Good enough to successfully pass their genes on to their offspring.
I find this a bit ambiguous. I know evolution likes to make out everything is not a great as we think. This was said with stuff like junk DNA and vestigial organs ect. But to me something that can reproduce is very complex and optimal whether its a micro organism or more complex life.
No well I was responding to when you said all life isn't optimal. I though our DNA is optimal and that is in all creatures.
That's not what optimal means.
What I mean is not every creature is going to be the same. But a worm is a worm and that has everything it needs to function as a worm. A fly is a fly and it has all it needs to function perfectly as a fly. So even though these things are not as optimal in their make up as a human in that we can do a lot more each is still optimal for what they have to do to live. If they live they are optimal.
Yep, there's all sorts of variation even in existing modern species. Looking back through the fossil and genetic record we find even more. The pattern of that variation is one of the major lines of evidence for the theory of evolution.
But how do you tell if that variation isn't just the normal variation within the same species. An example I have used is the skulls of Dmanisi. These skulls suggest that half a dozen species of humanoids are actually the same species. What was once though to be transitional features between species is now seen as the normal variation of the same species. In this case being Homo erectus. Evolution does this a lot. They find a fossil out of place and even though it may look exactly like another fossil in a different layer they make it a new species based just on observation and assumption. The assumption is that because it cant be the same species or a variation of the same species because it was found in the wrong layer. So the dirt it was found in becomes the main weight for evidence.
Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution
Let's see your math showing exactly how many remains of intermediate species we should find. I'm not going to take your word that we are finding more or fewer examples than we should be.
I just think if you get for example the whale. Now from the land animal Pakicetus to the whale. They show about 8 or so stages from a tint dog sized animal to a massive whale. If you just take the size factor into consideration and nothing else how many stages do you think it would take to get from one to the other. Considering that the mother cant have a much bigger baby because of the size of its womb there should be many stages, maybe 100. We are talking about 4 feet long to over 100 feet long. Even if you give a foot at a time its still growing pretty fast compared to say humans. But size is easy to evolve. When it comes to some of the complicated changes needed structurally and internally it would need 100s of stages. Thats unless a mutation is able to say make a totally new skin or fins in one go. So we should see all these stages somewhere for every single animals that has ever lived.
Modern bird features aren't optimal, so I have no idea what your point is. And a bird popping up fully formed is what creationism would predict, so it not happening isn't a failure for evolutionary theory.
Modern bird features for birds are optimal. But the creatures they say they evolved from being Dino's and more specific theropods dont have the optimal features of birds. In fact they have to do some internal gymnastics to get the bird type lungs and respiratory system, wings, muscles, tendons, ligaments, brain circuitry, nerve systems, circulation system including from cold blooded creatures to warm blooded ones. The evidence shows that they dont have or that any transitional has the bird like structures to show that they evolved into birds. Evolution pulls out a few similarities but that is no where near what is needed. there are similarities with all creatures if you look for them. We all need some things similar because we occupy the same place more or less.
Researchers have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight -- and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609092055.htm
Yes, modern birds have various features that older extinct species don't have. That's more good evidence of evolution in action.
Not really in fact there is evidence that modern birds were around with dinos.
Modern Birds Now Found to Have Been Contemporaries of Dinosaurs
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/winged-victory/
What's a "fully formed feature"? Sounds like you're using it to mean "a feature identical to one found in modern species", but then all you're saying is that older species aren't the same as current ones. Which is basically just saying that different species are different. Did you mean to say anything more substantial?
Well unless something like a wing or a fin could have formed in one go then it cant be fully formed. A wind for example would need many stages to get to a fully working wing that allows bird flight. Does a dino pop out a baby with complete wings or does it take many generations to get to that point with random mutations and natural selection. Though I can see how natural selection would choose a partly formed wing on its way to a wing. But wings are just the external features. what more difficult to believe is evolution building all the internal things needed in a step wise process. I mean how do you make a bird respiratory system bit by bit. You have to even restructure bones, lose the diaphragm, change the lung structure and mechanism. You cant do that a bit at a time. thats unless random mutations can pop out a complete set of bird lungs in one go. Now that would be a mighty mutation.[/quote][/QUOTE]