Whale Evolution: Looks are everything
Instapundit links to the latest
Tangled Bank offerings promoting evolutionary scenarios, and our old friend DarkSyde is included in a post on the
so-called evolution of whales. Despite the fact that whales are notoriously prone to going extinct, evolutionists continue to cling on to whale fossils, which span across millions of years, as being the long lost
transitional fossils so readily absent from the fossil record.
The basis for such a claim rests mainly on how whale fossils apparently
look like they transition from one form to another. Despite admissions that the proposed evolutionary lineages are sketchy at best, despite the fact that the proposed time of transition is woefully short to encompass the necessary changes, and despite the lack of any clear despcription of a mechanism that could produce such changes*, we still see blatant examples of
Berra's Blunder. The bottom-line is that the examples presented as transitional fossils are nothing more than intermediate forms. Evolutionary "lensing," that is, viewing the data through strictly evolutionary spectacles, results in strictly evolutionary explanations.
The notion that,
transitional in nature is not the same as intermediate in form, never seems to occur to the evolutionist.
For a classic look at how major changes* in proposed whale evolution are glossed over, view the QT
video from the PBS series Evolution (especially note the animation towards the end of the clip).
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The Left is Lost
Per
FoxNews, regarding an FBI report on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Senator Dick said,
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings
Utterly Disgraceful
Let him know at
dick@durbin.senate.gov
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A New Blog lurking in the shadows
Longtime commenter Bonnie, from
Off the Top, will be teaming up with
Marla Swoffer (who probably owns a few Swiffers), on a new seven-woman blog to be titled
Intellectuelle. A seven-woman blog? Sigh. Should I get the
ACLUnatics to sue for gender discrimination?
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You won't see this on the boob tube
Per
Michell Malkin Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell banned her partner Kelli Carpenter from breastfeeding their daughter Vivienne just a few weeks after she was born--because she was jealous of their bonding sessions. Kelli gave birth to Vivienne in 2002, and the lesbian couple have been raising her along with their three other adopted children.
But O'Donnell admits she felt left out of the motherhood process whenever she observed her partner nursing their child.
Sounds like Rosie needs just a bit more Left Leaning Tolerance.
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* There are a variety of changes that must take place for a wolf-like land based mammal to transition first into a fresh-water and then salt-water based whale. In Michael Denton's book,
Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, we find that the wolf-like mammal must,
cease using its hind legs for locomotion and to keep them permanently stretched out backwards on either side of the tail and to drag itself about by using its fore-legs. During its excursions in the water, it must have retained the hind legs in their rigid position and swim by moving them and the tail from side to side. As a result of this act of self denial we must assume that the hind legs eventually became pinned to the tail by the growth of membrane. Thus the hind part of the body would have become like that of a seal. Having reached this stage, the creature, in anticipation of a time when it will give birth to its young under water, gradually develop apparatus by means of which the milk is forced into the mouth of the young one, and meanwhile a cap has to be formed round the nipple into which the snout of the young one fits tightly, the epiglottis and laryngeal cartilage become prolonged downwards so as tightly to embrace this tube, in order that the adult will be able to breath while taking water into the mouth and the young while taking in milk. Be it noted that there is no stage intermediate between being born and suckled under water and being born and suckled in the air. At the same time various other anatomical changes have to take place, the most important of which is the complete transformation of the tail region. The hind part of the body must have begun to twist on the fore part, and this twisting must have continued until the sideways movement of the tail developed into an up-and-down movement. While this twisting went on the hind limbs and pelvis must have diminished in size, until the latter ceased to exist as external limbs at all, and completely disappeared in most, whales.
But none of this is a problem as long as you keep repeating to yourself that the fossils
look so similar that
the only possible explanation is that they
must have transitioned into the forms we see through
tiny changes over
long periods of time.
Does the phrase "complete butthead" apply here? Actually, maybe it's not complete butthead because he broke his right pinkie and, if you'll notice in the pic, he's doin' his shovin' with his left hand.
