Posted on 03/01/2009 5:30:40 AM PST by Salman
For the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 2009), National Geographic News asked leading scientists for their picks of the most important fossils that show evolution in action ...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
The universe doubles??? What, there are male and females stars and they reproduce???
But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days.
It does more than that...The bible tells you everything was recreated after it's own kind, thus forever eliminating evolutionary theory...
Trying to get the word of God to line up with the theory of evolution is a hoax in itself...They are diametrically opposed to each other...
It is really interesting to read what others read into my statements as to my beliefs and motifs.
And this is true in the current debate over how to classify Neanderthals, once proclaimed an ancestor of man, now considered by some to be a subspecies, and asserted by some that they actually interbred.
Is the first dog an ancestor of the second on, or vice versa?
And what to do with this odd dog skull?
If you want to compare evolution to a religion, the religion you need is Rastafari.
monosyllabilic
err, monosyllabic.
I like your fish.
Obviously we disagree on this subject, let's shake hands and agree to our differences in opinion.
Homo Ergaster isn’t even an accepted classification- yet that doesn’t stop Nat Geo from presenting it as “fact”- Nat Geo is a disgrace to science. Because a fish has lobbed fins, they beleive it evolved into a land dweller- yet they have absolutely NO evidence of any such creature doing so- These lobe-finned fish as it turns out didn’t even use their fins to ‘crawl’ along hte bottom of the oceans and rivers like the ‘experts’ told us they did- they blatted on and on about how fish like the caelocanth used hteir fins to crawl with, yet surprise surprise, when one turned up alive, they found they infact did NOT- AND, even if a fish with lobed-fins did, they certainly could NOT bare their weight on them out of water.
P.S there is plenty of evidenece for God, plenty of forensic evidence that shows an absolute NEED for a supernatural causation for life as well as plenty of evidence that metainfo HAD to be present BEFORE creation as nature is absolutely incapable of creating metainfo via random mutation+ natural selection from simple chemical creations of ‘life’. Macroevolutionists will deny this until their dying breath, insisting that Nature ‘could have’ created ID and IC and Metainfo- but the accumulating evideences both for the NEED for an Intelligent Designer, AND against hte notion that nature is capable of such feats, is slowly but surely defeating the godless liberalism that has infested scientific inquirey
I used to have a photo comparison of an ancient fossil skull and a painting of Mozart.
The skulls matched.
Walk around and look at people. You will see all sorts of skull types.
I have seen several living people who looked like they could have posed for the NGO paintings of “extinct” ape men.
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The Rise and Fall of Tiktaalik? Darwinists Admit "Quality" of Evolutionary Icon is "Poor" in Retroactive Confession of IgnoranceOver the past couple years, Tiktaalik, a fish-fossil touted as documenting key aspects of the transition from fish to 4-legged tetrapods, has become a new celebrated icon of evolution:
The latest retroactive confessions of evolutionist ignorance comes on the heels of a published re-analysis of the bones of Panderichthys. The study used CT scans to show Panderichthys apparently had a few well-defined radial bones in its pectoral fins. (Radial bones are found only in fish fins, but evolutionary paleontologists contend that radial bones are homologous to digits in tetrapod limbs.) When commenting on this new find, the paper’s lead author, Catherine A. Boisvert, boasted in an interview with The Scientist that "it is now completely proven that fingers have evolved from distal radials already present in fish that gave rise to the tetrapod." Boisvert also praised her findings, stating: "The disposition of distal radials in Panderichthys are much more tetrapod-like than in Tiktaalik." Confident that her fossil showed evolution better than Tiktaalik, Boisvert and other Darwinists then proceeded to admit striking criticisms of Tiktaalik: The interview with Boisvert at The Scientist states, "Previous data from another ancient fish called Tiktaalik showed distal radials as well -- although the quality of that specimen was poor. And the orientation of the radials did not seem to match the way modern fingers and toes radiate from a joint, parallel to each other." (emphasis added) The "quality" of Tiktaalik as a fossil specimen was “poor”? When did we see Darwinists admit this previously? Never. They wouldn't dare make such admissions until they thought they had something better. Moreover, now that we have Panderichthys, Darwinists are openly admitting that the orientation of Tiktaalik's radials do "not seem to match the way modern fingers and toes radiate from a joint." That's a good point, but it's old news for readers of ENV: in August, I observed that Tiktaalik’s radial bones could not be likened to tetrapod digits unless you "[d]ramatically repattern, reposition, and transform the existing radials by lining them up, separating them out." And now we must turn to Panderichthys. How convincingly "tetrapod-like" are its newly reported radial bones? Below is a picture comparing the radial bones in the fin of Panderichthys to the digits of a true tetrapod limb:  (Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature, Catherine A. Boisvert, Elga Mark-Kurik, & Per E. Ahlberg, "The pectoral fin of Panderichthys and the origin of digits," Figs. 2c and 3d (Sept. 21, 2008); all text but radius (R), ulna (U), and ulnare (Ure) bone labels added by me.) Michael Coates, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, called the new findings "intriguing" but is not convinced that the digit-like structures in Panderichthys's fin are the equivalent of our fingers.The extremely un-radial-like and un-digit-like flat shape of these bones can be seen in the CT scan from the paper below:  (Adapted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature, Catherine A. Boisvert, Elga Mark-Kurik, & Per E. Ahlberg, "The pectoral fin of Panderichthys and the origin of digits," Fig. 2d (Sept. 21, 2008)) Given the jagged and "peculiar" shape of these "radial" bones in the scan seen above, and the fact that they are flat like the other nearby bones in the fin, Michael Coates makes a good argument that these alleged radials are really just "fragments of damaged bone." In the same NG article, one of the paper's co-authors Per Ahlberg said that if Tiktaalik were to remain the form that is closer to tetrapods, then "finger development took a step backward with Tiktaalik, and that Tiktaalik's fins represented an evolutionary return to a more primitive form." In other words, at least some the alleged similarities to tetrapods found in these fossils do not actually represent features that are homologous to tetrapods, i.e. they are convergent similarities, also called homoplasies. This means that similarities between these lobed-finned fish fossils and tetrapods imply homology, except for when they don't, making the Darwinian rationale for inferring "homology" appear weak and arbitrary. My main observation is this: if Panderichthys is dethroning Tiktaalik as the icon of the fish-to-tetrapod transition, what does that say about all the hype we've seen surrounding Tiktaalik? It says that "poor" and "primitive" Tiktaalik was never all it was hyped up to be. Contradictory Confessions The problem with making too many retroactive confessions of ignorance is that sometimes they contradict one another. For example, when Tiktaalik was reported, Darwinists attacked Panderichthys as being un-tetrapod-like, stating: Panderichthys possesses relatively few tetrapod synapomorphies, and provides only partial insight into the origin of major features of the skull, limbs and axial skeleton of early tetrapods. In view of the morphological gap between elpistostegalian fish and tetrapods, the phylogenetic framework for the immediate sister group of tetrapods has been incomplete and our understanding of major anatomical transformations at the fish-tetrapod transition has remained limited.Now that Panderichthys is back in vogue, they are attacking Tiktaalik as a fossil of "poor" quality with radials that "did not seem to match the way modern fingers and toes radiate from a joint, parallel to each other." But with Tiktaalik dethroned, it seems that there are many reasons to critique its would-be successor, Panderichthys. Darwinists are famous for making retroactive confessions of ignorance, where they only admit how poor the evidence was for a given fossil transition after some new fossil (which supposedly better demonstrates evolution) is reported. Darwinists have used this approach multiple times in the past when discussing the alleged fish-to-amphibian evolutionary transition. (For example, please see here or here.) This behavior should leave critically thinking readers asking two questions:
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Sorry, I'm going to have to call BS on this one. Everybody with anything resembling brains or talent who's ever taken any sort of a look at that situation in the last 60 years has said the same basic thing i.e. that there simply ARE NO missing links or intermediate fossils. The lack of intermediate fossils is one of the two main motivations for the new version of evolution which you read about i.e. the Gould/Eldridge/Mayr notion of punctuated equilibria, or "punk-eek". If there were missing links lying around all over the place, Gould and his pals would not have bothered.
The Fossils In General
"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 ..."
David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology)
Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum
Evolution, vol 28, Sep 1974, p 467
"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places."
Francis Hitching
The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong
Penguin Books, 1982, p.19
"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."
Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?"
Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127
"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line, there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89
"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be claimed to be the ancestor of any other group. We do not have in the fossil record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history and has been conservative in habitat."
G. S. Carter, Professor & author
Fellow of Corpus Christi College
Cambridge, England
Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution
University of Washington Press, 1967
"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear ... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."
Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
Natural History, 86(5):13, 1977
"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (p. 206)
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory (of evolution)." (p. 292)
Charles Robert Darwin
The Origin of Species, 1st edition reprint
Avenel Books, 1979
The Abundance of Fossils
"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about 120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."
David M. Raup, Curator of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology"
Field Museum of Natural History
Vol. 50, No. 1, (Jan, 1979), p. 25
"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record."
Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems,
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 9
"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."
Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51
[[The consensus of what is a “typical” homo sapiens skull is often presented when comparing man’s so called ancestors, however, if one does a little research into skull shapes, you will find that the shapes vary greatly! This is the best that National Geographic’s scientist can come up with? I am FAR from convinced! SCIENCE!!!]]
Bingo- There was even a case of a ‘neanderthal’ woman who lived in russia, mated, had a kid- people were convinced she was a neandethal (she was captured in the wild, and looked quite odd) Her son was tall, big boned and had the same ‘neanderthal features’- But when the skull was later examined, it was shown that the mother was simply a woman who suffered some bizzarre disease which deformed her skull. Can you imagine IF the skull had been found, and noone knew this woman actually lived in recent times? It would immediately become a ‘missing link’ because hte shape of hte skull was so different from ‘normal’ modern skulls.
Yes, as you stated- a quick look at hte variety of skulls of modern people does infact hsow a GREAT variety, and a look at diseases which deform skulls shows very clearly that they result in a great variety of shapes. But nope nope nope- since the skulls presented as ‘missing links’ were found to be ‘ancient’- they must have been ‘transitions’, and couldn’t possibly have suffered any diseases, because, as we know, medical superiority was much much greater in ancient times than it is today, and hterefore, there couldn’t have been any deformities! [/sarcasm]
if Tiktaalik has a ‘finger bone’ that even remotely resembles a land dweller- then by golly they are a transition dontachaknow? Homological similarities are proof positive that we’re all descended from molecules- and that is that- after all,
There are species of spiders that ‘live’ underwater and ‘breath’ underwater- of course they only briefly make forrays into the water, and can only breath by tapping into trapped underwater airbubbles, but by golly, since they are ‘aqautic spiders’ I must hterefore assume they are descended from Brown Trout, which as we all know, have been known to briefly ‘breathe’ out of water, and since they can leap great distances in the air this would of course indicate that htese brown trout are descended from air breathing ‘flying Squirrels’, who as you know, simply could not make a go of it on the ground, and feared becomming extinct, so, while some million or so other ground dwellers did just fine on the ground, these critters took to the trees (Which apparently had no predators), and since these ‘flying’ squirrels are able to glide from tree to tree- gliding right over hte heads of all the other poor saps on the ground who were surviving just fine, and since flying squirrels like to drink water, then this must hterefore mean that ‘flying squirrels’ are henceforth descended from ‘flying fish’.
Evidence? How dare you request any evidence?!!! Skin flaps under squirrels armpits evolved into fully functional wing structures, and squirrels evolved avian lungs and muscle structures all in anticipation of one day soaring high in the sky dag nabbit! And that is that! Just look around you at al lthe hological ‘similarities’- that should be proof enough that everythign descended from pond scum right there! How dare you quesiton Sir god Darwin?!!!
Lobe-finned fish are a LONG LONG way off from being any sort of ‘transitional’ species as their ‘digits’ and ‘ankle and wrist’ bones were NOT capable of bearign hteir wieght on land
IF Tiktaalik and other lobe finned fish are the best ‘examples of Macroevolution’ that Nat Geo or any scientist can put forth as their ‘best’ examples of transtions- then by golly their hypothesis of macroevolution is in serious serious trouble. Take a close look at their ‘best example’ of water-to-land ‘transitional charts’ and you will note some glaring and blatant gaps with NO intermediary evidences to back up their claims. The gaps are HUGE- they are NOT nearly as insignificant as thecharts intentionally mislead people to think they are!
Typical? Yes, and familiar to anyone who has watched the Temple of Darwinism drop its favorite fossils down the memory hole while pretending they never believed in them anyway.
Has this been because of better knowledge? No, because the arguments that were called out in support are now attacked as if that were the case all along.
This is a prime example.
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