Some Evidence Against Evolution

Darwinsterrier, The British Museum & the Natural History Museum are two entirely different entities as well, & neither is located at Teddington.Mark

PaulK, It isn't. The official title is The Natural History Museum. It officially changed its name in 1963 when it was officially separated from the British Museum, by act of parliament, no less!Mark

I stand corrected, sir!

WILLOWTREE, The results based upon study of the fossils are published, if you have a specific disagreement then by all means make it. As a professional palaeontologist you will be able to request access to the fossils in question if the fossils are in an institutions collection. If you aren't a professional palaeontologist, then there's not much point releasing valuable & rare fossils to laymen, is there? You are dangerously close to making an argument of the form, "I don't like what the conclusions are, it must be false, I have no specific complaint, so I'll charge evolutionary theory with mass fraud". Taking your first point last, says who? Based on what maths do you arrive at the conclusion that there must be millions of bones (there are millions of bones, I'm assuming you mean for a single lineage)? Clearly, to arrive at an informed opinion you will have taken into account biogeography, (species ranges, dispersal patterns etc), local taphonomic considerations based upon the organisms natural environment, & the subsequent chance of such a fossil being exposed at the surface in the Holocene.Show your working.If you can't do that, then I put it to you that your subjective opinion isn't any great danger to palaeontology, & evolutionary theory in general.Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 11-27-2003]

Mr Jack, It is evolution, not necessarily adaptive evolution, but it is evolution. Neutral theory & genetic drift are non-adaptive, are in no way related to fitness, yet are still evolutionary mechanisms.Mark

Mr Jack, I agree that natural selection makes evolution compelling, but it isn't the whole story. There are both morphological & genetic characters that don't owe their prevalence to ns. It is still change over time, still evolution. Even your own examples change over time.I think you are wrongly equating evolution with adaptation (in a pure sense). If butterflies with a particular wing vein pattern are replaced by another wing vein pattern, it is evolution even if drift or the founder affect was causal. Meaning drift & neutral theory can be the chief agents of evolutionary change for particular characters in some cases. You can't write this off as not being evolution. Certainly is! They are synthesised as a part of the ToE, they can't be separated from modern evolutionary understanding. Pick up any modern evolutionary textbook.If evolution is based on heredity, & the basic unit of that process is the gene, then allele frequency over time is a perfectly valid definition for evolution. Ultimately even macroevolution is explainable with this definition (lots of micro). It is a bit reductionist, I'll grant you, but valid nonetheless.As far as I can see, the only real falsifying data would be non-allelic DNA having a phenotypic affect, & that very much depends on how you define gene or allele.Mark------------------
"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

Mr Jack, I agree, but it can all be reduced to a "change in allele frequency". The mechanisms are unimportant to the definition, that's the job of the more expansive expositions. Even if certain mechanisms are more important under certain circumstances than others. A definition of evolution needs to be as short as possible, & as encompassing as possible. Natural selection, drift, etc. all do the same thing, they change the frequencies of alleles. It doesn't matter how complex a thing that ns can come up with, ultimately, at the reduced level all it's doing is changing allele frequencies. Looking at it the other way, complex morphological & chemical change is achieved by changing allele frequencies over time (plus naturally occuring variation, of course), so what's wrong with pegging the definition at the common genic level? I don't see how this is false.Mark------------------
"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

Your belief is wrong, then. It isn't "science" at all.