Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Bad Wolf]

Rev seriously? What are you doing here if not trolling? You aren't listening to a word anybody is saying. You clearly don't understand the theory of evolution and you don't appear to want to. Have you ever been educated by a qualified teacher, on evolution? Have you ever studied it at all? My guess is no. Why don't you try and understand evolution before not believing it.
And can you please respond to rebuttals with your own words and not links to answers in genesis. I won't even click on a link to that damn website, the general ignorance of it would cause my eyeballs to melt. We want to hear what you think is wrong with evolution, not what a thousand other uneducated, ignorant sheep believe.
And one more thing. Check out my thread on 'Intelligent design', that may clear up any misunderstandings you have about our position on it.

[max-greece]

However that hypothesis can be eliminated due to the fact that 99.8% of all of the species that have ever lived have now gone extinct.

In other words - the level of intelligence evidenced in the design is too low to be worthy of consideration.

Unless your God is dumber that a bag of dead squirrels, that is.

I highly doubt the level of intelligence of a species will decide or not if they become extinct. I also don't understand how extinction supports evolution?

I wasn't referring to the intelligence of the creatures but that of the creator.

I'm not trying to prove evolution - that was done 150 years ago (you obviously didn't get the memo).

I am showing why the idea of an intelligent creator only works if his fail rate is 99.8%. That's quite an achievement for an omniscient being don't you think?

[Anomalocaris]

tiktaalik doesn't eat junk food.

After he is done nibbling on me bum have him read this...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles...fishy-fish

He doesn't read smut either.

[Lemonvariable72]

I just wanted to bring one point here since the trilobytes are really getting thrown under the bus. Do you know how many major site there are where you can find 525 million year old fossils? Fucking 2 on the whole goddamn planet. 2! Of course you havent found the damn ancestor to trilobytes, the rocks it was fossilized in are in the damn mantle, or buried so deep we likely never find them.

[Esquilax]

I just wanted to bring one point here since the trilobytes are really getting thrown under the bus. Do you know how many major site there are where you can find 525 million year old fossils? Fucking 2 on the whole goddamn planet. 2! Of course you havent found the damn ancestor to trilobytes, the rocks it was fossilized in are in the damn mantle, or buried so deep we likely never find them.

Doesn't matter: you need all that proof for evolution, but no proof for god, with these people. You're talking sense to those that aren't even on speaking terms with it.

[Lemonvariable72]

I just wanted to bring one point here since the trilobytes are really getting thrown under the bus. Do you know how many major site there are where you can find 525 million year old fossils? Fucking 2 on the whole goddamn planet. 2! Of course you havent found the damn ancestor to trilobytes, the rocks it was fossilized in are in the damn mantle, or buried so deep we likely never find them.

Doesn't matter: you need all that proof for evolution, but no proof for god, with these people. You're talking sense to those that aren't even on speaking terms with it.

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Sense ->.

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[Anomalocaris]

I just wanted to bring one point here since the trilobytes are really getting thrown under the bus. Do you know how many major site there are where you can find 525 million year old fossils? Fucking 2 on the whole goddamn planet. 2! Of course you havent found the damn ancestor to trilobytes, the rocks it was fossilized in are in the damn mantle, or buried so deep we likely never find them.

Actually, there are many sites around the world that offers large arrays of Cambrian fossils. But You are unlikely to find the ancestress of trilobites in Cambrian fossils because at the beginning of Cambrian, trilobites are already clearly distinguished from their arthropod relatives and have the full array of distinguishing trilobite features. This indicates the common ancestor of all Arthropods considerably predate Cambrian, and trilobite lineage, as well as other arthropod lineages, already had a long independent heritage at the start of Cambrian.

The Cambrian explosion isn't so much an sudden explosion of life without known ancestors. It is actually the sudden explosion of fossils of calcium based, mineralized shells. It is thought that prior to Cambrian, ocean water chemistry did not support the formation of hard, mineralized calcite shells. Ancestors of those trilobites that left the earliest fossils of trilobite shells were still trilobites, just trilobites with shells that didn't contain calcite and so is much harder to preserve.

This doesn't mean pre-Cambrian trilobites can't fossilize, just fossilization of trilobites without mineralized shells are much more rare, those that fossilize are more likely to be in poorer state of preservation, and what is preserved would be more difficult to recognize as trilobites.

But nonetheless there are fossil evidence to show there were earlier lineage of indisputable trilobites that didn't look like trilobites because they lacked the distinctive, three lobed, segmented calcite exoskeletons of the iconic trilobite of popular science literature. Instead they looked instead like nondescript giant beetles with round soft chitin shells unreinforced by calcium carbonates.

They were not recognized for what they were for a long time because they looked superficially so unlike the classical trilobite. But in the late 1980s their fossils were systematically dissected under microscopes with dental drills. When the nondescript chitin carapace was ground away, what was revealed below was an arrangements of segmented limbs, mouth parts, and breathing gills highly distinctive to the trilobite lineage.

In other words, a lineage of trilobites existed that didn't have the iconic trilobite calcium shells which so easily and commonly fossilized in Cambrian era and later. Instead this lineage had unreinforced soft chitin shells that were hard to fossilize, hard to recognize when fossilized, but which could exist in the water chemistry prior to Cambrian, when hard mineralized calcite shells were not supported by water chemistry.

[Lemonvariable72]

I just wanted to bring one point here since the trilobytes are really getting thrown under the bus. Do you know how many major site there are where you can find 525 million year old fossils? Fucking 2 on the whole goddamn planet. 2! Of course you havent found the damn ancestor to trilobytes, the rocks it was fossilized in are in the damn mantle, or buried so deep we likely never find them.

Actually, there are many sites around the world that offers large arrays of Cambrian fossils. But You are unlikely to find the ancestress of trilobites in Cambrian fossils because at the beginning of Cambrian, trilobites are already clearly distinguished from their arthropod relatives and have the full array of distinguishing trilobite features. This indicates the common ancestor of all Arthropods considerably predate Cambrian, and trilobite lineage, as well as other arthropod lineages, already had a long independent heritage at the start of Cambrian.

The Cambrian explosion isn't so much an sudden explosion of life without known ancestors. It is actually the sudden explosion of fossils of calcium based, mineralized shells. It is thought that prior to Cambrian, ocean water chemistry did not support the formation of hard, mineralized calcite shells. Ancestors of those trilobites that left the earliest fossils of trilobite shells were still trilobites, just trilobites with shells that didn't contain calcite and so is much harder to preserve.

This doesn't mean pre-Cambrian trilobites can't fossilize, just fossilization of trilobites without mineralized shells are much more rare, those that fossilize are more likely to be in poorer state of preservation, and what is preserved would be more difficult to recognize as trilobites.

I maybe mistaken but I was under the impression that most of what we know of the cambrian comes from the burgess shale in Canada and a site in china, I could be wrong. Eitherway you have a hard enough time finding sedimentary rock from the ediacarian let alone fossils from that, which as you state, likely didn't have mineralized shells.

[Anomalocaris]

Actually, there are many sites around the world that offers large arrays of Cambrian fossils. But You are unlikely to find the ancestress of trilobites in Cambrian fossils because at the beginning of Cambrian, trilobites are already clearly distinguished from their arthropod relatives and have the full array of distinguishing trilobite features. This indicates the common ancestor of all Arthropods considerably predate Cambrian, and trilobite lineage, as well as other arthropod lineages, already had a long independent heritage at the start of Cambrian.

The Cambrian explosion isn't so much an sudden explosion of life without known ancestors. It is actually the sudden explosion of fossils of calcium based, mineralized shells. It is thought that prior to Cambrian, ocean water chemistry did not support the formation of hard, mineralized calcite shells. Ancestors of those trilobites that left the earliest fossils of trilobite shells were still trilobites, just trilobites with shells that didn't contain calcite and so is much harder to preserve.

This doesn't mean pre-Cambrian trilobites can't fossilize, just fossilization of trilobites without mineralized shells are much more rare, those that fossilize are more likely to be in poorer state of preservation, and what is preserved would be more difficult to recognize as trilobites.

I maybe mistaken but I was under the impression that most of what we know of the cambrian comes from the burgess shale in Canada and a site in china, I could be wrong. Eitherway you have a hard enough time finding sedimentary rock from the ediacarian let alone fossils from that, which as you state, likely didn't have mineralized shells.

Burgess was the first big Precambrian find, around the turn of last century. A big find was made in china in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but these were followed shortly afterwards by many other Cambrian sites around the world. We now have a pretty good chronological column of fossils and fauna covering the whole if Cambrian, not just one or two slices in time in Cambrian.

You can now see lineages evolving within Cambrian, each fossil being a transition for something else that comes later.

As usual, more data and better understand will turn anything into a nightmare for biblical morons. Cambrian is certainly not excluded.

[Esquilax]

I maybe mistaken but I was under the impression that most of what we know of the cambrian comes from the burgess shale in Canada and a site in china, I could be wrong. Eitherway you have a hard enough time finding sedimentary rock from the ediacarian let alone fossils from that, which as you state, likely didn't have mineralized shells.

Hey Rev? I'd like you to take a good, long look at the exchange here between Lemon and Chuck, because I think it's a great contrast between the ways we address this issue. See how the two atheists aren't talking past one another in a mad scramble to hit all their talking points, heedless of the opinions and facts being exchanged? See how they're listening to one another, taking on board what is being said and allowing the conversation to evolve beyond the surface level?

See how they've clearly done their research at sources that don't have statements of faith?

What's happening here is an actual conversation. What you've done in this thread, frankly, is an insult to our intelligence.