In a particularly long thread enormous amounts of excellent evidence demonstrating the case for evolution was presented by me an many others. As usual, they were never either rebutted or taken into account in any fashion. So I thought to compile them in a single thread that belongs to me, and encourage others to do so also. Repeating the same refuted arguments 500 times in a 200 page thread is a useful tactic to drown the refutations. So here is good way to counter that,
1)Transitional Sea to Land Fossils and trends in Evolution
The theory of evolution predicts that descent with modification with natural selection will create species that will show biological similarities with their ancestral lineage while slowly diverging as time progresses into newer types of body structure. The theory of evolution predicts that when we look at two very different seeming types (land animals and fish), there will be ancient animals who lived in the past who would share characteristics of both fish and land animals and we would see a chronological sequence where we would see certain types of fossil fish appear that are more and more land animal like until the first fossils of land amphibians crop up.
Thus the theory of evolution predicts a pattern, a pattern that has no reason to exist otherwise. Here is the pattern
1) The ancient earth will have no land animals but only fish in the sea. This is indeed what we see before 400 million years.
2) There will eventually be groups of fish that will have some similarities with land animals. This is observed in the fossil record with lungfish (fish with lungs) and other lobe-finned fish (fish with four fleshy limb like fin lobes) cropping up from 400 million years. No land animals are found yet.
3) Some groups of lobe finned fish are seen to adapt to shallow waters and begin to sport primitive limb bones in their fins
Example Eusthenopteron. 385 million years ago, after generic lungfish are seen and before any animals are seen.
Palaeos Vertebrates Sarcopterygii: Osteolepiformes: Eusthenopteron
With the typical bone structure in the limbs that will become characteristic of all later land animals
4) By 375 million years, fish-amphibian transition animals like Tiktaalik are being found showing further development of limbs, heads and other features that make them more and more similar to land vertebrates.
Tiktaalik fossils reveal how fish evolved into four-legged land animals
"Its extraordinary blend of gills, scales, fins and lungs, combined with a movable neck, sturdy ribcage and crocodile-like head, placed Tiktaalik half way between fish and the earliest four-legged land animals.In work published on Monday, researchers describe fossils of the back half of Tiktaalik for the first time. The report shows that the animal had a large, robust pelvic girdle, a prominent hip joint, and long hind fins. The powerful fins could have propelled the beast in the water, but also helped it walk on riverbeds, or scramble around on mudflats."
5) Finally we have Acanthostega and Icthyostega that are discovered after 370 million years that, as I discussed, have many of the features that show them to be clearly amphibious.
Ictheyostega, a 370 million year old fish-amphibian transitional species that had fish like traits (tail fins, gills, fish like snout and teeth) and land animal like traits (four legs with feet and fingers, shoulders and necks and hips and lungs) . Found in the horizon between the arising of lungfish ancestors (lobe finned fish, 420 million years) and later modern amphibians (320 million years) . Just accident or evolution?
Full CT-scanned image of the animal based on fossils (over 200 individuals found)
Full details of anatomy
Ichthyostega
How it moved on land, hauling its body like seals
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-shift-shore-extinct-tetrapod-ichthyostega.html
6)Its only after this, from 360 million years, that land vertebrate fossils begin to enter the fossil record. An example is an ancient land walking amphibious animal Perderpes from 350 million years who show striking similarity with earlier Acanthostega and yet has more well developed legs and shoulders that are now capable of supporting its full weight on land.
7) Thus from 400-350 million years, the fossil record show a chronological sequence where -at one end we have only primitive fishes and no vertebrate animals whatsoever on land, and the other end we have the first land walking amphibians. And in between we have a whole sequence of fish-amphibian animals whose bodies begin by looking like the ancient fishes but take on characteristics of the primitive amphibians over time, until at the end we have the first land walking amphibians! This is exactly as predicted by the theory of evolution, where descent through modification and natural selection is expected to generate just this kind of a pattern as the animals slowly evolve from fully marine fishes to land-walking amphibians through 50 million years of evolution over successive generations.
8) Your "Jehova created everything directly when he wanted to" can neither predict such a pattern or explain why its rational to expect such a pattern. He could have created land animals with fully developed features along with all the fishes directly 450 million years ago. All the fishes, all the reptiles, all the amphibians, all the birds could have been created at the same time, fully modern . He could have created them billions of years ago instead of waiting around for 4 billion years since the formation of earth and populating the earth with nothing but bacteria, amoeba and plankton for the first 3.5 billion years of life.
In your theory there is no reason to expect
i) Simple unicellular prokaryotic life to predate complex multicellular life by a billion years (in evolution this is expected)
ii) Eukaryotic cells to arise after prokaryotic cells by a billion years (in evolution this is expected)
iii) Simplest types of animals like jellyfish and sponge to predate complex animals by 100 million years (in evolution you expect this)
iv) Early forms of invertebrate and vertebrate life look very primitive and less well developed than later types in the Cambrian era (in evolution you expect this)
v) Fish fossils to show distinct stages of sequential development of modern features over a 100 million year period like from jawless varieties to jaws, from bony plates to scales, from no internal skeleton to internal skeleton (the flexible vertebra), from early lobe like fins to more aerodynamic ray like fins. (evolution predicts this)
vi) For vertebrate animals to appear on land much much after the emergence of fish and the earliest of them showing a clear sequence of intermediate forms between certain fish and the first amphibians.(evolution predicts this)
vii) For amphibians to arise first, then reptiles, then mammals, then dinosaurs and then birds with clear sequence of forms intermediate between each of these group just at the time point of emergence.(evolution predicts this)
It appears Jehovah went into an enormous amount of trouble trying to time and finetune his designed animals so that it looks like they arose by evolution. It seems his only goals were to make evolution appear to be correct rather than good design of perfected animals! Thousands and thousands of very different animals filled the same ecological niche over the eons again and again before becoming extinct and replaced by new forms living almost the exact same way. What is this? A perfect omnipotent, omniscient designer can't decide what he wants and changing each and every animal type every 2-3 million years or so for the last 600 million years? Building and rebuilding species, moving the continents and oceans around again and again, building and eroding mountains again and again and again eon after eon of pointless mindless transformations and re-transformations. This is design?? Wow!! He is psychotic or something? You belittle God by hanging onto such a regressive view of creation.
An young earth view is even more ridiculous. Not only does this go against all geological, physical and astronomical evidence, it assumes the absurdity of believing all animals ancient and modern (ammonites to T-rex to pterosaurs to lions to rabbits to eagles to icthysaurs to otters to...) living side by side! It cannot explain why 90% of sedimentary rocks that also happen to be consistently dated to be the oldest has not a single animal fossil, and then suddenly the last 10% have animals, but not in random assemblages but in graded order of more primitive and alien looking to more advanced and modern looking, with distinct blocks of similar species in various layers. It cannot explain the pattern above whatsoever if all species were living together. And where are the drowned humans in the Cambrian, Ordovician or Triassic rocks? Can humans swim better than ammonites or icthyosaurs? This is just a taste of the absurd. There are many many more.
More will follow.
1)Transitional Sea to Land Fossils and trends in Evolution
The theory of evolution predicts that descent with modification with natural selection will create species that will show biological similarities with their ancestral lineage while slowly diverging as time progresses into newer types of body structure. The theory of evolution predicts that when we look at two very different seeming types (land animals and fish), there will be ancient animals who lived in the past who would share characteristics of both fish and land animals and we would see a chronological sequence where we would see certain types of fossil fish appear that are more and more land animal like until the first fossils of land amphibians crop up.
Thus the theory of evolution predicts a pattern, a pattern that has no reason to exist otherwise. Here is the pattern
1) The ancient earth will have no land animals but only fish in the sea. This is indeed what we see before 400 million years.
2) There will eventually be groups of fish that will have some similarities with land animals. This is observed in the fossil record with lungfish (fish with lungs) and other lobe-finned fish (fish with four fleshy limb like fin lobes) cropping up from 400 million years. No land animals are found yet.
3) Some groups of lobe finned fish are seen to adapt to shallow waters and begin to sport primitive limb bones in their fins
Example Eusthenopteron. 385 million years ago, after generic lungfish are seen and before any animals are seen.
Palaeos Vertebrates Sarcopterygii: Osteolepiformes: Eusthenopteron
With the typical bone structure in the limbs that will become characteristic of all later land animals
4) By 375 million years, fish-amphibian transition animals like Tiktaalik are being found showing further development of limbs, heads and other features that make them more and more similar to land vertebrates.
Tiktaalik fossils reveal how fish evolved into four-legged land animals
"Its extraordinary blend of gills, scales, fins and lungs, combined with a movable neck, sturdy ribcage and crocodile-like head, placed Tiktaalik half way between fish and the earliest four-legged land animals.In work published on Monday, researchers describe fossils of the back half of Tiktaalik for the first time. The report shows that the animal had a large, robust pelvic girdle, a prominent hip joint, and long hind fins. The powerful fins could have propelled the beast in the water, but also helped it walk on riverbeds, or scramble around on mudflats."
5) Finally we have Acanthostega and Icthyostega that are discovered after 370 million years that, as I discussed, have many of the features that show them to be clearly amphibious.
Ictheyostega, a 370 million year old fish-amphibian transitional species that had fish like traits (tail fins, gills, fish like snout and teeth) and land animal like traits (four legs with feet and fingers, shoulders and necks and hips and lungs) . Found in the horizon between the arising of lungfish ancestors (lobe finned fish, 420 million years) and later modern amphibians (320 million years) . Just accident or evolution?
Full CT-scanned image of the animal based on fossils (over 200 individuals found)
Full details of anatomy
Ichthyostega
How it moved on land, hauling its body like seals
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-shift-shore-extinct-tetrapod-ichthyostega.html
6)Its only after this, from 360 million years, that land vertebrate fossils begin to enter the fossil record. An example is an ancient land walking amphibious animal Perderpes from 350 million years who show striking similarity with earlier Acanthostega and yet has more well developed legs and shoulders that are now capable of supporting its full weight on land.
7) Thus from 400-350 million years, the fossil record show a chronological sequence where -at one end we have only primitive fishes and no vertebrate animals whatsoever on land, and the other end we have the first land walking amphibians. And in between we have a whole sequence of fish-amphibian animals whose bodies begin by looking like the ancient fishes but take on characteristics of the primitive amphibians over time, until at the end we have the first land walking amphibians! This is exactly as predicted by the theory of evolution, where descent through modification and natural selection is expected to generate just this kind of a pattern as the animals slowly evolve from fully marine fishes to land-walking amphibians through 50 million years of evolution over successive generations.
8) Your "Jehova created everything directly when he wanted to" can neither predict such a pattern or explain why its rational to expect such a pattern. He could have created land animals with fully developed features along with all the fishes directly 450 million years ago. All the fishes, all the reptiles, all the amphibians, all the birds could have been created at the same time, fully modern . He could have created them billions of years ago instead of waiting around for 4 billion years since the formation of earth and populating the earth with nothing but bacteria, amoeba and plankton for the first 3.5 billion years of life.
In your theory there is no reason to expect
i) Simple unicellular prokaryotic life to predate complex multicellular life by a billion years (in evolution this is expected)
ii) Eukaryotic cells to arise after prokaryotic cells by a billion years (in evolution this is expected)
iii) Simplest types of animals like jellyfish and sponge to predate complex animals by 100 million years (in evolution you expect this)
iv) Early forms of invertebrate and vertebrate life look very primitive and less well developed than later types in the Cambrian era (in evolution you expect this)
v) Fish fossils to show distinct stages of sequential development of modern features over a 100 million year period like from jawless varieties to jaws, from bony plates to scales, from no internal skeleton to internal skeleton (the flexible vertebra), from early lobe like fins to more aerodynamic ray like fins. (evolution predicts this)
vi) For vertebrate animals to appear on land much much after the emergence of fish and the earliest of them showing a clear sequence of intermediate forms between certain fish and the first amphibians.(evolution predicts this)
vii) For amphibians to arise first, then reptiles, then mammals, then dinosaurs and then birds with clear sequence of forms intermediate between each of these group just at the time point of emergence.(evolution predicts this)
It appears Jehovah went into an enormous amount of trouble trying to time and finetune his designed animals so that it looks like they arose by evolution. It seems his only goals were to make evolution appear to be correct rather than good design of perfected animals! Thousands and thousands of very different animals filled the same ecological niche over the eons again and again before becoming extinct and replaced by new forms living almost the exact same way. What is this? A perfect omnipotent, omniscient designer can't decide what he wants and changing each and every animal type every 2-3 million years or so for the last 600 million years? Building and rebuilding species, moving the continents and oceans around again and again, building and eroding mountains again and again and again eon after eon of pointless mindless transformations and re-transformations. This is design?? Wow!! He is psychotic or something? You belittle God by hanging onto such a regressive view of creation.
An young earth view is even more ridiculous. Not only does this go against all geological, physical and astronomical evidence, it assumes the absurdity of believing all animals ancient and modern (ammonites to T-rex to pterosaurs to lions to rabbits to eagles to icthysaurs to otters to...) living side by side! It cannot explain why 90% of sedimentary rocks that also happen to be consistently dated to be the oldest has not a single animal fossil, and then suddenly the last 10% have animals, but not in random assemblages but in graded order of more primitive and alien looking to more advanced and modern looking, with distinct blocks of similar species in various layers. It cannot explain the pattern above whatsoever if all species were living together. And where are the drowned humans in the Cambrian, Ordovician or Triassic rocks? Can humans swim better than ammonites or icthyosaurs? This is just a taste of the absurd. There are many many more.
More will follow.
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