Dannager said:
As far as I am aware, theistic evolution does not attempt to solve this "problem", as we already have transitionary forms in the fossil record, at just about any point you can imagine. Heck, just this week another pre-human ancestral fossil was uncovered and added to the record.
Ummmm, not really. The lack of an abundance of clear tranisitionary fossils remains a problem for the theory of evolution. Many structures, such as limbs, feathers, the eye, etc. seem to spring out of the record without a set of developing transitionary fossils. Darwin even expected that over time we would find a large number of intermediate fossils. The Cambrian Explosion remains problemmatic in this regard as well.
Yes, there are nice charts, etc. showing one animal next to another, like the sequence for horses. To a YEC, these charts don't really show much, except that it is possible to set things next to each other in a way that shows the Designer's order. I believe many of these charts have also portrayed things "out of order" (according to the generally accepted dates), in order to make the progression appear more complete.
"Punctuated evolution" is one of the many modification of the basic theory to try to account for the gaps in the fossil record. Google can provide a ton of links. The fact remains that there are significant gaps in the fossil record which must be explained one way or another.
(There are a lot of other problems with the actual fossil record. In the field, it is quite often a lot more complicated than the clean textbook presentations, with out of order layers, fossil graveyards, interstitial fossils, etc. Such things fit nicely in a YEC framework, but must be explained in other frameworks.)
Again, this isn't a problem that theistic evolution tries to "solve". We know what the mechanisms are - natural selection (and a handful of lesser-known selection mechanisms) combined with mutation.
Ummmmm, no. Virtually noone disputes natural selection, etc., where population pressures or a variety of other things can contribute to the changes within a group, giving preference to one type over another. It is a shame that one of the examples of this -the dark moth/light moth on the dark trees example - has been discredited, but the general principles are fine. (it also bugs me that there are still textbooks that cite this particular study.) The key is that natural selection changes the ratios within populations, it does not create any new attributes.
There are many problems with "mutations" being the primary mechanism for providing the rich variety of life needed for natural selection to work upon. The biggest problem is the fact that the overwhelming majority of mutations are actually harmful or detrimental to the creature.
TE addresses both of these problems, albeit in a
deus ex machina type of way. If the Creator is controlling evolution, then it is easy to explain new structures appearing - the Creator did it. Gaps are no problem because there weren't any transitions at that level, the Creator caused incremental, but puntuated development. The Creator also provides the mechanism for the genetic variations needed for other processes, such as natural selection, to sort out.
-lee-
