Sorry Jim, I am not that slick to have thought of that. That is a lawyer
thing not a scientist thing. This is not a court room where such sophistry
is accepted. Hopefully on the reflector we are pursuing truth not setting
logical traps.. I am not trying to trap you with some shifty rhetorical
device. I am just trying to get you to discuss scientific data.
By "dealing with the data" I mean explaining the data. I don't care if
you explain it by saying that little aliens in spaceships came to earth over
the past billion years and buried their dead. All these fossils we find are
the remains of various civilizations since Earth was the Galactic graveyard.
They put us here to care for their dead, but we went wacko and started
digging their dead up and playing with them and displaying their dead in our
museums. And now, we actually believe that these dead aliens are our
ancestors. What a hoot! Now, when they occasionally come to pay their
respects, we send jet fighters after their space ships which we call UFO's.
The transitional forms are lacking because all the forms came from
different planets. As civilizations died out, blew themselves up, got tired
of coming here to do burial detail, or found another planet to use as their
graveyard, their particular morphological form ceased to be buried so that it
appears to us, with our evolutionary views that the poor animal went extinct.
The slight variations of morphological forms within phyla are due to the
mutations induced by numerous nuclear wars. This accounts for the forms
which appear to be evolved along similar body plans but are a little bit
different. The iridium layer at the Cretaceous Tertiary boundary is not due
to a meteor impact. They use a form of nuclear power for transportation
which we have not discovered yet. We will find that there is an slightly
radioactive element at atomic number 154. It fissions to produce two iridium
atoms. 65 million years ago, one of their ships blew up in our atmosphere
causing the awfullest ecological disaster. It didn't kill the dinosaurs,
because they didn't live here. They found an ecologically nicer place to
bury themselves and so it appears they went extinct. Actually they live
about 1500 lightyears away from us.
This explanation accounts for all the features of the fossil record.
Appearance of certain forms at particular stratigraphic levels (They just
discovered what a wonderful place earth was for burials) their gradual change
(radioactive mutations), and their disappearance (They finally blew
themselves up or went elsewhere.) I dare anyone to disprove this theory!
Jim Bell writes:
"We have danced this dance already. I have suggested that the data does NOT
support large scale change (an interpretation). You brought up the "whale
sequence" and stratomorphic intermediates as "evidence" of the kind of
change at issue (an interpretation)."
I hate to be persistent but why is it so hard for you to simply tell me what
you would recognize as evidence of a major transition. You never even
responded to my question about why the whale lineage is not an acceptable
documentation of transition. It seem difficult to get you to commit to what
you think about the fossil record; especially when you won't answer simple
questions like these.
1. I mentioned the footed ness of the whale transition. Does that in your
view consitute a transition? If not, why not?
2.What criteria would you look for in fossil animals which would be able to
convince you that a transition had indeed occurred? Or how would you prove
that no transition had occurred?
3. Is there anything which would convince you that morphological transitions
have occurred?
There. I have phrased these without assuming any answer or response on your
part. Now, would you please, pretty please, answer the questions?
glenn