What evidence would convince you of evolution?

[DeMotts]

Hi all, new poster/longtime reader, etc.

I’ve noticed that some times when debating the merits of evolution with creationists the phrase “there isn’t any evidence� or “there isn’t enough evidence� is often said. In some extreme cases the creationist will go so far as to ask their opponent for a “videotape� or some type of recorded media. This is an extreme example and certainly isn’t the case with all creationists, but I have seen people on this board asking for what seems like an impossible level of evidence.

This lady is an example of this mentality:


My question is this:

Specifically what kind of evidence do you require before you would consider changing your viewpoint regarding evolution? Is there any level of evidence that would convince you? If there is a particular thing you think would change your mind, do you think that what you are asking is within the reasonable realm of possibility for science to provide?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

[jgh7]

For the most part I accept or am open to evolution. But I haven't seen the perfect proof for it that I desire. Here's what would literally convince me out of perfect proof.

Provide the fossils of an animal species evolving into its next form. I would need to see:

1) the fossils of its original form
2) the fossils of its next evolved form
3) Most importantly: the fossils of every form it takes in between the original and evolved form that show every significant mutation that occurs to lead to the evolved form.

-----

Most of the time, it seems that fossils show one animal form, and then a completely new evolution onto its next evolutionary form. Shouldn't there be tons of weird intermediary fossil forms between these two forms?

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 150 by jgh7]

You wrote:

"Provide the fossils of an animal species evolving into its next form. I would need to see:

1) the fossils of its original form
2) the fossils of its next evolved form
3) Most importantly: the fossils of every form it takes in between the original and evolved form that show every significant mutation that occurs to lead to the evolved form. "

If web sites wont do, and if books wont do, you might have to take a few college level courses for that info... and then ask the professor. You might not believe even that level of information.

Maybe you will just need to become a paleontologist or evolutionary biologist and go find out for yourself. But if you start OFF needing to prove all of the science is wrong, it's going to take you a LONG LONG while.

And if you want to use confirmation bias... the way that you are now....you wont go very far in science. You might NOT get many papers published if you start off PRESUPPOSING a creator.. or that GENESIS is true... just sayin'.

But good luck with your education.

If you ever DO want to learn about evolution, just ask.
Or just Google... you don't even NEED to ask, really. But a lot of people in the forum have some pretty hot links you may enjoy. Here is a good hint to start you off with though... EVERY fossil comes from an animal that came from their MAMA, and those mamas came from grandmas... and those grandmas from their grandmas.. And so on, and so on and so on for millions and even BILLIONS of years and each time, changing JUST a little bit.. you look like your mama.. but not QUITE exactly, there are changes over time. Every fossil is a "transitional fossil" in that sense. Some fossils demonstrate the transitions more than other fossils. You should really look up whales.. That's a real good one.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... vograms_03

[Neatras]

3) Most importantly: the fossils of every form it takes in between the original and evolved form that show every significant mutation that occurs to lead to the evolved form.

Are you aware of the rates of fossilization? Expecting an individual skeleton for every generation is vastly unrealistic. Fossils don't occur except under extremely rare cases. The fact that we have so many fossils just attests to the absolutely monstrous number of organisms that must have lived in the past.

[endtimer]

[Replying to post 147 by DeMotts]

You are right about me quoting the scripture as reference, apologies... but it has become habit to have reference after almost 64 years of researching this. Just so that you know , I dont follow any religion, or go to church, in fact I hate those false places. I dont belong to any society or fellowship. I walk alone with what I know and have. It's enough for me...

So in plain English regarding this , you can go find all the fossils you want, what you are searching for is truth yes? I can give you the rundown as I see it in my opinion in a easy way, but I'm very doubtful about evolutionists, no matter what you share, they have a tunnel vision mindset. they are great at tricking themselves not to look deeper, because it ends up being a spiritual thing. , they are bound to physical dimension which in laymen's terms is thinking inside the box... anyways >

If you can show me where the missing link is , then I will entertain this conversation with great detail. But the missing link is the key and critical keyword in this regard. Evolution is a theory just like black holes. We dont really know for sure what happened because we dont have any evidence showing the change from monkey to intelligent superhuman beings as we are now , even the DNA is proof of that, yet such a significant leap in history is purposely overlooked.

Think about this for a sec. There is no other documents or books that talk about a grand designer or creator that can stand up against time & history. detailing the creation thousands of years ago , why ? those days there where no scientists and yet they where living human beings that experienced these things and wrote them down. That is hard evidence.

So I believe in all of this not because I was forced to by anyone, but because I died as a child and I entered into the spiritual realm, and growing up I knew that my soul and spirit was not a earthly coincidence, i looked for the truth in every church and every religion , every scientific book known to mankind, and I could only find the solid truth that I was after in the bible . you can challenge yourself and go look for anyone who experienced death and actually died but was saved. They all have the exact same story. through all the ages and years everyone is coming back with the exact same message, go look on youtube, see for yourself. unfortunately a lot of people always seek and seek and never experience the supernatural. So in the beginning there was lots of time and understanding the creation will either make you or brake you, its important to harness your inner strength to bring this picture to light... This might be offensive to some, but I think its pretty easy. If you dont believe in the bible then that is fine, but being anti bible is also anti christ. no matter how you look at it. It's in your blood that determines what you believe. your dna is your saving grace or not...

There are 2 kinds of people in this world, and those bloodlines come straight from adam , dna proves this. The one bloodline is people that are born christians and know by default who God is without even opening a bible their whole life, the other type of bloodline is the atheist. The atheist will never believe and will never figure out why they cant believe, their drive in life is to try and proof their existence through science and debunking the creation through their eyes. If you research this topic in great detail as I have done, you will find no other account that has this detail and evidence even in science...

So if you believe nothing you read online , then test this theory in all dimensions of life sciences... As documented in genesis God created the Heavens and the Earth. So I wont dabble on scripture as you pointed out its too complicated for some, but genesis accounts for the fundamentals that make up our science world as we know it... There is a Super Intelligent Spirit in the sky that roams in outer space, you can call Him a alien also if you want because He is not from here...

He created heaven and also created angels, and during that initial first creation it was found that one angel in particular liked himself a little too much, God gave angles the power to rule other planets as well(Jude 1:6) ...So the angel that had a attitude problem got thrown out of heaven , he is a angel that posseses earth's design plans, he has that super intelligence and still does...this is where it gets interesting >>>

Through that cast our angel Lucifer's sin of rebellion against God, that old world under lucifer's stewardship was first subjected to Death and, through time, eventually died.
At the end of its time, when the stars of the old universe, including Earth's sun, perished, their remaining hydrogen oxidized into waters as darkness (both physical and spiritual) took its final toll upon the ancient Creation: "And the earth was without form, and void,and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."So from the very beginning , it started out with heaven & earth, the details about the time between each creations was voids and accounts for billions of years, that is evolution of planet earth , So all things got up to the point where the designer saw that it was good...over-sized animals wouldn't have worked anyways, our atmosphere and earth was in harmony, life itself was at the point where it was good but not intelligent... the next step in evolution required divine intervention, or simply reading genesis... Before He created Adam in flesh form , Adam was a spirit that had the power to create things with his voice, he named all the animals as well...

The heavens and Earth "which are now" are the second "generation" of the heavens and the Earth, the creation of which began when God said, "Let there be light..."(Gen 1:3) and was accomplished in six literal 24-hour days, with God "resting" on the seventh day. Our present Earth and heavens were regenerated by God from the physical remains of the old world. This is why the Bible says: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that God made the earth and the heavens,(Genesis 2:4 KJV) Our present world, the whole universe, is a regeneration of the original creation. That is a scriptural reality which fits the geologic evidence, but not the secular theories of Unitarianism geology and Evolution. Neither does it fit the doctrines of the contemporary Young Earth Creationist movement.
Young Earth Creationism demands that the universe and all things were first made only 6,000 years ago, and that there was no death on the Earth until Adam and Eve sinned. Romans 5:12 and Exodus 20:11 are the "proof texts" cited as the defining doctrines of the faith. Therefore, by their simplistic interpretation of those two verses, they claim there is no scriptural proof of death before Adam, therefore no Pre-Adamite world. Since they deny a Pre-Adamite world, all of the fossil record and the Ice Age must (according to their reasoning) be the result of Noah's flood. This is nothing less than classical Archaic Creationism presented in the new and improved wrapper of "Creation Science" and peddled on the claim of strict adherence to the literal wording of the Bible. However, as we have already started to document, that claim is not exactly the full truth.

Adam's sin brought death into his (our) world. Therefore it is no contradiction with the Bible that the Earth's geology shows a long and ancient track record of death on this planet long before Adam. Using the spiritual principle that death comes by sin, as the Scriptures clearly say in Romans 5:12, we will show you from the Scriptures that there was a sinner before Adam, in an ancient world that was here before Adam: Lucifer, a.k.a. Satan, the Dragon, the Serpent. Death came upon his ancient world when he fell - long, long before this present world, and the Earth's fossil record is the evidence of this truth, preserved by God (as a physical witness to truth) in the ancient rocks of our planet.

In My Research I will show that this is not heresy, but scriptural fact supported by both the Bible and geologic evidence. I will also show that Noah's flood was a real and global event, but could not possibly be the source for the sediments and fossil record found in the Earth today. This is followed by documentation of indirect scientific evidence in the geological and archaeological records which supports the Biblical account of the flood AND the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 146 by Kenisaw]

The first thing God made after His 100 billion year break from Gen.1:1-2 to Gen.1:3 were light.

So the divine word of your god, an all powerful being supposedly, had to use the word "day" to mean an actual day in some places in the Bible and mean a billion years in others? Can you show where a person is directed to assume a literal translation of day in one place and an absurdly longer time period (a billion years) in another place? No, you can't of course, because no such directive exists. So the only conclusion to logically reach is that you are rationalizing, trying to make the word of a god creature fit what is now known science. In other words, you are making it up as you go along.

Are you one of those people who claims that it was a billion years between each day? Makes me wonder how those plants survived for a billion years before your god being got around to making the Sun...

Note the difference between Gen.1:1-2 & Gen.1:3. Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven & the earth. In Gen.1:1-2 nothing is mentioned about Light growth animals etc because the earth was void empty containing nothing. (2) And the earth was without form & void & darkness was upon the face of the deep. See that earth was lying in water. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Gen. 1:2 record the condition of the original earth accurately saying it was empty containing nothing. This makes a big difference of billions of years between Gen.1:1-2 & Gen. 1:3 We see a few things from the first creation. The earth was created with no life on it, it was void empty with nothing on it except Gods Life that moved as the Holy Spirit Lighton the face of the waters.

Yeah, about that. If your supernatural thing "created" the Earth in day 1, it makes zero sense that it was "without form" in day 2. These are the words of an all knowing critter we are talking about too, yet they contradict each other. "Without form" doesn't mean empty (since water was there and water is something then it obviously wasn't "empty" for that matter, was it). Look up the definition of form...

7)After billions of years God made spiritual light & later on in Gen.1:14 He expanded His light from earth to glory igniting the heavenly lights the sun moon & stars. . parked His light  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (4) And God saw the light, that it was good & God divided the light from the darkness.

Those poor plants on day 3. Whatever did they do until the "heavenly lights" showed up on day 4...

This creation took place millions of years ago.

Great. All you need to do is prove that. You first need to prove that your god being actually exists. Then, after you do that (which no believer of any dogma since the dawn of time has ever been able to do, but best of luck to you), all you have to do is that this god being actually created anything. Because don't forget, just because it exists doesn't automatically mean it did anything. For all you know it exists and didn't even notice the Big Bang and planet Earth were going on...

Ignorant unbelievers denying scriptural facts believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago. The bible gives the answers to all Gods mysteries.

Sure. Pi= 3. That's a fabulous piece of divine info from the most powerful creature ever conceived. Your god doesn't math very well...

Scientific discoveries analyzing rock formations prove the creation took place billions of years ago.

Let's be accurate here. Geology proves the age of the Earth, it does not prove that a supernatural entity had anything to do with it.

I will proof it scripturally God calls His original creation of the heaven & earth generations. Gen.2:6 These are the generations of the heavens & of the earth (The heavens & earth had generations not just days) when they were created, in the day (not days) that the Lord God made the earth & the heavens.

The word "generations" is used in your particular version of the Bible (ever notice all Bibles have the word "version" on them by the way? Funny that the inerrant word of a god has "versions"...). For instance the NIV states: "4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." But keep reading Gen 2 and you will see that man came before trees, even though it is explicitly stated that he came AFTER trees in Gen 1. But that the inerrant word of a god creature for you...

The generation of mankind is calculated at 40 years per generation & common sense tells us that the heavens & earths generations are millions of years old cause it takes thousands & millions of years for sediments etc to settle & form rock formations crystallizing to what God had in mind. Gods Covenant was with man was before man came here God had mercy on certain people before the foundation of the world.

Common sense tells us that the claim that there is a god being is ludicrous. The claim that such a being made the planet and all life and stars and so forth is even more so. Why anyone would suspend their facilities when faced with this type of mythology is beyond me.

[jgh7]

[Replying to Neatras]

I have a middle-school level of knowledge on evolution. I honestly agree with evolution. It's either that or "God created everything and put fossils here to trick us". I have pretty much accepted that my skepticism is unjustified and comes from a lack of knowledge.

My previous post was meant to illustrate what an excellent form of proof would be for me. If there was a diagram showing each mutation that occurs from one evolution to the next for an animal, that would be awesome and very easy to understand and visualize.

My current suspicion, or perhaps lack-of-understanding, is with the viability of intermediary forms between evolutions. When an animal evolves from one form to the next, the beginning and final forms are viable and fit for survival. But wouldn't there be "odd" intermediary forms that can't survive? How does evolution explain this?

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 147 by DeMotts]

So in plain English regarding this , you can go find all the fossils you want, what you are searching for is truth yes? I can give you the rundown as I see it in my opinion in a easy way, but I'm very doubtful about evolutionists, no matter what you share, they have a tunnel vision mindset. they are great at tricking themselves not to look deeper, because it ends up being a spiritual thing. , they are bound to physical dimension which in laymen's terms is thinking inside the box... anyways >

Looking deeper than what, precisely? If you follow all the data and empirical evidence gathered to date, and I mean literally every single piece of it, from 2 billion fossils to the entire geological record across the globe to the entire body of work under the field of genetics, all of it points to the theory of evolution being a valid explanation for the progression of life on Earth. To look "deeper" is to search for something for which there is zero evidence for. Should we search for leprechauns being creators of living things? There is as much evidence for that as there is for your flavor of god having anything to do with life. Why not think Odin did it, or Osiris, or Mumba?

What you call for here, specifically, is a search for something that has no basis in fact. It's about as unscientific, unorganized, and irrational a thing that any person could do. Proceed from zero evidence or empirical data, and search for it anyway? What an absurd thing to propose...

If you can show me where the missing link is , then I will entertain this conversation with great detail. But the missing link is the key and critical keyword in this regard.

Actually, it isn't. Sorry to break this to you, but the so called "missing link" issue is a creationist fabrication. It's not an issue in science. All fossils are technically "transitional" fossils, because all living things are changing over time. It's not stunning that a believer doesn't understand this, sadly it is expected. There is ample data available for you to review about the changes in various animals over time that shows the progress from one animal to another. Dinos to birds for example. You could peruse the Berkeley.edu website for starters, or wikipedia, or rationalwiki, or livescience, or scientific american, or Discover magazine, or PBS' Nova, and so on. Here is a great article listing information about several animal lines: http://recoveringfundamentalists.com/no ... al-fossils I also like this site because of the references listed at the bottom: http://tolweb.org/Neornithes

If you've been looking into things for 64 years, you should have seen some of this by now....

Evolution is a theory just like black holes.

Wonderful. Another believer that doesn't know the difference between a layman's theory and a scientific theory. Just what this website needs.

We dont really know for sure what happened because we dont have any evidence showing the change from monkey to intelligent superhuman beings as we are now , even the DNA is proof of that, yet such a significant leap in history is purposely overlooked.

Great. Another believer that thinks we came from monkeys, instead of understanding that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. 64 years you've been researching? What the hell have you been doing that whole time?

By no evidence, I assume you mean no evidence except the fossil record, genetics, and geology. Because that stuff clearly shows the progression to modern homo sapiens...

Think about this for a sec. There is no other documents or books that talk about a grand designer or creator that can stand up against time & history. detailing the creation thousands of years ago , why ? those days there where no scientists and yet they where living human beings that experienced these things and wrote them down. That is hard evidence.

The Vedas (Hindu holy book) is even older, and it has a creation story too. Why don't you believe in that one?

The Bible doesn't detail anything. It is so full of errors and contradictions that only the purposefully ignorant could conclude that it stands up to anything. Try reading all the threads on the first page of the "Science and Religion" Index to get a fine example of why the Bible is not scientific, accurate, or reliable in matters of rational inquiry.

So I believe in all of this not because I was forced to by anyone, but because I died as a child and I entered into the spiritual realm, and growing up I knew that my soul and spirit was not a earthly coincidence, i looked for the truth in every church and every religion , every scientific book known to mankind, and I could only find the solid truth that I was after in the bible . you can challenge yourself and go look for anyone who experienced death and actually died but was saved. They all have the exact same story. through all the ages and years everyone is coming back with the exact same message, go look on youtube, see for yourself. unfortunately a lot of people always seek and seek and never experience the supernatural. So in the beginning there was lots of time and understanding the creation will either make you or brake you, its important to harness your inner strength to bring this picture to light... This might be offensive to some, but I think its pretty easy. If you dont believe in the bible then that is fine, but being anti bible is also anti christ. no matter how you look at it. It's in your blood that determines what you believe. your dna is your saving grace or not...

Bully for you I guess. I'll stick to the topic at hand and move on.

There are 2 kinds of people in this world, and those bloodlines come straight from adam , dna proves this.

There is no empirical data that shows Adam ever existed, or that he got his start in a magical garden that had had one spring producing four rivers. If you are referring to the most common recent ancestor on the male side, you have an enormous misunderstanding of it...

The one bloodline is people that are born christians and know by default who God is without even opening a bible their whole life, the other type of bloodline is the atheist.

We are all born atheists. We have to learn religion and belief systems.

Even then, you are still an atheist. There are thousands of gods in human history. Do you believe in Zeus? Odin? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Neither to do I. We are both atheists. I just lack belief in one more god than you do...

The atheist will never believe and will never figure out why they cant believe, their drive in life is to try and proof their existence through science and debunking the creation through their eyes. If you research this topic in great detail as I have done, you will find no other account that has this detail and evidence even in science...

Religious belief is not tied to DNA. It has mostly to do with where and to whom you were born. If you were born in Iran, you'd probably be a Muslim...

So if you believe nothing you read online , then test this theory in all dimensions of life sciences... As documented in genesis God created the Heavens and the Earth. So I wont dabble on scripture as you pointed out its too complicated for some, but genesis accounts for the fundamentals that make up our science world as we know it... There is a Super Intelligent Spirit in the sky that roams in outer space, you can call Him a alien also if you want because He is not from here...

Nonsense, as outlined in my previous post to you.

He created heaven and also created angels, and during that initial first creation it was found that one angel in particular liked himself a little too much, God gave angles the power to rule other planets as well(Jude 1:6) ...So the angel that had a attitude problem got thrown out of heaven , he is a angel that posseses earth's design plans, he has that super intelligence and still does...this is where it gets interesting >>>

Through that cast our angel Lucifer's sin of rebellion against God, that old world under lucifer's stewardship was first subjected to Death and, through time, eventually died.
At the end of its time, when the stars of the old universe, including Earth's sun, perished, their remaining hydrogen oxidized into waters as darkness (both physical and spiritual) took its final toll upon the ancient Creation: "And the earth was without form, and void,and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."So from the very beginning , it started out with heaven & earth, the details about the time between each creations was voids and accounts for billions of years, that is evolution of planet earth , So all things got up to the point where the designer saw that it was good...over-sized animals wouldn't have worked anyways, our atmosphere and earth was in harmony, life itself was at the point where it was good but not intelligent... the next step in evolution required divine intervention, or simply reading genesis... Before He created Adam in flesh form , Adam was a spirit that had the power to create things with his voice, he named all the animals as well...

The heavens and Earth "which are now" are the second "generation" of the heavens and the Earth, the creation of which began when God said, "Let there be light..."(Gen 1:3) and was accomplished in six literal 24-hour days, with God "resting" on the seventh day. Our present Earth and heavens were regenerated by God from the physical remains of the old world. This is why the Bible says: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that God made the earth and the heavens,(Genesis 2:4 KJV) Our present world, the whole universe, is a regeneration of the original creation. That is a scriptural reality which fits the geologic evidence, but not the secular theories of Unitarianism geology and Evolution. Neither does it fit the doctrines of the contemporary Young Earth Creationist movement.
Young Earth Creationism demands that the universe and all things were first made only 6,000 years ago, and that there was no death on the Earth until Adam and Eve sinned. Romans 5:12 and Exodus 20:11 are the "proof texts" cited as the defining doctrines of the faith. Therefore, by their simplistic interpretation of those two verses, they claim there is no scriptural proof of death before Adam, therefore no Pre-Adamite world. Since they deny a Pre-Adamite world, all of the fossil record and the Ice Age must (according to their reasoning) be the result of Noah's flood. This is nothing less than classical Archaic Creationism presented in the new and improved wrapper of "Creation Science" and peddled on the claim of strict adherence to the literal wording of the Bible. However, as we have already started to document, that claim is not exactly the full truth.

Adam's sin brought death into his (our) world. Therefore it is no contradiction with the Bible that the Earth's geology shows a long and ancient track record of death on this planet long before Adam. Using the spiritual principle that death comes by sin, as the Scriptures clearly say in Romans 5:12, we will show you from the Scriptures that there was a sinner before Adam, in an ancient world that was here before Adam: Lucifer, a.k.a. Satan, the Dragon, the Serpent. Death came upon his ancient world when he fell - long, long before this present world, and the Earth's fossil record is the evidence of this truth, preserved by God (as a physical witness to truth) in the ancient rocks of our planet.

In My Research I will show that this is not heresy, but scriptural fact supported by both the Bible and geologic evidence. I will also show that Noah's flood was a real and global event, but could not possibly be the source for the sediments and fossil record found in the Earth today. This is followed by documentation of indirect scientific evidence in the geological and archaeological records which supports the Biblical account of the flood AND the Ruin-Reconstruction interpretation of Genesis.

Nonsense, as outlined in my previous post to you. But please, by all means, show me that the global flood was real. I challenge you to make a better argument than me...

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to Neatras]

I have a middle-school level of knowledge on evolution. I honestly agree with evolution. It's either that or "God created everything and put fossils here to trick us". I have pretty much accepted that my skepticism is unjustified and comes from a lack of knowledge.

My previous post was meant to illustrate what an excellent form of proof would be for me. If there was a diagram showing each mutation that occurs from one evolution to the next for an animal, that would be awesome and very easy to understand and visualize.

My current suspicion, or perhaps lack-of-understanding, is with the viability of intermediary forms between evolutions. When an animal evolves from one form to the next, the beginning and final forms are viable and fit for survival. But wouldn't there be "odd" intermediary forms that can't survive? How does evolution explain this?

I listed some web sites for endtimer in a previous post on this page that deals with dinosaur to bird evolution. That is a good place to start.

You have to realize something that might help you in the long term. Evolution, and the literal mountain of evidence supporting it, can't just be slapped together in a couple of paragraphs with a flow chart below. If you want to understand it, you need to increase your knowledge base about science in general, and fields like biology, geology, and paleontology in particular. I'm not saying you need to be an expert in the stuff, but you need to get the background comprehended before digging into some of this stuff. The question is, are you curious enough to take the time to look into it?

To answer the question at the end of your post, I must first note that your understanding of life is a little off. There are no "final forms". Living things change over time. This never stops. Even species that change very little over time, like sharks, still change.

Having said that, why would the progression from one time period to another time period have "odd" forms? Do you think during the transition from dinos to birds they stopped having a heart? Lungs? A brain? Look at all the animals in the modern world, right now. Think about all the possible creatures that exist JUST among mammals. Is a giraffe any odder than a dolphin, or a human, or a kangaroo? The physical characteristics of creatures that you can visit at a zoo could very well be described as "odd", yet they work in their environment just fine.

That's because the only thing that matters is that any characteristic that any life form might develop has to be useful. I hope that makes sense. So a population of animals can change over time into virtually anything really, assuming that those changes are useful to those animals and allow them to compete successfully in their environment.

You are right, by the way, that there are some changes that ARE NOT useful. But what happens to the animals that get those? If it is a change that actually hurts the ability of that particular animal to survive, then it has a good chance of dying before it reproduces and passes that change along. That's where natural selection matters in all of this. Bad changes, as well as a lot of neutral changes (neither good or bad) don't get passed on because those that carry those changes aren't an improvement from past generations, and aren't as successful. But the population as a whole will continue to change as the GOOD changes that make certain members better able to survive get passed along into the general population.

Hope this helps.

[DeMotts]

[Replying to post 153 by endtimer]

Endtimer I appreciate that you are putting a large amount of effort into your posts but you did not respond to anything I said. You are simply preaching your viewpoint and not engaging in a debate about the issues I laid out.

Additionally, posting something like:

"There are 2 kinds of people in this world, and those bloodlines come straight from adam , dna proves this. The one bloodline is people that are born christians and know by default who God is without even opening a bible their whole life, the other type of bloodline is the atheist. The atheist will never believe and will never figure out why they cant believe, their drive in life is to try and proof their existence through science and debunking the creation through their eyes. If you research this topic in great detail as I have done, you will find no other account that has this detail and evidence even in science..."

You can't just throw that out there without some kind of reference or proof. There are two bloodlines directly from Adam, Christians and Atheists? I mean this is so far out there, and your post is peppered with stuff like this opinions stated as facts with no backup whatsoever. If you're going to post about bloodlines being confirmed by DNA evidence I need to know more about it.

I posted a very clear progression of proto-hominid -> homosapien evolution as evidenced by fossils, a path which contains many "missing links" (no longer missing). I also posted another response detailing the evolution of the horse. Can you respond specifically to these points?

Please, please respond to what I'm asking you, specifically.

[DeMotts]

[Replying to post 150 by jgh7]

Did you see my post two posts above yours that lays out exactly what you are asking for? The evolution of the horse is extremely well studied, and shows the progression from a small fox-sized creature to the modern horse with many, many intermediary steps. Dozens of species, detailing changes in anatomical form, combined with geological location within strata corresponding exactly to a linear progression from one species to another. Does this not count?