Modern man like footprints found, evolution theory in doubt.

[shmogie]

This is from a 1979 article from field museum of natural history bulletin. The amount of evidence for transitional fossils have increased so much in the last 38 years that no paleontologist today says such things... as would be evident in any review paper on the topic that is more recent.



Again quite an old quote. Elridge and Gould were trying to establish the idea that evolutionary theory predicts a punctuated pattern of evolution rather than a seamless change of one form to another. Literally thousands of transitional fossils are known, but arising of features occurs in a jerky modular way. This basic argument for punctuated equilibrium has been confirmed by the observation of gene complexes and how they evolve under natural selection. Once again one needs to look at post 2000 books and review articles to see how patterns predicted by evolutionary genetics are confirmed by transitional fossils.



Things have changed in 160 years. You know what? ask for transitional forms between any animal group (with bones or shells) and I will provide you with several.




Another quote from 1980. This is Gould in 1983 himself demolishing your claims.

Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" 1994

The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The "hammer" and "anvil" bones of the mammalian ear are descendants of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint—one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape�s of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features—increasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larder body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?


What has changed since then.. a veritable flood of transitional fossils making such things no longer rare.

You should read entire books (preferably up to date) from evolutionary biologists instead of collecting old misleading quotes from creationist websites.

Actually, I do read books, including those of evolutionists. Mammal like reptiles, are still reptiles, are they not ? The bi-ped is a bi-ped, not a human, or is it ? If it isn't then the flow of variant fossils should exist stage by stage to humans. Do their fossils exist ? I will research this "flood" of transitional species you speak of. Did the techniques of fossil collectors expand so exponentially that in a relatively short period of time they were able to find this flood, when it hadn't been found over a century after Darwin ?

 

[Jose Fly]

No diversion tactic, I will in time.

We'll see.

How can a quotation from an expert on a particular subject "mis represent their views" ?

Seriously? I just showed you with the Gould quote. The quote you posted from him was taken from him arguing to his colleagues that they should view patterns in the fossil record with the same understanding of speciation as population geneticists, rather than through Darwinian gradualism. You tried to cast it as him saying that transitional fossils don't exist. But even after I showed you Gould directly stating that creationists doing that sort of thing was either through stupidity or deceit, and making it very clear that he believed transitionals do exist, you refused to acknowledge that.

Another example is your Darwin quote, where you only included the bit where he posed the question about why transitional fossils aren't found everywhere, but you left out the parts where he answers that question. That's how Darwin wrote.....he would state potential objections to his ideas and then answer them. You only quoted the objections and deliberately left out the answers.

If you truly are interested in accuracy, you should check all your quotes against The Quote Mine Project.

 

[Jose Fly]

sorry !, continuing; upon you to present their views
Sorry, continuing; upon you to demonstrate what their real views are

???????????

The fact remains, transitional fossils exist in abundance. Not only that, they exist in a manner that is entirely consistent with evolutionary common descent, and are not found in a manner that would contradict it. You can either address that fact or you can try and dodge it. Your choice.

 

[sayak83]

Actually, I do read books, including those of evolutionists. Mammal like reptiles, are still reptiles, are they not ? The bi-ped is a bi-ped, not a human, or is it ? If it isn't then the flow of variant fossils should exist stage by stage to humans. Do their fossils exist ? I will research this "flood" of transitional species you speak of. Did the techniques of fossil collectors expand so exponentially that in a relatively short period of time they were able to find this flood, when it hadn't been found over a century after Darwin ?

There are only two ways to describe the transitional form, mammal like reptiles or reptile like mammals. Both can be used depending on the character set. Saying they are still reptiles or mammals is very disingenuous.

Apes like bonobos already walk on two legs sometimes. Early hominins are characterized by greater adaptations to bipedilaty meaning the proportion of time spent on two legs increased. They still spent time on four legs, especially on trees.

Yes it did. Also more brilliant people came into paleontology due to Jurassic Park effect. Assistive sciences like biology, ecology, climatology and geology has been completely revolutionized (genetics, conservation science, plate tectonics, climate change science etc.). Current teams contain 20-30 scientists of diverse disciplines to extract multidimensional data from fossil beds.

 

[dad1]

Posting your Emotional reactions to reading my post is NOT a reply. Please use your diary for that purpose. What I demonstrated in the post is quite simple

1) Scientists predicted the existence, shape and the characteristics of the cosmic microwave background radiation 20 years BEFORE it was discovered and it's characteristics could be observed.

Creation was fast and left the (what is perceived on earth as) radiation. In this case, imagining the universe popped out from nothing was close to what would have existed after being created.

Looking at the prophesies/predictions which fail from cosmology, one cannot latch onto a few that seem close as some evidence that the false prophets know what they are talking about. In SN1987a they did not predict the rings or know about them, nor the correct kind of star that 'blew' etc. In the CMB I notice that they did not predict a giant cold spot in the CMB either!

"In the first year of data recorded by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus was found to be cooler than the surrounding area.[4] Subsequently, using the data gathered by WMAP over 3 years, the statistical significance of such a large, cool region was estimated. The probability of finding a deviation at least as high in Gaussian simulations was found to be 1.85%.[5] Thus it appears unlikely, but not impossible, that the cold spot was generated by the standard mechanism of quantum fluctuations during cosmological inflation, which in most inflationary models gives rise to Gaussian statistics. The cold spot may also, as suggested in the references above, be a signal of non-Gaussian primordial fluctuations.

Some authors called into question the statistical significance of this cold spot.[6]
-----
Although large voids are known in the universe, a void would have to be exceptionally vast to explain the cold spot, perhaps 1,000 times larger in volume than expected typical voids. It would be 6 billion–10 billion light-years away and nearly one billion light-years across, and would be perhaps even more improbable to occur in the large-scale structure than the WMAP cold spot would be in the primordial CMB.
---
A 2017 preprint [19] reported surveys showing no evidence that associated voids in the line of sight could have caused the CMB Cold Spot and concluded that it may instead have a primordial origin."

CMB cold spot - Wikipedia

Then of course we have something like 95% of the universe being dark unknown stuff according to science.



A 2017 preprint [19] reported surveys showing no evidence that associated voids in the line of sight could have caused the CMB Cold Spot and concluded that it may instead have a primordial origin.

2) Scientists predicted the ratio of elements in the universe 30 years before it could measured.

Look, if a toddler predicts his mom will walk into the room soon, it is not like his mom popped into existence. The kid had experiences to draw from. Science looked at hydrogen and the things that existed, and then made some models of how it could have came to exist. They used creation to model! In no way does this mean the universe popped out of nowhere. It just means that the creation of the universe left some traces.

4) These predictions were made using the Big Bang theory and uniformity of laws of physics through time.

Looking at some physical bits of creation we can model to some degree how that would have come about from some coming into existence of the universe. That doesn't mean you are right. Nor does it mean that you know all the factors or that there are also things out there at work you cannot see. Nor does it mean that how atoms work in the area of the solar system at this time is how they work in the far universe. The whole thing is a lot deeper than you know.

5) The confirmation of these predictions decades after they were proposed demonstrates the truth of Big Bang Theory and the uniformity of the laws of physics through time.

False. If no time existed as we know it in the far universe than what we see here would NOT represent anything over time. It simply represents the fact that we see atoms and light and all things operate and exist IN time here a certain way. Nor does it mean that the time you think it too the universe to be created is correct. Nor the time in an expansion. Etc. Simply seeing leftover radiation from creation does not meam the big bang happened at all.

6) Your "theory", in contrast, predicts nothing and tells nothing about what new features or phenomena to expect as we continue to study the universe.

I do not have a theory. Nor do I need to pretend man knows much about the actual wonder of creation. We are looking at your religion here.

So, on the one hand we have a scientific theory of the reality that predicts new and interesting features of the universe and the world that are subsequently verified by observatiobs; and on the other hand we have an ad hoc, wild, after the fact contortions to somehow fit a fanatically held belief in an obsolete myth.

Trying to claim credit for creation is knavish. You predict dark matter/energy etc. In other words, you look at creation, or the bits we can see, and invent things to explain most things we can't see!

"Laws of physics were different!" And making up new fantastical laws in the past every day to desperately try to explain observations that show the myth is wrong.

On earth in the far past, yes, probably. As far as space goes, you know not how far any star is, how big anything is, or much else. Therefore you do not know how much time it represents.

"The past vanished without a trace!" To explain why no evidence or trace exists of this supposedly different realm of the past.

No. The earth and even people were still here, thank you very much. You see, when God changes forces and nature, He does it just right. Yes, we now lived less than 1/10 of what we used to in the former nature. Yes, there were differences in the world, and how things grew and worked.

"Humans who did not look like humans and left no evidence whatsoever of their presence."

Left no fossils...probably not. How we looked in a different nature with regards to being maybe shorter or taller, having a lttle different feet, or whatever..we don't know.

To explain why no modern human remains have ever been found from that "past" or to claim demonstrably non human footprints were actually "humans" from that past!

I don't know what they are, and have asked you to prove they were not human. You failed, so we don't know. See anyone proving they are not? I don't. Why is that?

The time for science inventing foolish godless fables and keeping us in the dark ages is over.

 

[dad1]

While it's pointless, it easy to demonstrate that ancient trees did not grow in a day, and moreover, the sun worked the same way as today.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...reveals_sunspot_activity_in_the_early_Permian

In Germany, there exists a petrified forest full of fossil coniferous tree trunks that had been buried under a volcanic eruption. Volcanic minerals seeped into the wood, mineralizing it and making it easy to use radioactive dating to set the date of all the trees to 290 million years ago. So, according to your theory, these trees are supposed to grow in a day while in our theory, they will grow over the many years the same way conifers grow today. Is there a way to determine which is true? Yes. One simply has to look if they have tree rings of conifers.

I said trees could grow in weeks, not a day. Now if a tree grew in say, a month, and had 1000 rings, then those rings obviously would not represent years or the seasons as they do in today's trees. As for radioactive decay dates, they are just a religious assigning of dates to isotope ratios, based on the belief that the past state was the same.

Tree Rings - What they Are and Why they Vary

Each tree ring marks a line between the dark late wood that grew at the end of the previous year and the relatively pale early wood that grew at the start of this year. One annual ring is composed of a ring of early wood and a ring of late wood.

• When a tree grows quickly, the xylem cells are large with thin walls. This early wood or springwood is the lighter-colored part of a tree ring.
• In late summer, growth slows; the walls of the xylem cells are thicker. This late wood or summerwood is the darker-colored part of a tree ring.

Correct. Today, with slow growth, we see that pattern. In the former nature, rings represent something else, obviously. Whether parts of a day, or a month, etc. So maybe in the 'cool of the day' back then, we might get a few rings forming. Who knows? You are trying to hold the past to today's rules.
When conditions encourage growth, a tree adds extra

tissue and produces a thick ring. In a discouraging year, growth is slowed and the tree produces a thin ring.

Today...yes. Now in the former nature we may have had a tree near a fount of the deep for example, that got regular changes of conditions in a day.

Thus, if trees grow in a day, we would expect one or two enormous tree rings or even none. But if these ancient trees grows seasonally over many years, we would see tree rings similar to conifers of today. And what do we find?

As pointed out, the changes in a month/week, or day would not leave what you claim. Silly strawman argument.

Tree rings in 290 million old trees just like today!

The dates are wrong, so maybe the tree was actually growing, say, 5300 years ago. The 77 rings in your tree had variations, that could have been caused by variations in growth pattern in trees from daily or weekly changes.

As the paper says, 43 best preserved trunk specimens were selected from this petrified forest and the width of 1917 rings were measured. Individual trunks had up to 77 rings in them. Not only the rings showed correlated growth in the trees (a good year had thicker rings in all trees while a dry year had thinner rings in all trees showing higher or lower yearly growths)

Trees in an area in the former nature obviously would all be impacted by the changes there. If the cool of the day caused a variation, for example, it would be seen in many trees! The issue is not that many trees had their rings affected, but by what they were affected by, and in what nature!

but the observed patter of decadal sunspot cycle that cause variations in growth pattern in trees from year to year was also observed. 6 complete sunspot cycle was determined over a 79 year period of growth. The average sun cycle was determined to be 10.6 years which is in excellent agreement with today's 11 year period.

Of course in today's nature things that affect slow growing trees would ALSO leave patterns.

Now, got any tough ones? Ha.

 

[dad1]

"Must means conformance with current knowledge. Using that knowledge, the phenomena can be accounted for.

U-235 decays more rapidly than U-238, so its proportion decreases over time.

You know, your wild contortions to support your old superstition are hugely amusing.\

In this state, yes. But how much of the stuff was already here at creation? How much was involved in whatever processes used to happen in the different state past? All we see is the present nature. Here, we see decay. Here we see decay at a certain observed rate. That does not mean decay existed in the former nature, nor that the stuff NOW produced by decay was then produced that way!

 

[dad1]

You're making a believer out of me.

From Monte Python's Holy Grail, scene 7:

Sir Bedevere: "And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped."

King Arthur: "This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes"​

Explain to us how science can be used to prevent earthquakes!? Or even predict them?​

 

[metis]

Unlike those hanger on, untrained, unstudied evolutionists who are terrified to consider any possible flaw in their faith.

"Faith" is what theists have, not scientists.

BTW, what Darwin stated on the issue 150+ years ago still applies today, according to these prominent evolutionists.

Much of what he believed, yes, because they been confirmed, but certainly not all. We don't worship Darwin.

 

[SkepticThinker]

So then, faith in science, no matter it fails, is your faith, no problem. You project to the future and believe science will explain the currently unexplained, and then you accept that as a promissory note, already paid, that it is explained. Well, Christ said faith could move mountains, so I guess you are entitled to your very unique faith

Science has given us all the answers we currently have. Religion has given us none. I'll stick with science.

I'm fine with accepting that I don't know everything there is to know and waiting for the answers, rather than just making something up. Equating religious "faith" with the "faith" that the self-correcting method of testing, observing, repeating, publishing, integrating information from multiple different fields of inquiry compiled by multiple independent groups of experts over large periods of time will reveal knowledge about the universe we live in, is silly to me, as they have nothing in common.

 

[leibowde84]

If it isn't then the flow of variant fossils should exist stage by stage to humans.

There are thousands of transitional fossils that have been found since 1973. But, why would you assume that all of the transitional fossils between bi-peds and humans should have been found? Is a perfect fossil record the only evidence you would accept when it comes to human evolution?

 

[leibowde84]

Explain to us how science can be used to prevent earthquakes!? Or even predict them?​

Obviously, science is not yet able to prevent seismic activity like earthquakes or volcanoes. But, science has made significant progress in predicting and preparing for them.

Predicting and preparing for earthquakes (from BBC - GCSE Bitesize: Predicting and preparing for earthquakes)
Earthquakes are not as easy to predict as volcanic eruptions. However, there are still some ways of monitoring the chances of an earthquake:

• Laser beams can be used to detect plate movement.
• A seismometer is used to pick up the vibrations in the Earth's crust. An increase in vibrations may indicate a possible earthquake.
• Radon gas escapes from cracks in the Earth's crust. Levels of radon gas can be monitored - a sudden increase may suggest an earthquake.

 

[shmogie]

There are thousands of transitional fossils that have been found since 1973. But, why would you assume that all of the transitional fossils between bi-peds and humans should have been found? Is a perfect fossil record the only evidence you would accept when it comes to human evolution?

Thousands huh ? The literature doesn't support that. If you have a creature decidedly non human, that you say is an ancestor of humans, yet you cannot show how this ancestry exists, why should I make the same assumptions that you do ?

 

[leibowde84]

In this state, yes. But how much of the stuff was already here at creation? How much was involved in whatever processes used to happen in the different state past? All we see is the present nature. Here, we see decay. Here we see decay at a certain observed rate. That does not mean decay existed in the former nature, nor that the stuff NOW produced by decay was then produced that way!

Do you have any evidence that carbon decayed at a different rate at any other time throughout history? Or, is this pure speculation?

Since we have been measuring the decay rate of carbon, we have seen that it is constant. So, that provides evidence that the decay rate has been the same throughout history. But, I am open to any evidence suggesting otherwise (beyond the weak argument that we weren't there millions of years ago).

 

[leibowde84]

Thousands huh ? The literature doesn't support that. If you have a creature decidedly non human, that you say is an ancestor of humans, yet you cannot show how this ancestry exists, why should I make the same assumptions that you do ?

They can and do show how the ancestry exists through genetics.

 

[shmogie]

Obviously, science is not yet able to prevent seismic activity like earthquakes or volcanoes. But, science has made significant progress in predicting and preparing for them.

Predicting and preparing for earthquakes (from BBC - GCSE Bitesize: Predicting and preparing for earthquakes)
Earthquakes are not as easy to predict as volcanic eruptions. However, there are still some ways of monitoring the chances of an earthquake:

• Laser beams can be used to detect plate movement.
• A seismometer is used to pick up the vibrations in the Earth's crust. An increase in vibrations may indicate a possible earthquake.
• Radon gas escapes from cracks in the Earth's crust. Levels of radon gas can be monitored - a sudden increase may suggest an earthquake.

Yep, as one who experienced many earthquakes in So. Cal., science is coming closer to being able to predict them, preventing them ? Not a chance.

 

[shmogie]

They can and do show how the ancestry exists through genetics.

Don't think so

 

[leibowde84]

Yep, as one who experienced many earthquakes in So. Cal., science is coming closer to being able to predict them, preventing them ? Not a chance.

No one knows what the future limits of science will be. But, currently, we aren't close to being able to prevent earthquakes.

 

[leibowde84]

Don't think so

Why not? Have you looked into the evidence?

 

[shmogie]

Science has given us all the answers we currently have. Religion has given us none. I'll stick with science.

I'm fine with accepting that I don't know everything there is to know and waiting for the answers, rather than just making something up. Equating religious "faith" with the "faith" that the self-correcting method of testing, observing, repeating, publishing, integrating information from multiple different fields of inquiry compiled by multiple independent groups of experts over large periods of time will reveal knowledge about the universe we live in, is silly to me, as they have nothing in common.

Yes, that is your hope, your faith, your mantra. The process, though it cannot answer many extremely important questions, is what is important. The process is the crutch that supports the faith. Religion has given no answers ? What are your questions ?