At Creation-Evolution Headlines, we hear that the story that bird flight evolved from “flap running” has been resurrected in the pop science media. Must be summer. (“Flap Over Flight Evolution” (June 26, 2011):
This just-so story is so lame, it should be a huge embarrassment to the Darwin Party. These guys don’t understand evolutionary theory at all. You can’t draw analogies between chick development to adult bird in a year, and say a similar transition occurs in evolutionary time over millions of years. Chick development is encoded in DNA and in numerous epigenetic regulatory codes, and is observable in the present. Are they believers in some mystical meta-Gaia belief, that the history of the life on Earth develops from embryo to adult? This hypothesis is a cross between Lamarckism and recapitulation theory, both of which have been tossed into the dustbin of history. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Here’s a pigeon flap running:
Some think flap running is a consequence of already having feathered wings. Would a penguin improve its speed on land by waving its flippers about?
In a familiar play for the popular Darwin market, the theory adds discarded ideas as a cook adds ingredients to a spoiled soup.
and CEH asks readers to send suggestions for helping straighten out the mess:
We laughed this hypothesis off the stage when it first appeared (01/16/2003), and even evolutionist Pennisi had her doubts. Now, eight years have gone by and Dial and Jackson are still promoting it. To make any progress toward sense in evolutionary circles, critics will have to at least get them to be consistent with their own belief system. Give us your suggestions for giving Jackson and Dial a much-needed red face. Reading them our 12/22/2003 commentary might be a start. If they are men of integrity, their faces will turn red with shame. If not, their faces will turn red with rage. (Note: federal funding, tenure, and media fame can have the unintended consequence of reducing integrity.)
Some think flap running is a consequence of already having feathered wings. Would a penguin improve its speed on land by waving its flippers about?