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To: VadeRetro
"Make sweeping dismissals of fossil evidence..."

I am certainly not dismissing the fossil 'evidence'. They are real and exist, but like I said before, they are easily explained within the creation model and do not provide the evidence for evolution.

"The fish-to-elephant demonstration is exactly the kind of progression-in-small-steps evidence which you are making a big show of demanding (because it supposedly doesn't exist) and at the same time throwing out (because it does in fact exist)."

That demonstration in no way shows 'progression-in-small-steps'. It only shows the progression of some peoples extreme bias for evolution. They believe evolution occurred so everything has to be crammed into that world view no matter what. Kind of like 'Don't bother me with other explanations my mind is made up' attitude. You can't provide one shred of 'proof' that those fossils represent the progression you describe. Try to provide me with undeniable proof that evolution is a fact. You can only provide assumptions and theories.

"What is the "legitimate" thing which is missing?"

Easy. If you are proposing gradual evolution from single cell organisms to humans the fossil record should be awash with fossils from every small step, as it starts to evolve eyes, limbs, mouths. etc. The fossil record fails in this area, as your examples have shown.

"Most scientists think it's the real thing. If they're wrong, where did they go wrong?

If you choose to reject God, evolution is your only option. Evolution is assumed to have happened, and the data is molded accordingly. Also called bias.

"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."

Wrong. It proposes that evolution occurs in short 'bursts'. Some do propose that the evolution in these short periods is gradual, but punctuated equilibrium is not proposed to be continuous gradual evolution.

"All of the intermediate stages are beneficial."

This is impossible if you are proposing gradual changes from single cells to people. Imagine the intermediates required to evolve a head, limbs, and organs. It becomes ridiculous in the extreme.

"You got lied to, that's all."

Yes I have, by evolutionists.

"Classical evolution has never addressed abiogenesis."

For good reason, because it is impossible life to come from non-life without intelligence acting upon it. The foundation of evolution is shattered. It is perfectly logical to assume that there is a creator from the abiogenesis problem alone. Evolutionist can't even begin to explain how abiogenesis could occur. Oh, but evolution is supposed to be a fact! Abiogenesis, however, is certainly part of your evolutionary story if you are an atheist (like you). I dare you to try to explain abiogenesis. I laugh at the impossibility of your task. I have to hand it to you though, it takes much more faith to believe in abiogenesis that to believe in a creator.
581 posted on 02/04/2005 9:06:21 PM PST by ol painless (ol' painless is out of the bag)
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To: ol painless
I am certainly not dismissing the fossil 'evidence'. They are real and exist, but like I said before, they are easily explained within the creation model and do not provide the evidence for evolution.

You make a big to-do of the absence of this or that fossil, but the finding of same means nothing. I don't really believe you don't understand that this can't be science.

That demonstration in no way shows 'progression-in-small-steps'. It only shows the progression of some peoples extreme bias for evolution. They believe evolution occurred so everything has to be crammed into that world view no matter what.

I can't tell you how funny that looks in light of the stupid game you play down the page in the same response. In fact, let's go get that right now.

... the fossil record should be awash with fossils from every small step, as it starts to evolve eyes, limbs, mouths. etc. The fossil record fails in this area, as your examples have shown.

"Everything we find, and everything we will ever find, means nothing. But where O where are the missing transitions?" I called you on this two or three posts ago, and you simply brazenly repeat.

You write well enough that you can't be as stupid as you are pretending to be. You pretty much have to be lying about what you can understand, here. I sometimes pretend to blame God for the bad behavior of the people who misbehave in public for him (beheadings, suicide bombings, witch trials, and creationists lecturing school boards about "the REAL science").

That's sarcasm. I don't really think some supernatural creator of Heaven and Earth is telling people to do those things. Your parents didn't raise you right. Now, any kids you may have are getting a bad example from at least one parent and so it goes.

I mentioned before that science considers prediction and theory to be in great agreement concerning evolution. It's true, and even a high-level summary of the lines of evidence pointing to evolution is impressively large.

Those lines of evidence include the fossil record. That the fossil record is rather jerky and discontinuous is mostly a matter of the disruptive influence of plate tectonics, which tends to assure that over the long haul periods of deposition in any one spot will be interrupted by periods of erosion.

In fairly recent decades, we have examined sea cores from bottom regions where deposition has continued uninterrupted for millions of years. We routinely see perfectly smooth change in such sediments (and here and there elsewhere despite the geological difficulties).

Here's a web page on what punk eek really is. Learn what you're talking about.

This page add some material, including the extent to which Darwin himself anticipated Gould and Eldredge. Not only is punk-eek a Darwinian theory, but Darwin went most of the way there himself in some neglected paragraphs of Origin.

We have the fossil record geology and evolution predict. Those predictions began when the tree of life was based almost entirely upon living species, the mere branch tips with almost no information from the trunk and larger branches on down the fossil record. Nevertheless, evolution said there is a scenario, a historical tree of common descent which the fossil record will outline.

Certain things were forbidden, flatly stated to have never lived, under this scenario. As I explained already on another thread, we find only the transitionals predicted by evolution and none of the falsifiers.

There is no possible scenario about which you cannot hypothesize, one thing evolved from another thing.

False. We have an established evolutionary scenario. Say, in the case of vertebrates it would be fish to amphibians to reptiles. One reptile branch (synapsids) gives rise to mammals. Another (diapsids) gives rise to dinosaurs and birds. Mammals and birds diversified along a certain scenario.

There are some uncertainties, some play, in the scenario, but there are things which evolution does not explain if they ever turned up. You can't have a seemingly direct amphibian-bird transitional, or amphibian-mammal, or bird-mammal, or fish-mammal. These things are flatly stated to have never existed.

Thus, for instance, we KNEW to look for land animal ancestors of whales even though they live in the water among fish and are basically shaped like fish. A separate mammalian evolution in water for cetaceans directly from fish was obviously false. Sounds trivial, now, but creationists scoffed right up until Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus, etc. were found. Now they have to lie about what they're able to understand. Sad. God shouldn't tell people to behave badly in public. You'd expect the creator of Heaven and Earth to refrain from malicious mischief.

Evolution says some things (which further outline the tree of life) must once have lived. In fact, we make new finds of those and only those things.

Thus, evolution is potentially falsifiable but it's late in the game for the falsifications to turn up if evolution were indeed false. It should have happened a long time ago and it hasn't. Thus, the game is over in real science and evolution has been accepted for over a century.

Creationism scoffs "Where are the missing links?" but swears it means nothing every time we fill another one. This is trying to have it all ways.

So, yes, your "science" predicts everything and nothing and is as worthless as the effort of correcting the falsehoods of back-again-dumb-as-a-stump creationists. The same thing is NOT at all true of evolution.

Because of the preceding, evolution is a much stronger and tighter theory than creationism's pathetic squawk of "We can account for that, too" every time the tree of common descent is further outlined. You don't particularly predict that it will be in any future finds. We've been doing so for almost 150 years and it's still looking good. You missed the boat.

You can always say that you have an answer for what we DO find (no matter WHAT we do find), but mostly you try to say we'll never find another one. You have no science. Hell, you have no integrity.

582 posted on 02/05/2005 9:02:17 AM PST by VadeRetro
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