1984 & A/S/K revisited

[Esquilax]

Let me ask you this: how do you know these are transitional fossils and not dead-end species? By presupposing Evolution first, of course. That's the point I'm trying to make. Evolution is on equal par with religion in that it has to presuppose outside beliefs.

It presupposes nothing, just follows the scads of actual, verifiable evidence that exists. See, the thing about these fossils is that evolutionary theory makes testable predictions about the fossil record that also turn out to be true: we can go to this place, dig this deep, and find this sort of creature.

But please, if you'd prefer to take up the much, much more ridiculous premise that every fossil found is an extinct, dead end species, then you'd have to actually support that claim with evidence, like evolution does, rather than just throw chaff by asserting it.

Esquilax tried to argue that the fossil record is proof of Evolution, but it is clear that cannot be the case.

The fossil record is one part of a vast tapestry of evidence for evolution, like the indisputable genetic data that you conveniently ignored. I guess it's easier just to focus on the concepts you think you might be able to debate against and pretend the ones you can't don't exist, huh?

If he simply means that the fossil record is consistent with, along with other things, a process like Evolution, I would dispute that too. There is a dating gap: http://www.icr.org/article/dating-gap/

I feel pretty safe in ignoring the views of that titan of scientific knowledge, the institute of creation research.

99.9% of all organisms that have ever lived are dead now. Why do we find hundreds of fossils for one species, but not one from millions of other species that must have existed in the same time period?

Because the process of making fossils is hard, and uncommon, and since there's no intent to make fossils it's entirely inexact? Those things?

The fact that we have as many fossils as we do have that confirm evolution just goes to show how correct the theory is.

Where are all the transitional fossils? What about one link between birds and dinosaurs, or fish and land animals? I'm just making a cursory argument here, because this is not a thread on Evolution. The point is that most people, if they looked at the fossil record without any prior beliefs, would not conclude Evolution occurred. A presupposition must be made.

Oh man, are you making my job easy here or what? We have transitional forms of those things: dinosaurs to birds- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

And fish to land animals- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik

Please note that these aren't the only examples we have, just the most well known, prototypical ones. There are plenty of others. So there's no presupposition that evolution occurs when looking at the fossil record, just a logical conclusion being made based on the fact that all of the available data, not just the fossils but the genetics, the predictive capabilities of the theory, and the current morphological observations or organisms, come together in a very clear picture.

When every shred of evidence points one way, there's no shame in interpreting other pieces of evidence to point that way, when they do.

It stands that Macroevolution has never been observed-- presupposition. Your quote on the difference between micro and macro is misinformed. Macro involves speciation via new information being added to the genome. Whereas microevolution can occur with existing genes by a process of Natural Selection, only random mutations are able to drive macroevolution.

You just don't understand evolution. Under your definition macroevolution is impossible because new information isn't added into genes, only altered. But that's not a point in your favor, because evolution as it stands never posited that new information could be added. The thing you've labelled as microevolution is just evolution; it's the only mechanism by which evolution occurs. And those smaller changes within species accumulate over time, giving us newer, diverse species.

What you've done is, you've created your own fantasy version of evolution, called it macro, and then argued against it, when nobody that actually supports evolution is arguing for it!