Posted: Apr 27, 2012 5:53 am
asyncritus wrote:Oldskeptic wrote:asyncritus wrote:Animavore wrote:Birds actually have scales on their legs. This is especially prominent on large birds. You can see this on my friend's turkeys. As you look up the leg you actually see the scales begin to become more perpendicular to the leg, elongated and feathery, quite quickly, as they near the top of the leg. I really don't see the problem there with that one. Once you pluck a turkey there's no scales under the feathery parts, because the feathers are the scales.
I don't see your point. Fish have a lot of scales too. You saying the birds could have evolved from fish too?
All tetrapods evolved from fish, so yes, birds did evolve from fish. To be precise, lobe-finned fish, beginning about 400 million years ago.
Ha ha haaaa!
You can't be serious. Or can you?
Explain this little point to me:
Here's a fish (whichever one you like) swimming in the water. Has lived there for n million years, doing all the things fish do. Like breathing with gills underwater.
Now for some reason (which you'll have to cook up) he decides to walk out on land. (BTW did you know that Tiktaalik is now dead as a dodo, and is now died out from the tetrapod evolution line?)
Let me grant you legs which have come from somewhere - he's developed them SO THAT he can get out and walk.
Right. He's got legs, but doesn't know what the hell to do with them. No walking/ambulatory instincts present.
So I ask you, where did the necessary instincts come from? Practice? Lamarck? What?
Tada
Exposed Platonism.
It's as simple as that: it's a fish. Fish swim. End of story for Platonists like Asyncritus. Perfect platonic fish cannot possibly do anything other than be fish, or they wouldn't be fish, so they wouldn't be evolving from fish into something else. The logic works if you either use 5th century B.C. scientific understanding, or lobotomise yourself with a spoon first.