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To: Junior
re: your post #860.

How do you "know" that totally different organisms decended from some previous totally different organism. Seems to me you have to have either: (1) observed this personally or, (2) have absolute proof that one species descended from another.

I personally have seen no absolute evidence presented by the evols in the threads I have read here on Free Republic. In general, making an absolute conclusion and then "proving" that conclusion with pictures and other assumptions is not proof.

I have a question that perhaps you can help me with. How did the billions of gallons of oil get to us? I've heard that oil normally originates from animal matter. If so, how did this happen? I personally have a hard time seeing how the oil got here if slowly evolving life has occured in the past.
866 posted on 03/18/2003 11:02:21 AM PST by HalfFull
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To: HalfFull
What's the alternative explanation? That the younger organism poofed into existence full blown? It did not exist at the time of the older organism, or we would find them mixed together. The Bible says all the critters were made at once, but the fossil record does not support that conclusion. The younger organism had to come from somewhere. Extrapolating from our knowledge that organisms change from generation to generation (fact) we can propose the younger organism evolved (changed) from an earlier organism - either the one mentioned above or a close relative. This is the theory of evolution. What have the creationists got to explain the situation? They'll tell you that spontaneous generation is impossible (they misunderstand Pasteur's work, but that's not important), but all they'be got to fall back on is that the newer organism sprang full blown from nothing at a certain point in history.

Unless you've got something else, maybe?

871 posted on 03/18/2003 12:02:52 PM PST by Junior (Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.)
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To: HalfFull
How do you "know" that totally different organisms decended from some previous totally different organism. Seems to me you have to have either: (1) observed this personally or, (2) have absolute proof that one species descended from another.

First off, welome to these threads. I just started myself not too long ago, and I'm already thoroughly addicted!

It really sounds like what your'e asking for is for me to show you a frog morph into a lizard. I can't do that because the differneces between species and thus these "transitions" that everyone keeps talking about are very small. To my understanding, even punctuated equilibrium (http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~lemmon/Research/Paper-EG4-Gradualism.htm) occurs over many generations. These things have been observed in small organisms like bacteria and things with short reproductive cycles, but are usually dismissed as "microevolution" although I don't see the distinction. I CAN show you evolution in action, but you'd either have to accept fruit flies as an example or agree to wait until I find a cure for mortality in order to demonstrate "macroevolution". :)

Also, the distinction between two species is not always clear. The usual rule is that the two groups not be able to produce fertile offspring. Hence Donkeys and Horses are seperate species even though they can reproduce together, because Mules are sterile. Dogs and wolves, on the other hand, are usually classified as differnet species although I THINK they can produce viable offspring. On the other hand, Great Danes and Chihuahuas, while both undeniably dogs, would have a hard time mating naturally. The transitions get blurry. Where do you draw the line? Look at it one way and there are no transitionals, look at it another and EVERYTHING is a transitional. The distinctions we make between species are somewhat arbitrary, thus it gets easy to make unanswerable questions about transitions between species. These types of questions do nothing to disprove evolution, they merely point out difficulties in our categorization techniques.

I have a question that perhaps you can help me with. How did the billions of gallons of oil get to us? I've heard that oil normally originates from animal matter. If so, how did this happen? I personally have a hard time seeing how the oil got here if slowly evolving life has occured in the past.

The commonly accepted theory these days is that oil came from a period far in the past when there was a lot of plant life and other organic material. Very swamplike, to my understanding. This dead material decomposed and was covered up by layers and layers of soil and whatnot. These layers piled up over millions of years, burying the material under miles of rock, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The point is that oil was trapped underground because it is from primitive DEAD life forms from a SPECIFIC PERIOD in Earth's history. Life didn't go away afterwards, it just wasn't in an enviornment conducive to forming oil. That's why we have limited supplies.

873 posted on 03/18/2003 12:23:05 PM PST by gomaaa
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