At 10:24 AM 10/21/97 -0600, Eduardo G. Moros wrote:
>There *appears* to be transitional forms, that's all. Clear mechanistic
>explanations are lacking and wanting. It also depends on what you call
>"transitional".
One runs into this argument often in the creation/evolution literature--the
idea that we must have a mechanism before we can believe in the transitional
forms. This is a flawed argument as can be seen by applying this reasoning
to the brain. I am currently reading "The Symbolic Species" by Terrence
Deacon, He writes,
"Despite all these advances, some critical pieces of the puzzle still elude
us. Even though neural science has pried ever deeper into the mysteries of
brain function, we still lack a theory of global brain functions. We
understand many of the cellular and molecular details, we have mapped a
number of cognitive taks to associated brain regions, and we even hae
constructed computer simulations of networks that operate in ways that are
vaguely like parts of brains; but we still lack insight into the general
logic that ties such details together." Deacon, p. 24
Applying your argument to this issue I could paraphrase you:
There *appears* to be brain function, that's all. Clear mechanistic
explanations are lacking and wanting.
Is this what we want to do for every item in nature we don't understand?
> According to Darwinism, we should find *not* 10 or 100 or
>even a 1000 fossils that resemble evolution. We should find tens or hundreds
>of thousands gradually chnafing life forms ............ but there are just not
>"enough" *transitional* (?) forms to prove lineage.
This is an entirely outdated view of how biologists view mutation. It was
Darwin's view, but Darwin was wrong. Consider the mutation which causes six
fingers. Where are the 1000s of transitional forms between the five-digit
individual and the six-digit individual. Where are the partially developed
fingers? Horses even today are occasionally born with three digits on their
limbs. There are no transitional forms. They either have 3 or they have 1.
There is no form with 1.5 toes.
>Each "species" (the
>definition of what a species is is currently evolving§) seems to appear fully
>developed and highly complex, the explanations for this fact are used as
>excuses. Science is not about scientirrific accounts of what may have
>happened, but about data and facts that point with a high degree of convincing
>evidences (w/o excuses) to a theory that accurately explains the data and
>facts may have happened (it does not really explained what actually happened).
> So, in affirming trans-speciation with the limited data we now have is a
>dis-service (in my opinion) to science as much as affirming that
>trans-speciation have not occurred because the bible says so (when it
>doesn't).
Considering that we have observed species arising in historical times, I
would certainly say that trans-speciation is an ongoing process. Consider this:
"At the margin of Lake Victoria, in Uganda, there sits a
small body of water called Lake Nabugabo that has an areal extent
of some fifteen miles. The smaller lake obviously formed from
the larger one when a sand spit grew across a channel that
formerly united the two bodies of water. Radiocarbon dating of
fossil plant material in the spit shows that Nabugabo was
separated from the parent lake approximately four thousand years
ago. Within Lake Nabugabo are, five species of cichlid fishes
unknown from Lake Victoria or any other locality in the world." ~Steven M.
Stanley, "Evolution of Life: Evidence for a New Pattern", Great
Ideas Today, 1983, (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1983), p.
22
For the creationist who thinks that carbon 14 dating dates things
too old, the problem is even greater. It means that the
speciation has occurred in even a shorter time.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm