And I consider ID more promising, more logical, and more plausible.
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I am not conflating the two,
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If you don't know whether or not life can come from non-life, then you don't have a theory of evolution. I understand that this is a difficult subject for you and science, but it is a necessary evil.
The origins of life are irrelevant when discussing the diversity of life with someone who is scientifically literate. You conflate the two with regards to your horse before the cart comments - instead of addressing the diversity claims you instead attempt to switch topics to origin claims. This is because as a proponent of ID who asserts that evolution is constrained by 'kinds', origins and diversity are intrinsically the same, that diversity of life is achieved through the way in which they originated - they were constructed differently. For an ID proponent conflation is the default position.
I am merely saying that before you can have macroevolution you have to have a sustantiated theory for organic evolution, and right now you don't have either.
Ummm what do you mean by a 'substantiated theory for organic evolution'? We have identified it, demonstrated it, refined it. We have it it is called 'Evolution'.
Ok, so you wouldn't recognize the elephant as the different kind of animal. That is ok, I won't hold it against you. Look, as I keep stressing, an animal has never been observed producing a different kind of animal. Point blank, period. I don't care how long you claim it takes. It will never happen. If every living creature on earth disappear EXCEPT dogs, a million years later..you will still have dogs. There is no reason to think that a non-dog would arise from this population of dogs. None. Yet you are telling me that the dogs of today came from non-dogs of yesterday. Ridiculous.
No, I recognize each of the animals as different to the other, the elephant being the most different of those particular ones you mentioned. The problem is that you are attempting to rely on a subconscious pattern seeking element to create a psuedo grouping to attempt to select some of the organisms and not others, however there is no merit to this approach in terms of actual biology. If you cannot define 'kind' then using it is not merely pointless, it becomes an obstacle to reasoned discussion - because a defined term which relates to biological categorization can be tested within the domain of scientific inquiry and this is something proponents of 'kind' limitations on evolution are keen to avoid - because every time they have done so their definition gets roundly proven to be without merit.
And yes, were dogs to be the only creatures left on earth, there would only be two options, either they were able to evolve to the altered conditions or they were not. If they are not able to evolve then they will all die out without offspring after perhaps a few dozen generations due to a lack of food. If they were able to evolve then one day there would be other organisms that they would produce, which we would no longer call dogs. They would of course start out as carnivorous mammals with canine denture, but the resulting environment would produce new opportunities for development (as well as threats). Most importantly they would need to be able to produce at least some subset of progeny that were omnivores/herbivores (which seems far more likely than developing the ability to photosynthesize), because the carcasses of all the other animals will eventually expire and therefore they will need a means by which to obtain sustenance other than through meat eating (though carnivores will remain) as well as a host of other adaptations to the new circumstances.
And there isn't any evidence of transitional phrases either. Why is there not? And how and who is doing the dating?
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So you show me a drawing of something that looks like a rat/rabbit and tell me that this based on what you believe to be a transitional fossil? Ha. What about the other transitional fossils in between? Do you have any drawings of that? What bout transitional fossils of other organisms, and the steps in between? With all of these changes over the course of hundreds upon hundreds of millions of years, we should have wayyyy more transitional fossils than not. But we dont. Hmmm.
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Everyone knows that transitional fossils don't exist. If transitional fossils exists, we should have a transitional fossil record for every living organism today. We should have the transitional fossil of bears, elephants, cats, dogs, everything. We don't. And not only that, but how do you know whether or not that whatever you think MAY be a transitional fossil, may actually be a fossil of a specific but different kind of animal that died out? What determines the distinction?
Then 'everyone' is wrong; because they do not know what they are talking about. We
do have samples for a huge number of transitions, the problem that you are simply not grasping the fact that all fossils are ALL transitional fossils every single one. The difference is that for some of them, them adhere to a set of characteristics that we have attached a label to and thus we dont really call them transitional fossils anymore. We have
far more transitional than non-transitional fossils. There are some transitions about which we have significantly FEWER samples - it is in such transitions that our evidence is far thinner (one of these transitions was the presence of a lower jaw - a sample of which was only recently discovered), but to claim we do not have transitional fossils - let alone that they do not exist? Is manifestly incorrect and simply indicates a gross level of unawareness about the subject. The backrooms in museums are FILLED with transitional fossils (as are universities etc), they are simply seldom on display (because everyone wants to see TRex, not Trex's ancestor who had much longer fore arms, a smaller head, was several feet shorter etc)
Scientists of various fields do the dating of fossils using a huge range of different dating methods depending on what is being dated, the dating methods do however remain consistent.
Right, we can only take them as fossils of animals that died. Nothing more, nothing less. To say anything beyond that is adding your presupposition to the evidence.
Actually, we can identify what it is made of, lets say it was a bone and thus calcium; we can look at the structure of the teeth and notice that they are all sharp teeth made for tearing, so we can make inferences about it's diet, we can also look for similarities with other organisms - such as a finding what looks like a human skull we can say hey you know that was a human, and since it is the remains of a human, just like WE have DNA, so too does it, hopefully sufficiently well preserved so that we can find out more about them. A fossil is more than simply a lump of 'stuff' about which we cannot learn more - your desire to remain unaware of what those fossils might teach us notwithstanding.
Which is my point, video or up close and personal, I would making an observation based on what I see.
DNA is a genetical blueprint. How do you get specified information like this from a trial and error process?
DNA is a record of those organisms which had up until that point (where the organism died) succeeded, it is a record of success - this is a hierarchical family portrait (gross simplification) of those traits that were passed on.
Well, why can we observe one and not the other?
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Then I will ask again, why can we observe one and not the other??
Time is the one and only factor which prevents it - microorganisms live a VERY short time, therefore, we can observe changes over many many many generations with relative ease (where six months of research might include hundreds of thousands of generations) - on the other hand with macro organisms they live a LOT longer, therefore observing multiple generations takes an extremely long time.
EDIT: played with the ordering a bit to attempt to remove redundancies where the same content is brought up repeatedly. Also to make for a more logical flow