Human's evolution in the most simple way .

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Or thinks he does. However give me a shout when you want to post something on topic, with content, that is more than an unfinished throw away two word sentence. Some of us actually prefer to put some time and effort into our posts.

Again however there is no real "missing link". There is no 5 step program to mapping out Human Evolution and we are just missing an example from one of the steps to show it is all true conclusively. Many fossils have been found and called the "missing link" by the media but..... although they are actually ancestral fossils.... the idea of a "missing link" is false.

The scientific theory proposes something more like a rainbow. If you look closer at a rainbow there is not a sudden point where red stops and orange starts. Where Orange stops and yellow starts. There is a continuous spectrum of colours slowly ‘fading’ into each other without a point where one starts and another begins.

Our ancestral history is the same. A very slow fading from one species to the next to the next often giving us no way to say where “orange” stopped and “yellow” began.

Originally Posted by National Academy of Sciences, 1999

So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species.

I have had meetings reported to me where almost fist fights broke out between scientists reviewing new specimens as they tried to decide if the new fossils were “Reptile like Mammals” or “Mammal like Reptiles”. This alone should give a good impression of just how many “Links” we have.

Unless we find one fossil of every generation of every animal who ever lived we will never have a complete picture and someone can always claim a “missing link” and people will be convinced by this “hole” in the theory. Frankly it is not a hole at all...

It is a media phrase only and means nothing. A scientific Theory is a proposed explanation that unites and explains facts and then makes predictions. The Theory must stand up to rigorous testing AND make predictions. What Ida and other “missing links” in fact are, are examples of these predictions being borne out in reality. It is us saying “If this theory is right then we should expect, upon looking, to find fossils of animals that exhibit characteristics X, Y and Z”.

Such predictions are not only made all the time by Evolution Theory but are shown to have been correct all the time by Evolution Theory. So either the theory is entirely correct, or the people making these predictions are suffering from an abundance of luck the likes of which has been unheard of before.

The best media example of this was the argument about the Whale evolving from a Land Mammal. In an effort to rubbish the theory Creationists started putting comical cartoons in papers at their own expense laughing about what “intermediates” would have to look like for the theory to be borne out. It was quite a silly looking walking whale creature.

The cartoons quickly stopped when “Ambulocetus” was found, literally meaning “The whale that walks” or “Walking whale” and looked in many ways very similar to the cartoon. Not content with this however, and using the first fossil as an indication of where to look, not one but multiple fossils were then found in the chain from land mammal to whale. They poured in now that we knew where to look. Pakicetus… Ambulocetus….Dalanistes…. Rodhocetus…. Takracetus… Gavioceluus…. Dorudon. (Forgive spelling or temporal errors here, that was from memory)…. So many in fact that we do not now have intermediate fossil forms, but intermediate fossil CATEGORIES on the road from one to the other.

The fossils were dated and lined up in temporal order based on the dating. They were not lined up out of convenience to match the theory. We did it in the age they appeared to be in our dating tests. The changes were THEN looked at to see if they matched. If three fossils dated in a row but we then saw something evolving "forwards" and then "backwards" again we know either our dating sucks or the Theory of Evolution is wrong. Did either happen? No. The steady migration of the dorsal blow hole, the steady and necessary changes in the middle ear, and more, all matched up perfectly. The predictions were borne out. Massively unlikely predictions to get right by sheer chance and luck.

We also do this on a genetic level. We make predictions based on the theory that must be borne out if the theory is true. For example the human genetic structure has 1 less chromosome pair than the higher apes. Massive changes are not allowed in genetics as it would rubbish the theory. Evolution is a slow process requiring slow small changes. We could not lose an entire pair of chromosomes and survive. This is impossible. The likely hood of a !sudden! Development in a pair is also small. The theory therefore predicts that 2 pairs must have merged. No other explanation would work if we were to hold the theory of evolution to be true.

Guess what? It is human chromosome number 2. In fact our knowledge is now advancing so well we can pinpoint it to a precise fusion point of base pairs. The precise fusion site has been located in 2q13–2q14.1 (ref. 2; hg 16:114455823 – 114455838),

So to be short (a clear inability on my part admittedly as you can see above) there is no such thing as a “missing link” nor will we ever find one nor is "Ida" one or "lucy" or any of the others hyped in the media. What we have is a Theory that unites and explains all the facts we "currently" have to hand (without postulating facts we do not have such as an invisible creator) that has withstood constant and intense testing and has made and had borne out countless predictions.

None of this is 100% “proven” of course. However nothing in Science is. Do not believe anyone that tells you anything in science is 100% conclusively proven. Infallibility and total certainty we leave to a type of people of a completely different ilk.

"9:24 Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief."

So to repeat, if you hear "Missing link" from someone then that someone simply does not know what they are talking about and the above long post explains why. Simply throwing out "Or does" and running is not likely to change that fact.

[Eusebius]

You might find this interesting. It is about Out Of Place Artifacts such as a bell found in a lump of coal and an iron pot found in a lump of coal and other OOPArts

OOPArt (Out of place artifacts) (part 2) - YouTube

[Eusebius]

In other words, the ooparts destroy the notion humans evolved from primates since the artifacts were found in coal which is supposed to have formed humdreds of millions of years ago. Last I checked, primates never mined for metals, never were clever enough to combine the metals and form intricate bells and other things.

And the video shows stone artwork 800 years old and some thousands of years old of pre-historic animals the humans had to have witnessed. So if the pre-historic animals became extinct millions of years ago, you can't tell me simple-minded primates carved those intricate images into stone.

Either that, the coal was formed from the flood of Noah's day about 5 to 7 thousand years ago.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Bideshi

Or does...

No definitely does not. Creationists themselves mine quotes from evolutionists saying that references to 'missing link' are simply a fairy tale - though they use that to pretend that they are saying that evolution theory as a whole is a fairy tale.

This is the standard ploy of misrepresenting evolution more or lest grotesquely so as to provide spurious support for - don't deny it - Faith- based rejection of it.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Eusebius

In other words, the ooparts destroy the notion humans evolved from primates since the artifacts were found in coal which is supposed to have formed humdreds of millions of years ago. Last I checked, primates never mined for metals, never were clever enough to combine the metals and form intricate bells and other things.

And the video shows stone artwork 800 years old and some thousands of years old of pre-historic animals the humans had to have witnessed. So if the pre-historic animals became extinct millions of years ago, you can't tell me simple-minded primates carved those intricate images into stone.

Either that, the coal was formed from the flood of Noah's day about 5 to 7 thousand years ago.

Even if that late 12th c AD carving does show a stegosaur (and it does at first sight resemble one) the best it does for your case is that there is just one more living fossil which survived, and may be one last last rare strain hidden in Cambodia (or is now extinct since we sure can't find it now) just as the King crab, nautilus and coelacanth - though, like the coelocanth has evolved somewhat since the Ta Phrom carving doesn't look much like a prehistoric stegosaur.

Last I checked the Oopart claims were very debatable. I'd suggest a separate thread on those, but I know that we'd end up in a morass of unvalidated claims and accusations of closed mindedness - just as we get in a debate on OOB experiences or reports of faith - healing and miracles.

[squall-lionheart]

The most stressful week known to students begins today
I should continue getting straight A's in order to go to Britain for the scholarship to continue my studies there .
So I will be away for awhile ( One week ,Miss you already )
I thank everyone, especially AREQUIPA & Rifleman .
Please forgive me I do not have much time to reply on both of your posts but let me say this :
I cannot refute to everything listing , the vast majority of the examples all fall into the same “non transitional” categories".
*It is quality that counts not Quantity.
When we claims that there are no transitional forms, we are referring to transitional forms between fundamentally different kinds of organisms .
The vast majority of examples on those sites are depicting transitional forms within kinds.
Yes ..,We could see a perfect example of a transitional form but even if it is true it is just transition within the same kind.
In the case of human ancestry all of the fossil evidence taken together and viewed as a whole handily refutes human evolution.
In my opinion it fall with the variety found in living humans today.
Any group of objects, living or otherwise, can be arranged in pattern.
For example, if we take all the creatures living today we can arrange them in an evolutionary pattern .
The fossil record is simply a snapshot of living organisms as they existed .
*I once read an article about Dr David Pilbeam, of the "Boston Natural History Museum" who has considerable expertise in palaeoanthropology (the study of fossil man).
Here are some of the included :
Dr David Pilbeam came to the attention of the scientific community as being an objective scientist when he wrote an article for Human Nature magazine, June 1978, entitled, ‘Rearranging Our Family Tree’.
In that article he reported that discoveries since 1976 had shaken his view of human origins and forced a change in ideas of man’s early ancestors.
Dr Pilbeam’s previous views were wrong about tool use replacing canine teeth, evidence for which was totally lacking. He did not believe any longer that he was likely to hit upon the true or correct story of the origin of man. He repeated a number of times that our theories have clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data.
None of the five museum officials whom Luther Sunderland interviewed could offer a single example of a transitional series of fossilized organisms that would document the transformation of one basically different type to another.
Dr Eldredge [curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the American Museum] said that the categories of families and above could not be connected .
Dr Raup [curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago] said that a dozen or so large groups could not be connected with each other.
But Dr Patterson [a senior palaeontologist and editor of a prestigious journal at the British Museum of Natural History] spoke most freely about the absence of transitional forms.
Before interviewing Dr Patterson, the author read his book, Evolution, which he had written for the British Museum of Natural History. In it he had solicited comments from readers about the book’s contents. One reader wrote a letter to Dr Patterson asking why he did not put a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. On April 10, 1979, he replied to the author in a most candid letter as follows:
‘. . . I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?
’I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.
*End
What I want to say is that natural selection is a real process , it works very well with small skill changes like color , size , Environmental adaptation etc ... but the complexity of life ? ... the origin of the species ? ..now that is a whole different thing .
I could be wrong of course, but that remains as my opinion at the present time .
I have one last question for now ..
Darwin said in his book "The Origin of Species " :
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case". 348
What does he mean by that & why the whole theory would break down because of the complexity within organ ?
I mean why the organs complexity precisely ?
Because it turns out that complexity within organs do exist !!!
Thank you

[TRANSPONDER]

Without wishing to gloss over the lack of a perfect series of fossils showing transition from T rex to turkey, there are enough transitional fossils to substantiate the claim that the process is occurring. The evolution of the horse is very compelling, though Creationists have argued that this is still micro -evolution - it's just a small horse that got bigger.

But the Cetan sequence is definitely a change from a crocodile to fish, (though the 'fish' was of course a mammal) and the queries which our pal Eusebius raised about the transition from teeth to baleen (effectively the irreducible complexity objection) was scuppered by the discovery of a fossil which had evidence of baleen along with the teeth.

Don't let yourself yet trapped, Lionheart, into the creationist quotemining of comments about transitions or other aspects of evolution taken out of context. The people who do that are being dishonest and you have already been shown examples of their dishonesty.

You should be wary of using them to support your argument. I am not going to gloss over the gaps in the fossil record or claim that every single line can be traced with a complete series of fossils. The case for evolution as regards fossils is that the evident development of forms linked to the sucessive laying down of strata in which they are found shouts that they gradually developed in their forms. They were not all made in one go. True, there ought to be transitional forms, and in fact they have now been found, just as Darwin predicted should happen.

It is sometimes claimed that Darwin admitted that there are no transitional fossils.

Quote #2.6

[Re: "lack" of transitional fossils]

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?" (Origin of Species, 1859).

"Besides leaving out the context, this is misleading in a subtler way when used for the proposition that there are no transitional forms. Darwin is not talking about the existence or nonexistence of transitionals here, but of an "innumerable" series of finely-graded transitionals linking together all extinct and existing forms. As he says later in Chapter XI of the sixth edition on page 342:

These causes [the imperfection of the fossil record, the limited exploration of the record, poor fossilization of certain body types, etc.], taken conjointly, will to a large extent explain why -- though we do find many links -- we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all extinct and existing forms by the finest graduated steps. It should also be constantly borne in mind that any linking variety between two forms, which might be found, would be ranked, unless the whole chain could be perfectly restored, as a new and distinct species; for it is not pretended that we have any sure criterion by which species and varieties can be discriminated.

In short, the use of the quote to imply there are no transitionals misstates Darwin's argument, intentionally or out of ignorance. Darwin was not stating that there was an absence of transitionals but, in fact, stated there were "many links." Instead, he was discussing why there are not more transitionals in an easily read pattern of gradual change. As Darwin correctly noted, where the fossil record does not approach "perfection,..."

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part2.html

So let's take that Darwin quote first. ""If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case".

What he is saying that, if he could see any animal or plant which was too complext to have developed through the process of mutation/natural selection then his evolution theory would collapse - but he cannot see any organism which could not have developed in that way. In other words, he is dismissing Irreducible complexity before it was even postulated by the ID people.

Before going on, I'll say that my beef is not so much with pointing up the unanswered questions and the ongoing revisions in evolution theory, though (as i suggested above) this really is nit-pickng about the overwhelming overall evidence for a gradual development of all life over geological ages (plus of course the DNA evidence and small but significant examples of natural selection through mutation being found today)

My beef is that they misrepresent what is being said. They Lie, in fact. They try to deceive their readers into thinking that their quotes destroy evolution as a theory when they do not. Even if the intent was to show that evolutionists 9even if they believed evolution) admitted they had no evidence, that too is false. They ommit the parts of the quote that say that they are evidence of evolution, but cannot be definitely linked to any particular other branch.

Let's take the quotes in sequence.

"Dr David Pilbeam came to the attention of the scientific community as being an objective scientist when he wrote an article for Human Nature magazine, June 1978, entitled, ‘Rearranging Our Family Tree’.... He did not believe any longer that he was likely to hit upon the true or correct story of the origin of man. He repeated a number of times that our theories have clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data.

I don't know where you got this information. It is not good practice to just toss in claims that Dr Pilbeam thinks this or that without giving some way I can check it.
I can show that one comment of his at least is taken out of context:-

"But real experts on the subject are aware that there is no scientific foundation for the claim of human evolution. David Pilbeam, a Harvard University paleoanthropologist, says:
If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, "forget it; there isn't enough to go on."

This is plagiarized at another anti-evolution site,
http://www.evidencesofcreation.com/tellme21.htm

The same sentence is wrongly attributed to Leakey himself, here:
http://www.thinkreal.org/evquote.htm (broken link)

In this forum, Willowtree has quoted Richard Milton quoting this same statement:
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.c...&t=368&m=51#51 -->www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=5&t=368&m=51#51">http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.c...&t=368&m=51#51

So, what is this quote really saying? Let's see the quote in context:

Of the primates, the chimpanzee is man's closest relative, while the two other great apes, the gorilla and orang-utan, are slightly more distant evolutionary cousins. The apes and hominids are collectively known as the 'hominoids'. Biologists would dearly like to know how modern apes, modern humans and the various ancestral hominids have evolved from a common ancestor. Unfortunately, the fossil record is somewhat incomplete as far as the hominids are concerned, and it is all but blank for the apes. The best we can hope for is that more fossils will be found over the next few years which will fill the present gaps in the evidence. The major gap, often referred to as 'the fossil void', is between eight and four million years ago.
David Pilbeam comments wryly, 'If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, "forget it; there isn't enough to go on".' Neither David nor others involved in the search for mankind can take this advice, of course, but we remain fully aware of the dangers of drawing conclusions from the evidence that is so incomplete.
Fortunately, there is quite good evidence regarding the ape-like creatures that lived over fourteen million years ago [...]"

http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&t=13427

Dr Eldredge [curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the American Museum] said that the categories of families and above could not be connected .

Quote #3.3

[Archaeopteryx is not a transitional fossil]

"Smooth intermediates between Bauplane [body plans] are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments: there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count)" - Gould, S.J. and N. Eldredge. "Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered." Paleobiology, 3 (1977): 115-151. (p. 147)

Representative quote miners: The Revolution Against Evolution: Archaeopteryx is No Transitional Form and Reason & Revelation: Archaeopteryx, Archaeoraptor, and the "Dinosaurs-to-Birds" Theory

A more complete quote:

At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the "official" position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count).

It's now obvious that Gould and Eldredge weren't arguing against Archaeopteryx being a transitional form, but arguing that it wasn't an example of a perfectly smooth change between body plans (or "Baupläne").

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part3.html
Dr Raup [curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago] said that a dozen or so large groups could not be connected with each other.

Quote #25

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin's time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it's rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23)

"Now let me step back from the problem and very generally discuss natural selection and what we know about it. I think it is safe to say that we know for sure that natural selection, as a process, does work. There is a mountain of experimental and observational evidence, much of it predating genetics, which shows that natural selection as a biological process works."

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quot...2.html#quote25

Obviously, none of this research is your own. You have lifted it from some creationist site or other. "Before interviewing Dr Patterson, the author read his book, Evolution, which he had written for the British Museum of Natural History." Obviously that wasn't you.

But Dr Patterson [a senior palaeontologist and editor of a prestigious journal at the British Museum of Natural History] spoke most freely about the absence of transitional forms.
...‘. . . I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?
’I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

True enough though missing the context -which is hinted at here:- "I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it."

The awful thing is that this looks very convincing to your case and would worry me, were it not that I know that it has been misrepresented.

" During the lecture a quotation of Dr. Colin Patterson was used to justify the standard creationist argument that 'there are no transitional forms.' Numerous other creationists I have encountered have used the quote,...I decided to get to the bottom of the matter. The quote is from a personal letter dated 10th April 1979 from Dr. Patterson to creationist Luther D. Sunderland and is referring to Dr. Patterson's book "Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.). My first step was to read the book. (I believe it is now out of print, but most university libraries should have a copy.) Anyone who has actually read the book can hardly say that Patterson believed in the absence of transitional forms. For example (p131-133):

"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."

Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution. Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not. What Patterson was saying to Sunderland was that, of the transitional forms that are known, he could not make a watertight argument for any being directly ancestral to living species groups."

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html