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Friday, September 24, 2010

Adios Tiktaalik, We Hardly Knew Ye


All Hail The Mighty Mudskipper From Whom the Tetrapods Arose! Heh-heh. Just having a little fun at the expense of the Darwinists out there. But does anyone else recall the hype concerning the finding of Tiktaalik? Why, it just happened to occur at the time that the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School Disctrict trial was happening and thus, the discovery was touted as a confirmation in the predictive ability of evolutionary biologists. After all, they theorized where such a transitional species could be found in the fossil record and Viola!, there it was! If youre wondering why there hasn't been much gloating about Muddy Mudskipper's Tiktaalik's discovery as of late, I think this edition of Nature Magazine provides a reason why...


"The oldest known tracks of a four-limbed land animal could rewrite part of vertebrate evolution.

Some prints, showing individual digits, were found in limestone slabs unearthed in a quarry near Zachełmie, Poland, dated to about 395 million years ago — more than 18 million years before tetrapods were thought to have evolved.

The tracks suggest that the animals that made them were up to 2.5 metres long and had a footpad up to 26 centimetres wide, although most prints were about 15 centimetres wide, reports a team of Polish and Swedish scientists in Nature this week. This would mean that large, land-roaming tetrapods would have coexisted for 10 million years with the elpistostegids — including Tiktaalik roseae, which lived 375 million years ago — a group thought to mark the transition of from fish to land-roaming animals.."


Casey Luskin of the Discovery Intitute catalogs in great detail all of those who fell for this farce initially. They include such organizations and publications as The National Academy of Sciences, TIME Magazine, PBS/NOVA and others who all lauded the discovery and BTW, shame on those ignorant design theorists who are trying to intentionally mislead us. Now we know the truth and evolutionists do not appear to be any closer to proving when such a creature first arose, if it arose at all or what the creature actually was that rose from the water to walk on land.

11 comments:

GentleSkeptic said...

My calculator suggests that an 18-million-year difference on a 395-400-million year total is a 4% error.

Frankly, I'm comfortable with that.

(Just out of curiosity, did it excite you that this evolution-killing discovery was made in the Holy Cross mountains?)

On a related note: did you know that Carl Drews, co-author of “Dynamics of wind setdown at Suez and the eastern Nile Delta” (The Red Sea paper) believes in evolution?

"I reject the idea that evolution and Christianity are always and must be in opposition to each other. I reject the notion that if the scientific theory of evolution is true, then Christianity must be false."

http://www.theistic-evolution.com/theisticevolution.html#What%20I%20Believe

GentleSkeptic said...

"It angers me when Christian speakers mock "Theistic Evolution" on non-scriptural and non-scientific grounds. I believe that mockery is sin; because it creates contempt in the hearts of Christians instead of love for those whom Christ came to save, and it produces sharp resistance in the hearts of non-believers if they ever hear about it. It bothers me that self-described "fundamentalist" Christians seem to have no knowledge that there are Christians out there who accept evolution."

- Carl Drews

Froggie said...

The media often jumps to conclusions about such discussions. The vast majority of working scientists do nothing of the kind.

Most scientists I have read disputed Tit as "the first" land dwelling animal from the outset.The first land-walking animals are often incorrectly cited as Devonian transitional forms called “fishapods” because they are intermediate between fish and true tetrapods. An example is the fish Tikaalik, which lived approximately 375 million years ago, during the Devonian period. It is remarkable that such organisms are so frequently cited as the first land animals when land animals from more than 50 million years before, such as Pneumodesmus newmani, are widely known.

Froggie said...

JD,
This is the type of thing that I find very troubling:

"But does anyone else recall the hype concerning the finding of Tiktaalik? Why, it just happened to occur at the time that the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School Disctrict trial was happening and thus, the discovery was touted as a confirmation in the predictive ability of evolutionary biologists."

Nowhere in the Conservapedia article you linked to concerning this, does Tiktaalic appear.
As far as I can see, it was never mentioned in the Kitzmiller trial.
Why do you try to link these two issues where there is no link whatsoever?

I consider this type of jpournalism to be intellectual dishonesty.

J Curtis said...

I seem to recall a greater, more widespread embrace of Tiktaalik than other evolutionary frauds of note. At least it perpetuated longer than the Ida scam which was over as soon as the pre-packaged Discovery Channel special's credits started to roll. Link

J Curtis said...

Nowhere in the Conservapedia article you linked to concerning this, does Tiktaalic appear.


That was shown in the PBS Special on the trial. I don't recall the title of the program, but I do recall being forced to watch it in exchange for an atheist reading a critique by Dr. Norman Wise of so-called "Bible slavery".

Froggie said...

"I seem to recall a greater, more widespread embrace of Tiktaalik than other evolutionary frauds of note."

It is interesting to note how certain religionists will holler about a handful of frauds, of which Titaalic is not one, but say nothing about the thousands of Christian frauds plying their trade in the USA every single day.

Let's start with the Cration Research Ministries, who have never, ever done an ounce of research.
They continually take one fact of evolution and ctiticise it, pick it apart, use pseudoscience to try to disclaim it, but never actually do refute it. They lie and corrupt their own integrity on a daily basis.

Let's take Answers in Genesis. See above
They state that scientists and they have the same facts yet they do not. Thjat is a lie. They constantly ignore most of the facts of astronomy, geology, paleontology and biology.
The oath that they sign states that their employees will utter nor write no words that contradict Ken Ham's literal bible interpretation. Theeeeeeen, they state that scientists also have presuppositions which can sometimes happen but is not part of the sientific method and the claim falls flat on it's face 99.9% of the time.

Let's take Benny Hinn who claims he is healing cancer, heart conditions, paralyzed people and raises people from the dead on failry regular occasion yet has never produced one iota of documentation.

Let's take Sid Roth who lures people into buying fraudulent oil stocks by claiming there is vast oil reserves under Isreal.

This crap continues every single day of the year and the frauds are ignored.

Let's take Kent and Eric Hovind who's pseudo science is so bizarre that even Answers in Genesis has published articles that tell people not to belive them.

Let's take "Dr" Mike Murdock who sells books (actually the same book over and over with different titles) promising that if his minions plant "seeds" with his ministry that they will become wealthy.

Pat Robertson is now reduced to telling the same lies, day anfter day after day.

Lets take the Homophobic bigoted hippocrites like Ted Haggard and George Rekers and now possibly Atlamta Mega church pastor Eddie Long.

You want to hear about more Christian fraud?

Hmmmmmmm???

How about the preachers and Liars like Tony Perkins and other dominionists whose sole purpose is to twist truth and corrupt their faith with their dirty politics (how many scientists have you ever seen running for office?) How many scientists do you see flying around in their own private jets with gold chains and rings and $5000.00 suits? Hmmmmm?

How about all the low life scum bag catholic priests and the Pope and bishops that hid and covered up their actions?

You wanna talk about some fraud do you?

And now you, JD. Titaalic had nothing to do with Judge Jones decision in the Kitzmiller trial.
You wanna dig your hole a little like Behe, Dumski and those lying bags of air?

You wanna compete with Hugh Ross Who shoehorns someperfectly good science (that he is not resonsible for) into disparate and unconnected bible verses?

You wanna throw in with that lot do you?

You buying into the Joyce Myers and Joel Olsteen schtick?

Let's talk about The tons of prophecies that Jack Van Impe has made over the last thirty years, none of which has come true?

Or are you more like a Fred Phelps type of guy.

Christianity vs Science in the USA. Let's see. Which has more cred.

Quit being so silly, JD and go get some education. The only way you can learn how to refute sound science is to learn it and then go about falsifying the facts supporting it.

People that are taking these religious nut cakes seriously are analogous to someone going to a butcher to remove a brain tumor.

J Curtis said...

#1. Who is Hugh Ross?

#2. Ted Haggard? Can't we just agree that we both just "set him aside for a moment" and we concentrate on others?

Froggie said...

"Who is Hugh Ross?"

Here, let me Google that for you

Coco Rico said...

JD Curtis, bravo! THis is a great post and a great addition to the discussion. You are very brave. I am adding you to my follow list.

SmartLX said...

Your, and Luskin's, issue with Tiktaalik appears to be that because there were tetrapods contemporary to it, it couldn't have been a transitional species between fish and tetrapods. That's like saying that humans can't have evolved from apes because apes still exist. It disregards diversification, and I hope not willingly in either your or Luskin's case.

Tiktaalik's anatomy alone demonstrates that it was a close descendent of fish and a close ancestor of early tetrapods, as explained in Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. The apparent discovery that other descendents of fish had moved onto land earlier (only slightly earlier in geological time, at that) doesn't change much. It just means that the common ancestor of all modern tetrapods was most likely a sea-dweller. I know no one that this would surprise, given how broad and non-species-specific the "tetrapod" category is.