On Wed, 3 Jul 1996 13:58:49 -0700 (PDT), Randy Landrum wrote:
NM>bird-like traits. It seems to me that this is a fair point in
favor of the theory of bird evolution - not "propaganda".
>That said, I agreed with much of the rest of what Jones said: the story about
>the creature's death seems far fetched, and convergent evolution is a problem
>(though not an unsolvable one, as the current example shows).
RL>I have a lot of problems with believing that Dino's evolved from
>Birds, or some of which are:
I think the proposition is that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
RL>1. If so why are there so many birds and so few dino's?
>2. What caused the lose of flight? And wouldn't that cause extinction?
>3. There should be millions of transitional life forms still alive.
>4. How do you explain the differences such as bone structures. (Birds
>have more or less hollow bones to allow flight.
The real show-stopper is the avian lung, which is fundamentally
different from reptiles and indeed any other anima, as Denton
points outl:
"...the fact is that a huge number of highly complex systems in
nature cannot be plausibly accounted for in terms of a gradual
build-up of small random mutations. Indeed, in many cases there does
not exist in the biological literature even an attempt to explain how
these things have come about. A classic example would be the lung of
the bird, and I could mention some other ones, but everybody knows
the lung of the bird is unique in being a circulatory lung rather
than a bellows lung. I think it doesn't require a great deal of
profound knowledge of biology to see that an organ, which is so
central to the physiology of any higher organism, its drastic
modification in that way by a series of small events is almost
inconceivable. This is something we can't throw under the carpet
again because, basically, as Darwin said, if any organ can be shown
to be incapable of being achieved gradually in little steps, his
theory would be totally overthrown." (Access Research Network, "An
Interview With Michael Denton", excerpt from a transcript of a video
interview)
[...]
God bless.
Steve
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