Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Mothonis]

Well that wasn't giant bold font.

Jesus told us to go out to the world and make disciples.

Rev a tip,if you are going to cite sources make sure they are official scientific journals.

[Revelation777]

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.

If (or when) we actually discover that to be the answer, then so be it...
Until then, we should not commit to one answer over any other, just because we were taught to believe in it as kids.

Maybe that is why Jesus said this:
Mat 18:3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

[SteelCurtain]

If (or when) we actually discover that to be the answer, then so be it...
Until then, we should not commit to one answer over any other, just because we were taught to believe in it as kids.

Maybe that is why Jesus said this:
Mat 18:3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

This is the most damning post you have made so far, Rev.

[Revelation777]

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.

And yet, every time we have answered one of those perplexing questions, the answer has not been "god." It is the people who said "we don't know yet, but we are working on it" who found many of those answers, as opposed to the people who decided that god must have done it and that to continue to search was in vain.

It seems to me that if there is one search that has been in vain, it is the search for god, who is always jussssst about to appear on the scene and show us what we've been missing, but never actually ever arrives.

Dear friend,
No, sir, it is not vain to search for God.
Jer_29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

[Minimalist]

I'm tired of this moron spouting AIG so I'll shove Richard Dawkins up his ass.

'SHOW ME YOUR CROCODUCK!'
'Why doesn't the fossil record contain a fronkey?' Well, of course, monkeys are not descended from frogs. No sane evolutionist ever said they were, or that ducks are descended from crocodiles or vice versa. Monkeys and frogs share an ancestor, which certainly looked nothing like a frog and nothing like a monkey. Maybe it looked a bit like a salamander, and we do indeed have salamander-like fossils dating from the right time. But that is not the point. Every one of the millions of species of animals shares an ancestor with every other one. If your understanding of evolution is so warped that you think we should expect to see a fronkey and a crocoduck, you should also wax sarcastic about the absence of a doggypotamus and an elephanzee. Indeed, why
limit yourself to mammals? Why not a kangaroach (intermediate between kangaroo and cockroach), or an octopard (intermediate between octopus and leopard)? There's an infinite number of animal
names you can string together in that way. * Of course hippopotamuses are not descended from dogs, or vice versa. Chimpanzees are not descended from elephants or vice versa, just as monkeys are not descended from frogs. No modern species is descended from any other modern species (if we leave out very recent splits). Just as you can find fossils that approximate to the common
ancestor of a frog and a monkey, so you can find fossils that approximate to the common ancestor of elephants and chimpanzees. Here is one called Eomaia, which lived in the early Cretaceous period, a little more than 100 million years ago.

As you can see, Eomaia was nothing like a chimpanzee and nothing like an elephant. Vaguely like a shrew, it probably was pretty similar to their common ancestor, with which it was roughly contemporary, and you can see that a lot of evolutionary change has taken place along both pathways from an Eomaia- like ancestor to an elephant descendant, and from the same Eomaia- like ancestor to a chimpanzee descendant. But it is not in any sense an elephanzee. If it were, it would
also have to be a dogatee, for whatever is the common ancestor of a chimpanzee and an elephant is also the common ancestor of a dog and a manatee. And it would also have to be an aardvapotamus, for the same ancestor is also the common ancestor of an aardvark and a hippopotamus. The very idea of a dogatee (or an elephanzee, or an aardvapotamus or a kangaroceros or a buffalion) is deeply unevolutionary and ridiculous. So is a fronkey, and it is a disgrace that the perpetrator of that little witlessism, the Australian itinerant preacher John Mackay, has been touring British schools in 2008
and 2009, masquerading as a 'geologist', teaching innocent children that if evolution were true the fossil record should contain 'fronkeys'.

An equally ludicrous example is to be found in the Muslim apologist Harun Yahya's enormous, lavishly produced, glossily illustrated and fatuously ignorant book Atlas of Creation. This book obviously cost a fortune to produce, which makes it all the more astounding that it was
distributed free to tens of thousands of science teachers, including me. Notwithstanding the prodigious sums of money spent on this book, the errors in it have become legendary. In the service of illustrating the falsehood that most ancient fossils are indistinguishable from their modern counterparts, Yahya shows a sea snake as an 'eel' (two animals so different that they are placed in different classes of vertebrates), a starfish as a 'brittlestar' (actually different classes of
echinoderms), a sabellid (annelid) worm as a crinoid 'sea lily' (an echinoderm: this pair come not just from different phyla but from different sub-kingdoms, so that they could hardly be more distant
from each other if they tried, while still both being animals) and - best of all - a fishing lure as a 'caddis fly' (see colour page 8). But in addition to these gems of partisan risibility, the book has a section on missing links. One picture is seriously offered to illustrate the fact that there is no intermediate form between a fish and a starfish. I find it impossible to believe that the author seriously thinks evolutionists would
expect to find a transition between two such differing animals as a starfish and a fish. I therefore cannot help suspecting that he knows his audience all too well, and is deliberately and cynically exploiting their ignorance.

'I'LL BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION WHEN A MONKEY GIVES BIRTH TO A HUMAN BABY' Once again, humans are not descended from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys. As it happens, the common ancestor would have looked a lot more like a monkey than a
man, and we would indeed probably have called it a monkey if we had met it, some 25 million years ago. But even though humans evolved from an ancestor that we could sensibly call a monkey, no animal gives birth to an instant new species, or at least not one as different from itself as a man is from a monkey, or even from a chimpanzee. That isn't what evolution is about. Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact; it has to be gradual if it is to do any explanatory work. Huge leaps in a single generation - which is what a monkey giving birth to a human would be - are almost as unlikely as divine creation, and are ruled out for the same reason: too statistically improbable. It
would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing.

Put down your fucking bible. Delete the link to AIG and get a copy of "The Greatest Show on Earth." Maybe you'll learn something...although that seems even far more unlikely than a crocoduck.

[SteelCurtain]

I think we broke him.

[Revelation777]

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

Yes, you are. So am I and so is every other human being on the planet. Humans, gorillas, chimps and bonobos are taxonomically identical down to the Family level (Hominidae).

To claim that human beings are not apes is precisely akin to claiming that Chihuahuas are not dogs because they don't look exactly like mastiffs.

When you deny the basic precepts of biological evolution (common descent, speciation, natural/sexual selection, and so forth) and do so in the face of overwhelming evidence for evolution, you're simply displaying a willful, deliberate ignorance. This is the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears, squinching your eyes shut, and shouting, 'Nyah, nyah, nyah, I can't hear you!!'

You've lost this one, Rev. Evolution is a fact, as little in doubt as gravity. When you claim the opposite, you look as foolish as someone doubting that gravity is real.

Boru

My beef is with "Molecule to Man" evolution.

[Godlesspanther]

Yo Rev, this is how completely unwilling Answers in Genesis' loathsome paymaster is to even consider opposing viewpoints: he won't even accept creationism from a christian school. It's his specific brand of young earth, literalistic creationism, or it's nothing.

This is a man who is so opposed to anyone believing something that isn't exactly what he believes that he'll chastise the people who believe the same wrong things as he does, for not believing it enough. How can he possibly be trusted to honestly represent a view that is directly opposed to what he wants to be true?

They are standing firm on what they believe to be true. True to the Word of God and what the evidence is showing them. I commend them for that.

No -- they are dogmatically believing stuff that plainly and simply is not true based on a faulty methodology. There is nothing commendable about it. They are just lying. That's it -- just lies.

There is no such thing as a magic book that is always right. One does not exist. You need to grow up.

[The Valkyrie]

If (or when) we actually discover that to be the answer, then so be it...
Until then, we should not commit to one answer over any other, just because we were taught to believe in it as kids.

Maybe that is why Jesus said this:
Mat 18:3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, "stop thinking for yourselves and I'll let you into 'paradise' and worship me forever"

Jesus also reputedly said that you have to hate your family before you can be one of his followers. I say "reputedly" because there's no actual evidence for his existence.

---

And yet, every time we have answered one of those perplexing questions, the answer has not been "god." It is the people who said "we don't know yet, but we are working on it" who found many of those answers, as opposed to the people who decided that god must have done it and that to continue to search was in vain.

It seems to me that if there is one search that has been in vain, it is the search for god, who is always jussssst about to appear on the scene and show us what we've been missing, but never actually ever arrives.

Dear friend,
No, sir, it is not vain to search for God.
Jer_29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Bible quotes to atheists, the last resort of the desperate theist who has run out of arguments.

[Godlesspanther]

Maybe that is why Jesus said this:
Mat 18:3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, "stop thinking for yourselves and I'll let you into 'paradise' and worship me forever"

Jesus also reputedly said that you have to hate your family before you can be one of his followers. I say "reputedly" because there's no actual evidence for his existence.

---

Dear friend,
No, sir, it is not vain to search for God.
Jer_29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Bible quotes to atheists, the last resort of the desperate theist who has run out of arguments.

To be fair -- ALL loony cults operate exactly that way.