But should we be talking about a “Big Bang” of birds?

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 13, 2014

Evolution, Intelligent Design, News}

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Does the idea of an “explosion of organisms” reinforce a misleading perspective?

The evidence for intelligent design just keeps getting stronger. It’s long been known that the Cambrian explosion isn’t the only explosion of organisms in the fossil record. There’s also something of a fish explosion, an angiosperm explosion, and a mammal explosion. Paleontologists have even cited a “bird explosion,” with major bird groups appearing in a short time period. Frank Gill’s 2007 textbook Ornithology observes the “explosive evolution” of major living bird groups, and a paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution titled “Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse” explains:

A literal reading of the fossil record indicates that the early Cambrian (c. 545 million years ago) and early Tertiary (c. 65 million years ago) were characterized by enormously accelerated periods of morphological evolution marking the appearance of the animal phyla, and modern bird and placental mammal orders, respectively.

Now, a massive genetic study published in Science has confirmed the fossil evidence that birds arose explosively. According to an article titled, “Rapid bird evolution after the age of dinosaurs unprecedented”: More.

Okay, it all happened really fast, and so do explosions. (If it happened really slow, we would call it evolution.)

See the problem? Explosions aren’t just very fast, they are usually destructive. Yes, they can be constructive, but only if controlled for a constructive purpose like blasting a subway tunnel (intelligent design).

What actually happens, whether it’s the origin of the universe or the origin of birds most fits the pattern of a scheduled rollout.

You can often see antecedents, to be sure, as in the dinosaurian traits of birds. But the antecedents do nothing to account for later developments like the “enormously accelerated periods” or “unprecedented” rapidity of constructive change.

Don’t forget, Fred Hoyle called it the Big Bang theory to make fun of it. In doing so, he implanted an idea that fits what we are required to believe, but not what we see. Thoughts?

See: Big Bang exterminator wanted, will train

Comments

gpuccio @ 27
Really amazing how complex regulatory networks can not only arise, not only be conserved, but also independently evolve!
"amazing" seems like an understatement in this case. :)Dionisio_{December 14, 2014
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Mapou: Therefore what? Therefore Darwinian evolution did it? It is evidence against that claim that birds "were created in an instant, boom." The phylogeny strongly supports branching descent, in particular, that birds descended from non-avian theropods. Mapou: This is like saying, automobiles didn’t appear out of nowhere, but were preceded by horse drawn carriages. Therefore Darwinian evolution did it. The evidence supports that automobiles were designed by a peculiar species of ape. The evidence supports that birds descended from theropods through a process of branching descent. See Jarvis et al., Whole-genome analyses resolve early branches in the tree of life of modern birds, Science 2014. ppolish: Birds were not preceded by theropods Zachriel. Did you bother to read the paper? See Brusatte et al., Gradual Assembly of Avian Body Plan Culminated in Rapid Rates of Evolution across the Dinosaur-Bird Transition, Current Biology 2014. gpuccio: Independent evolution again! Really amazing how complex regulatory networks can not only arise, not only be conserved, but also independently evolve! Sure. See Darwin 1859. gpuccio: And let’s not forget that, more or less at the same time, mammals diversity emerged too Sure. A great extinction event left many niches vacant.Zachriel_{December 14, 2014
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bornagain77 @ 34
The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.
If you believe all the things you own are not real, that there resale value is zero, that the dollars you earn are spiritual, I really don't know what to say!
Moreover, I take the reduction of material to information in teleportation to be a direct violation of the reductive materialistic claim that information ‘emerges’ from a material basis.
You just transport the information about the state (say spin) of a non-entangled particle to already entangled particles. You don't have to reduce material to information.
Nothing about classical channels being used to send information about how to set the detector
Quantum teleportation is defined as transferring Qubit by classical channel.Me_Think_{December 14, 2014
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A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke “decoherence” – the notion that “the physical environment” is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in “Renninger-type” experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. Henry 4-D Space-Time is a mathematical description and certainly is nor the cause of its own existence. Many people, because of QM, refer to space-time as an illusion Photons are not 'isolated from the environment' in the double slit. Consciousness being integral to wave function collapse is what is completely antithetical to materialistic thought. (Also see Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser) Einstein was shown to be completely wrong with his postulation of hidden variables, thus why did you quote him on Quantum Mechanics. Perhaps you would do better to listen to Wigner, whose insights into quantum mechanics continue to drive breakthroughs in QM? "It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness." Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays "Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays"; Eugene Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics "It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" - Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries' Of supplemental note to the preceding Wigner 'consciousness' quote, it is interesting to note that many of Wigner's insights have now been experimentally verified and are also now fostering a 'second' revolution in quantum mechanics,,, Eugene Wigner – A Gedanken Pioneer of the Second Quantum Revolution - Anton Zeilinger - Sept. 2014 Conclusion It would be fascinating to know Eugene Wigner’s reaction to the fact that the gedanken experiments he discussed (in 1963 and 1970) have not only become reality, but building on his gedanken experiments, new ideas have developed which on the one hand probe the foundations of quantum mechanics even deeper, and which on the other hand also provide the foundations to the new field of quantum information technology. All these experiments pay homage to the great insight Wigner expressed in developing these gedanken experiments and in his analyses of the foundations of quantum mechanics, http://epjwoc.epj.org/articles/epjconf/pdf/2014/15/epjconf_wigner2014_01010.pdf Moreover, I take the reduction of material to information in teleportation to be a direct violation of the reductive materialistic claim that information 'emerges' from a material basis. Nothing about classical channels being used to send information about how to set the detector. Moreover, see: Doing The Impossible - Verifying Macroscopic Objects Are 'Quantum' Objects - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktWhH6m_DM etc...bornagain77_{December 14, 2014
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Moose Dr @ 26,
Me_think, we have evidence of a single moment that spawned a perfectly balanced and tweaked out universe. Where is the problem?
I have no problem if you can explain to the IDist how all species were created by omnipotent being in a week via mechanism that you know. I fervently hope you don't mean Big Bang created universe, vegetation and all species in one single 'bang'!Me_Think_{December 14, 2014
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gpuccio @ 29, 30
So, you have decided that all QM is superfluous and useless, and that the concept of wave function and wave function collapse have no practical utility in understanding reality. Amazing.
That's an amazing statement. I wonder what lead you to that conclusion. I am just correcting misconception about QM as much as I can.Me_Think_{December 14, 2014
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bornagain77 @ 23
Decoherence does not explain wave function collapse... you have no ‘mechanism’ (also see post 15)
Decoherence is loss of coherent phase angle, which is what everyone perceives as wave function collapse.
About @ 15 “But there is gravity,” you say. No, “gravity” is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation
What do you think space time is about?
Moreover, photons in the double slit are not in isolation and the photons only collapse to their particle state when consciousness interacts with the experiment (see Radin)
Of course they are in isolation.Radin was talking about observer being part of the QM experiment - not isolation of photons from environment. When you observe or measure it collapses - that's what I have been saying.
As well, realism, the belief that a 3-D material reality exists apart from conscious observation is falsified by Leggett’s Inequality. And, as referenced earlier, is also shown to hold for the macro-scale
Paraphrasing Einstein, it means the moon is not there when one doesn't look! If you look at your computer as you type, it is there but it is not there if you don't look. Your SUV is there when you look, but is not there when you don't. Metaphysical interpretation of QM equations is hilarious.
As well, reductive materialism, which undergirds neo-Darwinian thought, is falsified by quantum teleportation see Zeilinger
Apparently You took Qubit (information) transportation over classical channel to mean teleportation of physical form.Me_Think_{December 14, 2014
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Me_Think: Check this too: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-microphone/ "What's the sound of one molecule clapping? Researchers have demonstrated a device that can pick up single quanta of mechanical vibration similar to those that shake molecules during chemical reactions, and have shown that the device itself, which is the width of a hair, acts as if it exists in two places at once—a "quantum weirdness" feat that so far had only been observed at the scale of molecules."gpuccio_{December 13, 2014
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Me_Think: So, you have decided that all QM is superfluous and useless, and that the concept of wave function and wave function collapse have no practical utility in understanding reality. Amazing. You seem also very sure of what makes the wave function collapse, which remains one of the most controversial aspects of QM. Have you ever heard of macroscopic quantum phenomena? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroscopic_quantum_phenomenagpuccio_{December 13, 2014
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And let's not forget that, more or less at the same time, mammals diversity emerged too: "At the end of the Cretaceous period 65 MYBP [Million Years Before Present], only two lineages of Eutherian mammals were present: insectivorous Protoeutheria and hoofed Condylarthra. [Noneutherian Marsupialia, Monotremata, and Multituberculata, a now extinct group resembling rodents, were also present]. Following the disappearance of dinosaurs at the K/T [Cretaceous / Tertiary boundary], there was a rapid evolution of new mammalian types. By the middle of the Eocene epoch (45 MYBP), most of the twenty or so present-day mammalian orders are identifiable, including forms as diverse as Chiroptera [bats] descended from Protoeutheria and Cetacea [whales] descended from Condylarthra. This rapid evolution of morphological and taxonomic diversity is an example of an adaptive radiation." Well, those must have been very busy days! (ehm, million years, you are right, Zachriel :) )gpuccio_{December 13, 2014
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To all: This is really interesting (from the same issue of "Science"): http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6215/1256846.full
Song-learning birds and humans share independently evolved similarities in brain pathways for vocal learning that are essential for song and speech and are not found in most other species. Comparisons of brain transcriptomes of song-learning birds and humans relative to vocal nonlearners identified convergent gene expression specializations in specific song and speech brain regions of avian vocal learners and humans. The strongest shared profiles relate bird motor and striatal song-learning nuclei, respectively, with human laryngeal motor cortex and parts of the striatum that control speech production and learning. Most of the associated genes function in motor control and brain connectivity. Thus, convergent behavior and neural connectivity for a complex trait are associated with convergent specialized expression of multiple genes.
Independent evolution again! Really amazing how complex regulatory networks can not only arise, not only be conserved, but also independently evolve! But, obviously, our "skeptical" friends are never skeptical about those issues. :)gpuccio_{December 13, 2014
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Wow this is an interesting thread! I wish I had more time to digest the great comments. Me_think (3): "Sorry, but there is no known mechanism which helps a single being plan and build trillions of structures and processes in a week." Me_think, we have evidence of a single moment that spawned a perfectly balanced and tweaked out universe. Where is the problem?Moose Dr_{December 13, 2014
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When Dinosaurs Flew – February 4, 2014 Excerpt: A study published online by PeerJ on Jan. 2 detailed the examination of a startlingly complete and pristine specimen of an ancient, dinosaur-era bird: Hongshanornis longicresta, which flapped throughout what is now China roughly 125 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period.,,, “This isn’t a mode of flight we expected from Cretaceous birds,” Habib said, adding that its small size and overall shape are comparable to that of modern birds. “It was pretty much a Cretaceous starling with a larger tail like a mockingbird.” Transported to the modern world, it wouldn’t look like anything special to the casual observer, until a closer examination revealed claws at the end of the bird’s wings and tiny teeth in its beak.,,, http://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/1622/when-dinosaurs-flew/ also see post 13 https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/but-should-we-be-talking-about-a-big-bang-of-birds/#comment-536561bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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A lot of the new fossil evidence is coming from NE China in Liaoning province which was a warm wet shallow sea. The evidence of theropod-bird transition in many of the fossils is so ambiguous that real scientists have difficulty categorising them.rvb8_{December 13, 2014
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Decoherence does not explain wave function collapse. i.e. you have no 'mechanism' (also see post 15) Moreover, photons in the double slit are not in isolation and the photons only collapse to their particle state when consciousness interacts with the experiment (see Radin). As well, realism, the belief that a 3-D material reality exists apart from conscious observation is falsified by Leggett's Inequality. And, as referenced earlier, is also shown to hold for the macro-scale, i.e. "for unrestricted measurement accuracy a violation of macrorealism (i.e., a violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities) is possible for arbitrary large systems",, As well, reductive materialism, which undergirds neo-Darwinian thought, is falsified by quantum teleportation (see Zeilinger).bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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bornagain77 @ 21,
Related notes on ‘interaction free’ measurement:
It relates to measuring a Quantum state in isolation. Without isolation, whether you measure or not, the wave function collapses. Again,you could ,of course ,claim an omnipotent God has a mechanism for isolating QM Wavefunction in universe and avoid interaction, but we have no knowledge of such a mechanism.Me_Think_{December 13, 2014
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Related notes on ‘interaction free’ measurement: Quantum Zeno effect “It has been experimentally confirmed,, that unstable particles will not decay, or will decay less rapidly, if they are observed. Somehow, observation changes the quantum system. We’re talking pure observation, not interacting with the system in any way.” Douglas Ell – Counting to God – pg. 189 – 2014 – Douglas Ell graduated early from MIT, where he double majored in math and physics. He then obtained a masters in theoretical mathematics from the University of Maryland. After graduating from law school, magna cum laude, he became a prominent attorney. The Mental Universe – Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics John Hopkins University Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke “decoherence” – the notion that “the physical environment” is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in “Renninger-type” experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf The Renninger Negative Result Experiment – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3uzSlh_CV0 Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester Excerpt: In 1994, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat, Harald Weinfurter, and Thomas Herzog actually performed an equivalent of the above experiment, proving interaction-free measurements are indeed possible.[2] In 1996, Kwiat et al. devised a method, using a sequence of polarising devices, that efficiently increases the yield rate to a level arbitrarily close to one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb-testing_problem#Experiments Experimental Realization of Interaction-Free Measurement – Paul G. Kwiat; H. Weinfurter, T. Herzog, A. Zeilinger, and M. Kasevich – 1994 http://www.univie.ac.at/qfp/publications3/pdffiles/1994-08.pdf Interaction-Free Measurement – 1995 http://archive.is/AjexE Realization of an interaction-free measurement – 1996 http://bg.bilkent.edu.tr/jc/topics/Interaction%20free%20measurements/papers/realization%20of%20an%20interaction%20free%20measurement.pdf The following video also clearly demonstrates that “decoherence” does not solve the measurement problem: The Measurement Problem in quantum mechanics – (Inspiring Philosophy) – 2014 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7d5V71vUE Macrorealism Emerging from Quantum Physics – Brukner, Caslav; Kofler, Johannes American Physical Society, APS March Meeting, – March 5-9, 2007 Excerpt: for unrestricted measurement accuracy a violation of macrorealism (i.e., a violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities) is possible for arbitrary large systems.,, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007APS..MARB33005Bbornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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bornagain77 @ 18
Of related interest to the doubt that MT has about God having sufficient knowledge to create life in a week (or however long), although I could point out the fact that God brought the entire universe instantaneously into being, a bit better example is found by examining a single photon.
Quantum states work only in isolation. If they interact, the wave function collapses.Particles in universe are not in isolation.In nature all macro quantum states (even if isolated by structures (like in case of plant cells) lasts femtosecond, giving no opportunity to exchange quitbit information. Thus a Quibit will always reduce to a classical bit without isolation. Even if you observe a quantum superposition, once observed, a quantum function assumes one of the possible states, so I don't know how you can build a structure out of QM- you reduce it to classical bit every time you measure it. QM becomes useless. System decoherance will be huge. You could ,of course ,claim an omnipotent God has a mechanism for isolating QM Wavefunction in universe and avoid interaction but we have no knowledge of such a mechanism.Me_Think_{December 13, 2014
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A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - 2012 talk University of Wyoming J. Budziszewski http://veritas.org/talks/professors-journey-out-nihilism-why-i-am-not-atheist/?view=presenters&speaker_id=2231 – J. Budziszewski's homepage http://www.undergroundthomist.org/bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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Of related interest to the doubt that MT has about God having sufficient knowlege to create life in a week (or however long), although I could point out the fact that God brought the entire universe instantaneously into being, a bit better example is found by examining a single photon. ,,, The wave function of a single photon,,
Quantum Theory's 'Wavefunction' Found to Be Real Physical Entity: Scientific American - November 2011 Excerpt: "This strips away obscurity and shows you can't have an interpretation of a quantum state as probabilistic," he says. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-theorys-wavefunction
,,,The wave function of a single photon is described as a infinite dimensional Hilbert space:
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner - 1960 Excerpt: We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts: the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html Wave function Excerpt "wave functions form an abstract vector space",,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function#Wave_functions_as_an_abstract_vector_space
Moreover, this 'real' infinite dimensional hilbert space (i.e. wave function) can be encoded with information while it is in its wave state:
Ultra-Dense Optical Storage - on One Photon Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image's worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.,,, As a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once,,, http://www.physorg.com/news88439430.html
Moreover, the amount of information that a single photon can be encoded with is, theoretically, infinite:
“By its conventional definition, a photon is one unit of excitation of a mode of the electromagnetic field. The modes of the electromagnetic field constitute a countably infinite set of basis functions, and in this sense the amount of information that can be impressed onto an individual photon is unlimited.” Robert W. Boyd – The Enabling Technology for Quantum Information Science 2013 - University of Rochester, Rochester, NY - lead researcher of the experiment which encoded information in a photon in 2010 Single photons to soak up data: Excerpt: the orbital angular momentum of a photon can take on an infinite number of values. Since a photon can also exist in a superposition of these states, it could – in principle – be encoded with an infinite amount of information. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/7201 Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1
Thus every time we see (observe) a single photon of ‘material’ reality we are actually seeing just a single bit of information that was originally created from a very specific set of infinite information that was known by the consciousness that preceded material reality. i.e. information known only by the infinite Mind of omniscient God!
Job 38:19-20 “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?”
Thus since God by his infinite knowlege can bring a single photon into existence every time we look at a photon, then God, of course, has sufficient knowledge to bring whatever else he wants into being instantaneously. Quote and Music:
"Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!" Scott Aaronson - MIT Professor - Quantum Computing Instant Karma - John lennon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqP3wT5lpa4
bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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Birds were not preceded by theropods Zachriel. Independent and "dotted line" relationship: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evolution_of_dinosaurs_EN.svgppolish_{December 13, 2014
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God Is the Best Explanation For Why Anything At All Exists – William Lane Craig – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjuqBxg_5mA Aquinas’ Third way (argument from existence) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V030hvnX5a4 Aquinas’ First Way – (The First Mover – Unmoved Mover argument) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmpw0_w27As “The ‘First Mover’ is necessary for change occurring at each moment.” Michael Egnor – Aquinas’ First Way http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/jerry_coyne_and_aquinas_first.html
As to the ancient first mover argument of Aquinas in particular, the double slit experiment is excellent for illustrating that the ‘unmoved mover’ argument is empirically valid. In the following video Anton Zeilinger, whose group is arguably the best group of experimentalists in quantum physics today, ‘tries’ to explain the double slit experiment to Morgan Freeman:
Quantum Mechanics – Double Slit Experiment. Is anything real? (Prof. Anton Zeilinger) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayvbKafw2g0
Prof. Zeilinger makes this rather startling statement in the preceding video that meshes perfectly with the ‘first mover argument’::
“The path taken by the photon is not an element of reality. We are not allowed to talk about the photon passing through this or this slit. Neither are we allowed to say the photon passes through both slits. All this kind of language is not applicable.” Anton Zeilinger
If that was not enough to get Dr. Zeilinger’s point across, at the 4:12 minute mark in this following video,,,
Double Slit Experiment – Explained By Prof Anton Zeilinger – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6101627/
Professor Zeilinger states,,,
“We know what the particle is doing at the source when it is created. We know what it is doing at the detector when it is registered. But we do not know what it is doing in-between.” Anton Zeilinger
or as Dr. Egnor succintly put the argument,
“The ‘First Mover’ is necessary for change occurring at each moment.” - Michael Egnor
Supplemental quote:
“Joel Primack, a cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, once posed an interesting question to the physicist Neil Turok: “What is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws.” Turok was surprised by the question; he recognized its force. Something seems to compel physical objects to obey the laws of nature, and what makes this observation odd is just that neither compulsion nor obedience are physical ideas.,,, Physicists since Einstein have tried to see in the laws of nature a formal structure that would allow them to say to themselves, “Ah, that is why they are true,” and they have failed.” Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion pg. 132-133
Verse and Music:
Acts 17:28 For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Britt Nicole - Gold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9PjrtcHJPo
Of related interest:,,, as Stephen Talbott has clearly pointed out, a major problem with Darwinian explanations is how to describe the complexities of life without illegitimately using terminology that invokes agency,,,
The 'Mental Cell': Let’s Loosen Up Biological Thinking! - Stephen L. Talbott - September 9, 2014 Excerpt: Many biologists are content to dismiss the problem with hand-waving: “When we wield the language of agency, we are speaking metaphorically, and we could just as well, if less conveniently, abandon the metaphors”. Yet no scientist or philosopher has shown how this shift of language could be effected. And the fact of the matter is just obvious: the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology, as opposed to physics or chemistry. Is this in turn just hand-waving? Let the reader inclined to think so take up a challenge: pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness1. One reason this cannot be done is clear enough: molecular biology — the discipline that was finally going to reduce life unreservedly to mindless mechanism — is now posing its own severe challenges. In this era of Big Data, the message from every side concerns previously unimagined complexity, incessant cross-talk and intertwining pathways, wildly unexpected genomic performances, dynamic conformational changes involving proteins and their cooperative or antagonistic binding partners, pervasive multifunctionality, intricately directed behavior somehow arising from the interaction of countless players in interpenetrating networks, and opposite effects by the same molecules in slightly different contexts. The picture at the molecular level begins to look as lively and organic — and thoughtful — as life itself. http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2014/mental_cell_23.htm
This working biologist agrees completely with Talbott:
Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails - Ann Gauger - June 2011 Excerpt: I'm a working biologist, on bacterial regulation (transcription and translation and protein stability) through signalling molecules, ,,, I can confirm the following points as realities: we lack adequate conceptual categories for what we are seeing in the biological world; with many additional genomes sequenced annually, we have much more data than we know what to do with (and making sense of it has become the current challenge); cells are staggeringly chock full of sophisticated technologies, which are exquisitely integrated; life is not dominated by a single technology, but rather a composite of many; and yet life is more than the sum of its parts; in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology--we simply cannot avoid them. Furthermore, I suggest that to maintain that all of biology is solely a product of selection and genetic decay and time requires a metaphysical conviction that isn't troubled by the evidence. Alternatively, it could be the view of someone who is unfamiliar with the evidence, for one reason or another. But for those who will consider the evidence that is so obvious throughout biology, I suggest it's high time we moved on. - Matthew http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/life_purpose_mind_where_the_ma046991.html#comment-8858161
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as to this claim by an MT
"there is no known mechanism which helps a single being plan and build trillions of structures and processes in a week."
Actually, the atheist MT is the one fooling himself that he has a 'known mechanism'. Laws and Random Chance Have Never Caused Anything.
A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf
C.S. Lewis humorously stated the point like this:
"to say that a stone falls to earth because it's obeying a law, makes it a man and even a citizen" - CS Lewis
The following ‘doodle video' is also excellent for getting this point across:
“In the whole history of the universe the laws of nature have never produced, (i.e. caused), a single event.” C.S. Lewis - doodle video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_20yiBQAIlk Can Law Make Worlds? - Joshua Youngkin July 2, 2012 Excerpt: Filippenko apparently wants a first cause of some sort, but not a personal first cause, not a mind, not an agent. So he subtly turns physical law into a mind-independent reality, something that is self-sufficiently "there" at the beginning, something that can thus be filled with world-creating agency and power. But what would you call "law" that lives nowhere in particular yet could of its own accord decide when, where and how to apply itself? In seeking to identify such a strange power, the one name we cannot give it is "law." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/can_law_make_wo061551.html
In other words, law or necessity does not have causal adequacy within itself. i.e. Law is not a ‘mechanism’ that has ever ’caused’ anything to happen in the universe but is merely a description of a law-like regularity within the universe. The early Christian founders of modern science understood this sharp distinction between law and lawgiver quite well,,,
Not the God of the Gaps, But the Whole Show – John Lennox – 2012 Excerpt: God is not a “God of the gaps”, he is God of the whole show.,,, C. S. Lewis put it this way: “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.” http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-god-particle-not-the-god-of-the-gaps-but-the-whole-show-80307/
Perhaps the most famous confusion of a mathematical description of a law and the causal agency behind the law is Stephen Hawking’s following statement:
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.The universe didn’t need a God to begin; it was quite capable of launching its existence on its own,” Stephen Hawking http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/09/the-universe-exists-because-of-spontaneous-creation-stephen-hawking.html
Here is an excerpt of an article, (that is well worth reading in full), in which Dr. Gordon exposes Stephen Hawking’s delusion for thinking that mathematical description and agent causality are the same thing.
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: ,,,The physical universe is causally incomplete and therefore neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world,,, Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality.,,, Universes do not “spontaneously create” on the basis of abstract mathematical descriptions, nor does the fantasy of a limitless multiverse trump the explanatory power of transcendent intelligent design. What Mr. Hawking’s contrary assertions show is that mathematical savants can sometimes be metaphysical simpletons. Caveat emptor. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/
Moreover, the same type of confusion arises when atheists' appeal to ‘random chance’ as a causal agent instead of merely a description. When people say that something ‘happened by chance’ they are not actually appealing to a known causal mechanism but are instead using chance as a ‘placeholder for ignorance’ as to an actual causal mechanism. Stephen Talbott puts the situation like this,,
Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness – Stephen L. Talbott – Fall 2011 Excerpt: In the case of evolution, I picture Dennett and Dawkins filling the blackboard with their vivid descriptions of living, highly regulated, coordinated, integrated, and intensely meaningful biological processes, and then inserting a small, mysterious gap in the middle, along with the words, “Here something random occurs.” This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle. It is the central miracle in a gospel of meaninglessness, a “Randomness of the gaps,” demanding an extraordinarily blind faith. At the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?” http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-illusion-of-randomness
In other words, when people say that something “happened randomly by chance”, usually a mishap, they are in fact assuming an impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings which is, in fact, impossible to separate from causal agency. i.e. 'every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle' Although the term “chance” can be defined as a mathematical probability, such as the chance involved in flipping a coin, when Darwinists use the term ‘random chance’, generally it’s substituting for a more precise word such as “cause”, especially when the cause, i.e. ‘mechanism’, is not known. Several people have noted this ‘shell game’ that is played with the word ‘chance’..
“To personify ‘chance’ as if we were talking about a causal agent,” notes biophysicist Donald M. MacKay, “is to make an illegitimate switch from a scientific to a quasi-religious mythological concept.” Similarly, Robert C. Sproul points out: “By calling the unknown cause ‘chance’ for so long, people begin to forget that a substitution was made. . . . The assumption that ‘chance equals an unknown cause’ has come to mean for many that ‘chance equals cause.’”
Thus, when an atheist states that something happened by chance, we have every right to ask, as Talbott pointed out, “Can you be a little more explicit here?” In conclusion, contrary to how atheists imagine reality to be structured, they, in their appeal to random chance and law as to being causally adequate within themselves, have, in reality, appealed to vacuous explanations for a ‘causal mechanism’ that are far more properly grounded in agent causality. ,,, ,,,”vacuous explanations for a causal mechanism” reminds me of Lawrence Krauss’s argument against God from a few years ago in his book ‘A Universe from Nothing’,,
Not Understanding Nothing – A review of A Universe from Nothing – Edward Feser – June 2012 Excerpt: A critic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical philosophers thought his existence necessary in the first place. So when physicist Lawrence Krauss begins his new book by suggesting that to ask “Who created the creator?” suffices to dispatch traditional philosophical theology, we know it isn’t going to end well. ,,, ,,, But Krauss simply can’t see the “difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one.” The difference, as the reader of Aristotle or Aquinas knows, is that the universe changes while the unmoved mover does not, or, as the Neoplatonist can tell you, that the universe is made up of parts while its source is absolutely one; or, as Leibniz could tell you, that the universe is contingent and God absolutely necessary. There is thus a principled reason for regarding God rather than the universe as the terminus of explanation. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/05/not-understanding-nothing
To put what I consider the main philosophical arguments for God more simply, (at the risk of irritating more than a few philosophers), atheistic materialists do not have a causal mechanism to appeal to to explain how the universe originated, nor do they have a causal mechanism to explain why the universe continues to exists, nor why anything in the universe continues to exist in the universe, nor do they even have a causal mechanism for explaining how anything, any particle in the universe, moves within the universe! Here are a few notes along that line:
The Kalam Cosmological Argument (argument from the beginning of the universe) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CulBuMCLg0
bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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Zacky:
Birds didn’t appear out of nowhere, but were preceded by theropods.
Therefore what? Therefore Darwinian evolution did it? This is like saying, automobiles didn’t appear out of nowhere, but were preceded by horse drawn carriages. Therefore Darwinian evolution did it. You need to smoke some weed, Zacky. It might do you some good.Mapou_{December 13, 2014
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a few notes: Donald Prothero: In evolution, stasis was general, gradualism rare, and that’s the consensus 40 years on - February 2012 Excerpt: In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. Rather than answers, we have more questions— Donald Prothero - American paleontologist, geologist, and author who specializes in mammalian paleontology. https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/donald-prothero-in-evolution-stasis-was-the-general-pattern-gradualism-was-rare-and-that-is-still-the-consensus-40-years-later/ When Dinosaurs Flew - February 4, 2014 Excerpt: A study published online by PeerJ on Jan. 2 detailed the examination of a startlingly complete and pristine specimen of an ancient, dinosaur-era bird: Hongshanornis longicresta, which flapped throughout what is now China roughly 125 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period.,,, “This isn’t a mode of flight we expected from Cretaceous birds,” Habib said, adding that its small size and overall shape are comparable to that of modern birds. “It was pretty much a Cretaceous starling with a larger tail like a mockingbird.” Transported to the modern world, it wouldn’t look like anything special to the casual observer, until a closer examination revealed claws at the end of the bird’s wings and tiny teeth in its beak.,,, http://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/1622/when-dinosaurs-flew/ Darwin 'Wrong': Species Living Together Does Not Encourage Evolution - December 20, 2013 Excerpt: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution set out in the Origin of Species has been proven wrong by scientists studying ovenbirds. Researchers at Oxford University found that species living together do not evolve differently to avoid competing with one another for food and habitats – a theory put forward by Darwin 150 years ago. The ovenbird is one of the most diverse bird families in the world and researchers were looking to establish the processes causing them to evolve. Published in Nature, the research compared the beaks, legs and songs of 90% of ovenbird species. Findings showed that while the birds living together were consistently more different than those living apart, this was the result of age differences. Once the variation of age was accounted for, birds that live together were more similar than those living separately – directly contradicting Darwin's view. The species that lived together had beaks and legs no more different than those living apart,,, ,,,there is no shortage of evidence for competition driving divergent evolution in some very young lineages. But we found no evidence that this process explains differences across a much larger sample of species.,,, He said that the reasons why birds living together appear to evolve less are "difficult to explain",, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/darwin-wrong-species-living-together-does-not-encourage-evolution-1429927 “The whole notion of feathered dinosaurs is a myth that has been created by ideologues bent on perpetuating the birds-are-dinosaurs theory in the face of all contrary evidence” Storrs Olson - curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History The hype about feathered dinosaurs in the exhibit currently on display at the National Geographic Society is even worse, and makes the spurious claim that there is strong evidence that a wide variety of carnivorous dinosaurs had feathers. A model of the undisputed dinosaur Deinonychus and illustrations of baby tyrannosaurs are shown clad in feathers, all of which is simply imaginary and has no place outside of science fiction. - Storrs Olson The Archaeoraptor Fraud of National Geographic Magazine (In 1999) Excerpt: "The idea of feathered dinosaurs and the theropod origin of birds is being actively promulgated by a cadre of zealous scientists acting in concert with certain editors at Nature and National Geographic who themselves have become outspoken and highly biased proselytizers of the faith. Truth and careful scientific weighing of evidence have been among the first casualties in their program, which is now fast becoming one of the grander scientific hoaxes of our age---the paleontological equivalent of cold fusion." - Storrs Olson curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History Alan Feduccia, considered an expert on bird evolution, has written, “The major and most worrying problem of the feathered dinosaur hypothesis is that the integumental structures have been homologized with avian feathers on the basis of anatomically and paleontologically unsound and misleading information.” FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds - Feathers - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2yeNoDCcBg FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds - Flight muscles - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFdvkopOmw0 FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds - Skeletal system - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11fZS_B6UW4 Jim Al-Khalili and the Quantum Robin - video According to Quantum Physicist Jim Al-Khalili, the phenomenon Quantum Entanglement in Robins is "nothing short of miraculous." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jepgOQEvWT0 FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds – Starling murmurations – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GR9zFgOzywbornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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No. Birds are theropods. See Brusatte et al., Gradual Assembly of Avian Body Plan Culminated in Rapid Rates of Evolution across the Dinosaur-Bird Transition, Current Biology 2014.
Umm, no one knows what makes a bird a bird let alone how genetic changes can produce one from theropods.Joe_{December 13, 2014
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Moreover, disparity preceding diversity is not only found in the Cambrian Explosion but is a defining characteriastic in the fossil record after the Cambrian as well:
Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head - July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: "This pattern, known as 'early high disparity', turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn't a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.",,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: "Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: "A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html The unscientific hegemony of uniformitarianism - David Tyler - May 2011 Excerpt: The pervasive pattern of natural history: disparity precedes diversity,,,, The summary of results for phyla is as follows. The pattern reinforces earlier research that concluded the Explosion is not an artefact of sampling. Much the same finding applies to the appearance of classes. These data are presented in Figures 1 and 2 in the paper. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2011/05/16/the_unscientific_hegemony_of_uniformitar “The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find’ over and over again’ not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.” Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager (Department of Geology & Oceanography, University College, Swansea, UK) “It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution…This phenomenon becomes more universal and more intense as the hierarchy of categories is ascended. Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes and phyla are systematic and almost always large.” G.G.Simpson – one of the most influential American Paleontologist of the 20th century “Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” – Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University “What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.” Robert L Carroll (born 1938) – vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians “In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms.” Fossils and Evolution, TS Kemp – Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999
bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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as to:
"It’s long been known that the Cambrian explosion isn’t the only explosion of organisms in the fossil record. There’s also something of a fish explosion, an angiosperm explosion, and a mammal explosion. Paleontologists have even cited a “bird explosion,” with major bird groups appearing in a short time period."
Another fact that argues for the sudden appearance of organisms in the fossil record is the fact that major types of organisms appear in a 'top down' fashion in the fossil record rather than in a gradual 'bottom up' fashion as is predicted by Darwinism. This anomaly in the fossil record, which is at odds with Darwinism, is called 'disparity preceding diversity'. The 'top down' pattern is most noticeable in the Cambrian explosion,,,
Cambrian Explosion Ruins Darwin's Tree of Life (2 minutes in 24 hour day) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQKxkUb_AAg
, as Dr. Wells points out in the preceding video, Darwin predicted that minor differences (diversity) between species would gradually appear first and then the differences would grow larger (disparity) between species as time went on. i.e. universal common descent as depicted in Darwin's tree of life. What Darwin predicted should be familiar to everyone and is easily represented in the following graph.,,,
The Theory - Diversity precedes Disparity - graph http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/JOURNEY/IMAGES/F.gif
But that 'tree pattern' that Darwin predicted is not what is found in the fossil record. The fossil record reveals that disparity (the greatest differences) precedes diversity (the smaller differences), which is the exact opposite pattern for what Darwin's theory predicted.
The Actual Fossil Evidence- Disparity precedes Diversity - graph http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/JOURNEY/IMAGES/G.gif Timeline graphic on Cambrian Explosion from 'Darwin's Doubt' (Disparity preceding Diversity) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/its_darwins_dou074341.html Chinese microscopic fossil find challenges Darwin's theory - 11 November, 2014 Excerpt: One of the world's leading researchers on the Cambria explosion is Chen Junyuan from the Nanjing Institute of Palaeontology and he said that his fossil discoveries in China show that "Darwin's tree is a reverse cone shape". A senior research fellow at Chengjiang Fauna [fossil site], said, "I do not believe the animals developed gradually from the bottom up, I think they suddenly appeared". As a medical professional and former atheist, I ignorantly believed that Darwin's evolutionary theory was a scientific fact. The fact is, Darwinism has never been more than an unproven theory,,, http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/1636922/chinese-microscopic-fossil-find-challenges-darwins-theory Challenging Fossil of a Little Fish Excerpt: "In Chen’s view, his evidence supports a history of life that runs opposite to the standard evolutionary tree diagrams, a progression he calls top-down evolution." Jun-Yuan Chen is professor at the Nanjing Institute of Paleontology and Geology http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htm Investigating Evolution: The Cambrian Explosion Part 1 – (4:45 minute mark - upside-down fossil record) video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DkbmuRhXRY Part 2 – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZFM48XIXnk "The record of the first appearance of living phyla, classes, and orders can best be described in Wright's (1) term as 'from the top down'." (James W. Valentine, "Late Precambrian bilaterians: Grades and clades," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 91: 6751-6757 (July 1994).) “Darwin had a lot of trouble with the fossil record because if you look at the record of phyla in the rocks as fossils why when they first appear we already see them all. The phyla are fully formed. It’s as if the phyla were created first and they were modified into classes and we see that the number of classes peak later than the number of phyla and the number of orders peak later than that. So it’s kind of a top down succession, you start with this basic body plans, the phyla, and you diversify them into classes, the major sub-divisions of the phyla, and these into orders and so on. So the fossil record is kind of backwards from what you would expect from in that sense from what you would expect from Darwin’s ideas." James W. Valentine - as quoted from "On the Origin of Phyla: Interviews with James W. Valentine In Explaining the Cambrian Explosion, Has the TalkOrigins Archive Resolved Darwin's Dilemma? - JonathanM - May 2012 Excerpt: it is the pattern of morphological disparity preceding diversity that is fundamentally at odds with the neo-Darwinian scenario of gradualism. All of the major differences (i.e. the higher taxonomic categories such as phyla) appear first in the fossil record and then the lesser taxonomic categories such as classes, orders, families, genera and species appear later. On the Darwinian view, one would expect to see all of the major differences in body plan appear only after numerous small-scale speciation events. But this is not what we observe. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/05/has_the_talk-or059171.html
bornagain77_{December 13, 2014
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ppolish: I think you meant birds appeared out of nowhere independent of theropods. No. Birds are theropods. See Brusatte et al., Gradual Assembly of Avian Body Plan Culminated in Rapid Rates of Evolution across the Dinosaur-Bird Transition, Current Biology 2014. ppolish: And how about that bird explosion boom. If by boom, you mean an event that occurred over millions of years, then boom.Zachriel_{December 13, 2014
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Birds didn’t appear out of nowhere, but were preceded by theropods? I think you meant birds appeared out of nowhere independent of theropods. And how about that bird explosion boom. That had ID written all over it. NeoDarwin can't explain.ppolish_{December 13, 2014
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