Missing link found by Norwegian scientist

Toclafane said:

Nope, it's not the easiest to understand.
It may be for YOU, but not for everyone.

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Yes, I know --- I'm not talking about the ones who only understand GOD DID IT --- or the ones who can't get past Genesis 1.

I'm talking about those who really want to learn.

AV1611VET said:

Yes, I know --- I'm not talking about the ones who only understand GOD DID IT --- or the ones who can't get past Genesis 1.

I'm talking about those who really want to learn.

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Ya may want to rephrase that as you've just flamed everyone that prefers & likes other versions, including everyone that using non English versions.

Toclafane said:

Ya may want to rephrase that as you've just flamed everyone that prefers & likes other versions, including everyone that using non English versions.

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Not hardly.

I do think that other versions are harder to understand, but for the record, I was limiting my reply to just those who only understand GOD DID IT and can't get past Genesis 1.

According to Gail A Riplinger, the KJV is on a level of comprehension of something like a 5.8th grade, whereas the others are on the level of comprehension of 5.9 - 6.5.

(I could look up the exact figures --- but I'm not going to.)

AV1611VET said:

Either that --- or --- as God put it:And they aren't there because John wrote down the Revelation 'with God'???

What on earth does that mean?That's easy --- God took care of all of that.

Do you realize that of all the translations in existence, the King James is the easiest to understand?

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You are hard core. I'll give you that.

Prophecy is like. God spends five days preparing for the main event. And on the sixth day, man is made, in God's image. God is a man, a Divine Person, Who actually died. Now that is definitively human. He gave dignity even to executed criminals. And on the first day everything was made new.

It is as if you are entirely sure that the Holy Spirit told someone in dictation what to write down, yet, John's account is different, he was simply ordered to record the events. Suppose Moses (or Adam) was told to do the same with Genesis, so God shows him creating Heaven and Earth, and tells him to write it down. Nice. Maybe you should try something similar, or an artist could try and explain what that would be like.

Honkytnkmn said:

Are you asking me to prove a negative? I can't. Other than the fact that we don't witness it because it takes too long to happen which is a cop out.

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It's not a cop out, it's just the way things work. New traits can only be introduced when new individuals are born. Because of this, the rate of evolution for a given species depends entirely on the age of sexual maturity for that species. In terms of human evolution, a single researcher can only realistically observe a few generations. This is why fruit flies are used so often in lab experiments, because they reproduce so quickly.

This also allows us to do calculations to estimate how long ago speciation events occurred. For two species, if we know how much of their genomes differ, how long it takes each species to reproduce and the average mutation rate per individual, we can calculate how long ago those species diverged. We can then check this against the fossil record and see how well they match up.

If it were the case we would have enough evidence to put everything together and watch it like a cartoon. Frame by frame. The earth would be riddled with failure after failure of every single species on the planet till it was right. We would see birds with solid bones and feathers. we might see land animals with hollow bones. We would find so many different creatures probably everything you can imagine as nature tried to sort out exactly what the best method for survival is.

What do we see, a shoulder bone here, a few teeth there, a horse hoof or two.

Tell me where are the fossils?

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There are lots of them in museums all over the world. People write about them all the time in scientific journals. The information is out there. All you have to do is look for it. If you have questions about it, there are a bunch of knowledgeable people on this and many other message boards.

Honkytnkmn said:

I got it before. I just don't believe it.

exactly where in my posts did I say one species had another species?

But at some point it stops being a worm? Or am I wrong there too?

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You're not wrong at all. It never stops being a worm. It just becomes a worm with eyes. Then a worm with eyes and fins. Then a worm with eyes, fins and teeth. Then a worm with...

Does that make sense?

Aron Ra, who posts here from time to time, made an excellent video about exactly this. Each species can be uniquely classified by what it "evolved from", and therefore still is. He talks dizzyingly fast, but capturing every detail isn't important.

Here's the link: YouTube - 10th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism

Honkytnkmn said:

I got it before. I just don't believe it.

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In that case you have either:

a) Not viewed the evidence for evolution
b) Not understood the evidence for evolution
c) A pre-existing religious belief that you would have to abandon if you accepted the evidence of evolution.

I'd say you are mainly c with a healthy dose of a and b.

Most Christians realise you can accept reality without abandoning their faith it is sad that some like you and AV can't, but science will survive and continue bettering the lot of manking without you.

exactly where in my posts did I say one species had another species?

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I don't understand what this is supposed to mean.

But at some point it stops being a worm? Or am I wrong there too?

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Yep, you should have read the link about cladistics I posted for you.

Honkytnkmn said:

Are you asking me to prove a negative? I can't. Other than the fact that we don't witness it because it takes too long to happen which is a cop out.

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That's not what I'm asking you to do at all. I'm asking you to give more of a justification than "it just can't". Personal incredulity is not a scientific value. We can make assertions like "there cannot be life on Mercury" or "humans take flight under their own power like a bird" and provide reasons why we can make those negative assertions. That's what I'm asking you to do.

Honkytnkmn said:

If it were the case we would have enough evidence to put everything together and watch it like a cartoon. Frame by frame.

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That's the wrong way to view it (pun intended). The proper analogy is a ciminal case presented with forensic evidence. Yeah, we find a whole body here and only a couple of fibers here, but when taken in toto it will constitute sufficient evidence to render a verdict. In evolution we have many thousands of bodies and many millions of fibers pointing to the conclusion that evolution happened.

Honkytnkmn said:

The earth would be riddled with failure after failure of every single species on the planet till it was right.

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What makes you say that? Evolution isn't some climb up the ladder towards perfection. Every species or population is suited to it's environment otherwise it would go extinct. That does happen a lot, but not because those species were somehow not "right", but because the environment changed. The Dodo did swimmingly in the Maldives until it's environment changed and an invasive species decided to hunt them to extinction.

Honkytnkmn said:

We would see birds with solid bones and feathers.

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They're called dinosaurs.

Honkytnkmn said:

we might see land animals with hollow bones. We would find so many different creatures probably everything you can imagine as nature tried to sort out exactly what the best method for survival is.

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No, not really. That's not how it works. A detrimental mutation will likely kill the individual before it can reproduce and will not enter the population. The last time we had nature "experimenting" with crazy body plans was the Cambrain. Since then it's pretty much been the forms of the 27 phyla that survived. Also, you're anthropomorphisizing natural selection. It doesn't experiment and tinker. Mutations happen and either they confer a benefit or they don't.

Honkytnkmn said:

What do we see, a shoulder bone here, a few teeth there, a horse hoof or two.

Tell me where are the fossils?

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Have you never been to a museum or a flea market for that matter? If not, start with this Wiki article and we can go from there.

Honkytnkmn said:

See thats why I hate that term. Adaptation explains it much better. A species can adapt to its environment but cannot evolve or morph or change into another species.

Why is it, that because I believe a species can adapt to its environment, I automatically have to believe that it can evolve to a new species? I see a distinct difference between the two.

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Because the moment a species has adapted to a different environment it basically has evolved to be better suited to that environment. For example:

The Finish are lighter skinned because they need sunshine (which is less in the northern hemisphere) in order to to make vitamin D. Africans need Dark skin to protect them from too much sun. Both are the same species yet each has evolved certain characteristics that has allowed them to survive in their specific environment. This evolution is not enough to be able to differentiate the two as being different species. Now given enough time and conditions being different for both (no cheating by involving artificial environments) then yes the two can diverge into two different species! This is how evolution works!
So no matter how you like to dress evolution; it is still evolution!

Honkytnkmn said:

Are you asking me to prove a negative? I can't. Other than the fact that we don't witness it because it takes too long to happen which is a cop out.

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Hardly: it's a fact. And the evidence of past events more than makes up for it.

Honkytnkmn said:

If it were the case we would have enough evidence to put everything together and watch it like a cartoon. Frame by frame. The earth would be riddled with failure after failure of every single species on the planet till it was right.

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Fossilisation is an incredibly rare process. Of the trillions of trillions of organisms that have ever lived, only a scant few die in just the right conditions needed for fossilisation to occur, and only a small fraction have anything that can fossilise.

Honkytnkmn said:

We would see birds with solid bones and feathers.

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We do: protoarchaeopteryx.

Honkytnkmn said:

we might see land animals with hollow bones.

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Archaeopteryx.

Honkytnkmn said:

We would find so many different creatures probably everything you can imagine as nature tried to sort out exactly what the best method for survival is.

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And we do. Honestly, have you ever seen how many fossils are out there?

Honkytnkmn said:

What do we see, a shoulder bone here, a few teeth there, a horse hoof or two.
Tell me where are the fossils?

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Oh, look, there they are!

WC, any chance you can resize that skull series photo so I don't have to use the horizontal scroll?

TheBear said:

My only objection is the use of the term 'missing link'. It's very misleading and causes confusion among those not familiar with paleontology. A better term would be, "another piece of the puzzle".

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Hespera said:

Sure dont like the term "missing link" either.

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Add me in.

I also e-mailed KDFW ch. 4 when the news reader referred to people who "believed in evolution."

mpok1519 said:

Human beings are homo sapiens bro.

why do you always try to derail the thread with nonsense?

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I think the more important question is why do so many reply to him and facilitate his derailments with nonsense?

Honkytnkmn said:

You're example above is very easy to understand, but you're missing millions of changes in between.

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If I show you vacation photos of my trip from Boston to St. Louis, but don't photograph every single mile marker, would you think I hadn't made the trip?

Honkytnkmn said:

It is not well documented in the fossil record.

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We actually have a very good fossil record of the fish to tetrapod transition. And before you or anyone else comments on the drawings, each fossil has it's own page. Please click on them and check them out before dismissing this series.

We also have some very interesting molecular evidence like Lamprey hemoglobin as described here
"In human, four haemoglobin genes are known to be cousin genes of each other. An ancestor globin gene from an ancient vertebrate split into two genes, alpha and beta, which ended up in two different chromosomes and continued to evolve independently. Both alpha and beta further split into more independently evolving genes. All jawed fish show such alpha/beta split as predicated by evolution. However, lampreys and hagfish are ancient enough that they predate this gene split. In fact, jawless fishes, whenever investigated, do not possess split globin genes."

Honkytnkmn said:

I do truly understand the concept, I just don't buy it.

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Personal incredulity isn't an argument.

USincognito said:

WC, any chance you can resize that skull series photo so I don't have to use the horizontal scroll?

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Whoops, done. Though faith_guardian will have to update his post...

USincognito said:

I also e-mailed KDFW ch. 4 when the news reader referred to people who "believed in evolution."

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What's wrong with that? It's better than 'evolutionist'

AV1611VET said:

Evolution can take a hike.

It makes a mockery of God and His perfect Creation.

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God exists but evolution does not make a mockery of anything, and there's nothing wrong with it. It is a fact that it happens. Can you observe someone else drinking a can of Pepsi? Then you can observe evolution. Not that easy, but it's observable. It has been proven with a history of things, including fossils like the ones posted above. They do not disprove God, at all. No book (such as the Bible, or Koran) has stated how God created everything. They pretty much state "In the beginning, he created everything" but do not go into detail how.

Evolution is evidence for God. Truth be told, the world was made by God with certain events and processes that unfolded overtime. Evolution is just one of those processes and there's no reason to deny the truth. We know it is, because we know it happens. The world has been here billions of years. These events have taken long, long amounts of time to unfold to where we are, and they still are taking place.

I think you're getting the two mixed up. Evolution describes how things evolve over time. It does **NOT** explain where these things came FROM.

apwood said:

God exists but evolution does not make a mockery of anything, and there's nothing wrong with it. It is a fact that it happens. Can you observe someone else drinking a can of Pepsi? Then you can observe evolution. Not that easy, but it's observable. It has been proven with a history of things, including fossils like the ones posted above. They do not disprove God, at all. No book (such as the Bible, or Koran) has stated how God created everything. They pretty much state "In the beginning, he created everything" but do not go into detail how.

Evolution is evidence for God. Truth be told, the world was made by God with certain events and processes that unfolded overtime. Evolution is just one of those processes and there's no reason to deny the truth. We know it is, because we know it happens. The world has been here billions of years. These events have taken long, long amounts of time to unfold to where we are, and they still are taking place.

I think you're getting the two mixed up. Evolution describes how things evolve over time. It does **NOT** explain where these things came FROM.

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Pretty good, tho, "truth be told" that is your opinion / perception only, that there is a god or that anything was made by such.

AV1611VET said:

Evolution can take a hike.

It makes a mockery of God and His perfect Creation.

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Ignorance can take a hike.

justifying ignorance with tradition or religion doesnt make your ignorance any less ignorant.

apwood said:

I think you're getting the two mixed up. Evolution describes how things evolve over time. It does **NOT** explain where these things came FROM.

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Is the creation still in progress?

Hespera said:

Pretty good, tho, "truth be told" that is your opinion / perception only, that there is a god or that anything was made by such.

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It is your perception that it is my opinion, but to me it is a knowing fact.

AV1611VET said:

Is the creation still in progress?

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Absolutely. For example, the fact that we evolve and evolution still takes place is proof of that process. People have the mindset that believe God just magically waved a wand and created everything. It's simply not true. The universe is billions of years old, and so is the earth. The universe and earth was created with natural laws, and certain events and processes were put into place by God that lead into humankind as we are.

Creationism and evolution don't counter each other, they actually compliment each other. One is pointless without the other. Evolution isn't here to discredit God because God lead the process. That would be like trying to discredit the waiter for bringing you the food and saying the food brought itself to you. All things come from one "source". Essentially, we are all related, and we all are indeed related in someway or another to EVERY living thing.

As for mankind, there was no Adam and Eve, because biology doesn't work that way (man and women appearing all of a sudden). Instead, mankind did evolve through naturalistic processes, and mankind did rebel against God. That would be how to take the story of Genesis. Man did not come from mud, and women did not literally come from his rib.