Evolution

[keithprosser3]

Given the nature of reproduction and of natural selection isn't evolution inescapable?
How can evolution not happen?

[kenblogton]

I'm starting to worry that you aren't actually reading, or just not considering it.

Third & final reply to 1. What evolutionary theory maintains

"Evolutionary Theory maintains... [abiogenesis]"
No. You know this has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

Abiogenesis is the attempt to replicate that event through simulation of early earth conditions.

No.
Oxford dictionaries: The original evolution ([emergence/change from]) of life or living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances
Merriam Webster: the origin of life from nonliving matter

It has NEVER been done. It obviously does not take millions of years to achieve if the theory & replication of conditions are correct.

"Obviously it does not take millions of years if the theory and conditions are correct"
False. In what possible way is this obvious?

We don't know if abiogenesis happened more than once. It had up to 500 million years and the entire planet to occur. We've never observed it.

EVERYTHING tells us that all of human civilization - let alone a human lifespan - probably isn't long enough to observe it occurring.
Your expectation for abiogenesis to have occurred is entirely unreasonable and without basis.

Third & final reply to 2. The only other way to avoid God besides evolution to explain the origin of species is to use the term big bang, which is a scientifically accurate term for the origin of species.

...the term you've been using?

How about this:
Every now and then, a species gradually appears, materialising out of thin air.

There, a theory that has no God requirement. In fact, it's almost like theistic biogenesis just with God removed.

Do scientists support a round Earth hypothesis to avoid the truth of the World Turtle?

Oh, and why are there so many Christians that believe in God AND evolution if evolution was invented to avoid God?

Third & final reply to 3. There is much solid evidence for evolution within species, as in dog or cattle breeding; there is no solid evidence for evolution across species. There is no solid evidence, for instance, in the transition from sea to land, of creatures with emerging limbs or modified lungs. At the website http://unmaskingevolution.com/10-intermediates.htm, it gives some useful definitions and comments, which I'll cite here below:
The general public understand the meaning of the following evolutionary terms to be:-

'Ancestor' - the true predecessor of an organism.

'Intermediate' - an organism that was truly between two different types of organisms.

'Transition' - one of the true steps in the change of one type of organism into another.

'Lineage' - the true history of the ancestors of an organism.

There is solid evidence and it has been given.
Your refusal to acknowledge transitional species by labelling them as "final" is begging the question by assuming the falsity of evolution in order to disprove evolution.

The early Darwinists believed that they would easily find the history of the evolution of all organisms in the fossil record, but this failed to materialise. Despite this lack of evidence, many evolutionary trees have been displayed in museums and textbooks.

�"In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." D.M. Raup, Science, July 17,1981 p:289


�"... biologists may simply pick out species at different points in geological time that seem to fit on some line of directional modification through time. Many trends, in other words, may exist more in the minds of the analysts than in phylogenetic history." N. Eldredge "Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks", McGraw-Hill Pub Co: New York, 1989 p:134

I doubt that they seriously expected to find evidence of everything. If they did, they are very bad at predication.

Third & final reply to 4. As you say "All animals are the same species as their parents." Two parents. With humans, Mitochondrial Eve & Y-Chromosomal Adam.
kenblogton

Yes, your quote mining of two sentences that aren't directly contradictory to you amongst paragraphs of objections clearly proves you are right.

In fact, your lack of any response to anything raised AT ALL in the entire post, aside from the assertion that abiogenesis should occur in a small lab in 10 years because it occurred once in 500 million years in the entire planet, is well received as clear evidence for controversial opinion that the majority scientific consensus is wrong, as well as the fact that you ignore 99% of the articles (Adam&Eve) from which you cite as evidence for genesis.

"Mitochondrial Eve is named after mitochondria and the biblical Eve.[2] Unlike her biblical namesake, she was not the only living human female of her time. However, her female contemporaries, except her mother, failed to produce a direct unbroken female line to any living woman in the present day."

"Y-chromosomal Adam is named after the biblical Adam, but the bearer of the chromosome was not the only human male alive during his time.[1] His other male contemporaries could also have descendants alive today, but not, by definition, solely through patrilineal descent."

Second paragraph of both of the articles. Did you read that far?

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 1. We have no evidence that spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred! We know abiogenesis has never occurred. At http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/page ... page_id=f8, it states
"Secretly, Darwin did have his own ideas about how life kicked off; he thought that life probably began spontaneously from the chemical soup that existed as the earth began to calm down a bit following its violent birth. He wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker expressing this idea:

‘But if (and Oh! What a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity etc., present that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes’

Darwin had actually hit the nail on the head, the origin of life is a problem for chemistry and biochemists.

In 1953 two people created Darwin’s warm little pond. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, working at the University of Chicago mixed water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a glass bulb and added heat and sparks of electricity; they were trying to recreate the atmosphere that existed during earth's early days to test whether organic molecules such as amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, could have spontaneously formed. They ran the experiment for a week and amazingly, when they analysed their concoction, found over 10 different types of amino acids. When Miller’s old tubes were reanalysed in 2008 with new equipment, they discovered they had actually created over 20!"
The father of evolution sees the origin of life as the beginning of evolution! If you don't accept this, you don't understand evolution. I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 2. You said "Every now and then, a species gradually appears, materialising out of thin air." This is the hypothesis that something can come from nothing, of which there are no real examples.
Because there are people who believe in evolution who call themselves Christian does not make evolution true. Since those same people believe in God - does that mean the existence of God is true? The scientific evidence for evolution is inadequate. Scientists prefer the theory of evolution to species big bangs, because big bang points to an unknown cause; evolution is scientifically tidier. I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

Fourth & Hopefully final reply to 3. You said "I doubt that they seriously expected to find evidence of everything. If they did, they are very bad at predication."
I'm not sure what your point is. Are you agreeing with me that that the evidence for evolution is flawed?

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 4. You can no way assert with confidence that Mitochondrial Eve & Y-Chromosomal Adam were NOT the only humans alive at the time. If the entire line of homo sapiens comes from them, how can you possibly say they were NOT the only 2 original humans? I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

kenblogton

[kenblogton]

�"In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." D.M. Raup, Science, July 17,1981 p:289


�"... biologists may simply pick out species at different points in geological time that seem to fit on some line of directional modification through time. Many trends, in other words, may exist more in the minds of the analysts than in phylogenetic history." N. Eldredge "Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks", McGraw-Hill Pub Co: New York, 1989 p:134

Discredited articles from 1981 and 1989 don't tell us what fossils and DNA evidence have been discovered in the decades since. You'll have to provide valid evidence if you want to debunk anything we say. The Homo erectus skull, for example, was excavated, along with four others, relatively recently. Who cares what 1981 says?

What makes this evidence discredited? How have later discoveries discredited it. More of the same doesn't discredit - it's just more of the same. Because you don't agree with it doesn't make it invalid.
kenblogton

[Jashwell]

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 1. We have no evidence that spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred!

We have no evidence that divine spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred.

We know abiogenesis has never occurred. At http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/page ... page_id=f8, it states
"Secretly, Darwin did have his own ideas about how life kicked off; he thought that life probably began spontaneously from the chemical soup that existed as the earth began to calm down a bit following its violent birth. He wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker expressing this idea:

�But if (and Oh! What a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity etc., present that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes�

Darwin had actually hit the nail on the head, the origin of life is a problem for chemistry and biochemists.

In 1953 two people created Darwin�s warm little pond. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, working at the University of Chicago mixed water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a glass bulb and added heat and sparks of electricity; they were trying to recreate the atmosphere that existed during earth's early days to test whether organic molecules such as amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, could have spontaneously formed. They ran the experiment for a week and amazingly, when they analysed their concoction, found over 10 different types of amino acids. When Miller�s old tubes were reanalysed in 2008 with new equipment, they discovered they had actually created over 20!"
The father of evolution sees the origin of life as the beginning of evolution! If you don't accept this, you don't understand evolution. I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

Evolution requires self replicating systems.
The LITERAL ORIGIN of the systems is nothing to do with evolution.

If God made the first life form, it'd still evolve and evolutionary theory would be wholly accurate.

If you mean the origin of species or the origin of more advanced life forms like basic cells from the original self replicating systems, that would be governed by evolution, but the actual abiogenesis is nothing to do with evolution.

Arguments against naturalistic abiogenesis are not arguments against evolution.

As for your objections - we don't understand the beginning of life and there are many models, a lot of which are consistent, and your objection to a single model raised 50 years ago is not an objection to any naturalistic hypothesis. I don't see how it's an objection either to quote a single experiment that gave positive results (creation of amino acids).

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 2. You said "Every now and then, a species gradually appears, materialising out of thin air." This is the hypothesis that something can come from nothing, of which there are no real examples.
Because there are people who believe in evolution who call themselves Christian does not make evolution true. Since those same people believe in God - does that mean the existence of God is true? The scientific evidence for evolution is inadequate. Scientists prefer the theory of evolution to species big bangs, because big bang points to an unknown cause; evolution is scientifically tidier. I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

It was just an example of no evolution but still "avoiding" God.
My question is why do they believe in evolution over other non-theistic hypotheses if it's invented to avoid God.

My other objection was misrepresented. I'm saying, there are plenty of theists who accept evolution so in what possible way is it "invented to avoid God"?

Fourth & Hopefully final reply to 3. You said "I doubt that they seriously expected to find evidence of everything. If they did, they are very bad at predication."
I'm not sure what your point is. Are you agreeing with me that that the evidence for evolution is flawed?

No, I'm saying there expectations were too high.
There are plenty of transitional fossils that you dismiss out of hand because of your faith based belief in final lifeforms which itself is an objection to evolution.

We aren't going to find a complete fossil record of everything any more than we're gonna find every footprint a man made between two places to prove he walked somewhere.

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 4. You can no way assert with confidence that Mitochondrial Eve & Y-Chromosomal Adam were NOT the only humans alive at the time. If the entire line of homo sapiens comes from them, how can you possibly say they were NOT the only 2 original humans? I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

kenblogton

Because the entire CURRENT line of homo sapiens, not the ENTIRE line of homo sapiens descend from them.

Their contemporaries died, or their children died, or their children.

In other words, Adam is part of the only successful unbroken male line, Eve is part of the only successful unbroken female line, and the literal most recent common ancestor is part of the only unbroken line.

This is the reason they're called the most recents - because there were others before them.

[Star]

�"In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks." D.M. Raup, Science, July 17,1981 p:289


�"... biologists may simply pick out species at different points in geological time that seem to fit on some line of directional modification through time. Many trends, in other words, may exist more in the minds of the analysts than in phylogenetic history." N. Eldredge "Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks", McGraw-Hill Pub Co: New York, 1989 p:134

Discredited articles from 1981 and 1989 don't tell us what fossils and DNA evidence have been discovered in the decades since. You'll have to provide valid evidence if you want to debunk anything we say. The Homo erectus skull, for example, was excavated, along with four others, relatively recently. Who cares what 1981 says?

What makes this evidence discredited? How have later discoveries discredited it. More of the same doesn't discredit - it's just more of the same. Because you don't agree with it doesn't make it invalid.
kenblogton

If an article from 1981 states that certain evidence hasn't been found yet, is that as of 1981, or 2014? Think about it.

Much progress has been made in the last 33 years. DNA evidence has been key in corroborating the fossil record. Many new so-called "transitional" species have been found.

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 1337 by Star]
Star said "Much progress has been made in the last 33 years. DNA evidence has been key in corroborating the fossil record. Many new so-called "transitional" species have been found."
kenblogton replied: Please show me the evidence for the complete transition from 1 specie to the next?
kenblogton

[kenblogton]

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 1. We have no evidence that spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred!

We have no evidence that divine spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred.

We know abiogenesis has never occurred. At http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/page ... page_id=f8, it states
"Secretly, Darwin did have his own ideas about how life kicked off; he thought that life probably began spontaneously from the chemical soup that existed as the earth began to calm down a bit following its violent birth. He wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker expressing this idea:

�But if (and Oh! What a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity etc., present that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes�

Darwin had actually hit the nail on the head, the origin of life is a problem for chemistry and biochemists.

In 1953 two people created Darwin�s warm little pond. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, working at the University of Chicago mixed water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a glass bulb and added heat and sparks of electricity; they were trying to recreate the atmosphere that existed during earth's early days to test whether organic molecules such as amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, could have spontaneously formed. They ran the experiment for a week and amazingly, when they analysed their concoction, found over 10 different types of amino acids. When Miller�s old tubes were reanalysed in 2008 with new equipment, they discovered they had actually created over 20!"
The father of evolution sees the origin of life as the beginning of evolution! If you don't accept this, you don't understand evolution. I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

Evolution requires self replicating systems.
The LITERAL ORIGIN of the systems is nothing to do with evolution.

If God made the first life form, it'd still evolve and evolutionary theory would be wholly accurate.

If you mean the origin of species or the origin of more advanced life forms like basic cells from the original self replicating systems, that would be governed by evolution, but the actual abiogenesis is nothing to do with evolution.

Arguments against naturalistic abiogenesis are not arguments against evolution.

As for your objections - we don't understand the beginning of life and there are many models, a lot of which are consistent, and your objection to a single model raised 50 years ago is not an objection to any naturalistic hypothesis. I don't see how it's an objection either to quote a single experiment that gave positive results (creation of amino acids).

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 2. You said "Every now and then, a species gradually appears, materialising out of thin air." This is the hypothesis that something can come from nothing, of which there are no real examples.
Because there are people who believe in evolution who call themselves Christian does not make evolution true. Since those same people believe in God - does that mean the existence of God is true? The scientific evidence for evolution is inadequate. Scientists prefer the theory of evolution to species big bangs, because big bang points to an unknown cause; evolution is scientifically tidier. I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

It was just an example of no evolution but still "avoiding" God.
My question is why do they believe in evolution over other non-theistic hypotheses if it's invented to avoid God.

My other objection was misrepresented. I'm saying, there are plenty of theists who accept evolution so in what possible way is it "invented to avoid God"?

Fourth & Hopefully final reply to 3. You said "I doubt that they seriously expected to find evidence of everything. If they did, they are very bad at predication."
I'm not sure what your point is. Are you agreeing with me that that the evidence for evolution is flawed?

No, I'm saying there expectations were too high.
There are plenty of transitional fossils that you dismiss out of hand because of your faith based belief in final lifeforms which itself is an objection to evolution.

We aren't going to find a complete fossil record of everything any more than we're gonna find every footprint a man made between two places to prove he walked somewhere.

Fourth & hopefully final reply to 4. You can no way assert with confidence that Mitochondrial Eve & Y-Chromosomal Adam were NOT the only humans alive at the time. If the entire line of homo sapiens comes from them, how can you possibly say they were NOT the only 2 original humans? I can't make my views any clearer. If you don't agree, let's agree to disagree.

kenblogton

Because the entire CURRENT line of homo sapiens, not the ENTIRE line of homo sapiens descend from them.

Their contemporaries died, or their children died, or their children.

In other words, Adam is part of the only successful unbroken male line, Eve is part of the only successful unbroken female line, and the literal most recent common ancestor is part of the only unbroken line.

This is the reason they're called the most recents - because there were others before them.

Final reply to 1.
Jashwell said "We have no evidence that divine spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred."
kenblogton replied: There is no evidence that natural spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred; the only alternative is divine generation. I have already stated my views on the remainder of your comments and have nothing further to add.
Final reply to 2.
I have already stated my views on your comments and have nothing further to add.
Reply to 3.
Jashwell said "We aren't going to find a complete fossil record of everything any more than we're gonna find every footprint a man made between two places to prove he walked somewhere."
kenblogton replied: How about a complete fossil record of just 1 species?
As stated in Johnson, P.E. 1991. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity,
"According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about five million years.… Because this record is so complete, palaeontologists assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked to illustrate continuous evolution. On the contrary…“the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to the next.� (51)"
Final reply to 4.
I have already stated my views on your comments and have nothing further to add.
kenblogton

[Danmark]

How about a complete fossil record of just 1 species?
As stated in Johnson, P.E. 1991. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity,
"According to Steven Stanley, ...

Is this 23 year old debunked book, still touted by the Discovery Institute, the only resource you have on the subject? Others there, like Berlinski, continue to try to salvage its nonsense.

Jerry Coyne, Ph.D.:
"Of course, since Darwin’s time the “missing� fossil evidence has appeared—in spades. It’s all detailed in my book, and you can find it online, too. We have intermediates between early fish and amphibians, early amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and birds, and reptiles and early mammals. We have lineages, especially of marine microfossils, but also of larger animals like horses, showing gradual change that accumulates into what can only be seen as macroevolution.

We have the once-missing intermediates between terrestrial artiodactyls and whales: a fine fossil series. And, of course, we have all those fossils in the hominin family tree, from early australopithecines with apelike skulls and more modern human-like postcranial skeletons to more modern forms that closely resemble modern humans in nearly every feature. None of these were known in Darwin’s time.

For Berlinski to pretend that the fossil evidence doesn’t support Darwin, when every bloody fossilized tooth, bone, leaf, and integument cries out “evolution�, is the height of stupidity. Or, since I don’t think Berlinski is stupid, let’s say the height of intellectual dishonesty. Berlinkski knows of the fossil record, and pretends it doesn’t exist. He’s a liar.

He also lies about whether Darwin (or modern biologists) think there are species. Berlinski implies that Darwin denied the existence of species. He didn’t, though he was at times confused about what they represented. Modern biologists, of course (at least most of them, with the exception of a few botanist or systematist miscreants), also realize that species are real units of nature, and most of us understand that they are reproductive units, separated from other such units by genetic barriers to interbreeding."[emphasis mine]
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com ... nt-design/

'Jerry A. Coyne, Ph.D is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a member of both the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology. Coyne received a B.S. in Biology from the College of William and Mary. He then earned a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Harvard University in 1998, working in the laboratory of Richard Lewontin. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Timothy Prout's laboratory at The University of California at Davis, he took his first academic position as assistant professor in the Department of Zoology at The University of Maryland. In 1996 he joined the faculty of The University of Chicago.'
http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/about.htm

[Jashwell]

Final reply to 1.
Jashwell said "We have no evidence that divine spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred."
kenblogton replied: There is no evidence that natural spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred; the only alternative is divine generation. I have already stated my views on the remainder of your comments and have nothing further to add.

Seriously? This is a complete argument from ignorance and so seriously fallacious that it's not worth addressing.

What you said, rephrased as an argument for my side (demonstrates the absurdity):
"We have no evidence that divine spontaneous generation of life has ever occurred; the only alternative is natural generation."

It's the worst kind of argument from ignorance.

Final reply to 2.
I have already stated my views on your comments and have nothing further to add.

Yet you haven't addressed either question.
Why, out of all the different ways to "avoid God" and address speciation, do scientists (87%) choose evolution through natural selection?

Why do theists accept evolution and still believe in a God if evolution was made to avoid God?

Reply to 3.
Jashwell said "We aren't going to find a complete fossil record of everything any more than we're gonna find every footprint a man made between two places to prove he walked somewhere."
kenblogton replied: How about a complete fossil record of just 1 species?
As stated in Johnson, P.E. 1991. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity,
"According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about five million years.… Because this record is so complete, palaeontologists assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked to illustrate continuous evolution. On the contrary…“the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to the next.� (51)"

I think my analogy was great.
We wouldn't find an entire complete fossil record. That's like finding every human's footprints.
We probably wouldn't find a specific complete fossil record (I'm not entirely sure what you mean by one species, I take it you mean one kind of specific line of evolution) any more than a single human's complete footprints.
What we would expect and do see is in places where humans leave footprints, some footprints will be left. (though in the analogy it has to be recent, that's not representative)

Final reply to 4.
I have already stated my views on your comments and have nothing further to add.
kenblogton

I've clearly pointed out how it's in no way inconsistent for them to not be the first humans, and that they weren't the only humans either, and that the same facts that say they existed say that they aren't the first humans and weren't the only of their time.

For another example, see this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... lution.svg
Consider the bottom the people who are currently alive.
(somewhat simplified)
There's no requirement for the Mitochondrial Most Recent Common Ancestor to be the first. (Hence Most Recent).
They plainly aren't the only couple living at the time. (And they aren't Adam & Eve, in the simplified graph the mtDNA MRCA is Eve, her partner is unknown)

With regards to the population, the first sentence of the first paragraph of this article:
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/1/2.full.pdf

"Genetic variation at most loci examined in human population indicates that the (effective) population size has been ~10⁴ for the past 1 Myr and that individuals have been genetically united rather tightly."

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 1340 by Danmark]
Here's what Wikipedia says about Jerry Coyne:
Jerry Allen Coyne (born December 30, 1949) is an American professor of biology, known for his commentary on intelligent design. A prolific scientist and author, he has published dozens of papers elucidating the theory of evolution. He is currently a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. His concentration is speciation and ecological and evolutionary genetics, particularly as they involve the fruit fly, Drosophila. He is the author of the text Speciation and the bestselling non-fiction book Why Evolution Is True.[6] Coyne maintains a website also called Why Evolution Is True.

Cone is no unbiased source to assess evidence - he's a committed evolutionist.

Here's evidence which remains unrefuted from Johnson, P.E. 1991. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity: "According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about five million years.… Because this record is so complete, palaeontologists assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked to illustrate continuous evolution. On the contrary…“the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to the next.” (51)"

Steven Stanley is a more neutral and so more credible source. His website ishttp://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/people/gg_profi ... ley_s.html and his profile is: Researcher
Marine and Environmental Geology Division
Office: POST 719D
1680 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822
Phone: (808) 956-7889 • Fax: (808) 956-5512
E-mail: stevenst@hawaii.edu

Research Themes
Earth's surface: water, sediments, and life
Earth history

Courses Commonly Taught
Graduate
GG611

Asking Coyne's opinion is like asking an atheist for a balanced and neutral assessment of the Bible.
kenblogton

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 1341 by Jashwell]

I have nothing more to add to what I've already said regarding points 1, 2 & 4. I only have additional comments on point 3. Previously stated on point 3 was:

Reply to 3.
Jashwell said "We aren't going to find a complete fossil record of everything any more than we're gonna find every footprint a man made between two places to prove he walked somewhere."

kenblogton replied: How about a complete fossil record of just 1 species?
As stated in Johnson, P.E. 1991. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity,
"According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about five million years.… Because this record is so complete, palaeontologists assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked to illustrate continuous evolution. On the contrary…“the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to the next.� (51)"

Jashwell replied: I think my analogy was great.
We wouldn't find an entire complete fossil record. That's like finding every human's footprints.
We probably wouldn't find a specific complete fossil record (I'm not entirely sure what you mean by one species, I take it you mean one kind of specific line of evolution) any more than a single human's complete footprints.
What we would expect and do see is in places where humans leave footprints, some footprints will be left. (though in the analogy it has to be recent, that's not representative).

kenblogton replied: We're speaking of fossils, not footprints. A failure to find one complete evolutionary fossil record over a period of 5 million years is an abject failure. I have nothing further to add on point 3.
kenblogton