Mikel

I asked him in his view, exactly what he will accept as being a transitional and he said "It isn't about my view. Read the definition of kingdom, phylum, class, order, etc. and see what you think are similar." I also told him all individuals of all species ever are or were transitional and he doesn't agree. He says "It's kind of like me saying that practically everybody agrees that 8 x 9 = 72 and you getting defensive and questioning the fact that I'm speaking for practically everybody. This is not destoying evolutionary theory (yeah, it still is a theory which many scientists are finding to be more intriguing than accurate) it is just stating a known fact."

How should I reply to him (not to the myriads guy but the guy with the 3 "problems")?

Well, once again I'm debating with a creationist. He said there was a gap between reptiles and birds so I gave him this this link to show the origin of birds for him. Anyway, about 2 weeks later he replies saying this

I will tell you the truth about Archaeopteryx. Let's start out with a quote from Michael Denton, "[T]he universal experience of paleontology... [is that] while the rocks have continually yielded new and exciting and even bizarre forms of life... what they have never yielded is any of Darwin's myriads of transitional forms. Despite the tremendous increase in geological activity in every corner of the globe and despite the discovery of many strange and hitherto unknown forms, the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin. The intermediates have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains a century later, one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record."

So how could Denton get away with saying that in his famous book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis? He got away with saying that because it was the truth. Here are the problems with Archaeopteryx:

1) Assuming archaeopteryx was an intermediate, it doesn't show evolution just as in my prior Corvette analogy. To show evolution we would need to know how you got from reptile to archaeopteryx to bird. The archaeopteryx doesn't show us whether it evolved or was simply created.

2) Look at the duck-billed platypus. It is a strange looking animal (just like archaeopteryx) that possesses characteristics of different classes, but practically nobody considers it transitional.

3) A common misconception is that the archaeopteryx is half-bird and half-reptile, but it isn't even close. Scientists can see now days that archaeopteryx was completely a bird. That means that it wasn't even an intermediate.

 

So, in essence, the link you provided me based its evidence off of archaeopteryx which was thought of as transitional a century ago, but now is clearly nothing more than a bird. Did you notice their other argument? "In fact, recent expeditions in China, Mongolia, Madagascar, Argentina, and elsewhere may uncover dinosaurs that usurp the "urvogel" status of Archaeopteryx." (emphasis mine) In other words, "We haven't found anything yet after thousands of expeditionary digs for over a century, but we are still optimistic that we might just find something".

I would appreciate it if you guys can help me out again. Thanks.

Ummm... well... i'm a dumbass (I haven't even gone into biology yet) so, I'm not quite sure what your talking about. It may be better, since you know what your talking about, for you to argue it. http://www.giveupalready.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59146&pagenumber=2

First you must register. Beware of the moderators. Btw, i'm Mikel on there too.

I doubt it. I think I shamed him.

If I told him that I would get warning type thing for flaming. Our forums have mods. After my last reply and sucessfully refuteing all his arguments he just kinda disapeared.

I gave that first link in a different debate entitled "evolution vs. creationism". A fellow believer of evolution was the first to respond. He said

I remember seeing a progamme about those Silver Foxes. They choose deliberatly for tameness and now they act like domestic puppies and dogs. I didn't know the information about the physiological changes though, that was rather interesting. Obviously the domestic dog wasn't so intensively bred like this and other traits were selected as well as tameness (speed, size, herding or tracking abilites as well as asethetic purposes). I wonder if when choosing for tameness the humans accidently choose slightly "cuter" animals - which might explain the more appealing appearance of the foxes, or whether those traits are part of a set of genes which promote less aggression.

I think the difficulty is, playing devil's advocate, artificial or natural selection does not necessarily prove evolution, as natural selection is only one componant of it.

 

I would question the wisdom of taming another animal. Especially since they are now having to sell some off to the fur trade.

 

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

How would you respond?

Thanks. I can't wait to see what other wild arguments he comes up with next.

I'm still debating with the same guy and tearing apart his arguments, but I have a second question. He posted this Sure, scientists created a few proteins from amino acids in a lab under extremely impossible conditions for what the first cell would have undergone. However, take into account that life must have water to survive, yet amino acids are destroyed instantly in water. So the cell would have to overcome extreme odds of left hand amino acids matching up perfectly with right hand amino acids (also virtually impossible) in completely waterless conditions and then IMEDIATELY be taken to water to survive, despite the fact that the cell would have to create, from nothing, a protective covering and energy processing abilities to survive for more than a couple of milliseconds. Are you seeing any sort of gap here now? Yet evolutionists who believe there is not intelligent force that helped out argue that the answers are out there to be found eventually...sounds a lot like a religion to me. Again, can you guys help me out?

Thanks alot. I'll come here for any more questions I have.

Hi! I ran across your forums today trying to find someone who could help me. I'm debating with a guy on another site with forums who appearently has absolutely no idea what evolution is about and one of the things he said was "They can’t explain how that cell evolved into a mulit-celled organism or how that multi-celled organism grew a back bone slowly or how animals went from having 2 to 3 to 4 chamber in their heart….it’s sorta hard to have 2 and a half chambers in your heart, is it not? And supposedly evolution is extremely slow so you’d have one guy with 2 chambers, the next with 2.00001 chambers, the next with 2.00002 chambers….it doesn’t really work…you have 2 or you have 3. You die if you have anything in between." I'm afraid I don't exactly know much at all about the evolution of the heart. I tried researching and couldn't find anything on it. Can you help me? What exactly would you say to him?