Kosh

You seem to be ignmoring quite a few questions
put to you. Are you working on filling in those
blanks on Genesis?

lpetrich

As to blanks, we have to work with whatever fossils we find.

As to evidence, I wonder what would satisfy randman short of going back in time in a time machine so he can see for himself.

randman

It would satisfy me if evolutionists said we beleive such and such species to be transitional based on these similarities rather than putting up such a big act and proclaiming something has been proven when it has not.

DougI

So let's take a particular species and view the transitionals:
Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Procetus, Kutchicetus, Durodon, Aetiocetus, Basilosaurus, Cetotherium, Squalodon, Kentridiodon and Odebenocetops. Although there is a direct lineage fitting into the time line will you conclude these are transitionals or just stay in cretinist denial?

Kosh

And yet in another thread you said:

So, what is your definition of a transitional?

theyeti

Randman, why don't you look at this thread: <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001511" target="_blank">transitional forms: the mammal-like reptiles</a>, and tell us why these fossils are not transitional forms. If you decide that they aren't, then tell us what a transitional fossil between the mammals and the reptiles should look like.

theyeti

randman

Here is one rebuttal. It doesn't copy but go to the site and scroll down and compare the drawings with the bones found. I think that alone destroys the evolutionists claims here.

"One of many examples of the incomplete picture given in Hunt’s FAQ may be found in her treatment of whales. Besides presenting a phylogeny that (much like elsewhere in the FAQ) seems to rely largely on dental records at the expense (in the absence?) of the balance of physiological evidence, she makes mention of Pakicetus, which she describes as “the oldest fossil whale known ... nostrils still at front of head (no blowhole) ... found with terrestrial fossils and may have been amphibious...” What Hunt fails to include in her description of “the oldest fossil whale” is the fact that the fossil material from which Pakicetus was conjured up consisted of nothing more than:

the back of a mammal skull
two jaw fragments
some teeth
[Readers may see the image linked here for an illustration of just how much “whale evolution” is contrived from how little substance.]

As Hunt notes, these fossils were found amidst an array of land mammal fossils in 1983. There is no significant evidence to lead one to assume these remains belonged to an “old whale” any more than to an “old land mammal.” Yet the discoverers (P.D. Gingerich et al.) chose to “interpret” their findings as a whale, and evolutionary proponents (such as Hunt) have happily parroted their claim ever since.

[Let the reader be reminded at this point that one alleged evolutionary ancestor of man (Piltdown Man) was exposed as a deliberate hoax; that another (Nebraska Man) might as well have been a hoax, a whole hominid “species” having been contrived entirely from a single tooth, which turned out to belong to a pig; and that among other now seriously questioned human “ancestors” is Ramapithecus (since reclassified as Sivapithecus), based on a few teeth and jaw fragments that turned out to so closely resemble those of a modern day orangutan that Richard Leakey’s associate and co-author Alan Walker has cautiously alluded to the orangutan as a potential “living fossil”. The history of paleontology abounds with the rise and fall of various fabrications and complete reversals, demonstrating the need for extreme caution in accepting any claims based on what is often scant and equivocal evidence.]

Similarly, Hunt presents us with Ambulocetus natans (=“walking-whale swimming&#8221 , supposedly a “transitional” organism between land mammals and whales. Now, Pakicetus (the “oldest whale&#8221 is said to be 52 million years old, and yet Ambulocetus natans (featuring powerful limbs, hooves, a long tail, and land mammal breathing & hearing configurations) was found in fossil beds nearly 400 feet higher in elevation than Pakicetus and has been declared to be about the same age. Curiously, Hunt doesn’t mention that this creature, weighing an estimated 650 lbs., in addition to possessing the above-mentioned land mammal physiology, also features teeth remarkably like mesonychid ungulates, considered to be large wolf-like carnivorous land mammals, adding further to its questionability as an ancestor of modern whales.

In any case, it is noteworthy (and conspicuously absent from Hunt’s document) that these Archeoceti (or presumed “primitive whales&#8221 are not universally accepted as such. G. A. Mchedlidze, a Russian expert on whales has expressed serious doubts as to whether the likes of Pakicetus, Ambulocetus natans, and others—even if accepted as aquatic mammals—can properly be considered ancestors of modern whales. He sees them instead as a completely isolated group. [G. A. Mchedlidze, General Features of the Paleobiological Evolution of Cetacea, trans. from Russian (Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, 1986, p. 91]

In 1988 R. L. Carroll, a leading paleontological authority among evolutionists, published the presumption that whales evolved from a land mammal like the mesonychids. Since then, it seems there has been a rush to attribute whale ancestry to anything resembling these wolf-like creatures, creating aquatic behavioral scenarios to help the imagination along—thus “filling” one of many troublesome gaps in the fossil record.

The so-called record of “transitional fossils” (as portrayed by Kathleen Hunt and elsewhere) is replete with just such unsubstantiated, equivocal “evidence” as exemplified in Hunt’s treatment of whale phylogeny. It is by no means a convincing body of “scientific data” in which an objective student could hope to find solid evidence of transitional evolution. More accurately, it is testimony to what is possible as a the result of forcing the data through an imaginative and speculative matching process, based mainly on hypothetical presuppositions"

<a href="http://www.trueorigin.org/isakrbtl.asp#fossils" target="_blank">http://www.trueorigin.org/isakrbtl.asp#fossils</a>

Kosh

Of course, elevation is not importatant.
What matters is which gelological layer it was
found in. The same layer can be higher due to
upheaval and folding.

Did you actually get accepted to Harvard?

randman

That may be true due to upheaval, but I think that would have to be explained.
Also, that is only one piece of the argument, and not the central point.
The central point as I see it is that they have reconstructed a creature more from imagination than from the actual bones found.

Kosh

Even if that were true (which I doubt), there
are many more fossils supporting the wolf-like-animal to whale evolution. So your
assertion that this example "alone destroys
evolutionist claims" is patently wrong and a
gross overstatement of the facts.

What was it you were accusing the evolutionists
of?