[Coyoteman]

Thanks for your reply. You obviously put a lot of effort into it, and are communicating instead of being negative or whatever, which I appreciate.

You were polite, so you deserved a polite reply.

I guess I’ll just have to disagree with you. I do believe, if evolution is true, that there should be transitional life forms or at least fossils. As one example, I do believe, that if modern day birds are the result of evolutionary changes from dinosaurs, there should be some type of half birds/half dinos in the fossil record. I guess you don’t think that’s necessarily so, but I do.

Please check the link I posted again. You might have missed it, but that link by former FR poster Ichneumon, contained some 70 pages (on my browser) of evidence pertaining to transitionals. One of the sections of that post deals with the theropod dinosaur to bird evolutionary transition. It also included a cladogram with a lot of details. I am reproducing that below:

You write, "there should be transitional life forms or at least fossils;" well, they are there but you have to be willing to at least look at the link.

I guess the skulls you’ve posted are supposed to be transitional from ape to man? I think the data can be interpreted differently; I’m sure it is.

It is interpreted differently by those who can't accept what the data are saying for religious reasons. Scientists are in general agreement with that series of skulls, with the provision that there are bound to be additions, improvements, and lots of additional data in the future.

I had to smile about its own disclaimer: it’s their “best guess!” I know you are familiar with the many big announcements about such “missing links,” so far always disproven in a short time. We can have different skull shapes, even between races, and that does not mean we have evolved from apes.

The "best guess" of an expert is taken to be pretty significant. For example, in court testimony, qualified experts are allowed to speculate in ways that laymen are not.

"Missing link" is not a good term. I know the newspapers and magazines love it, but scientists do not. That may be what is misleading you. There are a lot of fossils that have been found that fit on or near the ape-like to human path. Scientists are busy working out the details, and are gradually getting closer to figuring it out.

Funny you should mention skulls--that's one of my fields (I am an archaeologist, with a considerable amount of training in fossil man, evolution, osteology, human races, etc.). I am familiar with cranial differences between the races, as well as most of the major specimens of fossil man. If you were to see the skulls and fossils scattered around a desk, you would probably arrange them in the same order as scientists just based on the morphological characteristics. Its not rocket science to arrange from smaller to larger with cranial size, as well as from more to less rugged in mandible and tooth morphology.

As for “ligers,” that is to say, lions and tigers interbreeding, yes, I know, but their offspring can’t reproduce. It stops there. Same with horses and donkeys, right, I know.

But the offspring of dogs and wolves can reproduce.

So that to me is not scientific evidence of evolution, rather, creationist evidence of God make each type of animal after its own kind. Dogs are an easy example. I doubt there were Great Danes and poodles on the ark. Just a “dog,” ancestor of wolves, coyotes, and common dogs. Species can differentiate - we can breed for certain traits, obviously, using genetic selection - but we can’t change them into new species, even when we try very, very hard.

You are getting away from science here. Science has found no evidence of an ark or a global flood.

Yes, I think penguins are a finished product. I think men are a finished product.

Penguins? Check back in a few tens of thousands of years and you will see significant differences. Humans finished? My aching back disagrees. We were originally quadrupeds, and the change to upright posture was a hit-and-miss proposition.

We are more technologically advanced than our forebears, because we have built up a gradual knowledge over time and recorded it and used it as a starting point, building upon past knowledge and accomplishments. But I think our ancestors were just as smart and just as human as we are. Archeological evidence certainly supports me there.

Archaeological evidence shows little significant change in humans for some 40-50,000 years. Prior to that there were major changes in locomotion, brain size, technology and other areas.

I don’t know very much about changing genetic info. I suppose we do that in labs with genetic engineering. That is not, however, proof of evolution either. Evolution should not require men in white coats! It’s supposed to happen naturally. Mutations are always negative. They never improve a species - make it faster, smarter, what have you. They are a genetic defect.

Mutations are not always negative (that is a creationist talking point). Mutations are simply a change. Some changes are beneficial, some are harmful, and most are neutral. Why would you consider the change in skin color as early humans migrated from Africa through southern Europe and into northern Europe to be a negative? The lighter skin color allowed more Vitamin D to be produced in the skin to match the reduced intensity of the sun at higher latitudes. that seems to me to be a beneficial mutation, rather than a negative one. There are a lot of other examples of beneficial mutations if you look.

I do, now, get a lot of information from creationist textbooks, particularly the Apologia series by Dr. Wile, which I use in my home school. He does teach what the theory of evolution is, however, he teaches that it is false. I find his textbooks fascinating, because in public school you never even got two sides to the story. It was all evolution, evolution, evolution.

Better be careful, as the creationist sources have a nasty habit of misrepresenting science to make it come out the way they want. They will omit inconvenient facts, distort what they can omit, and overall do the type of science one would expect from comic books. (Oh, wait! One of them does do comic books!) If you teach that type of "science" as real science you will be doing a great disservice to your students.

You probably should cross check anything the creationist textbooks and websites say. Mark Isaak's Index to Creationist Claims is a good, easy to use, reference.

As an example, your statement that "Mutations are always negative" is contradicted by this article: Claim CB101: Most mutations are harmful, so the overall effect of mutations is harmful. Take a look.

[Marie2]

Coyoteman,

As I read the many who are wrangling with you on this creation vs. evolution issue, I find most of them are saying what I would say anyway. I think we can largely say it all hinges on what “experts” and “scientists” we decide we want to believe.

For example, the radiometric and radiocarbon dating. There is a great debate as to its accuracy. You trust those who say it’s accurate. I trust those who say it’s not. I’ve certainly never done any experiments about it myself. I lack the ability and the equipment.

Of course I must be willing to look at your links, but I will willingly confess I lack the scientific knowledge to interpret all the data. That’s why I lean on the high school level knowledge I do have, along with better educated minds than mine who put forth their findings AND their interpretations of them.

It’s the interpretations of the data that we disagree on.

For example, you say, “It is interpreted differently by those who can’t accept what the data are saying for religious reasons.” I could say the same about those who hold on doggedly to evolutionary theory! See, the knife cuts both ways.

I see evolutionary theory as “trying to put a square peg in a round hole.” Desperate to deny that God is their Creator and Sustainer, and that we are wholly dependent on and subservient to Him, mankind invents fantastic theories which make us autonomous, self-reliant, the way we want to be. Certainly there is data that can fit into the theory of evolution, as long as you interpret it with an evolutionary presupposition.

Your statement about penguins and your aching back are prognostications, of course, and no one on this thread will live long enough to see if it’s true. My opinion is, the penguins will still be the same. I don’t believe our ancestors crawled on all fours, so we have backaches now, any more than I believe occasional headaches mean we used to have helmets grafted on which we’ve since shed.

So you and I can acknowledge backaches, and headaches, and differently shaped skulls, and dino fossils, and yet come to radically different conclusions.

As you say, “Better be careful, as the creationist sources have a nasty habit of misrepresenting science to make it come out the way they want. They will omit inconvenient facts, distort what they can omit, and overall do the type of science one would expect from comic books.” Well, I might say the evolutionist sources do the same thing. Remember Piltdown Man and Lucy, etc. etc. etc.? Quite disingenous. And I’ve had plenty of evolutionary theory in comic book/picture book format. One of my fave books as a child had tremendous dino drawings, no men around of course, telling me repeatedly “. . . many million years ago. . .”

You mention you are the field of archeology. Does the fact that all archeological discoveries so far have coincided with Biblical detail affect your opinion of the veracity of the Bible at all? I am an enthusiastic reader of Biblical Archeological Review.

Bottom line, when all charts are read and experiments concluded, I can not believe that the indescribable design elements I see displayed in everything from a simple cell to the human eye are all the products of millions of years of mutation and genetic selection. That notion is, to me, preposterous. I have read, for instance, in regard to the human eye, that there would need to be over ten million successful, positive mutations in order to get near it.

And that’s just an eyeball of one species.