Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Angrboda]

There are many, many, many transitional fossils. You can see them in museums, you can see them in books, you can see them in peer reviewed, scholarly articles by evolutionary biologists. It is undeniable that transitional forms do exist.

Thank you for the nice response. Check out this article
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles...2/tetrapod

Creationists and evolutionists have observed that many organisms, both fossil and living, exhibit a mosaic distribution of character traits. Parker66 put it this way:

• ‘Each created kind is a unique combination of traits that are individually shared with members of other groups.’

Stephen Jay Gould called such organisms ‘mosaic forms’ or ‘chimeras’67 while Kurt Wise68,69 calls them chimeromorphs. The duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), for instance, has features of both mammals (hair, milk production) and reptiles (egg-laying). Perhaps the best-known fossil example is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers with teeth and wing claws. In fact, a mosaic pattern of character distribution is seen in many other fossil organisms. For instance, Woodmorappe70 recently drew attention to the chimeric nature of the pakicetids, a group of terrestrial artiodactyls with a whale-like inner ear.

This observation seems to apply to the Devonian tetrapods and fishes considered in this article. For example, Daeschler et al. noted that:

• ‘Devonian tetrapods show a mosaic of terrestrial and aquatic adaptations.’71

Some of the fishes possess tetrapod-like characters while the tetrapods have fish-like features. Evolutionists interpret mosaic organisms like these as evolutionary intermediates linking major groups. However, Wise72 makes an important point against this interpretation:

• ‘Although the entire organism is intermediate in structure, it’s the combination of structures that is intermediate, not the nature of the structures themselves. Each of these organisms appears to be a fully functional organism full of fully functional structures.’

Evolutionary theory might lead us to expect examples of intermediate structures, but there is nothing intermediate about, for example, the internal gills of Acanthostega, its lateral line system, or its limbs. They are fully developed and highly complex. What is unusual is their combination in a single organism. Intelligent design offers an alternative understanding of this widespread pattern. The Devonian tetrapods are thought to have lived a predatory lifestyle in weed-infested shallow water. They were therefore equipped with characteristics appropriate to that habitat (e.g. crocodile-like morphology with dorsally placed eyes, limbs and tails made for swimming, internal gills, lateral line systems). Some of these features are also found in fishes that shared their environment.

Ah yes, ye olde, "They aren't intermediate, they only look like they are."