Why is my belief in the scientific method dogmatic but belief in the book of Genesis is rational? I don’t say that the scientific method is perfect but I do believe that reason is man’s only way of gaining knowledge.
One example of a transitional fossil is the recent discovery of several whale species with legs instead of flippers and some with half leg/ half flipper appendages that lived in a shallow sea in the area that is now the eastern Mediterranean. The Fossil record records several intermediate stages of a land mammal returning to the sea and evolving flippers. Now there is your transition stage evidence.
How many examples would it take before you recognized the evidence as legitimate? I agree that there are large gaps in the fossil records and that is why I don’t believe in evolution as the only mechanism at work. I do believe the universe was created with conscious intent. You have whole new types of animals suddenly appearing in the fossil record that can’t be explained by slow evolution.
On the other hand the idea that the Earth is only several thousand years old is absurd, in my opinion.
The fossil record shows absolutely nothing of the kind. All it shows is extinct species. Joining one species to another via presumed “evolution” is pure conjecture.
If evolutionary dogmatists cannot prove their theory by means other than attacking religion, then how is it within the auspices of reason?
FTR, there is nothing in the Bible that states that the planet is a mere seven millennia old.
Sure [creation] and short ages are absurd. Why they’d have to lie, hide, ignore and fabricate on literally hundreds of facts and data points. For instance - claiming those whale appendages must have been legs at one time - YEAH RIGHT!!!
101 Evidences for a Young Age of the Earth...And the Universe
http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
Did the ancient proto-whales take Thalidomide or something? And did they use the half-leg / half-flippers for surfboarding?
You'll have to show that this intermediate stage represented a stable enough niche w.r.t. predators as well as mobility on land/water/swamp/whatever, or else you are engaging in circular reasoning.
Two more interesting questions which I've never seen anyone one answer rigorously are --
1) the time frame over which the changes occurred, compared to the rate of change of the environment (I doubt it was changes in solar irradiation which prompted the transition, btw...); and compared to the expected mutation rate per base pair per generation; and it'd be really really cool if one could map the proteins and structures expressed directly to both the genetics and epigenetics.
2) At what point did the genetic line diverge so that the fin-droppers / fin-acquirers (depending on which direction they were going) could no longer mate with their homies left on land
3) How well did the changes in the mode of locomotion map to changes in streamlining of the rest of the body, storage of body fat / temparature regulation, changes in birthing and maternal practice, and modification of lungs? What is the purported physical mechanism by which changes in the legs make changes in these other structures follow? (I mean, it's not like there's a lot of variation in the placement of nostrils normally: so why should the genes controlling nose structure suddenly start exhibiting more mutations just because the legs became fin-like)? 4) By the way, I assume it is a good guess that the entire species did not suddenly grow semi-fins, but rather just a couple of litters? If that is the case, then unless this change was a dominant characteristic compared to normal legs, then the progeny with semi-fins or even more-finnish limbs, could only have resulted from the breeding of the limited population with the first set of proto-fins. If that's true, how did they avoid the deleterious effects of genetic bottlenecks from too few breeding pairs?
Cheers!