Rebuttal To Creationists - "Since We Can't Directly Observe Evolution..."

I'm curious about why you keep bringing up Darwin. That's like bringing up the Wright Brothers in a discussion about twenty-first-century aviation.

It's the garbage-in, garbage-out principle. Whatever you put into the front end of the bull, the same thing is going to come out the back end.

They didn't know anything about supersonic flight, for example. He didn't know anything about genetics, for example.The point is, why are you stuck in the past? Why not just call it "evolution": instead of "Darwinism"? I didn't say anything about conservation principles. I was suggesting a reason for the bullshit coming out of you: bullshit in (from creationist sources), bullshit out. Again, why not just "Evolution"?

Living things are open systems (plenty of energy coming in), so conservation isn't really relevant.

It is. They are. Glucose.

I just did a quick Google and it only mentioned glucose. That's all I needed to suggest that the question is silly. Evolution happens at the population level. You seem to be thinking on the wrong scale.

Duh.But what has replication at the cellular level got to do with evolution?

*shrug*But evolution does happen. So the rate of mutation doesn't seem to be significant.

So it's hard to figure out what you're trying to accomplish here.

But you're not doing that. You're just challenging us to explain it. Y'see, that's where you lose all of your credibility, with silly creationist slogans like that.

There you go again, asking when you should be telling. I have trouble with a teacher who demands that I teach HIM. If you wanna teach, teach. So all you have is repetition of the same childish slogans.

No deal. My motto is, If you have a secret, keep it. Don't expect me to keep your secrets for you.If you wanna teach, teach. Mick Jagger taught me that you can't always get what you want. But you're not repeating a teaching. You're not teaching anything. You're just shouting slogans like, "Lock her up!" That ship has sailed. We have understood the fossil record for centuries. It was geologist Lyell's book that prompted Darwin to ask the questions that he answered on The Origin of Species.Don't waste our time trying to feed us a load of creationist crap. It did. You're ignoring the most important variable in your calculation: the rate of fossilization. It's pretty low.And by the way, we only really need one transitional fossil to show that there was a transition.

Not from a guy who calculates that, "There aren't enough transitional fossils," and then forgets to consider the rate of fossilization. That's creationist thinking at its best (pretty bad).

Edited by ringo, .

So, you think there ARE enough transitional fossils? And I replied that we do. You're saying that we "should" have a lot suggests that you think we don't have enough.But you don't seem to be considering the fact that fossilization is very rare. You said you wanted to teach and I pointed out that you don't seem to be trying very hard to teach. I didn't say I wanted you to teach. I have never thought you had any ability to teach. I'm sure the chimpanzees don't brag about being related to you either. But you don't get to pick your relatives.

That's a very basic error in logic. As I said, you only need one transitional to indicate transitionals. How many pigs do you need as evidence that pigs exist? Well, of course we don't have fossils for every step. But I'm trying to get it through your head that one transitional is evidence of transitionals. Archaeopteryx is all we need to show a link between dinosaurs and birds. According to Nature:

quote:

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Calculating that T. rex survived for about 127,000 generations before becoming extinct, the researchers came up with a figure of 2.5 billion individuals over the species’ entire existence. Only 32 adult T. rex have been discovered as fossils, so the fossil record accounts for just one in about every 80 million T. rex. This means that the chances of being fossilized — even for one of the largest-ever carnivores — were vanishingly small.

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So we don't expect to find many transitionals. The point is that we do find some. Strictly speaking, every fossil is a transitional - but I suppose you mean fossils that clearly demonstrate a link, like archaeopteryx. Fish didn't evolve into mammals. We do have a common ancestor with fish. Some of them evolved into fish and some of them evolved into us. (This is why people keep telling you you know nothing about evolution.) It's impossible to argue otherwise. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You're trying to argue that a million steps can't take you a thousand miles because a milion is a big number. The number is irrelevant. Keep adding and you'll get to it.