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Wrong -ID claims that the evidence does not support that concept as well as it supports special creation by an intelligence that acts beyond natural laws inherent in our system.
And where is the original research for those suppositions. For people wishing to pass their mythology off as science, they damn sure aren't concerned about making any actual contributions.
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The fact that creatures appear fully formed in the geological strata,
As opposed to 3/8's formed? You are not making a point with that statement except to show us you do not know what transitional forms are. Every fossil can be considered a transitional form. Sometimes those transitions went nowhere, sometimes they were passed on with success. Indeed, if you want to see a living transitional animal, look no further than the nearest animal as we are all transitional forms between our ape ancestors and whatever the future of our genepool produces.
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remain essentially unchanged (ie. exhibit stasis) for the duration of their appearance and then disappear abruptly
I refuse to believe you honestly believe that because it pains me to imagine anyone could be that dense on purpose. Allow me to give you an active example of changes and how quickly they can occur.
Morton's Toe, which is having one's second toe be larger than the hallux, was present in less than 5% of caucasians during the 1950's. It is now over double that and within some caucasian populations as much as five times that. And this is just one genetic trait over the course of half a century(thanks bluegenes). Imagine, then, the sum total of our traits and how quickly they can morph us. Slow by our own reckoning, but not by geological time. A longer toe here, an increase of rubidism there, it all adds up.
Beers, C. V.; Clark, L. A. :
Tumors and short-toe--a dihybrid pedigree: a family history showing the inheritance of hemangioma and metatarsus atavicus. J. Hered. 33: 366-368, 1942.
Kaplan, A. R. :
Genetics of relative toe lengths. Acta Genet. Med. Gemellol. 13: 295-304, 1964.
PubMed ID : 14198926
Romanus, T. :
Heredity of a long second toe. Hereditas 35: 651-652, 1949.
Orthopaedic Nursing. 21(6):35-39, November/December 2002.
Childs, Sharon G.
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or (in other cases) are essentially the same as those now living,
The fact that you must resort to the weasel word "essentially" is very telling. With that one word you have conceded to knowing that there is in fact change to an animal but in order to prove your point you must refer to it over a shorter timeframe.
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is better explained by special creation rather than by gradualism
The moment you used the word "essentially" you have made concession to gradualism. Gradualism shows that things will always be "essentially" the same as their nearest ancestors and predecessors in terms of evolution. But those small changes that make them "essentially" the same add up as one moves through the time scale. Think of light. One band of light is "essentially" the same as the bands above and below it. But those small changes add up giving us a vast and varying scale. All because of small changes.
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which is badly supported by the available evidence.
Are you simply uninformed or are you being deliberately obtuse. Gradualism is excellently supported in multiple biological fields. What is not supported is special creation. One need look no further than the embarassingly small-for all intents and purposes- peer reviewed documentation put out by the ID community.
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Id also claims that wonderful stories of gradual evolution of,say the eye,are badly supported since all different kinds of fully developed eyes appear, not piece by piece, but complete in the geological record. Where are all the inbetween partly functional eyes? What would their purpose be that natural selection would retain them if they didn't work to begin with. Where are all the inbetween partly functional eyes?
Would you call photoreceptive cells on simple organisms, depth perceptive light awareness in mollusks, and other such simple forms of vision that follow the evidenciary chain of evolution anything other than building blocks to more advanced forms of eyes?
I am beginning to suspect you are making an attempt to be deliberately ignorant. Your argument may have worked one hundred years ago. But fortunately, science grows and learns as opposed to falling back on the lazy person's cop-out of "goddidit".
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What would their purpose be that natural selection would retain them if they didn't work to begin with. Considering the many many parts that have to work together with nerves and brain co-ordination included in order to be of any use at all, it remains, to our thinking, inconceivable that no intelligence nor plan was involved.
Early eyes, which still exist in some creatures, were no more than photoreceptive cells. With our own degree of visual involvement that mus seem useless to you. But to a simple organism it is all that is needed to kickstart circadian cycles or even find an adequate foodsource. From there it slowly becomes more complicated. A little here, a little there. Our own eyes are not much more than useful combinations of those photoreceptive cells. We have cells to detect color, cells to detect light amputure. Two eyes proved beneficial for depth perception and thus remained in the varying species.
I myself find it slightly ironic that the best example off design that IDists can come up with is an organ which is in some way faulty in nearly half the creatures possessing it. Too bad the intelligent designer did not think to design bifocals early on. We had to wait for Franklin to get them
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I realize that this is a hard concept for an evolutioist's mind to get around but nonetheless,
Of course it is, we being reasonable people have a hard time understanding how people such as yourself can piss away that reason which has brought us medicine, transportation, and communication.
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it is a reasonable alternative to the evolutionary model of gradualism and just because you find it hard to believe, that does not make it necessarily untrue nor inconceivable.
There is nothing reasonable about it. Falling back on a magick sky pixie because you do not wish to accept the evidence is as far from reason as one can get. Perhaps I should take my disputes with gravitational theory and just claim gravity does not exist. We are all held to the ground by an intelligent faller.
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In the absence of pure proof either way,
Plugging one's ears and proclaiming, "not listening" loudly does not make it any less so. You can claim there is no evidence till blue in the face. All it shows is you really have no idea what you are talking about.
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lets climb out of the evolutionary box and consider the alternatives.
Alright, find us an alternative supported with evidence and I am sure every last person here will be more than happy to hear it.
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you don't like the idea so you misrepresent it in order to make it look stupid.
We do not make it look stupid. It *is* stupid. How anyone can still hold to ID when Behe admitted under oath that astrology would have to be a science for ID to be science is beyond me.
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Most branches of science were started by people that believed that God was responsible for creation and that we therefore live in a rational universe with working laws
These same people were also alchemists who thought they could transform lead to gold and through simple acid/base extraction techniques could become immortal. Medicine was founded by men who believed the starts effected chemicals in your blood and that the kidneys were the seat of intelligence. The difference between them and you is they were willing to grow and accept new information as opposed to holding onto an idea simply because a great mind before them had it.
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And in the same vein who needs to know that we must have evolved in order to investigate what we see around us?
I don't know. I guess only doctors, environmentalists, engineers, computer scientists, and pretty much anyone else with a vested interest in the future of our animal and our planet.
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please proceed to investigate the issue without your preconceptions
You mean without our brains as that is the only way anyone can accept ID.
Edited by faust, : Fixing stupidity error I made.
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