An article called "Human Genome shows proof of recent evolution" was written in 2006. Again the evidence you have to support argument is old. Got anything recent?
Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds
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An article called "Human Genome shows proof of recent evolution" was written in 2006. Again the evidence you have to support argument is old. Got anything recent?
Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds
An article called "Human Genome shows proof of recent evolution" was written in 2006. Again the evidence you have to support argument is old. Got anything recent?
Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds [/quote]
The authors of the article have shown proof of the ability of all life forms, including human, to adapt to changes in their environment. Evolution is the change from one species to a different species. The human genes in the article did not do that, therefore evolution was not proved, but this is what the National Geographic wants the gullible to believe.
The magazine has a long track record of misinformation about evolution because the authors have a strong bias. They have been caught in the act several times. For more information, go here and here and here and here.
Again you still didnt answer my question. The research your have is 30 years old. Got anything recent??
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Fossil Gaps 1l
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In fact, chains are missing, not links. The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that it is safe to conclude that these gaps are real; they will never be filled (l).
l. ??It may, therefore, be firmly maintained that it is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of palaeobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of the material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled.? Nilsson, p. 1212.
??...experience shows that the gaps which separate the highest categories may never be bridged in the fossil record. Many of the discontinuities tend to be more and more emphasized with increased collecting.? Norman D. Newell (former Curator of Historical Geology at the American Museum of Natural History), ??The Nature of the Fossil Record,? Adventures in Earth History, editor Preston Cloud (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1970), pp. 644??645.
??A person may choose any group of animals or plants, large or small, or pick one at random. He may then go to a library and with some patience he will be able to find a qualified author who says that the evolutionary origin of that form is not known.? Bolton Davidheiser, Evolution and Christian Faith (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1969), p. 302.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 23. Fossil Gaps
In order for evolution to happend, species genes mutate to adapt to the environment around them (Survival of the fittest). This so called perfect transistion fossil that your are looking for will probaly not be found (because it already has). You seem to disprove evolution not science. Your opinion is based on 30 yeard old research. You should read "Origin of species" by Darwin.
You're criticizing Pahu for citing a source that's thirty years old, yet recommend reading a source that's over 150 years old? :wtf:Quote:
Originally Posted by funiman111
You got me on that one.
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The ??evolutionary tree? has no trunk. In what evolutionists call the earliest part of the fossil record (generally the lowest sedimentary layers of Cambrian rock), life appears suddenly, full-blown, complex, diversified (a), and dispersed??worldwide (b).
a. ??There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.? Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 348.
??The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists??for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick??as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection.? Ibid., p. 344.
??To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.? Ibid., p. 350.
??The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.? Ibid., p. 351.
??The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time...The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash.? Stephen Jay Gould, ??An Asteroid to Die For,? Discover, October 1989, p. 65.
??And we find many of them [Cambrian fossils] already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists.? Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), p. 229.
Richard Monastersky, ??Mysteries of the Orient,? Discover, April 1993, pp. 38??48.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 24. Missing Trunk
From my understanding we dont have record of anything for the first two billion years (plate tectonics). I guess the way I see it is, I dont need to see something to know that it exist. Again Im sorry but the facts you are getting are from a religous website. You cant mix science with religon.
The evidence for evolution has primarily come from four sources:
1. the fossil record of change in earlier species
2. the chemical and anatomical similarities of related life forms
3. the geographic distribution of related species
4. the recorded genetic changes in living organisms over many generations
1. Where are there fossils showing a record of change from one species to a different species as required by evolution?Quote:
Originally Posted by funiman111
2. In what way do chemical and anatomical similarities of related life forms indicate a change from one species to a different species as required by evolution?
3. How does the geographic distribution of related species show a change from one species to a different species as required by evolution?
4. Where are those recorded genetic changes in living organisms over many generations that show a change from one species to a different species as required by evolution?
Why do you believe you can??t mix science with religion?
The website from which I get most of the information I am sharing is directed by Walt Brown.
Walt Brown received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He has taught college courses in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Brown is a retired Air Force full colonel, West Point graduate, and former Army Ranger and paratrooper. Assignments during his 21 years of military service included: Director of Benét Laboratories (a major research, development, and engineering facility); tenured associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College. For much of his life Walt Brown was an evolutionist, but after years of study, he became convinced of the scientific validity of creation and a global flood. Since retiring from the military, Dr. Brown has been the Director of the Center for Scientific Creation and has worked full time in research, writing, and teaching on creation and the flood.
For those who wish to know more about Walt Brown, a new book (Christian Men of Science: Eleven Men Who Changed the World by George Mulfinger and Julia Mulfinger Orozco) devotes a chapter to Brown. It may be read by clicking here.
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??One of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the occurrence of diversified, multicellular marine invertebrates in Lower Cambrian rocks on all the continents and their absence in rocks of greater age.? Daniel I. Axelrod, ??Early Cambrian Marine Fauna,? Science, Vol. 128, 4 July 1958, p. 7.
??Evolutionary biology??s deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven??t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable?? Jeffrey S. Levinton, ??The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,? Scientific American, Vol. 267, November 1992, p. 84.
??Granted an evolutionary origin of the main groups of animals, and not an act of special creation, the absence of any record whatsoever of a single member of any of the phyla in the Pre-Cambrian rocks remains as inexplicable on orthodox grounds as it was to Darwin.? T. Neville George (Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow), ??Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective,? Science Progress, Vol. 48, No. 189, January 1960, p. 5.
b. Strange Cambrian fossils, thought to exist only in the Burgess Shale of western Canada, have been discovered in southern China. See:
L. Ramsköld and Hou Xianguang, ??New Early Cambrian Animal and Onychophoran Affinities of Enigmatic Metazoans,? Nature, Vol. 351, 16 May 1991, pp. 225??228.
Jun-yuan Chen et al., ??Evidence for Monophyly and Arthropod Affinity of Cambrian Giant Predators,? Science, Vol. 264, 27 May 1994, pp. 1304??1308.
Evolving so many unusual animals during a geologic period is mind-boggling. But doing it twice in widely separated locations stretches credulity to the breaking point. According to the theory of plate tectonics, China and Canada were even farther apart during the Cambrian.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 24. Missing Trunk
OK - if you think think a 'thorough' rebuttal is based on Straw man arguments...Quote:
Originally Posted by Pahu78
I can go one better sir, here is a thorough rebuttal of your rebuttal LOL
A response to Ashby Camp's "Critique"
Your version of truth is LIES
"Walt Brown, a new book (Christian Men of Science:"
Science and religon doesn't mix. One is faith and one is science. Two diffrent topics. One is based on fact the other is based on faith.
What type of fossil are you looking for? We have more evidence to support the evolution theory then evdence that goes against it.
Resistance to evolution stems in part from misunderstanding science and how it is distinct from religion. Science and religion provide different ways of knowing the Earth and universe. Science proceeds by testing hypotheses and thus is restricted to natural, testable explanations
Biological evolution is not debated in the scientific community ?? organ-
isms become new species through modification over time. ??No biologist today
would think of submitting a paper entitled ??New evidence for evolution;?? it simply has not been an issue for a century? (Futuyma, 1986).
"Patricia H. Kelley
Paleontological Society President, 2001-2005"
very good discussion, I still gotta side with those who question the Evolution of man from ape. I like ape and I like human but I see huge if not some main piece of evidence missing to support the theory of evolution from ape.
Not to mention the primer or first steps or concepts even pieces of evidence from the very beginning were questionable in the evolution from ape theory.
On a side note, I have a strong urge to help the apes considering their current situation. I can see us being cousins of ape but not ape being our grandparents. I would really like to know as well though, if we come from ape why are they still in the trees. And if we don't come from ape, then what or where even who made us.
Also on a side note can some one educate me as to when man as human man showed up? Is it 6000 B.C. or 15000 B.C. or some other time? Also how old are the oldest known ape bones/fossils.
Well... i know this thread isnt about the existence/inexistence of God, and i dont want to hijack it, but i must point that, interestingly enough, skeptics, atheists and such denies the existence of God because He cant be seen...Quote:
Originally Posted by funiman111
Hi Madsativa,Quote:
Originally Posted by MadSativa
Humans didn't actually evolve from Apes - both Apes & Humans share a common ancestor and the two lineages separated between 5 and 8 Million years ago into the ancestors of Chimps and Gorilla and our own ancestoral line the Hominids.
To complicate things more you have similar hominids like Neanderthals (arguably a sub-species to homo sapiens) who were around as recently as 28,000 years ago - but co-existed at the same time as species of Homo Sapiens (modern himans like us which have been around 100,000 to 28,000 years ago).
The Cro-Magnon culture for example were around about 40,000 years ago. They were tool makers, artists and had musical instruments!
So anatomically modern humans have been around for at least 50,000 years - but maybe up to 100,000 years! even so we are a still a little different to Homo Sapiens from even 30,000 years ago - we have lighter bone structure and smaller molar teeth for example - but are generally very very similar.
Hope that helps! As we discover more fossils the tangled web of modern human evolution becomes clearer all the time, hence the very generalised numbers.
They don??t mix in their respective applications. It is true that while science is the study of the universe from a strictly natural perspective, it cannot be equal to a religion that depends on divine revelation from the creator of that universe to learn facts that science is not equipped to study.Quote:
Originally Posted by funiman111
Fossils that show the gradual change of a species to an entirely different species, as evolution requires.Quote:
What type of fossil are you looking for?
Where is that evidence? So far what passes for evidence is nothing more than speculation and wishful thinking based primarily on similarities that don??t prove evolution.Quote:
We have more evidence to support the evolution theory then evdence that goes against it.
There is a lot of debate in the scientific community. The information I am sharing reflects that debate. There have been many papers claiming new evidence for evolution. That is one of the main arguments I get all the time; the claim that the information I am sharing is outdated because of all that new information.Quote:
Resistance to evolution stems in part from misunderstanding science and how it is distinct from religion. Science and religion provide different ways of knowing the Earth and universe. Science proceeds by testing hypotheses and thus is restricted to natural, testable explanations
Biological evolution is not debated in the scientific community ?? organisms become new species through modification over time. ??No biologist today
would think of submitting a paper entitled ??New evidence for evolution;?? it simply has not been an issue for a century? (Futuyma, 1986).
"Patricia H. Kelley
Paleontological Society President, 2001-2005"
When the two models of origins are compared with the facts of science, evolution loses and creation wins. For example, the first law of thermodynamics says that the actual amount or energy in the universe remains constant??it doesn't change. The second law of thermodynamics says that the amount of usable energy in any closed system (which the whole universe is) is decreasing. Everything is tending toward disorder and the universe is running down. Now if the overall amount of energy stays the same, but we are running out of usable energy, then what we started with was not an infinite amount. You can't run out of an infinite amount. This means that the universe is and always has been finite. So it must have had a beginning.
The law of causality tells us that whatever happens is caused, so what caused the universe to begin? It is [speculatively] possible that the big bang is simply the latest in a series of explosions that destroy all evidence of what came before. But that only backs the question up a few steps to "What caused the first explosion?" It is also [speculatively] possible that the steady state theory is right, that the universe had no beginning and is creating hydrogen from nothing to maintain energy without running down. But this explanation is contrary to the evidence and the law of causality.
There are two views of origins. One says that everything came about by natural causes; the other looks to a supernatural cause. In the case of the origin of first life, either it came about by spontaneous chemical generation without intelligent intervention, or by the intervention of an intelligent being through special Creation.
Evolutionists believe that life began in a spontaneous way from nonliving chemicals by purely natural processes. Shortly after the earth was cooled enough to allow it, they tell us, the combination of simple gases like hydrogen, nitrogen, ammonia, and carbon dioxide reacted to form elementary amino acids, which in time developed into DNA chains and finally cells. Of course, this is said to have taken several billion years and the extra energy of the sun, volcanic activity, lightning, and cosmic rays were needed to keep the process going. Experimentation begun by Stanley Miller arid Harold Urey has attempted to reconstruct these conditions and has had success in producing various amino acids needed for life. From this, much of the scientific community has concluded that the spontaneous chemical generation of life from a pre biotic soup is the way life began.
There are, however, some very good reasons to reject this view. First, the early earth conditions necessary to produce life are just as likely to destroy it. The experimental work has shown that no oxygen can be present for the reaction to work. Also, the energy needed from the sun and cosmic radiation are damaging to the very substances produced. Under the conditions required for life to have arisen spontaneously, it is more likely that the elements would be destroyed faster than they could be produced. Even if the right chemicals could be produced, no satisfactory answer has been given for how they could have been arranged properly and been enclosed in a cell wall. This would require another set of conditions altogether.
What could explain the sudden appearance of life and also provide for the informational organization of living matter? If we apply the principle of uniformity (analogy) to the question, the only cause that we know routinely does this kind of work in the present is intelligence. The reasonable assumption is that it also required intelligence to do it in the past. Uniform experience proves this to us and, as Hume said, "As a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof from the nature of the fact" that the information inherent in living things required an intelligent cause. Since it is not possible that we are speaking of human intelligence, or even living beings in the natural sense, it had to be a supernatural intelligence. Once it is admitted that there is a radical disjunction from nothing to something at the beginning of the universe, there can be little objection to the idea of another intervention when the evidence clearly points to it.
But what of the fossil evidence that has been so widely proclaimed? Darwin recognized this as a problem as well and wrote in ??The Origin of Species,? "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." [Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 280] In the 150 years since Darwin wrote, the situation has only become worse for his theory. Noted Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has written, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." [Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace" in Natural History May 1977, p. 14]
Eldredge and Tattersall agree, saying:
??Expectation colored perception to such an extent that the most obvious single fact about biological evolution??non-change??has seldom, if ever, been incorporated into anyone's scientific notions of how life actually evolves. If ever there was a myth, it is that evolution is a process of constant change.? [Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 8]
What does the fossil record suggest? Evolutionists like Gould now support what creationists like Agassiz, Gish, and others have said all along:
??The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
??1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
??2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and ??fully formed.??" [Gould, op. cit. pp. 13-14]
The fossil evidence clearly gives a picture of mature, fully functional creatures suddenly appearing and staying very much the same. There is no real indication that one form of life transforms into a completely different form.
Now that we have new evidence about the nature of the universe, the information stored in DNA molecules, and further fossil confirmation, the words of Louis Agassiz resound even more loudly than they did when first written in 1860: "[Darwin] has lost sight of the most striking of the features, and the one which pervades the whole, namely, that there runs throughout Nature unmistakable evidence of thought, corresponding to the mental operations of our own mind, and therefore intelligible to us as thinking beings, and unaccountable on any other basis than that they owe their existence to the working of intelligence; and no theory that overlooks this element can be true to nature." [Louis Agassiz, "Contribution to the Natural History of the United States" in American Journal of Science, 1860]
There are two views of origins. One says that everything came about by natural causes; the other looks to a supernatural cause. The overwhelming evidence supports the Creationist view.
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Evolution predicts that minor variations should slowly accumulate, eventually becoming major categories of organisms. Instead, the opposite is found. Almost all of today??s plant and animal phyla??including flowering plants (c), vascular plants (d), and vertebrates (e)??appear at the base of the fossil record.
c. ??... it is well known that the fossil record tells us nothing about the evolution of flowering plants.? Corner, p. 100.
A. K. Ghosh and A. Bose, ??Occurrence of Microflora in the Salt Pseudomorph Beds, Salt Range, Punjab,? Nature, Vol. 160, 6 December 1947, pp. 796??797.
A. K. Ghosh, J. Sen, and A. Bose, ??Evidence Bearing on the Age of the Saline Series in the Salt Range of the Punjab,? Geological Magazine, Vol. 88, March??April 1951, pp. 129??133.
J. Coates et al., ??Age of the Saline Series in the Punjab Salt Range,? Nature, Vol. 155, 3 March 1945, pp. 266??267.
Clifford Burdick, in his doctoral research at the University of Arizona in 1964, made discoveries similar to those cited in the four preceding references. [See Clifford Burdick, ??Microflora of the Grand Canyon,? Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 3, May 1966, pp. 38??50.]
d. S. Leclercq, ??Evidence of Vascular Plants in the Cambrian,? Evolution, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 1956, pp. 109??114.
e. John E. Repetski, ??A Fish from the Upper Cambrian of North America,? Science, Vol. 200, 5 May 1978, pp. 529??531.
??Vertebrates and their progenitors, according to the new studies, evolved in the Cambrian, earlier than paleontologists have traditionally assumed.? Richard Monastersky, ??Vertebrate Origins: The Fossils Speak Up,? Science News, Vol. 149, 3 February 1996, p. 75.
??Also, the animal explosion caught people??s attention when the Chinese confirmed they found a genus now called Yunnanzoon that was present in the very beginning. This genus is considered a chordate, and the phylum Chordata includes fish, mammals and man. An evolutionist would say the ancestor of humans was present then. Looked at more objectively, you could say the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate.? Paul Chien (Chairman, Biology Department, University of San Francisco), ??Explosion of Life,? Explosion of Life: A scientist reveals details of the Cambrian explosion, p. 3. Interviewed 30 June 1997.
??At 530 million years, the 3-centimeter-long Haikouichthys appears to be the world??s oldest fish, while another new specimen, Myllokunmingia, has simpler gills and is more primitive. To Conway Morris and others, the presence of these jawless fish in the Early Cambrian suggests that the origin of chordates lies even farther back in time.? Erik Stokstad, ??Exquisite Chinese Fossils Add New Pages to Book of Life,? Science, Vol. 291, 12 January 2001, p. 233.
??The [500] specimens [of fish] may have been buried alive, possibly as a result of a storm-induced burial....The possession of eyes (and probably nasal sacs) is consistent with Haikouichthys being a craniate, indicating that vertebrate evolution was well advanced by the Early Cambrian.? [/color][/i]D. G. Shu et al., ??Head and Backbone of the Early Cambrian Vertebrate Haikouichthys,? Nature, Vol. 421, 30 January 2003, pp. 527, 529.
D. G. Shu et al., ??Lower Cambrian Vertebrates from South China,? Nature, Vol. 402, 4 November 1999, pp. 42??46.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 24. Missing Trunk
My qoute was about fossils. Not the existence of god
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coelho
Show me the evidence to support creationism. Uniformitarianism approach is what scientist do today. Which assumes that the natural processes that operated in the past are the same as those that can be observed operating in the present. We see evolution going on today which they can make conclusions about the past. We have NO evidence what so ever to support creationism. Which again is a seperate topic.
Again certain fossils are easier preserved then others.
Why do gaps exist? (or seem to exist)
Ideally, of course, we would like to know each lineage right down to the species level, and have detailed species-to-species transitions linking every species in the lineage. But in practice, we get an uneven mix of the two, with only a few species-to-species transitions, and occasionally long time breaks in the lineage. Many laypeople even have the (incorrect) impression that the situation is even worse, and that there are no known transitions at all. Why are there still gaps? And why do many people think that there are even more gaps than there really are?
Stratigraphic gaps
The first and most major reason for gaps is "stratigraphic discontinuities", meaning that fossil-bearing strata are not at all continuous. There are often large time breaks from one stratum to the next, and there are even some times for which no fossil strata have been found. For instance, the Aalenian (mid-Jurassic) has shown no known tetrapod fossils anywhere in the world, and other stratigraphic stages in the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and Cretaceous have produced only a few mangled tetrapods. Most other strata have produced at least one fossil from between 50% and 100% of the vertebrate families that we know had already arisen by then (Benton, 1989) -- so the vertebrate record at the family level is only about 75% complete, and much less complete at the genus or species level. (One study estimated that we may have fossils from as little as 3% of the species that existed in the Eocene!) This, obviously, is the major reason for a break in a general lineage. To further complicate the picture, certain types of animals tend not to get fossilized -- terrestrial animals, small animals, fragile animals, and forest-dwellers are worst. And finally, fossils from very early times just don't survive the passage of eons very well, what with all the folding, crushing, and melting that goes on. Due to these facts of life and death, there will always be some major breaks in the fossil record.
Species-to-species transitions are even harder to document. To demonstrate anything about how a species arose, whether it arose gradually or suddenly, you need exceptionally complete strata, with many dead animals buried under constant, rapid sedimentation. This is rare for terrestrial animals. Even the famous Clark's Fork (Wyoming) site, known for its fine Eocene mammal transitions, only has about one fossil per lineage about every 27,000 years. Luckily, this is enough to record most episodes of evolutionary change (provided that they occurred at Clark's Fork Basin and not somewhere else), though it misses the most rapid evolutionary bursts. In general, in order to document transitions between species, you specimens separated by only tens of thousands of years (e.g. every 20,000-80,000 years). If you have only one specimen for hundreds of thousands of years (e.g. every 500,000 years), you can usually determine the order of species, but not the transitions between species. If you have a specimen every million years, you can get the order of genera, but not which species were involved. And so on. These are rough estimates (from Gingerich, 1976, 1980) but should give an idea of the completeness required.
Note that fossils separated by more than about a hundred thousand years cannot show anything about how a species arose. Think about it: there could have been a smooth transition, or the species could have appeared suddenly, but either way, if there aren't enough fossils, we can't tell which way it happened.
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 1A
Evolution does not break the 2nd law of thermodynamics - that either shows your lack of knowledge of Evolution or of the 2nd law, take your pick.
The Earth is NOT a closed system so evolution and life itself does not break the 2nd Law.
This is a common misconception made by Creationists and tantamount to wilfull ignorance or deception - take your pick.
You might want to read this page:
Get Answers - Answers in Genesis
^^ It has a list of arguments that even Creationists have realised they shouldn't use. That's kind of telling in itself - don't you think?
Why don't those non-believers in evolution look an a chart of the phases of human embryo development into a complete human. The stages are very distinctive as the genetic code unfolds and the body develops. Reptillian and fish are are just two of the phases. :jointsmile:
If you want an religion that mimics evolution, look at Hindu and the transmigration of the soul through the life cycles and animal species. :D :stoned:
But where is there any evidence of those species-to-species transitions? The attempt to show them only shows different complete species that share certain similarities, which are claimed to be transitions. Isn??t that more an example of imagination?Quote:
Originally Posted by funiman111
Your assumption that eons of time elapsed is based on what? Are you aware all the dating techniques being used have been proven to be unreliable?Quote:
And finally, fossils from very early times just don't survive the passage of eons very well, what with all the folding, crushing, and melting that goes on. Due to these facts of life and death, there will always be some major breaks in the fossil record.
And yet Darwin noticed: ??why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined??Quote:
If you have only one specimen for hundreds of thousands of years (e.g. every 500,000 years), you can usually determine the order of species, but not the transitions between species.
Other recent scientists have observed the same problem:
??Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so, we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory.? [Ronald R. West (evolutionist), ??Paleontology and Uniformitariansim.? Compass, Vol. 45 (May 1968), p. 216.]
??The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that a gradualistic model can be valid.? [Steven M. Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process. San Francisco: W. M. Freeman & Co., 1979, p. 39.]
"...Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.? [George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360.]
??Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so.? [E.R. Leach (evolutionist); Nature 293:19, 1981]
??At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the ??official? position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count).? [S.J. Gould & Niles Eldredge (evolutionists); Paleobiology 3:147, 1977]
??The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology ... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ??fully formed.??? [S.J. Gould (evolutionist); Natural History 86:14 (1977)]
The sudden appearance of fully developed life forms is consistent with creation, isn??t it? One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence disproving evolution is the ??Cambrian Explosion?, which refers to the great quantity and diversity of life found in what is called the Cambrian layer of the geologic column. The Cambrian age in the geologic time scale is dated by scientists as being about 530 million years old. What is really interesting is not just what is found in this layer, but what is found in the layers above it, and what is not found in layers under it. The Cambrian layer has virtually every phyla known to man. Yes, all major body plans and enormous varieties of each all coexist in this layer. No evolutionary sequence here, they are all coexistent simultaneously.
If evolution did not take place, if the natural forces at work today did not create the diversity of life we see on our little blue world, then something supernatural must be responsible. True science seeks to understand, no matter what the philosophical or metaphysical ramifications may be. That is why evolution is not science, but rather a philosophy, for it seeks to explain things within only one possible framework, whether or not this framework is true. The facts are that the scientists' own interpretation of the fossil record clearly demonstrates that every species appeared at once suddenly and then gradually died off with the passage of time. The significance of this great body of evidence against evolutionary theory in the fossil record cannot be stressed enough. It is utterly devastating to evolutionary theory completely by itself. But in the final analysis, it is but one of a plethora of scientific facts that refute the 19th century fable that is evolution.
When we set out to explain why and how something happens, we must use the evidence, facts and experience available to us if we are to arrive at a logical conclusion. Using available evidence, experience, facts, observation and experimentation, we know that the universe had a beginning and that before that beginning there was no universe and therefore there was nothing. We know this because of the Law of Causality (for every cause there is an effect and for every effect there is a cause). Based on this law, we can use the following logic:Quote:
Show me the evidence to support creationism.
1. The universe exists.
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Before the beginning of the universe, there was no universe.
4. Since there was no universe, there was nothing.
5. Since the universe does exist, it came from nothing.
6. Nothing comes from nothing by any natural cause.
7. Therefore the cause of the universe is supernatural.
8. Life exists.
9. Life always comes from pre-existing life of the same kind (the Law of Biogenesis).
10. Life cannot come from nonliving matter by any natural cause.
11. Since life does exist, the cause of life is supernatural.
Many people with a naturalistic worldview assume everything can be explained by natural causes. From the beginning, they reject the possibility of a supernatural cause. Because of this they are left with no scientifically valid answers to the question of how the universe could come from nothing, which is impossible by any natural cause of which we are aware. Many answers have been proposed that go beyond the realm of known evidence, experience, facts, observation and experimentation and therefore enter the realm of fiction.
The same logic applies to life. Using available evidence, experience, facts, observation and experimentation, we know that life only comes from pre-existing life of the same kind.
??Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the Law of Biogenesis. Evolution conflicts with this scientific law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes? (From In the Beginning by Walt Brown, Ph.D. page 5). [http://www.creationscience.com/]
Life never comes from non-living matter by any natural cause of which we are aware.
Now that we have seen proof that God exists, using logic based on known evidence, experience, facts, observation and experimentation, we need to see if He has revealed Himself to us. In the Holy Bible there are hundreds of prophecies given by God who is speaking in the first person. In both Bible and secular history we find that those prophecies have been accurately fulfilled. No other writing on earth comes close to doing this! Only God can accurately reveal the future, ergo, He is the author of the Holy Bible. Within the pages of the Holy Bible He reveals His nature, our nature, His relationship to us, our need for salvation and His plan of salvation for us.
The reason the universe and life cannot come from nothing by any natural cause, but can come from a supernatural cause is because God is the self-existent creator of everything and everyone. He is not subject to His creation. He created it and sustains it. It is a mistake to judge God by human standards and human perspectives. God reveals that He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
If you are interested in more detailed proof, read, ??Evidence that Demands a Verdict? by Josh McDowell.
[From ??Reincarnation in the Bible?? http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/b...0-595-12387-2]
The classic evolutionist argument used in defending the postulates of evolutionism against the second law goes along the lines that ??the second law applies only to a closed system, and life as we know it exists and evolved in an open system.?Quote:
Originally Posted by Delta9 UK
The basis of this claim is the fact that while the second law is inviolate in a closed system (i.e., a system in which neither energy nor matter enter nor leave the system), an apparent limited reversal in the direction required by the law can exist in an open system (i.e., a system to which new energy or matter may be added) because energy may be added to the system.
Now, the entire universe is generally considered by evolutionists to be a closed system, so the second law dictates that within the universe, entropy as a whole is increasing. In other words, things are tending to breaking down, becoming less organized, less complex, more random on a universal scale. This trend is a scientifically observed phenomenon??fact, not theory.
The evolutionist rationale is simply that life on earth is an ??exception? because we live in an open system: ??The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things.? This supply of available energy, we are assured, adequately satisfies any objection to evolution on the basis of the second law.
But simply adding energy to a system doesn??t automatically cause reduced entropy (i.e., increased organized complexity, or ??build-up? rather than ??break-down?). Raw solar energy alone does not decrease entropy??in fact, it increases entropy, speeding up the natural processes that cause break-down, disorder, and disorganization on earth (consider, for example, your car??s paint job, a wooden fence, or a decomposing animal carcass, both with and then without the addition of solar radiation).
Speaking of the general applicability of the second law to both closed and open systems in general, Harvard scientist Dr. John Ross (not a creationist) affirms:
??...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems ... there is somehow associated with the field of far-from equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.?
[Dr. John Ross, Harvard scientist (evolutionist), [i/Chemical and Engineering News,[/i] vol. 58, July 7, 1980, p. 40]
So, what is it that makes life possible within the earth??s biosphere, appearing to ??violate? the second law of thermodynamics?
The apparent increase in organized complexity (i.e., decrease in entropy) found in biological systems requires two additional factors besides an open system and an available energy supply. These are:
a ??program? (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity
a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy.
Each living organism??s DNA contains all the code (the ??program? or ??information?) needed to direct the process of building (or ??organizing?) the organism up from seed or cell to a fully functional, mature specimen, complete with all the necessary instructions for maintaining and repairing each of its complex, organized, and integrated component systems. This process continues throughout the life of the organism, essentially building-up and maintaining the organism??s physical structure faster than natural processes (as governed by the second law) can break it down.
Living systems also have the second essential component??their own built-in mechanisms for effectively converting and storing the incoming energy. Plants use photosynthesis to convert the sun??s energy into usable, storable forms (e.g., proteins), while animals use metabolism to further convert and use the stored, usable, energy from the organisms which compose their diets.
So we see that living things seem to ??violate? the second law because they have built-in programs (information) and energy conversion mechanisms that allow them to build up and maintain their physical structures ??in spite of? the second law??s effects (which ultimately do prevail, as each organism eventually deteriorates and dies).
While this explains how living organisms may grow and thrive, thanks in part to the earth??s ??open-system? biosphere, it does not offer any solution to the question of how life could spontaneously begin this process in the absence of the program directions and energy conversion mechanisms described above??nor how a simple living organism might produce the additional new program directions and alternative energy conversion mechanisms required in order for biological evolution to occur, producing the vast spectrum of biological variety and complexity observed by man.
In short, the ??open system? argument fails to adequately justify evolutionist speculation in the face of the second law. Most highly respected evolutionist scientists (one of whom has been quoted above with care??and within context) acknowledge this fact, many even acknowledging the problem it causes the theory to which they subscribe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gypski
Evolutionists have taught for over a century that as an embryo develops, it passes through stages that mimic an evolutionary sequence. In other words, in a few weeks an unborn human repeats stages that supposedly took millions of years for mankind. A well-known example of this ridiculous teaching is that embryos of mammals have ??gill slits,? because mammals supposedly evolved from fish. (Yes, that??s faulty logic.) Embryonic tissues that resemble ??gill slits? have nothing to do with breathing; they are neither gills nor slits. Instead, those embryonic tissues develop into parts of the face, bones of the middle ear, and endocrine glands.
Embryologists no longer consider the superficial similarities between a few embryos and the adult forms of simpler animals as evidence for evolution (a). Ernst Haeckel, by deliberately falsifying his drawings (b), originated and popularized this incorrect but widespread belief. Many modern textbooks continue to spread this false idea as evidence for evolution (c).
a. ??This generalization was originally called the biogenetic law by Haeckel and is often stated as ??ontogeny [the development of an embryo] recapitulates [repeats] phylogeny [evolution].?? This crude interpretation of embryological sequences will not stand close examination, however. Its shortcomings have been almost universally pointed out by modern authors, but the idea still has a prominent place in biological mythology.? Paul R. Ehrlich and Richard W. Holm, The Process of Evolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 66.
??It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.? George Gaylord Simpson and William S. Beck, Life: An Introduction to Biology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1965), p. 241.
??The enthusiasm of the German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel, however, led to an erroneous and unfortunate exaggeration of the information which embryology could provide. This was known as the ??biogenetic law?? and claimed that embryology was a recapitulation of evolution, or that during its embryonic development an animal recapitulated the evolutionary history of its species.? Gavin R. deBeer, An Atlas of Evolution (New York: Nelson, 1964), p. 38.
b. Haeckel, who in 1868 advanced this ??biogenetic law? that was quickly adopted in textbooks and encyclopedias worldwide, distorted his data. Thompson explains:
A natural law can only be established as an induction from facts. Haeckel was of course unable to do this. What he did was to arrange existing forms of animal life in a series proceeding from the simple to the complex, intercalating [inserting] imaginary entities where discontinuity existed and then giving the embryonic phases names corresponding to the stages in his so-called evolutionary series. Cases in which this parallelism did not exist were dealt with by the simple expedient of saying that the embryological development had been falsified. When the ??convergence? of embryos was not entirely satisfactory, Haeckel altered the illustrations of them to fit his theory. The alterations were slight but significant. The ??biogenetic law? as a proof of evolution is valueless. W. R. Thompson, p. 12.
??To support his case he [Haeckel] began to fake evidence. Charged with fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court at Jena, he agreed that a small percentage of his embryonic drawings were forgeries; he was merely filling in and reconstructing the missing links when the evidence was thin, and he claimed unblushingly that ??hundreds of the best observers and biologists lie under the same charge??.? Pitman, p. 120.
c. ??Another point to emerge from this study is the considerable inaccuracy of Haeckel??s famous figures. These drawings are still widely reproduced in textbooks and review articles, and continue to exert a significant influence on the development of ideas in this field.? Michael K. Richardson et al., ??There Is No Highly Conserved Embryonic Stage in the Vertebrates,? Anatomy and Embryology, Vol. 196, No. 2, August 1997, p. 104.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 20. Embryology
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In fact, many more phyla are found in the Cambrian than exist today (f). Complex species, such as fish (g) worms, corals, trilobites, jellyfish (h) sponges, mollusks, and brachiopods appear suddenly, with no sign anywhere on earth of gradual development from simpler forms. Insects, a class comprising four-fifths of all known animal species (living and extinct), have no known evolutionary ancestors (i) The fossil record does not support evolution (j).
f. ??Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100.? Roger Lewin, ??A Lopsided Look at Evolution,? Science, Vol. 241, 15 July 1988, p. 291.
??A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla discovered during that period of time [Cambrian] (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means [there are] more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils [of animal life], than exist now.
??Stephen Jay Gould has referred to this as the reverse cone of diversity. The theory of evolution implies that things get more complex and get more and more diverse from one single origin. But the whole thing turns out to be reversed??we have more diverse groups in the very beginning, and in fact more and more of them die off over time, and we have less and less now.? Chien, p. 2.
??It was puzzling for a while because they [evolutionary paleontologists] refused to see that in the beginning there could be more complexity than we have now. What they are seeing are phyla that do not exist now??that??s more than 50 phyla compared to the 38 we have now.? Ibid., p. 3.
g. ??But whatever ideas authorities may have on the subject, the lung-fishes, like every other major group of fishes that I know, have their origins firmly based in nothing, a matter of hot dispute among the experts, each of whom is firmly convinced that everyone else is wrong...I have often thought of how little I should like to have to prove organic evolution in a court of law.? Errol White, ??A Little on Lung-Fishes,? Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Vol. 177, Presidential Address, January 1966, p. 8.
??The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of the fishes...? J. R. Norman, A History of Fishes, 3rd edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), p. 343.
??All three subdivisions of the bony fishes first appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time. They are already widely divergent morphologically, and they are heavily armored. How did they originate? What allowed them to diverge so widely? How did they all come to have heavy armor? And why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms?? Gerald T. Todd, ??Evolution of the Lung and the Origin of Bony Fishes??A Causal Relationship?? American Zoologist, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1980, p. 757.
h. Cloud and Glaessner, pp. 783??792.
i. ??There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral insects looked like...Until fossils of these ancestors are discovered, however, the early history of the insects can only be inferred.? Peter Farb, The Insects, Life Nature Library (New York: Time, Inc., 1962), pp. 14??15.
??There is, however, no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin; the oldest insects known show no transition to other arthropods.? Frank M. Carpenter, ??Fossil Insects,? Insects (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 18.
j. ??If there has been evolution of life, the absence of the requisite fossils in the rocks older than the Cambrian is puzzling.? Marshall Kay and Edwin H. Colbert, Stratigraphy and Life History (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), p. 103.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 24. Missing Trunk
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Frequently, fossils are not vertically sequenced in the assumed evolutionary order (a).
a. Walter E. Lammerts has published eight lists totaling almost 200 wrong-order formations in the United States alone. [See ??Recorded Instances of Wrong-Order Formations or Presumed Overthrusts in the United States: Parts I??VIII,? Creation Research Society Quarterly, September 1984, p. 88; December 1984, p. 150; March 1985, p. 200; December 1985, p. 127; March 1986, p. 188; June 1986, p. 38; December 1986, p. 133; and June 1987, p. 46.]
??In the fossil record, we are faced with many sequences of change: modifications over time from A to B to C to D can be documented and a plausible Darwinian interpretation can often be made after seeing the sequence. But the predictive (or postdictive) power of theory is almost nil.? David M. Raup, ??Evolution and the Fossil Record,? Science, Vol. 213, 17 July 1981, p. 289.
??Fossil discoveries can muddle our attempts to construct simple evolutionary trees??fossils from key periods are often not intermediates, but rather hodgepodges of defining features of many different groups.? Neil Shubin, ??Evolutionary Cut and Paste,? Nature, Vol. 394, 2 July 1998, p. 12.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 25. Out-of-Place Fossils
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Sometimes, land animals, flying animals, and marine animals are fossilized side-by-side in the same rock (g). Dinosaur, whale, elephant, horse, and other fossils, plus crude human tools, have reportedly been found in phosphate beds in South Carolina (h). Coal beds contain round, black lumps called coal balls, some of which contain flowering plants that allegedly evolved 100 million years after the coal bed was formed (i). In the Grand Canyon, in Venezuela, in Kashmir, and in Guyana, spores of ferns and pollen from flowering plants are found in Cambrian (j) rocks??rocks supposedly deposited before flowering plants evolved. Pollen has also been found in Precambrian (k) rocks deposited before life allegedly evolved.
g. Andrew Snelling, ??Fossil Bluff,? Ex Nihilo, Vol. 7, No. 3, March 1985, p. 8.
Carol Armstrong, ??Florida Fossils Puzzle the Experts,? Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 21, March 1985, pp. 198??199.
Pat Shipman, ??Dumping on Science,? Discover, December 1987, p. 64.
h. Francis S. Holmes, Phosphate Rocks of South Carolina and the ??Great Carolina Marl Bed? (Charleston, South Carolina: Holmes?? Book House, 1870).
Edward J. Nolan, ??Remarks on Fossils from the Ashley Phosphate Beds,? Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1876, pp. 80??81.
John Watson did extensive library research on the relatively unknown fossil discoveries in these beds. Their vast content of bones provides the rich phosphate content. Personal communications, 1992.
i. A. C. Noé, ??A Paleozoic Angiosperm,? Journal of Geology, Vol. 31, May??June 1923, pp. 344??347.
j. R. M. Stainforth, ??Occurrence of Pollen and Spores in the Roraima Formation of Venezuela and British Guiana,? Nature, Vol. 210, 16 April 1966, pp. 292??294.
A. K. Ghosh and A. Bose, pp. 796??797.
A. K. Ghosh and A. Bose, ??Spores and Tracheids from the Cambrian of Kashmir,? Nature, Vol. 169, 21 June 1952, pp. 1056??1057.
J. Coates et al., pp. 266??267.
k. George F. Howe et al., ??A Pollen Analysis of Hakatai Shale and Other Grand Canyon Rocks,? Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 24, March 1988, pp. 173??182.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 25. Out-of-Place Fossils
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In Uzbekistan, 86 consecutive hoofprints of horses were found in rocks dating back to the dinosaurs (b). Hoofprints of some other animal are alongside 1,000 dinosaur footprints in Virginia (c). A leading authority on the Grand Canyon published photographs of horselike hoofprints visible in rocks that, according to the theory of evolution, predate hoofed animals by more than 100 million years (d). Dinosaur and humanlike footprints were found together in Turkmenistan (e) and Arizona (f).
b. Y. Kruzhilin and V. Ovcharov, ??A Horse from the Dinosaur Epoch?? Moskovskaya Pravda [Moscow Truth], 5 February 1984.
c. Richard Monastersky, ??A Walk along the Lakeshore, Dinosaur-Style,? Science News, Vol. 136, 8 July 1989, p. 21.
d. Edwin D. McKee, The Supai Group of Grand Canyon, Geological Survey Professional Paper 1173 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 93??96, 100.
e. Alexander Romashko, ??Tracking Dinosaurs,? Moscow News, No. 24, 1983, p. 10. [For an alternate but equivalent translation published by an anti-creationist organization, see Frank Zindler, ??Man??A Contemporary of the Dinosaurs?? Creation/Evolution, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1986, pp. 28??29.]
f. Paul O. Rosnau et al., ??Are Human and Mammal Tracks Found Together with the Tracks of Dinosaurs in the Kayenta of Arizona?? Parts I and II, Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 26, September 1989, pp. 41??48 and December 1989, pp. 77??98.
Jeremy Auldaney et al., ??More Human-Like Track Impressions Found with the Tracks of Dinosaurs in the Kayenta Formation at Tuba City Arizona,? Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 34, December 1997, pp. 133??146 and back cover.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 25. Out-of-Place Fossils
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Petrified trees in Arizona??s Petrified Forest National Park contain fossilized nests of bees and cocoons of wasps. The petrified forests are reputedly 220 million years old, while bees (and flowering plants, which bees require) supposedly evolved almost 100 million years later (l). Pollinating insects and fossil flies, with long, well-developed tubes for sucking nectar from flowers, are dated 25 million years before flowers are assumed to have evolved (m). Most evolutionists and textbooks systematically ignore discoveries which conflict with the evolutionary time scale.
l. Stephen T. Hasiotis (paleobiologist, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver), personal communication, 27 May 1995.
Carl Zimmer, ??A Secret History of Life on Land,? Discover, February 1998, pp. 76??83.
m. Dong Ren, ??Flower-Associated Brachycera Flies as Fossil Evidence for Jurassic Angiosperm Origins,? Science, Vol. 280, 3 April 1998, pp. 85??88.
The best-preserved fossils are encased in amber, protected from air and water and buried in the ground. Amber, a golden resin (similar to sap or pitch) usually from conifer trees such as pines, may also contain other preservatives. No transitional forms of life have been found in amber, despite evolutionary-based ages of 1.5??300 million years. Animal behaviors, unchanged from today, are seen in three-dimensional detail. For example, ants in amber show the same social and work patterns as ants today.
Experts bold enough to explain how these fossils formed say that hurricane-force winds must have snapped off trees at their trunks, causing huge amounts of resin to spill out and act like flypaper. Debris and small organisms were blown into the sticky resin, which was later covered by more resin and finally buried.
In a clean-room laboratory, 30??40 dormant, but living, bacteria species were removed from intestines of bees encased in amber from the Dominican Republic. When cultured, the bacteria grew! This amber is claimed to be 25??40 million years old, but I suspect it formed at the time of the flood, only thousands of years ago. Is it more likely that bacteria can be kept alive thousands of years or many millions of years? Metabolism rates, even in dormant bacteria, are not zero.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 25. Out-of-Place Fossils
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For over a century, studies of skulls and teeth have produced unreliable conclusions about man??s origin (a). Also, fossil evidence allegedly supporting human evolution is fragmentary and open to other interpretations. Fossil evidence showing the evolution of chimpanzees, supposedly the closest living relative to humans, is nonexistent (b).
Stories claiming that fossils of primitive, apelike men have been found are overstated (c).
It is now universally acknowledged that Piltdown ??man? was a hoax, yet Piltdown ??man? was in textbooks for more than 40 years (d).
a. ??... existing phylogenetic hypotheses about human evolution [based on skulls and teeth] are unlikely to be reliable.? Mark Collard and Bernard Wood, ??How Reliable Are Human Phylogenetic Hypotheses?? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 97, No. 9, 25 April 2000, p. 5003.
b. ??Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether.? Henry Gee, ??Return to the Planet of the Apes,? Nature, Vol. 412, 12 July 2001, p. 131.
c. Lord Zuckerman candidly stated that if special creation did not occur, then no scientist could deny that man evolved from some apelike creature ??without leaving any fossil traces of the steps of the transformation.? Solly Zuckerman (former Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government and Honorary Secretary of the Zoological Society of London), Beyond the Ivory Tower (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1970), p. 64.
Bowden, pp. 56??246.
Duane T. Gish, Battle for Creation, Vol. 2, editor Henry M. Morris (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1976), pp. 193??200, 298??305.
d. Speaking of Piltdown man, Lewin admits a common human problem even scientists have:
??How is it that trained men, the greatest experts of their day, could look at a set of modern human bones??the cranial fragments??and ??see? a clear simian signature in them; and ??see? in an ape??s jaw the unmistakable signs of humanity? The answers, inevitably, have to do with the scientists?? expectations and their effects on the interpretation of data.? Lewin, Bones of Contention, p. 61.?
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 26. Ape-Men?
Im easy I have faith.
Science is great but my faith will win everytime for myself. As for anyone else thats their choice. To each their own
i kinda feel like im reading the big bang theory without the jokes
Oh, you silly christians. You'll say anything just to help you sleep at night. I completely lost respect for the argument when it said that everything everything requires an intelligent creator. It's a little something called 'natural selection'.
I am so glad this topic never dies. the title is priceless :S2:
Evolution is a fact.
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Since 1953, when Piltdown man was discovered to be a hoax, at least eleven people have been accused of perpetrating the hoax. These included Charles Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.
The hoaxer now appears to have been Martin A. C. Hinton, who had a reputation as a practical joker and worked in the British Museum (Natural History) when Piltdown man was discovered. In the mid-1970s, an old trunk, marked with Hinton??s initials, was found in the museum??s attic. The trunk contained bones stained and carved in the same detailed way as the Piltdown bones. [For details, see Henry Gee, ??Box of Bones ??Clinches?? Identity of Piltdown Palaeontology Hoaxer,? Nature, Vol. 381, 23 May 1996, pp. 261??262.]
Before 1977, evidence for Ramapithecus was a mere handful of teeth and jaw fragments. We now know these fragments were pieced together incorrectly by Louis Leakey (e) and others into a form resembling part of the human jaw (f). Ramapithecus was just an ape (g). Some textbooks still claim that Ramapithecus is man??s ancestor, an intermediate between man and some apelike ancestor. This mistaken belief resulted from piecing together, in 1932, fragments of upper teeth and bones into the two large pieces. This was done so the shape of the jaw resembled the parabolic arch of man. In 1977, a complete lower jaw of Ramapithecus was found. The true shape of the jaw was not parabolic, but rather U-shaped, distinctive of apes.
Artists?? drawings, even those based on speculation, powerfully influence the public. Nebraska man was mistakenly based on one tooth of an extinct pig. Yet in 1922, The Illustrated London News published a picture showing our supposed ancestors. Of course, it is highly unlikely that any fossil evidence could support the image conveyed of a naked man carrying a club.
e. Allen L. Hammond, ??Tales of an Elusive Ancestor,? Science 83, November 1983, pp. 37, 43.
f. Adrienne L. Zihlman and J. Lowenstein, ??False Start of the Human Parade,? Natural History, Vol. 88, August??September 1979, pp. 86??91.
g. Hammond, p. 43.
??The dethroning of Ramapithecus??from putative [supposed] first human in 1961 to extinct relative of the orangutan in 1982??is one of the most fascinating, and bitter, sagas in the search for human origins.? Lewin, Bones of Contention, p. 86.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 26. Ape-Men?
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Forty years after he discovered Java ??man,? Eugene Dubois conceded that it was not a man, but was similar to a large gibbon (an ape). In citing evidence to support this new conclusion, Dubois admitted that he had withheld parts of four other thighbones of apes found in the same area (h).
h. Java man consisted of two bones found about 39 feet apart: a skullcap and femur (thighbone). Rudolf Virchow, the famous German pathologist, believed that the femur was from a gibbon. By concurring, Dubois supported his own non-Darwinian theory of evolution??a theory too complex and strange to discuss here.
Whether or not the bones were from a large-brained gibbon, a hominid, another animal, or two completely different animals is not the only issue. This episode shows how easily the person who knew the bones best could shift his interpretation from Java ??man? to Java ??gibbon.? Even after more finds were made at other sites in Java, the total evidence was so fragmentary that many interpretations were possible.
??Pithecanthropus [Java man] was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the Gibbons, superior to its near relatives on account of its exceedingly large brain volume, and distinguished at the same time by its erect attitude.? Eugene Dubois, ??On the Fossil Human Skulls Recently Discovered in Java and Pithecanthropus Erectus,? Man, Vol. 37, January 1937, p. 4.
??Thus the evidence given by those five new thigh bones of the morphological and functional distinctness of Pithecanthropus erectus furnishes proof, at the same time, of its close affinity with the gibbon group of anthropoid apes.? Ibid., p. 5.
??The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity ... A striking example, which has only recently come to light, is the alteration of the Piltdown skull so that it could be used as evidence for the descent of man from the apes; but even before this a similar instance of tinkering with evidence was finally revealed by the discoverer of Pithecanthropus [Java man], who admitted, many years after his sensational report, that he had found in the same deposits bones that are definitely human.? W. R. Thompson, p. 17.
W. R. Thompson, in his ??Introduction to The Origin of Species? by Charles Darwin, refers to Dubois?? discovery in November 1890 of part of a lower jaw containing the stump of a tooth. This was found at Kedung-Brubus (also spelled Kedeong Broboes), 25 miles east of his find of Java ??man? at Trinil, eleven months later. Dubois was confident it was a human jaw of Tertiary age. [See Herbert Wendt, In Search of Adam (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishers, 1955), pp. 293??294.] Dubois?? claims of finding ??the missing link? would probably have been ignored if he had mentioned this jaw. Similar, but less convincing, charges have been made against Dubois concerning his finding of obvious human skulls at Wadjak, 60 miles from Trinil.
C. L. Brace and Ashley Montagu, Human Evolution, 2nd edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1977), p. 204.
Bowden, pp. 138??142, 144??148.
Hitching, pp. 208??209.
Patrick O??Connell, Science of Today and the Problems of Genesis, 2nd edition (Roseburg, Oregon: self-published, 1969), pp. 139??142.
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Many experts consider the skulls of Peking ??man? to be the remains of apes that were systematically decapitated and exploited for food by true man (i). Its classification, Homo erectus, is considered by most experts to be a category that should never have been created (j).
The first confirmed limb bones of Homo habilis were discovered in 1986. They showed that this animal clearly had apelike proportions (k) and should never have been classified as manlike (Homo) (l).
i. Bowden, pp. 90??137.
Marcellin Boule and Henri V. Vallois, Fossil Men (New York: The Dryden Press, 1957), p. 145.
j. ??[The reanalysis of Narmada Man] puts another nail in the coffin of Homo erectus as a viable taxon.? Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, as quoted in ??Homo Erectus Never Existed?? Geotimes, October 1992, p. 11.
k. Donald C. Johanson et al., ??New Partial Skeleton of Homo Habilis from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania,? Nature, Vol. 327, 21 May 1987, pp. 205??209.
l. ??We present a revised definition, based on verifiable criteria, for Homo and conclude that two species, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, do not belong in the genus [Homo].? Bernard Wood and Mark Collard, ??The Human Genus,? Science, Vol. 284, 2 April 1999, p. 65.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 26. Ape-Men?
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The australopithecines, made famous by Louis and Mary Leakey, are quite distinct from humans. Several detailed computer studies of australopithecines have shown that their bodily proportions were not intermediate between those of man and living apes (m).
m. Dr. Charles Oxnard and Sir Solly Zuckerman, referred to below, were leaders in the development of a powerful multivariate analysis technique. A computer simultaneously performs millions of comparisons on hundreds of corresponding dimensions of the bones of living apes, humans, and the australopithecines. Their verdict, that the australopithecines are not intermediate between man and living apes, is quite different from the more subjective and less analytical visual techniques of most anthropologists. To my knowledge, this technique has not been applied to the most famous australopithecine, commonly known as ??Lucy.?
??... the only positive fact we have about the Australopithecine brain is that it was no bigger than the brain of a gorilla. The claims that are made about the human character of the Australopithecine face and jaws are no more convincing than those made about the size of its brain. The Australopithecine skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian as opposed to human that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white.? Zuckerman, p. 78.
??Let us now return to our original problem: the Australopithecine fossils. I shall not burden you with details of each and every study that we have made, but ... the conventional wisdom is that the Australopithecine fragments are generally rather similar to humans and when different deviate somewhat towards the condition in the African apes, the new studies point to different conclusions. The new investigations suggest that the fossil fragments are usually uniquely different from any living form ...? Charles E. Oxnard (Dean of the Graduate School, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and from 1973 to 1978 a Dean at the University of Chicago), ??Human Fossils: New Views of Old Bones,? The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 41, May 1979, p. 273.
Charles E. Oxnard, ??The Place of the Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt?? Nature, Vol. 258, 4 December 1975, pp. 389??395.
??For my own part, the anatomical basis for the claim that the Australopithecines walked and ran upright like man is so much more flimsy than the evidence which points to the conclusion that their gait was some variant of what one sees in subhuman Primates, that it remains unacceptable.? Zuckerman, p. 93.
??His Lordship??s [Sir Solly Zuckerman??s] scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution. ??They are just bloody apes,?? he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa.? Lewin, [i]Bones of Contention, [i] pp. 164??165.
??This Australopithecine material suggests a form of locomotion that was not entirely upright nor bipedal. The Rudolf Australopithecines, in fact, may have been close to the ??knuckle-walker?? condition, not unlike the extant African apes.? Richard E. F. Leakey, ??Further Evidence of Lower Pleistocene Hominids from East Rudolf, North Kenya,? Nature, Vol. 231, 28 May 1971, p. 245.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 26. Ape-Men?