Originally posted by randman
"We have reptiles for millions of years, and *EVENTUALLY* we see birds - but never birds that predate archeoptryx."
Actually, this is incorrect, but it is not germane to the discussion. Archy can have birds before him, and he could have not evolved at all, and the evolutionist would still claim he is transitional. Their model is so elastic as to include any data that could possible come along, and over the years, you will see it change and adapt.
You hear people speak of well if this was found, evolution could be doubted, but they said the same thing if massive numbers of transitional/intermediary fossils were not found, or if some species never evolved at all, but as these things happened, they juist shifted and moved on.
There is absolutely nothing that can be discovered that the imagination cannot plausibly find a way to fit into an evolutionary model.
Also, once again, your analogy is flawed. We are finding fossils of distinct and separate species, not pictures of the same guy. You are assuming they are all pictures of the same guy, but that is a blatantly false assumption. They are not the same species.
As has already been explained to you, Randman, common descent causes us to expect SOME fossil specimens that appear in a sequence a - b - c, where a is the oldest, c is the newest, b is newer than a, and b shares many of its anatomical features with a and many of its anatomical features with c. Common descent predicts this. It is found, in (for instance) Archaeopteryx. THAT is what is meant by transitional forms, and why transitional forms are good evidence for common descent.
Common descent predicts transitional forms of this kind because it says (among other branches and diversions) that any existing species did evolve step-wise, species by species, from some already existing species of organism. The stochacity of preservation in the fossil record gives us no hope of ever determining a single and complete line of true intermediaries, so we DO NOT expect to see the kind of series you are talking about. You are asking for proof that a particular species is INTERMEDIARY (not merely transitional), and that cannot be done. Nevertheless the evidence from transitional fossils (and busloads and reams and scads of other kinds of evidence) still strongly supports common descent by evolution.
and....
I will try a different approach. Instead of showing you how Archaeopteryx supports common descent, I will tell you why it doesn't support creationism.
Creationism does not predict the existence of an organism like Archaeopteryx. Before it was found, no one, based on a creationist model, would ever predict that there would be a flying dinosaur with bird features, or a bird with a therapod tail, head, teeth, etc.
Creationism makes no prediction about what part of the geological column a creature like Archaeopteryx would be found in.
Common descent predicts that there MUST have been creatures like Archaeopteryx. Common descent predicts that they must follow the dinosuars in the geological column.
When Archaeopteryx is found, then, that is 2 points for common descent, zero for special creation.
Common descent does not predict how frequently we will be able to unearth creatures like Archaeopteryx, or whether its immediate ancestors and descendents will be unearthed. It says that its immediate ancestors MUST have existed (the law of biogenesis says this too), but it does not say whether they will be turned up. The fact that they are not recovered does nothing to discredit evolution.
Furthermore, Archaeopteryx is the closing pitcher in a game that evolution has already won. The OTHER evidence (fossil, biogeographic, morphological, etc...) had already confirmed evolution to a degree of confidence that discovery of Archaeopteryx wasn't even a surprise to many.
If you are interested in evolution, learn about it from the basics of biology on up to whatever level you care to take it to. Coming in at the end of the game and insulting the pitcher doesn't change the score.
