Once upon a time there were some story tellers, so they told stories to other people. These story tellers were different. They called themselves scientists and expected their stories to be taken as true because....they called themselves scientists. They changed their stories as often as they wanted to but always expected each one to be taken seriously. For as long as it was science then it was true, or at least pretty close to being true.
They called one of their stories the tree down theory. One story teller made it up. He said, "Once upon a time there was a group of avian ancestors and they kept jumping from tree to tree. They jumped and jumped. They were quite jumpy little fellows. In the course of time they kept jumping and some fell down and died. The others did not stop jumping and eventually enough were killed that only the best jumpers were left. Oh, that's right. Just having good jumpers is not enough because a lot of things still jump in trees pretty good. Well, among the best jumpers they started growing one lil' feather and then another lil' feather! ....and their lil' arms, they started just a-changin'. Yep, the bone structure just went all different like. Then, their lil' lungs started to breathe on the in and the out so that they could get enough air. ...and their lil' mammalian lips, they started going harder and harder, like a lil' beak! Well...finally, one day, they just flew, flew on away!"
Another story teller said, "Man that is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard! Here, let me try...." For the story tellers did disagree with each other as long as it was the same type of story, in the end.
"Once opon a time there were some dinosaurs. They curled up when they slept and looked like a lil' bird. So, that means that birds came from dinosaurs! Here is how it happened. Their lil' scales just changed a little here and a little there until they became one lil' feather and then another lil' feather. Then, they jumped in the air some. They were jumpy too, all jumpy. Some of the ones that could not jump high enough died and the ones that could jump high lived. So they jumped higher and higher! Well, their bones switched around and their arms began to grow up out their back instead. Their hearts and lungs switched all around too. They began to flap the arms that grew up out their back, here a little and there a little, flap, flap. They kept on jumping, the jumpy dinosaurs. Finally, one day they flew up, up and on away, as a Big Bird!"
The other replied, "You just watched Sesame Street, is all. I still like my story about things jumping out of trees and killing themselves enough times that they flew away one day."
To which the second said, "Well, at least we can agree that our mommy Nature did it somehow. Otherwise we might have to tell a story about how some sort of Father God created things. And the divisiveness of that. I have the urge to merge!"
"Me too, what else can we try to merge together? I like my mommy Nature, she will merge everything for me."
For the real problem with these story tellers is that they are geeks. In reading the text of Nature and all the jots and tittles of it, they want only titillating tittles and refuse to read the jots. For the discrimination, the divisiveness and separation of the jots must be avoided for people of their psychology, regardless what the truth is.
But the truth is that you cannot necessarily just make up a Big Bird or a Big Rat. (see comments section) Putting lil' feathers on a T-Rex does not mean that birds came from dinosaurs, even if dinosaurs did have feathers. There are ancient paintings, carvings, engravings and the like that indicate "dragons" did look like birds in some ways. But evolutionists do not believe in ancient knowledge because all ancient peoples were just a bunch of primitives, I suppose. They seem quite smart about some things for being so primitive. Not to mention the fact that there is no explanation for innate mental structures and the pattern of universal prejudices that seem written in them.
2 comments:
The Big Rat, I smell a rat.
"Some idea of the daunting difficulties involved in reconstructing transitional forms can be gauged by considering the vast number of factors that would have to be taken into account in the relatively simple task of redesigning a very much enlarged version of a well known organism. The German zoologist Bernhard Rensch has described the changes that would be necessary in designing a gigantic beaver-sized rat some sixty times heavier than a normal rat.
'a hypothetical “rat” of excessive body size, about as large as a beaver, would differ from its smaller relatives in the following characters. This animal compared with related smaller species would have a relatively smaller head, brain case (in relation to the facial bones), brain stem (in comparison to the brain as a whole), ears, and feet; a relatively shorter tail and shorter hairs; and a relatively smaller heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, thyroid, and pituitary and adrenal glands. The weight of the bones would be relatively heavier, the facial bones relatively longer (in relation to the brain case), and the forebrain relatively larger (in relation to the brain as a whole). The retina of this giant rat would be relatively (and probably absolutely) thinner; the layer of ganglion cells and both granular layers of the eye would be less dense; the number of rods and cones would be relatively smaller. In the forebrain the cortex-7-stratificatus would be relatively larger, and the semicortex relatively smaller. The absolutely larger neurons of the brain would be less dense but would have many more dendritic ramifications. There would be equally large but definitely more numerous blood corpuscles and bone and connective tissue cells, and relatively smaller insulin-producing tissue of the pancreas. Finally, the general metabolism (especially the rate of oxygen consumption, breathing, pulse, and blood circulation) would be decreased; the amount of blood sugar would be less, and the relative speed in locomotion would be slower. In this giant rat, the onset of maturity would be postponed, the gestation period and average length of individual age would be prolonged, and the animal would be superior in learning ability and in memory.'
Any change, therefore, which on the surface may at first appear quite trivial, on closer examination would inevitably necessitate extensive reorganization of the entire anatomy and physiology of the organism. It is clear, then, that a complete reconstruction of hypo thetical transitional organisms including all the details of their biology, anatomy, physiology, behaviour etc is out of the question, and it may never be possible to rigorously test any major evolutionary claim by providing fully reconstructed transitional types. Nevertheless, if the gaps were closed gradually through transitional types, as evolution implies, then at least it should be possible to provide general descrip tions of the intermediates to show that they could have actually existed.
On the whole, however, even the most tentative schemes outlining a sequence of events are seldom convincing. Take, for example, the problem of the origin of birds. The flight feather of a bird is one of the most beautiful and well known of all biological adaptations."
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, Michael Denton :201-202)
Back to the feather....already done, but along the same lines, on another issue:
""For example, it has always been traditionally considered that the morphology [morphology = "Hey, this looks like that! Oh, then it must have come from it.] of the vertebrate heart and aortic arches in fishes, lung-fish, amphibia, reptile and mammals form a clear series.
However, the sequence is very much a broken one, and it is doubtful to what extent it really gives evidence of being a sequence (see Figure 5.2). Take one section of the traditional sequence: amphibia-->reptile-->mammal. There are many detailed aspects of their comparative anatomy which do not support it, for example, the aortic arches. The major vessel leaving the left ventricle in a reptile, which is the major vessel carrying aereated blood from the heart, is formed from the fourth right aortic arch, while in a mammal it is derived from the left aortic arch (see Figure 5.3). Instead of arranging them in a sequence amphibia-->reptile-->mammal we might just as easily arrange them circumferentially with reptile and mammal equidistant from amphibia. [......]
The only section of the series that is convincing in any sense is the sequence fish-->lungfish-->amphibia. But as we have already seen, although the lugnfish does seem to be intermediate in an overall sense between fish and amphibia, its organ systems are not strictly transitional. Its aortic arches are essentially like those of any fish while the mode of return of aereated blood from the lungs is essentially amphibian, and the heart is of a highly specialized design which differs significantly from any fish or amphibian and certainly cannot be construed to any degree as ancestral to any modern amphibian."
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, Michael Denton :112-113)
What evolutionists generally try to do is just merge things. That's about it. So you arrange the environment in a sequence, aquatic, semi-aquatic and then land. Then, the organisms are already in some semblance of a sequence....and it is time for some story telling.
Once upon a time a group of mammalian ancestors, flopped and flopped themselves up into marshes....
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