For creationists: give me your arguments against evolution.

[Shemjaza]

Genetic evidence tells you for sure that there's an evolutionary path which includes tons of transition species no one has ever seen?

Sure there's gaps... but I'm unaware of any particularly egregious holes in the major lineages of life?

The human one in particular seems awfully clear. We have a whole lot of "ape-like" and "human-like" species filling in the last few million years.

I can see that you have doubts, but I'm just not certain where the problems lie. Can you tell us what you would accept?

 

[BornAgainBrian]

Genetic evidence, fossil evidence, embryological evidence, morphological evidence, geographical evidence, phylogenetic evidence, vestigial evidence, atavistic evidence, anatomical evidence, retroviral evidence, speciation evidence.

Other than that, I got nothin'.

You have embryos of the transition species? You have visible evidence of the change? You have evidence of where this assumed transition specie lives? (etc)

 

[BornAgainBrian]

Sure there's gaps... but I'm unaware of any particularly egregious holes in the major lineages of life?

The human one in particular seems awfully clear. We have a whole lot of "ape-like" and "human-like" species filling in the last few million years.

I can see that you have doubts, but I'm just not certain where the problems lie. Can you tell us what you would accept?

I'll have to get back with you next weekend. Out to the field for the week.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

No, the odds are really in favor of it happening.

That's circular reasoning i.e. because we're here, and I believe in evolution, therefore evolution is true.

Ooooo, I love this mere pronouncement game! It saves so much work, looking for evidence and all that!

I still don't understand the evolution of range of motion in muscle and bone yet. Never mind the finer points.

There is a drawback . . . mere pronouncements turn out to not be very good at convincing people. Oh dear, what can we do about that?

I was answering the OP's question, not trying to convince anyone.

One can look for evidence, I suppose. Like, vestigial tails inside our bodies. If we had that, it might be evidence of descent from a tailed species.

I thought we were evolving a tail, not losing one. They are very useful you know.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

So are the odds that you would be born, grow up and one day post on this forum.

One of the problems is that science is unable to present an explanation of evolution that is understandable by the average person. We are asked to 'believe' goobledegook.

 

[Split Rock]

If it's such irrefutable science, I think there should be evidence of the entire transformation.

There is no such thing as "irrefutable science." The preponderance of the evidence points to whales evolving from terrestrial ungulates during the Eocene Period. You asked for transitionals, and I gave them to you. Now you shift the goalposts just like Euler predicted.

If I saw no in-between stages, I'd have a hard time believing a tadpole became a frog.

I gave you in between stages. In any case, there are other lines of evidence such as the fact that whale embryos grow leg buds and reabsorb them (https://pigeonchess.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/dolphin-embryo-with-hind-limb-buds.jpg), whales are genetically closer to hippos and cows than to other aquatic mammals (Analyses of mitochondrial genomes strongly support a hippopotamus-whale clade.), there are whales that have been found with atavistic legs, etc. It isn't just fossil transitionals.

 

[Split Rock]

One of the problems is that science is unable to present an explanation of evolution that is understandable by the average person. We are asked to 'believe' goobledegook.

So since its easier to understand "God blew on some dirt and out popped Adam," that God must have created humans that way??? Do you understand nuclear fusion? Brain surgery? Aerodynamics? Do you question them as well, because its not at the level of a children's book??

 

[psalms 91]

Actually they are compatible if you subscribe to a pre adamite world which I do. If interested look it up as would take a lot to explain it

 

[Split Rock]

Genetic evidence tells you for sure that there's an evolutionary path which includes tons of transition species no one has ever seen?

Do these species really matter to you? I doubt it. But lets look at a transition that is so well documented that there are no gaps... horse evolution:
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm
Horse Evolution
Are you convinced now?

 

[OldWiseGuy]

So since its easier to understand "God blew on some dirt and out popped Adam," that God must have created humans that way??? Do you understand nuclear fusion? Brain surgery? Aerodynamics? Do you question them as well, because its not at the level of a children's book??

The fossil record shows compete organisms ready to sit up and take nourishment. This is evidence for creation, not evolution. The term 'evolution' is actually a misnomer. The process should rightly be called metamorphosis, as the organisms change in giant leaps seemingly overnight having undergone some mysterious process, out of the sight of science.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

So since its easier to understand "God blew on some dirt and out popped Adam," that God must have created humans that way??? Do you understand nuclear fusion? Brain surgery? Aerodynamics? Do you question them as well, because its not at the level of a children's book??

The fossil record shows compete organisms ready to sit up and take nourishment. This is evidence for creation, not evolution. The term 'evolution' is actually a misnomer. The process should rightly be called metamorphosis, as the organisms change in giant leaps seemingly overnight having undergone some mysterious process, out of the sight of science.

http://ojotaylor.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/then-a-miracle-occurs-cartoon.jpg

 

[Split Rock]

The fossil record shows compete organisms ready to sit up and take nourishment.

As opposed to what?.... waiting for their creator to feed them and change their diaper?

This is evidence for creation, not evolution.

See above. A creator can make a species dependent on it (we have, by way of breeding), but a natural process like evolution cannot. There is no evidence for creation, because you guys claim that everything and anything possible would be evidence for creation.

The term 'evolution' is actually a misnomer. The process should rightly be called metamorphosis, as the organisms change in giant leaps seemingly overnight having undergone some mysterious process, out of the sight of science.

Nothing mysterious at all.. there are three major mechanisms of evolution (four if you separate sexual selection from natural selection):
Natural selection
Genetic drift
Gene flow.

 

[TheImmortalJellyfish]

The thing that gets me about evolution is not all the transitional fossils, which ones, whether they're real, etc...

At what point in the evolution chain from chimp to homosapian did one of those intermediates start speaking? Think of the complexity of speech. Why are we the only group of anything that can fluently learn to speak a (many of us more than one) language, and not just mimicry...I mean use of diction, syntax, word composition, sentence composition, meaning, inflection...

I mean, you take something like flying. Pretty basic...if humans had wings, we'd fly. Or if we had poison sacs in our tear ducts and could use them for self-defense...probably not very complex of a system, that.

But at some point, evolution supposedly "decided" that some of these chimps were going to branch off, become many times physically weaker, but many times mentally stronger, the likes of which is unprecedented in the animal kingdom. You can't teach a chimp to speak today, (sign language, tho) and there's no way of knowing which "descendent" was able to develop this way. Or is there?

In no way do I claim to be an authority on this subject. I'm just responding to the OP.

 

[Loudmouth]

I might be more inclined to accept macroevolution if I saw multiple skeletons of each stage of transition for each animal. I haven't seen a bunch of skeletons of not-quite-whales or of whatever's in between a T-rex and an ostrich.

As you have already demonstrated, even when you are shown these fossils, you still reject evolution. But for what it is worth . . .

 

[TheImmortalJellyfish]

As you have already demonstrated, even when you are shown these fossils, you still reject evolution. But for what it is worth . . .

Ya know...this is the second or third time someone's posted this thing, but what are they all? What is each one from A-L? Anyone can put together a bunch of skulls. Us "non-science believing" Creationists need a bit more info....

 

[Loudmouth]

The thing that gets me about evolution is not all the transitional fossils, which ones, whether they're real, etc...

The thing that gets me about creationists is that they often refuse to accept the very evidence they ask for. My post above has a picture with various hominid transitionals, for your perusal.

At what point in the evolution chain from chimp to homosapian did one of those intermediates start speaking? Think of the complexity of speech. Why are we the only group of anything that can fluently learn to speak a (many of us more than one) language, and not just mimicry...I mean use of diction, syntax, word composition, sentence composition, meaning, inflection...

Because we are the only species to have evolved a big enough and smart enough brain to do so. In fact, the fossil record shows a transition in brain size. Here is a chart of brain size (normalized to body weight) vs. time.

It starts with Australopithecines on the left, and modern humans on the right. Worth noting, the Australopithecine brain is nearly the same size as a chimp brain, for comparison.

But at some point, evolution supposedly "decided" that some of these chimps were going to branch off, become many times physically weaker, but many times mentally stronger, the likes of which is unprecedented in the animal kingdom. You can't teach a chimp to speak today, (sign language, tho) and there's no way of knowing which "descendent" was able to develop this way. Or is there?

Evolution doesn't make decisions. Evolution no more decided that chimps wouldn't talk than it decided that humans would. It just so happened that the right mutations happened at the right time and right environment to drive our species towards big brains that were capable of speech. One of the initial adaptations may have been weaker jaw muscles, strangely enough. A weaker jaw muscle does not require as much bone to anchor to. This allowed the cranial bones to be thinner, and the cranium to be larger in volume.

Nature. 2004 Mar 25;428(6981):415-8.

Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the human lineage.

Stedman HH1, Kozyak BW, Nelson A, Thesier DM, Su LT, Low DW, Bridges CR, Shrager JB, Minugh-Purvis N, Mitchell MA.

Powerful masticatory muscles are found in most primates, including chimpanzees and gorillas, and were part of a prominent adaptation of Australopithecus and Paranthropus, extinct genera of the family Hominidae. In contrast, masticatory muscles are considerably smaller in both modern and fossil members of Homo. The evolving hominid masticatory apparatus--traceable to a Late Miocene, chimpanzee-like morphology--shifted towards a pattern of gracilization nearly simultaneously with accelerated encephalization in early Homo. Here, we show that the gene encoding the predominant myosin heavy chain (MYH) expressed in these muscles was inactivated by a frameshifting mutation after the lineages leading to humans and chimpanzees diverged. Loss of this protein isoform is associated with marked size reductions in individual muscle fibres and entire masticatory muscles. Using the coding sequence for the myosin rod domains as a molecular clock, we estimate that this mutation appeared approximately 2.4 million years ago, predating the appearance of modern human body size and emigration of Homo from Africa. This represents the first proteomic distinction between humans and chimpanzees that can be correlated with a traceable anatomic imprint in the fossil record.
Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the huma... - PubMed - NCBI​

 

[Loudmouth]

Ya know...this is the second or third time someone's posted this thing, but what are they all? What is each one from A-L? Anyone can put together a bunch of skulls. Us "non-science believing" Creationists need a bit more info....

Why don't you tell us. List the criteria you use to determine if a fossil is an ape, transitional, or human, and then show how they apply to each fossil.

 

[Loudmouth]

The genetic study you are doing (I think) is a very short time period study (years).

When we compare human and chimp DNA, we are covering 5 million years. When we compare human and orangutan DNA, we are covering 10 million years.

Of course, any such study WILL have some kind of observable continuity. But that does not mean the concept of common ancestry is true because it is normally used on an idea which stretched over immense amount of time. So, use a very short time result to support a concept of very long time is not valid. And honestly, you should not use a single term (common ancestry) for the ideas of two systems that have drastically different time scale. When you do that, it is a deliberately cheating.

Genomes from different species fall into the predicted nested hierarchy over large periods of time. We are interpolating over millions of years of evolution, not extrapolating.

 

[Loudmouth]

The fossil record shows compete organisms ready to sit up and take nourishment.

That is exactly what we should see if evolution is true.

The process should rightly be called metamorphosis, as the organisms change in giant leaps seemingly overnight having undergone some mysterious process, out of the sight of science.

Examples?

 

[Loudmouth]

Genetic evidence tells you for sure that there's an evolutionary path which includes tons of transition species no one has ever seen?

The genetic markers used to test common ancestry are fossils. They are genetic fossils. For example, humans and other apes share the same viral insertions at the same position in their genomes. These are fossils of a single integration in a common ancestor that have been passed down to each lineage. In fact, genetic evidence is much better evidence than fossils since genomes are a direct record of your ancestry.