Your reason for accepting evolution

Let us consider transitional fossils.Most creationists accept that some evolution has occurred within what they call "kinds". "Kinds" are thought to be roughly equivalent to the families of biological taxonomy but there is no way to recognise a "kind" scientifically. (This, in itself is a serious problem for creationists).Transitional fossils making a transition between groups at higher taxonomic levels, therefore are something we should not expect if creationism is true. Their discovery is not enough to disprove creationism because creationism allows for almost any possibility that we could see, but it is definitely unexpected. Evolution on the other hand predcts that we should find such fossils. In an especially impressive example, the discoverers of Tiktaalik even predicted where they would find a fossil of this sort, through their understanding of evolution and geology.But let us be clear what evolution does predict here. For some time the predominant mode of speciation has been thought to be allopatric speciation where a small isolated population diverges from the parent species. Gould and Eldredge recognised that the fossil record would tend to miss these speciation events, unless they took place in a region where there was a very good fossil record. Equally the known fossil record does not include all the species that ever existed (we are still finding new species - including new transitional fossils !). Therefore we do not expect to find direct ancestors - and we have no way of certainly identifying them if we did. However, when we deal with the larger transitions we can expect to at least find closely related species.And that is what we do find. And keep on finding.The creationist response is generally to find a way to wish away this evidence. Often they deny that transitional fossils even exist, citing Gould. However they misrepresent Gould - what Gould was referring to was the transitions between species, as I explained. But creationists believe that many of these transitions did take place. The ones they want to deny are the transitions between higher level taxa - and Gould does not deny their existence. Sometimes they try to insist that transitionals must be direct ancestors. That is wrong for the reasons I have explained. When dealing with archaeopteryx they either deny the dinosaurian features of archaeopteryx or even insist that because archaeopteryx is classified as a bird it cannot be a transitional. The last ignores the fact that the rules of taxonomy mean that any transitional form between dinosaurs and birds would be classified as one or the other. The more birdlike examples would be classified as birds.This is not coming to conclusions based on the evidence. It is trying to deny the evidence.

The "Cambrian Explosion" represents a relatively rapid period of evolution and one we are still learning about. However we are finding more fossils that helkp us decipher it. It is apparent that the divergence began well before the supposed "Explosion" and the "sudden appearance" is largely due to the limits of the fossil record.The Young Earth Creationist "explanation" on the other hand is completely nuts. It doesn't explain the order in the fossil record, and that has been known for a long time. Cuvier's investigation of the geology and paleontology of the Paris Basin, for instance, found that a single flood was not a viable possiblity. Hydrological sorting is also a complete failure.