Summations Only

More importantly, how do these fossils, or any fossils for that matter, disprove evolution?From what I have seen, Eliyahu has confused the absence of evidence with evidence that disproves a hypothesis. Using the forensic evidence analogy again, if we don't find the suspect's fingerprints at the crime scene it does not prove that the suspect is innocent. However, finding someone else's fingerprints would lead us down the road of disproving the prosecution's case.In the case of fossils, the fossils we do have do not disprove evolution. In fact, all of the fossils we have support the theory.What we do not have is a fossil that disproves evolution.

Not a problem for people that understand what evolution is in biological terms rather than in creationist fantasy.It appears that Eliyahoo thinks that evolution is either very very slow (his evolution = gradualism statement) or very very fast (his evolve a hamster from a cat statement) ... and thus it is very evident that he doesn't understand the biology of evolutionary processes (and is unwilling to learn, like most creationists). He has confused many things with apparent completely careless abandon, things that even grade school education should have covered (at least here in the US). And he is also confused about "proof" and science and basic logic, and seems to think that if a theory is not proven by the evidence then it is disproven ... a rather uncredible leap of faith.

Bs'dWrong. When there is a limited number of bases, then there is a limited number of ways in which you can recombine them. That's one thing I don't see there. Please post it here. And HOW do you think they evolve??That's the question.

Bs'dYes. "The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide acceptance among paleontologists. It attempts to account for the following paradox: Within continuously sampled lineages, one rarely finds the gradual morphological trends predicted by Darwinian evolution; rather, change occurs with the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldredge and Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these events are not preserved. .... The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. Apart from the obvious sampling problems inherent to the observations that stimulated the model, and apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground."Ricklefs, Robert E., "Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution," Science, vol. 199, 1978, p. 59Robert E Ricklefs is an evolutionist and professor biology at the University of Missouri te St. Louis:
Robert E

Bs'dFor sure not in the fossil record, and that's the point of this discussion. I say it is more in line with the evidence.

Bs'dMy story is: God created them.I'm just trying to show that really there is no known alternative.

Bs'dThere we have it: When they agree with the ET the layers are correct, if they don't; they are inverted.With this kind of "science" you can proof about everything.

Bs'dIf nobody can tell me how new attributes are formed, then it is a kind of useless trying to learn about it....

Bs'dThe facts are the opposite. What the fossil record shows is that the fossils exhibit STASIS, non-change, even during millions of years in the fossil record. The fossil record shows that new species pop up suddenly, fully formed, without any link to supposed predecessors:Stasis, or non-change, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. .... The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, non-evolution)."Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15
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."Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ... That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, .... prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search .... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserly fossil record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.
The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way."Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46.
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."Paleontologists have paid an enormous price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. .... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed."Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182
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."The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change."Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163
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."Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion .... it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. .... Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species."Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.Schwartz, Jeffrey H is professor anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and also evolutionist, writer of boek about evolution: Sudden Origins, a provocative new theory on how evolution works by sudden leaps and bounds:
'Sudden Origins : Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species' by Jeffrey H. Schwartz
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."Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95, speaking about the Bighorn basin in Wyoming USA.S.M. Stanley is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium which has been published in Geological Society of America
For more info about prof Stanley look here: Steven M. Stanley - Wikipedia
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.I can go on like this for a while, but I assume you got the picture by now: The fossil record shows STASIS and sudden appearance of new fully formed species, and not evolution.
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Bs'dSo what you are saying is: Mutations make new species with totally different attributes.The only problem is: Mutations cannot do that. The DNA is like a very long, very complicated code. When you start throwing monkey wrenches in the code, which is what mutations do, then you ruin the code, and not make it any better.Here are some expert opinions on the subject:
"Point mutations are, for an important part, responsible for what is sometimes called micro-evolution, or molecular evolution, that is to say: the continually progressing replacement of bases in homologous genes and of amino acids in the corresponding proteins during evolution. However, they probably were not involved much with the phenomenon which comprises much more of evolution, and led to the origin of increasingly complex life forms. Point mutations appear to have occurred with the same frequency throughout the entire evolutionary process and show no correlation to events that at certain moments have led rather abruptly to the emergence of new species."
Prof Christian de Duve, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, De levende cel (The living cell), part 2."Point mutations or chromosomal rearrangements are themselves a limited source of variation for evolution because they can only alter a function or change on kind of function into another."An Introduction to Genetic Analysis, A.J.F. Griffiths, (university of Britisch Columbia) J.H. Miller, (university of California, Los Angeles) D.T. Suzuki, (university of Britisch Columbia) R.C. Lewinton, (Harvard University) W.M. Gelbart (Harvard University) 1996, blz 794"Evidence is accumulating which suggests that protein sequence evolution is not the only or even the most important basis of organismal evolution."
Biochemistry, pp. 131.http://www.weloennig.de/...of-Law-of-Recurrent-Variation.pdf"In accord with the law of recurrent variation, mutants in every species thoroughly examined (from pea to man) − whether naturally occurring, experimentally induced, or accidentally brought about − happen in a large, but nevertheless limited spectrum of phenotypes with either losses of functions or neutral deviations. Yet, in the absence of the generation of new genes and novel gene reaction chains with entirely new functions, mutations cannot transform an original species into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the 20th century taken together as well as with the laws of probability. Thus, the law of recurrent variation implies that genetically properly defined species have real boundaries that cannot be abolished or transgressed by accidental mutations."

Every reproductive event containing evolution is just equivocation with the term, "evolution", in that way you can claim adaptation, a change in allele frequencies in gene pools, is the event of evolution.There is no direct logically sound argument that shows this, they can only claim that this type of, "evolution" leads to macro-evolution, by pointing to tenuous inductions of fragmentary historical evidence. As you say, mutations are not largely favourable and the accumulation of them leads to error catastrophe.Refuting Evolution 2 chapter 5: Argument: Some mutations are beneficial - creation.com So there are qualified scientists that are telling us we don't have to conflate adaptation with macro evolution, we are quite reasonable to deny the claim that it leads to that.The tremendous design-diversity in the billions of species on earth, the almost limitless imagination of them, is down to design, when we look at the anatomy, because each anatomy shows us the contingency-plans for the engineering problems we see.For example when we look at the cartilage between bones, imagine it was not there, all of that friction, now what about the problem of long-bones and their development, the solution is growth plates. But you need immense thought-capability with the cartilage between bones for example, because it still needs to be lubricated or it won't function. There can also not be any blood vessels in cartilage because the joints, the pressure would burst them, so you have to invent something perfect like cartilage, which can later turn to bone, which solves growth problems. But also, if the cartilage between joints was smooth on the surface, it wouldn't be able to self-lubricate. It has a particular surface that allows the lubricant to cover the surface area. Moreover, bones such as our bones, are spongey, yet this structure actually makes the stronger than solid bone, despite being lighter. Now all of these things need to be thought through, in order to be solved. This is only a very basic few problems with having bones as a chassis. Also notice, our chassis begins as nothing, becomes cartilagee and then becomes the correct bone, in the correct place for the function of the bone, in the correct way, in the design plan. Show me a car designer that can come up with a solid chassis that can create itself.These are only some basic design-elements involved in the anatomy, I have NOT gone into detail pertaining to how incredible the design is, I have only touched the surface.

Which it is by the definition of the process of evolution: It is not equivocation Mike, rather it is distinguishing between the process of evolution and the theory of evolution. Equivocation would try to confuse the two. Nice to see you again.

In any one fixed length. Insertions change the lengths, result: unlimited. Try again: where are the limitations? So you didn't read the article you referenced. One simple method is duplication of an existing gene and then mutations to alter it to new use while the original continues the original use.Note this also adds to the overall length and complexity of the DNA ... By modification of existing traits via mutation and selection. I provided a sample in Message 63:

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When we look at fossils like the Therapsids we not only see a progression from reptile jaw and ear to mammal jaw and ear, we see several intermediate forms where the jaw is double jointed -- one at the reptile location and one at the new mammal location. Functional intermediates.

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The reptiles, as we have noted, have one bone in the middle ear and several bones in the lower jaw, and mammals have three bones in the middle ear and only one bone in the lower jaw. On the other hand, the jaw joints in the reptile are formed from different bones than they are in the mammalian skull. ...

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... it can be clearly seen in a remarkable series of fossils from the Triassic therapsids. The earliest therapsids show the typical reptilian type of jaw joint, with the articular bone in the jaw firmly attached to the quadrate bone in the skull. In later fossils from the same group, however, the quadrate-articular bones have become smaller, and the dentary and squamosal bones have become larger and moved closer together. This trend reaches its apex in a group of therapsids known as cynodonts, of which the genus Probainognathus is a representative. Probainognathus possessed characteristics of both reptile and mammal, and this transitional aspect was shown most clearly by the fact that it had TWO jaw joints--one reptilian, one mammalian: ...

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In a slightly later group, known as the ictidosaurians, the mammalian part of the double jaw joint seen in Probainognathus was strengthened, while the old reptilian part was beginning to become reduced in size. In describing a member of this group known as Diarthrognathus, paleontologists Colbert and Morales point out: "The most interesting and fascinating point in the morphology of the ictidosaurians (at least, as seen in Diarthrognathus) was the double jaw articulation. In this animal, not only was the ancient reptilian joint between a reduced quadrate and articular still present, but also the new mammalian joint between the squamosal and dentary bones had come into functional being. ...

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Thus, the fossil record demonstrates, during the transition from therapsid reptile to mammal, various bones in the skull slowly migrated together to form a second functional jaw joint, and the now-superfluous original jaw bones were reduced in size until they formed the three bones in the mammalian middle ear. The reptilian quadrate bone became the mammalian incus, while the articular bone became the malleus. ...

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This is the process of evolution demonstrated in spades in the fossil record.

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Only for those undereducated in evolution or in denial of the evidence.Edited by RAZD, : color

Well now you're just making things up. That would be like saying, "If you can't read a book then it must be upside down," but that's not true, is it. The book could be in an unfamiliar language.The easiest way to recognize that a book is upside down is by checking if the letters and words are upside down, and that's the way we recognize that layers are inverted, that the elements making up the layers are upside down. Layer boundaries are eroded upward from the bottom instead of downward from the top. Structures representing streams and lakes are upside down. Radiometric dating runs backward with youngest layers beneath. Evidence of the tectonic forces necessary for mountain building (which is what usually produces tilting and inversions) will be present. In some cases the layers are the same ones and in the same order as non-inverted layers in a nearby region, just upside down.Perhaps you didn't notice my Message 263? It addresses several other of your errors.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Change font size of subtitle, and the subtitle itself.

Is there a compelling reason for the continuing use of gigantic subtitles? It makes the All Topics and Biological Evolution's page look awful, in my opinion.