The fossil record is indeed full of transitionals-- previous posts have linked to threads showing the transitional fossils between fish and amphibians, between reptiles and mammals, between dinosaurs and birds, between ruminants and whales, between primates and humans, and on and on. Of course, each fossil is a "fully functional, integrated organism"; that's exactly what evolution predicts. It has to be to stay alive and pass on its genes to the next generation. It just is a fully functional, integrated organism that happens to have, in the case of transitional whales, both hip bones and flippers.
2) The only other materialistic explanation for the development of new species is punctuated equilibria, which requires spectacular, massive, beneficial mutations simultaneously in two creatures, one male and one female. Both creatures must then find each other and mate. This ludicrous impossibility must happen many times within a "species" and then innumerable times in history to create all existing species. The theory is simply laughable.
Punctuated equilibrium requires no such thing. Punk-eek speaks of evolution as happening relatively quickly, in geologic time-- e.g., over tens of thousands of years rather than the hundreds of thousands predicted by classical darwinism-- not all in one generation. And a mutation doesn't have to occur in both a male and a female; if one of them has it, half their offspring will have it, and if it confers a reproductive advantage, more of the next generation will have it, and so on.
Where are the duds? The transitional forms with half-developed eyes? Half-developed nervous systems, etc.?
Punk-eek speaks of evolution as happening relatively quickly, in geologic time-- e.g., over tens of thousands of years rather than the hundreds of thousands predicted by classical darwinism-- not all in one generation.
And how is this is different from differentiation by small mutation?
And a mutation doesn't have to occur in both a male and a female; if one of them has it, half their offspring will have it, and if it confers a reproductive advantage, more of the next generation will have it, and so on.
Not if it's a giant step. Either you have variation by small mutation which would result in a fossil record full of transitional duds, or you have variation by large mutation which necessitates the simultaneous, spontaneous, miraculous appearance of both a male and female of the same new species.