Evolution is a crock

[npetreley]

I find it very revealing that the evolutionists here have been ducking and dodging simple questions, making excuses for being unable to provide a series of transitionals from 99.9% of the fossil record, obsessing on polyploids and guessing (wrong) about my motives for excluding them, and so on.

I had hoped to take this process step-by-step and get evolutionists to define the terms, chart what was reasonable and what wasn't, so that there would be no argument when we reached the conclusions that I had made up my own terms. But the evolutionists here are so terrified of saying anything that could be used as ammunition that they refuse to answer questions directly or deal with very simple issues and instead attempt to obscure the issues with meaningless terminology.

Unfortunately, my workload has just increased quite a bit so I can't play this game for a while. So here are some of the simple points I hoped to make:

Speciation: Evolutionists on this board repeatedly assert that speciation means reproductive isolation (the biological speciation concept) which is the first step toward macroevolution. Unfortunately for evolutionists, this cannot apply to (most) plants, because one of the mechanisms of change in plants is cross-breading, which produces polyploids with increased morphology due to the fact that these are natural hybrids. In these cases, you have what are already defined as TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES and they interbreed naturally, and create a THIRD new species. It violates the BSC definition during cross-breeding and again after the new species emerges, because it's entirely possible for the new species NOT to be reproductively isolated. Since this happens in 20-80% of all plants, this argues quite strongly that the whole concept of speciation is purely arbitrary, and can be redefined as needed to suit whatever argument for evolution you want to make. This is typical of evolutionist thinking - create definitions that support the theory and that way you can use them to declare the theory to be a fact.

Fossil record: I also wanted to exclude polyploids because they are clearly a different genetic mechanism of morphology than what one would have to assume is responsible for most evolution in just about anything but plants. (There are some polyploids in amphibians, etc., but these are rare.)

One would assume that just because plants are easily subject to cross-breeding doesn't mean they are immune to the other genetic mutations supposedly responsible for evolution in vertebrates. So if one wants to "test" the evolution of plants and invertebrates for the OTHER genetic mechanisms of adding information (morphology) in vertebrates (as in our reptile-to-mammal series), then one must exclude cross-breeding between different species as the most common means of creating new species and look at the remaining evidence to see if there is an equivalent reptile-to-mammal transition that occurred. If so, then one could confirm that this same mechanism (or some other non-polyploid mechanism) of mutation was occurring that could apply to vertebrates, plants and invertebrates.

Obviously, this didn't matter because nobody was able to come up with any meaningful series of transitions anyway.


But the bottom line is that IF the vertebrate series are dependable, and vertebrates make up 0.01% of the fossil record, then it should be EASY to find a better, more complete series with more fine-grained transitionals from the 99.9% of the record that includes invertebrates and plants. But the lack of evidence speaks for itself. Nobody was able to come up with such a series, and I doubt if anyone ever will.

THAT should tell you something right there. How can anyone believe in a theory that leave no evidence in 99.9% of the fossil record, but miraculously leaves evidence of transitions which we assume are true based on incomplete fossils (sometimes only one bone) gathered from scattered locations throughout the world (the creatures migrated from location to location as they evolved, I guess)? Because evolution didn't happen, but evolutionists will believe just about anything in order to salvage this crock.

Anyway, enjoy all your ad-hominem attacks, etc. I have other work to do.

 

[Jerry Smith]

I will reply at greater length later, but for now, I just want to point out that we have been chased through umpteen threads trying to get Nick to explain why he wanted to eliminate polyploids, when what he really wanted to eliminate was hybrids. I have yet to puzzle out from the post above exactly what his reasoning is for wanting the hybrids out, but it seems that there is a reason that makes sense to him...

I would also like to suggest that if what we are testing for is a genetic mechanism for plant evolution, we should probably focus on modern genetics experiments rather than attempt ill-founded guesses from the fossil record.

 

[Joe V.]

Because evolution didn't happen, but evolutionists will believe just about anything in order to salvage this crock.

Nick, do you have ANY idea how ridiculous-sounding this statement is coming from you, especially considering what you believe and why?

- Joe

 

[seebs]

It seems to me that, if hybridization can yield new life forms which can compete with the parents, that just makes evolution look more plausible, to me, because it increases the variety of new combinations that can be tried, and might answer the question of "if one species develops feature A, and another develops feature B, how do you get features A and B in the same life form"?

 

[Morat]

  Wesley Elsberry has a few things to say about this 99.9% stuff...

As for the assertion that invertebrate fossil sequences show
no evolutionary change, that is simply false.

Roger Cuffey wrote a review article in the early 1970's
concerning evolution and paleontologic evidence.  Most of
his citations were to studies of invertebrate evolution.
It was reprinted more recently.

Roger Cuffey.  1984.  Paleontologic evidence and organic
evolution.  In: A. Montagu (ed.), "Science and Creationism".

Or look up the original in the Journal of the American
Scientific Affiliation 24(4).

Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould used two examples of
invertebrate transitions showing allopatric speciation of
peripheral isolates in their original 1972 essay introducing
punctuated equilibria.  This evidence is discussed on pages
98-108.  Further examples of change are dicussed in the
1977 review paper, including a validation of an instance
of phyletic gradualism in forams (an invertebrate taxon).

Eldredge, N., & Gould, S. J.  1972.  Punctuated equilibria: an
alternative to phyletic gradualism.  In: Models In Paleobiology (Ed.
by T. J. M. Schopf).

Gould, S. J., & Eldredge, N.  1977.  Punctuated equilibria: the tempo
and mode of evolution reconsidered.  Paleobiology, 3, 115-151.

A reference that documents evolutionary change within forams
and also has pictures is seen in Pearson et alia 1997.

Pearson, P.N.; Shackleton, N.J.; and Hall, M.A., 1997.  Stable
isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of
_Globigerinoides_trilobus_ and _Orbulina_universa_ (planktonic
foraminifera).  Journal of the Geological Society, London, v.154,
p.295-302.

 

[WinAce]

I'm involved in a similar debate over at a different forum, but the tactics used by YECs seem consistent in every single topic I've come across. They either misrepresent the data, ask for something which no one will ever be able to produce (such as fossil plants that aren't polyploid, since you can't tell the difference), or appeal to emotion, and so on.

The evidence for common descent is so overwhelming, from homology in all aspects of life, to common errors in the DNA, unnecessary structural similarity, obvious jury-rigging, transitional fossils found exactly where evolution predicts them, etc... that no one can seriously dispute it. They can wave their hands and say how the evidence isn't good enough, even though there's so much of it and from widely different fields that you can't propose any alternative, testable explanation except 'god had his reasons for making it that way'.

However, in science, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and generally behaves like a duck, you'd need some pretty solid evidence to show how it would more likely be a supernatural, duck-like creature in disguise.

So, what are we left with? Literal young-earth creationism is directly contradicted by the data, from genetic bottlenecks in some species but not others, to the geologic features no flood could ever hope to account for, to the fact that our planet is billions of years old (measured by radiometric methods whose accuracy is corroborated by a wide variety of non-radioactive ones), to the fact we see stars billions of light years away.

Scientifically, YEC beliefs are therefore completely unfounded. That's not to say they don't have purely religious value, but they don't say that and instead specifically claim equally scientific status as accepted cosmology, geology, physics and biology.

Theistic evolution, a.k.a. intelligent design, is somewhat compatible with the data, at least (by somewhat, I mean it's not directly contradicted, but there are still things which seem to have no point whasoever from a design perspective but make a great deal of sense thru evolution). However, we still have no positive data indicating intelligent design is a more reasonable explanation than known mechanisms of mutation which are observed today, especially since our genome consists of little except what appears to be the results of that activity.

ID advocates would do well to actually publish what they consider the mechanisms of intelligent design, as opposed to saying 'you can't explain this... eh, you can? well, you can't conclusively prove that's how it happened so my belief is correct by default!'

 

[Jerry Smith]

I'm involved in a similar debate over at a different forum,

My deepest sympathies.

Your assessment of what is going on in this one is pretty much spot-on for the participant who started this thread. I would have to say, though that by and large the participants in this forum are more victims of YEC tactics than they are perpetrators of them.

In any case, I hope you will be hanging around here more often.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith


My deepest sympathies.

Heh, heh.

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Originally posted by npetreley
I find it very revealing that the evolutionists here have been ducking and dodging simple questions, making excuses for being unable to provide a series of transitionals from 99.9% of the fossil record, obsessing on polyploids and guessing (wrong) about my motives for excluding them, and so on.

This is completely false. Name one question that has been ducked or dodged by the evolution defenders on this board.

As to the transitionals issue, no one denies that we have not been able to produce a fine-grained non-polyploidal well-understood photos-on-the-internet transitional sequence from the non-vertebrate fossil record. You completely ignore, however, the other, slightly different, transitional sequences that have been presented as well as references to published sequences for which no photos appear on the Internet.

You seem to be under the impression that the inability of some amateurs to produce a response to a very specific challenge somehow proves something.

I had hoped to take this process step-by-step and get evolutionists to define the terms, chart what was reasonable and what wasn't, so that there would be no argument when we reached the conclusions that I had made up my own terms. But the evolutionists here are so terrified of saying anything that could be used as ammunition that they refuse to answer questions directly or deal with very simple issues and instead attempt to obscure the issues with meaningless terminology.

I think a more accurate statement is that we refuse to simplify issues that are in fact very complex.

Speciation: Evolutionists on this board repeatedly assert that speciation means reproductive isolation (the biological speciation concept) which is the first step toward macroevolution. Unfortunately for evolutionists, this cannot apply to (most) plants, because one of the mechanisms of change in plants is cross-breading, which produces polyploids with increased morphology due to the fact that these are natural hybrids. In these cases, you have what are already defined as TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES and they interbreed naturally, and create a THIRD new species. It violates the BSC definition during cross-breeding and again after the new species emerges, because it's entirely possible for the new species NOT to be reproductively isolated. Since this happens in 20-80% of all plants, this argues quite strongly that the whole concept of speciation is purely arbitrary, and can be redefined as needed to suit whatever argument for evolution you want to make. This is typical of evolutionist thinking - create definitions that support the theory and that way you can use them to declare the theory to be a fact.

You seem to be whining here that the world is more complex than you want it to be. Tough. The BSC is just a heuristic means for defining species and was never meant or advertised to provide the unequivocal answer. Blaming evolutionists for the complexity of species boundaries is like blaming physicists for the complexity of quantum mechanics.
Regardless, your point is moot. While hybridization can and does occur among plants, the fact remains that most plants are reproductively isolated with respect to each other. If this were not true, you could go out in your back yard and create a hybrid between a watermelon and an oak tree. The fact that there are occasional "holes" in the species barrier is of no import to evolutionary theory.

Fossil record: I also wanted to exclude polyploids because they are clearly a different genetic mechanism of morphology than what one would have to assume is responsible for most evolution in just about anything but plants. (There are some polyploids in amphibians, etc., but these are rare.)

One would assume that just because plants are easily subject to cross-breeding doesn't mean they are immune to the other genetic mutations supposedly responsible for evolution in vertebrates. So if one wants to "test" the evolution of plants and invertebrates for the OTHER genetic mechanisms of adding information (morphology) in vertebrates (as in our reptile-to-mammal series), then one must exclude cross-breeding between different species as the most common means of creating new species and look at the remaining evidence to see if there is an equivalent reptile-to-mammal transition that occurred. If so, then one could confirm that this same mechanism (or some other non-polyploid mechanism) of mutation was occurring that could apply to vertebrates, plants and invertebrates.

Obviously, this didn't matter because nobody was able to come up with any meaningful series of transitions anyway.

You conveniently ignored that fact that for most transitional sequences hybridization is irrelevant. Say A appears in the fossil record 100 million years ago, and C appears 50 million years ago. If later we find presumed transitional B and date it to 75 million years ago, we can immediately rule it out as a hybrid between A and C because we know C didn't even exist until 25 million years later.

But the bottom line is that IF the vertebrate series are dependable, and vertebrates make up 0.01% of the fossil record, then it should be EASY to find a better, more complete series with more fine-grained transitionals from the 99.9% of the record that includes invertebrates and plants. But the lack of evidence speaks for itself. Nobody was able to come up with such a series, and I doubt if anyone ever will.

There you go again. All you demonstrated is that the amateurs on this board were unable to find fossil photographs on the Internet meeting your restrictive criteria. You were presented with sources where such transitionals could be found, but you just chose to ignore them, apparently because they conflict with your a-priori conclusion about the fossil record. Quoting from: http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_04.htm

Some good examples can be found among brachiopods (McNamara, 1984), molluscs (Newell, 1942; Erben, 1966; Hallam, 1968, 1982; Spinosa, Furnish, & Glenister, 1975; Ward & Blackwelder, 1975), trilobites (Palmer, 1965; Lesperance, 1975 ), conodonts (Behnken, 1975), and mammals (Gingerich, 1976b).

and

For example, within Phylum Mollusca, transitional fossils have been found between [1] Class Monoplacophora and Subclass Nautiloidea (Pojeta, 1980; Runnegar & Pojeta, 1974), [2] Class Monoplacophora and Class Rostroconchia (Pojeta, 1980; Runnegar & Pojeta, 1974; Pojeta & Runnegar, 1976; Runnegar, 1978), [ 3] Class Rostroconchia and Class Pelecypoda (Pojeta, 1980; Runnegar & Pojeta, 1974; Pojeta & Runnegar, 1976; Pojeta, 1978), [4] Class Rostroconchia and Class Scaphopoda (Pojeta, 1980; Runnegar & Pojeta, 1974; Pojeta & Runnegar, 1976, 1979) , [5] Subclass Bactritoidea and Subclass Ammonoidea (Erben, 1966).

THAT should tell you something right there. How can anyone believe in a theory that leave no evidence in 99.9% of the fossil record, but miraculously leaves evidence of transitions which we assume are true based on incomplete fossils (sometimes only one bone) gathered from scattered locations throughout the world (the creatures migrated from location to location as they evolved, I guess)? Because evolution didn't happen, but evolutionists will believe just about anything in order to salvage this crock.

I guess if we all made the same logical errors as you, then no one would believe evolution. Fortunately the scientific community has become reasonably adept at filtering out shoddy thinking. Your assertions and objections are simply wrong.

• There are transitionals in the fossil record in the non-vertebrates (see references above).
• Your "scattered around the world" assertion is false.
• The ARE spectacular transitional sequences among vertebrates. Unless you think non-vertebrates are somehow special, this is unequivocal proof that large morphological change can happen gradually over time.
• Even absent specific transitionals, the larger pattern of the fossil record still matches the predictions of evolution. Primitive species always appear in the fossil record before more modern ones. Species known to be native to one area (e.g. horses) have fossil ancestors confined to the same approximate area.

And most of all, the fossil record is only one line of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. For a full treatment of all of the evidence supporting evolution, see:

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

 

[Jerry Smith]

LFOD... Great post! Thank you.

 

[Trinai]

And most of all, the fossil record is <B>only one</B> line of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. For a full treatment of <B>all of</B> the evidence supporting evolution, see:

target=_blank>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc&nbsp;&nbsp;

I can see this is going to go back and forth forever. Still though, one link deserves another.

http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp

Yes, it's a critique of the proofs put forth within your link.

 

[Morat]

&nbsp; Not a very good one, as Dr. Theobald demonstrates.

&nbsp;&nbsp; It's, in fact, quite a pointed lesson.

&nbsp;

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

I am very familiar with this critique, and I'm not impressed.

Dr. Theobald himself has written a response to this critique.

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

If you are interested in discussing this futher, rather that engage in a battle of dueling links, maybe you could pick one or two sections from Camp's critique that you think are particularly persuasive and start a new thread to discuss them.

 

[Jerry Smith]

THAT should tell you something right there. How can anyone believe in a theory that leave no evidence in 99.9% of the fossil record, but miraculously leaves evidence of transitions which we assume are true based on incomplete fossils (sometimes only one bone) gathered from scattered locations throughout the world (the creatures migrated from location to location as they evolved, I guess)?

This is the usual tactic when faced with evidence that is too strong to deny -- focus on its smallest weaknesses, and misconstrue it so as to suggest there are weaknesses when there are not. The reptile-mammal transition which Nick is "critiquing" here is described in length here:

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1b.html#mamm

Yes, some of the synapsid-mammal transition is based on incomplete fossils. Reading Nick's assessment of it, one might come away with the false impression that this transition isn't well documented. It is.

What about the "missing" transitions? Evolutionary theory requires a very large number of transitions must have taken place from the beginning of life until the present. Is the synapsid-mammal transition the only one documented by real fossils? Well of course not. The faq page linked above is part of a larger article dealing with an abundance of transitional fossils from the vertebrates.

Unfortunately, no one has compiled such an article on invertebrates and plants. We have seen a few examples on this board from both of those groups, but we cannot produce such a finely grained sequence for them that still bridges a very large gap. Why? Maybe luck of the draw... after all, the sequence like the synapsid-mammal transition, very finely grained with numerous fossils that bridge a large taxonomical, morpholocial, and chronological gap is a surprising enough.

A point: No matter what groups such a series represented, they would themselves comprise an extremely small segment of the fossil record, and the remainder of the record would comprise an extremely large section. So what is the point of mentioning that such a sequence isn't readily available in the remaining large portion of the fossil record?

Well, charitably, there may be some. After all, the transitional series that I know of in the invertebrates do not represent nearly so radical a transition, and no clear series emerges from the transitional fossils that we find in the plant kingdom. Why is it that the very clear series we observe do come from the vertebrates, a very small group out of the total fossil record?

I have a few guesses of my own. I don't think it is merely luck of the draw. Notably:

1) The vertebrate radiation is far more recent than the invertebrate radiation. Older fossils may be more weathered or distorted by geological pressures and forces.

2) The vertebrates have more hard parts to fossilize, and they tend to be larger than invertebrates. The distinctions and similarities that can be used to construct a series will tend to be more readily identifiable in vertebrates than invertebrates or plants.

3) People are vertebrates, and therfore vertebrate paleontology is more interesting to us than plants and inverebrates. Even if people in those fields had identified impressive transitional series, we are less likely to know about them, or find information about them readily available on the internet or popular books.

I do think these three factors bear on the situation that allows a talking head to "point out" the absense of transitional series in the vertebrate and plant fossil record.

Having said that, I point out again that transitional forms among plants and invertebrates do exist and have been identified on this board.

Now, I will place a small objection. Creationists tend to focus on the fossil record to the exclusion of all else. Why? Well, that is the "weak link" in the evidence for evolution. This is a problem, because we would have so much data to conclude common descent in the form of comparative anatomy, biogeography, and genetic homology, together with direct evidence of the action of evolutionary mechanisms that we could conclude that that common descent is correct with very strong confidence even if there was no fossil record. To direct a discussion to focus on the weaknesses of the fossil record is to ignore the bulk of the evidence. The fossil record does, (as LFOD points out) support evolution at almost every level, and one bores quickly of having it pointed out to us that it is incomplete. Of course it is incomplete. The vast majority of living organisms never fossilize. To pretend that the incompleteness of the fossil record contraindicates evolution is to ask one's audience to naively ignore the facts of both the fossil record and the bulk of the evidence.

The tactics we are seeing here are a crock.

 

[Sauron]

Originally posted by npetreley
I find it very revealing that the evolutionists here have been ducking and dodging simple questions, making excuses for being unable to provide a series of transitionals from 99.9% of the fossil record, obsessing on polyploids

Apparently, Nick, it is *you* who are obsessing on polyploids. After all, nobody else here is trying to exclude them from being valid examples.&nbsp;

And no one else here has made such a demand, while simultaneously being unable to tell us which fossils do, or don't, exhibit polyploidy.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by npetreley
I had hoped to take this process step-by-step and get evolutionists to define the terms, chart what was reasonable and what wasn't, so that there would be no argument when we reached the conclusions that I had made up my own terms. But the evolutionists here are so terrified of saying anything that could be used as ammunition that they refuse to answer questions directly or deal with very simple issues and instead attempt to obscure the issues with meaningless terminology.

What questions have we refused to answer?&nbsp; I hope you can support this accusation.

Unfortunately, my workload has just increased quite a bit so I can't play this game for a while. So here are some of the simple points I hoped to make.

I’m sorry your work load has increased.&nbsp; CF will miss your unique sense of humor.

Speciation: Evolutionists on this board repeatedly assert that speciation means reproductive isolation (the biological speciation concept) which is the first step toward macroevolution.

From Douglas Futuyma’s textbook, Evolutionary Biology:

• species: In the sense of biological species, the members of a group of populations that interbreed or potentially interbreed with each other under natural conditions; a complex concept. . . .&nbsp; Also, a fundamental taxonomic category to which individual specimens are assigned, which often but not always corresponds to the biological species.
  
• speciation: Evolution of reproductive isolation within an ancestral species, resulting in two or more descendant species.

Okay, we got some definitions out of the way.

Unfortunately for evolutionists, this cannot apply to (most) plants, because one of the mechanisms of change in plants is cross-breading [sic], which produces polyploids with increased morphology due to the fact that these are natural hybrids. In these cases, you have what are already defined as TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES and they interbreed naturally, and create a THIRD new species.

Ahh, but at what rate do these hybrids happen?&nbsp; Are they common?&nbsp; Are they rare?&nbsp; Are they fertile?&nbsp; Those are the kind of questions that need to be answered to determine if the two taxonomic species are members of the same biologic species.

(Correction: Cross-breeding does not produce polyploids; it produces hybrids.&nbsp; I thought we already covered that in other threads.&nbsp; The two terms are not freely interchangeable as you seem to think.)

Taxonomies are being continually reworked as more data is gathered.&nbsp; Yet I know of not a single rework that calls evolution or common descent&nbsp;into question.&nbsp; Do you happen to know of one?

It violates the BSC definition during cross-breeding and again after the new species emerges, because it's entirely possible for the new species NOT to be reproductively isolated.

The only thing you have shown is that it is possible that some plant hybrids call into question whether some taxonomic species are biological species.&nbsp; This does not even come close to demonstrating that biological species concept can not be accurately applied to the majority of plants.

Since this happens in 20-80% of all plants, this argues quite strongly that the whole concept of speciation is purely arbitrary, and can be redefined as needed to suit whatever argument for evolution you want to make.

How does this show that “speciation” is purely arbitrary?&nbsp; Could you please be more detailed in your thinking?&nbsp; Specifically, actual examples of arbitrary “speciation” from scientific literature.&nbsp; You’ve given us a generic situation, but if you want to call the biological basis for evolutionary theory into suspect, you are going to need to provide hard data, preferably from across the spectrum of life.

This is typical of evolutionist thinking - create definitions that support the theory and that way you can use them to declare the theory to be a fact.

Your post is a typical evolution-denial thinking: high on rhetoric and emotion, low on facts and accuracy.

Fossil record: I also wanted to exclude polyploids because they are clearly a different genetic mechanism of morphology than what one would have to assume is responsible for most evolution in just about anything but plants. (There are some polyploids in amphibians, etc., but these are rare.)

Evolution is evolution.&nbsp; Why does it matter whether variation is the result of point mutation, gene duplication, hybridization, or polyploidy?&nbsp;

One would assume that just because plants are easily subject to cross-breeding doesn't mean they are immune to the other genetic mutations supposedly responsible for evolution in vertebrates. So if one wants to "test" the evolution of plants and invertebrates for the OTHER genetic mechanisms of adding information (morphology) in vertebrates (as in our reptile-to-mammal series), then one must exclude cross-breeding between different species as the most common means of creating new species and look at the remaining evidence to see if there is an equivalent reptile-to-mammal transition that occurred.

If so, then one could confirm that this same mechanism (or some other non-polyploid mechanism) of mutation was occurring that could apply to vertebrates, plants and invertebrates.

What is the significance of trying to see if the plant fossil record has the exact same distribution of evolutionary mechanisms as the vertebrate record?&nbsp; Is this supposed to challenge evolutionary theory?&nbsp; It seems to me that you would like to take something from zoology and test if it is also true for botany, and conclude that if it fails that evolution does too.&nbsp; You’re going to have to work much harder to correctly draw that conclusion.

Furthermore, your challenge amounts to testing the genes between extinct creatures.&nbsp; That’s impossible since fossilization doesn’t usually preserve the genome.&nbsp; Since evolutionary theory doesn’t rest on the ability to genotype fossils, your challenge is meaningless.

Obviously, this didn't matter because nobody was able to come up with any meaningful series of transitions anyway.

It doesn’t matter because your challenge is meaningless.

But the bottom line is that IF the vertebrate series are dependable, and vertebrates make up 0.01% of the fossil record, then it should be EASY to find a better, more complete series with more fine-grained transitionals from the 99.9% of the record that includes invertebrates and plants.

Here you have drawn an erroneous conclusion.&nbsp; Vertebrate series might not make up most of the fossil record, but it is inaccurate to conclude that there should be better series out there.&nbsp; It’s like saying that if the rich make up 0.1% of the population then there must be someone in the other 99.9% who makes more money or has a larger yacht.&nbsp; This ignores the possibility that perhaps it is because a person is in that special 0.1% that they’re likely to make the most money or have the largest yacht.

But the lack of evidence speaks for itself. Nobody was able to come up with such a series, and I doubt if anyone ever will.

So what if no one ever does?&nbsp; How does this affect the accuracy of evolutionary theory?

THAT should tell you something right there. How can anyone believe in a theory that leave no evidence in 99.9% of the fossil record, but miraculously leaves evidence of transitions which we assume are true based on incomplete fossils (sometimes only one bone) gathered from scattered locations throughout the world (the creatures migrated from location to location as they evolved, I guess)?

Ahh, but you have now shifted your argument.&nbsp; The inability to show fine-grained, non-polyploid, non-vertebrate fossil transitions with detailed pictures simple enough for Nick Petreley to accept is not the same thing as the inability to show evidence for evolution in the other 99.9% of the fossil record.&nbsp; I seriously wish that you could at least construct arguments more logically consistent then:

If A, B, C, D, thus E &amp; F.&nbsp; Therefore their inability to show G proves them wrong.

The flaw with this bait and switch is that G&nbsp;was never&nbsp;actually part of your argument.

In case you are wondering, there is plenty of evidence for the evolutionary history of non-vertebrates.&nbsp; Other have already given you references to get your odyssey started.

Because evolution didn't happen, but evolutionists will believe just about anything in order to salvage this crock.

Well, the appropriate response to this is to point people to the numerous hoops, dishonesty, and hand-waving that creationists do to preserve their specific interpretation of scripture, but I will just post this link.

Anyway, enjoy all your ad-hominem attacks, etc. I have other work to do.

Translation: "Mr. Kettle, you are black."


&nbsp;

 

[randman]

Great post Nick.

Get some work done in your "real" life, and don't worry about t hese guys' absurd accusations.

 

[Gunny]

 

[choccy]

Great post Nick.

Yeah, I though this would be right up your alley.

Choccy

 

[RufusAtticus]

Am I the only one who finds in ironic that Gunnysgt used a computer to make that statement?