Are there out-of-sequence fossils that are problematic for evolution?

Creation Ministries International ^ | 4-17-2014 | by Gary Bates and Lita Cosner

[fishtank]

Are there out-of-sequence fossils that are problematic for evolution?

by Gary Bates and Lita Cosner

Published: 17 April 2014 (GMT+10)

In his debate with Ken Ham, (the ‘science guy’) Bill Nye dogmatically claimed, and asked Ham, to cite any out of order fossils in the geologic record, because if there were any, it would be problematic for the evolutionary model. Due to the seeming confidence of Nye’s assertion (and that it was not answered during the debate), many have contacted us for an answer on this single question. In addition, while out on ministry our speakers have mentioned how this question has often come up. At a recent event, Gary Bates encountered a Christian university student who said this question was being used as a club by lecturers and professors to ‘beat him with’. It appears that this seeming ‘knockout punch’ argument by Nye is being used as a ‘great’ falsification of the creation model.

[fishtank]

From the article:

"“To the surprise of many, ducks,3 squirrels,4 platypus,5 beaver-like6 and badger-like7 creatures have all been found in ‘dinosaur-era’ rock layers along with bees, cockroaches, frogs and pine trees. Most people don’t picture a T. rex walking along with a duck flying overhead, but that’s what the so-called ‘dino-era’ fossils would prove!”"

[fishtank]

CMI image caption: "Fossil octopus remarkably preserved in Lebanon reveals details of the eight arms, suckers, ink, gills, mouth, eye capsule and more."

From the article: "So a better way to counter this would be to ask whether evolution has made predictions about the fossil record that have been confirmed by subsequent discoveries. And by this measure evolution falls dramatically short.

For instance, Charles Darwin said that “no organism wholly soft can be preserved.”

He was simply wrong, because we have many examples of this. "

[freedumb2003]

Quote a from a real scientific publication’s real article not built on a straw man and we’ll talk.

[coloradan]

Evolution doesn’t make a prediction about whether soft organisms can be preserved or not, so the fact that Darwin’s personal opinion on this matter was mistaken can’t be used to refute evolution, generally.

[freedumb2003]

>>Evolution doesn’t make a prediction about whether soft organisms can be preserved or not, so the fact that Darwin’s personal opinion on this matter was mistaken can’t be used to refute evolution, generally.
<<

Don’t use facts and logic. It just irritates them.

[cuban leaf]

Quote a from a real scientific publication’s real article not built on a straw man and we’ll talk.

---

So, based on that remark I’m gonna guess you buy into AGW.

[Da Coyote]

Agree.

I am most definitely a Christian...but sorry, folks the earth is not 4K years old, and evolution is pretty much how methinks God did things.

If we want to go down the 4K years old thing, why then is not the earth only one nanosecond old...and we’ve had all our memories preinstalled.

One can easily believe in evolution and also believe that God perhaps used the normal randomness allowed in quantum physics to introduce changes in species vectors without violating any of the laws of physics that are so tightly tuned for our existance.

[Da Coyote]

Quote a from a real scientific publication’s real article not built on a straw man and we’ll talk.

So, based on that remark I’m gonna guess you buy into AGW.

Sorry, but he said “real scientific publications”.

Those that are pushing AGW are most definitely not even close to scientific...for N reasons...where N is a very very large number. Always remember, if you’ve got Cs and Ds in your physics courses, you can always get a government grant and go into something that’s your level....climate research.

[varmintman]

The sequence is not that big a deal. Classical Darwinism requires that the vast bulk of all fossils be clear intermediate forms and there simply aren't any. The more recent version of evoloserism, the Gould/Eldredge/Myer "Punctuated Equilibria" amounts to an attempt to get by both the problem of missing intermediate fossils and the gigantic problem of the Haldane dilemma, but has its own set of problems which is just as bad.

The big lie which is being promulgated by evolutionites is that there is some sort of a dialectic between evolution and religion. There isn't. In order to have a meaningful dialectic between evolution and religion, you would need a religion which operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution, and the only two possible candidates would be voodoo and Rastafari.

The dialectic is between evolution and mathematics. Professing belief in evolution at this juncture amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic. It's basically ignorant.

Evolution has been so thoroughly discredited at this point that you assume nobody is defending it because they believe in it anymore, and that they are defending it because they do not like the prospects of having to defend or explain some expect of their lifestyles to God, St. Peter, Muhammed...

To these people I say, you've still got a problem. The problem is that evolution, as a doctrine, is so overwhelmingly STUPID that, faced with a choice of wearing a sweatshirt with a scarlet letter A for Adulteror, F for Fornicator or some such traditional design, or or a big scarlet letter I for IDIOT, you'd actually be better off sticking with one of the traditional choices because, as Clint Eastwood noted in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

God hates IDIOTS, too!

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.

Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.

And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record (despite the BS claims of talk.origins "crew" and others of their ilk) to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:

Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now:
OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.

But it gets even stupider.

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...

2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...

3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.

4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.

5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:

The don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek"

They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:

ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!

Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?

Splifford the bat says: Always remember A mind is a terrible thing to waste; especially on an evolutionist.
Just say no to narcotic drugs, alcohol abuse, and corrupt ideological
doctrines.

[clamper1797]

I hope you realize that the earth IS flat AND the sun and the rest of the entire universe revolves around the earth. It’s been that way for all the 4000 years that the earth has been around. Oh and all those civilizations that existed LOOONG before that ... the devil made the evidence of those and they are not real. Now pass me an other joint and don’t try to confuse my faith driven predetermined opinions with facts.

[rjsimmon]

am most definitely a Christian...but sorry, folks the earth is not 4K years old, and evolution is pretty much how methinks God did things.

Sorry, incompatible. Gen 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth."

They are mutually exclusive. Evolution dictates non-directed mutations. Creation dictates directed distinctions.

Either you believe God or you believe man.

[JimSEA]

While “bees, cockroaches, frogs and pine trees” would all be expected in “dinosaur era” fossils, the others will need citations as I suspect some misrepresentation. There are mammal “like” reptiles going way back and mammals walked the earth with dinosaurs just as birds are the living relatives of dinosaurs. Fossils of kinds not anticipated by Darwin prove nothing. Darwin was a fallible individual, apparently unlike your flood geologists.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Sorry, I think you're going overboard in some of your reasoning. Maybe there was some intelligent design at some time, maybe not, but there's clearly been many eons on earth with some likely evolutionary changes confirmed by various dating techniques.

Your bullet points don't all seem convincing. For example, #9 is:

4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.

I submit that this happens all the time. Look at our inner cities.

[Sopater]

Quote a from a real scientific publication’s real article not built on a straw man and we’ll talk.

You mean that you'll be willing to discuss it when the evolutionists admit it?

[Sopater]

One can easily believe in evolution and also believe that God perhaps used the normal randomness allowed in quantum physics to introduce changes in species vectors without violating any of the laws of physics that are so tightly tuned for our existance.

Certainly, but as long as true observational science lacks evidence for this theory, I prefer to believe what God said He did.

[Gadsden1st]

Or you believe various different MAN’s account of GOD.

[Brett66]

I agree, Christianity can consider science true, there is no need to turn science into an “ism” against all Christians.

[MrB]

You’re asserting that the Bible is a work of Man, then.

[driftdiver]

Really? Any proof of that or is it just another opinion like evolution.

[jcon40]

I have heard the question but never a good answer put to evolutionists where;

If we only use 5-10% of our brain

and if the demands made on an organizism by its environment is what causes organisms to evolve

how did we ever need or use 100% of or brain at sometime in the past?