Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils Part II

This is where you lose me. How can a lack of evidence - real or imagined - be "the primary evidence" against ToE?It seems to me that we have to look at the evidence that we do have and draw conclusions from that. What positive conclusions do you draw from the evidence that we do have? How do your conclusions differ from the ToE and why are your conclusions better?You can't just throw out the mainstream conclusions without proposing something better to replace them.As an interested bystander, I'm having the same problem with you here that I had with Tranquility Base in the Recolonization thread: you keep charging ahead without explaining what it is you're trying to say. You tell us what you think the evidence doesn't show, but you never really tell us what the evidence does show. (I may be wrong, but I think that's sort of what Yaro has been driving at.)As Admin said:

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... the actual test of sound reasoning is that it make sense to other people, not just to you.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Quick Google, first hit:Philip D. Gingerich"Continued work on the east side of the Sulaiman Range in Pakistan yielded many additional archaeocetes, including Takracetus simus, Gaviacetus razai, Dalanistes ahmedi, Qaisracetus arifi, Andrewsiphius sloani, Babiacetus indicus, Basilosaurus drazindai, and Basiloterus hussaini (Gingerich et al., 1995, 1997, 2001)."

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

But a shortage of evidence is not evidence in itself. You are the one who claims that they should not be rare. You need to back that up and explain why there should be more transitional whale fossils and how many you think there should be and why there should be that many. But there are fossils of extinct, whale-like creatures. You need to explain the fossils that we do have, not complain about the ones we don't have. Why do we have some fossils that "look like" transitionals if the ToE is incorrect? Again, a shortage of evidence does not show that something doesn't exist. And you still have given no plausible non-evolutionary explanation for the transitional fossils that do exist.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

randman,What I'm saying is that there are fossils which "look like" transitionals between land animals and whales. All you're doing is waving your hands and saying they're not transitional.Your only "reasoning" seems to be that there should be a lot more steps preserved in the fossil record. You need to explain how all those transitionals - if they existed - would have been preserved. And you need to be a lot more quantitative in what proportion of them would have been preserved.(You also need to have an alternative explanation for why the fossils that we do have seem to be transitional.)Your whole approach seems to be that mainstream science needs to answer to your satisfaction every objection that pops into your head.On the contrary, mainstream science has explanations for the evidence. If you don't like the explanations, it is up to you to provide an alternative explanation.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Just a clarification:As I said, it was the first link that I found. It took less than a minute to find it. Your claim about "all of the links and literature" you had read is not very impressive.Since you were the one who was claiming that Basilosaurus was not found in Pakistan, it was up to you, not Yaro or me, to do the one-minute research project. Your failure to do so does not strengthen your other assertions.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

randman,I don't know if I follow your calculations completely, but it seems to me that you are claiming that there "should" be an average of 5 or so fossils found for each of the whale-ancestor transitionals. It also seems to me that you base your calculations somewhat on the "thousands" of Basilosaurus fossils which have been found.But I think you're looking at it backwards. The number of Basilosaurus fossils seems to be an anomaly rather than the norm. For some reason, a large number of Basilosauri were preserved and/or a large number of Basilosaurus fossils have been found.But that large number would tend to skew the average upward - i.e. the average "5 or so" fossils which we "should" see for each transitional would actually be much lower if the anomalous Basilosaurus data was excluded.In fact, the average number of fossils that we "should" find - according to your own calculations - would be close to zero.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Yes, I should have been more clear in saying that Basilosaurus may be an anomaly.My point is that if Basilosaurus is anomalous, then randman's calculations would be skewed upward - i.e. he would expect more fossils of whale transitionals.Since randman has given Basilosaurus as his main quantitative example, I think it is quite relevant to question whether that data point is valid.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.