Another Example of Evolutionist Fantasizing Aggressively Promoted as Science, per Dr. Adequate

Dr. Adequate again:

Opportunely enough, details of a new intermediate form, Liaoconodon hui, have just been published.

Some details here:

The new genus and species described by Meng et al. comes form the exquisitely preserved Jehol biota of Liaoning, and shows the last tenuous connection between the mammalian ear ossicles and the lower jaw, via Meckel’s cartilage, an ancient part of the lower jaw lying along the medial surface of the dentary. They refer to it as a “transitional mammalian middle ear”, the transition being between the mandibular middle ear (i.e. attached to the lower jaw) of the earliest mammals (and most advanced reptiles), and the definitive mammalian middle ear present in the adults of all extant mammals, in which there is no persistent connection between the middle ear and the lower jaw.

Now in modern mammals Meckel's cartilage disappears during embryological development:

Living mammals, including humans, have Meckel's cartilage as embryos, but it disappears as they mature. In the L. hui fossil - an adult - it is ossified and the fossil shows how it supported some of the post-dentary bones as they shifted into the ear.

This is more evidence for the evolution of this irreducibly complex structure.

Meanwhile, creationists continue to attribute this sort of structure to entirely unknown and unevidenced processes; and this they do based only on not being able to see how this sort of thing evolved --- despite the fact that, dammit, we can.

Look, you believe life evolves so something like this is evidence to your mind, although it is only evidence because it fits with your theory, not the kind of evidence that actually proves anything. It's just another of those plausibilities that the whole theory is built of, just an exercise in recognizing structural analogues.

Since I do not believe life evolves, except for variations within a species, such phenomena are simply examples of design similarities that occur everywhere in nature. Its function in the embryo may be quite different than Evo theory makes of it, you're simply smugly content with a facile explanation that fits with the theory, and of course there is no way to falsify such an explanation so you have no fear that anything a creationist might say could unsettle your certainty.

And, we CAN "see how this sort of thing evolved" BASED ON YOUR ASSUMPTION THAT IT DID. We can "see" the same thing you see, we simply recognize that it's nothing but another imaginative construction and not evidence in the true sense at all.

Also, you ask us to take a lot for granted even in the description of the evidence. You ask us to believe that this really is the same cartilage in all the examples you mention though you provide no photographs to demonstrate it, that it occurs in the embryos of mammals and humans -- does it look exactly the same? Are you sure it's the same structure? -- and that it later "disappears," and that its function is as you describe with relation to dental development. Hey, maybe it is, but as I recall, a famous propagator of the "Biogenetic Law," Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, which my generation was raised on, had so fudged the illustrations he offered in proof of his thesis that eventually they were recognized as fraud -- all in the service of proving his belief in that principle and in evolution itself.

Yet we're still only presented with raw descriptions such as the above and not shown anything that would allow us to judge for ourselves whether the researchers are interpreting the phenomena correctly or perhaps imposing their own bias on the data -- fudging a bit here and there.

In any case, the occurrence of any particular structure across many species doesn't prove evolution, merely design similarity.

Oh, and terms like "ancient" and "modern" -- as well as "intermediate" -- are also interpretive bias imposed on the data. A species of word magic.

Evolutionary "science" is really laughable when you take the time to ask the right questions.

The ToE has been Falsified many times over but residents of Wonderland need not notice; and a note about forensics

I keep thinking I'm going to run out of interest in the evolution debate again soon or just run out of topics to keep me going, but EvC is a goldmine of such topics at the moment. Somehow I'd overlooked this thread inviting Potential Falsifications of the Theory of Evolution .

As I've been saying so frequently lately, all Evolution has is Hypotheses, it has no other credentials from the Scientific Method, it's nothing but a subjectively elaborated mental exercise in the end. THEREFORE it cannot be falsified. But by asking for falsification they give the illusion that it is science and that it's those who can't come up with an ironclad falsification who are at fault, not the theory.

Again, this is a competition of hypotheses, it's a matter of judgment calls not science, not any of the methods of science. Creationists have the better hypotheses and the better judgment calls but since it's all a matter of who believes which system this can forever go unnoticed. It's all a matter of who has the power and Old Earth and Evolution have the power.

The geologic timetable is laughable and without it the foundations of evolutionary theory are destroyed but they don't need to notice because there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove any of this. The Flood beautifully and elegantly accounts for all the phenomena that are so awkwardly and ridiculously interpreted by evolutionists as time periods, the disparate layers undisturbed until all were in place, for instance, but this need not be noticed because there is no way to scientifically prove or disprove it one way or the other, It remains observation and hypothesis. It SHOULD falsify evolution just because it's a better explanation, the observation is rational as evolution's is not, and the hypothesis makes sense while evolution's is a weird concoction, but since they are deluded that any of this has anything to do with the Scientific Method they've protected themselves from ever having to recognize it.

The fossil record is beautifully explained by the worldwide Flood, as there is no other way so many living things could have been buried so as to meet the conditions for fossilization, and the immense variety of fossilized life forms, many of which no longer exist, is completely in keeping with the Biblical record of the Flood, but again, since there is no way to scientifically prove this no matter how much more reasonable an explanation it is than the geo timetable /evolution explanation, they can go on blindly in their delusion. Again, this SHOULD falsify evolution just because it's a better explanation, but since they require creationists to meet impossible criteria that they themselves can't even meet, though they think they do, alas, they can sustain their fantasy by aggressive ridicule and flat-out assertion forever.

And then there is the genetic delusion as well, that mutations just keep on a-building the genetic code although the evidence in hand is clearly against this assumption -- and it is, as usual, nothing BUT an assumption, again at best a hypothesis, upheld by belief in it, not evidence. The evidence shows that in small populations genetic deterioration is the norm, but they still believe that in bigger populations mutation saves the day although there is NO evidence for this and simply studying the DNA in ring species would show their assumption to be wrong.

All these things falsify the Theory of Evolution but since the Theory of Evolution is constructed out of pure fantasy like the Emperor's New Clothes, they simply can't see the falsification because their fantasy is so beautiful and so real -- really, so NECESSARY -- to them.

========
Interesting, a contributor to that same thread, named Michael McBride, has said pretty much what I've said above but unfortunately instead of keeping to the particulars of evolution he went way back to the origin of the universe to make his point. It's the same point, which is that the past is not subject to the Scientific Method, so that all evolution can be is a theory / hypothesis (so is Creationism but it's the better hypothesis and we have a written document on our side too). Alas, the poor lock-step pedantic evolutionists aren't going to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt. I suppose, to be fair, that they can't, simply because they ARE locked into their assumptions and their false belief that SCIENCE has anything to do with any of this.

Sorry, Michael McBride. Good try. Start a blog. It's wonderful for exploring the truths that the world rejects.

========
Oh but then a bunch of them jumped on him with all their smug pedantic irrelevant pronouncements about how it's not just that the ToE can't be proven, it's that science itself can't be proven, falsely implying that the ToE is science. Some science IS proven, if not to the unrealizable perfection these pedants keep insisting on, at least proven in a way the ToE can never be proven, because real science is subject to the Scientific Method while the ToE is not, and Newton's law IS an example of real science. The ToE simply IS NOT SCIENCE and IS "just a theory" in a sense Newton's Law is not, but they'll NEVER EVER stop to see how that is true, they'll just go on with their prissy definitional / credal chants on the word "theory" and miss the whole reality.

Anyway, here's another bit of Evo pedantry, or sophistry, that needs to be taken down, by subbie in Post #71:

There is no way to Observe the origin of the universe

There is nothing preventing us from observing the evidence left behind from the origin of the universe and develop scientific theories based on those observations. In the exact same way, there's nothing preventing us from observing the evidence left behind from the history of life on this planet and develop scientific theories based on that evidence.

Right, you can make those observations and you can develop theories / hypotheses about them, both about the origin of the universe and about the history of life on this planet, AND THAT IS THE END OF WHAT YOU CAN DO SCIENTIFICALLY.

You CANNOT TEST THEM because you cannot REPLICATE them, you cannot do EXPERIMENTS to prove or disprove them. The only conclusions and consensus you can achieve are purely a matter of subjective persuasion, politics, NOT SCIENCE. You cannot, in a word, subject them fully to the Scientific Method. You are left ONLY with your theories in the end, and with theory in a sense that Newton's Laws were not, or that Einstein's were not, or any of the rest of the "hard" sciences whose propositions are testable and replicable, because they CAN apply the Scientific Method in full and others can replicate their work.

It's irrelevant that new data might eventually change the scientific picture in those cases, because what is in hand CAN BE SUBJECTED TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD and valid conclusions can be drawn to the extent of current knowledge; but THAT CANNOT BE DONE WITH THE PAST, whether with the history of life on the planet or with the origin of the universe and it is sheer delusion that the scientific method applies here as applies to the laws of physics. If you apply what you know about the present to the past you are making an unwarranted leap of pure blind assumption because you have no way of knowing how different the past might have been.

If you'd just PAY ATTENTION to what Creationists have been TRYING to say forever, and really THINK about it instead of just rattling off your nitpicking objections and your canned creeds, you might NOTICE that we are saying something you need to hear.

But I won't hold my breath.

========================
And on a similar point, let's see if we can put to rest another bit of sophistry that keeps coming up in this regard, the idea that criminal forensics is the right scientific model:

Why can't the origin of the Universe be observed?

time travel hasn't been invented yet

Police solve crimes that have no eyewitnesses all the time. Things that have actually happened leave evidence behind.

First it needs to be pointed out when you resort to forensics for your model that you are abandoning classic Scientific Method -- you know, the observation-hypothesis-conclusion-testability-replicability-falsifiability-consensus model. I probably got some of that out of order but you get the idea. Forensics is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT investigative model. So which is it, Scientific Method or Forensics?

Well, the Scientific Method cannot be applied to questions about the UNWITNESSED past.

So let's see if the Forensics method can be.

You say the crime leaves evidence behind. And so do events in the very distant unwitnessed past. So far so similar. Maybe we're on the way to abandoning the Scientific Method conceit if nothing else.

However, there are huge clues available to criminal forensics that are not available to the study of the distant past because the crime occurred in a present in which other crimes are known. The investigator can't perform tests to be replicated, but he can count on other cases he's studied for clues, hundreds of them. He can remember and usually go back and read about all those in which similar patterns are discernible. There is no such thing for the distant past, there are no anchor points, you are in completely unknown territory.

The criminal investigator can make reasonable guesses amounting to assumptions about the habits and motivations of people who live in his own time and place. This isn't the case for the investigator of the distant past. Even the historically known past can't be approached without a lot of study of history, and then your own experience often has to be set aside in order to understand situations that are radically unfamiliar in your own contexts. Then when you are studying a past that has not been recorded in history at all (except of course in the Bible which you all discount), the origin of species for instance, you have nothing to go on. Nothing. As far as observation is concerned, Natural Selection takes you no further than microevolution, known for millennia, you have only unverifiable/unfalsifiable assumption that makes the leap to macroevolution.

The criminal investigator is most likely familiar with any objects that happen to occur in connection with the crime and if he's not he has sources of information he can go to for help. Even human artifacts from the distant historical past may take lifetimes of study to comprehend and there is no guarantee that they will ever be understood. But even the creatures found in the fossil record are different from what we are familiar with today and we have NO examples of fossilization on such a scale, or sedimentary layering on such a scale, and no matter how much we know about DNA in the present, all extrapolations to the past are pure guesswork since we don't know how different DNA may be now from what it was thousands of years ago. YOu think you have an objective measure in various atomic dating methods but how can you when you can't know anything about how THEY behave in the past either? EVERYTHING you assume about the past is ONLY an assumption and not subject to the methods of science so not falsifiable, and forensics methods can't offer any more reliable information either.

I'm sure I can come up with more differences that make the forensics model just as useless to justifying evolution as the scientific method but I'm getting tired and this should go a long way to making the point as is.

However, I do think creationists do better forensic reasoning about the distant past than evolutionists do. More later.