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.
References
That's right. The evos insist on cramming anyone who says *creation* into a *one size fits all YEC, 6,000 year old earth if they read the creation account of Genesis as factual, they demand that the whole Bible be taken literally* box.
How 'bout getting lost? Can God get lost?
Can’t maintain a coherent thought? The question was if there was something God cannot do, and I answered.
You, of course have never engaged in trying to polarize an argument.
==In this case, the person came after me.
Don’t you just love it when a person claiming to be a “Christian” snuggles up to atheists and tells them “I’m with you, don’t listen to those evil, ignorant Christians.”
A house cannot be divided against itself...
You’ve said my arguments are irrelvant, and that your responses are simply because it’s me. Isn’t that the essence of a personal attack?
You mentioned something about these threads ending in flame wars, but I’ve noticed alot of yours BEGIN that way.
When confronted you either offer a smart aleck answer or change the subject or project. Period.
It looks to me alot of the time you’re not interested in anything BUT projections and flame wars.
All right, we’ll play it your way, you’re still not off the hook with the questions posed to you about evolution and the puzzle pieces, and it’s not a “small detail” to identify by definition what is (or isn’t) evolution.
Not to mention squashing research?????? Well, that’s just a joke!
Apparently, you’re the only one that doesn’t “get it”.
If I disagree with an argument, I'll say so and why I disagee with it. If I do, it will be about the argument, not the person that's making it.
Are you sure the end justifies the means?
Can God be measured? Made to act replicably?
What would your “God included” science sound like? Would it be accepted worldwide as real science is? What barriers would your “God included” science encounter to world wide acceptance?
What experiments do you propose that would include God as a factor?
“God did give us allegory”
That was kind of the point... I don’t think any Christian who has spent time in the word is doubting there is some parable or allegory there, but when there is it is usually labeled as such. The Buckster just arbitrarily tags anything he doesn’t believe as allegory.
And yet, you consistently come out on the side of defending the NEA, liberalism...
Only in a polarized universe.
“Except where, you know, Gordon Greene accepts it as allegory.
Hence, the problem.”
The last thread of hope you guys have is taking folks out of context. The point, my friend is that the bible is generally clear when something is a parable or a story for the point of teaching. Where your side has the problem is that you must assume allegory or assume that it is implied.
Unlike you and B, I don’t possess the intelligence to rubber stamp the acceptable passages of the Bible and rule out those too fantastic to believe as truth.
Congratulations on your personal enlightenment. May we all be blessed with such revelation knowledge.
“How do they chose what’s allegorical and what’s not?”
That’s easy... Bucky tells ‘em!
Didn’t this post teach you anything???
My “side?” Didn’t know I had one.
Listen, the Bible is nice and all and of COURSE much of the allegorical passages are obviously so. And of COURSE the boring history and frightening OT Laws were factual as best as they could be.
But there is plenty of stuff that will never and can never be agreed upon. And that’s FINE. I don’t have the answers and nor do you.
My problem with the bible is when so called literalists (which can’t possibly exist in reality) use it as a science text, which it is not.
I could help you with the “ruling out the fantastical” stuff though. Basically, anything impossible (miracles, resurrections, virgin births, man living in whale, woman from rib, worldwide flood) can be ruled out as fact. It’s not too hard to do, actually. Just go back and read my paranthetical - sounds pretty silly now, doesn’t it?
The Free Republic hardcore evolutionists (by default) will automatically side with the Democrat Left in matters such as Biblical Christianity and their worship of the far left Big Government Public School monopoly.
“Just go back and read my paranthetical - sounds pretty silly now, doesn’t it?”
Your parenthetical statements? Yes, in the context you framed them in you do sound pretty silly.
Let me be serious for a moment... if you look at strictly human wisdom there are some things it takes a lot of faith to believe. Did you really think I would agree with you that those things are silly?
Crazy boy... Compliments on your chosen name...
I'll only comment on AIG and CRI. They are both laughable. I've been told plenty of times on these threads that Dr. Russell Humphreys is a genius ahead of his time and that I'm not a real scientist or a real Christian because I point out the huge logical and factual errors in his articles. I'm the one who is stupid, yet this amazingly brilliant Dr. Humpreys believes that the universe was created from a giant ball of water:But the Bible implies that the real universe indeed has a center! Appendix B of Starlight and Time details much of what follows. After creating a light-years-size ball of water (Genesis 1:2, "the deep ... the waters"), God said, "Let there be an expanse |or "firmament"| in the midst of the waters" (Genesis 1:6, italics mine). So the expanse started near the center of the large ball of water as a thin spherical layer separating a planet-size ball of water inside it from the much larger amount of water outside it.AIG and CRI sicken me. They provide militant atheists with fodder to paint all Christians as ignorant, toothless hillbillies.
This coming from a guy who doesn’t even know the difference between expansion and inflation. LOL
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