Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you, for some reason your reply didn’t show up in the RSS feed.

I looked at the “Real Science Friday” site, run by Kgov, I’m sorry you believe that stuff. I’m sorry the public school system failed you so badly. I’ve read over the first several articles posted and clicked on the referencing works, in many cases the kdog site completely misrepresents what the studies found. The Caveman one stands out boldly, as does the ‘human gestation was lengthened from 6 months to 9 months as Eve’s punishment”.

I do not “misunderstand” evolution at all-I understand it very well. It’s hokum. It has been redefined many times so that the average Joe doesn’t REALLY know what could be implied by the word “Evolution”.

So the fact that science has no trouble correcting or clarifying its results based on new evidence is a ‘bad’ thing? Really? Science is not a dogma, it is not a belief system, it doesn’t claim a higher authority, it has to sink or swim on its own merits. If you put forth a hypothesis you had better be able to back it up, because half of the community is going to poke it with sharp sticks. As it should be. If a hypothesis cannot stand up to questions or evidence it doesn’t belong in science and will never become theory or law.

Mutations are not always detrimental. This is the biggest fallacy concerning evolution. The fact is most mutations are neutral, some beneficial and the ones that are harmful tend not to survive long enough to breed so they cancel themselves out. Hair, skin and eye color are examples of neutral mutations; the skin lightening served a purpose in Northern living humans, the hair and eyes were probably novel mutations that piggybacked with other changes. I personally have several mutations regarding my bones, but I’ve lived long enough to breed successfully and at least one of my offspring has the same mutations, more than likely one of my parents has the same mutations.

What about the Earth only being a few thousand years old? I see that is the reason they think soft tissue was found in the triceratops horn. Finding soft tissue in fossils is not as rare as you would think, although it usually takes a demineralizing bath to find it. The only fossils that seem to have this happen are ones that got buried quickly in soils/sediments containing heavy metals (think landslide) as the carcass was not exposed to scavengers or elements so the soft tissue didn’t get the chance to naturally decay. There is nothing strange about this. As for people on this site believing dinosaurs may still exit, they are right, they might. We have several animals living today who were contemporaries of dinosaurs, Crocs and Gators jump to mind.

I understand that believing in something unchanging can be comforting, but the god of the gaps (we don’t know, so therefore god did it) isn’t really an answer. I would much rather have an honest “I don’t know” or “We think this is how it happened” than a vague invocation to an invisible being who blames his arch enemy for trying to deceive the faithful every time a fossil is found.

We have records and evidence of civilizations that rose, thrived and fell over and over again. We have physical evidence for creatures millions of years old. We have bones and DNA from our own ancestors as proof that we have changed, that we are continuing to change. We can use the theory of evolution to predict were we go from here, just as we have used evolution to create antibiotics to defeat new mutations in bacteria.

I’m not screaming with my hands over my ears either; why would I be dialoguing with you?

Yes, there are lot’s of “Religious folks” that accept evolution…but they’re just as wrong as you are. And should know better.

I do not “misunderstand” evolution at all-I understand it very well. It’s hokum. It has been redefined many times so that the average Joe doesn’t REALLY know what could be implied by the word “Evolution”. For example; I DO accept: survival of the fittest, and (limited -genetic barriers are real-true science-wink, wink) change within’ kinds, (Scientifically true) some mutation-(BUT IT’S ALMOST ALWAYS DETRIMENTAL TO A SPECIES ON A WHOLE)…but I DON’T accept the slime to you and me “evolution”; that is a fairy tale beyond description.

Look, We’ve got the SAME evidence, it’s just how you interpret it.

Anyway, since this IS a cryptozoology site where many believe dinosaurs could still be living somewhere on the planet… Check this out.

@ Sasquatch

Your lack of understanding regarding evolution doesn’t mean everyone else is wrong, it means you haven’t bothered taking the time to learn.

More to the point, Science has proof positive through fossils, DNA, anthropology and physiology that evolution has occurred and is happening even as we speak. What does Creationism or ID have? Nothing but failed lawsuits and a highly politicized, badly edited version of Bronze Age myths to back its hypotheses up. No ability to predict outcomes, no way to prove everything ‘magically’ appeared on the face of the Earth. All you have is wishful thinking and the ability to plug your ears and scream until you drown out the voices of others. And I know for a fact that religion and evolution are NOT mutually exclusive as I know plenty of religious folks who understand and accept evolution, including a priest, several Rabbis and a few Pastors.

If you choose to follow the teachings of a religion, even to the exclusion of reality, that’s fine, no one is trying to stop you, no one wants to stop you. Drink all the kool-aid you like, put on funny hats and declare yourself king. However your rights to do this end at the point that you harm others. I try taking a live and let live approach to most things, but you spewing ignorance on an easily researched topic is quite simply beyond the pale. If we followed your line of thought people would still be dying of easily cured infections, childhood diseases and childbirth. (bacteria theory, drug resistance, antibiotics, vaccines)

I guess I’d just like to use this post here and say that I really appreciate your input on this. And I would also like to say that I agree with or at least enjoy about 90% of your postings on here. I think your one of the regulars. And I like what you say a lot.

@thylo

In the case that sasquatch wasn’t being completely ironic… I do believe I appreciate your post most of all. For the sake of anyone who reads and lurks or whatever, your post has to be a benefit to someone…. uninformed.

“sasquatch responds:

… Oh, yeah, they set that up by saying that killer whales use to be wolf-like creatures. Ridiculous. Let’s all let Rover swim around in ponds and see how soon he starts losing legs and fur and have fins pop out. I just don’t buy it.”

ummm…. hmmmm…. not sure what to make of this statement of yours amigo.

in the off chance that you are being ironic, my apologies…. but i see so much poor understanding of evolution that i have to say something here.
first of all though, i am responding to that portion of your post that i have quoted above, and am not arguing for mermaids (nonsense). AAT is something else and i wish that these buffoons had not involved it in a discussion of mermaids… sigh.

so… whether you accept evolution or not, the concept is not, NOT, that you can put a dog in water and force it to adapt. it is not even that within the life of an organism it will adapt to a new environmental pressure and magically store thatas genetic data for transmission to subsequent generations. no….

evolution simply put is that the variation found in offspring of a species may or may not equip it to better deal with a new environment than previous generations. over a vast amount of time, these small inborn mutations may survive and thrive through natural selection.
this is not a process that happens within one lifetime, and the changes are hardwired at conception- they do not happen after birth, development notwithstanding (cf. larva, pupa, neoteny etc.), in repsonse to a pressure.
behavioural adaptation is not intrinsically genetic and not part of evolution. big * on this because of course there are tangents to this such as genetic predisposition to adapt behaviourally, and many other permutations on the theme that could be considered.

but no, rover in the pool learning to swim will never develop fins. he was born with the morphology he will die with.

however, if there was a life-strategy advantage to living in the pool and adapting to it, then future generations of rover’s descendants may exhibit physiological and morphological tendencies that that lifestyle favoured. and this would occur over a vast amount of time and the changes would typically be miniscule at any given point. perhaps a blood chemistry more favourable to a highly chlorinated environment and so on.

and your statement indicates your belief that rover would, by evolutionary theory, become your orca?

nah… although it is often noted that the ancestors of all cetaceans (not just orcas) were “wolf-like”, they were not wolves or even members of order Carnivora at all. they were hoofed carnivores most closely related to elephants, tapirs and pigs that lived near the seas and some of whom developed greater and greater affinities for aquatic life. they were known as mesonychids.

and if you want to see a good approximation of the transition from terrestrial carnivory to fully aquatic carnivory there are many good examples of varying degrees to be seen in the present day: minks, otters, pinnipeds (eared seals), and phocids (earless seals) to name a few in order of dependence on the land. given a good stretch of time you may see all these forms develop even more for a fully aquatic life, check back in in two million years!

i won’t argue with your right to believe in creationism or what have you, but at least be aware of what evolution actually theorizes if you are going to address it. otherwise you are misrepresenting it and, like crappy animal planet shows, there is too much of that out there.

rover in the pool is just a stinky dog.

cheers!

Still, I did enjoy the aquatic ape theory as it does use some good scientific ideas. The special effects could have used some help, but it’s a made for TV special so we can’t expect too much. I think what I enjoyed the most was the ideas that it brought up. Things like ‘what extreme would governments go to in order to protect their interests’ or ‘can modern humans be trusted to not kill out of fear or pleasure’ and ‘is avoidance the only reason they still survive’. I also liked the part about polar bears and how they are evolving into aquatic mammals, just as whales, seals and dolphins have.

I watched the Mermaid special the other day. It was amazing. Highly entertaining. Never gave mermaids a second thought, and that special kinda fascinated me the same way bigfoot does.

I never thought the show was real. I never thought they were trying to hoax. They were trying to entertain, make the viewer believe, bring a little myth and fantasy into reality.

It made me want to check out that Dragon mockumentary people have brought up.

To the people who proclaim this entertainment mockumentary as fake, a hoax, and stupid… I’ve a couple things to say: If you feel the need to clear the air about it being fake, that makes me think part of you was tricked by it. You were fooled somewhere, sometime by something that you later realized was fake. That’s okay. The other thing it makes me think– you probably like Finding Bigfoot. Because that’s ‘real,’ unlike the mermaid moc.