Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Heywood]

When evolution occurs, the rate at which a form changes is not constant. Sometimes changes in the form occur very rapidly and sometimes they occur very slowly. Trilobites appeared when evolution "settled" on a particular form.

Who or what decides this? Is evolution some sort of supreme being that says - ok, you turn into this then stop and you are gonna be this?

Any being with sufficient intellect can design a "set it and forget it" evolutionary system to produce what ever that being wants. I did this thread which touched on that subject:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-24609.ht...ig+blunder


In evolution theory there is something called punctuated equilibrium which proposes most species will exhibit little change for most of their history. The crocodile is a good example. That beast hasn't changed much in the last 250 million years.

Some like to think about periods of punctuated equilibrium as plateaus. I like to think about them as high walled valleys in the evolutionary path that need a special mutation or parlay of mutations that give a species enough oomph to lift it out of the valley its settled in. Once out of the valley rapid changes can occur again until a species settles into another valley. An example of this is life going from unicellular to multicellular. For billions of years life on this planet was unicellular and didn't change a whole lot. Evolution was in a bit of a rut. Then came the mutation or parlay of mutations that gave evolution enough oomph to climb out of the rut onto a plain were rapid and diverse changes could happen. There was a an explosion of new species which appear...suddenly. Some of those suddenly appeared species were trilobites which then went on to settle into a new valley.