The catch-22 of creationist demands for fossil transitions

[pitabread]

Is there actually a debate inside of TOE believers about how fast & drastic these transitions could have occurred?

On a generation-to-generation basis, transitions would still appear relatively gradual.

Relative to the fossil record however they would appear a lot quicker given that the time frames between specimens could be hundreds or thousands of generations.

I wonder if having a ton of transitions between the transitions is even possible, because you can’t end up with a species that’s neither fit for land or for water.

You can however end up with species that are fit for both. And we have loads of examples of existing fauna that fill those ecological niches.

 

[Job 33:6]

You speak of "succession" and we hear the phrase "fossil record". I did listen to a bit of that second video you posted. The guy mentions that we have to look for fossils on the surface, and that a fossil 5 miles under the earth does us no good since we'll likely never see it. It seems like an important albeit obvious point. Given all the geologic activity like continental shift, mounting forming, earthquakes, volcanism, erosion, flooding, etc., isn't the fossil record very, very incomplete? More like a collection of snapshots than a "record"?

Why not?

You've mean they've never been found?

Well, the earth is big. We only see, perhaps 1% or less of all fossils that exist. So, without a doubt, there is plenty more to discover. And I bet that in 100 years, people will look back to todays time and agree that todays succession is incomplete. Just as we might have looked back 100 years ago and said the same.

But yes, it is like a bunch of snap shots. I usually equate it to a photo album. A photo album of billions of pages. A couple hundred years ago we might have only had a hundred pages. Now we may have thousands of pages, but ultimately, you could scour the earth forever and still have many blank pages. And this is usually a point of contention in these discussions. Anti evolution people talk about the blank pages. Scientists fill blank pages up and anti evolution people just turn to other blanks. But really all the anti evolution people need to do is find a 5th grade photo in the 80s section, or find an 80 year old photo in the 5th grade section, and they could easily knock over the house of cards. But after 200+ years of fossil discover, the 5th grade photos always fall into the 5th grade section and the 80s photos fall into the 80s section, over and over again.

We have enough fossils to identify a succession. We have enough fossils to create a story, like jurassic park for example. We have many species of dinosaur, and many plant fossils found with them and many rocks that can tell us about their environment. Collectively we tell the story.

Rocks also can tell us what was land and what was sea. They can tell us where continents were, where mountains were, where volcanoes were. And we can see, the history of earth, one rock at a time. The more rocks we look at, the more clear the picture becomes. But really geologists with an old earth understanding have been around for hundreds of years now, so we have an understanding that is worth something. We call it the geologic record. Of course everyone is free to call it the "collection of geologic snap shots" if they want to. Doesn't matter to me, so long as everyone is on the same page.

 

[Job 33:6]

Why not?

You've mean they've never been found?

If a succession were moving from sea to land, lungs would not appear in something transitioning from land to sea, as lungs are for breathing air, which is a land based quality.

Tiktaalik wouldnt have lungs if it were a transition toward the direction of sea life, when pre existing fossils did not have lungs.

And if you think silurian tiktaaliks exist, you are more than welcome to find them. If you do, let me know and I will get in my car or on an airplane and I will come right over there and I will attempt to become famous with the discovery. Thats pretty funny. Anything can happen though, i like the thought of discovery.

 

[Job 33:6]

These transitional fossils between the transitional fossils that people ask for (the catch 22), might they not exist at all? Can a parent species spit out a transition in a single generation?

Is there actually a debate inside of TOE believers about how fast & drastic these transitions could have occurred? I wonder if having a ton of transitions between the transitions is even possible, because you can’t end up with a species that’s neither fit for land or for water.

In a single generation? I dont think speciation is possible in a single generation. But that would be a question for biologists.

But there are concepts like punctuated equilibrium. Rates of change in the fossil succession are not unattainable with relation to rates of change proposed by biologists. But from a geologists perspective, fossils aren't really found one generation after another and so a succession will skip generations. In which case, a transitional form might not exist if it is requested on a species level.

For example, if you have 10,000 generations between 1 species to another, its unlikely that paleontologists are going to dig up 10,000 sets of fossils for every single generation. But really this is sort of what anti evolution people are trying to do. They ask for a transition, a transition is given and they ask for more fine tuned transitions. More fine tuned transitions are given and they just ask for more, finer still.

At some point or another people just have to accept that the transition is there and that it doesnt take a billion fossils to recognize it.

But yes, there are discussions on how fast evolution can occur. Paleontologists cant distinguish very fine rates of transition because, like i said above, we dont have billions of fossils to work with. Biologists seem to have a good understanding of possible rates, but as in all fields of science, information is always being discovered. People also always have biases, so you might find some scientists who are strong gradualists, while others might suggest a punctuated evolution mixed with gradualism. But really its all just...nit picky. Its like debating how round the earth is. At the end of the day its round and we all agree, but people like to spice things up by talking about mountains and valleys.

 

[lifepsyop]

You mentioned transitionals between major groups. That's why I brought up tiktaalik to show that such transitions do exist.

When evolutionists refer to a "transitional" species, it's used only in a very abstract sense.

Most of the time it's simply referring to an isolated body part. (the rest of the animal's anatomy may even be trending in a direction away from what it was supposed to be transitioning into).. A pretty clever trick evolutionists are fond of.

Additionally, even assuming evolution is true, if you examine your own theory, you'll find that you could not even say with any certainty whether the features on Tiktaalik were truly "transitional" towards tetrapods, or whether they were a convergent evolution on an entirely separate branch....

...oh, not to mention, I believe they found fully advanced footprints in rocks considered several million years older than Tiktaalik who was supposed to represent the origin of primitive fin-feet.

 

[Job 33:6]

When evolutionists refer to a "transitional" species, it's used only in a very abstract sense.

Most of the time it's simply referring to an isolated body part. (the rest of the animal's anatomy may even be trending in a direction away from what it was supposed to be transitioning into).. A pretty clever trick evolutionists are fond of.

Additionally, even assuming evolution is true, if you examine your own theory, you'll find that you could not even say with any certainty whether the features on Tiktaalik were truly "transitional" towards tetrapods, or whether they were a convergent evolution on an entirely separate branch....

...oh, not to mention, I believe they found fully advanced footprints in rocks considered several million years older than Tiktaalik who was supposed to represent the origin of primitive fin-feet.

Tiktaalik isnt an isolated body part. There have been tens of skeletons discovered.

And if a succession is regionally isolated without predecessors, then you dont have evidence to suggest convergent evolution. Also, even if it were convergent evolution, it would still be convergent evolution from sea to land, as that is what the temporal succession suggests. Convergent evolution is still evolution.

And regarding your last point, its been suggested that those tracks may have been created by a tiktaalik or similar themselves, and they are still located within the devonian post lobe finned fish and pre tetrapod, so its irrelevant. As ive said before and ill say it again, if the tracks were in the silurian or the ordovician or cambrian, or any subformation therein, it would make a difference. But when you are talking about bordering formations contained within 10 million years, it becomes less meaningful. Especially when you have 4.56 billion years of rock.

Next!

 

[Jimmy D]

Not much of life. Stromatolites generally make up pre-cambrian fossils and not much sign of bigger life forms and then BOOM Cambrian layer happens and there is life in variety that seemed to have skipped time.

There were bacteria and sponges and odd things pre Cambrian and then something evolved but it wasn't just one thing it was more than one because by the time the Cambrian era rolls around there is a good variety of stuff that wouldn't have had time to naturally mutate and evolve and reproduce and speciate and spread and speciate enough by the time the Cambrian layer hits..

Just by observing the fossil record..

I see Komatiite has addressed this so I won't bother. You're lucky to have someone with an in-depth knowledge of the subject helping you out (Komatiite, not me!).

 

[Job 33:6]

I like thinking of the zachelmie tracks like i think of tuning a guitarre or violin.

There is your general order of strings, G D A and E. And they each make sounds in a succession from low to high or high to low. But the strings can also make sharps and flats. G sharp, G flat, A sharp, G flat etc.

In the fossil succession, there is an order GDAE, just like with a stringed instrument. If you break the order, you break the theory. Fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal/bird, with burgess fauna at the start.

With the zachelmie tracks, you arent really breaking the order. Youre arguing that G sharp is actually G, and that what is G is actually G flat.

You aren't breaking the theory, you are fine tuning the strings.

The same can be said for terrestrial invertebrates. Some suggest that they appeared in the late ordovician. Others suggest that they appeared a relatively short time later, in the early silurian. Nobody is coming out saying that terrestrial invertebrates evolved in the mesozoic or the cenozoic or the carboniferous or permian etc. Rather, its a fine tuned discussion between what is a G and what is a G flat. And thats why we dont hear much controversy about the zachelmie tracks, because they are pretty close, geologically and temporally to our already established estimates.

 

[DogmaHunter]

There are no links between the alleged links, and there never can be. That's why the scientist is exasperated at the end of the clip. And you need exactly that physical evidence if you want reasonable people to accept the claim based on physical evidence.

There can never be, only because creationist keep moving the goal post.

Suppose you have 2 fossils. From from 60 million years ago and another one from 5 million years ago. You'll point to the "link gap" between them. Then, we find a fossil in the same lineage from 30 million years ago. Now, you'll just point out that there are 2 link gaps: one between 60 and 30 mya and one between 30 and 5 mya.


And all that trouble, while fossils, solid evidence as it is, is actually the weakest form of evidence for evolution compared to the other independent lines of evidence, like the genetic record.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I actually think it would be more compelling to see live macro evolution than to see fossils because fossils can be incomplete or have more than one animal pressed into them.

You can google "observed speciation".
If you wish to observe "live" the kind of change that takes place over millions of years... that might be a bit dificult (not to mention a dishonest request).

But here's the good news: we don't need to observe that. We can infer from comparative DNA that this has occured.

 

[DogmaHunter]

This is the kind of thing that leads me to say science is a religion. Evolution is a religion.

That makes no sense. Events of the past, leave evidence that can be examined in the present.

You don't need to observe a fire beginning, raging and ending, to infer from the smouldering ashes that it actually occured.

You don't need to observe a murder in order to solve it (find the guilty, deduce the flow of events, deduce the time and cause of death, etc). You can solve it based on the evidence left behind.

In evolution, the best evidence is the genetic record. As DNA is passed on from parents to off spring, with modification, your personal DNA reads like a track record of all your ancestors past.

It takes greater faith than Christians to believe in this stuff.

It really, really doesn't. Just like it doesn't require faith to accept the time it takes for Pluto to complete an orbit, eventhough we haven't known about Pluto long enough yet to actually observe it complete an actual orbit. And even if we did, one orbit takes 2 to 3 lifetimes.

Yet, we can perfectly predict where exactly you should place and point your telescope at any given moment, to be able to see it.

The wind blows and you don't see where it comes from or where it is going.

We can measure that and given enough data, we can also predict it. Because we understand the underlying process that makes wind happen.

 

[DogmaHunter]

There isn't a way to accurately date anything.

Denialism. Or sheer ignorance. Not sure wich.

You sound wise in what you have been taught but where is the proof for your claims?

yes, science is very demonstrable and very results based.
Science works.

We can know that we have a pretty good understanding of how atoms work because nukes explode and nuclear powerplants provide thousands of homes with power. A lot of the dating mechanisms are based on that understanding. If you are going to say that dating does not work, then that means that we are wrong on how atoms work. Yet..... nukes explode and nuclear plants generate power.

If you think you can just randomly claim parts of science are incorrect because they happen to disagree with your a priori, rather fundamentalist, religious beliefs... then you'ld be very very wrong.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Oil is actually the only place I am stumped with YEC. It's traditional view is that it was formed over millions of years. There isn't really evidence that I've found to show otherwise, so I'm left waiting to see if we find where it really comes from or not.

Likewise I feel like saying oil formed over millions of years also provides inconclusive evidence. I lean towards denying that they are actually fossil fuels but I have no evidence of where it comes from. All I can say is that it was already there if I was a die hard. But I'm not. I like to examine both sides of the evidence.

Clearly, your last sentence is simply not true.
Since you flat out admit that you don't have any evidence of the contrary, you have no evidence in support of what you already believe and yet still deny the evidence of the mainstream.

Clearly, you don't care about evidence. You care about defending what you already believe, regardless of evidence.

Otherwise, you wouldn't say such things.

What more evidence do you need? Oil is found by prediction and the predictions as made based on science concerning old age geology, evolutionary history of species and ancient forests, dating mechanisms, etc.

If you assume a YEC view, you don't find oil and go bankrupt.
If you assume the scientific view, you find oil and make billions.

Go figure.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I believe God created the earth with oil already in it, to be discovered in its time.

Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

I like to call these things "easter eggs."

I call it Last Thursdayism.

 

[DogmaHunter]

History is based on the testimony of people in the observations they have made and is recorded.

...and corroborated with actual physical evidence.

And that only deals with human history. There's also history where humans aren't involved.

Evolution is not.

Evolution is concluded and confirmed through multiple lines of independent, objective and testable evidence from various different scientific fields. All these lines of evidence, bar none, converge on the exact same model: common ancestry of species that evolved over time.

 

[AV1611VET]

I call it Last Thursdayism.

Then you would be mislabeling it.

Can God create a loaf of raisin bread tomorrow in an instant of time?

If so, would that constitue "Last Thursdayism," since raisins are dried grapes?

 

[DogmaHunter]

Although it does make me wonder, even though there is a parent species, and evolution could very well be plausible for the biodiversity throughout the world, that doesn't necessarily refute the idea that macro evolution isn't a reality, because while certain species may speciate away from a parent species, to me they are very much alike and you could say they are still the same kind of animal but just a different variant thanks to micro evolution. So a lion and a tiger are both different species but they are the same kind of animal and are felines or whatever but can produce a Liger. And a zebra and a donkey are two different species that produce a Zonkey. So now that I think about it I am beginning to open up to the idea that micro evolution can be a means to bio-diversify the planet.

You're on a roll. Just a few more steps.

You seem to understand already that the accumulation of changes in genetically isolated populations, can account for speciation events where the new subspecies is no longer able to reproduce with the main population. You acknowledge that this sum of changes can also account for clear morphological change, like leading to tigers and lions.

In evolutionary history, tigers and lions are seperated by some 3.2 million years of evolution....

Having said that. Clearly you also understand how time is of the essence here. The more generations, the more divergence. Since it works by accumulation of changes and each new generation introduces its own changes into the genepool.

So... the longer this process continues, the more changes accumulate.

So here's an honest question.... what makes you think that this accumulation stops?
Consider starting out with primitive life - let's not even define what that is for now.
Then let it survive and reproduce with variation for 3.8 billion years.

Following the logic you acknowedged above (changes accumulate over generations, leading to speciation and morphological changes), what is the logical result of 3.8 billion years of accumulation? More, less or the same amount of changes as compared to a period of only 3 million years?

 

[DogmaHunter]

But my point is if something changes anatomically in a life form or its' seed it should be scientifically observable through whatever chemical or mechanical process or whatever.

And it is. It's called genetic mutation.
And the results of which can be identified through comparative genetics.

This is how we can know how related 2 species are.

And I believe this is true with micro evolution

I'll let you in on a public secret: there's no such thing as a "micro evolutionary process" and a "macro evolutionary process". There is just the evolutionary process.

Macro evolution, simply refers to large scale evolution stretching over more generations. Depending on context, it can refer to speciation or the evolution of specific traits / body parts on larger scale.

But it is the exact same process. The only difference is how much accumulation / evolution we are talking about.

Evolutionists believe we come from apes and I must disagree.

1. we don't just "come from apes", we ARE apes

2. we don't "believe" that, we KNOW that. It's a genetic fact.

I think there are all varieties of apes and some of them may have a common ancestors and other varieties of apes may have a different common ancestor than other apes but to go from ape to human, we have to trust we can leap from one kind of animal to another kind, otherwise we are apes.

No.

It's all there in the DNA, which literally holds a record of our ancestors past.
Genetically, chimps and humans are more closely related then chimps and gorilla's.



edit: fixed quoting problem

 

[DogmaHunter]

Then you would be mislabeling it.

No, that's exactly what it is.

Can God create a loaf of raisin bread tomorrow in an instant of time?

I'll go ahead and say yes, since god is defined as being able to do anything. Even what is impossible.

If so, would that constitue "Last Thursdayism," since raisins are dried grapes?

Yes.

 

[AV1611VET]

No, that's exactly what it is.

I'll go ahead and say yes, since god is defined as being able to do anything. Even what is impossible.

Yes.

Then it's no wonder you think God creating the earth with oil reservoirs is Last Thursdayism.