Summations Only

Perhaps we should take a breath and try to each state what we think the actual facts are. I'll take a turn as an example and then you can give yours.1. There are layered fossil baring rocks all over the world.2. Without referring to absolute ages or even specifying if they are measured in thousands of years or millions of years we can note that on a relative basis older* layers do not contain many of the fossils that are included in newer layers. In fact, with layers far enough apart in relative ages the fossil collections are utterly different.3. In more detail: there are reptile like fossils in older layers than mammal like fossils and not the reverse.4. In even more detail there are layers with reptiles like skeletons that have jaws that are not at all like mammalian jaws. In higher layers there are skeletons that do have mammalian jaws. In all layers (times) above a certain point there are mammal like jaws found.5. Between the newest (highest) layers with no mammal like jaws found and the oldest (lowest) layers with actual mammal like jaws found are layers with skeletons with jaws that are intermediate between full reptile like jaws and mammal like jaws in a layer depth (time) ordered squence from less mammal like lower down to more mammal like higher up.Which of these facts do you dispute?*older being for the most part layers under "newer" layers.

All the red herrings about genetics and such is beside the point of this thread.The pattern of the fossils laid out above for reptile to mammal jaws is exactly what one would expect from an evolutionary scenario. It doesn't prove anything. Just as Jar suggests there are umpty other explanations that you could come up with.What those undisputed facts do is NOT invalidate the evolutionary explanation.What they also are is only one example of many, many that follow similar patterns.It's at least interesting that all other explanations one can contrive start to look exactly that -- contrived. They don't follow naturally from the over all explanation for life's history in the rocks and what we know about biology, geology and all other sciences.As others have noted: since we don't have the DNA of these fossilized organisms we can't see the genetic changes or link from one to the other at that level.However, all the available evidence in the facts above suggests that at earlier times there were no mammals around at all. Since later on there are mammals around we have to ask who were their ancestors? One not unreasonable answer is that the reptiles that were around could have been their ancestors and therefore genetically linked to them.Since we also see organisms that are part way from one end to the other even more strongly suggests that some reptiles of earlier days were in fact ancestors to some mammals of later days.You statements about genetics have and are being discussed elsewhere. If it wasn't genetic changes that produced mammal descendants from reptile ancestors is your explanation the one given by Jar? Maybe you have another one?

and dividing by zero is prohibited because it produces stupid results like that one.

Utterly false!

Faith is not the only one with focus problems. I suggest that you keep it narrow. Also keep it simple, Faith can't handle anything of any complexity at all. Even things that seem simple and obvious to you are not to her. In argument she acts like my Dad used to: unfocussed, unable to visual complex relationships and suffering from some dementia in the later days.For example, I think the existence or non-existence of any order in the fossil record is an important sub topic to focus on. Faith has jumped to evolutionary relationships between then at one point. That is irrelevant to the existence of an order. She has seemingly agreed that there is an order and also claimed that the order is an illusion. It might be an idea to see if she can both make clear what she thinks is there and not there and what she thinks the claims of others actually are.

You are making this way to complex for some people to grasp. Go slower and simplify.E.g., a layer of sediment maybe laid down over some time period (days or megayears doesn't matter right now). Let's call it 100 units of time.For one reason or another a period of time (say the Cambrian) is deemed to have started when the layer was half laid down after only 50 units have passed. So in the case that particular layer of sediment (say the coconino sandstone*) is a continuous layer of sediment is half in the pre cambrian and half in the Cambrian period of time.* I know the Coconino was much later but this is just a made up example.In your example, Edge, the Tapeats (you seem to say) started at the beginning of the Cambrian and stopped being deposited in the middle of it. That is the inverse case: this time the sediment layer is all in one time period but doen't cover all of it. In my made up example the layer was in two time periods.Actually, I had never thought of this before. I kinda always thought of a time period and some layers of sediment as being synonymous. Now I see that they might be but won't be in at least some parts of the world.Edited by NosyNed, : No reason given.