Capella’s Guide to Atheism

So, in a world of millions of species, and many thousands of vertabrate species, here we have the thousands of transitional fossils we might expect…i mean….uh, oh…you mean we have only a sketchy, disputed fossil (archeaopteryx) and some evidence of variation within a species? (human, horse)? What about the transitions that created pigs, dogs, cats, camels, giraffes, zebras, bears, elephants, kangaroos, wombats, wolves, lynxes, swallows, whales, dolphins, cattle, yaks, llamas, koalas, bats….and thats just touching present day species…..and we have possible evidence for THREE? Is that more rational than the unending ‘coincidences’ that a Christian experiences?

Exactly! By the same logic will one be able to obtain 3 randomly found automobile frames from all times and succinctly trace their ancestry and evolution from Model T to today’s hybrids.

Also, taking just protohuman fossils that have so far been discovered, if we had the same representations of sequence of automobiles as we do of protohumans stretching from the beginning to end, I think we would see a definite sequence of artificial selection in cars.

“If there were a real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which has been proved to be true. But I do not think there is any such proof since none has been shown to me.”
— Cardinal Robert Bellarmine

Yes indeed, those crazy scientists that dedicate their entire academic and professional lives to biology, paleontology, geology, and history don’t know what the heck they are talking about.

Does anyone else find it interesting, by the way, that even such seemingly incredible genetic mutations like having 6 fingers, two heads, dwarfism, etc. are relatively common occurrences. Polydactylism being more common, of course, than having two heads… Anyway I bet that if you live in a proper city (not a tiny rural town) there are at least a half dozen people living amongst you that have extra fingers! So we know that significant mutations occur with some degree of regularity in a species, and we know that genetics are passed on from parent to child. We also know that some mutations can be bad; take siamese twins, for example — a hundred years ago, such an abnormality would have been a death sentence. Also, we know that genetic abnormalities can be quite beneficial — as in bacteria and viruses evolving to trick our immune system into leaving it alone, or at least altering its chemical and molecular appearance to throw our immune system off. Granted, evolution occurs more quickly in bacteria since they reproduce thousands of times per minute, but given millions of years, one would be insane to believe that mammalian species do not evolve as well. In fact, as Capella and Leon point out there are many pieces of fossil and DNA evidence to support such evolutionary occurrences.

Anyway, don’t disregard the opinions of thousands upon thousands of scientists who, for the last few hundred years, have dedicated a collective total of billions of man hours of research to this subject as well as to others that indirectly contribute our understanding of this subject. Don’t make the assumption, as the Catholic church did, that because you do not understand the complexities of scientific research, that the simpler explanation of the bible is more rational.

Remember that humans have been around for the blink of the eye in terms of life itself… And within that blink of an eye, we developed the first (one string) instrument a mere 40,000 years ago.

In response to Steve, please visit the testimony of Kevin Padian in Kitzmiller v. Dover

http://www.sciohost.org/ncse/kvd/Padian/Padian_transcript.html

There are thousands of fossils, and every single one confirms evolutionary change over time.

For Capella, Yes, fossilization is a rare process, and it is estimated that less than 1% of species are represented in the fossil record, but 1% of millions of species is a lot.

I’ve spent the past 10 years as a geologist and a vertebrate paleontologist, but you don’t have to take my word for it- that’s the beauty of science. Go to a museum. Go to a website other than “answers in Genesis”. Read at least 10 books on evolution. Open your mind, and think rationally. Ask yourself, if all the theories of geology and biology have a mistaken basis, why does it all work so well? How do we find oil and natural gas if the current models of the Earths age are so wrong? How do we engineer new drugs to fight evolving bacteria if evolutionary ideas are so wrong? How come a transitional form between fish and amphibians ( like Tiktaalik roseae) be predicted in Devonian age rock, and then , lo and behold, that form is found in correct stratigraphic sequence?

Steve pulls out the hoary old obscurantist chestnut that differentiates between adaptation and evolution. Either he is ignorant of the topic that he is discussing or being deliberately obtuse.

Just as an example, over the past decade and a half there has been advances in clarifying the evolution of whales including the discovery of the ancestral form Ambulocetans natans.

Anyway, the whole question of “transitional fossils” is simply an attempt to muddy the waters. If we have a species A and an ancestral species B then if we discover a transitional species C, the creationists simply demand another two transitional forms - one between B and C and the other between C and A. The argument is undefeatable.