Godscreated Wrote:Until someone can show that one certain animal became something else evolution has no leg to stand on.
GC, your understanding of evolution is so poor that you cite something that would disprove evolution if it happened as what it would take for you to believe evolution is true.
One more time. No organism becomes another organism. No organism spawns another organism that isn't the same species as the parent organism, or a hybrid if the parents are different species. But the offspring are not exactly like the parents, each one is a little different due to genetic mixing and mutations. These variations are inheritable. If a variation favorably affects an organism's chance of reproducing, that variation will become more common. If a variation unfavorably affects an organism's chance of reproducing, that variation will become less common. Over hundreds or thousands of generations, an organism's descendants can come to be quite different from their ancestors if the reproductive success environment changes, or remain much the same if the reproductive success environment remains much the same. But even then, though the descendants superficially remain similar, after enough generations genetic drift will have made the descendants so genetically dissimilar that they would not be able to successfully interbreed with one of their remote ancestors. This kind of change (genetic drift) is almost impossible to detect in the fossil record, but genes tell the story.
Another story genes tell is of endogenous retroviruses. This is when a virus's DNA is incorporated into the germ line of the host species, which mean that until the forces of selection and drift eliminate it or sufficiently alter it, it acts as a foolproof marker of lines of descent. There's literally no other reasonable explanation for two organisms to have the same viral DNA in the same location unless they are in the same line of descent. This is the genetic smoking gun for evolution. Retroviral DNA provides markers that allow us to measure the degree of relationship between species based on how many of these markers they have in common. The more markers in common, the closer the relationship. You will have many of the same retroviral markers as your parents, for instance. Endogenous retroviruses comprise around 5% of the human genome. We have more of these 'viral fossils' in common with chimpanzees than gorillas, indicating a more recent common ancestor. Again, there is literally no other reason than common descent for us to have the same retroviral insertions in the same places as apes do (and fewer with monkeys, and fewer with lemurs, and so forth).
Before you decide what it would take to convince you that the modern synthesis is the most likely available scientific explanation for the development and diversity of life, you should understand what it is actually saying. Any 'evolution tree' you've seen is necessarily grossly oversimplified, leaving out thousands of gradual intermediate steps, separations and re-joinings, and countless 'branches and twigs'.
If you showed the Bible the same level of skepticism you direct at biology, you'd not only be an atheist, you'd be the 'the Bible is all fake' kind.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.