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93 Responses to Evolution’s Repeat Performances

1. 91

   Dave WiskerJune 29, 2009 at 3:21 pm

   HI William,

   Lack of transitionals could be chalked up to the very rarity of fossils you mentioned in your post. It would hardly falsify evolutionary theory.
   

   Not so. We find fossil evidence of past life, and we know the process is rare, so we expect gaps.However, it’s not rare enough that no transitional sequences at all (no matter how gappy) could be reasonably expected.

   It should be obvious that if no sequences of any kind were found, then the fossil record could not be used to support the theory at all. Without it, the essential inference of common ancestry could not be made beyond extant organisms. A completely different theory would be needed to explain how the diversity of life came about.

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2. 92

   bornagain77June 29, 2009 at 6:04 pm

   I don’t know which “predicted” fossil you are talking about but if it is this one you are deceiving yourself:

   Tiktaalik – besides the fact they looked in a known “swampy area” at the time for a “swampy creature” should clue you to the utter lack of predictive power they were truly exercising. Besides that they are not transitional:
   Excerpt: Indeed, Tiktaalik’s fin was not connected to the main skeleton, so could not have supported its weight on land. The discoverers claim that this could have helped to prop up the body as the fish moved along a water bottom,3 but evolutionists had similar high hopes for the coelacanth fin. However, when a living coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was discovered in 1938, the fins turned out not to be used for walking but for deft manœuvering when swimming.
   http://creation.com/tiktaalik-.....ssing-link

   Here is the true state of the fossil record:

   In spite of the crushing evidence found in the Cambrian explosion and DNA analysis of different phyla most scientists, and thus a large portion of the public, continues to imagine that all life on earth descended from a common ancestor and continues to imagine missing links with every new fossil discovery making mainstream media headlines. Yet, the true story of life since the Cambrian explosion, that is actually told by the fossil record itself, tells a very different story than the imaginative tales found in mainstream media accounts. Where the story of life, since the Cambrian explosion, is extremely clear to read is in the sea creatures who fossilize quickly in ocean sediments. We find fossils in the fossil record that appear suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, fully-formed. They have no unambiguous evolutionary predecessor. They just appear abruptly in the fossil record unique and fully-formed. This is exactly what one would expect from an infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator continually, and abruptly, introducing new life-forms on earth. Even more problematic for the materialist is the fact once a fossil suddenly appears in the fossil record it remains surprisingly stable in its basic structure for as long as it is found in the fossil record. The fossil record can offer not even one clear example of continuous transition from one distinct type of fossil form to another distinct type of fossil form out of millions of collected fossils. In fact some sea creatures, such as certain sharks and starfish which are still alive today, have unchanging fossil records going back hundreds of millions of years to when they first suddenly appeared in the fossil record without a predecessor.

   Ancient Fossils That Evolutionists Don’t Want You To See – video
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLzqDLZoufQ

   “The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find’ over and over again’ not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.”
   Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager

   “A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth’s geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin’s hypothetical intermediate variants – instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.”
   Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki

   “There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps.”
   Professor of paleontology – Glasgow University, T. Neville George

   “Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? … The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record.” Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma 1988, Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9

   “The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be …. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin’s time … so Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated”.
   David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History

   The Fossil Record – Don Patton – in their own words – video
   http://video.google.com/videop.....6900194790

   “In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms.” Fossils and Evolution, TS Kemp – Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999

   ” Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.”
   George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360.

   “No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.” -
   Niles Eldredge , “Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate,” 1996, p.95

   Partial List Of Fossil Groups – without the artificially imposed dotted lines – Timeline illustration:
   http://www.estrellamountain.ed.....o_plfr.gif

   “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.”
   Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory in America
   prior to his recent death.

   The Fossil Record – Fact And Fiction – Marc Surtees – video
   http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/fossils.xml

   “Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined? But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties?” Charles Darwin – Origin Of Species

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3. 93

   William J. MurrayJune 30, 2009 at 9:37 am

   Dave:

   Could you tell me what the theory of punctuated equllibrium is, and why it was first hypothesized?

   Also, as bornagain77′s evidence indicates, there seems to be some disagreement or controversy in the scientific community over whether or not there are “enough” such “transitionals” to support the theory of gradualism as it pertains to evolution.

   You can see that my request above is connect to the evidence that bornagain77 has provided.

   Let us not lose sight that this exchange is in regard to your claim that a complete lack of “transitionals” would falsify the theory of common descent. I am agreeing that there is not a complete lack of “transitionals” (I have that word in quotations for a reason), but I wish to continue this debate after you have answered my question about “punctuated equillibrium” above.

   Bornagain77, I greatly appreciate your contribution!

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