Science\'s argument against evolution (Long but interesting read)

Some of you may have heard of it. Many of you have not. Science\'s argument against Darwinism is the subject of "Intelligent Design". Intelligent Design suggests that evolution wasn\'t the random, chaotic process most biologists believe it to be; but indicates the probable existence of a designer who was responsible for the design.

Pieced together from a webpage on the subject
What makes this significant is that Intelligent Design is a phenomenon to be dealt with and studied scientifically rather than a topic left to religion or other pursuits. It\'s a claim that leads directly to the other principal argument made by Intelligent Design adherents: that science as it now is constituted isn\'t adequate to deal with the discovery of intelligent design in nature because science is too closely wed to materialistic and naturalistic interpretations of what nature is.

This is a very revolutionary claim. What\'s at the basis of the argument, says Dembski, is a controversy over "the nature of nature." Dembski finds naturalistic science "impoverished" when it comes to handling intelligent design. How impoverished? Because materialism and naturalism assume that natural explanations will suffice to answer every question that arises in science, and this simply won\'t do when it comes to dealing with the phenomenon of Design.

Intelligent Design does not argue any specific theology. The word \'Designer\' doesn\'t necessarily mean the God of Genesis,(though it doesn\'t exclude Him). "My view is that from the empirical data we have we cannot make affirmation of a deity. It is the possibility [of a deity] that we arrive at." Charles Thaxton explains that it is a "generic design that we talk about in Intelligent Design. When people want to go beyond that, that\'s where their particular views [about God] come in."

What makes the Intelligent Design Movement so revolutionary is that it goes full force against the perceived wisdom of science, and particularly biology. Darwinism pervades every aspect of Western civilization and Darwinists argue that there is no design in nature, none at all that would suggest a designer. Everything in nature, say the Darwinists, is the result of random evolution, with no design that would suggest direction or planning.

Here is how one of the world\'s foremost Darwinists, Oxford University\'s Richard Dawkins, described this worldview in his 1995 book, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, a direct attack on the possibility of design in nature: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

The Darwinian position was put in even starker words by Peter Atkins in his book The Second Law, which appeared in 1984, the same year that Thaxton and his coauthors published The Mystery of Life\'s Origin: "We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the universe."

Michael Behe takes on Darwinism from a different angle. A Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, Behe argues that life at its most fundamental is "irreducibly complex," a phrase he has added to the Intelligent Design debate. To explain what he means by irreducibly complex, Behe talks about a mousetrap, a human construction made up of a base, hammer, spring and holding bar, each of which is needed for the mousetrap to work. Without any one of the aspects, the mousetrap would not be a mousetrap.

Nature, too, has examples of irreducible complexity -- the system in a cell that targets proteins for delivery to subcellular compartments, for example. Almost every one of the components that make up this system is necessary for the system to work. Without one of the components, the proteins are not delivered to their proper destination.

Behe argues that the development of such an elaborate and complex system in Darwinian evolutionary terms by one small step after another simply won\'t do, because during any step prior to all the complex parts working together, the system would be nonfunctional. What is the probability of all those parts that have to work together starting to work together at a given moment? Just as the irreducible complexity of a mousetrap indicates a design that renders the possibility of its parts working together, so the irreducible complexity of the cellular protein-delivery system indicates design.

Behe likes to quote from Darwin himself to show the importance of irreducible complexity when it comes to Darwinian theory. In the Origin of Species Darwin wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." Behe believes that the existence of such a complex organ already has been demonstrated.

Sir Isaac Newton (who died in 1727) wrote, "This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being."

The English divine William Paley who published his Natural Theology in 1802 in which he made his famous argument that if we came upon a watch in a field, we would assume that it was made by intelligence because its various parts are directed toward one aim: the telling of time. (Paley also had much to say about the complexity of the mammalian eye, which seemed to him to indicate design. Darwin, who was equally in awe of the complexity of the human eye, concluded that, despite this complexity, the eye could have evolved small step by small step over time.)

Behe is optimistic about the future of the Intelligent Design Movement: "I don\'t know whether it\'s going to be two years or 20, but that\'s where the data of science is heading," he says. "Scientists sense that something\'s not quite right. There are new ideas we need new definitions for."

Its a long read, so I doubt this gets many replies. Still I want to start a good scientific argument against Darwinism.

And now I banish this thread to obscurity.

Intelligent Design is not a scientific argument.  Intelligent Design is a restructured God of the Gaps argument--whatever we don\'t understand, God Did It.

Intelligent Design has no experimental background, makes no predictions, and, ultimately, is untestable.

ID is effectively saying "We don\'t know how this could have possibly evolved.  Therefore, God Made It." or "Everything\'s balanced so perfectly, there\'s no way it could have evolved by chance.  Therefore, God Made It."

Sure, they\'ll claim that God isn\'t necessarily involved, but the ID hypothesis requires some unknown super-intelligence that left absolutely no evidence behind of its meddling.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/pigliucci1.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/vic_stenger/stealth.pdf
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/science/creationism/behe.html

To make this even longer, here\'s an excerpt from the book: The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. Written by: Stewart Kauffman.

http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/themes.html

A quick Synopsis for those who don\'t want to read it all: The phenomenon we call life life is self organizing, much in the same way non-biological examples such as snowflakes or crystals form their own unique shapes out of seemingly nothing.

Enjoy.

The title of this book, Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, states the book\'s task: To answer the question, What are the sources of the overwhelming and beautiful order which graces the living world? To presume to ask such a question is also to know one must not presume to succeed. Questions such as this must ever be asked anew as each generation comes to perceive new ways of ordering its view of life.

One view, Darwin\'s, captives us all: natural selection and the great branching tree of life, spreading from the major phyla to the minor genera and species, to terminal twigs, to curious humans seeking their place. Darwin and evolutionism stand astride us, whatever the mutterings of creation scientists. But is the view right? Better, is it adequate? I believe it is not. It is not that Darwin is wrong, but that he got hold of only part of the truth. For Darwin\'s answer to the sources of the order we see all around us in overwhelmingly an appear to a single singular force: Natural selection. It is this single-force view which I believe to be inadequate, for it fails to notice, fails to stress, fails to incorporate the possibility that simple and complex systems exhibit order spontaneously. That spontaneous order exists, however, is hardly mysterious. The nonbiological world is replete with examples, and no one would doubt that similar sources of order are available to living things. What is mysterious is the extent of such spontaneous order in life and how such self-ordering may mingle with Darwin\'s mechanism of evolution---natural selection---to permit or, better, to produce what we see.

Biologists have not entirely ignored the spontaneous emergence of order, the occurrence of self-organization. We all know that oil droplets in water manage to be spherical without the benefit of natural selection and that snowflakes assume their evanescent sixfold symmetry for spare physiochemical reasons. But the sheer imponderable complexity of organisms overwhelms us as surely as it did Darwin in his time. We customarily turn to natural selection to render sensible the order we see, but I think the answer to our questions about the origins or order is broader. We already have some inkling of the kinds of spontaneous order which may bear on biological evolution, and I believe we must make the most profound assessment of such self-organization. We must look in any direction that seems profitable because whatever spontaneous may abound is available for evolution\'s continuing uses.

What makes the present stage of biological science so extraordinary is that molecular biology is driving us to the innermost reaches of the cell\'s ultimate mechanisms, complexity, and capacity to evolve. At the very same time, work in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology is revealing how far- reaching the powers of self-organization can be. These advances hold implications for the origin of life itself and for the origins of order in the ontogeny of each organism. One major theme of this book is an effort to link recent work in molecular biology with these new insights into spontaneous order in complex systems. Union of the two streams of insight promises to transform our understanding. The order inherent in the busy complexity within the cell may be largely self-organized and spontaneous rather than the consequence of natural selection alone.

Yet our task is not only to explore the sources or order which may lie available to evolution. We must also integrate such knowledge with the basic insight offered by Darwin. Natural selection, whatever our doubts in detailed cases, is surely a preeminent force in evolution. Therefore, to combine the themes of self-organization and selection, we must expand evolutionary theory so that it stands on a broader foundation and then raise a new edifice. That edifice has at least three tiers:

We must delineate the spontaneous sources of order, the self- organized properties of simple and complex systems which provide the inherent order evolution has to work with ab initio and always.

We must understand how such self-ordered properties permit, enable, and limit the efficacy of natural selection. We must see organisms in a new light, as the balance found, the collaboration achieved, when natural selection acts to further mold order which preexists. In short, we must integrate the fact that selection is not the sole source of order in organisms.

We must understand which properties of complex living systems confer on the systems their capacities to adapt. For Darwin simply assumed that the accumulation of advantageous mutations was possible, and yet the capacity to do so is not self-evident. Some systems can hardly adapt at all. Indeed, we must investigate the possibility that selection itself achieves the kinds of organisms which can adapt successfully. Therefore, we must also wonder whether there may be characteristic features so deeply requisite for the capacity to adapt in a coevolutionary process that their presence in organisms is itself a lawlike consequence of selection operating on complex coevolving systems.

While these points hardly seem contentious, it is no secret that we have, as yet, no theory which embodies them. Physics has its examples of remarkable order, but no use for natural selection. Biologists are secretly aware that selection must be working on systems which to one degree or another exhibit order by themselves. D\'Arcy Thompson (1942) told us so with eloquence years ago, but we have not troubled to think through the implications. How strange, yet therefore how inviting, that we may one day bring ourselves to see life in a new light.

The major parts of the book discuss the following topics.

The introduction, Chapter 1, outlines our contemporary view of organisms, order, and evolution. Here we have been persuaded by Monod\'s (1971) evocative phrase, "Evolution is chance caught on the wing." And we are equally persuaded by Jacob\'s (1983) view that evolution "tinkers together contraptions." Here broods our sense of organisms as ultimately accidental and evolution as an essentially historical science. In this view, the order in organisms results from selection sifting unexpected useful accidents and marshaling them into improbable forms. In this view, the great universals of biology---the genetic code, the structure of metabolism, and others---are to be seen as frozen accidents, present in all organisms only by virtue of shared descent. The quiet sense that spontaneous order is everywhere present is itself not central to this view. Hence it is not stressed, not investigated, not integrated.

The first part of the book, Chapters 2 through 6, examines the power and limits of selection when acting on complex systems exhibiting spontaneous order, explores our first examples of self-organization, and proposes that the evolutionary marriage of self-organization and selection is itself governed by law: Selection achieves and maintains complex systems poised on the boundary, or edge, between order and chaos. These systems are best able to coordinate complex tasks and evolve in a complex environment. The typical, or generic, properties of such poised systems emerge as potential ahistorical universals in biology.

None can doubt Darwin\'s main idea. If we are to consider the implications of spontaneous order, we must certainly do so in the context of natural selection, since biology without it is unthinkable. Therefore, we must understand how selection interacts with systems which have their own spontaneously ordered properties. At a minimum, we must wonder whether selection in sufficiently powerful to obviate any inherent order in life\'s building blocks. If so, the order seen might reflect selection\'s dictates alone. Thus Chapters 2 to 4 consider the character of adaptive evolution under strong natural selection on mountainous "fitness landscapes," with high mountain tops representing peaks of fitness and ridges and deep valleys representing low fitness. We shall in fact find critical limits to me power of selection: As the entities under selection become progressively more complex, selection becomes less able to avoid the typical features of those systems. Consequently, should such complex systems exhibit spontaneous order, that order can shine through not because of selection, but despite it. Some of the order in organisms may reflect not selection\'s success, but its future.

Continued

Much of the discussion in Chapters 2 to 4 focuses on adaptation in sequence spaces, such as among possible DNA or protein sequences, where we can conceive of evolution as carrying out adaptive walks toward peaks that represent how well proteins perform specific catalytic or ligand binding tasks. Consideration of the evolution of proteins able to carry out new catalytic functions, in turn, leads to the abstract concept of a catalytic task space. Among the implications of such a space is that about 100 million roughed-in enzymes might constitute a universal enzymatic toolbox able to catalyze almost any reaction. The immune repertoire of about 100 million may already be a first example of such a universal set. This possibility is not merely abstract, for Chapter 4 leads us toward practical implications as well. It is now possible to use genetic-engineering techniques to generate extremely large number of random or quasi-random DNA sequences, hence very large numbers of random or quasi-random RNA sequences and quasi-random proteins. Thus it is possible to explore sequence spaces for the first time. I believe this exploration will lead in the coming decades to what might be called "Applied Molecular Evolution" with very great medical and industrial implications, such as rapid evolution of new drugs, vaccines, biosensors, and catalysts.

Chapter 5 seeks the principles of construction in "parallel-processing" integrated systems of elements that allow the systems to adapt their behavior in a complex environment. We find two themes: First, the emergence of profound spontaneous order. Second, a bold hypothesis that the target of selection is a characteristic type of adaptive system poised between order and chaos. The unexpected spontaneous order is this: Vast interlinked networks of elements behave in three broad regimes---ordered, chaotic, and complex regime on the frontier between order and chaos. The spontaneous order of the ordered regime foretells much of the order seen in aspects of developmental biology. The bold hypothesis states construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt optimally through accumulation of useful mutations, even in a coevolutionary context where an adaptive move by one "player" distorts the fitnesses and the fitness landscapes of the coevolving partners. Ordered systems, particularly those near the edge of chaos, have the needed properties.

In Chapter 6, we see that the same construction requirements find echos at higher levels, such as whole ecosystems. Here the problem is to understand how such systems are coupled so that members coevolve successfully and how selection itself may achieve such coupling. Again, such ecosystems can behave in three broad regimes---ordered, complex, and chaotic. Again, remarkably, coevolving systems may optimize their capacity to coevolve by mutually attaining the edge of chaos.

The second and third parts of the book discuss other major examples of powerful self-ordering. In each case, the spontaneous order appears so impressive that it would be shortsighted to ignore the possibility that much of the order we see in the biological world reflects inherent order.

In the second part, Chapters 7 to 10, I discuss the origin of life. It requires no more words than this phrase to remember that we do not now know how life may have started. Any discussion is at best a body of ideas. The central problem is this: How hard is it to obtain a self-reproducing system of complex organic molecules, capable of a metabolism coordinating the flow of small molecules and energy needed for reproduction and capable of further evolution? Contrary to all our expectations, the answer, I think, is that it may be surprisingly easy. To state it another way, I want to suggest that we can think of the origin of life as an expected emergent collective property of the modestly complex mixture of catalytic polymers, such as proteins or catalytic RNA, which catalyze one another\'s formation. I believe that the origin of life was not an enormously improbable event, but law-like and governed by new principles of self-organization in complex webs of catalysts. Such a view has many implications. Among them, the template- replicating properties of DNA and RNA are not essential to life itself (although these properties are now essential to our life). The fundamental order lies deeper, the routes to life are broader.

Further, I suspect that the same principles of self-organization apply to the emergence of a protometabolism. I suggest that the formation of a connected web of metabolic transformations arises almost inevitably in a sufficiently complex system of organicmolecules and polymer catalysts. This view implies that, from the outset, life possessed a certain inalienable holism. It also suggests that almost any metabolic web, were life to evolve again, would have a very similar statistical structure. Thus I find myself wondering if the web structure of a metabolism may reflect not the contingent consequences of this particular history of life, but some underlying ordering principles in biology.

These ideas are generalized in Chapter 10 to a new class of "random grammar" models which exhibit functional integration and transformation in coevolving systems, ranging from prebiotic chemical systems with protoorganisms to the emergence of mutualism and antagonism between simple organisms to similar features of economic and cultural systems. Grammar models are new testbeds for the locus of law in deeply historical sciences such as biology.

The third part, Chapters 11 to 14, examines the "genetic program" which controls cell differentiation during development of the adult from the fertilized ovum, and the machinery which yields ordered morphologies. The main intent is to suggest that many highly ordered features of ontogeny are not the hard-won achievements of selection, but largely the expected self- organized behaviors of these complex genetic regulatory systems.

The problem of cell differentiation, the focus of Chapters 11 to 13, is one of the two most basic issues in developmental biology. Different cell types---nerve, muscle, liver parenchymal---arise and differentiate from earlier cell types during development and, ultimately, in a human, form several hundred cell types. Each cell in a human\'s body contains essentially the same genetic instructions as all other cells. Those instructions include the structural genes coding for aobut 100 000 different proteins. Cell types differ because different subsets of genes are "active" in the different cell types. The activation and repression of genes is itself controlled by an elaborate regulatory network in which the products of some genes switch other genes on or off. More generally, expression of gene activity is controlled at a variety of levels, ranging from the gene itself to the ultimate protein product. It is this web of regulatory circuitry which orchestrates the genetic system into coherent order. That circuitry may comprise thousands of molecularly distinct interconnections. In evolution, the very circuitry is persistently "scrambled" by various kinds of mutations, as is the "logic" of the resulting developmental program.

In Chatpers 11 to 13, I try to show that such properties as the existence of distinct cell types, the homeostatic stability of cell types, the number of cell types in an organism, the similarity in gene expression patterns in different cell types, the fact that development from the fertilized egg is organized around branching pathways of cell differentiation, and many other aspects of differentiation are all consequences of properties of self- organization so profoundly immanent in complex regulatory networks that selection cannot avoid that order. All aspects of differentiation appear to be properties of complex parallel-processing systems lying in the ordered regime. These properties may therefore reflect quasi-universal features of organisms due not to selection alone, but also to the spontaneous order of the systems on which selection has been privileged to act.

Chapter 14 treads D\'Arcy Thompson\'s ground and considers the second fundamental problem in developmental biology: morphology. The actual morphologies of organisms must also be viewed as a collaboration between the self-ordered properties of physicochemical systems together with the action of selection. Oil droplets are spherical in water because that is the lowest energy state. The membrane of a cell, a bilipid structure, forms spherical closed surfaces because that is its lowest energy state. Other aspects of spatial order in organisms reflect dissipative structures rather like whirlpools, which require a continuous flow of matter and energy to maintain the form. Thus the genome\'s capacity to generate a form must depend on very many physicochemical processes constituting a panoply of developmental mechanisms beyond the sheer capacity of the genome to coordinate the synthesis of specific RNA and protein molecules in time and space. Morphology is a marriage of underlying laws of form and the agency of selection. The task is to find the laws and hallow the marriage.

I should make it clear that there are many fundamental problems in evolution and development which I have made no attempt to discuss. Most notably, the study of evolution has focused and will continue to focus on analysis of branching phylogenies, with related debates about the tempo and mode of evolution and the roles of natural selection and drift in the evolutionary process. In the best sense, this tradition studies this history of life. My aim in this book, nowhere in opposition to the familiar tradition, is to examine some new directions in which the occurrence of spontaneous order underpins this history of life.

I should also stress that, while the book is finished, it is not a finished book. Some of the subjects are familiar and can be discussed with a modest sense of completion. Others, however, constitute new areas of thought and investigation. Premises and conclusions stand open to criticism. If usual, I hope they are open to improvement.

On that same note:

Some(not all) of the evolutionist\'s theories have no experimental background, make no predictions, and, ultimately, are untestable.

There is no way to scientifically prove evolution which is why it is a "theory". Just like Intelligent Design.

Things like the golden mean(ratio) and the complexity of life forms make the odds against life just happening as a function of chaos staggering. Impossible? No. Improbable? I believe so.

I don\'t expect many people to agree with this theory because to do so would require an almost complete paradigm shift and we know how much people hate change. I hate to be cliche but think outside the box for a little bit.

The main difference between self-organzing theory of life and Intelligent Design from what I\'ve read, is that SOTheory states that the formation of life from simple protines into complex and diverse creatures is a natural property of the universe.. a law.. (albiet unproven) much like gravity or reletivity. The very laws of the universe lean towards the creation of life. This bodes very well for people looking for life on other planets. Intelligen Design cannot answer "where" life came from like the SOTheory, and it uses complexity to infer that there is some higher order or power directing it.

The basic idea behind the studies of Joseph Mastropaolo, Ph.D.
Mathematically speaking impossibility is known as a 1 in 10^150 chance.(Law of small probability)

The probability of evolving one molecule of one protein is a 1 in 10^75 chance, that does not satisfy the criterion of the law of small probability (one chance in 10^150). So in theory it is possible for one molecule of protein to have been spontaneously created.

However, the simultaneous availability of two molecules of one protein does satisfy the criterion(meaning it would be impossible) and even if, by some freak occurance, it did happen; they would be far from the necessary amount to create a living cell.

For a minimal cell, 60,000 proteins of 100 different configurations would be needed. Take the following into account.

• All of these raw materials had to be evolved at the same time
• They could not have been more complex on average to evolve than the iso-1-cytochrome c molecule
• These proteins had to be stacked at the cell\'s construction site

If you take these things into account then we can make an incredibly low estimate of what the chances would be to evolve that first cell. The probability is one chance in more than 10^4,478,296, a number that numbs the mind because it has 4,478,296 zeros. If we consider one chance in 10^150 as the standard for impossible, then the evolution of the first cell is more than 10^4,478,146 times more impossible in probability than that standard.

Reproduction can be called a regularity because billions of people have witnessed billions of new individuals arising that way, and in no other way, for thousands of years. The origin of life was a unique event and certainly not a regularity. Therefore, according to mathematical logicians, the only possibilities left are that life either was generated by chance or by deliberate design. The standard for impossible events eliminated evolution so the only remaining possibility is that life was designed into existence. The probability of the correctness of this conclusion is the inverse of the probability that eliminated evolution, that is, 10^4,478,296 chances to one.

A scientific breakdown on the subject of Intelligent Design.

Hopefully it is understandable.

That is, of course, unless Self Organizing property of life proves to be untrue. Life, in all it\'s form and splender, may be just another property of the universe.. akin to such forces such as gravity, energy, and momentum. It would be interesting to find a planet with the exact same climate and terrain as the earth, and start the process all over again to see if life arises on that planet in the same forms it did on earth of if it would be radically different.

The overview of the book which I posted was written in 1993. I\'ll see if I can find some more up to date links and see if the theory has changed over this time or has been dismissed totally by contrary evidence.

EDIT: I found this link which may be interesting to some people. It\'s basically a discussion on Koffman\'s book: At Home in the Universe. One particularly interesting factoid is that the theory of Self Organization as it pertains to life has been backed up by actual labratory results. While it is not direct proof that theory is true, results most certainly support it.

http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho32.htm

Oddly, the theory of Self Organization actually supports Clowd\'s claims. Well, not presicely. He believes that god formed man and animals with his own hands from dirt and dust.. all at the same time.. SO Theory states that through the chaos, there IS a higher order to our being here. We BELONG here.. we were made of the earth by the forces of the universe.. and it was not by chance.

I like this theory because it pacifies both my religeous creationist tendacies and the drive for the answers to also be scientifically plausable. By making creation a property of the universe, you trace it\'s orgin back to the creation of the universe. Of course, no-one knows what caused the Big Bang... weither it be god or a natural force. That is an answer left to be revealed another day.

Originally posted by SonyFan


Oddly, the theory of Self Organization actually supports Clowd\'s claims. Well, not presicely. He believes that god formed man and animals with his own hands from dirt and dust.. all at the same time.. SO Theory states that through the chaos, there IS a higher order to our being here. We BELONG here.. we were made of the earth by the forces of the universe.. and it was not by chance.

 

I dont believe God made man the same time as the animals,  the animals were first, then man.

I believe that you get the large variety of life from breeding,  just how humans have gotten different sizes and colors and looks,  animals have done the same.  But they remain to their kind.  The fossil record shows complex life appearing in large quantities in short periods of time,  not long periods.

All spieces fall in a category (kingdom, phylum, etc)  there isnt one that belongs in more then 1.

EDIT:  BTW the fossil record is basically complete,  and no incomplete,  or skeletons showing limbs forming have been found.  I can elaborate in my next post if you want.

All spieces fall in a category (kingdom, phylum, etc) there isnt one that belongs in more then 1. - Clowd

Well, that\'s funny, because I can list two right off the top of my head.

1. Spiney Echindna

2. Duckbill Platypus

These two animals are quite unique in they are both considered mammals (Feed their young with milk they produce) and they lay eggs... something no other mammal does.. yet Insects/Fish/Reptiles/Birds do.

Heh, and lets not forget those loveable Dinosaurs who roamed the earth many millions of years ago who exibit traits found in both Reptiles and Birds.

So really, your argument should state that SOME creatures seem to spontaniously appear while others have been shown to clearly be in a transition from one kingdom, class, genus, whatever, into another.

Modern archeology has only been around for the past 200 or so years.. you can\'t possibly expect us to find missing links to all creatures in all times. The conditions must also be right to facilitate the formation of fossils... and I\'m sure there\'s been a great many species that have thrived upon this earth which have absolutely no evidence left behind due to everything from the climate they lived in to scavengers which spread the remains. More recent creatures have been discovered, and again.. if you\'d simply look in the fossil record you\'d make some remarkable discoveries. Just look at the changes proto-man took to become modern man.. from Lucy to Einstein.

BTW: You concede that you can make a new -breed- of animal by simply mating them correct? Take a Jack Russel Terrier, and breed it to be smaller, more lean, and increasingly photogenic eyes, and given enough time (several hundred thousand years), enough selective breeding, and eventually you\'ll end up with a Cat. (After all, Cats and Dogs DO share a common ancestor)

BTW the fossil record is basically complete - Clowd

Yes, please do elaborate.. and provide links if you\'d bothered to pull that from an actual website rather than your a$$. Reminds me of the guy who closed the patent office back in the 1920\'s because "There was nothing new for mankind to discover". :rolleyes:

1. Spiney Echindna

2. Duckbill Platypus

They may resemble,  but they are NOT in 2 categories.  Theres more to belonging in another category then just laying eggs and feeding young with milk.  You also forgot forget the mass differences the two have.

Once again,  you may say traits have been found,  but the fossil record is complete,  and there arent incomplete skeletons,  or skeletons forming limbs.  Its impossible for evolution to exist if there is not fossils of incomplete skeletons, organs.

Dinosaurs may have bones that resemble birds,  but the point is,  it cant be proven.  The fossil record doesnt prove it.

You think youll end up with a cat after breeding dogs for several hundred years? No,  that dont happen.  The fossil record proves it dont by not showing ANY evidence of it happening.

Modern archeology has been around for 200 years and you cant expect to find everything?  They found what you claim 200 million year old dinosaur bones.  Im sure they would find something evolving along the timeline.

Theres more to belonging in another category then just laying eggs and feeding young with milk. You also forgot forget the mass differences the two have. - Clowd

And you are correct, which is why they are considered Mammals. However they are the ONLY mammals which lay eggs, a trait NOT found in any other mammal species, it\'s a staple of every other philus(?). It\'s mammilian enough to be considered a Mammal, yet is not wholly mammilian since it lays eggs. It\'s on the tail end of a transistion from one type of creature to another.

Its impossible for evolution to exist if there is not fossils of incomplete skeletons, organs. - Clowd

Incomplete skeletons are found all the time, and you will not find fossils of individual organs since they decay far to fast to leave an impression in the rock that forms around them. WTF are you even trying to say here? Nonsence...

Once again, you may say traits have been found, but the fossil record is complete, and there arent incomplete skeletons, or skeletons forming limbs. - Clowd

The fossil record is NOT complete.. not by a long shot.. and I\'ll provide a link below. As for skeletons forming limbs, what exactly are you looking for? A pre-historic 9mm movie of a creature spontaniously sprouting a fifth leg? These changes take place gradually, slowly, over time. Look at the diagrams of the bone structures found in fossilized fish compaired to animals which lived later.. and you\'ll clearly see how the bones of the fin slowly.. piece by piece.. move, grow, fuse.. and eventually form into legs. It was posted in the "Thread III" thread by shockwaves, I believe.

The fossil record proves it dont by not showing ANY evidence of it happening. - Clowd

Actually, if you\'d do a bit of actual research into the fossil record, you\'ll find that they are related... and both came from the same species of animal.

Modern archeology has been around for 200 years and you cant expect to find everything? They found what you claim 200 million year old dinosaur bones. Im sure they would find something evolving along the timeline. - Clowd

No you can\'t, and the link below explains exactly why.

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/completeness.html


Oh, and may I ask.. where is your souce? You have STILL yet to provide even one, save the bible, and you won\'t even reveal which verision you\'re pulling this "truth" from.

Originally posted by SonyFan


Oh, and may I ask.. where is your souce? You have STILL yet to provide even one, save the bible, and you won\'t even reveal which verision you\'re pulling this "truth" from.

Save the bible from what?

As for fossil record:

Swedish botanist Heribert Nilsson after 40 years of his own research: “It is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of plaeonbiological facts.  The fossil material is now so complete that…the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of material.  The deficiencies are real, and will never be replaced.*

*Bold added

I believe as birds breed,  some may change in color or small changes in physical charcastics,  but remain to its kind.  Humans have different sizes of lips,  colors of hair skin,  but are humans.