Summations Only

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The "coincidence" is an illusion.

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If the fossils are distributed randomly as you claim then the actual physical order must be a truly massive coincidence.Obviously a better explanation is needed.

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It would only be a coincidence if there was a principle other than sheer imaginative classification of seeming similarity behind it

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Since I am talking about the observed order, not the interpretation we have more evidence that it is you that confuses the two. Funny how you blame others for your own mistakes.No, if there were no real principles behind the observed order it would have to be a massive coincidence. Weird how you manage to confirm the point you are supposedly disagreeing with.Not to mention the fact that your whole idea of kinds is based on the same seeming similarities - certainly it has to be if you want to apply it to fossils. And it is exactly the same similarities that Linnaeus used to classify humans as apes.

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...but complexity can't be the principle, since "early" fossils are sometimes much more complex than "later" ones.

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I’ve already explained that there is only a partial principle and that is agreement with Linnaean classification. (Not perfect, but we don’t expect perfect).

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All you have to go on is appearance based on morphology and you impose the idea of genetic relatedness on that

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And we are often right, where it can be tested. After all genetic relatedness will cause similarities.

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Specific claims of genetic relatedness such as between reptiles and mammals should be recognized to be absurdly impossible because of the sheer numbers of changes that would have to take place all in concert to get a mammal from a reptile, though even getting one plausible stage of change in one organ would be probabilistically impossible.

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It’s sort of funny how this comes up when your whole point is to reject a probability argument. And the argument you are rejecting is rather more solid - while exact numbers may be hard to work out the principles are clear, and you chose to invoke chance.Whereas in this case you really have no idea at all of the relevant probabilities. You are just offering a completely uninformed opinion and trying to pass it off as fact. Unfortunately for you uninformed opinions can’t beat evidence. The evidence says it happened so you need real evidence to answer it.

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not to mention that there are thousands of transitionals needed between any two Species to even begin to make an argument, and you have what, half a dozen between different Species at best?

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You believe in lots of evolution between species. Unless you want to abandon your idea of kinds and go back to fixity of species you have to accept that between-species evolution can occur without leaving fossils.Then we have the question of why there are so many transitional representing evolution you don’t believe in.

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The "fossil order" is nothing but a testimony to the ability of human imagination to invent patterns that have no real meaning in reality.

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The fossil order is the observed order you claim to accept, so at best you are being unclear again. Even if you claim to be talking about the evidence for evolution the methods of classification are the same as Linnaean taxonomy so you have to reject that, too. (Don’t tell your fellow YECs they are too busy trying to claim Linnaeus as a great Creationist scientist.)

Instead of arguing that the transition is impossible perhaps you would like to go and tell the actual fossils that they can’t exist ?Seriously trying to produce a purely theoretical argument - based on guesses at that - is worthless unless you engage with the evidence.Some points for you to consider.Genes are not a blueprint and the developmental processes are not quite as simple as you think.There is no preplanned outcome (which means that the probability of getting a specific result is irrelevant)Your assumptions about microevolution - which is clearly microevolution even if you refuse to admit it because of your crazy superstitions - are just assumptions.

While you could make some changes to the order you couldn’t have amphibians before fish, or reptiles or mammals before amphibians, or birds before reptiles.Even the trilobite order could be made worse evidence for evolution.If you don’t actually know this then you really have no business declaring yourself right. Ignorance of even the basics is not a sound basis for an opinion.

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If you can't show any actual relatedness of the fossils in the order, the order remains a mere mental construct and not a physical reality.

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That looks like a demand tailored to discount any evidence that we could actually have.However the fact is that the observed order - which is not merely a mental construct - strongly agrees with the pattern predicted by common descent. In the absence of any other remotely reasonable explanation for this pattern and given that evolution invokes no unknown processes it makes a pretty good case.

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In what way? As long as it has no empirical or physical relatedness from one to another in the order it is in fact only a mental construct, a theory.

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An empirically observed fact is clearly not a mere mental construct. You’re only supposed to be arguing against the interpretation, not the actual order remember ?

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I grant the logic of it and the persuasiveness of the pattern, but it still is only a pattern,

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Inference from observed patterns is a major basis for science. So only a pattern is hardly an objection.

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...and since there is a whole other way of classifying many of the fossils in the "order" as members of separate Kinds without any genetic relatedness between them,

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Let us note that you are already reduced to dragging in complete irrelevancies. Constructing a classification system is nothing. Linnaeus discovery that life could be classified as a nested hierarchy is significant (and it certainly need not be if Creationism were true). That we have an explanation for it, and for other evidence and that the fossil record strongly supports that explanation is very important.An alternate classification system whose sole interesting feature is the assumption that life consists of unrelated kinds is not important.

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and since between many of the classifications evolving from one to another is impossible by many criteria,

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It is not known to be impossible by any valid criteria. Your poorly-informed judgements are frequently wrong, and that is all you have.

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it remains a theory that looks to me like it has no justification whatever in actual physical reality.

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And yet you already admitted that it did. The fossil record is actual physical reality. Linnaean classification is based in actual physical reality. The agreement between the two is equally based in physical reality. And that is before we get into all the other evidence. I’ll explicitly mention the transitional fossils which are frequent enough to raise a very big question mark against the idea that there is no connection - because fossils are the topic. But there is more evidence in the present day world, too.

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Obviously you don't appreciate the problems involved in a paradigm clash for the underdog paradigm. Definitional problems are a huge problem because facts don't have the same interpretation in the different paradigms.

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Your errors aren’t due to definitional problems. Your misuse of Walther’s Law for instance. Nor does it cover the many falsehoods you make.The fact of the matter is that you often jump to wrong conclusions through your own irrationality, prejudice and carelessness.Making excuses to cover up your many serious errors is simply another example of your pride overriding any commitment to the truth you might have.

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There is static order, like objects arranged in a row according to size, which is the kind the fossil order is. But you think the fossil order implies something dynamic as well, evolution from one form of life to another over time.

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This seems to be the distinction between the observed order and the process creating the order. You claim that the order is due to some unknown sorting process - which would clearly be dynamic,

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There is little argument with the first kind of order; it's clear that fossils are found in a predictable order from layer to layer, using the term "order" in the static sense, although there isn't any obvious characteristic like size that links them, or complexity or whatever you think is implied

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How quickly you forget. Or are you just repeating old claims even knowing that they have been shown to be in error?

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But when it comes to the interpretation of evolution from life form to life form over time that is not proven and nobody here is saying anything that proves it exists at all.

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Is this an attempt to deny the fact that we do have strong evidence ? Or simply the typical Creationist view that your opinion beats anything but absolute proof ?

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Over the years I have made some really good arguments that NEVER get any recognition whatever.

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No. You haven’t. You really ought to stop telling obvious untruths.

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You have no idea what it's like to be treated this way time after time after time after time

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Other people who make ridiculously bad arguments get treated the same way.

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So don't tell me I'm the one being unfair.

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Well, you are. I can understand that you don’t like being easily defeated time and time again. But if you make obviously bad arguments that is really your problem. If you were actually good enough at critical thinking to see and correct the flaws in your arguments - or even avoid posting the real stinkers you would find it a bit less unpleasant here.But no, you’d rather boast about being great at critical thinking instead of actually employing it. At all.

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Oh sure, you can find one exception to a rule that can be seen in hundreds of thousands of other places. But it doesn't really matter how you divide it, you've still got time stuck onto rocks no matter how they're sorted, and it's that correlation that's ridiculous and impossible

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What correlation? What is wrong with the idea that the sediment was deposited over a period of time ? This whole argument of yours just seems crazy.

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Still the same problem. There shouldn't be ANY rocks to identify time, period, certainly not rocks for all the time periods

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This is just silly.
The first just doesn’t make sense. If you believe all the rocks must have appeared at the Creation just say so. If you mean something else you really need to say what it is.The second seems obviously wrong. If there was a long stretch of time when no sediment was being deposited anywhere - and no lava erupted - why should it be identified as a geological period? And why would you think such a thing was even likely ? Since you claim to be certain, please explain

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Appeared at the Creation???? No, they appeared at the Flood.

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But you seem to be objecting very strongly to the idea that they were deposited, so I have to ask.If you have a stratum there must be a particular period of time (in the ordinary sense) in which it was deposited. Right? There’s nothing insane about that, right?

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A day will do

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Which is rather ironic given your next statement.

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Argue all you want, there's no way you could get thousands of square miles of a single sediment spanning most of a continent on the Old Earth model. Not buying it.

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Well, now we see how confident you were in your certainty. Not only did you ignore the point in your first reply, now you are completely changing the subject. If you don’t have enough faith in your own argument to even discuss it then I can’t see how you can expect anyone else to believe it.But, since you raise the point of extent I’ll return to something Edge said. The extent of the Tapeats is partly due to the fact that it wasn’t all deposited at once. As the coastline retreated the region where the sand was being deposited moved with it. Time does contribute to the extent of at least some formations.

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I had that in mind when I wrote what I wrote.

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That’s amazingly vague.Perhaps you meant when you wrote: you knew it wouldn’t stand up to any rational discussion.Certainly the fact that you are running away so quickly suggests as much.

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The "vague" remark was a response to the last paragraph about edge's Tapeats explanation. Sorry.

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There was no way to know that.

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Oh yes I'm running away from the insane miscommunication in this madhouse.

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Running away from yourself is hardly likely to work.But the fact remains that if you really have an obvious truth, couching it in unclear terms, refusing to explain it and changing the subject to avoid talking about it hardly makes sense.And yet this is what you want people to believe.

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Strata could overlie anything but the strata I'm talking about are those that make up the Geological Column that is seen ON THE LAND all over the place and not in the oceans

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If material laid down under the sea doesn’t count, then you ought to exclude all the marine strata from the geological column.

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And if a new layer is NOT overlying existing geological column it's not part of the geological column.

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Another thing that doesn’t make sense. There has to be a base layer to the geological column. By definition the base layer can’t overly existing geological column.

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The Geological Column is over and done with, it is not continuing, the Flood built it and it's done. This is evident wherever it exists.

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It is certainly not evident. It is evident that the geological column was not built in a mere year or by a flood of any sort. It is evident that sedimentation continues, in a very large scale in some places.That you think otherwise, despite all the evidence is testimony only to your ability to deny the truth.

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That's why you all pretend it can go on in ways it couldn't possibly go on. Ugh what deceit.

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Sure, Faith. You have to pretend we’re doing what you’re doing. Standard Creationist tactic. But hardly one that works. Even you know that your claims are often false, your frequent evasiveness proves that. And don’t bother whining about ad hominem. All I’m doing is answering your false accusation. We don’t need another display of hypocrisy from you.