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Lack of evidence does not disprove a theory bases on limited but actual evidence. There were literally millions of dinosaurs but there are very few fossils. That does not make dinosaurs impossible. Only one fossil makes the dinosaurs exist. The theory does not require all the transitions to prove the relationship.
BTW - I was in grade school when I thought the dinosaurs were killed and did not just stop evolving and that Geese looked a lot like small duck billed dinosaurs. Nice to know I was correct.
That's what you've convinced yourself, but that's a pretty weak argument - especially in light of prior claims made by archaeologists that were later proven false (think Nebraska Man, etc).
Here's the deal. If I claim that you stole $20,000 from me and need to pay it back, I need to have evidence. In fact, I need to have PROOF. And weak little circumstantial indications - like that I saw a car the same color as yours drive by my house once - will not work.
The theory of evolution makes broad, sweeping claims - and claims them as scientific proof. The problem is that you you're lacking evidence to support those claims. At the core - the very foundation of the theory - you lack evidence.
Shoot, I'm not even saying evolution is wrong or false. Nor am I proposing anything else. I'm just saying that the theory of evolution is horribly lacking in evidence. And my saying that has the pro-evolution zealots here going nuts!
The major problem with trying to use the scientific method here with regards how evolution came about in the first place
You're talking about abiogenesis, not the ToE. Evolution only describes a process that happens when life is present.
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the remote possibility of it coming about by random chance (or as the Reverend Dawkins says, "blind pointless indifference") in the first place given the mathematical odds.
You cook a few billion planets for a few billion years, something interesting is bound to happen.
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Nevertheless they insist it happened and it only happened once
Who insists it only happened once? Anyway: We're here. Geology shows clearly that once we weren't here and that there's a progression from non-life to simple life to complex life. Sure, you can postulate a Creator somewhere, all you need to do is provide the evidence. We'll never know the details, it's OK.
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So because the so-called scientific method cannot be used here to replicate anything regarding life morphing from that pre-biotic protein enriched oceanic soup, it is therefore not only unscientific by their own definition
Not really, no. That we haven't been able to replicate abiogenesis under lab conditions doesn't mean it can't happen in nature. We can't replicate sustained fusion reactions either, but they still exist. We may be able to observe the Higgs boson relatively soon (or not), but that doesn't make the Standard Model "unscientific by their own definition".
It is quite in accordance with science to formulate a hypothesis that can't currently be tested. (Subtly different from an untestable hypothesis.)
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Thus, we find it to be one of the most incredible faith-based beliefs the world has ever known.
Who's "we"?
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I believe we are still waiting from the other thread for you to cite us just one scientific empirical example (which is also peer-reviewed) of how the brilliant informational code encrypted in DNA came about by random chance through physics and chemistry.
You want a process that took a few billion years in a planet-sized petri dish replicated in a lab? Hey, I've an idea: Why don't you produce an iota of evidence for an alternate hypothesis?
That's what you've convinced yourself, but that's a pretty weak argument - especially in light of prior claims made by archaeologists that were later proven false (think Nebraska Man, etc).
The latest fairytale is yet another dino-chicken found in China of all places. Anyone remember the atheistic communist Chinese "Piltdown Chicken" hoax that was shoved down the world's throat as a FACT ???
It is said that it first evolved it's head and neck, then later evolved the rest of it's body. Seriously, that's how the article today printed it.
They're calling it by the name of "Darwinopterus", after the great holy man himself.
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Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks
Here's the deal. If I claim that you stole $20,000 from me and need to pay it back, I need to have evidence. In fact, I need to have PROOF. And weak little circumstantial indications - like that I saw a car the same color as yours drive by my house once - will not work.
Oooooooooooo
They're the only ones allowed to use logic.
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Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks
The theory of evolution makes broad, sweeping claims - and claims them as scientific proof. The problem is that you you're lacking evidence to support those claims. At the core - the very foundation of the theory - you lack evidence.
But the one thing they don't lack is faith.
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Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks
Shoot, I'm not even saying evolution is wrong or false. Nor am I proposing anything else. I'm just saying that the theory of evolution is horribly lacking in evidence. And my saying that has the pro-evolution zealots here going nuts!
I'm just saying that the theory of evolution is horribly lacking in evidence. And my saying that has the pro-evolution zealots here going nuts!
Two things:
You're, bluntly put, wrong - paleontology supports ToE. It may not live up to your arbitrary requirements for hundreds of millions of specific fossils, but them's the breaks. What is more, paleontology is just one branch of science that provides evidence for ToE. Tell an untruth, you'll get contradicted. Why is that bad?
"Evolution is lacking in evidence" is so very often used as a code for "Christian creationism is an equally valid scientific hypothesis" which is a most tiresome lie. I'm sure a lot people here have read the Wedge document and followed the Dover trial - it's an annoying strategy that serves neither religion nor science very well. If you used the phrase unaware of how loaded it is, well, I am sorry.
You're, bluntly put, wrong - paleontology supports ToE. It may not live up to your arbitrary requirements for hundreds of millions of specific fossils, but them's the breaks. What is more, paleontology is just one branch of science that provides evidence for ToE. Tell an untruth, you'll get contradicted. Why is that bad?
"Evolution is lacking in evidence" is so very often used as a code for "Christian creationism is an equally valid scientific hypothesis" which is a most tiresome lie. I'm sure a lot people here have read the Wedge document and followed the Dover trial - it's an annoying strategy that serves neither religion nor science very well. If you used the phrase unaware of how loaded it is, well, I am sorry.
Paleontology supports the theory of evolution? Wow, that's kind of like saying Lutherans support christianity. Of COURSE it supports it!
But you still have that one little problem: The lack of fossil evidence.
And I'm not using any wedge argument or any such thing. I'm simply telling you that your theory lacks evidence. That is all. And neither you, nor any of the other pro-evolutionist here, have been able to produce the necessary evidence.
"There are two ways to view the stars, as they really are and as we wish them to be."
The same can be said for all those rediculous experiments regarding E-Coli generational replications. They never morphed into anything else, all had a different DNA fingerprints, just like we humans. This is nothing more than an example of reading into something what you wish it to be. Faith ???
I've always found it comical the way evolutionists insists we separate the beginning and call it Abiogenesis (A term coined by the famous evolutionary racist biologist Huxley) and a so-called evolutionary mechanics.
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Originally Posted by Dane
You cook a few billion planets for a few billion years, something interesting is bound to happen.
You're correct, cooked planets.
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Originally Posted by Dane
Who insists it only happened once? Anyway: We're here. Geology shows clearly that once we weren't here and that there's a progression from non-life to simple life to complex life. Sure, you can postulate a Creator somewhere, all you need to do is provide the evidence. We'll never know the details, it's OK.
By all means, please cite just one example of how the brilliant informational code on DNA came about by random mutation through nothing more than chemistry and physics.
Paleontology supports the theory of evolution? Wow, that's kind of like saying Lutherans support christianity. Of COURSE it supports it!
Would be a decent analogy, if not for the fact that the science of paleontology predates he formulation of ToE.
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But you still have that one little problem: The lack of fossil evidence.
There's plenty. What's more, no fossil evidence contradicts ToE. And as I've posted ad nauseam, there's abundant scientific evidence for evolution outside paleontology.
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I'm simply telling you that your theory lacks evidence.
Your opinion is duly noted. I hope you'll pardon me if I prefer that of actual scientists over a random guy on a message board?
Anyway, feel free to formulate an alternate hypothesis and demonstrate how it's a better fit with the evidence. There's a Nobel to be had.
It's very interesting, however, that you cannot provide any of these fossilized transitional life forms.
You keep saying they're all around us, but you don't have any. There are probably 10 posts on this thread alone, where pro-evolutionists are saying, "But there ARE transitional life forms!!!" Yet none of you has produced any - or pointed the way to any.
And again, I'm asking you... Should there not - of necessity - be hundreds of millions of said fossilized transitional life forms? Incremental evolution demands the presence of millions of them.
There actually are several "transitional fossils," but the presence or lack of a fossil record doesn't disprove evolution. Nor is a continuous fossil record required to prove evolution. Sorry. It's a silly standard the idiot fundamentalists like to try to use.
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Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks
You say that birds are descendants of dinosaurs, but you don't have any sequential fossils evidencing an incremental transition. You just say it happened.
Well... Where's the evidence?
Right, see the discussion above about idiot fundamentalists.
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Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks
Also, you can drop the little "fundamentalist" condescension. That's a derogatory deflection that doesn't apply to me in any way.
I'm still waiting to see the hundreds of millions of fossilized transitional life forms. They have to be somewhere in order to make evolution plausible.
I have so far stayed out of this argument, mostly, because your claim is so blatantly stupid.
Still, you keep repeating it, so I'll just take a minute to respond.
Your argument goes something like this:
1. If evolution were true, it would have created hundreds of millions of fossilized transitional life forms.
2. We do not have hundreds of millions of fossilized transitional life forms.
3. Therefore, evolution is not true.
Let's just keep with this lack of hundreds of millions of fossilized life forms thing, though.
1. If the species on earth today are the same as the species on earth in the distant past, we would have hundreds of millions of fossilized life forms in the same form as current organisms.
2. We do not have hundreds of millions of fossilized life forms in the same form as current organisms.
3. Therefore, the species on earth today are not the same as the species on earth in the distant past.
Or, to make it even more straightforward:
1. If life on earth existed in the distant past, we would have hundreds of millions of fossilized life forms.
2. We do not have hundreds of millions of fossilized life forms.
3. Therefore, life did not exist on earth in the distant past.
Any way you look at it, your argument is based on the assumption that past conditions would have given rise to the existence of hundreds of millions of fossilized life forms. You provide no evidence for this assumption. In fact, other posters have pointed out that it is, in fact, rare for dead life forms to become fossils. Since your fundamental assumption (your major premise) is false, your entire argument is invalid.
One reason why land animal fossils aren't found in huge abundance is this,
[SIZE=1]Land creatures have what we call a "low-fossilization potential." As land animals die in water, they bloat, float, and come apart. It is very difficult to trap a bloated animal under water, in order for it to be buried. Furthermore, scavengers readily devour both flesh and bone. Seawater and bacterial action destroy everything. The scouring ability of underwater mudflows, common during the Flood, would grind bone to powder.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=1][/SIZE]
Fossils take a lot of very perfect conditions to form.
1. Nothing else can eat them. This is harder to do on land, as things eat other things on land. Where in the ocean they simply floated to the bottom, out of sight. This is also why most of the fossilized remains we find of land animals today, are found in ancient swamps and lakes, because they fell in or drowned.
2. Weather. Ever see what the sun does to a cow carcus thats left out for days? After bacteria and the sun get done with an animal, there isn't much left.
3. Scattering. Goes back to the "eating" from before. When animals are eaten, they aren't left in one spot, they are generally drug all over the place.
This are only a few of the reasons why 95% of the fossils we find are sea creatures of some kind.
Oh, and there have been some transitional species found. Ardi is a recent one, Neanderthals (maybe),
and ever remember this picture?
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Seriously, that's how the article today printed it. 
