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Dinobird: Practically anything, no matter how false or ridiculous, is given serious attention in the science press as long as it appears to support Darwinism

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File:Archaeopteryx lithographica, replica of London specimen, Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe, Germany - 20100925.jpg
Replica of the London specimen/H. Zell

In “Science stunner! ‘Missing link’ for 150 years and now it isn’t?” ( World News Daily, , July 28, 2011) Bob Unruh puts his finger on the key point about an otherwise routine reclassification ofa fossil from bird to dinosaur: “Expert says Nature report highlights sands on which Darwin theory built”:

The report says the latest discovery suggests the assumption that Archaeopteryx is “the evolutionary link between the two [birds and dinosaurs]” may need reconsideration.

A legitimate debate. That said, this fossil was purchased, not found. Plus the report author admits the hypothesis that knocked the dinobird from its perch is only “weakly supported” by data. So how sure are we? Anyone remember “Feathers for T. Rex”? Oh wait, that scam fell down the memory hole, so we are not allowed to remember. Which is a problem.

Unruh grasps the central point when he asks,

But what about the century-plus that Archaeopteryx was considered “the ideal ‘missing link’ with which to demonstrate evolution from non-avian dinosaurs to birds”?

What about it? It falls into the same memory hole as T. Rex’s feathers, that’s what. We’re all supposed to dumbly worship and believe at the temples of Darwinism (museums) and pay for its sacred texts to be force on students in school. We are supposed to regard as experts Darwinists, who are routinely the marks for Holy Icon scams. And Archaeopteryx was only ever important as a Most Holy Icon of Evolution. Otherwise, it is just a beautifully preserved fossil from time out of mind.

Who knows what will become of the dinobird, real or imagined? Practically anything, no matter how false or ridiculous, is given serious attention in the science press as long as it appears to support Darwinism. No one working there considers (or is allowed to consider?) the cumulative effect of repeated frauds, failures, and offenses to common sense.

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Comments
Nick Matzke is once again propagandizing for the goons at the NCSE. Archy was a bird, and a perching bird at that. Deal with that! It likely had a modern avian lung - completely different from that of dinosaurs - along with a breastbone and a full plumage of complex feathers. The alleged "dino" features - teeth, claws, boney tail - are not anatomically specific to theropod dinosaurs. Moreover, close examination finds that these shared traits are not so similar in fact. This latest dinobird find could well have been purchased from a fake fossil factory situated in Liaoning Province, northeast China.Joe Bozorgmehr
August 1, 2011
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Neo-Darwinism had a good run with Archy, generations over the course of a century were worked over with this fossil. It was a sweet run Nick.junkdnaforlife
August 1, 2011
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"Wake me up when someone finds a fossil mammal with bird lungs." Elizabeth Liddle, be careful what you wish for. The duck-billed platypus, after all, shows mammal, bird,and reptile traits. It is only reasonable to suppose that creatures as strange have moved on the Earth in times past, as there is no special reason to think that the present day is uniquely likely to produce them. Why even be surprised? ID types did not elevate Archaeopteryx to anything in particular, and would be unlikely to have done so. It the Icon is under suspicion now, it is not owing to them.News
August 1, 2011
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as well, Falsification of Natural Selection https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=10WqN_Z_2GjzhPQUVe7QmcMZDPObJCG45XqgF7pZVcVMbornagain77
August 1, 2011
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Elizabeth you state: 'Also important, I would have thought, for ID credibility' now hold on Elizabeth,,, Should not neo-Darwinists at least have some type credibility for their own theory, as far as the actual empirical evidence is concerned, before they they start to worry about ID's credibility? ================= Dr. David Berlinski: Random Mutations - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGaUEAkqhMY Guy who DOESN’T support ID: Genomics has “overturned” Darwin’s iconic Tree of Life Excerpt: The genomics revolution, Koonin argues, … 'effectively overturned the central metaphor of evolutionary biology (and, arguably, of all biology), the Tree of Life (TOL), by showing that evolutionary trajectories of individual genes are irreconcilably different. Whether the TOL can or should be salvaged — and, if so, in what form — remains a matter of intense debate that is one of the important themes of this book. Uprooting the TOL is part of what I consider to be a ‘metarevolution,’ a major change in the entire conceptual framework of biology.' https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/guy-who-doesn%E2%80%99t-support-id-genomics-has-%E2%80%9Coverturned%E2%80%9D-darwins-iconic-tree-of-life/ Here is a page of quotes by leading paleontologists on the true state of the fossil record: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=15dxL40Ff6kI2o6hs8SAbfNiGj1hEOE1QHhf1hQmT2Yg Here are four more pages of quotes, by leading experts, on the fossil record here: Creation/Evolution Quotes: Fossil Record #1 - Stephen E. Jones http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/fsslrc01.html etc.. etc.. furthermore,,, "Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal species emerge in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruitflies in hundreds of millions of generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh pressures have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce speciation. And in computer life, where the term “species” does not yet have meaning, we see no cascading emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial burst. In the wild, in breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But by the absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of variation appear to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species." Kevin Kelly from his book, "Out of Control" https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-evolutionary-tree-continues-to-fall-falsified-predictions-backpedaling-hgts-and-serendipity-squared/#comment-392638 as well,,, New Research on Epistatic Interactions Shows "Overwhelmingly Negative" Fitness Costs and Limits to Evolution - Casey Luskin June 8, 2011 Excerpt: In essence, these studies found that there is a fitness cost to becoming more fit. As mutations increase, bacteria faced barriers to the amount they could continue to evolve. If this kind of evidence doesn't run counter to claims that neo-Darwinian evolution can evolve fundamentally new types of organisms and produce the astonishing diversity we observe in life, what does? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/new_research_on_epistatic_inte047151.html And, in light of such poverty of 'actual' evidence for neo-Darwinism, I think the 'credibility' of ID is doing quite well thank you,, Cells Are Like Robust Computational Systems, - June 2009 Excerpt: Gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are similar to cloud computing networks, such as Google or Yahoo!, researchers report today in the online journal Molecular Systems Biology. The similarity is that each system keeps working despite the failure of individual components, whether they are master genes or computer processors. ,,,,"We now have reason to think of cells as robust computational devices, employing redundancy in the same way that enables large computing systems, such as Amazon, to keep operating despite the fact that servers routinely fail." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616103205.htm Systems biology: Untangling the protein web - July 2009 Excerpt: Vidal thinks that technological improvements — especially in nanotechnology, to generate more data, and microscopy, to explore interaction inside cells, along with increased computer power — are required to push systems biology forward. "Combine all this and you can start to think that maybe some of the information flow can be captured," he says. But when it comes to figuring out the best way to explore information flow in cells, Tyers jokes that it is like comparing different degrees of infinity. "The interesting point coming out of all these studies is how complex these systems are — the different feedback loops and how they cross-regulate each other and adapt to perturbations are only just becoming apparent," he says. "The simple pathway models are a gross oversimplification of what is actually happening." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7253/full/460415a.htmlbornagain77
August 1, 2011
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Also important, I would have thought, for ID credibility, is the differentiation between evidence for Common Descent, and evidence that Darwinian mechanisms are the explanation for adaptation down the lineages. Phylogenies are nested hierarchial models fitted to real data. The fact that nested hierarchical models fit the phenotypic data so well is itself an explanandum. Darwinian evolution might be one explanation for the fit of the model; ID might be another; some baraminology model might yet be another (as Todd Wood believes). But shaking garlic at any news about phylogenetic refitting seems a bit silly to me :) Wake me up when someone finds a fossil mammal with bird lungs.Elizabeth Liddle
August 1, 2011
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In the olden days, up to and including Jonathan Wells, creationists all insisted that Archy was "just a bird". Now, suddenly, they're all delighted to say "it's just a feathered dinosaur".* Over here in The Land of Actual Science, (a) *all* birds are "just feathered dinosaurs", thus the media coverage of this study as saying that Archy is "a dinosaur not a bird" is highly misleading; (b) the actual suggested move of Archy on the phylogenetic tree is actually quite minor in the grand scheme of things -- since the early "birds" and feathered dinosaurs were all quite closely related on previous analyses, and are still quite closely related on this analysis as well. (c) the definition of "bird" is pretty arbitrary, anyhow. "Crown group birds" *can* be coherently defined as the common ancestor of all living birds, and all its descendants. But once you start including branches on the tree lower than that common ancestor, it becomes arbitrary how far you go before you stop calling the fossils "birds". We already knew of fossils that were below the stem but above Archy. All this study is move Archy a little lower down the stem, and move a few of the other dinosaurs a little higher up. Maybe. (I say "maybe", because the resolution is poor, which is actually the *expected* result as you get more and more in-between intermediate fossils.) Ask Todd Wood if you don't believe me. Scientists will *never* take you guys or ID in general seriously unless and until you bother to understand the actual science before ranting and raving about it. * (Which, by the way, is as much proof of the transitional status of Archy as a reasonable person could want.)NickMatzke_UD
August 1, 2011
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