Originally posted by RJHinds
Then you are really referring to Occum's Razor and I already responded to that on another tread with the following:

You forget that Occam's razor is only a guide and not foolproof. It can mislead you into believing a lie.

http://www.yesiknowthat.com/uncanny-world-of-occams-razor/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP3MEeyL73E

The Instructor

I know Occam's razor has its limitations, but it is the only method for eliminating your stupid theory if I'm not going to challenge your time scales. With what you insist on any phenomenon can be explained away by God willing it, which is predictively useless, gods being notoriously temperamental.

In your earlier post you claimed that there is no evidence for macro-evolution. This is patently false, there are nuclear mechanisms to enforce speciation which have been decoded from DNA. There is a continuous fossil record in which species can be linked together. There is DNA evidence of ancestral relationships between species. There is the way we can see more than 6,000 light years across space. Your position crumbles to dust and ashes.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I know Occam's razor has its limitations, but it is the only method for eliminating your stupid theory if I'm not going to challenge your time scales. With what you insist on any phenomenon can be explained away by God willing it, which is predictively useless, gods being notoriously temperamental.

In your earlier post you claimed that there i ...[text shortened]... e can see more than 6,000 light years across space. Your position crumbles to dust and ashes.

I am not talking about speciation, so your claim that my claim is patently false is patently false. Your points are irrelevant to my points, because I am talking about EVIL-LUTION.

The Instructor

Originally posted by RJHinds
I am not talking about speciation, so your claim that my claim is patently false is patently false. Your points are irrelevant to my points, because I am talking about EVIL-LUTION.

The Instructor

Which of course means you are talking about nothing. Evolution is real, your fairy tales are just that, fairy tales for the weak minded.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Which of course means you are talking about nothing. Evolution is real, your fairy tales are just that, fairy tales for the weak minded.

However, Evil-lution is the fairy tale for the atheist evolutionists, who believe God was not needed as a Creator.

The Instructor

Originally posted by RJHinds
However, Evil-lution is the fairy tale for the atheist evolutionists, who believe God was not needed as a Creator.

The Instructor

Maybe a god was the creator but it for absolute sure it wasn't your so-called bible god, your god of vanity, your god of vindictiveness, your god of death.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Maybe a god was the creator but it for absolute sure it wasn't your so-called bible god, your god of vanity, your god of vindictiveness, your god of death.

I see Him as the God of life.

The Instructor

Originally posted by RJHinds
I see Him as the God of life.

The Instructor

That would be your cognitive dissonance talking. Totally ignoring the millions of religious deaths that have happened in the past few hundred years. Where was your god when all that death happened, eh?

Sounds an awful lot like either A, no such god, or B, this god of yours doesn't give a shyte what happens to humans.

Originally posted by sonhouse
That would be your cognitive dissonance talking. Totally ignoring the millions of religious deaths that have happened in the past few hundred years. Where was your god when all that death happened, eh?

Sounds an awful lot like either A, no such god, or B, this god of yours doesn't give a shyte what happens to humans.

My God died by crucifixion to save my soul. So during that period of time you are referring to, He has been in Heaven preparing a mansion for me.

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Glory be to God! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The Instructor

Originally posted by RJHinds
My God died by crucifixion to save my soul. So during that period of time you are referring to, He has been in Heaven preparing a mansion for me.

HalleluYah !!! Praise the LORD! Glory be to God! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The Instructor

Oh, that explains EVERYTHING. Lets see. Millions upon millions die from religious war, wars over land, disease and all the while your god ignores these millions of deaths being busy building a mansion just for RJ Hinds. Go figure.

Originally posted by DeepThought
There is a continuous fossil record in which species can be linked together.

The purpose of Punctuated Equilibrium is to explain why there is not a continuous fossil record. If the fossil record is continuous, then why do we need a theory to explain why it's not continuous?

If someday we manage to unearth those elusive transitional species (and there must be far more of them than the ones we know about) then science will still need PE to explain the sudden emergence of new and more complex body types that showed up during the Cambrium period. The sudden appearance of increased complexity and body types needs a theory like punctuated equilibrium to maintain an illusion of many intermediate species that must have existed for evolution to maintain its credibility.


I have my own theory. I think maybe God is just messing with our minds, and has hidden these transitional species from us. If he created us, then he obviously has a sense of humor.

Originally posted by lemon lime
The purpose of Punctuated Equilibrium is to explain why there is not a continuous fossil record. If the fossil record is continuous, then why do we need a theory to explain why it's not continuous?

If someday we manage to unearth those elusive transitional species (and there must be far more of them than the ones we know about) then scien ...[text shortened]... transitional species from us. If he created us, then he obviously has a sense of humor.

The purpose of Punctuated Equilibrium is to explain why there is not a continuous fossil record. If the fossil record is continuous, then why do we need a theory to explain why it's not continuous?

There are two possible meaning you can give to the word “continuous” in this context that I believe has just lead to major confusion in this conversation.
A “continuous record” could mean, like you mean here, seeing continuous gradual change in each species from one species to the next in the fossil record. But that is not what DeepThought meant. He meant a continuous series of species where one species, or a close relative of it, was likely to be the ancestor of the next species seen in the fossil record.

If someday we manage to unearth those elusive transitional species …..

We have already unearthed them. Science has moved on since, now you should. (There is also missing links that exist today).

Punctuated Equilibrium is a proven scientific fact -the fossil record proves it.

Originally posted by humy

The purpose of Punctuated Equilibrium is to explain why there is not a continuous fossil record. If the fossil record is continuous, then why do we need a theory to explain why it's not continuous?

There are two possible meaning you can give to the word “continuous” in this context that I believe has just lead to major confusion in this c ...[text shortened]... ist today).

Punctuated Equilibrium is a proven scientific fact -the fossil record proves it.

Science must move on, even without evidence. Some scientists just declare there are no missing links in the fossil record and close their eyes and minds to that possibility. Others are just content in believing the missing link fossils will eventually be found or else they have been destroyed or were never preserved by nature.

It is all in the interest of preserving the science fiction myth of evil-lution.

The instructor

Originally posted by humy

The purpose of Punctuated Equilibrium is to explain why there is not a continuous fossil record. If the fossil record is continuous, then why do we need a theory to explain why it's not continuous?

There are two possible meaning you can give to the word “continuous” in this context that I believe has just lead to major confusion in this c ...[text shortened]... ist today).

Punctuated Equilibrium is a proven scientific fact -the fossil record proves it.

I see no reason as to why there should be no violins on Television!

Originally posted by RJHinds
Science must move on, even without evidence. Some scientists just declare there are no missing links in the fossil record and close their eyes and minds to that possibility. Others are just content in believing the missing link fossils will eventually be found or else they have been destroyed or were never preserved by nature.

It is all in the interest of preserving the science fiction myth of evil-lution.

The instructor

Science must move on, even without evidence.

NO. Science can only move on WITH evidence. That is how science works.
We have many missing links and we just keep finding more. THAT is the evidence that has allowed science to move on.

Admittedly, we are using the term “missing link” here rather loosely to refer to “transitional forms" which, strictly speaking, is not quite exactly the same thing. But the distinction is pretty academic for this discussion so examples of transitional forms would do just nicely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossil

Evidence for just a few transitional forms, esp with the rest of the evidence, would prove macroevolution beyond any rational doubt. We obviously don't need (nor expect) to find every transitional form that has ever existed to prove macroevolution! -that would be absurd. Just a few examples, like the ones we already have, would do just fine.

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/otherprehistoriclife/tp/10-Missing-Links-In-Vertebrate-Evolution.htm

“...As useful as it is, the phrase "missing link" is misleading in at least two ways. First, most of the transitional forms in vertebrate evolution aren't missing, but in fact have been conclusively identified in the fossil record. Second, it's impossible to pick out a single, definitive "missing link" from the broad continuum of evolution; for example, first there were theropod dinosaurs, then a large array of bird-like theropods, and only then what we consider true birds. With that said, here are 10 so-called missing links that help fill in the story of vertebrate evolution. ...”

-it then lists 10 examples of transitional forms. See the evidence there for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

http://ncse.com/book/export/html/2201
“...Fossils with transitional morphology are not rare. Fossils illustrating the gradual origin of humans, horses, rhinos, whales, seacows, mammals, birds, tetrapods, and various major Cambrian "phyla" have been discovered and are well-known to scientists. ...”

Originally posted by RJHinds
Science must move on, even without evidence. Some scientists just declare there are no missing links in the fossil record and close their eyes and minds to that possibility. Others are just content in believing the missing link fossils will eventually be found or else they have been destroyed or were never preserved by nature.

It is all in the interest of preserving the science fiction myth of evil-lution.

The instructor

I assume that first sentence was irony. Clearly science can't move on with a total absence of evidence, but since we are talking about gaps in the fossil record this is not the case. The fossil record is incomplete, which we can only address by looking for fossils, but there is enough data to build a narrative, for example the extinction events are quite clear. The various missing links and so forth aren't the death knell for the theory you seem to think they are.