The Creation/Evolution dividing line

Because it looks enough like the last organism, which was an organism that you considered close enough to an elephant to be its ancestor.If A is the ancestor of B, and B is the ancestor of C, then A is the ancestor of C, no matter how different A and C may be. Since you accepted that it was related to the creature that was related to the elephant, then by necessity it must be related to the elephant.

What is related? Anything? You don't believe that anything is related? That wasn't your original claim. Originally, you claimed that you could tell that a purported elephant ancestor was not, in fact, related to the elephant, because it looked different. Not because it was a fossil.Whether or not you believe that the ancestor in question looks similar enough to the elephant to be related, if we can prove that it's related to something you would consider similar enough to be related to the elephant, then we've proved you wrong.If A is the ancestor of B, and B is the ancestor of C, then A is the ancestor of B. We've proved it. The only escape for you is do what you're doing now - change your argument and claim that nothing is related to anything in the fossil record, ever, no matter how similar. Based on what evidence? Since whatever we're talking about is the ancestor of the ancestor of the elephant, it must, by definition, be related to the elephant.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 10-05-2004 03:55 PM

Why? There's no evidence that kinds even exist.

Breasts are modified sweat glands. I don't see it as a big leap.

You've got the timeline backwards. The dependancy on milk doesn't predate the development of mammaries.What could happen is, an organism that can do just fine on regurgitated insects finds that a secretion from its parent is even better, easier to digest, and fatalities from starvation or choking are reduced; also, organisms who hatch too early to have fully-developed digestion systems survive on the simpler secretions.The gene for the secretions spreads throughout the population due to differential survival; the reduced egg gestation time improves survivability of offspring by reducing the vulnerability of being egg-bound and stationary. Getting mobile at an earlier age improves survival. A branch of reptiles called "therapsids." The first development on the path that ended up with mammals was the development of more efficient teeth. These teeth gave the premammals considerable metabolic advantage over reptiles, allowing for a host of developments like endothermia and viviparity.

Who advanced such a leap? Aren't you overlooking the obvious middle step - an offpsring that can obtain milk but doesn't need it to survive?

???How can it not be clear? It's a simple statement in plain English. Not if the offspring, too, can generate milk at its eventual maturity, which would be the case for the organism in question, having inherited the milk gene from its parent. I did that, already. The definition of mammal is not "requires milk to survive." The definition is "produces milk for its offspring." What you don't seem to understand is that it is entirely possible for an organism to provide milk for offspring that do not, in fact, require it.

Existing now? Who proposed that such an animal exists now? Again, you don't seem to comprehend what we're talking about. You need to show me why the ability to digest milk requires that an organism be able to digest only milk. Your objections so far have been completely irrelevant to this task. No, the reason that in all likelyhood I'm going to have a hard time showing you the transitional sequence surrounding the development of milk production is because mammilaries are glands, and therefore do not fossilize. Particularly the kind of microscopic, modified sweat glands we're referring to.But even within the mammal group you can see a transitional series from simple to developed milk production; in the monotremes, milk is secreted from the skin surface rather than from any developed teat. In the marsupials, the teat is protected within the pouch. The placental mammals have the well-defined teats we're all familiar with. Indeed it does take many, many volumes to describe the history of life on Earth in anything but the briefest level of detail. I'm not sure why you think that constitutes any sort of refutation, however. Describing how computers work in depth, for instance, requires many volumes as well, but that's hardly evidence that computers don't exist.