So, according to many Christians, there are no transitional forms....?

Question

Did you forget the Archaeopteryx? Or how about the Microraptor?

They both are definately transitional forms with features of both the dinosaur and the modern bird.

And before you say anything ridiculous about Archaeopteryx isn't a direct ancestor of birds, no it isn't. But that isn't what we're looking for. We're looking for a transitional form, which is a different thing. Direct ancestry is not necessary to show lineage and transitions. There are enough anatomical and genetic similarities between Archaeopteryx, birds and reptiles (including the crocodile, which is one of the oldest living species on the planet) to justify calling it a transitional form. To call it an ancestor would be to imply direct lineage when its not needed.

Transitional does not mean ancestral.

What are the features of birds? Well there have been dinosaurs found with feathers. That’s right, feathers. The dinosaurs Protoarchaeopteryx robusta, Caudipteryx zoui, and Sinosauropteryx all had feathers. They are not birds because they do not have any other feature of birds, only the feathers.

The Archaeopteryx has an opposable big toe which is found in birds, not dinosaurs. It also has a “wishbone”. The bone we all love to break for luck at Thanksgiving from the turkey. Its pubis is elongated like a bird.

What features are reptilian? The Archaeopteryx does not have a bill like a bird does. Its mouth is shaped like a reptiles. Bird vertebrae are fused, the Archaeopteryx vertebrae are not as in a reptile. The bones in their body are hollow as they are in birds and in some dinosaurs (called pneumatic). The brain is shaped as a reptiles would be, not as a birds. The neck is attached to the skull from the rear as in reptiles, not from below as in birds. Vertebrae are shaped as a reptiles, not as a bird. (I could continue but I sense you getting bored and being unwilling to read further so I won’t).

This means that Archaeopteryx has features of both which makes it a transitional form and blows your idea of “no transitional forms so evolution is wrong” right out of the water. You can no longer argue “there are no transitional forms” because you are wrong.

There are transitional forms. You just have to know about them to understand them. And the Archaeopteryx is right smack in the middle between birds and dinosaurs.

And there you have it, you are wrong. Now you’ll have to find a new argument against evolution.

What say you? Are you willing to take the high road and admit when you're wrong?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microraptor
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9009261/Archaeopteryx
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/archaeopteryx.html

Dog, probably but I had to try. There's something wrong about an uneducated person.

Quite right, we have transitional fossils everywhere that the religious are unwilling to accept. However, the point has been made again and again that there's nothing thats smack in the middle. Rather like Kirk Camerons idiotic "crocoduck". I thought that point out something that really IS smack in the middle might make them open their eyes. I could be wrong however, which makes me a bit disappointed in humanity.

Barbie, what load of crap did you read that on? The lowest strata shows single celled organisms, not fully formed and functional complicated organisms.

Please please get an education. I'm actually willing to beg. You're embarassing yourself.

Anthony, no I didn't. You just ignored what I said. Nice job making yourself look like a dunce.

Zeke, on the contrary. There is no proof of your god anywhere. Thus YOUR argument means nothing. I've given you proof of transitional forms, how about you give me proof of your god that isn't something stupid like "look in the mirror", "look around you" and "the bible says so".

James, if scientists were wrong you wouldn't have the computer you're typing on right now. If scientists were wrong, there'd be no penicillin.

Don't you think that millions of scientists who've spent a combined hundreds of years studying these subjects might be a little more informed on such things than the regular person? Just a thought.

The only way to remedy ill education and ignorance is for you to educate yourself. Until then you have no one to blame for you not understanding but yourself and only make yourself look like a fool.

D2T, one scientist with a dissenting voice does not make it wrong. It makes one scientist with a dissenting voice. And yes, there is a minority of scientists that claim that the Archaeopteryx is a bird. Most scientists do not agree with that assumption. It has too many features of reptiles to be taken seriously.

iron maiden, you didn't even read what I posted did you?

Tim, it too is a transitional form. And I did not address the platypus because I did not address it. I gave you an example of a true transitional form and instead of focusing on it, you've completely ignored it and gone with something else entirely.

Ignoring what I said because it doesn't suit your religion only makes you look foolish.

lollipop, nice try. The evidence has not been manipulated. The evidence is the evidence. Don't make unsubstantiated claims you know nothing about just because they're convenient for you.

Answer 1

Usually I don't bother to post on this debate in this forum at all because the questions and answers usually don't have much thought put into them, but I see yours does.

I think that only the most uninformed of Christians would try to deny the whole theory of evolution. It is fairly clear that natural selection occurs, for instance. I think that the sticking point on transitional forms for most Christians would be that man is a separate creation from all the other types of animals, and that there is no transitional form between man and another animal. Except for the people wedded to the 10,000 year old earth theory, I think most are willing to concede that evolution happens over time, they are just not willing to concede that it is the origin of the species, that all earth life could be traced back to a single cell, or that there is no design to the universe and that the world around us just happened.

Thanks for the question though. You made your point well--I'm just not sure how much your point means to the whole creation/evolution debate, but you have shown that each and every species of creature was probably not individually created, and that whether creation or random acts of physics started it all, that clearly evolution is a process that shapes the traits of many species.

Answer 2

All fossils are transitional. What they want they will never get because it doesn't exist. The literally want to see an animal that is half cat and half dog or some **** like that. I wonder if they realize how stupid they look when they bring up something like the "croco-duck" and where is it. You know, there is no such thing as an animal that is not fully formed. Of course all animals are fully formed at "conception", the wouldn't be able to live if they weren't!

Answer 3

Here's an interesting and ironic point: Belief and logic have nothing to do with each other. This has been shown scientifically many times. (In double blind tests conducted by skeptics and BF Skinner's pigeon experiment)

If you need more evidence, just ask any believer what logical evidence it would take to convince them that they are wrong, and the reply you will get is that NOTHING will convince them to compromise any part of their faith. Belief is born from experience and is much more closely related to instinct than logic (no matter how much people try to justify it).

The Irony is that most of us think we can affect belief with well presented logical evidence. We believe this despite all logical evidence to the contrary. That is why this forum is a bit of a time waster, so don't take it too personally.

Answer 4

There are so many it's just silly. In fact, we have almost all of the reptile to mammal forms in a very long, smooth transition. Nice complete transitional sets of legged animals to both whales and sea cows have been recovered. The actual list is huge, but examples can be found in talkorigins.org.

Coffeepot: Actually, the platypus is one example of exactly what creationists ask for all the time. It is a modern surviving form of a line in transition between reptile and mammal. By studying them we can see that the first mammalian characteristics to develop were fur and lactation, and that both were refined in stages (The platypus lactates, but lacks a nipple, and its fur is hard spikes). Placental birth came later, the platypus lays eggs. By studying marsupials we can see how intermediate stages of egg-laying to placental birth developed.

Zeke: the debate about evolution vs. creation only takes place in very religious Abrahamic-god countries like the United States or Saudi Arabia. There is no debate in the rest of the world, and they laugh at us.

D2T: That's why the new feathered dinosaur and protobird fossils coming out of China now are so interesting. They are clarifying for us how the transition took place.

Answer 5

The best example to me of transition between species is the evolution of the horse from a tree-dwelling rodent to what we have today.

Answer 6

Fantastic research, my fellow believer in science!!!!! Paleontology is a fascinating topic isn't it?

If only they would listen.... they won't. There will always be those who won't believe it no matter how much proof there is.. And there is a lot of proof.

Answer 7

On the timescale evolution works on and despite our passion for discrete limits on species and speciation, we are ALL transitional forms. It's not a neatly segmented row of blocks, it's a sliding scale.

Answer 8

The gamble at the end of life is what if everybody alive is wrong and the true Gods have passed from memory.

The believers won't listen they are blind and deaf to evidence (you say that to Atheist, time to switch it around).

Answer 9

Dr Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself says:
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”

The question is not of ‘DID dinosaurs evolve into birds?’, but ‘HOW did this “proven” transition occur?’
Leading evolutionary paleo-ornithologists Dr Storrs Olson of the Smithsonian called the dino-to-bird dogma one of the great ‘scientific hoaxes of our age’ which is ‘actively promulgated by a cadre of zealous scientists’.

Answer 10

You could take them back in time machine and show them actual living creatures at their various evolutionary stages, and they would still look at you with that dumb, vacant expression and say "but goddidit".