Evolution, if this is true why don't we have millions of transitional fossils?

Question

Lee Strobel on Evolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJmBevvR0Y&mode=related&search=

Many of you have said "fossils are rare and hard to find." I find them ALL the time. There's some right now in my back yard.

Answer 1

Here are some quotes from some legitimate scientists...
Hope they help!

Fossils are a great embarrassment to Evolutionary theory and offer strong support for the concept of Creation" (Gary Parker, Ph.D., biologist/paleontologist and former evolutionist).
"most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument in favor of Darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true" (Dr. David Raup, curator of geology, Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago).
"As is well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the fossil record" (Tom Kemp, Oxford University).
"The fossil record pertaining to man is still so sparsely known that those who insist on positive declarations can do nothing more than jump from one hazardous surmise to another and hope that the next dramatic discovery does not make them utter fools.Clearly some refuse to learn from this. As we have seen, there are numerous scientists and popularizers today who have the temerity to tell us that there is 'no doubt' how man originated: if only they had the evidence..." (William R. Fix, The Bone Pedlars, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984, p. 150).
"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places" (Francis Hitching, archaeologist).
"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply" (J. O'Rourke in the American Journal of Science).
"In most people's minds, fossils and Evolution go hand in hand. In reality, fossils are a great embarrassment to Evolutionary theory and offer strong support for the concept of Creation. If Evolution were true, we should find literally millions of fossils that show how one kind of life slowly and gradually changed to another kind of life. But missing links are the trade secret, in a sense, of paleontology. The point is, the links are still missing. What we really find are gaps that sharpen up the boundaries between kinds. It's those gaps which provide us with the evidence of Creation of separate kinds. As a matter of fact, there are gaps between each of the major kinds of plants and animals. Transition forms are missing by the millions. What we do find are separate and complex kinds, pointing to Creation" (Dr. Gary Parker, biologist/paleontologist and former ardent evolutionist).
"Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them" (David Kitts, paleontologist and evolutionist).
"I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation. Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed and a palm tree have come from the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would break down before an inquisition" (Dr. Eldred Corner, professor of botany at Cambridge University, England: Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961, p. 97).
"So firmly does the modern geologist believe in evolution up from simple organisms to complex ones over huge time spans, that he is perfectly willing to use the theory of evolution to prove the theory of evolution [p.128]one is applying the theory of evolution to prove the correctness of evolution. For we are assuming that the oldest formations contain only the most primitive and least complex organisms, which is the base assumption of Darwinism [p.127]. If we now assume that only simple organisms will occur in old formations, we are assuming the basic premise of Darwinism to be correct. To use, therefore, for dating purposes, the assumption that only simple organisms will be present in old formations is to thoroughly beg the whole question. It is arguing in a circle [p.128]" Arthur E Wilder-Smith, Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1968, pp. 127,128).
"It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint, geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by the study of their remains imbedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of the organisms they contain" (R. H. Rastall, lecturer in economic geology, Cambridge University: Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 10, Chicago: William Benton, Publisher, 1956, p. 168).
"I admit that an awful lot of that [fantasy] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs [in the American Museum of Natural History] is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared fifty years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now, I think that that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some of the stuff. But by the time it filters down to the textbooks, we've got science as truth and we have a problem" (Dr. Niles Eldredge, paleontologist and evolutionist).

(Maybe they'll help some of the idiots in this forum as well...)

May God bless you!!

Answer 2

Do you recognize that it truly isn't any longer only fossil data that symbolize the main efficient data for evolution? whether we had no longer a single surviving fossil, ERVs (to illustrate) might symbolize rock-stable data for evolution. As does straight forward genetics. Then there is homology. Funnily, all of those distinctive traces of knowledge are strikingly consistent. Any theory that may not evolutionary in nature has some huge hurdles to conquer. after all, your fact is fake. there are a lot of transitional fossil for the elephant and have been plenty on account that until now i replaced into born (and that i'm no spring hen). There are somewhat some for the giraffe too. on the different hand, there'll constantly be *some* creatures for which truly finished transitional fossil sequence do no longer exist. that's no longer in any way a situation for evolution, on account that we'd on no account assume to have close to end sequence for *each and every thing*. Fossilization and then the maintenance of those fossils is plenty too uncommon a technique for that. Your situation isn't which you would be waiting to discover some creatures for which the data of transitional fossils is undesirable, it truly is that there are various animals for which the data is astounding. Or are you going to posit that in the time of straight forward terms those animals for which the transitional fossil sequence is somewhat sketchy have been created and each of something greater? and then as new fossils are discovered, you are going to take them decrease back off god? No, i did no longer think of so - meaning it truly isn't any longer an truthful argument. you're declaring huge fat creationist fibs and clutching at straws.

Answer 3

I hear evolutionists talk about all the transitional fossils that exist but I've never seen one of them produce any evidence. This is a major point in evolution-creation debates that stumps the evolutionists. If it's been millions and millions of years to bring us to where we are today, then LOGIC tells us that there should be millions of transitional fossils, but there isn't. No, I still believe that a greater being created all there is throughout the universes instead of the idea that time+chance+matter has produced what we are today. As one mathematician has stated: "Evolution being true would be equal to a tornado hitting a junkyard and producing a new 747 Jumbo jet." I also find it amazing that renowned British philosopher Anthony Flew, an atheist of 60 years, has recently renounced atheism, citing the reason being that science has produced more evidence for intelligent design than for evolution (you can watch an interview with him of Leestrobel.com). By the way, check out Angeltress' answer, it's great.

Answer 4

Fossils are sort of hit or miss things. Hit or miss as to whether a plant or animal will happen to be fossilized. Conditions have to be just right. Then hit or miss as to whether someone will stumble upon it before erosion or some road crew destroys it. We have now found a LOT of fossils, and some of them, like Archaeopterx and Eusthenopteron, do seem to be transitional forms. But millions? That is probably a bit like playing the lottery.

Btw, I do not really know if evolution is absolutely 100% true or not. But I do know that the Bible account does not necessarily rule out that possibility.

Answer 5

For a fossil to last millions of years it needs the animal to die or become trapped in a substance that will not erode the bones. A skeleton just left on the surface will disappear in as little as 5 years (depending on the weather).

Considering the world is 4.5 billion years old, and over that time there will have been millions or even billions of animals to walk this planet, it is not hard to see how whole species of animals may never be discovered. If all life on this planet just died, and in 1 million years some lifeform came to Earth, they may not be able to see that humans ever populated it.

And everything is a transistional entity. We are always evolving into something else.

Answer 6

That video is nothing but disgusting deception and propaganda. The 'phyla' show a branching tree of life over time, exactly as predicted by Evolution by Natural Selection. The same thing happens at the level of genera and species (where 'transitional species' abound). Evolution by Natural Selection does NOT predict gradual change between species over 10's of million of years - all modern observations of speciation (yes it has been observed) show it happening geologically very rapid and in geographically very isolated subsets of the population. Although in particular cases, there are long gradual transitions, eg. among oceanic planktonic foraminifera fossils ('millions' of them). And the whales thing was a bald faced lie - Sinonyx, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Indocetus, Dorudon and Basilosaurus spring to mind, just on the fossil evidence. Not to mention the overwhelmng modern biological evidence. But I'm wasting my time.

Answer 7

We do, but some people just need a fossil from every single organism that ever existed. teh fast that we have Austrolopithescene, Homo Habilis, Homo Eurectus, Neanderthals, etc. is enough for anyone to use inductive and dedcutive reasoning, along with the observable laws of evolution (natural selection, mutation, gene flow, gene shift) to conclude that the organisms probably changed via mutations ot the point they can no longer breed with their parent species and so you have a new species.

In fact, new organisms are being formed right now. You have bacterium, which over time, though natural selection, have become resistant to antibiotics. But, the example I am going to refer to, that severly disproves a literal undertanding of creation in genesis is that of polyploidy plants. In genesis, it says god created all organisms and adam named them all. Now, why do we get the new species of salt brush (Atriplex Robusta) found along highway I-80 in Utah, formed from a natural cross between fourwing saltbrush and saltsage (to use the simpler names).

Answer 8

"There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.

Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out."

Any fossils at all are EXTREMELY RARE. Creation advocates keep claiming that there should be millions of transitional fossils, but that's not true at all. Anybody who says something like that is someone who clearly knows nothing about science and how fossils are produced.

Answer 9

May I direct you to "A Short History of Almost Everything," by Bill Bryson? Mr. Bryson is a witty writer with a gift for making complex issues such as evolution quite comprehensible.

Clearly, you are interested in exploring whether evolution is a viable explanation of how things have come about, or else you would not have asked that question. You're certainly not one of those people who seek out what appear to them to be "unanswerable questions" in an effort to "win" an argument. That would be illogical behavior, wouldn't it?

Answer 10

Every fossil is some sort of a transitional fossil. It is so bizarre to hear those who cannot accept the self evident truth of evolution bringing up this objection over and over again. I suppose that if you have two species with no transitional fossil and then a scientist discovers a transitional fossil that then you are missing 2 transitional fossils, because now you have two gaps!!!

Answer 11

You are a (living) transitional fossil between your parents, and (potential) children.

97% of the members of the National Accedemy of Sciences disagree with you and Strobel.