transitional fossils

Originally posted by scottishinnz
You are horrendously dumb if you truly believe that.

When you only have a small amount of data then yes, you are truly guessing. When you have copious amounts of data, as we do, then you can be almost certain that any inferences you make are true. You can then collect more data, as we do, to test those inferences.

What data has the church collected on the subject recently?

If all you are doing is looking at them and saying this one is related
to that one, yes it does not matter your method of assignment is
faulty and is strictly subjective. The argument you seem to be making
is if you have 4 fossils you can be completely wrong when assigning
their relationship with other life forms, but if the method of
assignment is still the same and now you can get it wrong millions of
times over that some how makes your subjective assignments of
relationships some how more accurate! Unless you are using the
broken clock method of getting it right?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
If all you are doing is looking at them and saying this one is related
to that one, yes it does not matter your method of assignment is
faulty and is strictly subjective. The argument you seem to be making
is if you have 4 fossils you can be completely wrong when assigning
their relationship with other life forms, but if the method of
assignment is sti ...[text shortened]... ome how more accurate! Unless you are using the
broken clock method of getting it right?
Kelly

Let's not be vague.

What accusation are you trying to make?

I guess he's saying that if you have a fossil record which shows a clear history of organisms that become, over time, progressively similar to the ones alive today, it still doesn't make sense to theorize that those organisms might in some way be related to each other. Because then you're "assuming a relationship."

Which is silly. The relationship is evidenced by the fossil record itself, in that fossils show a clear pattern of progression. It makes sense to recognize that relationship; it makes much less sense to assume there's no connection, and that all these progressively similar fossils are totally unrelated, and that their patterns of similarities and progression are all just a grand coincidence. To assume that is to ignore the evidence before us.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Let's not be vague.

What accusation are you trying to make?

I"m saying you are wrong.
Kelly

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Let's not be vague.

What accusation are you trying to make?

duplicate post

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Let's not be vague.

What accusation are you trying to make?

duplicate post

Originally posted by KellyJay
I"m saying you are wrong.
Kelly

Then stop making vague insinuations and provide some form of empirical evidence.

Saying "you're wrong" doesn't make me wrong. Only evidence can do that, which you have spectacularly failed to provide, so far.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Then stop making vague insinuations and provide some form of empirical evidence.

Saying "you're wrong" doesn't make me wrong. Only evidence can do that, which you have spectacularly failed to provide, so far.

I gave you my reasons, you can ignore them if you wish.
Kelly

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Then stop making vague insinuations and provide some form of empirical evidence.

Saying "you're wrong" doesn't make me wrong. Only evidence can do that, which you have spectacularly failed to provide, so far.

i have once heard an argument from a theist that sounded like this:

when a baby is made, it gets half characteristics from its mom and half from its dad. no new information is added; just old information combined, unless there is an error which is a mutation and is not beneficial. a snake having two heads is gonna die, it is not gonna evolve into something new. this was interesting to me, so where does the new information come from in evolution, do animals evolve during their lifetimes and change because of the environment or is the theory of evolution claiming that each slow change is during birth? if they are claiming birth, i would say it is wrong.

Originally posted by EcstremeVenom
i have once heard an argument from a theist that sounded like this:

when a baby is made, it gets half characteristics from its mom and half from its dad. no new information is added; just old information combined, unless there is an error which is a mutation and is not beneficial. a snake having two heads is gonna die, it is not gonna evolve into s ...[text shortened]... ming that each slow change is during birth? if they are claiming birth, i would say it is wrong.

To some extent complex organisms - like animals and plants - can change and adapt over the course of an individual generation, but a great deal of the new information in evolution does come from mutation.

Mutations can be beneficial. Most will not be, of course; the organism is complex enough, and the demands of survival are particular enough, that a random change in its biological makeup is likely to hurt the organism's chances for survival instead of helping them. When the change is bad, as it usually is, natural selection will work against it, and the mutation will not be passed on. But there's no reason to expect that mutation won't, given time, produce some changes that are actually helpful; then, natural selection will tend to make those traits dominant.

Obviously this will take a really long time, and sure enough, evolution takes a really long time. It's almost impossible to observe it in complex organisms because it always takes years to go from one generation to the next. But in unicellular organisms we can produce thousands of generations in the course of a single lab experiment, and they demonstrate beneficial mutations all the time. See this page outlining some of them:

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html

Originally posted by darthmix
To some extent complex organisms - like animals and plants - can change and adapt over the course of an individual generation, but a great deal of the new information in evolution does come from mutation.

Mutations can be beneficial. Most will not be, of course; the organism is complex enough, and the demands of survival are particular enough, that a ran ...[text shortened]... e time. See this page outlining some of them:

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html

so it is a creationist lie that they are ALL bad mutations?

It might not be an intentional lie, but it certainly isn't the truth. If mutations are really random, why should they always be bad? Does that make sense to you?

Originally posted by darthmix
It might not be an intentional lie, but it certainly isn't the truth. If mutations are really random, why should they always be bad? Does that make sense to you?

yes it does but i really dont think creationists are the only ones who lie or give wrong information, that is unfair to say that

In general, creationists are not the only people in the world who spread bad information; they just tend to do so disproportionately in arguments about evolution.

Originally posted by darthmix
In general, creationists are not the only people in the world who spread bad information; they just tend to do so disproportionately in arguments about evolution.

so is there such thing as a credible alternative to evolution? or is evolution the only possible theory at this point in time?