Are there large warring groups going at it over this somewhere?

Given just the nature of adaptation of a species to it’s surroundings, I fail to see how one makes the jump to something just being created to function within it’s niche. Evolution is a far superior theory, and always will be, to creationism or intelligent design or whatever other psuedo-scientific names you want to label it.

Jimmy, there is no “jump to something just being created to function”, this is what we find in the fossil record. Organisms fully developed with no transitions. The oldest bat was a fully funtioning bat with no hint of process. So rather than being “far superior”, evolution is fabricated process necessitated by a particular world view. Follow the evidence, not your biases.

Look who’s talking! Another in a long line of fanatical theorists that base their entire objection on a tome written by enraptured, gullible supersticious laymen of little intellect over two-thousand years ago as interpreted by self-serving, lap-of-luxury con-men that collect money for telling their unquestioning flocks to give generously to the church lest they dare to be be different people that think for themselves and face reality without fear.

One of my favorite quotes:

What’s certain about Darwinism is that it would take less time for (1) a single-celled organism to evolve into a human being through mutation and natural selection than for (2) Darwinists to admit they have no proof of (1) - Ann Coulter

I used to wonder if evolution were true and we evolved from apes,then why didn’t an occasional human be born to apes.But now days I think possibly the humans were here first and the way some of them act,think,and dress that possibly the apes eolved from humans.The culling of the herd seems to result in the worse of the species surviving while the better disapear. LS

I do not believe that we ‘evolved’ from apes. Apes would have evolved into something that takes much better care of their own than humans do.

Besides, how many apes do you think would want to claim responsbilty for the likes of Ray Vinson?

Sigh. Can we just get it straight when it comes to the ancestry of apes and humans? Please? Just this once?

Apes and Humans are distant cousins. Neither of them evolved from the other, but share a common ancestor much further back in history. So stop with the red herrings about apes giving birth to the occasional human or vice versa.

Mr. Chaikowsky,

You need to open up a current biology text and read it carefully, preferably with the help of an expert to explain things to you. There have been quite a few transitions found in the fossil record. Saying that evolution is bunk because we haven’t found transitions resembling a flip-book in the fossil record is a flawed argument and you know it. Or maybe you don’t. Normally, I wouldn’t waste time talking with someone like you, but the problem is that your kind is trying to misinform others about a scientific process that you don’t even have a grasp on. Try some advanced-intermediate reading this summer– I recommend “The Beak of the Finch”.

And can we please dispel the false notion that there are no “transitional” fossil records?

There are vast (and growing) fossil records showing gradual variations and transitions for many species and their ancestors. The problem is that the nay-sayers simply draw arbitrary lines in the transitional fossil progression. One side of the line is Species A and the other side is Species B, with the implication that the two are completely unrelated.

When another fossil shows up with features that are directly between the two species, the nay-sayers simply redraw the line and assign it to one side or the other. No matter how fine the gradation, creationists will persistently divide and subdivide the fossil record to rationalize their preconceived conclusions and deny the obvious.

Try this thought experiment: How are the numbers 3 and 4 related? There seems to be no evidence that the two are connected in any way. What about 3.5? Just another version of 3. And 3.98? Same thing. It’s even got a “3″ in it. It can’t be related to 4 in any way, it’s just another garden variety 3…

Sound disingenuous? It is.

Right on Fark! Time to stop worrying about sailing over the edge of the Earth and join the 21 century. Horses have an excellent fossil record.

Is “Evolutionist” even a real word?

Is this letter writer saying that there is no more evolution and that all evolution happended in the past? If that’s the case, what date did evolution end?

Oh, wait - this is the new assualt on Evolution from the bible thumpers; just claim that it doesn’t exist. I get it!! If you say something doesn’t exist, does that make it so?

The fossil record for individual species shows over millions and millions of years transitions. Whose to saw that flounder isn’t in mid-evoloution as we speak?

Jom - YOUR PILLS!

Fark - Darwin believed that man came from apes. He stated in his Descent of Man, “The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded.” Because it allegedly occured “much further back in history” we’ll never know. No one observed the branching, all testing is indirect and circumstantial and its a unique, one time event. How scientific is that?

If there are “vast (and growing) fossil records showing gradual variations and transitions for many species and their ancestors,” why did Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have to propose their ad hoc Punctuated Equilibria Theory to explain away their systematic absence?

Mr. Jones - Also the forensic evidence of the alleged transitions in the fossil record for the horse, is another unique occurance. Except maybe for Eohippus, the other horses in the series are just that - horses. They may vary in height and toe count, but horses none the same. Micro not macroevolution. Paleontologist and evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson wrote, “The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature.”

Red State - If macro evolution were occuring today. We would not be having this discussion.

Thank you all for your comments.

John C - Darwin did indeed believe that man evolved from apes. Given the limited fossil record of hominids at the time, it was a reasonable theory. But one that has since been pretty well refuted since than. The hominid fossil record has seen numerous additions since Darwin’s time. Science and theories advance as evidence advances.

“No one observed the branching, all testing is indirect and circumstantial and its a unique, one time event. How scientific is that?”

Uhm, pretty darned scientific, if you ask anyone versed in the scientific method (as opposed to someone who gets their science lessons from a thousands-years-old book of fiction which states, among other ludicrous claims, that the value of pi is 3 and that the sky is a solid ceiling and rain happens when god opens a window in the firmament).

Science is charged with explaining observed and NON-OBSERVED events. We regularly explain and detail events which are observed by no human eyes. That’s what science does. Theorize answers and processes, compare evidence and results to the theory, and subject the theory to peer review. As new evidence appears which refutes a given theory, new theories are posited to encompass all relevant evidence, and peers review the new theories for accuracy.

This is where biblically-based “science” is doomed to fail again and again. The “theories” are etched in stone, monolithic and unable to change in response to conflicting evidence. Instead, creationists are forced to employ increasingly crazy rationalizations to explain the discrepancies between what is stated in Genesis and what is directly observable (for instance: “Dinosaur fossils were planted by Satan to tempt your faith”).

Sending a man to the moon pretty much poked an impossible hole in the whole “solid firmament” idea once and for all. But creationists and other bible-science apologists stubbornly cling to their increasingly archaic theories in the face of mounting contradictory evidence.

As for the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, it does not in any way refute evolution and gradual change. Any geneticist working with resistant bacteria has witnessed this type of change directly in the lab. I have been working with genetics and genetic simulations on computers for decades, and have personally observed that very principle take place in virtual petri dishes. Laugh all you want about simulations, but they VERY closely mirror behaviors of natural systems, and the theory of “Punctuated Equilibrium” is a reasonable theory which accurately describes the behavior in these systems.

“Punctuated Equilibrium” does NOT imply that beings suddenly change from having no eyes to having 2 fully formed eyes. Phenotype changes in a local population can disseminate to dominate the locale in a very short number of generations. It also does not imply that gradual change does not happen, because it does. But in addition to the gradual changes, you can also observe larger leaps of change in localized populations.

It’s called the “scientific method”. When a creation “scientist” finally submits his theories for a bonafide peer review, we can continue this discussion.

Fark

When we talk about science, we are either talking about empirical or historical science. Empirical science deals with the utilization of the senses which is why the scientific method incorporates observation and direct testing. Historical science, again, involves investigation after the fact. No direct observation. A CSI unit will collect all the evidence they can, try to determine what is relevent and what is not and then try to put it all together to make sense out of it. Its open to a lot of interpretation as they try to make inferences to the best explanation. Macroevolution is an historical science.
Now, Michael Ruse, in thev 1982 Arkansas trial defined science a little different. He testified that science is 1. guided by natural law. 2. based on explaining by natural law. 3. testable 4. tentative and 5. falsifiable. Even by these criteria Darwinism still does not fall under the domain of empirical science. Verification for (testing) or against (falisifiability) is difficult for evolution because it is so plastic it can explain anything.
This definition makes archaeology, paleoanthropology and even the SETI project non-scientific. Should a scientist really try to explain cave drawings by natural means first before accepting an intelligent cause?
There has been additions to the fossil record since Darwin’s time, yet evolutionary paleontologist David Raup wrote in 1979 that “we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded … ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.”