Posted on 01/18/2005 9:49:17 AM PST by Laissez-faire capitalist
I would have to say that this statement bears no resemblance to reality. What I cannot say is whether the author writes in ignorance or deceit.
Actually many evolutionist agree with us creationist on this point.
University of Oklahoma paleontologist Dave Kitts:
'Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of seeing evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of gaps in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them
.' (Kitts, David G. (1974), Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory, Evolution, 28:458-472, September)
For one thing, you need to learn a better form of argument.
For another thing, even if that citation of Kitt is accurate, the situation is different today than in 1974.
What bothers me more than creationism being false is that it's a lie. You can't all be that ignorant. Most of you have to be lying.
THANKS TONS.
No doubt the naysayers with little regard for logic or truth will still vainly try to come up with the usual train load of drivel about how this or that doesn't fit.
But they will never admit that it doesn't fit because
it does
NOT FIT THEIR RELIGION OF SCIENCE UNHOLY RIGID, NARROW, IRRATIONAL DOGMA!!!
Science isn't argued with dueling quotes. Religion apparently is. This would indicate that science isn't a religion after all, despite what creationists try to claim. People who try to dispute science with selective quoting simply do not understand what is going on.
In science, facts trump quotes. Quotes are mostly used for background before plunging into the latest round of findings.
This kind of comment betrays you up front as from the "You can't make me see" school of creationism. Well, that's practically all of you anyway.
Some of the skulls are unconstestedly human (except perhaps contested by you). The question is where do the apes stop and where do the humans begin?
Some interesting results have been arrived at already. In fact, we've pretty well established that while creationists will usually claim that one thing is "Just another kind of ape" and other thing is "Just another man within the allowable variations in kind," one creationist's "Ape! Just an ape!" will be another creationist's "Man! Just a man!"
Solid documentation of this phenomenon.
How can a "scientific discipline," especially one that claims apes and humans are fundamentally and obviously distinguishable from humans, be confused and give answers all over the map on what is an ape and what is a man?
Note that evolution actually predicted in advance that specimens--let's call them "transitionals"--should once have lived, specimens with a mix of features which would drive bin-lumpers crazy. Now in case after case after case we have found them, and Luddite naysayers are unhappily trying to ignore it all away or shift the question to, "But where are the transitionals between that one and that one and that one and that one and that one?"
But I digress. The main strategy is to draw a perfectly arbitrary line somewhere and pretend that it is uncrossable.
One particularly famous Young Earth Idiot named Duane Gish lumps one particular specimen based on a skull cap solidly into the "ape" bin, but another specimen of the same species (Homo erectus) which displays the exact same skull cap appearance into the "human" bin.
Java Man and Lake Turkana Boy.
This buffoonish science has nothing to teach us. You can't learn anything playing these kind of childish Lawyers and Liars games.
Sound pretty confused myself here.
How can a "scientific discipline," especially one that claims apes and humans are fundamentally and obviously distinguishable fromEditor needed, must work for peanuts.humanseach other, be confused and give answers all over the map on what is an ape and what is a man?
Your link shows shells change, lemur-like-mammal teeth change, etc. I don't see a smooth transition from, for example, a worm to a fish or a fish to a reptile or a reptile to a bird or a monkey to a man.
The only necessary conclusion from the data you provided is that shells and lemur change form and remain shells and lemurs. That's micro-evolution and nobody denies it.
It is quite a stretch of - dare I say it - faith to propose that the only conclusion from changes in form within a particular type of animal is that one type of animal evolves into another type.
Classic evolutionist bait and switch: claim macro-evolution is a fact and present examples of micro-evolution as proof.
Bottom line: Finches stay finches, moths stay moths, fruit flies stay fruit flies, etc.
Indeed you don't. You left off the primitive chordates, the amphibians, the feathered dinosaurs, and the apes in the places where they bridge gaps.
I've seen another freeper use this site, the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, to show the progression from fish to elephant in small steps. You'll pardon me if I don't reproduce the effort, but I can probably find it if you're interested.
You're making too big of a thing about what you personally don't know. Obviously, you don't know beans. So what?
I suppose nobody denies micro tectonics, that continental plates can move an inch or two a year, either. And nobody denies micro erosion, that a mountain can have a few inches or even feet wear off in rockslides, mudslides, stream erosion, and glaciation.
Gets a little stupid to assume that changes we can see happening won't keep on accumulating, doesn't it? Especially in the absence of any sort of mechanism to stop or reverse the changes.
They get theirs from the real scientific literature and, unlike creationist sources, they cite it accurately.
There is a wide variation in the skulls of homo sapiens, and this includes cranial capacity and bone structure. This is not surprising since there are wide variations among different people across the globe. Many of those skull show could very easily be human.
But you just said a post or two ago it was a bunch of ape skulls.
To try and claim that they are transitionals is quite amusing.
Then why are you dodging? Where are the apes and where are the humans. Why don't creationist authorities agree with each other? Why does the fossil record show creatures with the mix of features shown becoming less and less like a chimpanzee (our nearest relative and the skull at the upper left) and more and more like a modern human (the skull at the bottom right?)
Darwin's theory predicted that such a progression of beings must once have lived. Creationism just scoffed. They turned up. How did that happen?
Same thing happened with the land-animal and amphibious ancestors of whales. Evolution said they must have existed. Creationism scoffed. They turned up.
The same thing happened with the ancestors of birds. Creationism scoffed. They turned up.
How does that keep happening? How is it all amusing? Is it because nobody can make you see? Is militant ignorance science?
Evolutionists expected to find specimens that are hard to lump into arbitrary bins. They knew to expect that even before they turned up. That there are disputes over classification is a consequence of life evolving from one form to another. This is not proof you are right. This is proof you are wrong.
Creationist agree that they are not links from lower life forms to humans.
But they don't agree on what's an ape and what's a human. That's funny, since the whole idea is supposed to be that an ape is an ape and a human is a human and never the twain have met.
Duane Gish can't even decide if a specific bone shape is apelike (as he calls it in Java Man) or human (as he calls it in Lake Turkana boy.)
All of the skulls shown are either human or some ape like species totally unrelated to man. This is what I mean when I say that evolutionist like to force the data fit their theory.
This makes no sense in light of what I have told you already. We find what evolution predicts. Thus, evolution is looking good. Separate creation is looking bad.
There is no evidence of intermediates anywhere else in the animal kingdom either.
I have linked many examples. What's wrong with them? We predicted them. They were found. That's pretty good.
Also, you still haven't addressed the abiogenesis problem, which was disproved long ago.
I can't tell which ignorant creationist misstatement you refer to here. Let's just say all of those were proved wrong long ago.
Didn't you click the links that Vade offered as evidence FOR intermediates? Christ, he linked to 9 or 10.
Many evolutionist will lament this fact.
Sez you.
Unusual fossils do turn up from time to time, but they are obviously fully functional animals and not in a state of evolution.
Unngh. "...not in a state of evolution"...unngh.
They are simply either extinct or undiscovered species
Zooks! Are YOU a paleontologist?
The transition from fish to elephant in small steps with known fossils.
Against that, you just keep saying "There aren't any," and "No bones you can find mean anything."
And here's where I bop you on the head for claiming falsely that something scientists expect to find in the fossil record is in fact missing when two things are true:
Unusual fossils do turn up from time to time, but they are obviously fully functional animals and not in a state of evolution.
Populations evolve by staying fit, not by going unfit. You don't have a clue what the theory of evolution says.
Think about that. You don't have even the most elementary understanding of what you are claiming is wrong. How do you know it's wrong if you don't know what it is?
Four things are true, one of them being that I messed up the HTML tags and another that I failed to preview.
Again, you're following a simple outline.
That transition from fish to elephants commentary is a joke, and doesn't at all prove that transitionals exist. All of those could be modern animals, extinct animals, or a subspecies of modern animals that no longer exist (like different breeds of dogs) and you can't prove this is not the case.
Before you make another brainless repetition of the same claims, answer two questions.
1. What is the "legitimate" thing which is missing? (After all, you want to score points for this evidence being missing. What is this real thing which you would need to see?)
2. How does the evidence already presented in any way differ from the real thing you claim to be missing? (Most scientists think it's the real thing. If they're wrong, where did they go wrong?)
Some evolutionist lament the fact that the fossil record does not support the gradual evolution that you describe, and have proposed a different theory. This theory has been known as 'punctuated equilibrium'.
Since you don't know what evolution is, it can be no shock that you don't know what punctuated equilibrium is. It is still a gradual, Darwinian evolution. All you know about what you are saying is wrong you have obtained from creationist websites (or books or pamphlets). Absolutely every word is a lie.
You must not know what fully functional means. If you are going to have humans with complex organ systems evolve gradually from slime you are going to have to have features in intermediates that are not fully formed (limbs, eyes, brain, etc.,), which by the way is another reason why gradual evolution is ridiculous.
All of the intermediate stages are beneficial. The real theory does not involve somehow lucking through long periods of unfitness. You got lied to, that's all. You don't know the real thing.
I noticed you again conveniently avoided (dodged) the abiogenesis problem again, just like most evolutionist. You can't have evolution until you have life.
Try articulating something specific. Classical evolution has never addressed abiogenesis.
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