Posted on 04/09/2006 4:52:29 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Darwin predicted that the "missing links" of evolutiongaps in the fossil record between related specieswould come to haunt his theory. He was right: even today, they're a major theme in the effort to discredit evolution with the public. Which is why there was such a stir about a paper in the journal Nature last week describing a 375 million-year-old creature dug from rocks in the Canadian Arctic.
[snip]
Given the Inuit name Tiktaalik, the specimen neatly splits the gap between fossil fish that lived about 385 million years ago and the four-legged amphibians that came 20 million years later.
[snip]
The Discovery Institute, which promotes "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwin, was quick to assert that Tiktaalik "poses no threat to [ID] ...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The QUAGGA!!! (It only had stripes on the front side...)
Wait, now you're slinging mud? Sheesh....
Chalk up another one to the Pastafarians!
ID is heretical science in the same way that Hinduism is heretical Christianity.
Why do you think that article is interesting?
Sorry. Bad reading that appeals to the reader's ignorance. The evolution of the vertebrate eye has been well understood for decades. Which is why all but the most dishonest creationist publications (evidently beloved by at least some here) have given up on pretending that the eye represents some kind of problem for evolution. Try again.
"Bad reading that appeals to the reader's ignorance"
Another angered response by an evolutionist. Why so testy ? Guess the article hit a nerve.
What is it in the article that you think would hit a nerve?
Seeing endlessly refuted non-arguments that even most ardent creationists have given up on repeated as if they were saying something clever does tend to make me testy. Thinking that people who know nothing of biology can spot something as obvious as "the eye cannot be the product of evolution" which somehow the 99% of professional practicing biologists who spend their lives studying the subject haven't noticed is fatuous beyond belief; the most fruitloop kind of conspiracy-theory nonsense. Having Christianity and conservatism associated with militant ignorance and neo-luddism does hit a nerve, true. Note that even ID promoters such as Behe, Denton, Dembski, Meyer et al acknowledge that the evolutionary pathway for eyes is well understood.
BTW when I said that the evolution of the eye was understood decades ago I was wrong. I forgot that Darwin himself outlined the necessary intermediate stages from no eye at all to modern vertebrate eye and pointed out modern creatures and fossils that had/have those intermediates. So anyone promoting that "eye is too complex to have evolved" argument without recognising that it has already been refuted is 150 years out of date, not mere decades.
Don't hit yourself too hard. Fifteen decades is still decades.
There are still geocentrics hiding in the caves waiting for the defeat of Copernicus.
Take the non-junk regions, such as working genes and the similarity is nearer 99% than 95%. The comparison in that study is a flat comparison that includes redundant regions
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.