Transitional forms

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

As I said in a previous post:
http://www.christianforums.com/t5023066-yes-another-transitional-fossil.html

They just found the missing link in the evolution of mammalian ear, a transition which was predicted in 1975.

How many transtional fossils have to be found? What gap needs to be filled in? What hypothesis needs to be confirmed? What is it going to take?

 

[RedAndy]

It's incredible the way that Creationists deal with transitional fossils.

If a fossil that is quite clearly transitional is discovered, Creationists simply say, "Nonononono, that's no good at all. In fact, now you've just got two gaps where you used to have only one!"

No matter what fossils are discovered, Creationists will never accept them as being transitional, because what they want is a generation-by-generation sequence of fossils leading from a dinosaur to a bird, or a reptile to an amphibian, or something else. I would dearly love it if this happened, but with geology and palaeontology as they are, it's just not going to and I'm not losing sleep over it.

The funny thing about the "transitional fossils" argument is that Creationists acknowledge here that evolution is about gradual transition, yet completely ignore that fact when they state that evolutionary theory expects dinosaur eggs to hatch into pigeons.

 

[Loudmouth]

To me, according to what I believe no, but I am aware that others do not share my beliefs and so, yes, for them, I suppose, it is possible, but there is no way that they could know for a fact beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is.
This is why I refer to them as alleged transitionals.

FoeHammer.

That is nothing more than a cop out. Why don't you hold Genesis to the same criteria? You place your life in the hands of less certainty everyday. When you push on your car's brake pedal are you absolutely certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the car will stop? No. Why do you hold evolution to a higher standard than your car brakes?

Here are the simple facts. Evolution predicts that if two species share common ancestry that there should have been species that demonstrated a mix of features from those two species. If chimps and humans share a common ancestor then we should see species that have chimp and human like features. This is exactly what we see. These are called transitional species. If evolution is false, then why can it make such risky and accurate predictions?

 

[Phred]

Every species that doesn't go extinct is a transitional species.

Think of a long loaf of bread. If you start at one end and go to the other it's pretty much the same wherever you look... it's bread. Now slice it up. If you pull out the slices they're different. Each one with it's own shape. Yet each also with it's own place in the loaf. Easily recognizable for where it fits. Each slice is a transitional slice between the one before it and the one after it. There can be no sudden grand deviations as they're all part of the same loaf.

So too is life. We don't see cows giving birth to dolphins just as we don't expect to find the next slice of bread is a cupcake. Creationists don't get this. They do think that life is like a batch of cupcakes, each species individually baked with no relationship to the other.

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[Upisoft]

So too is life. We don't see cows giving birth to dolphins just as we don't expect to find the next slice of bread is a cupcake. Creationists don't get this. They do think that life is like a batch of cupcakes, each species individually baked with no relationship to the other.

No, they think that the baker is the same person. But, alas, they can't prove it.

 

[Dal M.]

Can we assume from the creationists' silence regarding what an individual transitional fossil should look like that the "alleged transitionals" that have been discovered are pretty much exactly what creationists would expect to find if evolution were true? It sounds like the only objection is that there aren't enough transitionals.