randman

Dave H., don't let these guys fool you. You are right on about the fossil record. For all the research out there, it is a fact that what we really see are 2 dominant characteristics in the fossil record, namely stasis, the fact that most species appear to change very little over time, and sudden appearance,the fact species appear fully formed without any trace of who their immediate ancestors were. These are the facts which the advocates of Punctuated Equilibrium have tried to address.
Here are a few good links. The sites are not all science sites, but they link to science articles published by critics of evolution on these matters.
<a href="http://www.trueorigin.org/index.asp" target="_blank">http://www.trueorigin.org/index.asp</a>
<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Postings.asp" target="_blank">http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/Postings.asp</a>
<a href="http://www.discovery.org/crsc/links.html" target="_blank">http://www.discovery.org/crsc/links.html</a>

Coragyps

Randman said "The sites are not all science sites, ..."

Indeed.

randman

But the articles are. Hey, Slate and Time are not science papers/sites either. At least, AIG links to undiluted science articles.

Oolon Colluphid

Yeah yeah yeah. Just how dumb do you think we are? Ooh, Answers in Genesis, there's a novelty, never seen that before. Oh well we're refuted, let's go home chaps . The more I study this subject, the more pathetic, weasly and plain imbecilic I realise the creationist arguments are.

I discovered in my Chambers dictionary recently a precise meaning, which I wasn't previously aware of, of a well-known word. The word was 'ignoramus'. It is "an ignorant person, especially one pretending to knowledge". I feel this is going to get as much use here as the <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> .

Randman, you are an ignoramus.

Do you honestly -- I repeat, honestly -- think that if evolution were so blatantly flawed, so many working scientists would continue to use it, daily, as the underlying principle of everything they do? If it were flawed, it wouldn't bloody work.

To the point. Yeah sure there's apparent stases in the fossil record, and then changes. But it does not undermine evolution.

For one thing, we have an ordinary, non-supernatural cause for it. It's called allopatric speciation. If, instead, these patterns are the result of divine intervention, your hypothesised creator would have to keep popping in every geological five minutes to tinker with life. Which is not how the Babble describes it; nor does it say much for his alleged omniscience. He may as well have let evolution do the work. Why tinker with trilobites which, being omniscient, he'd know would die out eventually?

For another, there are many cases where there is smooth, gradual change in the fossil record. While Eldridge had a classic punctuation with the trilobite Phacops rana (with what looks like textbook allopatric speciation), Peter Sheldon (1987) found gradual change in rib numbers in eight contemporaneous Ordovician trilobite lineages. (P Sheldon: 'Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites', Nature 330, 561-3, 1987) Similarly, Ken McNamara (1978) found increasing paedomorphosis in the early Cambrian trilobites Olenellus (Palaeontology 21, 635-56).

And that's just a couple of examples from one group of animals. Here are some more:







See <a href="http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/fossil_series.html" target="_blank">this site</a> for further details on these, and more examples.

Also see the skull series I posted above. There is as smooth a change in the fossil record as you could hope for with humans too, whether you consider cranial capacity, dentition or facial shape. Precise details available on request. Go ahead punk, make my day.

What I want to know -- in fact, demand that you answer -- is, if your creator was involved in punctuations, where was he for the gradual changes?

TTFN, Oolon

[ March 06, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Daggah

What is an 'undiluted science article?'

Between the mounds of ignorance, stupidity, and sheer dishonesty, AiG contains very little of anything that could ever be called "science."

davidH

Sorry been away for so long again! I have exams coming up pretty soon.

Before I comment on the fossils, I'd like to ask you another quick question.

Why do you not believe that there was a flood like it says in the Bible? Is it because it refutes the idea of evolution? Or would all animal life have ended in a flood of that magnitude?

I'd just like your opinions on this.
I'll reply on the fossils in more detail later as it's late tonight.

Kosh

- Utter lack of evidence supporting a flood scenario
- Insufficient water in the earth ecosystem to
cover the entire planet
- Improbably logistics of an bronze age man building a wooden boat to hold all the animals
- Impossible engineering requirements on wood for a boat that size
- Reality that rainbows are physics thing, rather than a "sign" from some god.
- Incredible parrallels to two other earlier flood myths

Should I stop?

Coragyps

davidH - to butt in with my own answer: I don't think there was a Noah-type, worldwide flood because the fossil/geological record shows absolutely no evidence for one. By about 1830 it was obvious to those who actually studied the record of the rocks that they were deposited over a very long span of time, and with many locally varying interruptions. No geology or paleontology since has done anything other than reinforce and add detail to that conclusion. There is abundant evidence that there was not a Flood in historicl times. There is no evidence that there was.

Oolon Colluphid

Actually, that's probably best. David asking a question when we have so many pending might send him off on a tangent, or at least give him too much to cope with (beyond what you guys have already said). Also, he's got exams coming up, and we don't want to give him yet more extracurricular stuff to reply to! (David, that's both with a and &lt;seriously&gt;. Your education is more important right now than arguing with a bunch of (armchair) scientists -- unless you're doing science exams!)

So I'll give you just this link
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/</a> ,
point you to the 'Flood Geology' bit, and say good luck with the exams, see you when you've read that link and passed!

Cheers, Oolon

[Edited for tyop]

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

MrDarwin

Believe it or not, there is no conspiracy by paleontologists, geologists, and biologists. There is nothing about whatsoever about evolutionary theory that says there cannot have been a global flood. Evolution and a global flood are not mutually exclusive. But other than biblical literalists, nobody believes there was a global flood (at least not the one described on the Old Testament, meaning within human history) because there is no evidence for one, either geological or historical.

Actually, the biblical story does say that the flood destroyed all life on earth aside from what Noah took on his boat, which puts quite a bit of pressure on biblical literalists to figure out how he could possibly have kept several million species of animals (never mind all the plants) alive, or even gotten them all on the boat in the first place.