Criticism against Evolution: Lack of Transitional Fossils

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   heatblast92posted 11 years ago

   http://www.understanding-creationism.co … hales.html
   Stumbled across this article while researching about dolphins. One line caught my attention:
   
   ' You can believe this creature just happened to have all the right DNA mistakes over millions of years in just the right step-by-step way to make it all work. '
   
   Not an expert on evolution; nevertheless, shouldn't an animal's DNA coding be smart enough to deem what is necessary and what isn't for it to grow in order to adapt to new environments throughout its evolutionary process?
   
   There's also an article countering the creationist's argument on the basis of a dearth of transitional fossils here:
   
   http://www.livescience.com/3306-fossils … heory.html
   
   It's not enough, and still it's better than 'wishful thinking', no?

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      Paul Wingertposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Creationist don't have an argument. They take the Genesis story as historical fact without question and with no evidence to back any of it up. They fail to realize that the people who wrote these stories thought the earth was flat, never heard of an atom, and had no idea where the sun went every evening. Trying to pass these ancient stories as historical fact and science is rediculous. Modern science did exist until the late 17th century. How could Biblical scripture contain anything of modern science? As for the evolution of whales and dolphines, there's traces of rear leg bones in whale skeletons and it goes for snakes. Humans still have a what's left of a tail bone. DNA evidence on ancient whales bones (when they were land animals) and present day whales do match up.

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   2. 61

      Josakposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Every DNA sequence has errors and mutations, by the same logic you are using all humans should be perfect Adonises with no disabilities, no weaknesses etc. but we aren't some are blind some are immune to leprosy, others are really good at running naturally etc. etc. thus mutation occurs in the wild the organism with the best mutations survive and thus evolution.
      
      There is no dearth of fossil evidence but really just looking at the human DNA and comparing it to the DNA of chimpanzees etc. is enough for the reasonable mind to see that evolution is the only answer that makes sense.

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   3. 60

      twosheds1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Regarding mutations, the author in that link totally misunderstands. A useful analogy is the old cliche about a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters trying to type out A Tale of Two Cities. If we waited for them to type it out totally at random, we'd be waiting for a long time. If we kept each correct letter as it appears in the correct place, the wait would be much shorter. For the first letter, there is a 1 in 26 chance (lesser chance if you include upper & lower case, and punctuation) of getting the right letter. Once that letter appears, it is kept and we move on to the next. Once that letter appears, we move on to the next, and so on. In fairly short order, we'd have the whole novel. That's how evolution works.
      
      Also, the author doesn't seem to be aware of two conflicting camps in evolutionary theory. Richard Dawkins leads the camp that contends that species arose gradually. The late Stephen Jay Gould led (not sure who leads it now) the camp that adovcates "punctuated equilibrium," where species appear fairly quickly. This would explain why there aren't transitional fossils, but there are indeed transitional fossils. Lucy and Ardi are two.

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   heatblast92posted 11 years ago

   See what you mean there, it's basically a trial and error process; though until we can find chart every intermediate form that passes through the evolutionary process of a certain species with the definiteness that creationists glorify creationism for, evolution would still remain an unacceptable answer to them.

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