evolution vs. creationism: evolution wins

If it is such a design flaw, I suppose that would explain the lack of success of the species mentioned.

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Descent with modification is the evidence I believe is missing. I do not believe that there are any bona fide examples.

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Are you a clone of your parents?Then you are decended from them, and modified.

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And as Darwin theorized, there should be millions of examples of descent with modifications, or his term, transitional forms.

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There are. Every organism is a transitional form between it's parents and it's offspring, unless they are clones.

You do realize that one of the species with that particular design flaw are humans?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It is a flaw, be it by design or accident. The species have survived despite the flaw.Separate of the success or failure of a species, you still haven't countered the crux of my argument:Why would an intelligent designer put a broken molecule/pathway in one of its designs?Would an intelligent designer design a building with an intentionally non-functional elevator? or perhaps a car with an intentionally non-functional air conditioning system?See, according to your logic, it doesn't matter that these things are non-functional because the building/car are still usable overall, and thus "successful".However, that doesn't explain why the designer intentionally sabotaged those systems to begin with.

The issue I was addressing was the willingness of the proponents of evolutionary theory to accept without question any evidence presented to support the theory.To answer your question, it walks on it's fins, but is this evidence of evolution ? How long have these creatures existed in their present form? How would a mutation enable one to have offspring that are functionally distinct, viable and capable of reproducing? If the mutation was able to reproduce, what would it reproduce with? If it were able to reproduce only with it's siblings, wouldn't this be a disadvantage?

I fully concur that Eoanthropus represents a black mark for science - an embarassment of the first water. However, your figure of "500 papers written by the scientific community" is incorrect. There may have been 500 essays, periodicals, pamphlets, articles, etc, but not in scientific journals as your statement suggests. In addition, you fail to mention that Piltdown probably did more damage to the early ideas of hominid evolution than any 50 creationist criticisms by both slowing down actual research and "confirming" erroneous ideas. However, the overall impact on our understanding of human evolution today is utterly nil.So what, pray tell, does a forgery exposed over 50 years ago have to do with anything we're discussing today in evolutionary biology or paleontology? As a "warning" to take revolutionary claims - especially those that seem to confirm our pet theories - with a grain of salt, I think Piltdown provides a salutory lesson. One, I submit, that has been taken to heart in the years since it was exposed.

This shows a very common misconception. At all stages most organisms are the same species as their parents, siblings and children. (Some recent examples in some plants are an example of an exception) Evolutionary theory (as per Darwin) would have said all organisms and it appears to be so close to all that we could really keep saying that.(borrowed from Dawkins)
That means that if you take an animal and transport it back `1,000 years it will be able to breed with the ancestors of that time. If you then pick up an individual from that 1,000 year ago time and take that one back another 1,000 years it will still be able to breed with it's ancestors. If you then pick up one from that 2,000 year ago time frame and take it back yet another 1,000 years it will still be able to breed back there.If you keep doing this it will keep working. If you took a human back 1,000 years it would work. A human from 1,000 CE would breed with someone from 1 CE. Someone from 1CE would breed with someone from 1,000 BCE.Someone from 101,000 years BCE would breed with someone from 102,000 years BCE and so on. However, somewhere in there you would find that someone from TODAY would NOT breed with that person of that long ago time. There would be a difference of species between us and them. However, where did the line get crossed? There is no line.The line between species in both space (ring species) and time (almost all others) is not a sharp line.ABEBTW (sort of relevant)
This paper describes how common insertion/deletion events are in humans. These are 1,000's to millions of base pairs long and appear to be rather common.
Nature - Not FoundThis message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-21-2005 11:24 AM

I was using "irony", conveyig a meaning contradicting the literal sense of the words used.

Hopefully you see that you have chosen a piss-poor example, since it was abandoned sixty-or-so-years ago. Doesn't sound like "accepting without question" to me. It is a living transitional that you can probably see at your local mall. I see it as an example of how a transition from aquatic to terrestial life may have occurred. In other words, we know that such a creature can exist, because it does. We don't have to conjure up a mythical beast to describe a fish that spends much of its time, and feeds, on solid ground; nor do we have to rely on fossils to show that such a creature could exist. You seem to hold preconceptions that speciation is an immediate event brought on by a single mutation event. Though it may be in rare cases, it is generally considered to be a much more gradual event, including physical isolation of a population into two groups, with each isolated group accumulating its own set of minor genetic changes until each group is distinct (and generally reproductively incompatible).Hopefully that makes sense - let me know if you have questions.

Which is too bad for you, because none of those species - humans included - are particularly successful in evolutionary terms. Our genus contains only one species, which is a near failure as far as evolution is concerned.Basically what I'm saying is that your words were literally correct; if you meant them sarcastically, you were factually wrong.

I was responding to a message that I considered a personal attack, and I was a little less cautious than normal. I believe the point I was trying to make was just as you observed about the grain of salt. I think that scientists are not careful enough in examining these discoveries.

Actually, I think that you'll find today most ANY new find is scrutinized thirteen ways from Sunday - unless it's so prosaic that nobody cares . This is especially true in the case of human evolution - just look at the in-fighting between Leakey and Johannson, for one. Every skull or bone fragment is examined and argued over, and every interpretation is questioned. You get a lot of the same thing in any of the controversial or leading edge scientific fields. Hell, even on the really technical details in some fields are fought over: in ecology they're still arguing over whether Wilson/MacArthur equilibrium is valid thirty years after it was published; in paleontology there's a huge on-going fight over the relative importance and implications of punctuated equilibrium 33 years after it was first published. As I said in my previous post, I think you'll find that the lessons of Eoanthropus and other mistakes/hoaxes of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries are taken to heart. Look how quickly the hoaxed Archeoraptor was debunked - three months or something? Remember the cold fusion and room-temperature superconductor claims that got creamed when other labs were unable to replicate the effects? Scientists DO make mistakes, and they CAN be fooled. It's the modern practice of science that insures these mistakes are caught.So yeah, take what scientists say with a grain of salt. But don't choke on it. They're right waaaaay more often than they're wrong.This message has been edited by Quetzal, 01-22-2005 00:16 AM

Quote "You seem to hold preconceptions that speciation is an immediate event brought on by a single mutation event. Though it may be in rare cases, it is generally considered to be a much more gradual event, including physical isolation of a population into two groups, with each isolated group accumulating its own set of minor genetic changes until each group is distinct (and generally reproductively incompatible).Hopefully that makes sense - let me know if you have questions."No, I never entertained that particular idea. I was thinking of gradual evolution, and the idea of the isolated populations is one that I have read. It actually seems to be one of the most reasonable of the theories that would explain the similarities of some species.The main problem I have with that is there doesn't seem to be any observable change in species in the fossil record. Is there some that I have overlooked? And it doesn't explain the abrupt appearance of man. I realize that there are gaps in my knowledge. and I am seriously entertaining the book idea, as I will have to do an exhaustive amount of research.

You might note that even a century ago this fraud was questioned. And long before it was proven a fraud it was understood to have something wrong about it since subsequent finds didn't support what might have been concluded from it.The degree of scrutiny has tightened up a lot in a century but it has always been there. Always a LOT more than that used by creation "scientists" today.

There have been many changes observed over time. Some transitions are only caught in a few snapshots of major steps. However others as in trilobites, various clam like beasties and nautaloids show an many, many millions of years rather detailed sequences of evolution.The reason for this difference should be obvious. Some lineages are of animals that have populations in perhaps the low numbers of millions over a continent (certainly not more than a few per sq km). Others like the trilobite etc are very numerous, have parts which fossilze reasonably easily and live in an environment conducive to fossilization. Heck some of them live already buried. There is one point that needs to be clarified :"changes in species"What do you mean by that? What do you mean by "abrupt". There is a steady sequence of fossils over several millions of years. The ones nearer today are more human like and the ones further away less human like as you would expect.In addtion, some human characteristics show a nice, if bumpy, directional change toward current values (skull capacity being a good one).Within our lineage the older forms like erectus are more like sapiens (but still erectus)when you get closer in time to us and less like as you get further away. The older forms of sapiens have characteristics which blur into erectus's and newer ones are finally, a few 10,000's of years ago, fully modern.There is nothing that I would call "abrupt" about it.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-22-2005 00:34 AM