Some Evidence Against Evolution

quote:

---

Science reporter Richard Milton says concerning the theory of evolution : "...the inability of Darwinists to demonstrate to a thinking member of the public {non Darwinist} conclusive scientific evidence to substantiate the theory ...."

---

Actually, 43% of Americans even believe in Theistic evolution (not counting atheistic evolution/ so that's not correct.

quote:

---

The larger context for the above statement is the fact that this criticism is specifically directed at the British Museum of Natural History at Teddington. With this said, I ask what museum actually possesses and displays the intermediary missing link bones ?

---

Bones of missing links, or fossils that you think should but there but aren't?There are no fossils that we think should be there but aren't. For example, here is the smooth transition from humans to jawless fish:) H. Sapiens Sapiens (us) (40kya)
2) H. Sapiens (500kya)
3) H. Erectus (1.8 Mya)
4) H. Habilis (2.5 Mya)
5) A. Africanus (3.0 Mya)
6) A. Afarensus (3.9 Mya)
7) Ardipithecus Ramidus (5.8 Mya)
8) Orrorin Tugenesis (6 Mya)
9) Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7Mya)
10) Kenyapithecus (16 Mya)
11) Dryopithecus (~16Mya)
12) Proconsul Africanus (~20 Mya)
13) Aegyptopithicus (~30 Mya)
14) Parapithecus (~32 Mya)
15) Amphipithecus, Pondaungia (~35 Mya)
16) Pelycodus, etc (~50 Mya)
17) Cantius (~50 Mya)
18) Palaechthon, Purgatorius (~60 Mya)
19) Kennalestes, Asioryctes (~80 Mya)
20) Pariadens kirklandi (95 Mya)
21) Vincelestes neuquenianus (135 Mya)
22) Steropodon galmani (~140 Mya)
23) Kielantherium and Aegialodon (~140 Mya)
24) Endotherium (very latest Jurassic, 147 Ma)
25) Peramus (~155 Mya)
26) Eozostrodon, Morganucodon, Haldanodon (~205 Mya)
27) Kuehneotherium (~205 Mya)
28) Sinoconodon (~208 Mya)
29) Adelobasileus cromptoni (225 Mya)
30) Pachygenelus, Diarthrognathus (earliest Jurassic, 209 Mya)
31) Oligokyphus, Kayentatherium (early Jurassic, 208 Mya)
32) Probelesodon (~225 Mya?)
33) Exaeretodon (239 Mya)
34) Probainognathus (239-235 Mya)
35) Diademodon (240 Mya)
36) Cynognathus (240 Mya)
37) Thrinaxodon (~240 Mya)
38) Dvinia (Permocynodon) (~245 Mya)
39) Procynosuchus (~245 Mya)
40) Biarmosuchia (~255 Mya)
41) Dimetrodon, Sphenacodon (~270 Mya)
42) Varanops (~275 Mya)
43) Haptodus (~290 Mya)
44) Archaeothyris (~315 Mya)
45) Clepsydrops (~325 Mya)
46) Protoclepsydrops haplous (~325 Mya)
47) Paleothyris (~325 Mya)
48) Hylonomus, Paleothyris (~325 Mya)
49) Limnoscelis, Tseajaia (~325 Mya)
50) Proterogyrinus or another early anthracosaur (~335 Mya)
51) Temnospondyls (Pholidogaster) (330 Mya)
52) Labyrinthodonts (eg Pholidogaster, Pteroplax) (~360 Mya)
53) Hynerpeton, Acanthostega, and Ichthyostega (~365 Mya)
54) Obruchevichthys (370 Mya)
55) Panderichthys, Elpistostege (370 Mya)
56) Eusthenopteron, Sterropterygion (~375 Mya)
57) Osteolepis (~385 Mya)
58) Palaeoniscoids (Cheirolepis, Mimia) (~400 Mya)
59) Acanthodians(?) (~420 Mya)Tell me where you think a "missing link" should be. If you can't name a specific, don't bring up the subject.

quote:

---

Every museum I have encountered diplays fake bones made of rubber and plaster. These pieces are always surrounded by impressive visual presentations that insert the bones as the missing links.

---

Please be more specific. Are you talking about entire skeletons, or just places where part of the skeleton was missing? If you're talking about the latter case, what do you expect, entire skeletons to be miraculously preserved intact? Think about the situation for a second: what happens when you throw a vase? You get some big pieces, some small pieces, and some things pretty much turned to dust. That's the same thing that happens when bones get buried under kilotons of rock under pressure and heat.Complete skeletons are incredibly rare, and very valuable.

quote:

---

This is outrageous as it appears these museum displays are presenting what they HOPE to find but have not. If there is a paucity of missing link bones in museums could this mean that there are none ?

---

You need to clarify which concept of "missing link" you're referring to in your statement of "missing link bones". Do you mean bones that belong to a supposed "missing link" in human evolution, or bones of a species for which a particular museum doesn't happen to own a complete skeleton for? Or are you trying to assert that there is no way to identify an organism without a 100% skeleton?Again, we need specifics before we can comment, not vague assertions.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

Fascinating response, I assume your view is not too popular with your fellow evolutionists ?

---

Actually, that "humans came from apes" (as we know apes today) is a creationist misconception of evolution. Present-day apes and present-day humans evolved from the same ancestors - *both* have diverged. I like how TalkOrigins puts it, in response to someone asking "If we are decended from apes, why are there still apes around?":" The question is rather like asking, "If many Americans and Australians are descended from Europeans, why are there still Europeans around?" "

quote:

---

What is that common ancestor ?

---

Pick your "ape". Family trees don't all branch off at one point. Organisms are constantly having genetic deviation, but are kept together by niche. When niches diverge, the species becomes reproductively isolated, and cladogenesis (the splitting of a species) occurs. Most splits die out in the long run, but a few become quite successful, and diverge many times further. The common ancestor between ourselves and (insert "ape" here) is the point where that particular split occurred. The real challenge is to get a fossil species along the exact lineage, and not a sister species (although you can still see the evolutionary pathway even if you end up with sister species fossils at a given point)

quote:

---

Also, I am surprised at the lack of response to your reply by other Darwinists. What is your response when they vehemently disagree with what you said in the reply I am responding to ?

---

We agree with him. We didn't evolve from apes. We evolved from their ancestors.

quote:

---

The problem I have with evolution is that it just doesn't make sense. I see brilliant scientists coming up with every explanation of the bones and fossils that they unearth, which said explanations ring hollow.

---

I would encourage you to take a course to learn the basics of paleontology. Just like in forensics you can learn a lot from a crime scene based on "incidentals", you can learn an awful lot from a bone.For example, we can tell which of our ancestors walked upright, which were quadropeds, and which were in-between. I'm sure you just assume that it's pure speculation when you hear it, right? Again, there's that knowledge gap: for a bipedal species, the sockets for the leg bones will need to be putting their pressure parallel to the spine, while for a quadroped they need to apply pressure perpendicular. Thus, you can look at the sockets to see where pressure is being applied and how they are free to rotate, and determine how the animal typically walked.There are literally thousands of different things you can determine by looking at a well-preserved skeleton. This is where "study" comes in, and why it takes years of college and years in the field to become a competent paleontologist.

quote:

---

It just seems like they will conclude anything and everything but God.

---

You do realize, I assume, that the original paleontologists were creationists? As the fossil record was uncovered, however, there were some significant concerns. Species, no matter where in the world you looked, were always sorted into layers. The sorting was completely irrelevant to size and shape. Why, for example, would you always find grasses above trilobytes? It made no sense. So, a theory was developed.Evolution, right?No. "Multiple creations".They were so set on seing the work of God in the world that they proposed a theory that was pretty much accepted, that God had actually made "multiple creations", and then destroyed all of creation and made new versions that looked similar to older versions.However, they kept having to increase the number of creations over and over, and the graduations between species kept getting smoother. Eventually, it was only a matter of time before evolution was formalized and accepted.

quote:

---

They can DEDUCE like crazy except the one deducement that God requires which is that what is made was deliberately made so that one could deduce that a Creator made it. {Romans 1:20}

---

Unfortunately, unless God is a prankster, all of the scientific fields keep running into data that contradicts that.Why, Willowtree, did God create only isotopes on earth that have half-lives longer than a few hundred million years (i.e., will have dissapeared by 4.5 billion years) or are part of a decay sequence? What reason would he have to do that? We can create, and see created elsewhere in the universe, these "missing" isotopes. But they're all gone here.Why would God sort the fossils as such, so as to force scientists into at first accepting multiple creations, and then finally evolution?Why would he match up radioisotope dating - even if you believe that they're all in error (despite confirming each other) - to dates that confirm the "missing isotopes"? In fact, due to radioisotopic dating, Geologists were arguing that the Earth was old even when physicists were insisting that it was impossible. The sun, they said, could not be billions of years old. Why? They didn't know about fusion at the time, so the model that they proposed for how the sun worked involved only gravitational collapse (which powers young stars). And yet, the geologists were completely convinced, based on radioisotope dating, that the earth was billions of years old, despite another branch of science stating otherwise. Then, fusion was discovered, and yet another piece of evidence came into play: the sun matches up exactly in composition with how it would be if it had been undergoing fusion for 4 1/2 billion years.Why did God create stars that are billions of light years away? I'm sure you're thinking, "How do we know they're that far away?" Here's 26 completely different methods, all of which just happen to confirm each other. Some have been in use since ancient times; some are more recent. Again, it's the reason why it takes years of college before you can understand just *why* scientists are so convinced as to the realities of the universe: everything fits.Why are there no stars with contents that indicate that they'd be older than 14 1/2 billion years? It's quite possible - indeed, many observed stars could keep burning for tens of billions of years more. But none are older than this - there's a sharp cutoff. Why?Yes, God could have created light en-route from stars that are billions of light years away, and made all stars look as if they're a range of ages from zero to 14 1/2 billion light years old. God could have sorted fossils in the ground from no conceivable method, and rigged all of the minerals in the planet to give false dates. He could have stripped the planet of all isotopes that would decay completely on a multi-billion year old earth, just to finish off the gag.But why? Is God a prankster?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

Are you saying that the long list that you posted is evidence of a fish evolving from humans, that is what you said if not implied.

---

Other way around. Humans evolving from jawless fish. The fossil record gets to spotty after that to be much use at establishing a direct or close sister-species based lineage.

quote:

---

Technically, I do not dispute the existence of the evidence you posted, I marvel over the fact that people , smart people have taken the time to discover and itemize these things.

---

I think you have no clue just how many fossils have been uncovered and examined. The number is truly staggering. They don't just name and date them, they study every plate, every ridge, every part of the fossil that can be recovered. It's very painstaking work. Its been going on for centuries now across the planet, and there are hundreds of thousands of people involved, so there is a massive body of evidence to look at.

quote:

---

Yes this is science, but the simple issue is what does it mean and the leap of your final conclusion is what I and many others dispute. Being a creationist I credit a Creator initiating the process due to the sole fact that such creation could not be so amazing unless there was an intelligent Being behind it.

---

That view is known as "theistic evolution", and, at the last poll I checked, 43% of Americans believe in it. It is also reasonably common in the scientific community also.

quote:

---

I was vague, I meant evidence of the missing links that transition apes to humans.

---

Yes, that is commonly asserted, but not true. In fact, it's been asserted since darwin's time; and yet, the rate we've been finding fossil hominids has been steadily increasing, and now there's quite a nice collection out there. Most of the current debate focuses on what is directly ancestral, and what is a sister line. For example, if you were an archaeologist from the future, and in the future there was a large number of species of aquatic iguanas - and you wanted to know where they came from, and started digging - odds are if you found an iguana, it wouldn't be *the* ancestor of aquatic iguanas. In fact, it'd probably be a different species of iguana - a sister species to the one that went on to diversify in the future. But it is still close enough that you can see what iguanas in general looked like in this time period. Do you understand?

quote:

---

According to Richard Milton very little if any of these evidences actually exist and he is not a creationist.

---

Richard Milton is not a creationist, but he's not an evolutionist either. He keeps using the term "missing link", and keeps failing to define where he thinks this "missing link" is supposed to go. [quote]Lets assume there is SOME, and lets assume they are missing link transitional types. Why not a LOT ?[quote] Why not the same amount - tons and tons - of fossils from all time periods? Back to the aquatic iguana example, let's say that the iguanas that diversified in the future came from today's aquatic lizards in the Galapagos Islands. 50 million years from now, what are the odds that a person would just happen to pick the Galapagos Islands and dig to the right layer? What are the odds that such an iguana would be lucky enough to be preserved, or that the soil in that area would even be suitable for preservation? What are the odds that the Galapagos layers being deposited now will even exist in the future (i.e., not having been eroded away, undergone metamorphisis, etc), or not be buried under half a mile of sediment? If a species is widespread, it is very easy to find. If a species lives in a confined region, you get less fossils from it. But current fossil lineages are quite adequate. I personally would like to see more bones from Sahelanthropus tchadensis and some of the fossils for the next several Ma older, but the lineage is still quite clear. There used to be (i.e., early 1900s) some significant gaps in the more recent hominid lineages, but fossils have been found that filled it in, and dated to just the right time periods.BTW, Willowtree, thank you for taking the time to be more polite on these boards. I really appreciate it. If I'm ever impolite, please point it out to me, and I'll try and do better ------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Willowtree,The early scientists working on the fossil record were creationist. They were so troubled by what they encountered, that they could no longer accept a literal biblical worldview. However, they were so dependent apon the bible for their beliefs, that they tried to reconcile it, and proposed the concept of "multiple creations", with God destroying the world in between each creation. They kept having to pile on more and more separate creations, until eventually the scientific community was all but forced to accept evolution. However, the key is that they kept resisting acknowleging *evolution*, and instead insisting that there must have been *creation* as was listed in the bible.Thus, your claim that there must be some taint because of a presupposition of no God is false. It is furthermore disproven by the fact that a good portion of scientists actually believe in theistic evolution.By the way - and please don't take this in the wrong way, I mean no insult by it - but you or someone else in a relatively small isoteric group made up those words. I can't find a single reference to them anywhere else. I mean, we can use them for the context of this discussion, but they're not real words.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

I plainly told you where these words originate - from cancer researchers.

---

And I understand that's where you said you got them. But could you point me to a single place where they're used? I can point you to tens of thousands of papers on cancer research online, written at all levels of technical knowledge - from the actual researchers themselves down to articles written for laypeople. Please, could you give me an example of a single place where they use the words?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

I learned of there existence and meaning from Dr.Gene Scott {Ph.D.Stanford University}

---

Dr. Gene Scott got a Phd in Philosophies of Education. That's like quoting someone who got a doctorate in teaching on how to build an atomic bomb.

quote:

---

This gives opportunity for scientists to intermingle there starting bias {atheism} into their evidence which the ordinary man will take their word on because of their lofty stature in life.

---

You didn't respond to the fact that almost half of all scientists in the US (45%) are theists. How would such an atheistic conspiracy exist if half of scientists out there are theists?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

Because the subject matter is not theistic evolution but the ruling body of neo-Darwinism/scientism which is presently in control of what the masses are allowed to know.

---

Let me try and get this straight. Almost half of scientists are theists, but you believe that scientists are trying to propogate atheism. This would imply that nearly half of them are unwitting dupes. Do you actually expect us to believe that?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

I'm saying that Professor Huston Smith author of "Why Religion Matters" identified in his book that the BRANCH of science called scientism consists totally of atheists who in their starting assumptions {everyone has them - not a matter of opinion} exclude the existence of God, whats so hard to understand about this.

---

Huston Smith, the professor of Religion and Philosophy is supposed to be even remotely knowlegable about science? Why is it that you keep referencing people who have no qualifications at all related to science - and in fact, no experience in it - as if they're experts on the subject? It would be like me making statements about Yak raising.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-12-2003]

Does this mean that I should put the missing isotopes back?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Perhaps by "marsupial gerboa" he means the bettong.Jerboa: http://96.1911encyclopedia.org/J/JE/JERBOA.htmBettongs are structured like kangaroos, and not only share marsupial reproductive characteristics, but everything else, even at the most microscopic level, such as a complete absense of brown adipose tissue (it's much rarer in marsupials). The entire genetic structure, and consequently the proteins made, are marsupial - there's no controversy. Besides, they don't even look all that similar, so I'm not sure why Milton even bothered.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

Creation scientists heartily agree, of course. Natural selection can't "create" - Natural selection can act only on those biologic properties that already exist [creation]; it cannot create properties in order to meet adaptational needs [macroevolution] Noble, et al., Parasitology, sixth edition, Evolution of Parasitism Lea and Febiger, 1989, p. 516.

---

Actually, the quote reads:"Creation scientists heartily agree, of course. Natural selection can't "create" - Natural selection can act only on those biologic properties that already exist; it cannot create properties in order to meet adaptational needs."They stuck words in there to try and change the meaning. This sentence (unaltered) is precisely correct: Natural selection doesn't work by just making things up out of thin air - it has to alter an already extant system.

quote:

---

How natural selection operates at the molecular level is a major problem in evolutionary biology. - Yokoyama, Color vision of the Coelacanth Journal of Heredity, May/June 2000, pp. 216 217.

---

Full quote:"How natural selection operates at the molecular level is a major problem in evolutionary biology. About 30 years ago, Kimura proposed that most sequence changes in DNA's and proteins are selectively neutral. This "neutral theory" is still controversial and we need to demonstrate convincingly the consequences of adaptive evolution and neutral evolution at the molecular level. However, it is not an easy task to elucidate experimentally the molecular mechanisms of adaptive evolution in the vertebrates. This is because it is extremely difficult to find genetic systems where the functional effects of adaptive mutations can be rigorously assessed. The visual pigments represent one of a very few model systems for studying adaptive mechanisms in vertebrates. Here I shall describe one example of adaptive evolution, color vision of the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae)." (Yokoyama 2000). "Color Vision of the Coelacanth and Adaptive Evolution of Rhodopsin (RH1) and Rhodopsin-like (RH2) Pigments".What sort of deceptive person would take the lead-in sentence to a paragraph and isolate it like that? The paragraph is talking about Yokoyama's work on the low-level functionality of selective mechanisms - i.e., answering the question as to whether most mutations make no change or not; he then explains why this is hard. This is *anything but* a comment on evolution in general - only on how to test whether an individual mutation is advantageous or not, on a timely basis, so as to answer rate of evolution questions. He then goes on to describe *how* the color vision of the Coelacanth evolved.Not to mention, they even got the title of the paper completely wrong. Is this the quality of "research" that your side does?I don't have a copy of "Genomics Meets Phylogenetics" on hand, but given your track record, it's probably no better.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

quote:

---

Crashfrog says that atheism and evolution are not synonymous.

---

He's right. They're not. 40% of U.S. scientists believe both in evolution and God. 43% of the general public in the U.S. does (and that number is a lot higher in the rest of the developed world).------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."