Well Dr A, you make a statement, "we have the fossils", I assume that means more than a handful, and it means you can show the evolution of an interior scapular girdle to the rib-cage, in turtles from an exterior girdle, by showing the transitionals for all pre-turtles and how that change could occur because of the disjunct? Does this mean you have all of the transitionals for pre-Pterosaurs, pre-bats, pre-spiders, pre-seahorses, pre-Ichthyosaurs, pre-Jellyfish? How about ancestors from terrestrial quadrupeds to arboreal bipeds? Got any to show? I doubt it.
As mentioned above, crabs and trilobites. Why do we find them in separate geologic layers? As to the rest, I will pick out this example:
"The Coelacanth Fish (340 million years old)"
The Coelacanth fish? Do you think coelacanth is the name of a species of fish?
Did you realize that Coelacanth is an entire order of fish comprising many, many species? Your argument is like saying that humans have been around for hundreds of millions of years because humans are mammals, and the first mammal fossils are found hundreds of millions of years ago.
That is a hold over from Victorian and earlier times where the worth of a species was determined by how closely it was related to humans. You can see the same biases in the names for Linnaean taxons, such as Eutherians (i.e. true crown group) and Primates (i.e. first rank, prime). Scientists have since identified this bias and have tried to rid scientific language of those terms, although they are still used to a lesser degree to this day.
At the end of the day, all modern organisms are equally distant from the universal common ancestor, so all organisms are equally evolved.
If they're Darwinian-evolutionists then they don't know much about species, as he couldn't even define the term.
If evolution is true then there shouldn't be an objective and non-arbitrary division between populations. The very fact that we can't objectively and non-arbitrarily define an absolute line between species is evidence for evolution.
And any changes that did appear in those single-cell organisms cannot be compared to higher animals, which are far more complex.
As I have pointed out before the variations shown in that diagram are way less than the variations in dogs which are all regarded as one species. This is poor evidence of speciation.
The morphological differences between dog breeds is larger than the differences between humans and chimps, and yet you consider humans and chimps to be separate species.
Of course gradualism is fundamental to ToE - does a fish grow a foot overnight? Different rates of gradualism is still gradualism.
Does a fish species undergo rapid speciation events causing more rapid changes in phenotype? Yep. Does that falsify the theory of evolution? Nope. Both punctuated equilibria and gradualism fit just fine in the theory of evolution.
That is ridiculous and unfair. I am arguing from the physical evidence and that is what the whole case has to rest on in the end. And I am not rejecting the "evidence" presented against me here, I am saying it's utterly irrelevant; nobody is addressing the point.
Faith, I have asked you this question before and we will see if you are able to answer it this time.
What features would a geologic formation need in order for you to admit that it falsifies your young earth/flood model?
Tell ya what. I don't see the picture as you see it but all this is not really relevant to the main point, so let me try to state it in a way that I hope will make it clearer by limiting it. There are huge lengths of the Grand Canyon walls that ARE made up of originally straight and flat strata that are still visibly only slightly off straight and flat due to changes after they were laid down.
Why is that a problem?
I see no way that the supposed time periods that are assigned to various levels in those walls, and the landscapes supposed to have existed for millions of years at those very locations, could have resulted in the flat slabs of rock that now represent them, based on this typical way of interpreting them.
Your ignorance is not our problem. Your refusal to accept the many examples of ongoing sedimentation producing flat deposits is not our problem.
Where's the sediment that becomes say a sandstone or a limestone in the stratigraphic column? How does such a lumpy shapeless bunch of stuff turn into a flat rock?
Just dig into a sand dune and look for yourself.
You will see the same flat horizons and cross bedding in sandstone:
I just want to see you explain the steps between ANY landscape, which the fossils in a given rock tell you existed on that spot, and the rock itself. Address that, please.
Go to any lake and start taking sections out of the lake bottom near the shore. I am sure you will find plenty of twigs, leaves, insects, and even fish bones buried in that mud.
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