Evolution!!!

sure, why not

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's an evolved dinosaur. Quack.

Is that a trick question?

I don't believe in Evolution. I also don't believe in Gravity.

I didn't realize it was a matter of 'belief.' Science doesn't deal in 'beliefs.' Whether you like it or not, evolution is a fact, not some mystic belief system.

what all the above said.

And I will even go so far as to state that the world is unlikely to be flat.

of course not silly ...
I'm not brain washed

Yes.
I also know this blind guy that found a marked grain of sand in the Sahara desert THREE times in a row(which is a calculation of the likelihood of even one protein molecule - roughly 100 amino acids in a specific sequence - being formed naturally)!
Oh! And I don't think Karl Benz invented the first car, that's preposterous. He found the car in an old stack of car parts. It had been put together by natural forces over millons of years.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but does it get the point across? You would never say that a car assembled itself in such a way, why would you say such a thing about a living organism? Also, someone please explain to me the Cambrian explosion, something like 30 million years during which most of the categories of animals and creatures that we know of appeared. Mind you, on the scale of evolution, 30 million years is no time at all. Additionally in the fossils that we have from the Cambrian explosion, there are no intermediate stages of creatures. There aren't missing links, there's a missing chain.
There is an important distinction to be made here between microevolution and macroevolution.

Microevolution is a fox adapting to a new environment, say a snowy one. As it lives there longer its fur becomes white to allow it to blend in better, thus giving it a better chance of survival.
Macroevolution is from the goo to you, via the zoo. It takes hundreds of millions of years of gradual change and intermediate stages for which there is no evidence in the fossil records.
Another issue I see is that the 'intermediate stages' would have little chance of surviving. Take the bird for example. It supposedly came from reptiles. What good would a lizard with 1/2 wings be? The wings would not be able to function and the lizard would be unable to climb and move as lizards are supposed to because it doesn't have front legs. It has 1/2 formed wings. This creature would not be able to get its own food, nor would it be able to escape a predator.

Regarding your incredulity about the CAmbrian Explosion. You seem to pooh pooh thirty MILIION years as a time period in wjich (according to you) you dont see how organisms could have evolved hard shells and exoskeletal features. Even if you were right, does 30 million years seem to mean that a god "created " something by taking 30 million years to do it?

ANYWAY, the concept of a "CAmbrian Explosion" ( a term introduced by Gould and picked up as some kind of refutation of evolution and underpinning of "Creation").

I am herein quoting myself from a recent post on another thread, so I dont apologize for the typos, thats just me, live with it.


As far as "Intermmediate stages" Weve discussed the overabundance of "intermeidate fossils" in the sedimenatary record. EVery single phyla has evidence of "intermediates " and many ORDERS also show intermeidates or "foundational" fossils. To remain ignarant, and defiantly so, is not my fight. You are free to post whatever gibberish you wish. I am also free to present actual evidence from scientific literature that shows that you are full of wet cement.

The witless attempts at metaphor, such as substituting Benz's car assembling itself for the popular 747 being assembled by a tornado in a junk yard (undoubtedly thinking him- or herself clever for the attempt to disguise that sad old whore), reveal how truly credulous people are who cannot understand the magnitude of opportunity. If proteins can assemble themselves in minutes (as we know that they can, as any high school chemistry lab is equipped to demonstrate), and one is dealing with billions of years--how can virtually every permutation of organic chemistry not have shown up, millions upon millions of times. Religious people apparently have no active imaginations, because they've been fed intellectual pap all their lives, as opposed to learning how to think for themselves and developing a sense of proportion.

What sources of information do you consider valid for getting information on evolution?

I would be happy if he returned and underpinned his beliefs. but why am I doubting that he will not show up?

Thats another habit of the style, they post and run.

Firstly, yes. Thirty million years is not very long on the geologic time-scale as you yourself point out when you assert it took hundreds of millions of years to form the complexity we now see. My argument for the cambrian explosion is well-founded in the fossil record, which, before even being aware of the cambrian explosion, Darwin himself admitted was a large problem in his theory. He assumed that as time went on, the fossil record would fill itself in. I repeat my argument that it has not. That all major animal groups appear at the same time, fully formed. I will concede that there were shells and basic fossils before, but none of them with anything close to the complexity seen during the Cambrian period - which IS when the Cambrian Explosion took place. That is, if you are willing to accept archaeology as a valid field of study.
I will also repeat that the intermediate stages, with the characteristics that are necessary to make them intermediate stages, would stand virtually no chance of surviving. The idea of macroevolution is that each species becomes adapted to its method of survival and that only the strongest survive(natural selection, which is itself a misnomer as the 'natural' which means without intelligent interference precludes any kind of selection or choice). This principal is the very downfall of the intermediate stages. The intermediate stages lack all the abilities of either creature that they are related to. So again, a lizard to a bird. What good would non-functional wings be to a lizard? None. It would only destroy the lizard's chance of surviving because it can no longer function as a lizard and cannot yet function as a bird.
Another problem is that macroevolution must be directional. If it were not, the lizard may get half way to being a bird and then instead, start going to go back to being a fish.

Additionally, my beliefs on this topic are slave to my belief - well founded in science and logic - that the universe was created, though that's in another thread if you care to see it.

It is important to note that - as far as I am aware - there is nothing published in any reputable scientific journals or books supporting the natural systems by which macroevolution would take place. If there are any, then please post a link or something.

Michael Denton writes "at a molecular level there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. So amphibia, always traditionally considered intermediate between fish and other terrestrial vertebrates, are in molecular terms as far from fish as any group of reptiles or mammals! To those well acquainted with the traditional picture of vertebrate evolution the result is truly astonishing."

You may say 'so what?' to the argument of the dissimilarity on the molecular level, but if evolution were true, the molecular level should clearly show genetic similarities between these stages.
Additionally, fossils cannot establish an ancestral relationship. Michael Denton also points out that roughly 99% of a creature's genetic information is in its soft tissue, which is not preserved in the fossils. Simply put, we don't know what these early creatures looked like, what their genetic codes would have been, or anything of the sort! It's entirely open to individual interpretation.
As for your assertion that there are in fact many intermediate links, well I simply ask you provide evidence for it. You claim that the cambrian explosion did not actually take place during the Cambrian period, though it is a nearly agreed upon fact. You say every singly phyla has evidence of intermediate stages, please back up your claim as you seem to be ridiculing me for not doing so.

Also, in regards to forming proteins, NO high school lab has done this. No scientist has done this. Amino acids have been formed, yes. Miller-Urey and one more recent experiment have demonstrated this. But the concentration of chemicals is such that it would have been impossible in the early atmosphere. The experiments to which I refer also produced a bad ratio of left and right handed molecules.

There are quite simply no natural laws that can produce specified complexity, such as is required for life. The laws of nature, when uninfluenced, bring disorder.
The simplest life contains the equivalent number of letters(ATCG in the genetic language) to 1000 volumes of the Encyclopedia britannica.
As I have said, no natural laws are known that can account for specified complexity and therefore no natural laws that can account for this vast accumulation of knowledge.
There are 2 types of causes, natural and intelligent.
If natural causes cannot account for the origin of life, then the only logical answer is intelligence.
Basically, I see this entire argument as moot because it presupposes that there is no supernatural force, even though a supernatural force in some shape or another is the only logical explanation for the universe being here. Evolution tries to explain a problem that, for all intensive purposes, does not exist. That problem is 'how did life form without intelligent design?'

Additionally 'spontaneous generation' is not scientifically feasible.
The concept asserts that something happens without a cause, which goes against the Law of Causality.
But okay, it just means that it's natural causes.
Yet the idea of spontaneous generation goes against all natural law.
There is no natural context that would allow for such an event as the spontaneous generation of life.

Youd be wrong on that He admitted that his theory would be in trouble if these early forms werent found, but they were found many years after his death. He predicted they would be from hisw knowledge of Silurian strata

Life didnt differentiate and suddnely get complex in some explosion (so named by Gould) The actual differentiation into basic three life forms Began about 3.5 Billion YEars ago and then the beginning of differentiation into complex life began about 2.1 B ILLION years . The "Cambrian Explosion" is not an explosion at all. It is a time period of about 1.7 Billion years long (from the Rhyacian to the end of the Ediacaran). During this period, shells began to be deposited on molluscs and annelida. Porifera and Brozoans, corals and beginning arthropods began depositing shells into a fossil record. Much of these fossils werent even known about until 20 or so years ago. The deposits of rocks in Greenland, Newfoundland,Namibia, China, and Asutralia have given us lots more species in the PreCAmbrian.This has "stretched out the "Cambrian Explosion" from 30 million years to over 1.5 BILLION. DArwin didnt even know about the CAmbrian system except for a few fossils that ADam Sedgwick had described. DArwin himslef said that "Endless eons must have preceeded the Silurain sediments or else my theory is all wrong"

Well then youd be dead wrong again. Drwin would be amazed and proud at how accurate his own work was since hed be able to see how the science of PAleo, now allows us to "pick spots" in the world where rocks of specific ages and environments can yield predicted fossil types that neatly "fill in the gaps"

Most recently are the neo dinosaurians from the late Permian of Russia and the "Fishapod" that was predicted to be in the seds of Ellsmere Island because these sediments were swamp deposits of the early mid Devonian marine deposits. Herein, two scientists discovered "Tiktaalik rosacea" a neat intermediate between fish and amphibians


No such a thing. Evolution is primarily ADAPTIVE ro ADAPTATIONAL, so whatever the environment presents an orgnism adapts to and evolves in concert with it. Some species have actually regressed in complexity, like parasites that were free living, or coelentarates and coleopterans that were free living larvae.

Thats an assumption by you. I can name at least three separate orders wherein the animals were as complex in the Pre CAmbrain (EDiacaran ) as they are in the present.

You seem to look at all this stuff too linearly. As the environments change species ADAPT, and sometimes the adaptation results in genetic complexities that cause several morphs to present themselves.
We can see that the "ice fish", in order to adapt to sub freezing Arctic ocean depths, had developed blood with no haem groups, the fish was mostly translucent and the HOX gene coded for several body lines like large "walking pectoral fins and razor backed caudal fins". Several genes were transcribing and evolution worked its way to develop an overall adapted fish.
If you read the anatomical description of Archaeopteryx, it has been documented very plainly that over 20 intermediate "Lizrd like" body forms existed on this bird and it seemed to do alright in the hundred million years or so that it survived.

You seem to ignore ALL recent scientific work in paleo. Im not a paleontologist, but I use paleo in my field as an economic geologist, so I am probably much closer to the actual literature than you. If you are interested , I will send you a, list of pubs that discuss the areas where you need some beefing up. Ill do it in a PM so not to be more boring than I already am.


There is an entire series of journals on the subject PAlontology Journal, Paleoecology, Evolution, Geological Society of AMerica Bulletin, Geology Journal, SEPM Journal. There is a really good book by dANIEL fAIRBNKS, a man of deep religious belief who is also a research geneticist and professor of evolutionary Biology. He wrote a bookin 2007 called "Relics of Eden" (powerful evidence of evolution in human DNA) I can send you some more after youve had a chance to skim that one.(or some of the journals Ive mentioned above, most are in any university library and some are on line after a years publication date.

I have no doubt that Michael Denton said that. I dont wish to denigrate Dr Denton further thn I hve in previouw posts and other threads. However the word "true believer" comes to mind

Very impressive! Thank you for a very well put together argument. You are clearly far more knowledgeable than I in this field and I would very much like a link to explore those pubs you were talking about.

My only complaint is that you misquoted me in one case, or at least did not get the full thing.

"Additionally, my beliefs on this topic are slave to my belief - well founded in science and logic" the full thing was

“Additionally, my beliefs on this topic are slave to my belief - well founded in science and logic - that the universe was created, though that's in another thread if you care to see it.”

I don't wish to argue that in this thread, though if you would like to join the debate on that it's also on this site and I would be glad to send you a link.

Farmer, I got the pm, but I cannot access it. Will you please send it to my email?

I sent another PM , watch for it. Sorry bout any e-mail.