Creationist with a silly question but how do I respond?

[usregimechange]

"Logically, organisms could not have developed lungs under water they would have drowned; above water they would have suffocated with gills. Therefore the transformation would have had to been instantaneous; not over hundreds, thousands, or millions of years. So therefore, the idea of this evolution is miraculous."

WTF? What do I say to this person?
:shrug:

[smokey nj]

1. Amphibians?

[LeftCoast]

4. Ha! Great minds!

:thumbsup:

[smokey nj]

6. To Us!!!!!!!.......

:toast:

[ComerPerro]

45. exactly, ever heard of amphibians?

[Richard Steele]

2. I wouldn't bother- you can't fix stupid.

[oneold1-4u]

14. Be only concerned

that your friend understands that that earth was flat and that for most of those, it still is!
It is a long fall off the edge!

[LeftCoast]

3. Ask him if he's ever heard of amphibians

:shrug:

[skipos]

5. I ain't no marine biologist, but don't dolphins breathe air?

I am pretty sure they don't drown very often either.

[ComerPerro]

46. no kidding. dolphins and whales

[aikoaiko]

51. weren't they returning mammals to the sea?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Respond with a photograph.

[usregimechange]

21. Thanks here is another one....

[WoodrowFan]

8. very small creatures don't have lungs

very small creatures don't have lungs. Insects, for example, absorb oxygen through their "skin" (or whatever they call it on a bug). At least that's what I read years ago in an article about 1950s scifi flicks with giants ants and such. They'd be too big to absorb enough oxygen...

[tocqueville]

33. you are partly right, spiders and others have book lungs

Book lungs are in cavities in the spider's abdomen. Air enters the cavities through a tiny slit on each side and near the front of the abdomen. Each lung consist of 15 or more thin, flat folds of tissue arranged like the blood vessels. As air circulates between the sheets, oxygen passes into the blood. Tarantulas have two pairs of book lungs. Most true spiders have 1 pair.

if the oxygen level is higher like under the Carboniferous a "spider" could have chased a cat (there were no cats at that time)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesothelae

http://www.palaeos.com/Paleozoic/Carboniferous/Carboniferous.htm

[WoodrowFan]

56. cool

thanks!

[mike_c]

34. ok, I MUST respond to this...

...just because I'm an entomologist. Most insects actually have a rather unique respiratory system called a tracheal system-- it's an internal system of air-filled tubules that divides into smaller and smaller tubules, eventually becoming microscopic and delivering air directly to respiring body tissues, e.g. to individual muscle cells. It's an amazing system. Even aquatic insects have it, filled with air internally. Only a few insects rely completely on cutaneous respiration.

[WoodrowFan]

55. thank you

Thanks, I knew there'd be somebody here who'd know! My apologies to the OP for my error. What can I say, I'm a liberal arts major who last took a science class about 30 years ago.




Um, giant radioactive ants ARE still impossible though, right?? :)

[Epiphany4z]

9. just a half arsed

educated guess is

from small organisms ..to creatures like fish ...ect then maybe
..they had both..I mean babies have these little plugs up there noses before they are born..after they are born the plugs are gone and the baby breathes air. I am sure there was an in between.

[democracyindanger]

10. A: Frogs. And then ask

if God is all powerful, how come he needed a day to rest? And if he's all-knowing, why didn't he create Eve in the first place, instead of realizing later that Adam needed someone to hang out with?

And then toss in a "You bozo" at the end.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. Here:

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/2/739

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Apparently, your friend doesn't understand what a "mutation" is

I wouldn't bother explaining. Wait til he or she tells you about the impossibility of forming the eye. That's always a good one, too.

[NMDemDist2]

13. she can't hold her breath? the animal who could hold his "breath" longer

could harvest more food out of the water so the ability to hold ones "breath" longer would gradually, over millions of years, lead to lungs rather than gills

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

15. Ask Them If God Came Down And Created New Lungs For Them Out Of The Womb.

Cause ya know, inside, there's kinda like no air. So I guess every time a child is born God miraculously swoops down and swaps out the old lungs for new ones right then and there.

Ok ok, so this one's on a different note. The whole 'duhhhhh amphibianssssss' angle is just too obvious. :)

[cali]

16. here

yeah, he's a freeper, but he's put together the best consolidated source of information on evolution on the web. He's a genius when it comes to arguing evolution with fundies.

http://www.freerepublic.com/~patrickhenry/

[Kutjara]

17. The concept is called 'preadaptation.'

This means that an organism has an existing anatomical feature that gets 'repurposed' by evolution to perform a new function in response to changes in the environment. Ancestral fish had 'swim-' or 'flotation bladder' that enabled them to remain bouyant in water and not sink to the bottom. When these fish were forced by environmental change to compete for resources at the dry fringes of their world, evolution worked on this bladder to enable it to process oxygen from air. Fish that had the modified bladder could spend longer out of the water, thereby competing more successfully for resources than their unmodified kin. Over time, the swimbladder evolved into what we call lungs.

[Crunchy Frog]

37. Actually, it's my understanding that it happened in the oposite order.

Both lungs and swim bladders are thought to have evolved from a primitive lung that was used by fish living in low O2 water to gulp air with.

I found this site with an explanation. http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2002-02/1014304962.Ev.r.html

[Kutjara]

38. Interesting...

...I hadn't seen that explanation before. So the preadapted organ was the common ancestor of the swimbladder and the lung.

Thanks for the link.

[BOSSHOG]

18. That's why they call it EVOLUTION! Things evolve! Get it!

[mike_c]

19. gills and lungs are not that different, really....

Lungs are simply internalized gills, brought into the body to keep the gas exchange surfaces moist. As others have noted in this thread, many amphibians combine gills, lungs, metamorphosis, and cutaneous respiration all in one life cycle. Some, like plethodontid salamanders, lack lungs altogether during the terrestrial adult life history phase and simply rely on gas diffusion through moist skin.

Some animals use gills quite effectively outside of water, too, at least if they can be kept moist-- that's the real key. Gas diffusion into and out of bodies MUST occur across moist surfaces-- that is one of the limiting factors in organismal gas exchange.

[NYC]

24. Some salamanders have gills outside the body.

This picture is not what I was looking for, but it will do.


This is a gilled Texas blind salamander.


I saw the gilled salamander a long time ago. It was during a phase of its life that the gills were outside. I think it was a very large salamander. Sorry I can't remember more. I had to settle for the picture above.

[mike_c]

32. yeah-- the plethodontids are unusual in that...

...they have gills during the immature, aquatic life cycle phase, but then metamorphose into lungless adults that rely on cutaneous respiration.

[NYC]

43. That looks like a skink.

Is that a skink?

[mike_c]

44. nope-- its a salamander....

That one just happens to be the only Asian representative of the plethodontid salamanders-- unique because of that. Most plethodontids are North American natives. Some other examples from my local fauna include the clouded salamander, the wandering salamander, the del Norte salamander, and the Siskyou Mountains salamander-- all members of the genus Aneides if I recall correctly. Here's the clouded salamander, Aneides ferreus:

[NYC]

50. Cute.

He has a big head and a skinny neck.

What is the giant salamander in Japan called?

[mike_c]

53. Andrias japonicus-- the japanese giant salamander....

[NYC]

54. Is that a small one?

I thought they came about 5 feet long, and were far wider, at least in the head.

Thanks for the picture. :hi:

[Mend]

20. ontology recapitulates phylogeny

fetuses have gills.

[neoblues]

22. and some bebe's are born

not hatched--no--I was going to say... born with vestigial 'fins' (nipped off easily, no problem... no "fish-boy" taunts later in childhood... though, if they left them, do you suppose the person would become a world-class swimmer? naw... they're tiny, and probably dysfunction in terms of nerves and musculature).

[Warpy]

23. Lungfish. They do both. They're still with us, too.

Plus plenty of aquatic mammals have lungs instead of gills. Consider the whales and dolphins.

Also point out that we share much of our DNA with one celled organisms like bacteria, the DNA responsible for all cellular functions. We've simply added to it over the years as we have developed into more and more complex creatures.

Sadly, there's not much you can say to a believer in nonsense. The best we can do is keep them off school boards and out of the government.

[Warren DeMontague]

25. Logically, an invisible all-powerful man in the sky creating phony fossils

makes a hell of a lot less sense than evolution.

[ComerPerro]

47. logically, you can't make people out of dirt

[Warren DeMontague]

48. Oh yeah? explain this, smarty-man:

[bluerum]

26. Shakes head and looks down. Stupid. Just plain stupid.

[SPKrazy]

27. Tell Them That Evolution May Happen Quickly

in spurts

changes don't necessarily happen slowly

[LittleClarkie]

28. Don't mudskippers have both?

I'd pull out a species like that.

[Fleshdancer]

29. Fetuses develop lungs under amniotic fluid

happens all the time actually! :rofl:

Let us know how you plan on responding to the Creationist.

[neoblues]

30. The answer was provided...

in the post about "Preadaptation".

However, you should also consider turning the tables and asking them why certain creatures, if designed by a really sharp designer, are so poorly designed...

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html

[Critters2]

31. Ask 'em how come

there are 2 creation stories in the bible, with opposite orders of creation. Did God create the universe twice?

That usually makes their heads explode. And then you win! :nuke:




edited because I can't type

[Gold Metal Flake]

35. Ask for proof that they have the necessary education to make such a claim.

Demand proof of their estimated time line. Refuse to take their typical bullshit for an answer. Refuse to follow them when they try to change the subject or descend to ad hominens.

BTW, the Beta fish has both lungs and gills. Their natural habitat is in ponds with not much water movement and so not much dissolved oxygen. They developed lungs so that they can come to the surface and gulp air.

[Crunchy Frog]

36. Point out the present day examples of fish that have lungs.

Like ummm...lungfish?

Lungs evolved in fish that lived in water with low O2 levels so they could supplement their oxygen intake. Some living fish still have lungs, though in most of them, the lungs eventually evolved into the swim bladder.

You might also point out the various types of fish that have gills and still manage to spend substantial amounts of time out of water. In addition to lungfish, this includes mudskippers and walking catfish, as well as a few others.

Your friend's argument is completely falsified by these living examples of what he claims can't possibly exist.

[Nikki Stone 1]

39. My answer: "Nature is full of miracles"

Look at your skin heal, a broken bone knit together, stem cells curing a paralyzed rat (CBS News). Nature IS miraculous, all on its own. But it's not perfect: cancer kills without treatment, and the bones of an octogenarian will not knit together terribly well. That's why it's important to distinguish between the very possible "miracles" of nature and the impossible ones (like parting the Red Sea with a little stick). Evolutionary changes are natural ones.

The short answer is, of course, amphibians, but some folks already said that. :)

[Lochloosa]

40. Send him/her to this website...

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/WalkingCatfish/WalkingCatfish.html

[MervinFerd]

41. "Lungfish"

They are still around.

There's a recent article in Science (maybe Nature) about a fossil fish with both gills and primitive lungs. An intermediate form.

[roguevalley]

42. lung fish.

[dysfunctional press]

49. walking catfish

http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/guidebooks/freshfish/text/217.htm

Family Clariidae
Africa Middle East, Asia. These catfishes are rather elongated with a flattened, broad, bony head, and wide mouth. They possess four pairs of long, rather stiff barbels. They are mainly nocturnal in habit, possessing accessory respiratory organs above their gills (like the labyrinth fishes) to enable them to utilise atmospheric oxygen...

[sakabatou]

52. Lungfish. Mudskipper.