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#1
12-10-2005, 01:00 AM
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The Fossil Question
[ QUOTE ]
1. How many fossils have been found that show transition from one species to the next? [/ QUOTE ] Although the above question appears to be a legitimate one it is in fact a trick question with either none, or many answers. It is one of many tricks employed by religionists (mostly Christians), for example like the questions about the fossil proof that man evolved from apes. There is none, because man didn't evolve from apes (nor did Darwin ever state that they did) Man and apes evolved from a common ancestor, but that doesn't mean that the common ancestor was an ape. In fact it most likely was a lemur. The idea that man evolved from apes was created, propagated, and is continued by opponents of evolution. The reason why the above question is a trick one becomes clear when we examine it closely. Let us say we are looking for a fossil that shows a transition from Species A and Species B, by definition said fossil cannot belong to either species. This means that it would have to be a different species that shows characteristics of both. Many such intermediate species have previously and currently exist. There are also many places in the fossil record where new species that are similar to existing species pop up (like [censored] Sapiens 200k years ago) But how does one prove that any one specific species led to another? Especially when there are several candidate species? Outside of DNA there is no way of doing this, and since fossils are made of stone they contain no DNA. 
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#2
12-10-2005, 01:08 AM
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Re: The Fossil Question
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] 1. How many fossils have been found that show transition from one species to the next? [/ QUOTE ] Although the above question appears to be a legitimate one it is in fact a trick question with either none, or many answers. It is one of many tricks employed by religionists (mostly Christians), for example like the questions about the fossil proof that man evolved from apes. There is none, because man didn't evolve from apes (nor did Darwin ever state that they did) Man and apes evolved from a common ancestor, but that doesn't mean that the common ancestor was an ape. In fact it most likely was a lemur. The idea that man evolved from apes was created, propagated, and is continued by opponents of evolution. [/ QUOTE ] You're not helping. This is totally incorrect. Man in fact did evolve from an ape, as did the modern apes. The dirty little secret is that . . . we're all apes. You can't call chimpanzees "apes" and gorillas "apes" without calling humans "apes," because we are more closely related to chimps than chimps are to gorillas. The most recent common ancestor with lemurs is long, long, long. long, long before the most recent common ancestor between apes like us and the rest of the apes.
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#3
12-10-2005, 01:34 AM
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Re: The Fossil Question
Actually joel is helping. This was his key statement:
[ QUOTE ] The reason why the above question is a trick one becomes clear when we examine it closely. Let us say we are looking for a fossil that shows a transition from Species A and Species B, by definition said fossil cannot belong to either species. This means that it would have to be a different species that shows characteristics of both. Many such intermediate species have previously and currently exist. There are also many places in the fossil record where new species that are similar to existing species pop up (like [censored] Sapiens 200k years ago) But how does one prove that any one specific species led to another? Especially when there are several candidate species? Outside of DNA there is no way of doing this, and since fossils are made of stone they contain no DNA. [/ QUOTE ] This is indeed the trick of creationists in trying to frame the question with a scientifically wrong premise, namely that for evolution of species to be true then there must shown an unbroken line of fossil evidence, which of course is not necessarily all extant. And the real trick is their trying to poke holes in evolution by saying it is not continuous when they are the ones making it a chain of discrete instances of antecedant and descendant species when in fact their is no precise point of differentiation, although one can point to a time when a new one existed and a time when it did not. The solution is that each individual biological specimen in the chain from one species to another is the "missing link". And one only has to look at evidence of early hom.o sapiens to see that Cro Magnon man was different in many ways than we who are the same species, though with a smaller brain capacity than Cro Magnon. There are also two other points wrong with the OP's arguments in this thread. Firstly, he falsely has tried to limit the discussion to macro evolution, with the implication that micro evolution is not a sufficient proof of a common biological process, which if continued for a long enough time would eventually produce a macro result if there were not occasional cross-breeding within variations of a species to prevent the divergence of the gene pool into first subspecies and then differing species. And secondly, he rejected David Steele's entire quotation of instances of speciation as only due to hybrydization and not natural selection. This is not true if one will look closely at all the studies on house flies.
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Hybrid Mode
