Dolphin May Have 'remains' Of Legs

[neverclear5]

[slam] My only point is that they are still butterflies, whether you have two or ten populations. They are of one major kind, or species - Insects. And butterflies will not change into worms, frogs or birds.

 

 

This isn't evolution slam. They came from a similar species a long time ago. Current species never change into each other. Something slimy and amphibeous may have turned into frogs and toads. toads never turned into frogs and vice versa. Something land dwelling may have turned into horses and elephants. ELEPHANTS NEVER BECOME HORSES OR VICE VERSA.

 

Also. you point about the ICR "scientists" spending lots of money means nothing. My equipment costs about £1,000,000. That doesn't mean my results are somehow "better" than those found in a test tube. It's just the equipment for the specific job. Yes, they've spent lots of money, because they are supported by religious groups with an interest in their work. A couple of nuts can spend all the time and money they want trying to prove spaniels can fly but that won't make it true.

[Slamdunk]

[slam] My only point is that they are still butterflies, whether you have two or ten populations. They are of one major kind, or species - Insects. And butterflies will not change into worms, frogs or birds.

 

This isn't evolution slam. They came from a similar species a long time ago.

 

[slam] When you say "similar species," which ones are you talking about?

 

Current species never change into each other. Something slimy and amphibeous may have turned into frogs and toads. toads never turned into frogs and vice versa. Something land dwelling may have turned into horses and elephants. ELEPHANTS NEVER BECOME HORSES OR VICE VERSA.

 

[slam] Can you think of any creature that ever became something different than what it is?

 

Also. you point about the ICR "scientists" spending lots of money means nothing. My equipment costs about £1,000,000.

 

[slam] Did you know that some of the ICR "scientists" are PHD's? ARe you aware of any of their work?

 

That doesn't mean my results are somehow "better" than those found in a test tube. It's just the equipment for the specific job. Yes, they've spent lots of money, because they are supported by religious groups with an interest in their work. A couple of nuts can spend all the time and money they want trying to prove spaniels can fly but that won't make it true.

 

[slam] What you say is true, of course. It's the quality of research and conclusions that make the difference. FE, the ICR scientists found the amount of helium in the atmosphere is inconsistent with an earth that is millions or billions of years old. They also found traces of C-14 (5,730 year half life) in deep earth diamonds. How is this possible if the earth is millions of years old.

[scitsofreaky]

[slam] Whatever definitions we come up with, let's not lose sight of the fact that major kinds (kingdoms if you will) and any of the variations within them, do not jump ship to become a different kingdom.

Last time I checked, Kingdoms aren't species, but contain species. By your definition all animals are the same species. They are obviously not. For example:

[slam] My only point is that they are still butterflies, whether you have two or ten populations. They are of one major kind, or species - Insects.

Beetles are also insects. Are beetles the same species as butterflies? No. Any fool can see that. Get a better definition, like say, a group of genetically similar organisms that is reproductively isolated.

[slam] Can you think of any creature that ever became something different than what it is?

I'm sick of your willful ignorance. Either go and learn what evolution actually says, or shut the hell up.

[slam] Did you know that some of the ICR "scientists" are PHD's? ARe you aware of any of their work?

Did you know that some evolutionary scientist are PhD's? Are you aware of any of their work?

[slam] What you say is true, of course. It's the quality of research and conclusions that make the difference. FE, the ICR scientists found the amount of helium in the atmosphere is inconsistent with an earth that is millions or billions of years old. They also found traces of C-14 (5,730 year half life) in deep earth diamonds. How is this possible if the earth is millions of years old.

Since I doubt your integrity, I'm going to need a source.

[Legion]

Slam, it does appear to me that you are laboring under a mistaken view of what evolution is. If I viewed evolution as you appear to, then I probably wouldn't accept it either.

 

Let us, for the sake of argument, say that you are interested in defeating evolutionists, don't you think then that it would benefit you to understand what their/our claims and models really are?

 

To be honest with you, part of me is pained to see that you appear to be so woefully unprepared.

[neverclear5]

 

[slam] Can you think of any creature that ever became something different than what it is?

 

[slam] What you say is true, of course. It's the quality of research and conclusions that make the difference. FE, the ICR scientists found the amount of helium in the atmosphere is inconsistent with an earth that is millions or billions of years old. They also found traces of C-14 (5,730 year half life) in deep earth diamonds. How is this possible if the earth is millions of years old.

 

first point, yes. And examples of these, and transitional fossils have been given to you before. Here's yet another link.

 

http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/fishibian.html

 

Second point, after 5,730 years half of what was there is gone. After another 5,730 years half of what was then there has gone again, leaving a quarter of the origonal number. After another 5,730 years we have an eighth of what was there. This is how nuclear decay occurs. A trace would remain after many many times the half life. How can you debate radiometric/carbon dating if you don't understand it??

 

Oh, and yes I've looked at the helium level arguement and NO, I'm not convinced. It reads like the desperate scrabblings of a mind, desperate to prove that it hasn't wasted life believing an obvious falasy. Sorry to be so blunt.

[Slamdunk]

 

Get a better definition, like say, a group of genetically similar organisms that is reproductively isolated.

 

[slam] Point is that butterflies, beetles, spiders, ants, etc. are of the INSECT species (major kind) and have never been anything else, nor will ever be anything else.

 

[slam] Can you think of any creature that ever became something different than what it is?

 

I'm sick of your willful ignorance. Either go and learn what evolution actually says, or shut the hell up.

 

[slam] When you talk like this, I lose interest real fast. Why not answer the question? Since I am willfully ignorant, I will expect you to educate me and present some examples of major kinds evolving into different major kinds (i.e invertebrate into vertebrate, land animals into whales, dinosaurs into birds, fish into reptiles, ???? into plants, ???? into insects, etc.

 

[slam] What you say is true, of course. It's the quality of research and conclusions that make the difference. FE, the ICR scientists found the amount of helium in the atmosphere is inconsistent with an earth that is millions or billions of years old. They also found traces of C-14 (5,730 year half life) in deep earth diamonds. How is this possible if the earth is millions of years old.

 

Since I doubt your integrity, I'm going to need a source.

 

[slam] The diamond specimens were taken from the Orapa and Kethakane mines in Botswana and South Africa. Other sampes came from Guinea and Namibia. All specimans showed small traces of C-14 (Thousand, not Billions, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, p. 57)

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0821rate.asp

 

[Slamdunk]

 

[slam] Can you think of any creature that ever became something different than what it is?

 

first point, yes. And examples of these, and transitional fossils have been given to you before. Here's yet another link.

 

http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdes[/quot.../fishibian.html

 

[slam] Everything in this site is a drawing or illustration of what scientists believe happened. There was no fossil evidence.

 

Second point, after 5,730 years half of what was there is gone. After another 5,730 years half of what was then there has gone again, leaving a quarter of the origonal number. After another 5,730 years we have an eighth of what was there. This is how nuclear decay occurs. A trace would remain after many many times the half life. How can you debate radiometric/carbon dating if you don't understand it??

 

[slam] If you extrapolate C-14 half life back to millions, or billions, of years, the amount would be so small as to be undetectable. The RATE scientists found consistent levels of C-14 between .02 and .31 percent modern carbon. This is strong evidence of a young earth.

 

Oh, and yes I've looked at the helium level arguement and NO, I'm not convinced. It reads like the desperate scrabblings of a mind, desperate to prove that it hasn't wasted life believing an obvious falasy. Sorry to be so blunt.

 

[slam] ARe you sure you understood all of it? I'm not impressed with "I've looked at the helium lever argument and am not convinced...." "desperate babblings, obvious fantasy." Sounds like you're the one who is desperate, fantacizing, babbling :-) Cite me some flaws in the RATE research.

[scitsofreaky]

[slam] Point is that butterflies, beetles, spiders, ants, etc. are of the INSECT species (major kind) and have never been anything else, nor will ever be anything else.

Insect(a) isn't a species, it is a class. From wikipedia

Insects are invertebrates that are taxonomically referred to as the class Insecta. They are the most numerous and most widespread terrestrial taxon within the phylum Arthropoda, and indeed the most diverse group of animals on the earth, with around 925,000 species described—more than all other animal groups combined.

The class Insecta, aka insects, contains nearly a million different species. Besides, you said kingdoms, and Insecta is not a kingdom. Animalia is a kingdom, hence I said that if you use that definition than all animals, i.e. organisms in the kingdom Animalia, are the same species. So a spider, which isn't even in Insecta, is the same species as a butterfly, and as a dog, and a human, etc. Because of this absurdity I reject your definition of species.

[slam] When you talk like this, I lose interest real fast.

Then go away.

Why not answer the question?

Because it is an invalid question since it has nothing to do the evolution.

Since I am willfully ignorant, I will expect you to educate me

But you are willfully ignorant, so why should I waste my time

and present some examples of major kinds evolving into different major kinds (i.e invertebrate into vertebrate, land animals into whales, dinosaurs into birds, fish into reptiles, ???? into plants, ???? into insects, etc.

You've already been shown examples of land animals into whales, and fish into amphibians. This is why I know you are willfully ignorant. You are shown examples, and you reject them and keep asking for them.

[slam] The diamond specimens were taken from the Orapa and Kethakane mines in Botswana and South Africa. Other sampes came from Guinea and Namibia. All specimans showed small traces of C-14 (Thousand, not Billions, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, p. 57)

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0821rate.asp

Why am I not surprised that AiG is your source? Oh wait, I know, because all you do is spout AiG bullshit. Quality does matter, and you have chosen a source with the lowest quality. Smooth.

[Antlerman]

first point, yes. And examples of these, and transitional fossils have been given to you before. Here's yet another link.

 

http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdes[/quot.../fishibian.html

[slam] Everything in this site is a drawing or illustration of what scientists believe happened. There was no fossil evidence.

HOLY CRAP! He did it again!!! He rejected them because he was shown illustrations!

 

The silly man, even if we showed him pictures of the fossils (which are plentiful) he doesn't have the smarts to know what they are, and certainly not the knowledge to dispute those who do! I'm with Scitsofreaky on his earliest assessment of him. He is totally disingenuous.

 

Oh, and yes I've looked at the helium level arguement and NO, I'm not convinced. It reads like the desperate scrabblings of a mind, desperate to prove that it hasn't wasted life believing an obvious falasy. Sorry to be so blunt.

 

[slam] ARe you sure you understood all of it? I'm not impressed with "I've looked at the helium lever argument and am not convinced...." "desperate babblings, obvious fantasy." Sounds like you're the one who is desperate, fantacizing, babbling :-) Cite me some flaws in the RATE research.

No substance. Troll response. Troll Alert!!

 

EDIT:

Ok, here's some photos. Maybe these aren't good enough either because they're a digital picture of them, instead of the actual bones on an actual table in front of him?

 

[Legion]

I will not deny that Slam raises some red flags for me. I, for one, intend to extend him a great deal of leaway however. My guess is that Slam represents a lot of people out there. I am not yet ready to declare him completely disingenuous.

[Antlerman]

I will not deny that Slam raises some red flags for me. I, for one, intend to extend him a great deal of leaway however. My guess is that Slam represents a lot of people out there. I am not yet ready to declare him completely disingenuous.

Neither was I for the first 100 posts. I'm usually the last to make a conclusion like this, but I was brought to it. It is rare in the extreeme when I call someone insincere. (Edit: Maybe I am wrong and he's not totally disingenous. I hope I am wrong. I prefer to believe in people).

 

Ok so lets deal with some transitional fossils that has both photos and drawings together, along with an explaination of them, and let's see where this goes?

 

Panderichthys is an interesting animal—it definitely looks more like a fish than a salamander, but its fins are stout and bony, and other characteristics of its skeleton clearly ally it with the tetrapods. In the shift from an aquatic to a fully terrestrial life, the limbs and their supporting pectoral and pelvic girdles had to undergo major changes. In fish, the pectoral girdles are coupled to the skull, while the pelvic girdles are small and 'floating' in the musculature. To bear the animal's weight, the pectoral girdles lost their connection to the skull, and both became thicker, stronger, and more closely bound to the axial skeleton. The fins themselves had to change from a fan of slender fin-rays to more solid load-bearing digits. In Panderichthys, we see a mixture of these changes in process.

 

The fossil isn't the prettiest specimen you'll see, but it's virtue is that poorly described parts of the animals are in relatively good shape and have been exposed and described. Panderichthys contained a mix of primitive and derived characters, the kind of intermediate hodge-podge we'd expect in a transitional form.

 

a, Outline of the body of Panderichthys. Grey shading indicates preserved portions of Panderichthys rhombolepis specimen GIT 434-1. Redrawn from ref. 14. b, Panderichthys rhombolepis specimen GIT 434-1 with head (h) and body (B ) outlined. The pelvic girdle and fin are shaded in orange. c, Pelvic girdle and fin. The matrix is distinguished from the fossil by an overlay of grey shading. d, Specimen drawing. F, femur; Fi, fibula; Fre, fibulare; Int, intermedium (proximal end of the); Pel, pelvic girdle; T, tibia. Vertical hatching indicates broken bone; grey shading indicates matrix; circles indicate thin dermal bone covering. e, Reconstruction of the pelvic fin. Thick outline indicates preserved margin, thin outline indicates inferred margin, dotted lines indicate uncertain margin. Solid black scale bars, 10 mm.

 

In particular, the hindlimb has been found to be significantly more primitive than the forelimb—while the forelimb is large and robust and capable of propping the animal up and pushing it along on the substrate, the hindlimb is relatively small and unimpressive, a glorified and lumpy fish fin. In the figure below, the fore- and hind-limbs of an even more primitive fish, Eusthenopteron, are compared with Panderichthys (in the middle) and Acanthostega. While the Panderichthys limbs have a more robust central axis than the branchy, fan-like Eusthenopteron fins, they aren't as obviously leg-like as those of Acanthostega.

 

Pectoral (a, c, e) and pelvic fins (b, d, f) of Eusthenopteron (a, B ), Panderichthys (c, d) and Acanthostega (e, f) all in ventral view. F, femur; Fi, fibula; Fre, fibulare; H, humerus; Int, intermedium; R, radius; T, tibia; U, ulna; Ure, ulnare. Thick outline indicates preserved margin; thin outline indicates inferred margin; dotted lines indicate uncertain margin. Scale bars, 10 mm.

 

What's it all mean? In our adaptation to terrestrial life, it suggests it was done forelimbs first. The earliest tetrapod ancestors humped their way along, using the hindlimbs to anchor themselves, arching and extending their backs forward, then hauling themselves further forward with their front legs. Hindlimbs expanded later to contribute more to movement.

 

Because the paired fin morphology of Panderichthys is defined substantially by a combination of primitive characters shared with osteolepiforms (mostly in the pelvic fin) and derived characters shared with tetrapods (many pectoral fin characteristics) rather than autapomorphies, at least part of the tetrapod stem lineage around the Panderichthys node must have displayed a combination of tetrapod-like pectoral fins with less limb-like pelvic fins. This suggests that the general locomotory pattern of Panderichthys characterized part of the tetrapod stem lineage between osteolepiforms and tetrapods. The evolution of tetrapod locomotion therefore seems to have passed through a 'front-wheel drive' stage powered by body undulation and pelvic fins as anchors, demonstrated by Panderichthys, before shifting to a 'rear-wheel drive' leg-powered walk in the interval between Panderichthys and Acanthostega.

In case you have trouble keeping the names of all those antique tetrapods straight—they aren't quite as popular as dinosaurs, unfortunately—here's an illustration by Carl Dennis Buell. I wish every cladogram were this well done; this is the kind of first rate scientific illustration that Edward Tufte ought to highlight. You can not only see the lineage relationships, but you also see the temporal extent of the known fossils and illustrations of their form, making it easy to see how the transformation of fish into amphibians is represented in the fossil record.

 

 

From here: http://pharyngula.org/index/science/2005/12/

 

Any bets on the type of response we'll get?

[scitsofreaky]

At there very least he is willfully ignorant, which really burns me up.

Any bets on the type of response we'll get?

Well, you did only give two actual pictures, and they aren't easy to make out, so I don't see any fossil evidence.

I don't think we are going to get a decent definition of species, which pretty much makes any discussion of evolution with him pointless. Then again, it would be pointless anyway since he isn't, in all likelihood, going to change his position no matter what we showed him.

[neverclear5]

Slam, do you just have a book of creationist standard answers doing auto reply?

I'm running out of patience here.

Half life of 5730, means that only half would have decayed on your 6000 year old earth!

Also those pictures are based on the fossils. Why do you need so much confirmation and corroboration on the part of the actual scientists and nothing at all on the side of the creationists?

Not everything on earth is the same age. If you find a rock thats only 6000 years old then fine, but that doesn't mean everything else is the same age! The weight of evidense against a young earth is just so overwelming I can't see how anyone could consider it. Even heads of the church can't deny the evidense any more. How can you even hope to make your arguement. Do you not think that if there was any evidence to prove you right we would have found it?

[Slamdunk]

 

Insect(a) isn't a species, it is a class. From wikipedia

 

[slam] Ok fine. But, again, you miss the main issue. Insects have always been insects. Use whatever terminology you want. They are what they are and have never been anything different. If you think insects evolved from a lower life form, please show evidence of what it was. Then, if you can, what those evovled from.

 

You've already been shown examples of land animals into whales,

 

[slam] Show me one single fossil (not someone's drawing) of a land animal's four legs gradually disappearing to form fins or flippers. Or, show me one fossil (not someone's drawing) of a sea creature with early formation of flippers that bear any resemblance to legs. After all, evolution is supposed to happen gradually.

 

and fish into amphibians. This is why I know you are willfully ignorant. You are shown examples, and you reject them and keep asking for them.

 

[slam] Ok, thanks for taking the time to point out what you think are examples of what I am asking for. I am familiar with these examples and have gone through them before in other forums. What I believe these illustrations represent are either variations within a species, different kinds of creatures bearing similarity of structure, or extinct species. They are not "intermediate" forms between different major kinds. This is supported by many evolutionists who say there are no fossils showing transitions or intermediate forms between two different major kinds. Niles Eldredge is one such evolutionist:

 

"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."

(Eldredge, Niles [Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History], "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p44)

 

Gould is another:

 

““All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. . . . . The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils . . . . We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." (Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, Vol. 5, May 1977, p. 13, 14.

 

and expecially DAvid Raup:

 

"A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: LOW-LEVEL TEXTBOOKS, SEMI-POPULAR ARTICLES, AND SO ON (emph. added). Also, there is probably some WISHFUL THINKING involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND -yet the optimism has DIED HARD, and some PURE FANTASY has crept into textbooks (David M. Raup, "Evolution and the Fossil Record," in Science, July 17, 1981, p. 289. )

 

Why am I not surprised that AiG is your source? Oh wait, I know, because all you do is spout AiG bullshit.

 

[slam] Actually, my source is the book published by ICR. AIG only concurs. I challenge you to get the RATE technical book and see where you think they have applied bad science.

 

Quality does matter, and you have chosen a source with the lowest quality. Smooth.

 

[slam] Why not point out the flaws in the research of the RATE scientists? Like others, you are swayed by the dogma of conventional science that will not even look at the research applications of any group that challenges the establishment which is so certain that the earth is billions of years old. I won't really expect you to cite any application of bad science by the RATE scientists because your mind is already made up. All you will do is look for some evolutionary website that says what you want to hear.

 

The simple fact remains is that the RATE scientists did find traces of C-14 in deep earth diamonds. After millions of years there should be none, or some that is undetectable.

 

 

 

I will not deny that Slam raises some red flags for me. I, for one, intend to extend him a great deal of leaway however. My guess is that Slam represents a lot of people out there. I am not yet ready to declare him completely disingenuous.

 

[slam] Well thank you so much, Regalis. That's downright neighborly:-)

[Slamdunk]

 

 

Half life of 5730, means that only half would have decayed on your 6000 year old earth!

 

[slam] C-14 half life isn't biased, seeking to prove a young earth or old earth view. The fact remains is that C-14 is found in diamonds. The best thing you can hope for is that the RATE scientists have applied bad science in their research. If they have, then let it be known.

 

Also those pictures are based on the fossils. Why do you need so much confirmation and corroboration on the part of the actual scientists and nothing at all on the side of the creationists?

 

[slam] Those drawings of fossils don't represent evolution between major kinds. They are variations within kind, similarity of structure among different kinds, or extinct creatures. You have to believe what your own people are trying to tell you - There are no transitional fossils showing evolution between major kinds.

 

"In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a SINGLE TRANSITION (emph added) from one species to another." S. M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable (New York: Basic Books, 1981) p. 95

 

Not everything on earth is the same age. If you find a rock thats only 6000 years old then fine, but that doesn't mean everything else is the same age!

 

[slam] Wait a minute! If diamonds are supposed be millions or billions of years old, but are really very young based on C-14 content, then let's start telling educators and students that what was once thought to be very old, is actually very young. Let's at least tell education that C-14 has been found in diamonds. Then let it be debated. But the science establishement won't allow that.

 

Even heads of the church can't deny the evidense any more. How can you even hope to make your arguement. Do you not think that if there was any evidence to prove you right we would have found it?

 

[slam] It has been found, but the establishment won't touch it because it comes from scientists who disagree with establishment position of an old earth. Creationists have presented what they believe is strong evidence of a young earth: helium found in zircons and C-14 in diamonds. There are many other young earth evidences cited by creationists. Would you support any evidence for a young earth being presented in public education for analysis and debate?

 

[Antlerman]

[slam] Wait a minute! If diamonds are supposed be millions or billions of years old, but are really very young based on C-14 content, then let's start telling educators and students that what was once thought to be very old, is actually very young. Let's at least tell education that C-14 has been found in diamonds. Then let it be debated. But the science establishement won't allow that.

 

<snip>

 

[slam] It has been found, but the establishment won't touch it because it comes from scientists who disagree with establishment position of an old earth. Creationists have presented what they believe is strong evidence of a young earth: helium found in zircons and C-14 in diamonds. There are many other young earth evidences cited by creationists. Would you support any evidence for a young earth being presented in public education for analysis and debate?

 

Neverclear,

 

Since you are part of the "science establishment", may I ask you a question? Do you and your fellow scientists hold secret conventions where you conspire together to hide the true age of the earth from the world of non-scientists? If so, may I ask how you guys manage to get so many people, from so many countries, from so many science disciplines, from so many philosophies, from so many religions, from so many cultures to all agree to conspire against America's Young-earth Creationists' amazing research they offer in order to push you guys' "agenda" of social materialism into America's classrooms? Admit it, it is you scientist guys' agenda to get people to reject God, isn't it?

 

One more question here, with this many scientists all conspiring in one big room together, doesn't the cigar smoke get a bit overwhelming for all you conspirators?

 

 

 

 

(Edit: - Post #2000! - (I get a pretty green star now! ))

[Legion]

Slam, I am trying my best to be kind to you, because I want you to stay long enough for me to figure out the best way to defeat you and those you represent. In my mind, you continue to live in a world of denial, or as Scitso has said, willful ignorance. You have come to our turf insisting that fossils are the best evidence for evolution and then say that this "best evidence" does not support our conclusions. Well, I am inclined to believe that the best evidence for evolution does not reside in the past but rather is present in the forces acting on us even today.

Those drawings of fossils don't represent evolution between major kinds. They are variations within kind, similarity of structure among different kinds, or extinct creatures. You have to believe what your own people are trying to tell you - There are no transitional fossils showing evolution between major kinds.

You have insisted that we show you an example of X. After we have patiently tried to show you an example of X, you say that can't be an X, because there are no X's. This strikes me as denial. Do you know what denial is?

Would you support any evidence for a young earth being presented in public education for analysis and debate?

I know this may seem draconian, but no. I do not support this. In my opinion the creationist position is one of comfortable lies. There is plenty enough of disagreement within legitimate science for students to cut their teeth on analysis and debate.

 

I have many hopes. I hope that you will continue to speak with us Slam. And I do hope to return to the concept of speciation eventually. I also hope that you will not neglect the other post that have you recently started, "Evidence for the Existence of God." I does not bother me that people believe in God, but when those beliefs compel one to encroach upon biology then I likewise feel compelled to try and stop it.

[neverclear5]

 

Since you are part of the "science establishment", may I ask you a question? Do you and your fellow scientists hold secret conventions where you conspire together to hide the true age of the earth from the world of non-scientists? If so, may I ask how you guys manage to get so many people, from so many countries, from so many science disciplines, from so many philosophies, from so many religions, from so many cultures to all agree to conspire against America's Young-earth Creationists' amazing research they offer in order to push you guys' "agenda" of social materialism into America's classrooms? Admit it, it is you scientist guys' agenda to get people to reject God, isn't it?

 

One more question here, with this many scientists all conspiring in one big room together, doesn't the cigar smoke get a bit overwhelming for all you conspirators?

 

 

 

 

(Edit: - Post #2000! - (I get a pretty green star now! ))

Oh its terrible, you can hardly breath in there. All us scientists meeting up and devising ways to corrupt the world. Obviousely, to have this conspiracy we have to realise there is a god so we're all actually complete beleivers in the bible and are working for satan. That always works right? I mean he pays up and everything? There wouldn't be ab obvious and huge downside to working with satan that anyone believing in him would clearly see???

 

Then again its not so bad, we work with the comittee trying to turn everyone gay and destroy your manufacturing industry too so its not a wasted trip!

 

 

Also, slam........ you really believe this stuff don't you???

 

Every scientist worth his salt can see that carbon/radiometric dating is not ambiguous. It is, as you say, not biased, it is a simple tool and clearly illustrates that the earth is well over 6000 years old. There is no division amungst scientists. None. What degrees do these "creation scientists" have?? Art perhaps?? Theology?? Catering?? I'm guessing theres no Physicists there.

[Slamdunk]

 

 

Slam, I am trying my best to be kind to you,

 

[slam] So just because I disagree, I am not worthy of your kindness:-(

 

because I want you to stay long enough for me to figure out the best way to defeat you and those you represent. In my mind, you continue to live in a world of denial, or as Scitso has said, willful ignorance.

 

[slam] My position from the beginning is that the fossil record does not support descent from common ancestry or any kind of gradualistic evolution. I have also said consistently that there are many evolutionists who believe in the ToE but do not believe the fossil record supports macroevolution. IOW, no major kind, or any variations within it, have ever changed into something different than the kind or variation it has always been. Please tell me if you think this prominent evolutionist is in denial:

 

"In fact,the fossil record does not convincingly document a SINGLE TRANSITION (emph added) from one species to another." S. M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable (New York: Basic Books, 1981) p. 95

 

The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.”

[steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1979, p. 39]

 

"[T]he fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity -- of gradual transitions from one kind of animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S. M., 1981 The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, N.Y., p. 40)

 

You have come to our turf insisting that fossils are the best evidence for evolution and then say that this "best evidence" does not support our conclusions. Well, I am inclined to believe that the best evidence for evolution does not reside in the past but rather is present in the forces acting on us even today.

 

[slam] I presume by your statement that you agree the fossil record is not the best evidence for the ToE. I whole-heartedly agree:-) So you must believe that there is better evidence. Please present any evidence you believe supports one major kind evovling into a different major kind outside the fossil record.

 

Would you support any evidence for a young earth being presented in public education for analysis and debate?

 

I know this may seem draconian, but no. I do not support this. In my opinion the creationist position is one of comfortable lies. There is plenty enough of disagreement within legitimate science for students to cut their teeth on analysis and debate.

 

[slam] I agree that your statement is draconian. You have no idea how creation scientists have applied the scienfitic method in their research, yet you claim they are lies. I have asked here before for someone to show where the RATE scientists are flawed, or "lying," in their research. Please do so.

 

I have many hopes. I hope that you will continue to speak with us Slam.

 

[slam] I will continue to speak, but I would like well-reasoned responses dealing more with science and less rhetoric. Let's talk science. Let's talk about the nature of the fossil record as viewed by prominent evolutionists. Let's talk about the complete lack of transitional life forms between the invertebrates and vertebrates. Let's talk about helium and lead retention in rocks. Let's talk about the presence of C-14 in deep earth diamonds. Lets talk about assumptions applied to RM dating. Let's talk about the recent T-Rex found with undecayed tissue.

 

[Legion]

Please present any evidence you believe supports one major kind evolving into a different major kind outside the fossil record.

I'm afraid I can't even begin to do that Slam because I have no idea what a "kind" or "major kind" are. What are they?

[scitsofreaky]

Please present any evidence you believe supports one major kind evolving into a different major kind outside the fossil record.

I'm afraid I can't even begin to do that Slam because I have no idea what a "kind" or "major kind" are. What are they?

He can't give you a definition because he doesn't know what it means. He seems to be using it because it is so ambiguous.

 

Slam- we cannot discuss anything until you give us a reasonable definition of "kind."

[Antlerman]

Please present any evidence you believe supports one major kind evolving into a different major kind outside the fossil record.

I'm afraid I can't even begin to do that Slam because I have no idea what a "kind" or "major kind" are. What are they?

He can't give you a definition because he doesn't know what it means. He seems to be using it because it is so ambiguous.

 

Slam- we cannot discuss anything until you give us a reasonable definition of "kind."

Better still, give us reference to where that term, "kind" is use by any scientist? It doesn't exist in science. It's not a scientific term.

 

If therefore it's not a term in science, then how the hell can it be used in a scientific discussion? It can't be so you must therefore stop using it without exception. Terms like "inspiration", "revelation", "Kinds", etc are theological and mythological language, not scientific language. They are not permissible language in a discussion of science.

 

That said, you have been shown the evidence for transition from one species to another repeatedly. You're claim it is invalid because it doesn't fit a non-scientific classification is meaningless. Our claming has been proven, and you have disproved nothing that has been offered. Furthermore, you have offered nothing as positive proof for an ID. Your entire claim for it is based on your dislike of the Theory of Evolution and citing the FEW (not many), who feel like you do for support to your non-scientific arguments against science.

 

If you’re going to continue challenging science on scientific grounds, then you must use the proper terminology.

[neverclear5]

[slam] Wait a minute! If diamonds are supposed be millions or billions of years old, but are really very young based on C-14 content, then let's start telling educators and students that what was once thought to be very old, is actually very young. Let's at least tell education that C-14 has been found in diamonds. Then let it be debated. But the science establishement won't allow that.

 

We do debate this stuff slam. The point is after the debate is finished and it is clear that one side is right. THEN we teach it to kids. The results are in slam..... you lost.

[Slamdunk]

 

That said, you have been shown the evidence for transition from one species to another repeatedly.

 

[slam] What do you mean by specie?

 

Your entire claim for it is based on your dislike of the Theory of Evolution and citing the FEW (not many), who feel like you do for support to your non-scientific arguments against science.

 

I POST THESE TO REFUTE YOU CLAIM THAT I ONLY CITE A "FEW." I HAVE MANY MORE, BUT I DOUBT YOU WILL READ THIS LONG LIST. JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT A 'FEW' MORE:-)

 

Paleontologist Alan Cheetham, a gradualist evolutionist, summed up decades of his own research: "I came reluctantly to the conclusion that I wasn't finding evidence for gradualism." Reported by R.A. Kerr in "Did Darwin Get It All Right?" Science 276:1421, 10 March 1995.

 

". . . there are about 25 major living subdivisions (phyla) of the animal kingdom alone, all with gaps between them that are not bridged by known intermediates." Francisco J. Ayala and James W. Valentine, Evolving, The Theory and Processes of Organic Evolution (Menlo Park, California: The Benjamin Cummings Publishing Co., 1979), p. 258.

 

“I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.” Søren Løvtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 422.

 

". . . experience shows that the gaps which separate the highest categories may never be bridged in the fossil record. Many of the discontinuities tend to be more and more emphasized with increased collecting." Norman D. Newell (former Curator of Historical Geology at the American Museum of Natural History), "The Nature of the Fossil Record," Adventures in Earth History, editor Preston Cloud (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1970), pp. 644-645.

 

."The [evolutionary] origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved." W.E. Swinton, "The Origin of Birds," Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds, editor A.J. Marshall (New York: Academic Press, 1960), Vol. 1, Chapter 1, p. 1.

 

"As our present information stands, however, the gap remains unbridged, and the best place to start the evolution of the vertebrates is in the imagination." Homer W. Smith, From Fish to Philosopher (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1953), p. 26.

 

"There is no more conclusive refutation of Darwinism than that furnished by palaeontology. Simple probability indicates that fossil hoards can only be test samples. Each sample, then, should represent a different stage of evolution, and there ought to be merely `transitional' types, no definition and no species. Instead of this we find perfectly stable and unaltered forms persevering through long ages, forms that have not developed themselves on the fitness principle, but appear suddenly and at once in their definitive shape; that do not thereafter evolve towards better adaptation, but become rarer and finally disappear, while quite different forms crop up again. What unfolds itself, in ever-increasing richness of form, is the great classes and kinds of living beings which exist aboriginally and exist still, without transition types, in the grouping of today." [emphasis in original] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. 2 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 32.

 

"Evolutionary biology's deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven't new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable?" Jeffrey S. Levinton, "The Big Bang of Animal Evolution," Scientific American, Vol. 267, November 1992, p. 84.

 

"The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of the fishes . . . ." J.R. Norman, A History of Fishes, 3rd edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), p. 343.

 

"Surely the lack of gradualism - the lack of intermediates - is a major problem." Dr. David Raup, as taken from page 16 of an approved and verified transcript of a taped interview conducted by Luther D. Sunderland on 27 July 1979.

 

"At any rate, modern gorillas, orangs and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere, as it were. They are here today; they have no yesterday, unless one is able to find faint foreshadowings of it in the dryopithecids." Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981; reprint edition, New York: Warner Books, 1982), p. 363.

 

". . . the gradual morphological transitions between presumed ancestors and descendants, anticipated by most biologists, are missing." David E. Schindel (Curator of Invertebrate Fossils, Peabody Museum of Natural History), "The Gaps in the Fossil Record," Nature, Vol. 297, 27 May 1982, p. 282.

 

"But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places. When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren't there; at least, not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don't exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn't, or might be, transitional between this group or that." [emphasis in original] Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (New Haven Ct,:Ticknor and Fields, 1992) p. 19.

 

"Although each of these classes [fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and primates] is well represented in the fossil record, as of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species. NOT A SINGLE UNDISPUTED MISSING LINK (emph. added) has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earth's crust despite the most careful and extensive searches" (Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Evolution, pp. 254, emphasis added).

 

"The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time . . . . The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash." Stephen Jay Gould, "An Asteroid to Die For," Discover, October 1989, p. 65

 

“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” Dr. T. N. Tahmisian, Physiologist. Atomic Energy Commission. "Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes," by N.J. Mitchell (United Kingdom: Roydon Publications, 1983), title page.

 

"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."(Eldredge, Niles [Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History], "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p44)

 

Evolutionists believe that amphibians evolved into reptiles, with either Diadectes or Seymouria as the claimed transition. Actually, by the evolutionist's own time scale, this "transition" occurs 35 million years (m.y.) after the earliest reptile, Hylonomus (a cotylosaur). A parent cannot appear 35 million years after its child! The scattered locations of these fossils also present problems for the evolutionist. [see Steven M. Stanley, Earth and Life Through Time (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1986), pp. 411-415. See also Robert H. Dott, Jr. and Roger L. Batten, Evolution of the Earth, 2nd edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 311.

 

“We have all heard of The Origin of Species, although few of us have had time to read it…A casual perusal of the classic made me understand the rage of Paul Feyerabend…I agree with him that Darwinism contains ‘wicked lies’; it is not a ‘natural law’ formulated on the basis of factual evidence, but a dogma, reflecting the dominating social philosophy of the last century.” Kenneth J. Hsu, "Sedimentary Petrology and Biologic Evolution," Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 56 (September 1986): p730.

 

[Darwin, speaking about Huxley:] "My good and kind agent for the propagation of the Gospel, the devil's gospel." Robert T. Clark and James D. Bales, "Why Scientists Accept Evolution", 1988, p. 45.

 

"More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance. New lines of thinking and experimentation must be tried." (Dose, Klaus, "The Origin of Life: More Questions Than Answers," Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 13, No. 4, 1988, p.348)

 

“As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly.” (Tom Kemp, “A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record,” New Scientist, Vol. 108, Dec. 5, 1985, p.67)

 

"Granted an evolutionary origin of the main groups of animals, and not an act of special creation, the absence of any record whatsoever of a single member of any of the phyla in the Pre-Cambrian rocks remains as inexplicable on orthodox grounds as it was to Darwin." T. Neville George (Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow), "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, Vol. 48, No. 189, January 1960, p. 5.

 

““All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. . . . . The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Heribert Nilsson writes, “The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks.” (Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13,14)

 

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

(Stephen J. Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), 'Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?' Paleobiology, vol 6(1), January 1980, pg 127)

 

"Despite the bright promise that palaeontology provides means of 'seeing' Evolution, it has provided some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and palaeontology does not provide them." (emphasis added) (David Kitts, Ph.D. Palaeontology and Evolutionary Theory, Evolution, Vol.28 (Sep.1974) p.467)

 

"Modern Apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans - of upright, naked, tool-making big-brained humans - is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter." (Dr. Lyall Watson, "The Water People," Science Digest, Vol. 90, May 1982, p. 44).

 

"The missing link between man and the apes...is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule: the story of life is as disjointed as a silent newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms that lie between species, the more they have been frustrated...Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school..."(John Adler with John Carey: Is Man a Subtle Accident, Newsweek, Vol. 96, No.18 (November 3, 1980, p.95)

 

"The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time . . . . The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash." (Stephen Jay Gould, "An Asteroid to Die For," Discover, October 1989, p. 65)

 

“Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure that they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so. What we are to make of that fact is still open to debate, but today it is the conventional neo-Darwinians who appear as the conservative bigots and the unorthodox neo-Sedgwickians who rate as enlightened rationalists prepared to contemplate the evidence that is plain for all to see." (Professor Sir Edmund Leach, addressing the 1981 Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science)

 

"Vertebrates and their progenitors, according to the new studies, evolved in the Cambrian, earlier than paleontologists have traditionally assumed." Richard Monastersky, "Vertebrate Origins: The Fossils Speak Up," Science News, Vol. 149, 3 February 1996, p. 75.

 

"Evolutionary biology's deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven't new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable?" Jeffrey S. Levinton, "The Big Bang of Animal Evolution," Scientific American, Vol. 267, November 1992, p. 84.

 

"All three subdivisions of the bony fishes first appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time. They are already widely divergent morphologically, and they are heavily armored. How did they originate? What allowed them to diverge so widely? How did they all come to have heavy armor? And why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms?" Gerald T. Todd, "Evolution of the Lung and the Origin of Bony Fishes - A Causal Relationship?", American Zoologist, Vol. 20, No. 4, p. 757.

 

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils . . . . We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, Vol. 5, May 1977, p. 14.

 

"Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans - of upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings - is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter." Lyall Watson, "The Water People," Science Digest, May 1982, p. 44.

 

"At any rate, modern gorillas, orangs and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere, as it were. They are here today; they have no yesterday, unless one is able to find faint foreshadowings of it in the dryopithecids." Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981; reprint edition, New York: Warner Books, 1982), p. 363.

 

". . . there are no intermediate forms between finned and limbed creatures in the fossil collections of the world." G.R. Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, ( N.Y: Harper and Row, 1983) p. 60.

 

"And let us dispose of a common misconception. The complete transmutation of even one animal species into a different species has never been directly observed either in the laboratory or in the field." Dean H. Kenyon (Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University), affidavit presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, No. 85-1513, Brief of Appellants, prepared under the direction of William J. Guste, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, October 1985, p. A-16

 

“There is no fossil record establishing historical continuity of structure for most characters that might be used to assess relationships among phyla." Katherine G. Field et al., "Molecular Phylogeny of the animal Kingdom," Science, Vol. 239, 12 February 1988, p. 748.

 

"There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral insects looked like, . . . . Until fossils of these ancestors are discovered, however, the early history of the insects can only be inferred." Peter Farb, The Insects, Life Nature Library (New York: Time Incorporated, 1962), pp. 14-15

 

". . . no human has ever seen a new species form in nature." Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1981), p. 73.

 

None of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterized the tetrapods." (Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, Dover, 1985, p. 148)

 

The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been FRUSTRATED." (Newsweek, November 3, 1980).

 

"A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: LOW-LEVEL TEXTBOOKS, SEMI-POPULAR ARTICLES, AND SO ON (emph. added). Also, there is probably some WISHFUL THINKING involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND -yet the optimism has DIED HARD, and some PURE FANTASY has crept into textbooks (David M. Raup, "Evolution and the Fossil Record," in Science, July 17, 1981, p. 289. )

 

“Gaps at a lower taxonomic level, species and genera, are practically universal in the fossil record of the mammal-like reptiles. In NO SINGLE ADEQUATELY DOCUMENTED CASE (emph. added) is it possible to trace a transition, species by species, from one genus to another.” Thomas S. Kemp, Mammal-Like Reptiles and the Origin of Mammals (New York: Academic Press, 1982), p. 319.

 

As Newsweek explains: "In 1972 Gould and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper intended at the time merely to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their INABILITY TO FIND FOSSILS OF TRANSITIONAL FORM BETWEEN SPECIES, the so-called 'missing links.' Darwin, and most of those who followed him, believed that the work of evolution was slow, gradual and continuous and that a complete lineage of ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into the next, could in theory be reconstructed for all living animals . . . But a century of digging since then has only MADE THEIR ABSENCE MORE GLARING. . . It was Eldredge and Gould's notion to call off the search and accept the evidence of the fossil record on its own terms" ("Enigmas of Evolution," Newsweek, March 29, 1982, pp. 44-49 - emphasis added).

 

“Origin of the vertebrates is OBSCURE—there is NO FOSSIL RECORD (emph. added) preceding the occurrence of fishes in the late Ordovician time.” Arthur N. Strahler, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1987), p. 316.`

 

“The THE ABSENCE OF ANY known series of such intermediates imposes severe restrictions on morphologists interested in the ancestral source of angiosperms [flowering plants] and leads to speculation and interpretation of homologies and relationships on the basis of the MOST MEAGER circumstantial evidence.” Charles B. Beck, Origin and Early Evolution of Angiosperms (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p. 5.

 

"In fact,the fossil record does not convincingly document a SINGLE TRANSITION (emph added) from one species to another." S. M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable (New York: Basic Books, 1981) p. 95

 

The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.”

[steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1979, p. 39]

 

"[T]he fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity -- of gradual transitions from one kind of animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S. M., 1981 The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, N.Y., p. 40)

 

"A major problem in proving the theory [of evolution] has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear anddisappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argumentthat each species was created by God."(Mark Czarnecki [evolutionist], "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade", MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56.)

 

"One of the most surprising negative results of palaeontological research in the last century is that such transitional forms seem to be inordinately scarce. In Darwin's time this could perhaps be ascribed with some justification to the incompleteness of the palaeontological record and to lack of knowledge, but with the enormous number of fossil species which have been discovered since then, other causes must be found for the almost complete absence of transitional forms."(Brouwer, A. [Professor of Stratigraphy and Palaeontology, University of Leiden, Netherlands], "General Palaeontology," [1959], Transl. Kaye R.H., Oliver & Boyd: Edinburgh & London, 1967, pp162-163)

 

"Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group. Thus, it has seldom been possible to piece together ancestor-dependent sequences from the fossil record that show gradual, smooth transitions between species."

(Hickman, C.P. [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington], L.S. Roberts [Professor Emeritus of Biology at Texas Tech University], and F.M. Hickman. 1988. Integrated Principles of Zoology. Times Mirror/Moseby College Publishing, St. Louis, MO. 939 pp.; (pg. 866))

 

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith that gradual, progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks than any hard evidence. he record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record. The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change."

(Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I. (1982) The Myths of Human Evolution Columbia University Press, p. 57)

 

"...there are about 25 major living subdivisions (phyla) of the animal kingdom alone, all with gaps between them that are NOT BRIDGED BY KNOWN INTERMEDITES (emph. added)." (Fransisco Ayala and James Valentine, “Evolving, the Theory and Process of Organic Evolution” (Menlo Park, Cal.: The Benjamin Cummings Pub. Co,. 1979), p. 258

 

"As our present information stands, however, the gap remains unbridged, and the place to start the evolution of the vertebrates is in the IMAGINATION (Emph. added)." (Homer Smith, "From Fish to Philospher"(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1953), p.26

 

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?"

"Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record." (Patterson, Colin [late zoologist specialising in fossil fishes, British Museum of Natural History, London], letter 10 April 1979, in Sunderland L.D., "Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems," [1984], Master Book Publishers: El Cajon CA, Fourth Edition, 1988, p89. Ellipses are Sunderland's.)

 

The punctuated eqilibrium model has been widly accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. ... apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground." (Robert E. Ricklefs (Dpt. Biology, University of Pennsylvania) "Paleontologists confronting macroevolution.' Science, vol. 199, 6 Jan 1978, p. 59)

 

"...the gradual morphological tranitions between presumed ancestors and descendants, anticipated by most paleontologists, ARE MISSING (emph. added)." (David Schindel (Curator of invertebrate Fossils, Peabody Museum of Natural History), "The Gaps in the Fossil Record," Nature, Vol. 297, 27 May 1982, p. 282.

 

“I fully agree with your comments on the LACK OF direct illustration of evoluntionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.” (Taped interview with Luther Sunderland, 10 – April 1979)

 

“But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places. When you look for links between major groups of animals, THEY SIMPLY AREN’T THERE (Emph. added); at least not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don’t exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn’t, or might be, transitional between this group or that.” (Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Darwin, Evolution and the New Biology, 1982, pp. 9).

 

"But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record FAILS TO CONTAIN A SINGLE EXAMPLE (Emph. added) of a significant transitions." (David Woodruff, "Evolution: The Paleobiological View," Science, Vol. 208, 16 May 1980, p. 716)

 

“To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation. The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition. TEXTBOOKS HOODWINK (emph. added).” (E.J.H. Corner, “Evolution,” Contemporary Botanical Thought, editors Anna M. MacLeod and L.S. Cobley (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961 ), p. 97

 

"So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which DOES NOT SHOW CHANGE (Emph. added)..." (David Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 1, Jan. 1979, p.25)

 

"The smooth transition from one form of life to another which is implied by the theory is...NOT BORNE OUT (Emph. added) by the facts..." (Niles Eldredge, "Missing, Believed Nonexistant," Manchester Guradian (The Washington Post Weekly), Vol. 119, No. 22, 26 Nov. 1978, p. 1)

 

"Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology DOES NOT PROVIDE THEM" (Emph. added) (David Kitts (School of geology and Geophysics, Univ. of Oklahoma), Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, Sept. 1974, p. 467)

 

“In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and NO TRANSITIONAL FORMS were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory. “Missing, Believed Nonexistent,” Manchester Guardian (The Washington Post Weekly), Vol. 119, No. 22, 26 November 1978, p. 1.

 

“Surely the LACK OF gradualism—the LACK OF intermediates—is a major problem.” Dr. David Raup, as taken from page 16 of an approved and verified transcript of a taped interview conducted by Luther D. Sunderland on 27 July 1979.

 

"When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with NO FIRM EVIDENCE that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a FORLORN PALEONTOLOGIST looking to learn something about evolution" (Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, 1995, p. 95, emphasis added).

 

“And the salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange. And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred.” Wolfgang Smith, Teilhardism and the New Religion (Rockford., Ill.: Tan Books, 1988), pp. 5-6. Dr. Smith, taught at MIT and UCLA.

 

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Sorry mate, but compared to the scientists supporting evolution thats a drop in the ocean. Even if it turns out evolution alone wasn't responsible. Intelligent design is just not feasible. Placing doubt on the current idea doesn't help yours because yours was discounted years ago. What evidense there is disproves your idea and so we are now formulating the best theory possible from the information. Its the same thing that was done with gravity and thermodynamics. We may adapt or find more accurate models but we'll never go back to those, ignorant, badly thought out ideas that came before because we have seen them for what they were and found more accurate theories. The same way we have with young earth creationism, which, by definition, is also a theory, just an old and incorrect one.