You don't believe in evolution because there are no transitional fossils?

Question

Well, here's a pretty good list of them:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

How about this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

Or maybe the fact that we have an almost complete fossil record of the evolution of the horse?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse

How can you NOT believe in evolution?

Answer 1

They don't believe in evolution because of fear and lack of education.

Answer 2

Speaking as a scientist (My faith has never interfered with believing in Evolution--only my scientific inquiry has) These are not transitional fossils. A transitional fossil would be a creature that is developing something that wasn't there before. For example, a skeleton. You cannot have a species without a skeleton, and suddenly there's one with a complete and working skeleton. It's too complicated--there must be in between steps that show how something would go from a cartilage creature to a creature with some hardened, bone like parts, to developments of joints etc. If evolution comes from additional genetic material thru mutations, then not only should we see these partial not fully developed transitional states of complex structures in the fossil record, but we should also see them occurring today with the millions of species we know about, we should see some of them beginning, in the middle of or at the end of the change. What about humans? Well, the only additional genetic material being added that I know of (and I'm no expert) would be those with Down's syndrome (they have an extra gene) and those with the XXX and XYY sex genes. This could be an argument showing how evolution might take place.

Answer 3

I took the bait and I looked.... and there are extremely few large specimines of anything, a whole prehistoric animal fabricated off a single scull fragment? The Evolution of the Horse sounded interesting, but alas, at each point it still looked like a horse with minor changes. The change between lizard to bird? The Archaeopteryx is the oldest known "bird dinosaur" yet, it has wings, feathers and a beak. I might have had a tail and teeth but it is still a bird. Anything before it, is just a lizard.

As we (Christians) always say, we DO believe in changes within the kind. We just dont believe one kind (lizard) will ever, or have ever become another kind (bird)

Answer 4

I believe that when God created the earth he created every animal possible with every different combination of genes possible. Some animals will look very similar because they have very similar genes but that does not mean that they have evolved into each other. Say in several thousand years time someone comes across a skeleton of a cat and a lion whos species have long been extinct. They could easily believe that they evolved into each other because they are so similar, even though we know that the cat and lion existed at the same time which makes that theory impossible.

Answer 5

This is a direct quote from one of your sources:This is a very tentative list of vertebrate transitional fossils (fossil remains of a creature that exhibits primitive traits in comparison with more derived life-forms to which it is related). An ideal list would only recursively include 'true' transitionals, i.e. those forms morphologically similar to the ancestors of the monophyletic group containing the derived relative, and not intermediate forms. See the article on transitional fossils for an explanation of the difference with intermediate forms. Since all species are supposed to be in transition due to natural selection, the very term "transitional fossil" is essentially a misconception. But the fossils listed represent significant steps in the evolution of major features in various vertebrate lines, and therefore fit the common usage of the phrase

EDIT: Another quote from your source Version 6.0 of the FAQ has been almost entirely rewritten, with:

A completely rewritten introduction & conclusion, discussing what "transitional" means, why gaps occur, and what the fossil record shows.
A greatly expanded list of "chains of genera" for most groups, especially mammals.
References for documented species-to-species fossil transitions, mostly for mammals.
Explicit mention of the notable remaining gaps in the fossil record.
EDIT: Another direct quote
The first and most major reason for gaps is "stratigraphic discontinuities", meaning that fossil-bearing strata are not at all continuous. There are often large time breaks from one stratum to the next, and there are even some times for which no fossil strata have been found. For instance, the Aalenian (mid-Jurassic) has shown no known tetrapod fossils anywhere in the world, and other stratigraphic stages in the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and Cretaceous have produced only a few mangled tetrapods. Most other strata have produced at least one fossil from between 50% and 100% of the vertebrate families that we know had already arisen by then (Benton, 1989) -- so the vertebrate record at the family level is only about 75% complete, and much less complete at the genus or species level. (One study estimated that we may have fossils from as little as 3% of the species that existed in the Eocene!) This, obviously, is the major reason for a break in a general lineage. To further complicate the picture, certain types of animals tend not to get fossilized -- terrestrial animals, small animals, fragile animals, and forest-dwellers are worst. And finally, fossils from very early times just don't survive the passage of eons very well, what with all the folding, crushing, and melting that goes on. Due to these facts of life and death, there will always be some major breaks in the fossil record.

Species-to-species transitions are even harder to document. To demonstrate anything about how a species arose, whether it arose gradually or suddenly, you need exceptionally complete strata, with many dead animals buried under constant, rapid sedimentation. This is rare for terrestrial animals. Even the famous Clark's Fork (Wyoming) site, known for its fine Eocene mammal transitions, only has about one fossil per lineage about every 27,000 years. Luckily, this is enough to record most episodes of evolutionary change (provided that they occurred at Clark's Fork Basin and not somewhere else), though it misses the most rapid evolutionary bursts. In general, in order to document transitions between species, you specimens separated by only tens of thousands of years (e.g. every 20,000-80,000 years). If you have only one specimen for hundreds of thousands of years (e.g. every 500,000 years), you can usually determine the order of species, but not the transitions between species. If you have a specimen every million years, you can get the order of genera, but not which species were involved. And so on. These are rough estimates (from Gingerich, 1976, 1980) but should give an idea of the completeness required.
Note that fossils separated by more than about a hundred thousand years cannot show anything about how a species arose. Think about it: there could have been a smooth transition, or the species could have appeared suddenly, but either way, if there aren't enough fossils, we can't tell which way it happened.

I could go on but the bottom line is that belief in evolution requires a certain measure of FAITH that it is so.

Answer 6

I believe in a less transitional evolution. I DO NOT believe as Darwin stated since he and his helper could never produce any evidence.
as far as the theory of evolution, the Bible only says that God created certain things, but other He said, "Let the earth bring forth"

Ge 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Ge 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

and again here

Ge 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Ge 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Ge 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Ge 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.


point is that GOD created science, He can do what He wants to with it.

Answer 7

yes your right evolution is true,, they show for each of these groups micro evolution of each species monkeys evolving to monkeys, horses to horses, okay, no christian believes evolution is false on a small scale. prove how life came to begin with from nothing, only creation explains that.

Answer 8

That is a form of microevolution, ( not an example of a species changing completely from one to anther as in macroevolution), adapting from one environment to another, while remaining in the same species.

Answer 9

I believe in evolution. Most Christians don't because they feel that evolution would invalidate their religious beliefs and they can't handle it.

Answer 10

Because the bible (which doesn't have any of the fact checking involved in Wikipedia) tells them so.