Denyse O’Leary is a very silly person, but you all knew that. One of her latest entries on her silly Design of Life blog, which purports to be promoting Dembski’s silly book of the same name, is treading old ground. She’s claiming that convergence is common, and that marsupial lions and wolves and squirrels are evidence of some kind of natural destiny. She’s getting all of this from Michael Denton, but the similarities are in ecological niches (sometimes, not even that) and in the names, and contrary to Denton, the similarities are only superficial.
Laelaps has the details on those convergent marsupials. The differences are very easy to spot, especially when you’ve got an expert guide with a battery of photos.
Those cooky creation zombies are at it again.
Dembski and Wells definitely try and oversell the similarities between the Tasmanian wolf and Grey wolf. Remember, they actually say that the two species are identical in ‘most features’. The skulls are similar, but easily distinguished if you know what to look for. For example, take a look at the picture of the skull comparisons. In the second picture from the bottom right, the Grey Wolf has very large, prominent auditory bullae (those two bulbous things at the bottom), while the auditory bullae from the marsupial’s skull are greatly reduced in size and different in shape. Also notice the two large holes in the marsupial’s palatine bone, which is absent in the placental wolf. The two animals also have different dental formulae (ie, the pattern of teeth). All of these features make the distinction immediately obvious and important to a trained mammalogist, but may be superficial to a layman. Also, no placental wolf I know of can open its jaws 120 degrees like the Thylacine could, nor can the Grey Wolf sit up on its hind legs and tail like a kangaroo.
Dembski and Wells need to make laymen think the two species are almost identical, so they ignore the huge differences and stress the superficial resemblances. Big surprise.
I like this, from the “BUZZ” section of the Design of Life website:
“Wells is a leading figure in the intelligent design (ID) movement.”
That’s supposed to be praise?
They’re all merging towards “oneness.” Like Denise merges into Denyse.
Convergence between the Thylacine & the Grey Wolf is nothing compared to the convergence between the Denyse O’Leary & the Howler Monkey. Except the Howler Monkey ain’t that crazy.
By Jove! A kangaroo is a giant jumping rat! Time to go smack myself in the head with a hammer to try to forget I ever read that.
To quote orac, “the stupid, it burns!”
The moment a woo-woo starts harping on about similarities in nomenclature, I roll my eyes. Here is a simpel amphiboly test: translate their basic statement into another language, and see if it still holds water. For example, “dog” is “god” spelled backwards… as if this held some metaphysical signfiicance. But in French, “dieu” and “chien” have very little in common, and the Japanese “kami” and “inu” even less.
But then, god is an Englishman who watches cricket on Sundays, right…?
Yes Denyse, there are similarities, except, you know, in the areas that evolution predicts are very difficult to change, if not impossible. Look at the reproduction of the “Tasmanian Wolf” and of the grey wolf, and try to find any real convergence.
You can’t, but then that’s never stopped you from lying before now. The only “convergence” is exactly the sort that evolution (you know, evolution, as opposed to the minutely-stepped creationism of ID) predicted from adaptation (the jaws, the running ability, both of which actually “converge” from a shared inheritance), the “Darwinism” that you hate in your gawping ignorance.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
There’s something here I don’t understand – I thought that convergent evolution would be evidence for natural evolution, and would be evidence against the design hypothesis. If there were a designer, why wouldn’t he just put wolves and lions in Australia?
Reading that blog post, I’m left with the impression that Denyse is simply gainsaying a quote from Steven Jay Gould. Reminds me of the old Monty Python bit about arguments: “No it isn’t!”
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is IDiocy, everything looks like “evidence” for “design”.
Don’t forget that rhetoric is what the intelligent design movement is all about. Their move away from scientific pretension to story telling, of which Denyse is a component, is appropriate.
Good thing she didn’t read Michael Benton’s book about the end-Permian extinction, “When Life Nearly Died.” His comments about Lystrosaurus let to popular articles with titles like “When Pigs Ruled the Earth.”
This is what I don’t get. They don’t [i]have[/i] any superficial resemblance. The thylacine’s a freaking tiger-striped pitbull/opossum hybrid with the back end of a kangaroo. It doesn’t look any more like a wolf than it does like a leopard, or a hyena. It doesn’t look like [i]any[/i] placental carnivore, even from forty feet away. Even without seeing the video where it rears up, yawns, etc.
With some of the marsupial mice and gliders and things, it’s a little trickier; you have to at least get close enough to notice that the head shape’s not quite rodentish. But you don’t need a bio degree to realize thylacines and wolves have nothing to do with each other; you just have to have visited a zoo at some time in your life. If you’ve seen a wolf, a tiger, a mongoose and a weasel, you really should be able to see that the thylacine is something entirely outside that group.
You know, from my standpoint it really doesn’t make any difference how much convergence is observed between any two species which are known not to have a recent common ancestor, just as it doesn’t make any difference how divergent two closely-related species are.
What matters is those factors which can select for or against convergence. It’s as if there is a certain species of creationist that is incapable of recognizing environmental influence. What these people do with tree rings is beyond me.
BTW, creationists are always arguing that there is no new source of information in evolutionary theories that could account for an increase in diversity. But this is just wrong, as the example of tree rings should make clear. Everyone knows that the thickness of one ring in a tree relative to others is an indicator of just how much it grew during that season. Dendrochronologists routinely make inferences about trees and the changing environments they occupied in the past from such rings. In other words, tree rings contain information. But what was the source of that information? Clearly, it was provided at least in part by the environment!
Bring up this argument the next time someone argues from information theory that evolution could not produce complexity/diversity!
The blog entry on the same page about tiktaalik is even more illuminating. From which I copy you this:
“Amphibians are considered to be the earliest vertebrates (animals with backbones).”
They then compare the evolution of tiktaalik with a pizza box and a laptop: superficially similar so one must have evolved from the other. Of course. I think that’s why my laptop gets hot – it’s for keeping the pizzas warm.
But then, god is an Englishman who watches cricket on Sundays, right…?
…and always supports your favorite team, causes individual players to have spectacular games, etc.
…but only if you pray hard enough.
:P
Of course. I think that’s why my laptop gets hot – it’s for keeping the pizzas warm.
wouldn’t that be an example of co-evolution, not convergent evolution?
:P
So, unable to properly refute tiktaalik, the cdesign proponentsists come up with the inane comparison to a pizza box-to-laptop chain. Gee, how idiotic. I suppose it’s no good just telling them to give up. Me, I don’t care if your local witch-doctor wants you to believe that pizzas spontaneously generate and arrive at your door via angelic transportation; I just don’t want to see your witch-doctor’s idea force it’s way into the science classroom.
Re; comment #7; But then, god is an Englishman who watches cricket on Sundays, right…?
I have always assumed so but the picture is getting fuzzy …what with all this limited-overs stuff creeping into the game and being played mid-week and as for the heresy that is 20/20 cricket, well, that is obviously the work of Satan.