Guest rj559 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 I'm just about to head out for the night and this idea popped into my head. I haven't searched to see if its been used anywhere else before, but I figured I would throw it up here and see if anyone knows what I am talking about. IDers cite gaps in the fossil record as one of Evolution's major weaknesses. Even Darwin himself describes that as the Theory's main weakness. Knowing what we know about fossilization and the rare conditions required for it to occur, would it be reasonable to estimate the volume of all the fossils that would be in the Earth if every creature left a fossil? I imagine that the volume of all the corpses in the past 10 millenia alone could not be accounted for. I have a hard time articulating this, but do you know what I'm saying? Estimate the amount of fossils that there would be if there was 100% fossilization to show that the astronomical calculation of that would be challenging to the existence of Earth as we know it, if only to demonstrate that the reason that there are 'gaps' is because fossilization is so rare. Have any theoretical calculations like this been done before? Also, I remember reading somewhere that there is conclusive evidence for 3.2 million years of human evolution alone. Could anyone point me towards a source for this information? Thanks, RJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taphophilia Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 Hello RJ and welcome to the site. I understand what you are saying. However, there are more than enough transitional fossils to prove evoultion is true. The first Humaniod species Homo Habilis is around 2 million years. Here's a site. There's a box on the right hand side with podcasts, if you scroll down in the box you will find, "How did humans evolve". Zach Moore PhD Taph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Jeff Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 Welcome to the site, RJ! We've come a long way since Darwin's time. The fossil record actually supports the ToE very well. There's some good information at the Talk Origins site. Here's a couple of good links: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html Glory! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 IDers cite gaps in the fossil record as one of Evolution's major weaknesses. Even Darwin himself describes that as the Theory's main weakness. Knowing what we know about fossilization and the rare conditions required for it to occur, would it be reasonable to estimate the volume of all the fossils that would be in the Earth if every creature left a fossil? I imagine that the volume of all the corpses in the past 10 millenia alone could not be accounted for. It sure would be quite a lot of bones. If all humans, and all animals, would leave all bones and all of it conserved. The planet would only be bones and nothing else. Since biological life reuses previous biological life, we contain the fragments of all the previous generations. So yeah, it would be impossible to have every link preserved. I have a hard time articulating this, but do you know what I'm saying? Estimate the amount of fossils that there would be if there was 100% fossilization to show that the astronomical calculation of that would be challenging to the existence of Earth as we know it, if only to demonstrate that the reason that there are 'gaps' is because fossilization is so rare. I know what you're saying. If fossilization were less rare, we would have serious problems with resources. Where would we get our nutrition from? After all, it comes from other life forms. Have any theoretical calculations like this been done before? I haven't seen any, but purely speculative, considering that they believe the bacteria underground alone represents more biomass than life above ground, I can only imagine what would happen if every fly, rat, dog, cat, horse, bird and cockroach would become a fossil after the die... Also, I remember reading somewhere that there is conclusive evidence for 3.2 million years of human evolution alone. Could anyone point me towards a source for this information? http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/species.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
par4dcourse Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 ri559, Why would there be a problem? Noah got them all on one boat with nary a mishap! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brother Jeff Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 ri559,Why would there be a problem? Noah got them all on one boat with nary a mishap! Amen, Brother! With God, all things are possible! Glory! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WarrantedPVC Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 I think the big problem of IDers is that they twist and turn the existing fossil evidence to their needs. I once went to a talk given by an ID proponent. He was discussing ape and humanoid fossils. He basically went chronologically, discussing the most important fossils one-by-one. He pointed out for each of them what characteristics were "human-like" and what characteristics were "ape-like", and based on that judgment he categorized all of them black-and-white into "ape" or "human" (despite for some of them he clearly admitted they had characteristics of both humans and apes!). He then drew up a table with all the fossils in these two columns and stated that "therefore there is no evidence of a single intermediate between apes and humans". *sigh* PVC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scitsofreaky Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 I think the big problem of IDers is that they twist and turn the existing fossil evidence to their needs. I once went to a talk given by an ID proponent. He was discussing ape and humanoid fossils. He basically went chronologically, discussing the most important fossils one-by-one. He pointed out for each of them what characteristics were "human-like" and what characteristics were "ape-like", and based on that judgment he categorized all of them black-and-white into "ape" or "human" (despite for some of them he clearly admitted they had characteristics of both humans and apes!). He then drew up a table with all the fossils in these two columns and stated that "therefore there is no evidence of a single intermediate between apes and humans". *sigh* PVC That sounds like something Duane Gish would say. God, what a troll. IDiots like to use the useless (and undefinable) word "kind" which precludes transitions. And they tend to just ignore the ones that are too hard (ie impossible) for them to categorize. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WarrantedPVC Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Yeah, it's incredible when IDists will state... "yes, that fossil is a bipedal ape. But it's just that. A bipedal APE!!" They won't recognize the meaning of it being both bipedal.. and ape??! PVC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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