quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

quote:

ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles
The 'Dark Ages' is a term often used synonymously with the 'Middle Ages.'

No it isn't. The middle ages is a blanket term for the period after the dark ages.

Great, another person with reading comprehension problems heard from.
Try reading the first paragraph here; http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/the-dark-ages-definition-history-timeline.html#lesson, very slowly and if you still think you are correct, write a correction letter to that website. You might want to include some footnotes that show you are not just some numb nut trying to spread your ignorance around.

I'm going on historians, not Google boy.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

So I say the early dark ages and quote a portion of YOUR source which if you read that section quickly starts talking about dates in the early dark ages.

From that you conclude that I'm talking about what you consider to be the very very end of the dark ages....What is your IQ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: DomKen
Archaeopteryx seems to argue for the ground up hypothesis.

Or Archaeopteryx used it's fingers for climbing much like hoetzin does today.

[image]local://upfiles/566126/81BF549044474EB79701EB609C31A1D8.jpg[/image]

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel
Here goes:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974
In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.

We know the above happens, it's been observed numerous times in and outside of the laboratory. Evolution as defined above is a fact. Even Ken Ham is forced to admit that evolution is happening (though he believes in a sort of ridiculous hyper-evolution) the guy is just ignoring a mountain of evidence to claim that evolution didn't used to happen.

I'll refrain from talking about most of the mechanisms at the moment and simply try to address some of your misunderstandings. Though there is a great introduction to evolutionary biology article here which they consider a must read for anyone who wants to have an intelligent discussion on the matter: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html

So anyway "change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next" let's talk about what we can expect that to look like and it's not one crocoduck hunting around for another crocoduck to mate with.

Instead the transition from reptile to bird involved a population of climbing reptiles becoming better suited to their environment. Now the changes we're talking about, slow isn't quite the right word nor gradual...compatible is the best word I can come up with. So you asked something about such animals would survive during the many, many generations before they had working wings. We have fossils from that transition but instead of getting into that I'll just say, ask the sugar glider:

quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel
Here goes:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974
In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.

We know the above happens, it's been observed numerous times in and outside of the laboratory. Evolution as defined above is a fact. Even Ken Ham is forced to admit that evolution is happening (though he believes in a sort of ridiculous hyper-evolution) the guy is just ignoring a mountain of evidence to claim that evolution didn't used to happen.

I'll refrain from talking about most of the mechanisms at the moment and simply try to address some of your misunderstandings. Though there is a great introduction to evolutionary biology article here which they consider a must read for anyone who wants to have an intelligent discussion on the matter: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html

So anyway "change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next" let's talk about what we can expect that to look like and it's not one crocoduck hunting around for another crocoduck to mate with.

Instead the transition from reptile to bird involved a population of climbing reptiles becoming better suited to their environment. Now the changes we're talking about, slow isn't quite the right word nor gradual...compatible is the best word I can come up with. So you asked something about such animals would survive during the many, many generations before they had working wings. We have fossils from that transition but instead of getting into that I'll just say, ask the sugar glider:

quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

It should be pretty straight forward to picture that some of the tree climbing ancestors of the sugar glider had skin that was a bit looser than others. The increased surface area made those rodents a bit less likely to fall to their deaths while leaping around and therefore a bit more likely to spread their genes. Therefore over time more and more of those rodents had looser skin between their limbs. This cycle then repeated and repeated and repeated causing a larger and larger gliding surface.

What happens from there, well check out this video on flying squirrel, see how they're controlling their gliding? Subsequent generations progressively getting better and better at that skill leads to being able to produce thrust until you end up with something like the bat:

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ORIGINAL: Tantriqu

Zealot: There's no evolution!
Scientist: OK -- so, Noah's ark was 500 feet long and housed all the animals we have now.
Zealot: YES!
Scientist: So, all species were collected and the food for all animals weighed hundreds of thousands of tonnes.
Zealot: YES!
Scientist: At a time when canoes were the most common boats.
Zealot: YES!
So, how did he get animals from all the continents, polar bears, kangaroos, Emperor penguians and galapagos turtles, together before the ark was built when he couldn't leave the Euphrates valley?
Zealot: FUCK!

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles
Maybe I missed it. But in all of this patting yourself on the back, I didn't see how the living things that exist all around us ended up with differing numbers of chromosomes, perhaps you could elucidate.

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ORIGINAL: Tantriqu
Zealot: There's no evolution!
Scientist: OK -- so, Noah's ark was 500 feet long and housed all the animals we have now.
Zealot: YES!

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles
Up until now, you never said early dark ages, you just said dark ages, so now it seems you are just, shall we say stretching the truth, to cover up the fact that you can't admit you made a mistake.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles
Obviously circle of the Earth means the earth is flat

That is how Bible scholars determined that the earth was flat during the early dark ages arguing against the scientific, evidence based theory that the earth was spherical.

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ORIGINAL: Dvr22999874

Go and have a look at some of the car-carriers that come into your nearest port. They are watertight floating boxes, otherwise known as ships............or boats if you so prefer. And I reckon it would take Noah and his family, if they ever existed, quite a few lifetimes to build one of those things, no matter what materials they used.
Where did he learn his boat building skills ? you can't just multiply up the measurments of a canoe and expect that to work.

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles
Maybe I missed it. But in all of this patting yourself on the back, I didn't see how the living things that exist all around us ended up with differing numbers of chromosomes, perhaps you could elucidate.

Chromosomes get split and spliced during copying. For instance human chromosome 2 is very obviously the chimp chromosomes 2a and 2b fused together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human)

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ORIGINAL: Yoursubmalex

With knowldge comes power. Arguing with someone who has no knowldge of geometry, calculus, history, comon sense and reasoning skills is pointless. This argument will continue forever as long as you engage with someone who leads their life with blind faith. The Noah's ark tale is much older than the bible and is found in religious scripture all over the world. There are plenty of sound arguments that show that there is no way the entire earth flooded. But if you are a man (or woman) who believes blindly, then there is no reason to argue. You can believe whatever you want to. You just look unintelligent to educated persons.

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ORIGINAL: epiphiny43

Parts of the Bible far predate Classical Greek culture. Be precise? SOME Greeks argued for a spherical Earth and there were numerous alternate proposed measurements and geometries of Earth and it's surrounding bodies. Every honest history I've read on the development of Astronomy covers this.
Many people have questioned most everything. The Greeks recorded the discussions and these records survive for us to examine, not so for a number of Asian cultures including China. We hear much less of the Islamic scholars who took critical thought quite a bit further than the Greeks, contributing considerably to Math and Astronomy among others disciplines. Something barely covered in most current texts. But we still use the ideas.
There seems No evolutionary value to 'wisdom' or knowledge, note that the Romans beat up the Greeks and out bred them easily. And then got smacked by 'barbarians' who mostly had less well documented cultures, not lower ones, in several cases. The highly educated Muslims fought the superstitious European Christians to a bloody draw?
I see little or no 'wisdom' in modern culture or scientific thought. Science is far better at describing the Natural World and biological processes. Wisdom is in values and standards for conducting our lives and treating each other. Evolutionary advantage is in outbreeding the competition, little or no overlap I see there with 'wisdom'. With the 'knowledge' of an Industrial or Post Industrial culture, birth rates crash, hardly an evolutionary strategy worth spit? All first world countries are currently below replacement birth rate. It's the Mormons who seem to have integrated Evolution into cultural values?

None of which makes this thread useful as educated people keep trying to point out to a particularly uneducated soul here that not understanding a concept has no bearing on it's validity. If it did, so many being totally incompetent in the Calculus and even higher mathematics would have That not 'working' as well. But super computers keep computing, space shots keep rocketing, fancy bridges and skyscrapers don't fall down, and Life keeps evolving. It takes a particular egotism to believe one's own intellectual or information limitations have any relationship to actual reality.