The great fossil illusion

[npetreley]

Link courtesy (sort of) of chickenman:

http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/fossil_illusion.htm

There's great stuff here, and some good references. Highly recommended.

The problems only get worse for the evolutionist. Not only is there no sign of evolution leading up to the complex invertebrates, but also missing in action are the enormous number of transitionals that must have existed to bridge the gap between invertebrates and vertebrates. The transformation from invertebrate to vertebrate would have been a major event in the earth’s evolutionary history. Yet the fossil record does not leave a single shred of evidence for this enormous transformation!5. This problem has been exacerbated by recent finds in China of highly advanced and extremely well preserved vertebrate life forms in the lower Cambrian strata. These fossils have collapsed the available time for the invertebrate to vertebrate transformation by at least 50 million years, to between 2 to 3 million years!6. This is a blink of the eye in geological time (a period called the Cambrian Explosion), prompting the two primary Chinese scientists involved to bluntly admit that these fossils roundly contradict the theory of evolution.7

The nightmare gets worse for the evolutionist when we consider that the wide diversity of body plans that suddenly appear in this brief 2 to 3 million year window are markedly distinct morphologically from each other. This disparity of body plans is followed by stasis, where there are no incremental alterations to the body plans through the entire history of the fossil record up to the present!8 This is precisely what one would expect if special creation were true, and a stark contradiction to evolution.

So all that is left is a sliver of a corner of the fossil record, the vertebrates. This is the rabbit in the hat for the evolutionist. The bulk of this sliver is made up of fish, where we again find no sign of evolution whatsoever.5 A small remainder of this miniscule sliver is left for the land-dwelling vertebrates. Of the land-dwelling vertebrate species unearthed, 95% are represented by a bone or less1. Yet this is where the evolutionist concentrates all his efforts to "show" to his audience that "the fossil record supports evolution"! Their audience is completely unaware that all of the examples they are being shown come from an incredibly puny section marred with incomplete data. They are conveniently left in the dark regarding the other 99.99% of the data, from a portion of the fossil record that is far more complete, that shows NO HINT OF EVOLUTION WHATSOEVER! This is their sleight-of-hand. This is a sham. This is brainwashing. There is no other way to put it.

 

[npetreley]

Also from that page...

Ironic, ain't it? That's basically what I got here on this board....brachiopods evolving into brachiopods, etc. Pitiful.

 

[npetreley]

Wow, even more good stuff.

What about this miniscule and fragmentary portion of the fossil record where evolutionists have been forced to spend so much of their time & energy? We would expect that due to the subjective nature of such fossils, many examples put forth from this group by evolutionists would be either 1) disputed by other experts in the field, or 2) later disproved by new, more complete data. Indeed we have an abundance of examples of both of these expected outcomes.

Take Archaeopteryx, for example. Many evolutionists hail this fossil bird as an intermediate between dinosaur & bird. Yet a decent number of leading bird experts, who are themselves evolutionists, roundly dispute this claim.9 The alleged ape-man ‘Lucy’ is another example championed by many evolutionists, but disputed by other qualified evolutionist scientists. Renowned anatomist Lord Solly Zuckerman once scornfully denounced A. afarensis as nothing more than a “bloody ape”!10 He became so frustrated with the claims of his fellow evolutionists that he declared there was “no science to be found in this field at all”.11

There are also many examples where later fossil data overturned prior misconceptions. Consider Mesonychid, an alleged whale ancestor. In a recent debate between evolutionist Pigliucci and creationist Walter Remine, Pigliucci confidently touted Mesonychid as an ancestor to the whales.12 He was apparently unaware that two years earlier the original champion of the Mesonychid link had retracted it because additional fossils falsified the original assessment.13

For more than 20 years Ramapithecus was proudly displayed in museums across the country as man’s first direct ancestor, based entirely on jaw and teeth fragments!14 When a complete jaw was found, evolutionists where forced to admit that it was actually a relative of the orangutan! There are many more examples, such as the now debunked Nebraska man, the chordate Pikaia as a vertebrate ancestor7, the eventual removal of Neanderthal man as a human ancestor, etc.

No science to be found in this field at all? Now where have I heard that before?

(accidentally posted this also in another thread...meant to be here)

 

[chickenman]

the entirety of that article is thouroughly refuted in the following thread at the EVC forum;

http://www.evcforum.net/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000049.html

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by chickenman
the entirety of that article is thouroughly refuted in the following thread at the EVC forum;

http://www.evcforum.net/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000049.html

Oh, yeah. I can see where it is so soundly refuted with statements like the vertebrate record is just more interesting, that's all. (Which surely explains why you can't FIND examples from invertebrates...they're just not interesting enough to find them, I guess, even if they do comprise the vast majority of the fossil record.)

Oh, and I really loved the example of a brachiopod evolving into a brachiopod...that soundly refuted the claim that evolutionists offer stupid evidence like a brachiopod evolving into a brachiopod.

 

[chickenman]

like all good creationists, this fred williams guy has a fansite

http://www.geocities.com/huxter4441/Williams.html

 

[Stormy]

Very Good thread Nick!!!

Evolution as proposed by Darwin was wrong from the start. Man cannot exclude the maker from the equation of creation and still hope to find the correct answer. It will never happen, for it is impossibility!

But still he will search for pieces of the puzzle that are needed to recreate his imaginary world. When will he understand that the Earth is true to its origination and cannot give to him that which he so vainly seeks?

 

[Stormy]

like all good creationists, this fred williams guy has a fansite

Poor tactics Chickenman If you cannot refute the truth offered you instead throw mud?

 

[AtheistArchon]

Man cannot exclude the maker from the equation of creation and still hope to find the correct answer. It will never happen, for it is impossibility!

- It's statements like this that keep me coming back to this forum. 

Poor tactics Chickenman <IMG alt="" src="http://www.christianforums.com/images/smilies/frown.gif" border=0> If you cannot refute the truth offered you instead throw mud?

- Who's throwing mud?

- NP, this link is nothing but a hodgepodge of the same old, tired creationist yarns that the folks in this forum have been refuting (successfully) for months.&nbsp; It's painfully obvious that you don't think about any of the responses given to you, you simply go out mining for more material and post it here, even if you have to repeat yourself in doing so.

- I'll take a step forward and grant you that you can mine creationist websites all day long and have a huge supply of exactly this kind of alphabet-soup argument collection.&nbsp; Perhaps it's your tactic that sooner or later, the rationalists in here are going to get tired of repeating themselves and ignore you, thus allowing you your victory... I don't know.&nbsp; If it's not that, it's something similar, because it's obvious you're not interested in debating the issues, you're only interested in winning at any cost.

- Hm.&nbsp; Somehow I get the feeling that I'm not the first person to tell you these things.

 

[Stormy]

It's statements like this that keep me coming back to this forum.

This is good.

 

[AtheistArchon]

This is good.

- No, it's bad!&nbsp; It means that you still equate evolutionary theory with the creation of the universe, and you still presume God to be a given in any and all situations, which taints any input you get.&nbsp; You "filter" anything that you're told through a God-filter.&nbsp; If it doesn't jibe with your personal beliefs, it "isn't true", end of story.

 

[Lanakila]

You filter all information through a no God filter, so there. Your statements don't prove anything Atheist.

 

[OneLargeToe]

You filter all information through a no God filter, so there.

Actually, it's called a "reality" filter.

 

[blader]

Originally posted by Lanakila
You filter all information through a no God filter, so there. Your statements don't prove anything Atheist.

Yeah. Got to hand it to you there. Guilty as charged.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Yeah. Got to hand it to you there. Guilty as charged.

Maybe this is sarcasm. If so - I can see the reasoning.

Maybe you really do filter your information through a "no God Filter". If so, you can leave me out of the mea culpa. That's not something I do. I even spent a few misguided weeks as a creationist once upon a time - (but don't tell anybody!)

Maybe you misunderstood the statement you were replying to?

 

[edgeo]

Link courtesy (sort of) of chickenman:

ttp://www.evolutionfairytale.com/a...il_illusion.htm"&gt;http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/a...il_illusion.htm

Ah, yes, Fred's site.&nbsp; I'll have to tell you some stories about him sometime.&nbsp; Suffice it to say that his understanding of the fossil record is rudimentary.

There's great stuff here, and some good references. Highly recommended.

(From Fred): The problems only get worse for the evolutionist. Not only is there no sign of evolution leading up to the complex invertebrates, but also missing in action are the enormous number of transitionals that must have existed to bridge the gap between invertebrates and vertebrates.

Actually, there probably weren't that many.&nbsp; The first vertebrates were very simple and their common ancestor with invertebrates were probably living in the Proterozoic at the same time as the Vendian fauna.

The transformation from invertebrate to vertebrate would have been a major event in the earth’s evolutionary history. Yet the fossil record does not leave a single shred of evidence for this enormous transformation!5.

Again, not necessarily.&nbsp; Fred assumes transition from brachiopods of the Cambrian Period to vertebrates of the Cambrian Period.&nbsp;&nbsp; Modern paleontology does not recognize this fact.

This problem has been exacerbated by recent finds in China of highly advanced and extremely well preserved vertebrate life forms in the lower Cambrian strata.

Highly advanced!&nbsp; LOL! These things do not even have mouths (added by edit: I meant to say 'jaws' here). They are much less advanced than anything people on this board would recgonize as vertebrates.

These fossils have collapsed the available time for the invertebrate to vertebrate transformation by at least 50 million years, to between 2 to 3 million years!6.

Once again, Fred has confined himself to the Cambrian.&nbsp; There is ample time prior to that and the Vendian fauna suggest precursors tens of millions of years earlier.

This is a blink of the eye in geological time (a period called the Cambrian Explosion), prompting the two primary Chinese scientists involved to bluntly admit that these fossils roundly contradict the theory of evolution.7

This comes from someone who thinks that the Cambrian Period IS the Cambrian explosion.&nbsp; Just keep that in mind as you read the website.

The nightmare gets worse for the evolutionist when we consider that the wide diversity of body plans that suddenly appear in this brief 2 to 3 million year window are markedly distinct morphologically from each other.

Wrong again.&nbsp; Fred thinks not only confines himself to the Cambrian Period, he thinks that since that is the time window in which the body plans occur, that that is the period in which they developed.

This disparity of body plans is followed by stasis, where there are no incremental alterations to the body plans through the entire history of the fossil record up to the present!8 This is precisely what one would expect if special creation were true, and a stark contradiction to evolution.

This is laughable.&nbsp; I'm not sure who would say that humans have the same body plans a Cambrian fauna.

So all that is left is a sliver of a corner of the fossil record, the vertebrates. This is the rabbit in the hat for the evolutionist.

Speaking of rabbits, where are mammals during the Cambrian Period? According to Fred, all of the body plans were present at that time.

The bulk of this sliver is made up of fish, where we again find no sign of evolution whatsoever.5

Fred leaves one with the impression that the Devonian and modern fishes look just like the Cambrian fish.&nbsp; No sign of evolution, eh?&nbsp; Then where are the halibut&nbsp;of the Pennsylvanian, or better yet things like porpoises?

A small remainder of this miniscule sliver is left for the land-dwelling vertebrates.

So, where did they come from?&nbsp; What Cambrian creature was a land-dwelling vertebrate?

Of the land-dwelling vertebrate species unearthed, 95% are represented by a bone or less1. Yet this is where the evolutionist concentrates all his efforts to "show" to his audience that "the fossil record supports evolution"!

Ah, statistical shenanigans.&nbsp; Of the millions of fossils found, how many are more complete?&nbsp; Fred deigns not to tell you.

Their audience is completely unaware that all of the examples they are being shown come from an incredibly puny section marred with incomplete data. They are conveniently left in the dark regarding the other 99.99% of the data, from a portion of the fossil record that is far more complete, that shows NO HINT OF EVOLUTION WHATSOEVER!

However, we DO have to explain the part of the fossil record that supports evolution.&nbsp; I find this to be one of the great creationist shortcomings.&nbsp; They don't feel that it is necessary to explain the part of the record that we can see... only the part that is misssing!

This is their sleight-of-hand. This is a sham. This is brainwashing. There is no other way to put it.

I'll agree that there is slight of hand here, but on whose part?

&nbsp;

 

[blader]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith


Maybe this is sarcasm. If so - I can see the reasoning.

Maybe you really do filter your information through a "no God Filter". If so, you can leave me out of the mea culpa. That's not something I do. I even spent a few misguided weeks as a creationist once upon a time - (but don't tell anybody!)

Maybe you misunderstood the statement you were replying to?

I was just stating the fact that when presented with information, we all look the to naturalistic explanation first, exhausting all possibilities. I didn't mean to imply a complete denial of "God is the reason."

 

[Jerry Smith]

Ah.. I understand now. I do employ a methodological naturalism - as do most creationists until it comes to evolution. I think that the kind of filter you describe is fairly universal...

 

[blader]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith
Ah.. I understand now. I do employ a methodological naturalism - as do most creationists until it comes to evolution. I think that the kind of filter you describe is fairly universal...

Agreed. Hence, guilty as charged!

 

[Jerry Smith]

But blader, methodological naturalism isn't a "no God Filter"... I look for natural explanations for natural phenomena, but I do not reject data that might indicate a God. I do not reject a hypothesis that would only work if their were a God for that reason... If I reject a hypothesis it is because the data do not support it. Guilty, perhaps - but not as charged...