New Creationist Ploy: Skepticism, Demanding Evidence

[Philpwnsyou]

Re: New Creationist Ploy: Skepticism, Demanding Evidence

You act like fossils are all over the place, all completely intact, willing to be found.

Most fossils are embedded within ridiculous amounts of rock, and are often just single bones, and only occur if conditions are absolutely perfect.

Taking that into consideration, there are still quite a few examples of animals whose skeletons are completely preserved (Clay pits, Quick sand etc). In every instance, there is a distinct animal. Which is either extinct, or it can be matched to a current animal on the discovery channel.

No land walking whales or anything along those lines.

It's Common Sense.

[devonin]

Re: New Creationist Ploy: Skepticism, Demanding Evidence

Of course there is a distinct animal. What are you expecting, the full body of a whale that in one generation was born with four full legs capable of supoprting its weight so it went up on land and ran around for a few years?

You seem to have this idea in your head that "evolution" means that in one fell swoop and entire species is just completely replaced with some new and improved species. This is not how evolution works.

We're looking at thousands of generations, where minute changes allow small percentages of very large populations to perform slightly better than others, reproducing a slightly above average amount of time, with others who possessed that slightly advantageous trait.

[Relambrien]

Re: New Creationist Ploy: Skepticism, Demanding Evidence

Philpwnsyou, it appears you're misunderstanding some of the arguments. Let me see if I can explain it any better.

Fossils of -any- kind are -extremely- rare. Even just a part of a bone is very very difficult to find. Fossils intact and complete enough to be able to create a picture of a transitional stage are even rarer. Thus, conjectures must be made.

The transitional whale species were developed in such a way as to explain the gaps between the land mammal, of which we have found fossils, and today's whale. Of course, those transitional species didn't just pop out of someone's head without any evidence; as it turns out, we -have- found evidence of ancient whales that have legs, in a spectacularly rare fossil-rich area called the Valley of the Whales in Egypt (http://www.teachersdomain.org/resour...ens/index.html).

Most ideas pertaining to ancient species tend to develop from scant bits of information that we've found, aided by a logical process to fill in the gaps.

As has already been said, the reason this information is scant is because of the conditions under which fossils can be found and utilized. First, in order for a fossil to be created -at all-, there is an exact set of conditions that must be met. This already means that it's very unlikely for any given organism to leave behind a fossil. Add to that millions of years of weather effects (which could damage or move the fossil), and natural degradation due to the passage of time, and you can see how unbelievably unlikely it is to find a fossil.

Wikipedia goes into a bit more depth as to why fossils of transitional species are exceptionally rare:

Fossilization is an exceptionally rare occurrence, because most components of formerly-living things tend to decompose relatively quickly following death. In order for an organism to be fossilized, the remains normally need to be covered by sediment as soon as possible. However there are exceptions to this, such as if an organism becomes frozen, desiccated, or comes to rest in an anoxic (oxygen-free) environment. There are several different types of fossils and fossilization processes.

Due to the combined effect of taphonomic processes and simple mathematical chance, fossilization tends to favor organisms with hard body parts, those that were widespread, and those that lived for a long time. On the other hand, it is very unusual to find fossils of small, soft bodied, geographically restricted and geologically ephemeral organisms, because of their relative rarity and low likelihood of preservation.

Larger specimens (macrofossils) are more often observed, dug up and displayed, although microscopic remains (microfossils) are actually far more common in the fossil record.

Some casual observers have been perplexed by the rarity of transitional species within the fossil record. The conventional explanation for this rarity was given by Darwin, who stated that "the extreme imperfection of the geological record," combined with the short duration and narrow geographical range of transitional species, made it unlikely that many such fossils would be found. Simply put, the conditions under which fossilization takes place are quite rare; and it is highly unlikely that any given organism will leave behind a fossil. Eldredge and Gould developed their theory of punctuated equilibrium in part to explain the pattern of stasis and sudden appearance in the fossil record.

Since transitional species lived only for a short time in relation to others, the already extremely low chance of finding a fossil is lowered even further.

There's probably more to talk about, but I've lost my train of thought so I'll let others handle it for now, until I remember or have something new to bring to the table.

[Philpwnsyou]

Re: New Creationist Ploy: Skepticism, Demanding Evidence

Of course there is a distinct animal. What are you expecting, the full body of a whale that in one generation was born with four full legs capable of supoprting its weight so it went up on land and ran around for a few years?

You seem to have this idea in your head that "evolution" means that in one fell swoop and entire species is just completely replaced with some new and improved species. This is not how evolution works.

We're looking at thousands of generations, where minute changes allow small percentages of very large populations to perform slightly better than others, reproducing a slightly above average amount of time, with others who possessed that slightly advantageous trait.

In regards to your particular example, it has often been said that at least the horse is a classic example of evolution found in the fossil record. As The World Book Encyclopedia states: “Horses are among the best-documented examples of evolutionary development.” Illustrations of this begin with a very small animal and end with the large horse of today. But does the fossil evidence really support this?

The Encyclopędia Britannica comments: “The evolution of the horse was never in a straight line.” In other words, nowhere does the fossil evidence show a gradual development from the small animal to the large horse. Evolutionist Hitching says of this foremost evolutionary model: “Once portrayed as simple and direct, it is now so complicated that accepting one version rather than another is more a matter of faith than rational choice. Eohippus (Hyracotherium), supposedly the earliest horse, and said by experts to be long extinct and known to us only through fossils, may in fact be alive and well and not a horse at all—a shy, fox-sized animal called a daman that darts about in the African bush.”

Placing little Eohippus as the ancestor of the horse strains the imagination, especially in view of what The New Evolutionary Timetable says: “It was widely assumed that [Eohippus] had slowly but persistently turned into a more fully equine animal.” But do the facts support this assumption? “The fossil species of [Eohippus] show little evidence of evolutionary modification,” answers the book. It thus concedes, regarding the fossil record: “It fails to document the full history of the horse family.”

So, some scientists now say that little Eohippus never was a type of horse or an ancestor of one. And each type of fossil put into the horse line showed remarkable stability, with no transitional forms between it and others that were thought to be evolutionary ancestors. Nor should it be surprising that there are fossils of horses of different sizes and shapes. Even today, horses vary from very small ponies to large plow horses. All are varieties within the horse family.

[Reach]

Re: New Creationist Ploy: Skepticism, Demanding Evidence

I've read about how millions of years have passed and we only see a small fragment of fossil record, however, if this has been going on for such a long time, shouldn't we able to find at least one?

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

And the rest of your argument is peppered with so many holes I won't even bother. D: