Darwinism? Tcha... You Know What? Uh-uh!

[catatonic]

Look Hobbit, I'm agreeing with you. I already drew the line in the sand at the evolution of one useful protein, let alone 40.

But if one useful protein can evolve, we have to discredit the possibility of there ever being a reason for the 40 to have ever been useful elsewhere and for them to ever have had a reason to come together. Too much for me and many Ph.D.s. Not an ample genetic record of cells to go on. Just the majority opinion.

All these Ph.D.s see the same argument from the same angle fully. If some still think its possible and some don't, the simplest explanation is that the ones that do are more creative. There is a lot creative people see that is too complicated for a paper. You should never accuse a scientist of being in denial, just their use of the scientific method. I'm done editing.

 

[MissileMan]

The whole thing is also in complete defiance of Occum's Razor. These 'scientists' remind of the 'astronomers' from the early Rennaissance who kept trying to plot the paths of planets and stars under the assumption that the Earth was stationary, when throwing out that assumption is so much easier. Darwinists start with the assumption that everything must have happened randomly without any outside intervention, failing to account for the fact that the solution comes much more easily if you throw out that assumption, which is, as yet, unproven and even unsupported.

Firstly, I think you really need to reread Occum's Razor. Secondly, by your reasoning, we can throw out every scientific law and replace it with "because god makes it happen"? That's the logic of a child.

 

[catatonic]

"because God made it happen" is a different concept, about refusal to inquire.

Refusal to inquire is not an explanation or hypothesis. It is nonchalance.

If you are explaining why your God makes something happen, that is not refusal to inquire, just as questioning your God's existence or definability is inquiry by another.

 

[bobn]

The fossil record shows life has changed over time. Constantly changing and shifting over millions of years. The earliest fossils of any type of organism do not represent modern types. Modern mammals for example didn't exist 50 million years ago. Where do the skeptics of evolution suggest they came from?

The earliest plants are without flowers or pollen. The fossil record shows a consistant pattern of simple life diversifying and becoming more complex over time. Even the often quoted cambrian explosion involved only the appearance of small aquatic simple creatures. No birds, reptiles or mammals or amphibeans appeared at all. Such creatures appear much later, and initially in primitive form. The earliest birds and the earliest mammals are all primitive. The earliest plants are primitive. The earliest humans are primitive. The fossil record just screams evolution.

Even well known IDists like Behe accept common descent of species. They may deny that subsystems like the flagellum could have evolved but they do not deny that humans descended from apes for example.

 

[bobn]

And if there's currently no evidence that the proteins serve other purposes, you're using Darwinism as a means of proving Darwinism, commonly known as circular logic.

Noone is using the flagellum as proof of darwinism. And it isn't a disproof of Darwinism either. It has not been proven that the flagellum can definitely not be reached gradually via single steps. Contrary to what you might have heard irreducibly complex systems can be built up one step at a time. To prove that the flagellum could not have evolved via sucessive modifications requires every possible pathway to be disproven. That is a monumental task and has not been done.

The whole thing is also in complete defiance of Occum's Razor.

Occam's Razor doesn't mean taking the most simplest explaination possible. Otherwise the answer to everything in science would be the simplest answer possible: "it's magic"

Darwinists start with the assumption that everything must have happened randomly without any outside intervention, failing to account for the fact that the solution comes much more easily if you throw out that assumption, which is, as yet, unproven and even unsupported.

The scientific method prevents untestable explainations being put forward such as "outside intervention did it". The reason being is that anything can be explained in that way, and it never helps arrive at the actual explaination.

For example take the orbit of planets. When we couldn't explain it would it have sufficed to simply say "outside intervention did it"? How would entertaining that explaination help arrive at the actual explaination we know today? No, Science has to throw out such untestable explainations. It's not that they are wrong, it's that they are irrelevant and redundant to the process of obtaining knowledge.

 

[catatonic]

Noone is using the flagellum as proof of darwinism. And it isn't a disproof of Darwinism either. It has not been proven that the flagellum can definitely not be reached gradually via single steps. Contrary to what you might have heard irreducibly complex systems can be built up one step at a time. To prove that the flagellum could not have evolved via sucessive modifications requires every possible pathway to be disproven. That is a monumental task and has not been done.



Occam's Razor doesn't mean taking the most simplest explaination possible. Otherwise the answer to everything in science would be the simplest answer possible: "it's magic"



The scientific method prevents untestable explainations being put forward such as "outside intervention did it". The reason being is that anything can be explained in that way, and it never helps arrive at the actual explaination.

For example take the orbit of planets. When we couldn't explain it would it have sufficed to simply say "outside intervention did it"? How would entertaining that explaination help arrive at the actual explaination we know today? No, Science has to throw out such untestable explainations. It's not that they are wrong, it's that they are irrelevant and redundant to the process of obtaining knowledge.

Finally, after 44 posts, somebody agreed with anything I said! My guess is by post 120, it will happen again. Excellent post; I endorse this post.

 

[Hobbit]

The fossil record shows life has changed over time. Constantly changing and shifting over millions of years. The earliest fossils of any type of organism do not represent modern types. Modern mammals for example didn't exist 50 million years ago. Where do the skeptics of evolution suggest they came from?

The earliest plants are without flowers or pollen. The fossil record shows a consistant pattern of simple life diversifying and becoming more complex over time. Even the often quoted cambrian explosion involved only the appearance of small aquatic simple creatures. No birds, reptiles or mammals or amphibeans appeared at all. Such creatures appear much later, and initially in primitive form. The earliest birds and the earliest mammals are all primitive. The earliest plants are primitive. The earliest humans are primitive. The fossil record just screams evolution.

Even well known IDists like Behe accept common descent of species. They may deny that subsystems like the flagellum could have evolved but they do not deny that humans descended from apes for example.

Actually, the fossil record does not indicate that beings changed over time. The fossil record shows a species seemingly appearing out of thin air, with no transitional phases from other species, remaining relatively unchanged for millions of years, then vanishing without a trace (except, of course, the dead ones left behind to fossilize).

As for changes from one species to the next getting more efficient over time, there's other examples of that, too. Ever read a rough draft and a final copy. The writer didn't randomly change words, throwing out the crappy builds until one worked. He picked and chose what he thought would work. Then there's that pesky thing about not a single transitional fossil having ever been found, and the even more improbable aspect of evolution, that we have never found a single fossil of mother nature's failures, which should outnumber transitional fossils by at least 100 to one. Where are the birds with solid bones that are too heavy to fly? Where's the bat without sonar capabilities? What about a animals with eyes in useless places, or appendages that serve no purpose. There should be millions of those things lying around, but there are NONE.

Then there's the thing about these 'earliest humans.' Where are they? Have we found a single fossil of something somewhere between ape and man? The only one they ever found was one skull in Sussex, and that turned out to be a massive fabrication.

Then there's the Cambrian Explosion. If you're so sure that there's no way it goes in the face of evolution, then how come most evolutionists seem to be? First off, let's get to how ludicrous it is that the things evolved so quickly. All pre-Cambrian fossils are nothing but sponges and anenomes. How does a frickin sponge turn into a vertabrate fish with a hinged jaw, scales, gills, a nervous system, fully formed eyes, a full digestive system, and even air bladders, well, at all, but much less in the space of a mere, at most, 10 million years? Geez, crocodiles have been around longer than that, and they still die when flipped on their backs, have stubby legs, and cannot open their jaws if there's even a little pressure holding them shut.

Then there's this. The only time any government school teacher ever brought up the Cambrian Explosion was when a WA state teacher showed his class the articles about Chinese paleantologists finding a huge stratum of pre-Cambrian fossils. Three evolutionist organizations and the ACLU sued the school on the basis that this list of recent archeological finds violates the seperation of church and state. Why? It's nothing but fossils, and the fossil record supports evolution, right? What are they afraid of?

Then there's Dr. Richard Sternberg. He used to work at the Smithsonian institute. He has Ph.D.s in both molecular and theoretical biology (quite some credentials, huh?). In 2004, he published an article by Stephen Meyer, who has a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science from Cambridge (also good credentials). This article was published in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, an obscure scientific journal. Before publishing, it was peer reviewed by three renowned scientists and was found to comply with all proper editorial proceedings. As soon as it was exposed to both readers of the journal, Sternburg, for, not writing, but merely PUBLISHING the article, was banished form the Smithsonian. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel went to investigate, which the National Center for Science Education immediately objected to. Not only were they fanatically opposed to any evidence against evolution, they were fanatically opposed to being investigated for firing a guy over it. During the investigation, Sternberg was accused of being a Young Earth Creationist, taking bribes to publish the article, and had his religion investigated. He was even accused of having no scientific training whatsoever, but only 'training as an orthodox priest.' Remember...two Ph.D.s, both in biology. The allegations were repeated so often that a collegue had to distribute his resume to remind everybody he had any degrees at all. So, why the cover-up. Why the wild accusation? Even Eugenie Scott, point woman for the NCSE in this attack, never offered any evidence that the article was false, but merely cited the fact that it went against the grain of evolution by saying "...if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it argues for zealotry." Well, where I come from, something that walks and quacks like a duck argues for it being a duck. Again, what was wrong with this article.

It's easy to see why there's a lack of American articles countering evolution. Those that dare go against this...this dogma are excommunicated from the scientific community without a second thought and sued up to their eyebrows, and their employers are sued up to their eyebrows. Hell, if I was a scientist, I might go with the flow just to keep from going bankrupt from legal fees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sternberg
http://www.rsternberg.net/
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_365852.html

Now, throughout this thread, I've cited source after source and given very complex arguments as to why evolution is an overly complex, outlandish theory that is only slightly above scientology on a scale of 'likely to happen,' yet the only arguments I get in return are complicated versions of 'no it isn't.'

I challenge every evolutionist on this board to make a case, based on sceintifically verified FACTS, not conjectures, that support evolution. There's nothing in the fossil record that hasn't been disprove. Lab experiments have fallen flat. Some parts of the fossil record wildly dispute evolution. Everything that has been hailed as 'proof of evolution' has been proven a hoax. Prove me wrong. Please. I'm getting very pissed off seeing paranoid, fanatical, delusional nutcases cling onto a rather unlikely scenario that has far less supporting evidence than Jesus Christ, whom they claim is just a figment of the imagination. It would give me a little more faith in my fellow man to find out that they had, you know, SOMETHING to support what they said.

Last but not least, the bolded statement. No, they don't. They never did, to the best of my knowledge. Only evolutionists believe common descent because there's so little evidence for it. DNA is about the only argument, and it doesn't really prove a whole lot unless you really want it to, because the only way you can believe that DNA proves common descent is if you already believe it's possble for DNA to change over time into the DNA of an entirely different species. Basically, DNA proves evolution is true, given that evolution is true.

 

[MissileMan]

I'm getting very pissed off seeing paranoid, fanatical, delusional nutcases cling onto a rather unlikely scenario that has far less supporting evidence than Jesus Christ, whom they claim is just a figment of the imagination.

How can you argue with a psycho retard who thinks the bible is a science book?

 

[catatonic]

The psycho retard phony cowards are the ones that ask pointless questions like, "If there were aliens who created those aliens?" and then turn around and accuse Hobbit of basing his arguments on the Bible when they had nothing to do with the Bible at all, the Bible being completely nonessential to his message (and mine thus far) which I found very strong (but his flagellum argument just needs a higher threshold of intelligence to see why it's baseless).

 

[Hobbit]

The psycho retard phony cowards are the ones that ask pointless questions like, "If there were aliens who created those aliens?" and then turn around and accuse Hobbit of basing his arguments on the Bible when they had nothing to do with the Bible at all, the Bible being completely nonessential to his message (and mine thus far) which I found very strong (but his flagellum argument just needs a higher threshold of intelligence to see why it's baseless).

Ah, I see what you're saying now. Just took me a while. I still stand by my argument on the eye, though. The flagellum was meant more as an introduction to the scale mutations would have to take to result in something so complex as an eye.

Oh, and Missile, point out a Biblical principal or scripture I used in my arguments and I'll give you a cookie, promise.

 

[Mr.Conley]

The psycho retard phony cowards are the ones that ask pointless questions like, "If there were aliens who created those aliens?"

I don't know why, but there is something I really like about that line.

 

[MissileMan]

The psycho retard phony cowards are the ones that ask pointless questions like, "If there were aliens who created those aliens?" and then turn around and accuse Hobbit of basing his arguments on the Bible when they had nothing to do with the Bible at all, the Bible being completely nonessential to his message (and mine thus far) which I found very strong (but his flagellum argument just needs a higher threshold of intelligence to see why it's baseless).

The question was to ascertain whether you believe all life was the result of creation or just life on this planet. There wasn't anything phony about it, and as yet you haven't answered it.

 

[catatonic]

MissileMan, the answer to your new question is that either there was perpetual intelligent design or else conditions were right for evolution somewhere. But your first question was a smear campaign to try to get me to say anything comes from outside Universe. There is no outside or inside Universe, so every specialized principle is there, like the specialized principle of an alien or human is there, and no further justification for their existence is necessary.

Actually that's not true. We have to address how common aliens are around us. We can derive that the most common things exist at the minimum/maximum limits of symmetry and simplicity. From Synergetics,

http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s01/p6000.html

See also 161.00-174.00

166.00 The prime eternal laws governing design science as thus far accrued to that of the cosmic law of generalized design-science exploration are realizability and relative magnitude of reproducibility, which might be called the law of regenerative design: the relative physical time magnitude of reproducibility is proportional to the order of magnitude of cosmic function generalizability. Because the higher the order of synergetic function generalization, the more embracing and simple its statement; only the highest orders can embracingly satisfy the plurality of low-order interaccommodation conditions.
167.00 There are several corollaries to the prime law of regenerative design durability and amplitude of reproducibility. Corollary A: The simpler, the more enduringly reproducible. Corollary B: The special-case realizations of a given design complex correlate as the more symmetrical, the more reproducible. Corollary C: There being limit cases of optimum symmetry and simplicity, there are simplicities of conceptual realization. The most enduringly reproducible design entities of Universe are those occurring at the min-max limits of simplicity and symmetry.

We know we are relatively near the min-max limits of simplicity and symmetry, which is the more important reason to realize we are a principle there should be a lot of around us and not a little, i.e. aliens coming to earth and not just a couple of aliens per trillion planets.

 

[MissileMan]

MissileMan, the answer to your new question is that either there was perpetual intelligent design or else conditions were right for evolution somewhere. But your first question was a smear campaign to try to get me to say anything comes from outside Universe.

You misinterpret the motive for my question. And with the answer you just gave above(bolded), if it's possible that life might have spontaneously formed someplace else, why not here? On what basis are you forming your opinion that life here on Earth is a product of creation if it's possible that life formed spontaneously?

 

[bobn]

Actually, the fossil record does not indicate that beings changed over time.

Take horses - the earliest horses have 3 toes. Modern horses appear later. That's change. Irrelevant of how they changed, it is clearly change based on previous types. The big point here is that while species appear throughout the fossil record, they don't all appear at the same time and there is an overall order of feature progression. Ie features appear over time and build upon one another. They don't all appear from the beginning.

The history of life has been like a blooming flower - diversity and complexity increases over time from simple and low diverse beginnings.

The fossil record shows a species seemingly appearing out of thin air, with no transitional phases from other species, remaining relatively unchanged for millions of years, then vanishing without a trace (except, of course, the dead ones left behind to fossilize).

On the species level this is largely true (but not strictly true - there are examples of smooth fossil species transitions), but within the higher categories there are lots of transitional phases. Again this is simply due to the fact that there is a pattern of development in the order species appear in. For example the earilest whales in the fossil record are not modern whales. They have hindlimbs and a nose halfway down the face rather than the back of the head (blowhole). Later whales are more like modern whales. The fossil record doesn't tell us how whales changed over time, but it does tell us they did.

As for changes from one species to the next getting more efficient over time, there's other examples of that, too. Ever read a rough draft and a final copy. The writer didn't randomly change words, throwing out the crappy builds until one worked. He picked and chose what he thought would work.

As I pointed out before the explaination of "outside intervention" can be used to explain literally anything so noone should be suprised. "outside intervention" would be compatible with whatever the fossil record looked like. If all species appear in the cambrian then it would be compatible. If all species appear in modern strata it would be compatible. It's a catch-all explaination which makes it untestable. The theory of evolution on the otherhand cannot fit every possible situation. It can only work if the "blooming flower" pattern exists in the fossil record, which coincidently it does. The theory of evolution would break down if modern horse fossils were found in the cambrian for example.

Then there's that pesky thing about not a single transitional fossil having ever been found

By the nature of the progression of development in the fossil record, there are plenty of transitional fossil. On the largest scale we can see amphibeans are transitional between aquatic life and terrestrial life and coincidentally they happen to lie right before the earliest terrestrial life. On smaller scales are fossils like Archeopteryx, Australopithecines, Tiktaalik, Cynognathus, Pakicetus to name some more popular ones. Using your rought copy example we - The 2nd rough copy will be transitional between the 1st rough copy and the final copy.

and the even more improbable aspect of evolution, that we have never found a single fossil of mother nature's failures, which should outnumber transitional fossils by at least 100 to one.

Define what a failure is. Were the dinosaurs a failure?

Where are the birds with solid bones that are too heavy to fly?

Evolution doesn't predict that such a thing should exist.

Where's the bat without sonar capabilities?

In this case I am sure early bats had no sonar. It fits the pattern I was talking about of features appearing over time. The reason we don't find them is because we hardly find any bat fossils whatsoever. Some creatures don't fossilize well. I am sure one will eventually be found though. A paralell example: early whale fossils show that early whales did not have sonar.

What about a animals with eyes in useless places or appendages that serve no purpose.

They don't live to reproduce and make more copies. Therefore there are very few of them compared to animals that do live to reproduce and do copy themselves many times.

Then there's the thing about these 'earliest humans.' Where are they? Have we found a single fossil of something somewhere between ape and man?

Yes many fossils with features between ape and man have been found. If you like the rough copy of humans had many ape characteristics.

Then there's the Cambrian Explosion. If you're so sure that there's no way it goes in the face of evolution, then how come most evolutionists seem to be?

I don't think they are. It's a complicated period and challenging problem to explain, but it's not a problem that goes in the face of evolution.

First off, let's get to how ludicrous it is that the things evolved so quickly.

I don't find 10 million years ludicrously fast.

All pre-Cambrian fossils are nothing but sponges and anenomes.

There are wormlike and jellyfish like creatures too and some traces of more complex multi-celled organisms.

How does a frickin sponge turn into a vertabrate fish with a hinged jaw, scales, gills, a nervous system, fully formed eyes, a full digestive system, and even air bladders, well, at all, but much less in the space of a mere, at most, 10 million years?

I don't see a problem with the time frame myself.

Jawed fish do not appear until about 100 million years after the cambrian explosion and certainly they did not evolve from sponges. Most of the features you mention arose in lifeforms that predate fish: Nervous system, fully formed eyes, digestive system and gills appear before vertebrate fish. For example gills appear in lobopods in the cambrian long before the first vertebrate fish. You have to ask yourself - what is the most primitive fish-like creature possible? isn't it simply a worm-like creature with finlike appendages that can swim? I can easily see how there could be gradual steps up to the first fish. I don't see a brickwall of impossibility.

Geez, crocodiles have been around longer than that, and they still die when flipped on their backs, have stubby legs, and cannot open their jaws if there's even a little pressure holding them shut.

If 99.9% of crocodiles in the wild never get flipped on their backs, and 99.9% of crocodiles in the wild encounter anything holding their jaws shut, then there will be no selective pressure to counteract these events. Therefore no wonder crocodiles are suceptible to both things. It makes total sense. The idea that more time = more resistant to things is not what evolution proposes. Development occurs due to reasons that make sense, not simply because time passes.

I challenge every evolutionist on this board to make a case, based on sceintifically verified FACTS, not conjectures, that support evolution.

That is what I plan on continuing doing. Im not going to spit out a huge essay. I will make the case for evolution slowly post by post. So far I have stuck with explaining the history of life known from the fossil record and it's characteristics. I have pointed out 3 things:

1) Life on earth started off with very little diversity and has diversified over time.

2) New species have appeared over time, not all at once from the beginning.

3) New species have not appeared randomly - there is a pattern or order of development of new features that build on top of one another.

This is the basis for understanding what any explaination for the history of life on earth has to explain.

Last but not least, the bolded statement. No, they don't. They never did, to the best of my knowledge. Only evolutionists believe common descent because there's so little evidence for it.

For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutinoary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world.
Michael J. Behe - "Darwin's Black Box" page 7

 

[catatonic]

You misinterpret the motive for my question. And with the answer you just gave above(bolded), if it's possible that life might have spontaneously formed someplace else, why not here? On what basis are you forming your opinion that life here on Earth is a product of creation if it's possible that life formed spontaneously?

I thought I posted already. The reason I don't discredit spontaneous generation everywhere at every time goes like this.

The poincare conjecture is that if you have a 4-dimensional sphere you can take a rubber band and shrink it on the surface without breaking it or the sphere. This was extraordinary difficult and a mathematician earned a million dollars for it.
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Poincare_Conjecture/
You cannot disprove it until you know everything about rubber bands shrinking on 4-dimensional spheres. There is an awful lot to know. If there is that much to know to disprove a property of a sphere, how much more is there to know to disprove a property of a cell, that by the general philosophy of evolution there can never be any potential thing that a cell could have to allow flagellum to form. Once you answer that, try asking are the rules everywhere at every time prohibitive of spontaneous regeneration. You'd be insane to try, which is why I won't discredit there ever being spontaneous generation of life, which would require I know all there is to know to disprove.

The basis of my argument is that all the arguments given here for alien design are based on what we accept about the rules on earth, allowing for discussion and decision in terms of what's rational. We can say that around here, it was intelligent design. We have to know everyhting there is to know to say whether this is always the case.

In support of there being differences in far different times and far different places, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2006-04-23-mu-change_x.htm?csp=15

 

[Hobbit]

Well explained, bobn, however, there are still a few holes.

First off, the early horses thing doesn't really fly, as the famous horse progression shown in science museums was later disprove through carbon dating, which places them completely out of order.

And I've never seen a transiitional species. Nobody has. Can you give me a link to an example? Sure, you can cite amphibians as evidence of transition from fish to lizard, but that's a huge leap from fish to amphibian to lizard, with many biological differences between the three. For example, there has still never been a fish with primitive legs or lungs found. There was once a fossil of a feathered lizard found, but the fossil record shows it went extinct long before the existence of birds.

As for the failures, there should be thousands of fossils out there with mutations that simply didn't work. Sure, there wouldn't be many of any one mutation, but there should be SOMETHING, like an animal with a primitive eye on its foot or something.

 

[Harmageddon]

You have no idea.

Actually, there are loads of transitional species, therefore people that consider the theory of evolution (to actually describe the transition of life forms as an adaptation to environmental challenges) to be true are quite willing to open their eyes to the facts of life.

Early horses that fly? I don't know, I am a biologist and have never heard of them. Although the transitional horse species are well documented: first small horses with five toes, later species that are somewhat larger and walk on three toes (and still show rudimentary fourth and fifth toe) and even later species that are larger still and walk one one toe (a hoof) but still show the bones for the second and third - up onto the present day horse.

Walking fish are aplenty - several of them are alive today. Coelocanth is one of the top of my head, that is alive in Africa and who's fossil remains have been found in stonebeds of 400 million years ago. It walks on its fins, that show bonestructures like those of reptiles and mammals - with an elbow and upper and lower arm-bones.

Then there are the fish that may move on land for a while (slickjumpers - dunno if that's their name in English) and also walk on their front fins while doing so.

Then there are the "lung-fish", alive today as well and 100s of millions of years old. They are fish, with lungs!

But if you don't know they exist, because you never hear of their existence from likeminded people that turn a blind eye to the evidence, well. . . it amazes me that this mainstream scientific knowledge does not get around to the common man. That's something that needs a lot of work still.

Anyways, the above is just of the top of my head..if you like, I can get a more extensive listing with correct names, although that may take a week or so, since I am busy getting my masters degree in summer.

 

[catatonic]

I think the 47th post at the top of this page by Hobbit was still very strong.

As for the eye itself, no matter how complicated you get, it requires the disproof of all possibilities to work if you want to discount the eye, not a waving the hand at no method present. Like a small camcorder is harder to put together than an old typewriter, the more intricate you get in the abscence of other factors the more the line slides from evolution to ID. Just the same, I think the human eye particularly is a strong point of evolution, because I can imagine every aspect I know about it coming from previous life, a motivation for survival, and gradual adaptation.

 

[MissileMan]

First off, the early horses thing doesn't really fly, as the famous horse progression shown in science museums was later disprove through carbon dating, which places them completely out of order.

Have a link for that whopper?

And I've never seen a transiitional species. Nobody has. Can you give me a link to an example? Sure, you can cite amphibians as evidence of transition from fish to lizard, but that's a huge leap from fish to amphibian to lizard, with many biological differences between the three. For example, there has still never been a fish with primitive legs or lungs found. There was once a fossil of a feathered lizard found, but the fossil record shows it went extinct long before the existence of birds.

The walking catfish comes to mind

As for the failures, there should be thousands of fossils out there with mutations that simply didn't work. Sure, there wouldn't be many of any one mutation, but there should be SOMETHING, like an animal with a primitive eye on its foot or something.

Most unsuccessful mutations probably wound up as someone's dinner, hence a reason they were unsuccessful.