There comes a point where the only “rebuttal” required is to point and laugh.

RS

Wortfish wrote:

felltoearth wrote:In your wet dreams. The Dover judgement would prevent any such thing.

One judge in one court doesn't change anything. Creationism has been taught in American public schools before. At the very least, criticism of Neo-Darwinism will be made a mandatory component of the science class.

Yeah because surely what the US needs is to put the christofascist version of the Taliban in charge of making the average american even dumber, more ignorant, more mislead, more religiously propagandized, more brainlessly consumerized, more gullible, and more superstitious than they already are. A christian Saudi-Arabia ruled by christian Sharia. That is the future you seem to be advocating for.

I guess if you're a person who despises the US then institutionalizing the railing against some of the best science in history a staple of the US education system is the best possible thing you could hope for as nothing is more certain to make a country collapse back into somalia-type anarchy and dysfunction than that.

In any case, there's absolutely nothing stopping Pence from effectuating his hyperastronomical stupidity already, so one wonders why it hasn't happened already. Perhaps he needs to practice his ability to suck on Trump's defecating orifice a little bit harder?

An old one from my archives, but prescient in the context of this thread ... someone should make Pence look long and hard at this, until the concept finally strikes home ...

Harsh, but on point.

Calilasseia wrote:An old one from my archives, but prescient in the context of this thread ... someone should make Pence look long and hard at this, until the concept finally strikes home ...

I am sure that Pence accept microevolution as do all creationists. He asked me to show you this slide:

More moronic ass slop. This has been thoroughly dealt with time and again.

Again, you are being disingenuous or moronic. Your pick.

felltoearth wrote:More moronic ass slop. This has been thoroughly dealt with time and again.

Again, you are being disingenuous or moronic. Your pick.

Just telling you what creationists believe. Evolutionists disingenously like to claim that macroevolution just means speciation..But creationists like Pence accept speciation!

Bullshit.

What evolutionary biologists (which is the proper term for the people who spend decades studying the subject) actually postulate here, is that the same processes resulting in changes that don't involve the formation of new taxa, are also involved in changes that do produce new taxa. If changes in certain key MHC and fertillin genes result in a population A developing interfertility failure with other populations B, C and D, when individuals in population A in past generations were previously interfertile with individuals in populations B. C and D, then we have a taxon generating event. Nothing "disingenuous" about this at all, it's documented lavishly in relevant papers.

Oh, and meanwhile, how many of the 101 or so papers on observed instances of speciation in my current collection, do I have to bring here to nail this creationist lie?

As for the idea that birds emerging from reptiles is "controversial" among people who paid attention in basic science classes, well first of all, we don't only have fossil data to rely on in order to establish this, but molecular data from modern organisms as well. Such as the paper I presented in this post covering the talpid2 mutation in chickens, which sees chicken embryos develop Archosaurian teeth. Oh wait, that's right, the genes for reptilian teeth are still present in many modern birds, except that those genes are shut down. Mutations re-enabling those genes result in reptilian teeth appearing in modern birds.

If you study even a single semester of comparative vert anatomy, you're overwhelmed by the similarities between birds and reptiles. They're the same.

Calilasseia wrote:
What evolutionary biologists (which is the proper term for the people who spend decades studying the subject) actually postulate here, is that the same processes resulting in changes that don't involve the formation of new taxa, are also involved in changes that do produce new taxa.

That's really well put.

Wortfish wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:An old one from my archives, but prescient in the context of this thread ... someone should make Pence look long and hard at this, until the concept finally strikes home ...

I am sure that Pence accept microevolution as do all creationists. He asked me to show you this slide:

Ah, so you're another one of those people who can understand that people can take a step, but are confounded by how people can walk a mile.....

Wortfish wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:An old one from my archives, but prescient in the context of this thread ... someone should make Pence look long and hard at this, until the concept finally strikes home ...

I am sure that Pence accept microevolution as do all creationists. He asked me to show you this slide:

Macroevolution is change in the number of species, which has been directly observed. At every level from emergence of new species to extinction of already existing species.

So that slide is just straightforwardly false. In the future if you repeat this falsehood, you will be lying.

By the way, you can infer that macroevolution took place by consilience of independent phylogenies, which can only be rationally explained if different species share common descent. You don't need fossils or geology for this.

Wortfish wrote:Evolutionists disingenously like to claim that macroevolution just means speciation

How is that dishonest? That's literally just what practicing evolutionary biologists use the word to mean. You can't fault biologists for the poor education of creationists, and the creationist lies and misuse of well-defined technical terms.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:If you study even a single semester of comparative vert anatomy, you're overwhelmed by the similarities between birds and reptiles. They're the same.

Calilasseia wrote:
What evolutionary biologists (which is the proper term for the people who spend decades studying the subject) actually postulate here, is that the same processes resulting in changes that don't involve the formation of new taxa, are also involved in changes that do produce new taxa.

That's really well put.

Birds have feathers, reptiles have scales.
Birds are warm-blooded, reptiles are cold-blooded.
Birds have lungs and femurs specialised for flight, reptiles do not.

Rumraket wrote:

Wortfish wrote:Evolutionists disingenously like to claim that macroevolution just means speciation

How is that dishonest? That's literally just what practicing evolutionary biologists use the word to mean. You can't fault biologists for the poor education of creationists, and the creationist lies and misuse of well-defined technical terms.

If you define macroevolution as speciation, then all creationists are macro-evolutionists! What macroevolution really means is the emergence of new organs, body plans and phyla. Creationists reject this entirely.

Calilasseia wrote:Oh, and meanwhile, how many of the 101 or so papers on observed instances of speciation in my current collection, do I have to bring here to nail this creationist lie?

Creationists accept speciation. In fact, their baraminology requires it. From a few created kinds rescued on the Ark, emerged all known species on earth. That is creationist dogma.

Or your fantasy?

Wortfish wrote:
Birds have feathers, reptiles have scales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_(anatomy)#Avian_scales

Birds' scales are found mainly on the toes and metatarsus, but may be found further up on the ankle in some birds. The scales and scutes of birds were thought to be homologous to those of reptiles,[4] but are now agreed to have evolved independently, being degenerate feathers.[5][6]

Emphasis mine.

Swing and a miss. How many more times do you want to embarrass yourself?