Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Mister Agenda]

Revy, every organism is in a transitional form compared to its descendants, so in a sense, every fossil is a transitional fossil.

You should do some research that doesn't come from creationists about evolution before you attempt to refute it.

I believe creationists do believe and accept that there are indeed changes and transitions that take place within organisms. But would not evolution have to show that at some point there was an original organism from with all organisms would of eventually evolve from?

That's what all the evidence we have currently points to, but if we had multiplie lineages, that would not be inconsistent with evolution, only with universal common descent.

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Who are we to tell God how He should of done things.

We're intelligent designers.

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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?

Evolution is a process that occurs and different rates depending on the prevailing conditions and the genome of the involved organisms.

So every one who has a religious avatar and/or believes in deity is an idiot?

Nope. My side isn't immune to overgeneralizing.

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Part of the problem is that you have been duped by some of the books you read. Time to wake up and smell the Truth.

If this is the case, part of the problem is your inability to demonstrate how the books we've read have duped us. Merely asserting that they have isn't helpful at all. Perhaps you could read one or two of them to find the mistakes? The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins is long, but if you're only going to read one, I recommend it.

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I'm hirsute and love bananas but not an ape.

Maybe we should take this in baby steps. Are you a mammal?

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Thank you for your recommendation. Make ya a deal, I'll read that and you read the Bible?

Read it, cover-to-cover, twice. A lot of us have read it. May I assume that you will return the courtesy?

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Just because a source has Christian beliefs doesn't mean that the source should be disregarded. I can do the same with atheistic sources.

I would be most surprised if anyone here ever points you to an atheistic, rather than scientific, source. It's not our fault that so many Christians have abandoned science that they're poorly represented in the upper echelons of scientific endeavor. They used to be on top in that regard.

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I am not an expert. Are you?

Compared to you, yes. Compared to Jack Horner, no. I have a good layman's understanding of evolution: I've read several books on the subject (including Evolution? The Fossils Say No by Gish) and learn from those better informed on it than I am. This is not a magic power I possess, you can do it, too.

But you won't. It would undermine your faith to discover how much lying your creationist sources do. It undermined mine. Creationism is the most effective tool for driving science-minded folks out of churches: it requires them to look at the one thing that we can be sure that if there was a God, was authored by that God directly, and reject it if it doesn't match what a certain tribe thought about nature thousands of years ago.

[Anomalocaris]

Well, so long as each species that ever existed on earth did not belong it its own totally separate lineage, having multiple lineages amongst the species on earth would be entirely consistent with evolution.

Such an occurance means life began many times, and many of those separate incidents of either biogenesis or abiogenesis then went on to spawn its own evolutionary lineage.

In fact, if it were not for hard evident to the contrary, our knowledge of organic chemistry would probably have led us to believe that there ought to be multiple, independent, unrelated evolutionary lineages in life on earth.

However, hard evidence from the proteins of all life on earth shows otherwise. It shows all life on earth most likely are descendants of a single lineage of primitive organisms. (Some have argued two very similar related lineages, but those lineages would have to be so similar they almost certainly have to be related. Mathematically probability of life on earth actually having arisen from two different lineages rather than one have been estimated at 10 to two thousands power, in other words, ) Furthermore this single lineage experienced considerable evolution before it branched off into all different types of life on earth.

By tracing common characteristics of all different type of life on earth, biologists are fairly confident what last organism on the common ancesteral lineage, just before the lineage split into all different forms of life on earth, looks like, how it functions, and how it behaves.

The even have a name for it LUCA - Last Universal Common Ancester. LUCA lived between 3.5 billion and 3.8 billion years ago. It was a single celled organism. It had no cell nucleus. It had a two layered cell membrane with through-membrane ion transport. It relied on chemiosmosis for energy production. It had double stranded DNA. It already had sophisticated system DNA maintenance.

[CapnAwesome]

Well, you are wrong about just about everything in your opening statement. It's always funny when anti-evolution nutcases say something like "We don't see in the fossil record.....blah blah blah"

You know what we definitely don't see, God creating new species out of thin air. That's what your alternative theory is. If that were observed even a single time then you'd have a point. It isn't and you don't.

[Tonus]

He seems to read everything... but is very selective as to what he replies... and he replies in a strange order...
Some people are weird that way...

Some people are evasive that way.

[Faith No More]

It's time for number two.

I mean, bring the next argument...and try to make sure it isn't full of number two.

[Mister Agenda]

This seems to be a common reply to those who reject God and don't have an answer to perplexing questions. "We don't yet but we are working on it." The problem is that the answer is, "God." Because some don't like that answer they keep searching in vain.

The entirety of science...everything that makes the modern world 'modern' comes from not accepting 'God' as an adequate substitute for 'We don't know yet but we are working on it.' There was NO unknown we couldn't have accepted God as being the answer for and quit looking. Maybe accepting God over 'We don't know yet' had something to do with that period where Christianity had near-absolute theocratic power and science advanced hardly at all for a thousand years.

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I'm actually going somewhere with this.

I repeat: can inert matter, by itself, produce life?

Yes, God took dirt and made man.

But God couldn't poosibly have taken microorganisms and made man, eh?

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You make it sound like "evolution" is some sort of intelligence.

I apologize if I made it sound that way. I assumed I could speak in colloquial English and you could grasp it without my qualifying every single nuance.

"it has to make do" and "its got to work with." Does evolution have a plan and a will? Sounds like evolution has some qualities of a Creator?

Evolution has no plan or will. It gives a superficial appearance of design, if you want to call that a quality of a creator. Because it has no plan or will, it can never plan ahead, and therefore it (evolution) is always drawn from what already exists in the genome of the organism under consideration, often giving rise to a 'jury-rigged' survival solution, like the giraffe's laryngeal nerve.

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Is it your job to change my mind? I doubt I can change yours. However, we can contemplate what each other has to offer.

You could change my mind with evidence supporting your position. I used to be a creationists, investigating the evidence for myself destroyed my faith in creationism, but maybe I somehow misunderstood the evidence...if that's the case, show me what I got wrong.

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You know what is ironic as well, Darwin did not deny that there was a God! In fact, in his sixth addition of Origin he refers to the Creator.

The ironic part is that so many theists are still butthurt about evolution. It makes not the slightest difference to us whether Darwin believed in God or not. Why should it?

One of best-known criticisms of natural selection was that nothing as complicated as an eye could have evolved purely by chance. Darwin's response was that we can observe many examples of the evolution of light-sensitive cells in nature. The most intriguing thought Darwin had on this subject was that just because we don't understand how something can evolve does not mean that the Creator wasn't behind it. His exact words in the sixth edition of Origin were "Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?"[v]. Using the telescope as an example of a man-made optical instrument, he added: "May we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to man?"

That sounds like a very reasonable view for someone who wants to believe in God without denying over 150 years of science. Maybe you should consider adopting it yourself.

Darwin never said that there was not a Creator. And he never said that the Creator didn't create life.

Why do you think that is important?

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You base your beliefs, and they are beliefs, on what you observe naturally. God, is a supernatural being.

Sure we have beliefs, but a theist who can correctly identify them would be a novelty around here.

He created a natural world but there are also supernatural events that have occurred, are presently occurring, and will occur. Just because you have not experienced any doesn't mean the supernatural doesn't exist.

Anecdotes don't support the existence of supernatural events. They're the claim, not the evidence.

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Why do you call them conmen? They have a Creation Museum and they will be building a Noah's Ark replica. I am very impressed with their findings.

That they're trying to make money from verious side-enterprises is NOT an argument against them being conmen.

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Since when is intelligence or knowledge correlated to the amount of books one reads?

When someone tries to argue a complex topic that they haven't studies up on, and what studying they have done is one-sided, it's not a good sign.

Do you see the amount of posts are on this thread? I already spent a couple hours trying to respond to posts and still like ten pages to go.

I appreciate your efforts in this regard. It's okay to ignore posts that are redundant or irrelevant and just focus on the more cogent ones.

I'm glad you read it.

Didn't you offer a deal to read a book that supports the theory of evolution if someone read the Bible?

Woops, he had a typo, that must mean his arguments are invalid. Not a good thing to have a grammatical error on an atheist board.

That is true. Atheists have a tendency to be grammar nazis. Not our finest trait. We also have a tendency to do better on tasks that involve critical analysis, which is one of our finer traits, though hardly universal.

[Anomalocaris]

Id like to see the next argument, and it seems like rev is out of steam and just tossing assertions out with nothing to back them up.

He never had any steam. But I am sure he is not out of hot air.

[Esquilax]

Actually, before we move on to any other arguments, I'd like to get something straight and ask a question from the Nye/Ham debate: Rev, what would it take to change your mind on any of these arguments you're making?

Because so far, it looks like evidence isn't it.

[The Valkyrie]

It's time for number two.

I mean, bring the next argument...and try to make sure it isn't full of number two.

Number 2: I don't understand so goddidit.

[Tonus]

You know what is ironic as well, Darwin did not deny that there was a God! In fact, in his sixth addition of Origin he refers to the Creator.

And yet, I don't see Christians using THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES to validate the existence of god. Ever wonder why that might be?