Would this guy be a transitional fossil if he were dead?
Posted on 03/04/2009 7:16:11 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
“Creationists claim there are no transitional fossils, aka missing links. Biologists and paleontologists, among others, know this claim is false,” according to a recent LiveScience article that then describes what it claims are 12 specific transitional form fossils.1 But do these examples really confirm Darwinism?
Charles Darwin raised a lack of transitional fossils as a possible objection to his own theory: “Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?”2 Later in this chapter of his landmark book, he expressed hope that future discoveries would be made of transitional forms, or of creatures that showed some transitional structure—perhaps a half-scale/half-feather.
Although some creationists do say that “there are no transitional fossils,” it would be more accurate to state that there are no undisputed transitional forms. Although the article asserts that the fossil record “is full of them,” the reality is that it does not contain a single universally accepted transitional form. Every transitional fossil candidate has both proponents and doubters even among evolutionary “biologists and paleontologists.”
The first supposed transitional form offered in the report is Sahelanthropus. This 2001 discovery was first hailed as a transitional form in the ape-to-human line, but controversy over its transitional status immediately ensued. Brigitte Senut of the Natural History Museum in Paris was skeptical, saying that its skull features, “especially the [canine teeth],”3 were characteristic of female gorillas, not human-like gorillas. Senut and her colleagues also disputed that Sahelanthropus was even in the ancestry of humans at all: “To represent a valid clade, hominids must share unique defining features, and Sahelanthropus does not appear to have been an obligate biped [creature that walked on two feet].”4 In other words, Sahelanthropus is at best a highly disputed fossil of an extinct ape, having no clear transitional features.
LiveScience also listed a medium-neck-length fossil giraffe named Bohlinia and the “walking manatee” as transitional forms. However, Bohlinia is just variation within what is still clearly the giraffe kind and doesn’t answer the question, “Where did the giraffe kind come from?” Such variations within kinds do not refute the creation concept, but rather are predicted by it.5 And the “walking manatee” walked because it had fully formed, ready-to-walk legs, hips, nerves, and musculature. The article does not mention that this particular fossil is shown elsewhere to be a dead-end species, “transitioning” to nothing, according to evolutionists.6
The LiveScience article, borrowing from geologist Donald Prothero, also claimed that Moeritherium is “the ultimate transitional fossil,” the ancestor of elephants. This was an amphibious mammal, shaped like a hippo, with a mobile, muscular lip fused with its nostril. But it had none of the real characteristics of an elephant—not the trunk, size, tusks, nor the specialized weight-bearing knee joint structure.7
The “classic fossil of Archaeopteryx” is not a transitional form either, but was fully bird. Its “reptile-like” teeth and wing claws are found in some birds today.8 Many reptiles have no teeth, but nobody claims that they evolved from birds. And the discovery of a “frog-amander” has yet to be agreed upon as transitional by evolutionists. John Bolt, a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago, told National Geographic that “it is difficult to say for sure whether this creature was itself a common ancestor of the two modern groups, given that there is only one known specimen of Gerobatrachus, and an incomplete one at that.”9
Other extinct creatures had “shared features,” physical structures that are found in different kinds of living organisms. However, “shared features” are not transitional features, which is what Darwin needed. There is no scientific evidence to refute the idea that shared features were designed into creatures by a Creator who wisely formed them with the equipment to live in various shared habitats.
Fossils do reveal some truth about Darwin’s theory—they reveal that the same inconsistencies he noted between his theory and the fossil data persist, even after 150 years of frantic searches for elusive transitions.10 Not only is there no single, undisputed transition, but real fossils reveal that animals were fully formed from the beginning.
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Ummmm...I’ll be glad to stop when you clowns will finally stop with the endles measurable, testable nonsense.
Because a tactic you regularly employ is exposed, this hypocrisy you go on with day in and day out, often unchallenged, means I’M being ridiculous?
LOL!
Being a nurse that works closely with doctors, I can assure you the last thing on our minds in our daily routine is darweenism.
Same for IT, plumbers and virtually everyone else.
But you go on believing it’s important and indespensable, just leave the normal folks alone will ya?
That's quite the hefty and paranoid assumption there Mike!
I've been told a number of times on FR that I'm not a real Christian.
Let's see, in reality was it because someone pointed out scripture and you once again paranoially ran with it to mean you're not a "real" Christian?
I'm reminded of the story of the addict that kept being told by virtually everyone around him that he needed an intervention...
or the person who kept being told he needed a good doctor, or shrink as it were, you know to get that paranoia checked out...
You seem remarkably similar.
I see, “at or near”....conversely, do you understand that if it can’t be proven the earth is “at or near” the center of the universe, then it can’t therefore be DISproven either?
It's not too hard for evos/atheists kids to opt out of the section of creationism in science class if they choose to instead of having to have it completely banned from all public schools for everyone.
Nope.
I was suspended once very early on because I posted an article from somewhere or other that was a no no.
AP?
Washington Times?
Can’t remember.
But that’s kinda funny the rude angle coming from you of all people allmendream. :)
Would this guy be a transitional fossil if he were dead?
But evos and atheists demand that doctors and IT departments and plumbers all pass the evo test to the extent of having it taught in public schools and testing them on it.
FWIW, one can take HS biology, pass everything with a 100, get every bit of the evo part wrong, and still pass with an overall average in the upper 90's and graduate high school.
A retread with the current sign up date of Nov 27, 2006, of someone who was banned a year ago?
Gee, tpanther, you're good.....
Not quite. I've been told a number of times that I can't be a real Christian if I don't believe that the earth is 6,000 years old. I don't care about me -- I have a thick skin -- but the same accusation is made against others who dare present facts that show otherwise. I just consider the source -- sometimes one's character is defined as much by their enemies as their friends. Take Obama for example -- he considers Rush (and people like you and me) as his enemies. It's a category that I'm proud to be a part of.
Well, there is no edge to the universe, just as there is no edge to the earth. I see that as another example of God's glory in the splendor of his creation.
"See above" where?
What is it with you guys? You never say anything, just point us to other people who also have not said anything. Are you proposing a circumstance of "infinite regression" here obtains in human reality, and it turns out to be an infiinite regression unto meaninglessness???
Well, it's pretty plain to me that the serpent, under the given conditions, is a liar. What a surprise! Yet it was he who, from the very beginning, made bitter war against humankind. That is his very raison d'être, his place in the biblical story of beginnings and ends.
I do not believe that any human being can "control the past." The past is what it is, the "moving finger that writes on," as Omar Khayyam put it, not one "jot or tittle" of which can ever be erased or expunged by the will of any man or all men taken together as a collective.
For human beings live, not only on the linear "arrow" of time past–present–future, but also in the dimension of timelessness. And that is God's "territory."
May our Holy God ever bless thee and me and all our loved ones.
Seems to me it "stops" — at direct observation.
For folks who purport to live in the "direct observation" business, who nonetheless are enchanted by macroevolutionary doctrine, this must come as a hard saying....
Thank you whattajoke for your astute observation.
Anyway, getting back to why all theories get a free pass when it comes to measurable, testable...blah blah blah except of course ID theory...
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