Conquer Club

Bill Hicks wrote:I actually asked one of these guys, OK, Dinosaur fossils - how does that fit into your scheme of life?
He said, "Dinosaur fossils? God put those there to test our faith." I think God put you here to test my faith, Dude. You believe that? "uh huh." Does that trouble anyone here? The idea that God.. might be.. fuckin' with our heads?

jay_a2j wrote:This thread should die for obvios reasons. Its been discussed in Logic Dictates. And heavey it really doesn't support your cause by telling everyone you know a guy who said, "God put them here to test us". As I am sure I can find people who say we were beamed down from outterspace from the mothership and were "created" by alien lifeforms with one eye. And then we "evolved". Making Darwin look like a nut job.

D.IsleRealBrown wrote:Where is the "God is an attempt to destroy reality" option?

Truman wrote: By the way, Vtmarik, could you make your signature a bit smaller? It's a little large.

Truman wrote:I wish I could post my four-part long debate I had with Jacob Geri about this subject (he's owner of Infidels.com by the way). But, I guess I can't. Many are close-minded about what I say since they're annoyed by my arguments which actually kick their little world of "scientific evolution" into the gutter..

Truman wrote:EDIT: By the way, Vtmarik, could you make your signature a bit smaller? It's a little large.

Nappy Bone Apart wrote:I wanted to vote for evolution, but the last option was too correct to pass on.

Truman wrote:Ok, here's one.

Evolutionism claims that vestigals prove evolution.

Well for one, they don't prove anything since none exist, and plus, why would losing something propose that evolution could have happened anyway? "Yes boys and girls, we slowly lost everything and that's how we got it all."

So, my contradiction is, evolutionists propose that there are such things as vestigal structures in any living organism proves evolution, when there have been none shown.

By the way, I don't know why men have nipples, but that doesn't prove they're vestigal. We probably just haven't figured out what they're for and in later years probably will. Just wanted to get that through.

Vestigial structures are often homologous to structures that are functioning normally in other species. Therefore, vestigial structures can be considered evidence for evolution, the process by which beneficial heritable traits arise in population over an extended period of time. The existence of vestigial organs can be attributed to changes in the environment and behavior patterns of the organism in question. As the function of the structure is no longer beneficial for survival, the likelihood that future offspring will inherit the "normal" form of the structure decreases.

The vestigial versions of the structure can be compared to the original version of the structure in other species in order to determine the homology of a vestigial structure. Homologous structures indicate common ancestry with those organisms that have a functional version of the structure.

The vermiform appendix is a vestige of the cecum, an organ that was used to digest cellulose by humans' herbivorous ancestors. Analogous organs in other animals similar to humans continue to perform that function, whereas other meat-eating animals may have similarly diminished appendices. The modern functionality of the appendix is still controversial in the field of human physiology, although most scientists and physicians believe that it has little or no function.

In whales and other cetaceans, one can find small vestigial leg bones deeply buried within the back of the body. These are remnants of their land-living ancestors' legs. Many whales also have undeveloped, unused, pelvis bones in the anterior part of their torsos.

Controversy

Because vestigial organs are used as supporting evidence for evolution, some creationists oppose the validity of the idea. They question whether these organs are actually useless, since they believe that God gave each organism its organs for a specific reason and use.

Those who question the existence of vestigial organs usually claim a different definition for vestigial, giving a strict interpretation that an organ must be utterly useless to qualify.[13] This is a definition often used in dictionaries[14] and children's encyclopedias.[15] Biology textbooks[16][17] and scientific encyclopedias[1] usually describe an organ as vestigial if it does not serve the same function in the modern animal as the cognate organ served in an ancestor, even if the modern organ serves a completely different use (preadaptation).

Those who consider the true meaning of vestigial to be "completely without use" tend to claim that the meaning has been changed over time as structures thought to be vestigial were found to have other uses.[18] However, documentation indicates that from the theory's beginnings in the 19th century, vestigial structures have invariably been understood to "sometimes retain their potentiality"[19], becoming either "wholly or in part functionless".[20] It was thought that "not infrequently the degenerating organ can be turned to account in some other way".[21]

An example of the dispute is the gas bladder of many fish, which is thought to be a vestigial lung, "left over" from the occasionally-air-gasping common ancestor of ray-finned fish and land vertebrates.

2dimes wrote:Hendy, Patroclus...

mightyal wrote:

2dimes wrote:Hendy, Patroclus...

examples of vestigals?

The best example of a vestigal structure is the human appendix, which currently has no purpose other than to get infected and get cut out.

jay_a2j wrote:Speech is a learned behavior. And don't give me the "language evolved" crap. Its learned, therefore it must be taught. Who taught the apelike men how to speak?

For those convinced human superiority stems from our ability to vocalize like no other creature on Earth, this one might be tough to swallow: Japanese researchers studying chimpanzees recently found the biological machinery behind speech is less distinct than previously thought, and may have evolved in part from a selection pressure wholly unrelated to speech-the development of our swallowing mechanism.

Takeshi Nishimura of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University in Japan believes the descent of the larynx evolved not as part one of speech development-even though it may have ended up playing that role-but rather to decrease the chance for choking. The evolution of a swallowing system, Nishimura said, provided ample space and machinery to keep our food going one way and air going another. The ability to use that air to speak came much later.

Humans can talk because the vocal chords in the larynx, the muscles of the tongue affixed to a bone called the hyoid, and the space in and around all of this up to our lips (collectively known as the vocal tract) are situated and coordinated in a manner enabling us to create a variety of sounds in rapid succession and in a single breath.

Many scientists had believed the descent of the larynx during infancy and early childhood was not only a critical foundation for speech development, but also a phenomenon unique to modern humans. Nishimura and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to chart the structural development of three infant chimpanzees and discovered their larynges also descended during infancy, as in human infants. Based on previous studies, Nishimura had hypothesized that primates too had falling larynges, as it were, but the MRI results provided even stronger evidence.

"We used to think speech evolved in human lineage after the split from our Neanderthal ancestors, but our research shows that is not the case," said Nishimura. "The mechanism for the descent of the larynx is in fact composed of two phenomena that are not simultaneous: hyoid descent and larynx descent relative to the hyoid bone."

Although both of these anatomical moves are necessary for speech development, chimps experience only the descent of the larynx, leaving the hyoid too high for speaking. If it were lower, could chimpanzees talk? Perhaps, said Nishimura.

The importance of the descent of the larynx has been overemphasized, said Tecumseh Fitch, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University. The recent paper out of Kyoto makes it "even more clear that it is not the descent of the larynx per se that is key for speech production in humans."

Rather, Fitch continued, it is the "the descent of the tongue root and hyoid bone, and the resulting re-configuration of the tongue and vocal tract" that have turned modern humans into talkers. It turns out these evolutionary steps were separate phenomena, and that one may have preceded the other by millions of years. The gift of gab, it appears, stems from the very basic need to feed.

Maybe it controls common sense? I still have mine!

jay_a2j wrote:Speech is a learned behavior. And don't give me the "language evolved" crap. Its learned, therefore it must be taught. Who taught the apelike men how to speak?




Vtmarik wrote:

The best example of a vestigal structure is the human appendix, which currently has no purpose other than to get infected and get cut out.

Maybe it controls common sense? I still have mine!

Jolly Roger wrote:

jay_a2j wrote:Speech is a learned behavior. And don't give me the "language evolved" crap. Its learned, therefore it must be taught. Who taught the apelike men how to speak?




Vtmarik wrote:

The best example of a vestigal structure is the human appendix, which currently has no purpose other than to get infected and get cut out.

Maybe it controls common sense? I still have mine!

Would you like to re-think your assertion that language is learned and therefore must be taught? I think you should. (Hint: Who taught Edison how to make a lightbulb?)

2dimes wrote:Evolutionary contradictions al.