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Evolution, the Challenge of the Fossil Record (San Diego, Calif.: Creation-Life Publishers, 1985), Evolution, the Fossils Say No! (San Diego, Calif.: Creation-Life Publishers, 1978), and Evolution, the Fossils Still Say No! (Spring Arbor Distributors, 1985)

http://skepdic.com/creation.html

(bill) Geese Filthy, these are some pretty old dates that they used to source Mr. Gish. I am assuming you fact checked all these resources to make sure they are still current and nothing has changed, didn't you? I was chided for not doing such a thing on this very thread...

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Despite the fact that 99.99% of the scientific community considers evolution of species from other species to be a fact, the creation scientists proclaim that evolution is not a fact but just a theory, and that it is false. The vast majority of scientists who disagree about evolution disagree as to how species evolved, not as to whether they evolved.

http://skepdic.com/creation.html

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(bill) Typical naturalist propaganda. They wasted no time at all here and went staight into into their strawman attack:

Despite the fact that 99.99% of the scientific community considers evolution of species from other species to be a fact,

(bill) They can come up with 99.99% because I know of no scientist, creationist or naturalist, that reject the notion that critters evolve from within their speices. This is known as microevolution.


the creation scientists proclaim that evolution is not a fact but just a theory, and that it is false.

(bill) More straman attacks I see. Most creation scientists fully accept microevolution. It is macroevolution which most creation scientists reject.


The vast majority of scientists who disagree about evolution disagree as to how species evolved,

(bill) Micro or macro? I thought NS though random mutations was pretty much agreed upon by the naturalists for macro?

not as to whether they evolved.

(bill) Micro or macro?


Thanks Trog. Kind words are always appreciated.

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(bill) Little does he know that anyone can go to any search engine and have an infinite supply of links on whatever they wanted.

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Originally posted by Bill scott
(bill) Typical naturalist propaganda. They wasted no time at all here and went staight into into their strawman attack:

Despite the fact that 99.99% of the scientific community considers evolution of species from other species to be a fact,

(bill) They can come up with 99.99% because I know of no scientist, creationist or naturalist, that reject the notion that critters evolve from within their speices. This is known as microevolution

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the creation scientists proclaim that evolution is not a fact but just a theory, and that it is false.

(bill) More straman attacks I see. Most creation scientists fully accept microevolution. It is macroevolution which most creation scientists reject.

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The vast majority of scientists who disagree about evolution disagree as to how species evolved,

(bill) Micro or macro? I thought NS though random mutations was pretty much agreed upon by the naturalists for macro?

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not as to whether they evolved.

(bill) Micro or macro?

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Bill:
It would take little, if any, extra knowledge for this feat then to correctly pick out a rock tool that is suitable for it's purpose as the otter does. I mean if your going to call a monkey a toolmaker because he strips some leaves off of a twig then a bird, who modifies twigs and straw etc... to build a nest, must be called a general contractor, not to mention the master builder known as the beaver...

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Originally posted by trogdor

In a truely Filthy-like manner I will get this page's trafic to double, nay triple!!!

The evolution of penises and vulvas!!

The penis

This article shows how penises have evolved multiple times independantly, but in each case they use the same basic methods.

most worrisome, many times, penises have been lost!

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A spotted hyena's vaginal canal makes a hairpin turn and exits the body like a penis. The opening of the vaginal canal is at the end of an elongated clitoris, nearly six to seven inches in an adult, that looks remarkably like a penis, Holekamp said.

The characteristics of the genitalia are responsible for some obvious anatomical challenges that arise when it's time for a hyena to mate and give birth.

Mating is tricky to say the least. A male must position himself at just the right angle to enter the female's clitoris. If the match is successful, a mother hyena will give birth to each of her 2-pound cubs through the elongated clitoris, which doubles its diameter from one to two inches for the occasion.

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Originally posted by trogdor

Now Bill is continuing to stick his fingers in his ears and scream "No transitional Fossils, I'm not listening, shut up!" at the top of his lungs. so, just to prove that he is a total douche-bag, I would like to open this thread for people to talk about their favorite transitional forms. The first one you bring up when talking to someone like [b] bill[b]. For me it's early cetids. so, write a good long post, link to info, and maybe Bill will learn something!


I will write one. soon.

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Chiroptera: Fossil Record

Although bats are one of the most diverse groups of mammals today, they are one of the least common groups in the fossil record. Bats have small, light skeletons that do not preserve well. Also, many live in tropical forests, where conditions are usually unfavorable for the formation of fossils. Thus we know little about the early evolution of bats.

Some mammal teeth from the Paleocene of France show characters of both bats and insectivores (the group including the hedgehogs, shrews and moles of today).

However, since these fossils are only teeth, we don't know what the rest of the animal was like. The next bat fossils start turning up in the Eocene, in sites with unusually complete preservation of whole skeletons, such as the Green River Formation of Wyoming and the Messel Shale of Germany. These fossils represent essentially modern-looking microchiropterans; bats had evolved all of their characteristic features and begun to diversify by this time. In fact, the oldest known complete fossil bat, the Eocene-age Icaronycteris shown at left, shows specializations of the auditory region of the skull that suggest that this bat could echolocate.

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"As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications."

Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species, p. 171

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Originally posted by dglas

How many "transitional fossils" does it take to make an evolutionary history?
How many grains of wheat does it take to make a heap?
Arguments against evolution on the basis of transitional fossils are a childish sorite.

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Originally posted by filthy

Hi V; welcome back! Hope you've been keeping well....

I thought we went through the evolution of the Chiroptera a long time back, including the fact that due to their habitats and the delicacy of their skeletons, bats don't fossilize well. We really don't know much of their ancient past. By 'we' I mean not only science; I include the creation-floggers as well and in particular.

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Chiroptera: Fossil Record

Although bats are one of the most diverse groups of mammals today, they are one of the least common groups in the fossil record. Bats have small, light skeletons that do not preserve well. Also, many live in tropical forests, where conditions are usually unfavorable for the formation of fossils. Thus we know little about the early evolution of bats.



However, since these fossils are only teeth, we don't know what the rest of the animal was like. The next bat fossils start turning up in the Eocene, in sites with unusually complete preservation of whole skeletons, such as the Green River Formation of Wyoming and the Messel Shale of Germany. These fossils represent essentially modern-looking microchiropterans; bats had evolved all of their characteristic features and begun to diversify by this time. In fact, the oldest known complete fossil bat, the Eocene-age Icaronycteris shown at left, shows specializations of the auditory region of the skull that suggest that this bat could echolocate.

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Evolution, micro or macro: that is the question.

No, that is not the question. It's all the same, damned thing, in my less-than-humble opinion. It's all just plain, ol' evolution. All else is merely a matter of degree. That said, let me ask a question: as we are all in agreement that small segments of evolution occure, how many so-called 'micros' do you, or anyone, think it would take to make a 'macro?'

Here's a link that's been posted on this site so many times that it might as well be part of the format:

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"As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications."

Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species, p. 171

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Another bat.



More bats.



Not a bat.

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The jawed vertebrates are a diverse group of animals, including ourselves (mammals), reptiles, amphibians, sharks and other fishes. Also included are two extinct groups, the Acanthodii and the Placodermi. The placoderms are the most primitive group of jawed vertebrates, and as such, have much to tell us about the evolution of various features within the group.

For example, teeth were generally thought to be absent in placoderms, with their dentitions instead being made up of denticles or bony plates. In this scenario, teeth would have evolved only a single time, in the common ancestor of all other jawed vertebrates. However, a re-examination of placoderms from the Late Devonian (370 million years old) Gogo Formation of Western Australia suggests that true teeth, comparable to those found in other jawed vertebrates, were present in at least some placoderm taxa.

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The mitochondria of eukaryotes evolved from aerobic bacteria (probably related to the rickettsias) living within their host cell.

The chloroplasts of eukaryotes evolved from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria (autotrophic prokaryotes).
Eukaryotic cilia and flagella may have arisen from endosymbiotic spirochetes. The basal bodies from which eukaryotic cilia and flagella develop would have been able to create the mitotic spindle and thus made mitosis possible.

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Originally posted by verlch

It's quite entertaining to watch you all explain away your dignity.

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http://www.cryingvoice.com/Evolution/Cells.html

We wouldn't expect to see such complexity on such a small scale, would we?

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The Amazing Cells, Bacterial Engines



It is easier to imagine a single cell evolving into complex animals and plants than a group of chemical substances forming a living cell. The leap from sea-water and sand to the living cell is much greater than the assumed evolution from the primordial cell to humans.

In Darwin's day, scientists thought the living cell is a very simple organism that has a nucleus and some liquid around it, inside a membrane. Since then, scientists have discovered that cells are composed of hundreds of parts and have thousands of functions, but they are still very far from understanding the cells' structure and functioning mechanism. Today we know that there is no such thing as a "simple" cell. Now we understand that a bacterium is far more complex than anything built by man. There is no laboratory on earth that can replicate the biochemical activity happening in the smallest living organisms. The more we learn, the more we realize that it is beyond our capacity to understand in detail the physico-chemical organization of the simplest cell.

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n 1996, the Free Press published a book by Lehigh University biochemist and intelligent design advocate Michael Behe called Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. The book's central thesis is that many biological systems are "irreducibly complex" at the molecular level. Behe gives the following definition of irreducible complexity:

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. (p. 39)

Although the argument from irreducible complexity is essentially a rehash of the famously flawed watchmaker argument advanced by William Paley at the start of the 19th century, Behe's book has attracted a great deal of attention from creationists and non-creationists alike. The articles collected here address the claims made by Behe in his book.

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