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Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
That same argument is used to point to a huge climate altering event namely: a flood. The fossil record is a record of extinction. Mass extinction starting right after the flood and then slowing but continuing to this day.
Embryological evolution was something that was considered a solid proof of evolution when I went to school. They had discovered that in the early stages of human development the embryo has what appears to be a tail. It later disappears. The thought of the day was that they were seeing a glimpse of the tail mankind sported earlier in his development. Turns out they were wrong. What they thought was a tail was part of the spinal column. The developing legs move down the body. The "tail" doesn't disappear at all but rather the body grows around it. Hopefully the powers that be have gotten around to correcting the text books.
The eyes develop in the embryo as part of the brain and move out towards the eye sockets later in the developing baby. They are not part of the spinal cord or the nervous system. The problem with the supposed links to the developing human eye is that none of them originate anywhere near the brain. They can't be part of the development of the human eye. Actually even if they had a direct connection to the brain it would be a huge jump to consider them as links to the development of the eye. The eye works differently. The theory that the eye evolved relatively quickly is being flogged because there is no evidence of said development. One would expect to see evidence of development if millions of years were involved. Also two holes in the skull are hardly a beneficial trait for survival. Anything less than functioning eyes in those holes would be a distinct disadvantage in nature.
Bottom line: Believing science has found plausible evidence of the development of the human eye is akin to believing Christ made an appearance in your cheese grilled sandwich. You've got to use your imagination, look at it from just the right angle, and really want it to be true.
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Speaking of really wanting something to be true, I watched an interesting program on PBS this weekend about the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs and the evidence favouring such a view. We've all heard of feathered dinosaurs, and some of the better read may be aware of the skeletal morphology of the bird-like theropods that is so similar to birds. But what was most interesting was the developments in genetic analysis. Scientists observed that in the egg, birds have a tail with many more vertebrae than a hatched bird and noticed that as the egg developed, the extra vertebrae were lost in the development of the foetal bird. Prior to losing the vertebrae in development, the foetal chicks had the same number of tail vertebrae as Archaeopteryx. Interestingly, after much experimentation, these scientists have figured out a way to delay the activation of the genetic switch that leads to the loss of vertebrae in the tail and they have developed chicks with many more vertebrae than a naturally born bird, although fewer than an Archaeopteryx would have had. (They delayed the activation of the switch but haven't been able to halt it) The interesting thing about this discovery of course is that the early foetal stage of a bird really does resemble it's early ancestors, and it is a genetic switch that makes the difference between a bird tail and a dino tail.
This actually leads to the hypothesis that foetal development may mirror evolution to a point, but determination may be difficult without understanding the genetic switches that steer foetal devolpment away from the precursor forms to the modern form.
To some degree the old 'discredited' statement of Ernst Haeckel that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' may actually have some truth to it, although not in the way Haeckel envisioned it. (Since he doctored his results)