I've often heard as a rejection of evolution: Well there should be thousands of transitional fossils. My response: How would you know if they were?
So we can see some very dramatic examples of "transitional" forms in animals like Archaeopteryx or Tiktaalik. Animals which are displaying signature examples of anatomy which are characteristic of two or more different groups. But leaving aside the normal observation that fossilization is incredibly rare and discovery/description rarer still, my question for creationists who think there ought to be transitional forms littering the landscape is this: [b][i]How do you know you[u] aren't[/u] looking at thousands of transitional forms?[/i][/b] Without seeing the animals directly on either side of this one...how would you determine whether or not it's transitional? Evolution predicts that genotypic change will be gradual, much less phenotypic change...so how does the creationist reasonably conclude that specimen [i]I[/i] is not transitional between specimen [i]H[/i] and [i]J[/i]?
鉂わ笍 If human bodies change because of various natural changes around the globe living apart on the continents, disease, and nutrition, how does that prove macro evolution that we came from the pond? Those aren't fossils that prove macro evolution. Those are adaptive changes that resulted in God moving the continents apart because of the sin of Babel's tower, "continental drift". 馃榿
[quote]I have answered what transitional fossils really are 3 times, please read it again. [/quote]
...? This must be one of those cases of miscommunication again, sorry.馃槅 Could you copy and paste your description of what constitutes a transitional fossil for me here?
Or are you maintaining that "No transitional fossils exist" IS a description of the qualities one would expect to see in a transitional fossil?
It doesn't help anyone to call them unreasonable or crazy. They consider themselves reasonable just as you and i do. So the better path is to make them exercise reason and see how well their beliefs stand up.
lol i do like that episode. Then you have proven my point sir!
I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be able to answer this question because i don't think there's a very good answer for it. I just want them to recognize how silly that argument is.
