Creationists: no transitional forms?

Question

what about this?

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114436537563919417-2SeevT9LrELO0e2AWr5cVOVeLBg_20060506.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

Answer 1

Gimme a minute to go look at it....and here's your response:
QUOTE
A rash of “gloating” evolution-biased articles spread worldwide shortly after the April announcement of Tiktaalik roseae, a fossilized fish dated by evolutionists at 375 million years old. The media reports—even while interspersed with cautionary language—hailed Tiktaalik as a missing link in the supposed sea-to-land evolutionary transition. Unsurprisingly, papers such as the New York Times immediately used these claims to bash creationists; for example, the April 5 Times article on the find alleged that “the fossils are widely seen by scientists as a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who hold a literal biblical view on the origins and development of life.”

Of course, Answers in Genesis published a next-day preliminary response on the find, authored by anatomist Dr. David Menton and AiG–USA CCO Mark Looy. In it, the authors sort through the evolutionary hype to see what the fossil really shows:

All they have actually found is a fish that is another example of a lobe-finned fish (one of which still lives today—the coelacanth) that has bones similar in position to those seen in the arm and wrist of land-walking creatures—except these structures support fins with rays in them, not digits like fingers and toes (and as has been stated, they are NOT connected to the axial skeleton).
Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago says “Could it walk? Could it rotate its shoulder and the rest? No. It’s doing half the function, but it’s half the function that suits the animal fully well.” This leads one to wonder if the survival of the fittest through natural selection fits. This transitional species would appear, to use the evolutionist’s terminology, to be at a disadvantage when coming in contact with predators. The University of Chicago website on Tiktaalik roseae also states “we knew that some fish in the Middle Devonian (375 million years ago) were experimenting with their fins in ways that would allow for the evolution of the weight bearing structure of tetrapod limbs.” How do they know fish are capable of experimenting? What has science come to?
END QUOTE

Try again blinky, NOT a transitional species.

Answer 2

I wouldn't get so hyped up. It is certainly an incredible find for a fossil that old that seems to fit into a hypothesis. But it needs a lot more corroborating evidence before we can say definitively that it fits the chain of common ancestors.

The case between evolution and gap filling ID is very controversial at the moment, always in and out of the headlines, papers want to sell copy so they like to get people riled.

ID has proposed that it is highly improbable that irreducibly complex organisms could have evolved or just 'appeared out of thin air' therefore they must have been designed that way. A very convenient argument. Perhaps this argument may be reduced to playground language,

"You're wrong (evolution). I have no evidence, but I am still right (ID), because I say so! So there!"

But as posited in Dawkins' latest book, a designed irreducibly complex organism needs a designer who is equally irreducibly complex, or more so, therefore equally improbable. Then we get to who designed the designer and so on....

This is a logical argument against ID, cannot disprove it, only reason away its probability. But this lack of ability to disprove ID does not make it more likely that a designer or ID are true.

ID seems to be more like a remora that hangs onto the underbelly of evolution and hijacks bits and pieces of conjecture to give itself credence. It has set itself up as the official contender with very little, if any, directly corroborating evidence.

*Just wishing desparately for something to be true doesn't make it so*

Answer 3

Read the following quote carefully and note my emphasis in caps,

"In yesterday's issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown fish that WAS ON ITS WAY To EVOLVING into a four-limbed land-dweller. It had a jaw, fins and scales like a fish, but a skull, neck, ribs and pectoral fin like the earliest limbed animals, called tetrapods."

Got that? It's called begging the question, or assuming the truth of that which you are supposed to prove. The evolutionists are supposed to prove that the fish was indeed a transitional form. However all they did was to ASSUME that the fish was evolving into a land creature and thus it is a transitional fossil. Why is it a transitional fossil? Because it is evolving. Why is it evolving? Because we have found a transitional fossil! And round and round it goes!

Answer 4

It adds to the set of forms between the lobe finned fish and the amphians:

Osteolepis
Eusthenopteron
Panderichthys
Elginerpeton
Obruchevichthys
Hynerpeton
Tulerpeton
Acanthostega
Ichthyostega
Pederpes finneyae
Eryops

Of course, Creationists will always use the argument that if you put something in the gap, you now have two gaps.

Answer 5

Great article! Thanx! It is also frustrating in a way as the article its self states that proponents of ID will always refute science no matter how much proof there is. It is sad that so many have their minds locked in a box of dogma and a need to believe in falsehoods no matter the cost.

Answer 6

I thought creationists WERE transitional forms

Answer 7

Without seeing the picture I would have ask is one is all you need to prove evolution. Wow the standards of scientific proof have really dropped haven't they. One type of animal is not proof of Evolution at all. Especially till we find the next level of transition. There are thousands of fossils that show no evolutionary change at all but one fossil that might is all that is needed to prove millions of years of evolution. Might as well throw in the walking catfish too. Evolutionists are just as willing to Believe through faith as Christians

Answer 8

It is an evolutionist hobbit to support their spoiled ideas with "made-up" evidences.
Why dont you mention a skull, shown as a transition between human & monkey,, was indeed half human( brain) , half monkey ( jaw).skull combined by a clever evolutionist and presented as an evidence to evolution for years..
Why do you need such "tricks" to support your ideas ?
HA HA HAAAAAA
I laugh at these ideas ( not with my mouth)
sorry

Answer 9

You are so deceived. Do you not understand the interpretation that goes into evolution and fossils. No fossil speaks and says I am derived from this, all you have is a fossil and then you have no evidence of evolution ever taking place, all you have are dead things that do not tell their relation to anyting else. Now is it reasonable to assume something took place before and after that fossil, that nowhere else evidences itself? Answer- No it is not.

Let me tell you something, there are fish like that today and they stay the same they are not changing, God made a wonderfully diverse creation through His power and intellect.Get over it already, evolution is nothing but barbarism, ancient nature worship, like Egyptians worshipping flies and crocodiles, you just don't see it yet because you are easily duped. Keep studying.

"They say they are wise, but they are fools; instead of worshiping the immortal God, they worship images made to look like mortals or birds or animals or reptiles."

Answer 10

Please... Everyone knows the Wall Street Journal has a liberal bias. They make-up stuff all the time. Why no pictures?