Seems to me that if I had not studied science it would be quite easy to refute my statements against evolution, yet there are numerous scientiific statements I have made on these threads which have gone completely unrefuted. Perhaps you and your friends will like to prove me wrong instead of hurling insults? I doubt it, but here it is:
There is no way one can examine the fossil data and come away with the conclusion that the fossil record supports evolution. A bird is not just a reptile with wings. Such a transformation takes much more changes than just transforming the front legs to wings (an awesome task in itself since each gradual change must be beneficial enough to compensate for the loss of the hands):
In addtion to the feather and the avian lung [quite unique and made for flight because the whole system works by absorbing air in a single direction - unique amongst all vertebrates] there are many other unique features in the biology of the birds, in the design of the heart and cardiovascular system, in the gastrointestinal system and in the possession of a variety of other relatively minor adaptations such as for example, the unique sound producing organ, the syrinx, which similarly defy plausible explanation in graudalistic terms. Altogether it adds up to an enormous conceptual difficulty in envisaging how a reptile could have been gradually converted into a bird.
From: Michael Denton, Evolution a Theory in Crisis, page 213.
Darwin collected evidence which supported his theory and ignored evidence which disproved it. That is why he ignored the platypus and did not talk about the most remarkable characteristic of the bat, the sonar. There was no answer for either so he swept that under the rug. He also had a fantastic ability for charlatanism, of seeming to prove something which in fact disproved his theory.
he cannot prove it, but please believe him.
All these causes taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record extremely imperfect, and will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.
He cannot prove it but it's true:
We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of any one or more species if we were to examine them ever so closely, unless we likewise possessed many of the intermediate links between their past or parent and present states; and these many links we could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the geological record.
There is no proof but I believe I am correct:
it deserves especial notice that the more important objections relate to questions on which we are confessedly ignorant; nor do we know how ignorant we are. We do not know all the possible transitional gradations between the simplest and the most perfect organs; it cannot be pretended that we know all the varied means of Distribution during the long lapse of years, or that we know how imperfect the Geological Record is. Grave as these several difficulties are, in my judgment
In the future I will be proven right (like Miss Cleo?):
Species and groups of species, which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will reveal to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class.
Contradicting what he said before of living fossils:
Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.
Both sides prove me right:
it follows, that the amount of organic change in the fossils of consecutive formations probably serves as a fair measure of the lapse of actual time. A number of species, however, keeping in a body might remain for a long period unchanged, whilst within this same period, several of these species, by migrating into new countries and coming into competition with foreign associates, might become modified; so that we must not overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of time.
The future again:
In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches.
If you have read through a few hundred pages of the above drivel, you will buy the garbage I am going to ask you to swallow now:
He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths. from: Origin of the Species, Chapter 6
The whole fossil nonsense is garbage. For one thing the scarcity of fossils makes it impossible to be sure when the organism was around. The coelecanth was thought long gone hundreds of millions of years ago and it is still around. Likewise we cannot tell when it first came to be. Without knowing exactly when species first arose and when they ceased to exist lines of descent are impossible to ascertain.
The problem however is even bigger. The evidence is quite lacking in much that is needed to prove descent. For example:
1. What is the evidence that dinosaurs did not have purple skin? (this is needed because skin is almost an absolute requirement for proper classification - fish have scales, reptiles do not, mammals have fur, and birds have feathers).
2. What is the evidence that dinosaurs did not have mammary glands? (again this is absolutely necessary since the definition of a mammal is that it has mammary glands).
3. What is the evidence that dinosaurs had 2, 3, or 4 chambered hearts? (again this is necessary because different species have different hearts)
4. What is the evidence for dinosaur DNA? (again, this is necessary to tell us the relationships to different species).
The answer is that we do not have any such evidence. The answer is therefore that we cannot tell the descent of species from bones because bones do not give us the necessary information to even classify the organisms being studied, let alone to determine if they could have descended from one another.
Two exampes of species that disprove evolution:
Platypus
Now the platypus certainly did not gradually evolve from any other living creature. The features it possesses come from many different vertebrate families including fish, reptiles, mammals and birds. There is absolutely no place in the 'evolutionary tree' to put this creature into.
FROM: Euglena Note the eye.
Euglena is both a plant and an animal, in addition to which it even has an eye. Now it is clearly impossible for a creature to have descended from both a plant and an animal in either small gradual steps or large ones!
It is not lack of knowledge that disproves evolution, it is knowledge that disproves evolution.
Essentially to get a new working gene, just one, you need what amounts to a miracle. You need:
1. a mutation which produces a duplicate gene.
2. that the duplicate gene does not hurt a vital part of the genome.
3. that the duplicate gene gets spread through the species at chances of 50% survival at each generation (note no selective advantage since the gene is just a duplicate at this point).
4. that the new gene acquires a mutation and then goes through 3 above to spread itself throughout the species again (again no selective advantage yet).
5. that it hits upon the correct helpful mutation by pure chance while going through 3 above after each try.
(Now the above alone should be enough to dissuade a reasonable person, one not blinded by faith in materialistic evolution, to say such a thing is impossible. The above is where we were some 50 years ago when DNA was discovered. Now we know more and the problem is worse.)
6. After all the above though, we still do not have a working gene! Now we need another miracle, we need the gene to:
a) be expressed in the cells where the new function, ability or whatever should go. Since there are some 3 billion cells in the human body finding which ones it should be expressed in is quite a task.
b. be connected to other processes in the organism that will tell it when to do its thing and when to stop doing it.
c. become part of the developmental program of the organism which tells the organism in what sequence each of the cell divisions is to take place. (we start with one cell and the program at each division has to determine what kind of cells to produce until we get a fully formed human being, the program does not stop there though, it continues running and telling the cells what to do until death).
Evolutionists believe however that all the above have happened - and not just once, but millions of times since the first single-celled organisms arose. Now who says that evolutionists do not believe in miracles?
If evolution were true then by looking at the differences in any gene for different species would give the same replica of the 'evolutionary tree'. However this is not so and what is most damaging to evolution is that the evolutionists doing this work know very well that it is not true. This one (PDF file) from Mammalian Genome presents a quite interesting example of evolution "science". First evolutionists tried to use mitochondrial DNA to show the relationships between the monotremes (platypus), the placentals (kangaroos) and the eutherians (all other mammals). The mtDNA did not give them the desired results "The value and accuracy of decades of morphological study have been discounted recently by mytochondrial DNA evidence". So of course the evos could not let that happen, so they had to try again. They then tried DNA hybridization. However, under this method also Darwinian theory was refuted "It is significant that apomorphies of the theran ancestors, such as the braincase, cranial nerve architecture, and reproductive physiology" had to be reclassified as convergences under these two tests. So of course they had to pick another test to get the results they wished - a totally new one called MP6/IG2FR!
Such is the way proofs of evolution are constructed - keep trying until you find a way. Different genetic tests give different results. That different tests give different evolutionary trees is a clear disproof of evolution. If all species descended from earlier species and each species in the different parts of the tree descended from another, then there needs to be in all genes the same order of descent and thus all the members of a family, an order, a taxa or whatever, need to have the same divergence in those genes as all other members of the family, order, taxa or whatever. That this is not true and that evolutionists need to "shop" the genes to use to prove their theory shows quite well that evolution is false. That they publicly announce this fraudulent method and that they are not thrown out for such unprofessional conduct shows quite well how totally bankrupt are those who work on evolution.
There are many examples of supposedly duplicate genes. However, none have been experimentally shown to add anything to the species. Specifically a new gene needs to be expressed, controlled and called on to act by the rest of the organism, it needs to be expressed. That there are so many apparent duplicates and yet no one seems to be able to experimentally get a new duplicate to work is clear proof against evolution. In fact, real scientists are loath to say that a duplicate does indeed work. The two citations, one from your buddy Lindsay who is an absolute joke and says anything is a fact without substantiation and the other from a magazine do not contradict my statements.
1) The duplication may be helpful right off the bat.
2) Parents in sexual species very frequently have more than one child. Mine did. If a lizard has 40 offspring in one litter, maybe 20 of them carry a given parental gene.
1. extremely doubtful due to what I said above. In addition, even if it gave a somewhat better survival ability it would have to more than double it to get above the 100% chance of replication needed for it to in any way become fixed in a species. (see below).
2. Number of children does not matter because it is a question of population genetics. You know quite well that I have totally demolished that argument since I have posted it more than once. Here it is again:
As I have been pointing out, family size does not matter so long as it is the same as the average family size of the species. You can use any number you like and you will see that the new trait will dissappear. Since you like big numbers we shall use ten children each generation in a rather small species of only 1000 individuals:
Generation 1: 1 mutant and 999 non-mutants
Generation 2: 5 mutants and 9995 non-mutants
Generation 3: 25 mutants and 99975 non-mutants
Generation 4: 125 mutants and 999875 non-mutants
Generation 5: 625 mutants and 9999375 non-mutants
We started with mutants as .1% of the population, we ended with mutants as .0625% of the population. So obviously the mutation is losing ground, not gaining it as evolution would require.
Evolution postulates that a population changes over time, but it stays integrated and fully functional even as it drifts or else it will die out.
What evolutionary theory postulates is proof of nothing. It is the truth of those postulates which is what these threads are about, so your statement above is meaningless. Science and logic argue against that postulate. That a whole species would coevolve gradually through a bunch of mutations without becoming separate is itself a logical argument against evolution.
