Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[orogenicman]

How does Tiktaalik not fit the definition of a transitional form?

It has fins like a fish, and also has rudimentary fingers like a reptile. The head of a croc and the gills of a fish. The ability to turn its head like a reptile, shoulders like a reptile, yet has scales like a fish.

There are others, but lets start there.

But it doesn't seem transitional to creationists, mostly because they never bother to define their terms in anything other than vagaries, specifically so they can move the goalposts like this.

We're arguing over a scientific term- transitional form- with somebody who doesn't care about science at all; of course there's going to be difficulties. Rev's idea of scientific is "what seems intuitively right to me at the time."

The bulk of creationists are not scientists. As such, they don't get to define scientific terms, particularly outside of published scientific journals and scientific organizations.

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By the way, the entire argument about transitional fossils is bogus. Yes, it is very important that we search for transitional fossils in the fossil record in order to give as complete a history of organisms in the fossil record as possible. But whether we find them for all species or any particular species is irrelevant to the question of evolution. Why? Because ALL species are, by convention as well as by definition, transitional. There is no ambiguity with regard to species being transitional. They are.