Interview with an evolutionist

[Hellbender]

so much for logical discourse.

so much for debate. Every point we make to you is either ignored, or goalpost-shifted (can't think of a better way to put that).

Something I've been noticing is that when the heat is put on evolution, people seem to start to attack ID.

What do you want us to do? you are presenting ID as science, and we reserve the right to point out its logical flaws (of which there are many). If you are going to argue against the theory we are defending, we will do the same.

But that's only a cop out when evolution starts to be revealed as something faulty.

so far you have not revealed anything, except the fact that you know nothing about evolution, like to talk down to us like we are a bunch of idiots, and are generally your garden-variety creationist, the likes of which we have dealt with countless times in the past. Try actually going to the sites we recommend.

Let's not stray too far from the thread topic. I want to see if anyone can make the theory of evolution stand on it's own merit.

We can, if you let us. But you continue to cry foul whenever someone attacks creationism, and simply shift the goalposts whenever a good point is made. I'll ask you, what part(s) of modern evolutionary theory do you have a problem with (and your ad hominem about darwin being a supposed racist is not a part of the science, whether it is true or not).

But if no one can, than hopefully we can just be adult and admit that this is a hack theory.

A hack theory? Why then have scientists stuck by it for so long? Why has it been around formore than a century? Why is it now considered a foundation of modern biology? Why must people like you resort to logical fallacies such as ad hominem attacks to argue against it?

Evolution can barely cough up one transitional form.

Read the "Intelligent" Design thread. At the end, Mokele lists all the transitionals between lobe-finned fish and humans. Its quite impressive, and I didn't even know we were able to find that many. The problem creationists have with transitional forms is that there are lots of them, and it is one of the simplest disproofs (in their eyes) of creationism. So what do they do? Pretend they don't exist, pretend they are hoaxed, focus on the organisms whose evolutionary histories are not complete, refuse to admit the fossil fits their idea of "transitional" or ask for transitionals between the transitionals.

 

edit: and I can guarantee that you will do at least one of the above after reading bascule's caption on Archaeopteryx.

[bascule]

Any form whatsoever would satisfy me. But let's say for example you find one[/i'] transitional form. It wouldn't prove evolution, because you'd have to have at hundreds of forms, and from different types of animals from humans to cats to bears to whatever. After all: they was "billions" of years for this to happen. But I'll make it easy for you. Post one. Anyone.

 

Uhh, I did, see the first link I posted:

 

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton2.html

 

Archaeopteryx - half reptile, half bird

 

The first dramatic missing link came to light in 1861, only a couple of years after Darwin's Origin of Species had been published. The first specimen of Archaeopteryx was discovered in a limestone quarry in southern Germany, and it was studied avidly by scientists throughout Europe. Early writers, such as Thomas Henry Huxley, immediately noticed that Archaeopteryx was an intermediate form.

 

It had bird characters, feathers and wings.

 

It also had reptilian characters, the skeleton of a small theropod (flesh-eating) dinosaur, with a long bony tail, fingers with claws on the leading edge of the wing, and teeth in the jaws.

Fossils show how some reptiles became more bird-like. The role of Archaeopteryx has been debated ever since 1861. Is it really a missing link between reptiles and birds, or is it just a bird and not a missing link at all?

A further seven skeletons have come to light, and all of them confirm that Huxley was correct.

 

In addition, fantastic new specimens of birds have been found in Spain and China, which are some 30 or 40 million years younger than Archaeopteryx, and they are more bird-like, exactly as an evolutionist predicts.

The new Spanish and Chinese birds have short bony tails, and their hand claws are reduced - they are becoming more bird-like.

The Chinese localities have not only produced amazing new birds, but also new dinosaur specimens with feathers!

 

It is now known that birds evolved from reptiles. These new specimens clinch the argument. Archaeopteryx is no longer on its own, a single species that attests to the reality of an evolutionary transition from reptiles to birds. Below it, on the evolutionary tree, stretch countless theropod dinosaurs that become ever more birdlike through time, and above it stretch numerous bird species that bridge every step of the way from Archaeopteryx to fully-fledged birds. A long series of fossils through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, a span of 140 million years, document the evolutionary transition from reptile to bird.

 

See, ID does not first assume that there is a God, then try to prove it.

 

No, because doing so would make ID scientific. You see, that's how science works, you make a hypothesis, then carry out an experiment designed to confirm or refute your hypothesis. With ID, you just assume there's a God, and that's that.

 

ID stands up to logic, and there's millions of things that prove it. After all, there are millions of species, of which are complex and organized.

 

Evolution can barely cough up one transitional form.

 

Can you cough up one peer reviewed paper to corroborate your claim that there's "millions of things that prove" ID?

[ydoaPs]

Can you cough up one peer reviewed paper to corroborate your claim that there's "millions of things that prove" ID?

/me waits for a link to Creation magizine

[Hailstorm]

well, it's not p'shawed[/i'], just anylized. And if flaws with the evidence given arises, it's not "gouging our eyes out" if we discuss these flaws. That's just being scientific.

 

There are no flaws in the theory of evolution.

 

Evolution can barely cough up one [/u'] transitional form.

 

EVERYTHING in Evolution is a transitional form.

 

If you walked to your house' date=' and discovered the front door was is kicked in'; you're TV was gone; all your jewelry is missing; and yet things like pot's and pans were left behind--things of not much value.

From these clues, we can determine that your house was robbed by some one, or some people.

 

It's the same with ID. From looking at just how organized things like our DNA structure is, and our eco-systems, how cyclical the rotation of our earth and the planets are, these things point to the fact that perhaps these things were planned and then set in motion.

 

Now with the house example, sure--perhaps some freakish earthquake could've shook the valuable somewhere else; and perhaps by accident, the rest of the house was unaffected by it. But no one who comes home to this would think it was just an "accident". The clues would justify that some intelligent being orchestrated this.

 

See, ID does not first assume that there is a God, then try to prove it.

 

Rather, by reason of all the scientific clues, such as our incredibly complex brain, ID leads us to conclude that there must be a God.

 

The same way we knew Pluto was out there because of Neptunes wierd orbit.

 

ID stands up to logic, and there's [i']millions of things that prove it. After all, there are millions of species, of which are complex and organized.

 

Evolution can barely cough up one transitional form.

 

ID stands up no no logic whatsoever, nor does it have anything to support it other than Ad Verecundiam arguments such as the one you just presented.

 

The ID arugments are WORSE THAN those used to "prove" the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe. At the very least, the latter provided legitimate replicatable evidence (that of sitting in your back yard, watching everything revolve around you in the sky).

 

ID has NOTHING to support it. The funniest thing that you guys claim is that current structures are "too complex" to have evolved. By Chaos theory, nothing is "too complex" to evolve, and an entire human could suddenly be spontaneously generated next to you. At the very most, you could claim that you believe that such structures are UNLIKELY to have evolved, not that they COULD NOT have evolved.

[AzurePhoenix]

well, it's not p'shawed[/i'], just anylized. And if flaws with the evidence given arises, it's not "gouging our eyes out" if we discuss these flaws. That's just being scientific.

The flaws you discuss are often based upon false assumptions. For instance in your first post, you brought up Lucy and Neanderthals, making ridiculously false claims. From your behavior, I can only assume you actually believed that drivvle. Right there, you see, we have blatant eye gouging. And yet, you still maintain a smug arrogance mingled with utter ignorance of the subject you're attempting to argue.

[zyncod]

But if no one can, than hopefully we can just be adult and admit that this is a hack theory.

 

Right! This is "grown-up" time! It's time to stop playing around with evolution and fossils and radiometric dating and start getting to the real issues, like how an omnipotent being made us some undeterminate time ago for some undeterminate reason......

 

Sooooo - what do we do now? I mean, "science" is apparently for kids. Ooohh! I know! Let's all convert to Christianity and start getting those calluses on our knees.

 

Look, I would expect a little bit of abuse if I went on Hyperradicalhomophobicevangelists.com and started talking about how everybody's mom used to be some hairy gorilla. If you go to Scienceforums.net and start spouting the equivalent of "Pink marshmallow fairies built the Great Wall of China," you've gotta expect some abuse too.

[ydoaPs]

Read the "Intelligent" Design thread. At the end' date=' Mokele lists all the transitionals between lobe-finned fish and humans.[/quote']it wasn't even all of them.

[Hellbender]

it wasn't even all of them.

Oh yeah, and the list was still pretty long.

[Dave]

Look, I would expect a little bit of abuse if I went on Hyperradicalhomophobicevangelists.com and started talking about how everybody's mom used to be some hairy gorilla. If you go to Science[/u']forums.net and start spouting the equivalent of "Pink marshmallow fairies built the Great Wall of China," you've gotta expect some abuse too.

 

This just about sums up my feelings on the thread.

 

I'd also ask for a bit of calm, please. There's absolutely no need for personal insults on these forums. I know that some people may find the subject rather infuriating (I know I do), but that's no reason to fire off at someone.

 

Thanks.

[shinbits]

With ID' date=' you just assume there's a God, and that's that.[/quote']

I thought I explained it well enough.

 

ID doesn't assume anything. Just like in a court of law, you are not assumed guilty. Rather, the court says, "We think you're guilty. Here's the proof."

ID never assumes there's a God. It proves it. How does it do it? Scroll up and read my post before this.

 

 

Archaeopteryx - half reptile, half bird

*sigh*....okay. I meant transitional forms that weren't lies like Archaeopteryx.

 

I have a question for you evolutionists. *chews gum*

How many Piltdown Mans and Nebraska Mans are you guys going conjure to up?

*shakes head*

 

I'm gonna go get something to eat.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

1. Fix your link.

2. Respond to arguments without strawmanning.

3. Read the evidence we give you.

4. Read this.

5. For your sources, find a credible site, not one dedicated to destroying evolution. We tend to trust impartial sites more. Although sites that give plenty of evidence and links to OTHER SOURCES may help.

6. Read through threads in the Evolution forum and get a bit of education.

7. Shut up about the Piltdown Man and all that crap.

Yes and it was proven to be just that 50 years ago. It is no longer considered anything but an embarassing moment in bioanthropology textbooks. I might add it was also revealed by other scientists, which is a good example of how science works. Scientists are human; they make mistakes, get excited and leap to conclusions just like anyone else. But they will usually admit they are wrong and everyone moves on.

 

 

Thank you.

[Mokele]

Something I've been noticing is that when the heat is put on evolution, people seem to start to attack ID. But that's only a cop out when evolution starts to be revealed as something faulty.

 

Wrong. ID is attacked because they're the only people intellectually dishonest enough to claim evolution doesn't occur.

 

Frankly, we're hostile because we're sick of you. We've refuted everything you've said, I can bet we've refuted in other posts everything you *will* say.

 

Wake up and smell the evidence, kid.

 

Let's not stray too far from the thread topic. I want to see if anyone can make the theory of evolution stand on it's own merit.

 

Go to your university library and check out a journal called Evolution. You'll get all the evidence you can stand in any one issue, with ample data analysis.

 

See, *REAL* science is conducted in peer-review journals. In those, you can find things like, say, direct observations of speciation (more common than you think).

 

Notice how he neglected to answer that.

 

Oh, yes, I've noticed how he completely ignored every substantial answer he was given.

 

well, it's not p'shawed, just anylized. And if flaws with the evidence given arises, it's not "gouging our eyes out" if we discuss these flaws. That's just being scientific.

 

No, scientific would be actually researching to see if these flaws are real, rather than just figments of the Discovery Institute's imagination. You'd find that none of them are.

 

There *are* unanswered questions in evolution, but these are obscure and only discussed in technical journals. Most deal with things like the imporance of non-disjunction as a speciation mechanism, or the long-term consequences of Mullerian mimicry. Furthermore, that we don't know these answers does *not* mean that evolution is flawed or wrong, only that our understanding is incomplete. Any new theory *must* account for new data, and so anything replacing evolution would simply be "evolution 2.0", as it would have to account for all existing data which supports evolution.

 

Any form whatsoever would satisfy me. But let's say for example you find

one transitional form. It wouldn't prove evolution, because you'd have to have at hundreds of forms, and from different types of animals from humans to cats to bears to whatever. After all: they was "billions" of years for this to happen.

But I'll make it easy for you. Post one. Anyone.

 

I repeat: google "Fossil whales"

 

There you will find a dozen transitional species, such as Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, and others I can't recall.

 

Also, look up "fossil horses". There's another dozen, easy.

 

Do your own damn research, kid.

 

It's the same with ID. From looking at just how organized things like our DNA structure is, and our eco-systems, how cyclical the rotation of our earth and the planets are, these things point to the fact that perhaps these things were planned and then set in motion.

 

No, it doesn't. Dembski's filter is hogwash, and "arguments from design" have been around since darwin first published in 1859. They failed then, have continually failed since, and fail now.

 

How about crystals? They look complex and nifty, surely they're designed? Wrong. See how stupid your arguement is?

 

Evolution can barely cough up one transitional form.

 

Bullshit. Search this site for "Transitional forms" and you'll find a post I made to someone else about this, listing over 40 just between fish and humans.

 

Go find it, or can't you be bothered to actually educate yourself?

 

ID never assumes there's a God. It proves it. How does it do it? Scroll up and read my post before this.

 

BUllshit. Pull your head out of your ass and look at the evidence, kid.

 

*sigh*....okay. I meant transitional forms that weren't lies like Archaeopteryx.

 

Except the garbage about it being a forgery is just that, garbage.

 

But creationists are too stupid to know a fossil when they see one, so you wouldn't know, would you, kid?

 

I have a question for you evolutionists. *chews gum*

How many Piltdown Mans and Nebraska Mans are you guys going conjure to up?

*shakes head*

 

Notice that *science* eventually detected both fakes. They may have been fakes, but they *were* caught, and stand as examples of the self-correcting nature of science.

 

----------

 

 

Go read a damn book, kid. You just might learn something.

 

Mokele

[Hellbender]

*sigh*....okay. I meant transitional forms that weren't lies like Archaeopteryx.

*SIGH* why do I get the feeling that you will dismiss every transitional we provide as a hoax? Thank you for proving me right, btw, see the bottom of post #52.

I have a question for you evolutionists. *chews gum*

How many Piltdown Mans and Nebraska Mans are you guys going conjure to up?

*shakes head*

Read my quote, posted by capn' above. I have a question for creationists: how many years is it going to be before you stop using long-defrauded hoaxes like these to attack evolution? You do know that they are no longer considered examples of human ancestors in bioanthropology textbooks, and haven't been for over 50 years, right?

[AzurePhoenix]

*sigh*....okay. I meant transitional forms that weren't lies like Archaeopteryx.

Congrats. You just moved up from gouging your eyes out to blowing your whole damn head off with a shotgun. I commend you for your ability to remain so delusional without going off on a schizophrenic tangent.

[swansont]

I thought I explained it well enough.

 

ID doesn't assume anything. Just like in a court of law' date=' you are not assumed guilty. Rather, the court says, "We think you're guilty. Here's the proof."

ID never assumes there's a God. It proves it. How does it do it? Scroll up and read my post before this.

[/quote']

 

 

Argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy, though, so the "proof" is invalid. You can't prove a negative.

 

It's basically "I can't think of a way that this could have happened, and I'm not particularly motivated to find out, so God did it."

[swansont]

I repeat: google "Fossil whales"

 

There you will find a dozen transitional species' date=' such as Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, and others I can't recall.

[/quote']

 

 

Indocetus, Basilosaurus, Rodhocetus

[bascule]

Read my quote, posted by capn' above. I have a question for creationists: how many years is it going to be before you stop using long-defrauded hoaxes like these to attack evolution? You do know that they are no longer considered examples of human ancestors in bioanthropology textbooks, and haven't been for over 50 years, right?

 

If science was wrong about one thing, then it's wrong about everything!

[The Peon]

I thought I explained it well enough.

 

ID doesn't assume anything. Just like in a court of law' date=' you are not assumed guilty. Rather, the court says, "We think you're guilty. Here's the proof."

ID never assumes there's a God. It proves it. How does it do it? Scroll up and read my post before this.

 

 

 

*sigh*....okay. I meant transitional forms that weren't lies like Archaeopteryx.

 

I have a question for you evolutionists. *chews gum*

How many Piltdown Mans and Nebraska Mans are you guys going conjure to up?

*shakes head*

 

I'm gonna go get something to eat.

 

 

Yes. We are all out to get you and lie to you. None of us care to know why, and none care about truth.

 

I think you are here debating with us because you yourself are confused. You WANT to believe in evolution but at the same time you cannot abandon your imaginary friend.

[Mokele]

Indocetus, Basilosaurus, Rodhocetus

 

Yes, that's them, thanks!

 

If science was wrong about one thing, then it's wrong about everything!

 

So if ID is right, I can build a perpetual motion machine?

 

----------------------

 

Ok, shinbits, let's see how well ID can answer a simple question: Why do whales have rear leg bones?

 

Or how about why horses have remanants of additional toes?

 

In both of the above cases, mutant animals have been found which reverted (partially) to the primitive state: whales with stumpy but external rear legs, horses with 3 toes (though they don't reach the ground).

 

Or how about why boas retain internal, skeletal vestiges of their back legs?

 

Evolution provides a simple, logical, and testable explanation for these, while all ID can do is unscientificly say "god did it" and offer no testable hypotheses. Yes, evolution is testable. Let's hear about one such test.

 

It's now thought by all biologists that birds evolved from dinosaurs. And we have copious fossil evidence. But can we test it? Yes! Some years ago, and ingenious embryologist devised a way to do so. He noticed that birds lack tissues over their beaks during the key embryological stage at which teeth develop. He figured that maybe the reason modern birds lack teeth is that some trigger located on the epithelium would cause tooth growth, and if he grafted tissue of a mouse onto the jays of an embryonic chick, it's grow teeth. He tested his hypothesis (you know, what *real* science does), and found several teeth, all of which were conical and suspiciously similar to the teeth of theropod dinosaurs.

 

ID has yet to generate a single testable hypothesis, and is therefore psuedoscience.

 

Mokele

[LucidDreamer]

I. Do you believe in the theory of evolution?

 

--Yes.

 

I. Do you think man evolved from apes?

 

--Yes (the classification of things might make that statement a little iffy, but I get what you are asking.)

 

I. Why?

 

--Well, all the evidence that says so.

 

I. What kind of evidence?

 

–Well Mr. Interviewer, there is a staggering amount, but to start you out lets take a look one of my favorite sites on evolution. Talkorigins.org has an excellent list of evidence for macroevolution, which would include the evolution of man.

 

1. Anatomical parahomology

2. Molecular parahomology

3. Anatomical convergence

4. Molecular convergence

5. Anatomical suboptimal function

6. Molecular suboptimal function

7. Unity of life

8. Nested hierarchies

9. Convergence of independent phylogenies

1. Statistics of incongruent phylogenies

10. Transitional forms

1. Reptile-birds

2. Reptile-mammals

3. Ape-humans

4. Legged whales

5. Legged seacows

11. Chronology of common ancestors

12. Protein functional redundancy

13. DNA functional redundancy

14. Transposons

15. Redundant pseudogenes

16. Endogenous retroviruses

17. Anatomical vestiges

18. Atavisms

1. Whales with hindlimbs

2. Humans tails

19. Molecular vestiges

20. Ontogeny and developmental biology

1. Mammalian ear bones, reptilian jaws

2. Pharyngeal pouches, branchial arches

3. Snake embryos with legs

4. Embryonic human tail

5. Marsupial eggshell and caruncle

21. Present biogeography

22. Past biogeography

1. Marsupials

2. Horses

3. Apes and humans

Part 5. Change

23. Genetic

24. Morphological

25. Functional

26. The strange past

27. Stages of speciation

28. Speciation events

29. Morphological rates

30. Genetic rates

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

 

I. You're right, there are similarities. Does this prove we came from apes?

 

--Well, I gave you a much larger list than just physical similarities, so I would consider that question a form of strawman. However, physical similarity is one method of determining the relationship between two animals. Evolution is a slow process that often builds or reconstructs new physical features from old ones. Two animals that display common anatomical features are more likely to be related than if they don’t share features, but morphology is only one of the many tools that biologist use to make classifications and determine evolutionary relationship. Some of the other methods can be found in that large list above.

 

I. Are robins and eagles similar?

 

--I guess you could say that.

 

I. Does this prove eagles evolved from robins?

 

--Hmm, it seems odd to me that an interviewer is asking me leading questions as if he were poorly constructing a flawed Aristotelian argument instead of giving an interview, but I’ll play along.

 

No. First of all, I have already told you that morphology is only one method used in determining evolutionary relationship. Second, the similarity between an eagle and a robin is relative. An eagle may look a whole lot like a robin compared to an octopus, but among birds there isn’t a lot of similarity. Third, when a biologist looks at two creature’s physical traits for classification he does extensive research on a hundreds of physical features, such as bone size, bone shape, bone density, ligand sizes, number of ligands, beak size, beak shape, color of beak, organ sizes, etc (the list could go on forever). It’s not as if a biologist visited his cousin Jethro on the farm one day and looked up and said, “Hey, them bird things look alike; they must be related.”

 

I. Have you ever seen the old fighter planes flown in WWII ?

 

--Yes.

 

I. Have you ever seen the fighter planes of today?

 

--Yes.

 

I. Are they similar?

 

--Depends on what you definition of similarity. Again, that word is relative. A WWII fighter plane looks more like an F-15 than a toaster.

 

I. Does this prove F-15's came from the old WWII planes.

 

--Hmm, what exactly does “came from” mean? The technology used to build WWII planes provided a lot of the information used to build modern planes, such as the F-15.

 

I. Then why are they so similar? They both have wings and a tail. Right?

 

--Yeah, that’s two similarities between two airplanes.

 

I. Could it be that the designer used the same law of aerodynamics to build the similar planes?

 

--I would hope so.

 

I. So the similarities could just be that they just have a similar blue print?

 

--That’s a very simplistic view of things, but I could agree to that. However there is a great deal more evidence for evolution, including the evolution of man?

 

I. What evidence is there?

 

--Hmm, it seems you have a bad memory. Please refer to the list I gave above.

 

 

--Well....There's Lucy that was found, and Neanderthal Man.

 

I. Lucy was later found to be just a three foot tall chimp. Neanderthal Man was the skull of an old man who suffered from arthritis.

 

--That’s very interesting Mr. Interviewer, but I thought I was the one who was suppose to be answering the questions. However, since it’s make believe sharing time I want to make sure you know that Tyrannosaurus Rex wasn’t really a large meat-eating dinosaur; it was just an iguana exposed to incredible amounts of radioactive llama poo. Diplodocus wasn’t really a large sauropod, but a large breed of dog with elephantitis of the tail.

 

Lucy was a name given to an Australopithecus that had a great deal of anatomical differences from humans or chimpanzees. Biologists who studied the fossils are quite convinced of this. There have been dozens of Neanderthal bones found and they too have a great deal of anatomical differences to Homo sapiens. Apparently that arthritic man’s skull was enormous, broken up into a thousand pieces, spread throughout Europe, and some of the pieces even look like other skulls, femurs, kneecaps, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

31.

I. In fact, some were delibrate hoaxes made to prove evolution, like Nebraska man, who had an entire skeleton constructed by people who found a tooth of an extinct pig. Why do you think evolutionists would do that?

 

--Because it’s an enormous evil conspiracy orchestrated by Satan. You know too much. I have been commanded to kill you. It won’t be a pleasant death either. You’re to be tied down with your eyes pinned open while you watch hours of teletubby and Barnie videos until you gnaw your own limbs off to escape.

 

I. Let's get back to topic. Can you give any examples of transitional forms?

 

--Here: Transitional forms

1. Reptile-birds

2. Reptile-mammals

3. Ape-humans

4. Legged whales

5. Legged seacows

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates

 

" The following are fossil transitions between species and genera:

6. Human ancestry. There are many fossils of human ancestors, and the differences between species are so gradual that it is not always clear where to draw the lines between them.

7. The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior (Stanley 1974).

8. A gradual transitional fossil sequence connects the foraminifera Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (Pearson et al. 1997). O. universa, the later fossil, features a spherical test surrounding a "Globigerinoides-like" shell, showing that a feature was added, not lost. The evidence is seen in all major tropical ocean basins. Several intermediate morphospecies connect the two species, as may be seen in the figure included in Lindsay (1997).

9. The fossil record shows transitions between species of Phacops (a trilobite; Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil; Eldredge 1972; 1974; Strapple 1978).

10. Planktonic forminifera (Malmgren et al. 1984). This is an example of punctuated gradualism. A ten-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.

11. Fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia are very common (they are mined as diatomaceous earth), and they show a continuous record of almost two million years which includes a record of a speciation event (Miller 1999, 44-45).

12. Lake Turkana mollusc species (Lewin 1981).

13. Cenozoic marine ostracodes (Cronin 1985).

14. The Eocene primate genus Cantius (Gingerich 1976, 1980, 1983).

15. Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change (Pojeta and Springer 2001; Ward and Blackwelder 1975).

16. Gryphaea (coiled oysters) become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic (Hallam 1968).

 

The following are fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:

17. Human ancestry. Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking (Richmond and Strait 2000).

18. Dinosaur-bird transitions.

19. Haasiophis terrasanctus is a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs. Although other limbless snakes might be more ancestral, this fossil shows a relationship of snakes with limbed ancestors (Tchernov et al. 2000). Pachyrhachis is another snake with legs that is related to Haasiophis (Caldwell and Lee 1997).

20. The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but unlike snakes, they do not have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards (Caldwell and Lee 1997; Lee et al. 1999; Tchernov et al. 2000).

21. Transitions between mesonychids and whales.

22. Transitions between fish and tetrapods.

23. Transitions from condylarths (a kind of land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees. In particular, Pezosiren portelli is clearly a sirenian, but its hind limbs and pelvis are unreduced (Domning 2001a, 2001b).

 

The following are fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:

24. The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features that connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement that is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusk's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusk's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive mollusks, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia (Conway Morris 1998, 185-195).

25. Cambrian and Precambrain fossils Anomalocaris and Opabinia are transitional between arthropods and lobopods.

26. An ancestral echinoderm has been found that is intermediate between modern echinoderms and other deuterostomes (Shu et al. 2004)."

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

 

 

I. Yes.

 

--Yes, what? Why are you covering your ears and saying ”nany nany booboo?”

 

I. Like?

 

--You know that really was childish of you.

 

I. Really? You can't name one? But wouldn't you be able to end this debate by just providing one? After all, there'd be nothing evolution oposers could say.

And there are millions of species of animals to chose from. You can't name just one transitional form out of them?

 

---Actually, I have given many examples of transitional fossils to creationists, but they always make give some pathetic rationalization. In the case of hominids every example is just a really strange chimp, a man with a disease, or and extinct ape that looked kind of like a man. The transitional fossils leading to whales are just whale-like creatures that had legs. How is it possible to show a creationist a transitional fossil if they already have their mind made up that it can’t possibly be a transitional fossil because no such thing exists? Every fossil that has anatomical characteristics of both ancient and modern animals becomes just another extinct animal or a diseased modern animal. There is no possible transitional fossil that can exist to satisfy a creationist.

 

There is a field with several layers of strata containing progressive levels of foot bones, starting with three toes and ending with the full-blown hooves of modern horses. However, creationists claim that those bones only represent several kinds of horse-like animals that have gone extinct. Apparently sometime within the last ten thousand years there were dozens of horse-like animals all hanging out together in the same field. Perhaps they had a good view of the 3 foot chimp, the Arthritic old man, and the whale-like creature with legs before the flood came and wiped them away.

 

--Well, some viruses evolve to adapt and become more suitable to their environment---like some evolve resistance to certain medicines.

 

I. That would be micro-evolution.

 

---I’m not sure how one would go about defining an exact distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution when there is no known method to create a barrier between to two.

 

I. Micro-evolution is a true fact. But it doesn't change into another kind of virus. It's just a different type of the same virus. Cold viruses don't evolve into HIV viruses, do they?

 

---No, but the primate virus SIV has evolved into many kinds of viruses, including HIV.

 

I. Because that would be macro-evolution, which is changing into a different species altogether. Like apes to humans. There are examples of micro-evolution. Can you, since you're an evolutionist, give an example of a fossil found in the process of macro-evolution?

 

--You seem to talk a lot about your beliefs for an interviewer that is suppose to be unbiased in his reporting. Haven’t I already given you several examples of transitional fossils?

 

I. Okay. Well, how did it all begin?

 

--The Big Bang.

 

What caused the Big Bang?

 

--I don't know. Some scientists say from some really dense matter or energy that just exploded. The big Bang does not attempt to explain why or who was involved, however.

 

I. Do you think that life came out of the water?

 

--Yes

 

I. So when the first life forms came out of the sea, did they have lungs or gills?

 

--They had scuba gear and used the Malibu Barbie convertible to cruise around looking for chicks and drive in movie theatres.

 

They obviously evolved the capacity to exist both in the water and on land. There are many examples of fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals that live partly in the water and on land and have evolved the ability to deal with both kinds of environments. Some have gills, some have lungs, some have one and then the other, and some have both. I would say that the first creatures to start exploring land had gills and lungs at the same time and their lungs became more and more efficient through time and evolution.

 

I. So when this creature came out of the sea, why didn't it die the way other creatures with gills do when they're out of water?

 

--Some modern creatures obviously don’t die when they come out of the water because they have evolved the capacity to survive on land as well as the water. The first creatures didn’t just decide one day that they would rather be land creatures so they could visit Taco Bell and then permanently move the whole family onto dry land. They were obviously like many of the beach creatures today who spend some time in the water and some time on land. These creatures gradually started to spend more time on land over time. There was a bounty of plant material and insects on the land plus they could get away from their predators, so there were great advantages and selective pressure for the alleles that allowed these creatures to stay on land for greater periods of time.

 

I. What caused it to become amphibious?

 

--Went over this one already.

 

I. Well, when this creature first came on land, was it male or female?

 

--Neither. It sang high-pitched songs and grabbed its crotch. It had unhealthy love for children and gave them Jesus juice. It called itself Michael Jackson.

 

It wasn’t one individual creature that came onto land. It was one type of creature that obviously had two sexes, that gradually started spending more time on land over many generations and characteristics that allowed this creature to spend more time on land were selected over these many generations.

 

I. What made it become two sexes?

 

--The doctors, but only after many operations and hormone pills.

 

I. Okay. Well let me wrap this up. Do you, as an evolutionist, believe that everything in the universe, from our ecosystem, full of millions of types of animals that have existed for thousands of years, without chaos, full of order and structure---

And this solar system with these gigantic masses called planets, that never crash into each other--- all came about by chance?

 

---No. The processes that govern all of these events are controlled by natural forces that exert predictable change and therefore are not random.

 

I. That's true. Tell me, do you believe, that our planet will crash into the sun?

 

---It's possible this could happen along time from now.

 

I. But not in our life time.

 

--Well, no.

 

I. What's keeping the planet from crashing into the sun now? Or what's keeping the planets from coliding? Right now as we speak, our galaxy is traveling along at 60,000 miles an hour, surrounded by hundreds of other galaxies. What's keeping our galaxy, which is surrounded by all these other galaxies with these unfathomably huge gravitational fields from crashing into one of them?

 

--Silly putty.

Galaxies sometimes do collide but most don’t because there is a lot of space between them and planets are involved in this strange phenomena called orbitals.

 

I. Are we just lucky?

 

--Depends, who are we talking about? I know I have been loosing a lot of money playing poker lately and I feel very unlucky.

 

Luck is a man-made concept that is relative, making that question hard to answer.

[Skye]

3)What qualifies as a transitional form?[/u'] What a question. Any animal halfway or partway to becoming another.

Ok, this appears to apply to all organisms. So what isn't a transitional form?

[AzurePhoenix]

Would something that went extinct before it could produce any ancestors count? Like a dodo? Or a Tyrannosaurus rex?

[Skye]

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted.

[Hellbender]

Would something that went extinct before it could produce any ancestors count? Like a dodo? Or a Tyrannosaurus rex?

When creationists obsess over "transitionals" they are talking about organisms that straddle the line between 2 major types of animals. You are right, however when you say everything is transitional.

[Hellbender]

Anyhow, lets settle this "where are the transitionals?" garbage once and for all:

 

whale evolution:

http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/

 

equine evolution: (with pictures!)

http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

 

Hominid Evolution:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html

(notice piltdown and nebraska man aren't mentioned. You are not onto us when you continually mention them, no one has considered them evidence for a while.)

 

Talk.Origins Transitional Fossil FAQ:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html

 

Info on the Piltdown Hoax:

http://skepdic.com/piltdown.html

 

Info on "Nebraska Man":

http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Nebraska_man_was_a_hoax

 

Shinbits: I strongly suggest that you click on these links and actually read and try to understand them before posting again. I hope this clears everything up for you.

 

edit: if any of these links don't work, tell me. I don't know how to "fix links" but I could post different ones.