Creation vs. Evolution

[MikeFerrara]

You mean like all the creationist 'scientists' that try to refute evolution with fallacy? (Points finger at Mr. Green)

:1poke::1poke:

Actually yes, I mean like that, although, I'm not pointing a finger at Mr. Green.

 

[H2Andy]

Where are all the critters who are on their way to having wings???

look at human evolution. you can see how hominids went from ape-like beings through a series of changes getting bigger and more upright, and eventually with much larger craneums

all those beings are "intermediate species", and we have their fossils

and, again, both the fossil record and DNA support evolution in that life has from the beginning continued to change and evolve into new forms of life, and will continue to do so until there's no Earth left

 

[Rick Murchison]

look at human evolution. you can see how hominids went from ape-like beings through a series of changes getting bigger and more upright, and eventually with much larger craneums

all those beings are "intermediate species", and we have their fossils

You missed the question. There is a rather dramatic leap from land-borne to air-borne. Name One fossil that is an example of an "almost flying" insect or pre-bird... AFAIK we don't have any examples.
Rick

 

[H2Andy]

i am saying that you can observe the same kind of change in other fossil families

what you are asking is, have we observed a more or less complete transition for all species that have ever existed?

the answer is no, of course not

but analysis of the species (separated by time) leads to the inescapable conclusion that one arose from the other.

there were no birds before the dinosaurs. then birds came about. where did they come from? they look suspiciously like dinosaurs with wings. the time-frame is right. the taxonomy is right. the fossil record is right.

there's a lot of evidence that birds came from dinos.

 

[Soggy]

You missed the question. There is a rather dramatic leap from land-borne to air-borne. Name One fossil that is an example of an "almost flying" insect or pre-bird... AFAIK we don't have any examples.
Rick

I don't know about almost flying to flying because I haven't looked into it, but it sure has happened the other way around a number of times. Look at penguins. They are birds, but definitely don't fly too well.

 

[Warthaug]

Since you do this for a living please help me understand, if the most basic definition of evolution is the "change of a populations genetic makeup over time",

It isn't the "most basic" definition - it is the definition. Natural selection, speciaiton, and whatnot are simply the details.

I see this as what I am calling natural selection where a certain creature adapts or changes over time to a particular evironment but it it stil the same creature.

What you've described has nothing to do with evolution. Individuals cannot change genetically - what you're born with is what you get. The changes occur as a result of mutations in the sperm/eggs of the parent. So the individual does, in fact, stay the same creature.

What changes is the population over time (i.e. over many generations). If you were to sequence your DNA, and compare it to the sequences of your parents DNA, you would find a small number of places where your DNA does not match the DNA of either parent - these differences are the result of unique mutations which were present in, and only in, the egg/sperm which made you.

So you are correct that individuals do not evolve, but over time a population does change at a genetic level. Over a long enough time this can lead to huge changes in the population - including the formation of new species, and given long enough, the formation of new families, phylum, genus, etc.

Going back to your statement, dog/wolves, cats/lions, roses/tulips. Where then is the jump from one type of creature to another - reptile/bird, fish/amphibian?

Those sorts of changes take a very long time - millions, tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years. But those changes are the logical outcome of accumulating lots of little changes. After all, ten million little changes = a lot of change.

People also don't realize just how small the difference between different types of animals are. People and fish seem to be very different creatures, and yet nearly every single gene needed to make a human is present in fish. At the end of the day life is little more then a lego set, and the difference between species is little more then how those blocks get put together.

This is what I think the general public calls evolution and it is what I think most creationists appose.

And they are a part of what evolution predicts will happen. As I pointed out above, you accumulate small changes over a long enough period of time and you get a lot of change. Loose a little hair, stand up a bit straighter, grow a bigger brain, and your chimp is now a man. At the end of the day, changes in the genetics of a population can lead to a lot of things. From things as small as modest changes in the colouration of the organisms, to changing fish into amphibians, or monkeys into humans.

Bryan

 

[Hemlon]

Isn't there a fish that leaps out of the water as if it's flying?

Who is to say that in another million years that it won't be able to really fly AND breathe air??

 

[H2Andy]

Isn't there a fish that leaps out of the water as if it's flying?

Who is to say that in another million years that it won't be able to really fly AND breathe air??

bugger... that will ruin fishing

 

[Hank49]

"
You've lost me here. My impression of creationism is that all life - including all existing species - spontaniously came to be. No evolution of one thing into another, so branching, no descent via modification. Just wham-bam-thank-you-mam.

Bryan

Bryan

If I'm correct in thinking I understand this, literally at an instant when a mother gave birth, (with different species throughout time) she gave birth to a different species. Because at some point, the DNA compatibility went from, "can breed" to "no can breed" (to original parent stocks which hadn't mutated or changed). There would be no "maybe". Correct? This is what I see being questioned. At some point this had to have happened.

 

[Rick Murchison]

I don't know about almost flying to flying because I haven't looked into it, but it sure has happened the other way around a number of times. Look at penguins. They are birds, but definitely don't fly too well.

Right... interesting, too, that it seems we have plenty of examples where animals whose ancestors flew have found niches where they needn't, and have evolved into creatures that couldn't. But... to my knowledge there are no fossil records of animals that couldn't fly who are in the process of developing the wings and musculoskelatal structure to support flight.
See the problem? If a niche existed that would be benign enough to allow an animal to survive with "half wings" there's be no evolutionary "pressure" to select for three quarter wings... In other words, there's no questioning the advantages of flight - it's the intermediate steps needed to get there that don't make sense - from an unguided evolutionary point of view, that is...
Anyway, even if you could dream up a scenario where the evolution of wings would make sense, where's the fossil record?
Rick