Yet another "Creationist's Nightmare"
Offline A previously unknown species of climbing catfish has been discovered in remote Venezuela, and its strange traits are shaking the evolutionary tree for these fish.
The newfound catfish, Lithogenes wahari, shares traits with two different families of fish - Loricariidae (armored catfishes) and Astroblepidae (climbing catfishes). It has bony armor that protects its head and tail, and a grasping pelvic fin that helps it to climb vertical surfaces such as rocks.
These characteristics in L. wahari suggest to ichthyologists Scott Schaefer of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Francisco Provenzano of the Universidad Central de Venezuela that the common ancestor of the Loricariidae and Astroblepidae probably could grasp and climb rocks with its tail and mouth. Fish in both families, as well as the new catfish, have sucker mouths.
The unusual catfish caught the team's attention 20 years ago in Caracas. An anthropologist, Stanford Zent of the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas, working in the remote state of Amazonas collected samples of local foods and brought them to the Instituto de Zoologíca for identification.
"The fish was so strange in morphology that it did not fit into any taxonomic category that we were aware of," Schaefer said. "But it looked like it was run over by a truck. We needed better specimens."
There are so many "Creationist Buster" species out there in the public eye now, I just don't understand how anybody could reasonably lose an argument with a creationist.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Well, the science freak in me reads that and says "Great! Another transitional fossil".
However, the cynic in me reads the same thing and thinks "Great, teo more places for theists to demand that transitional fossils need to be found or else they are automatically right".
=
Guy: "Hey, catfish, what are you doing climbing out of the pond?"
Catfish: "Trying to take over the WORLD!!!" *muahahaha*
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The difference in scientific method when a rung in the ladder is not there, is that you still have the sides of the ladder(DNA) that show the common ground.
Deity claims are a paper ladder who's sides are built on myth and rungs are hollow naked assertions based on magical superstitious claims.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
But couldn't this be evidence of a common designer? In all seriousness I don't think things like this matter to christians. They'll just use the same lame excuse no matter how many proofs there are.
Designer implies cognition, but in nature we see random process and patterns that repeat without a brain.
"Desinger" is an ignorant warm fuzzy word based on anthropromorfic projection where humans say, "it is so complex a human must have done it"
Instead, what is going on is not the cause of thinking, but a cause of random motion.
In laymen's terms, a "designer" is not needed for anything to explain the origins of the universe or biological life.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog