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The challenge (for the third time, and still unmet)
Here we go again. These are the goalposts. Have fun. More precision added for the benefit of putts. Here's what I challenge you to provide.
Someone posted this "series" of "transitionals" from reptile to mammal as evidence for evolution.
Now, I must admit these ARE very pretty drawings. Nice use of color. They remind me of the "Learn how to draw cartoons" books. It's cool how you can go from a circle to a cartoon face, step by step. But let's not quibble about drawings, let's assume what you have here is genuine and use it as the standard by which we will measure the degree to which you meet the challenge. The only thing I require that's harder than the above is that I don't want drawings. But as you'll soon see, it will be so easy in other respects that this will be but a minor difficulty to overcome.
THE REAL THING
Here's my challenge. USING PICTURES OF WHOLE FOSSILS, NOT DRAWINGS, provide at least the SAME NUMBER OF GRADUAL STEP BY STEP TRANSITIONS (I count 8 in the above example) with a COMPARABLE DEGREE OF CHANGE BETWEEN STEPS, and as COMPARABLY SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STARTING AND ENDING SPECIES as as the starting and ending species represented by these drawings.
In order to satisfy the last requirement, you'll need to know as much about the starting and ending species as we do about the ones represented in the drawings. In other words, we're supposedly not guessing that the drawings start with a reptile and end with a mammal -- you supposedly KNOW this to be true. So none of these guesses about whether or not a plant is seed bearing. You either have real, hard evidence or it doesn't belong in the transition. And does everyone understand here that we're not talking about pictures of a snail evolving into a snail, a fruit fly into a fruit fly, a mosquito into a mosquito, A BRACHIOPOD INTO A BRACHIOPOD -- DUH, or a trilobyte evolving into a trilobyte? If not, then you need not apply, since you're too ignorant to understand the challenge.
If any of this is unclear to you, I've enumerated the conditions below for easy reading.
THE BIG EASY
Now, this next part is what should make the challenge REALLY EASY. All you have to do is confine your choice of transitions to plants and invertebrates.
NONE of the fossils can include transitionals that involve KNOWN HYBRIDS. In other words, we're testing in 99.9875% of the fossil record for the kind of descent with modifiction that evolutionists say occurs in 0.0125% of the fossil record, the vertebrates, where hybrids and polyploids are extremely rare. If scientists DON'T KNOW IT IS A HYBRID OR RELATED TO A HYBRID then it's perfectly admissible. If your series includes any transitionals where one or more species is known to natrually cross-breed, then that series is inadmissible.
HOW EASY IS IT?
It should be unbelievably easy. I discovered my data on the number of known fossils was wrong, but according to several creationist sites, invertebrates and plants still likely make up at least 99.9875% of the fossil record, if not more. Regardless, I don't think anyone has any way to argue that this is not the vast majority of the fossil record. So let's look at the odds agian. 99.9% or thereabouts of known species are extinct. 99.9875% or thereabouts of the fossil record is comprised of invertebrates and plants. According to some paleontologists (although they can't seem to make up their minds) there are thousands of wonderful transitionals. One can only assume that most of those thousands of wonderful transitionals must be taken from the invertebrate and plant fossil record, since that's what most of the fossils are.
So you should easily be able to bombard this forum with page after page after page of 8-in-a-series PICTURES OF REAL, WHOLE FOSSILS which meet all of my criteria, which are drawn mostly from what you've already provided.
ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING
Okay, now I am perfectly aware that it doesn't matter how clear I've been. You'll move the goalposts and say I did it anyway. But just for the sake of doing this exercise right, let me establish and enumerate the goalposts so you can promptly ignore them and say I changed the rules.
1. INVERTEBRATES AND PLANTS ONLY
2. NO KNOWN HYBRID MORPHOLOGY
3. REAL PICTURES OF FOSSILS, NO DRAWINGS
4. AT LEAST EIGHT IN THE SERIES OF TRANSITIONS
5. COMPARABLE DEGREE OF SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EACH OF THE EIGHT TRANSITIONS AS REPRESENTED BY THE DRAWINGS ABOVE, WITH A CLEAR PROGRESSION FROM STARTING SPECIES TO TARGET SPECIES
6. COMPARABLE DIFFERENCE FROM FIRST TO LAST IN SERIES OF EIGHT TRANSITIONS AS REPRESENTED BY THE DRAWINGS ABOVE (NO LEAVES TO DIFFERENT LOOKING LEAVES -- I REALLY MEAN THE EQUIVALENT OF REPTILE TO MAMMAL)
7. WE KNOW AT LEAST AS MUCH ABOUT YOUR STARTING, ENDING AND INTERMEDIATES AS WE DO ABOUT THE SPECIES IN THE DRAWING (NO GUESSING ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THE SPECIES LIVED UNDER WATER OR IF IT WAS A SEED BEARING PLANT)
Worried that I'll judge fossils to be more or less comparable than you? Don't. Let the others who see your pictures judge for themselves. Remember, I'm the uneducated idiot here, so it doesn't matter what I think, and your evidence will undoubtedly be so convincing that nothing I say about it should matter anyway.
Last edited by npetreley on 29th July 2002 at 10:22 PM
