DNA analysis has demonstrated a predictable rate of change (mutations) in our genetic codes.
These can be used, for example, to track the prehistoric migrations of Pacific Islanders.
Tracking back further in time, they allow us to compare the similarities and differences between human and Neanderthal DNA.
This rate of DNA change analysis is also yet another way to help confirm ages of fossils which still contain DNA.
And comparing similarities and differences among DNAs of modern creatures provides data for estimating the time lapsed since any two species had a common ancestor.
Often these estimates are confirmed by fossils found from just about that time period.
Of course, we can be talking very ancient times here -- for examples, mammals & reptiles split off about 200 million years ago, and primates split from other mammals around 85 million years ago.
So if you picture only one small change per generation, over many tens of millions of generations, then it is entirely possible to see reptiles descending to mammals, descending to primates, descending to apes, descending to what we have today.
And that is just what the fossil record and DNA analysis tells us.
big black dog: "Folks have been messin with fruit flies for what amounts to millions of human generations and have never been able to produce anything other than a messed up fruit fly."
Insects go back about 400 hundred million years, they evolve rapidly and today include millions of different species.
But no insect has ever magically "evolved" into a frog or bird because, literally, "you can't get there from here."
To make a frog, you first need an internal skeleton, which of course, insects don't have -- and for survival reasons, never could have.
But evolution in insects is observed every day, and common ancestors of modern insect species can be estimated through DNA analysis.
And some of those ancestors are found in the fossil record -- notably encased in amber, which famously inspired the movie Jurassic Park.
Finally, to my knowledge, laboratory experiments have never been intended to create a viable new species of fruit fly.
After all, why would anyone want to do that?
On the other hand, depending on how you precisely define the term "new species," it seems to me a rather simple process, albeit requiring a long period of time.
big black dog: "Should I go out in my backyard and start looking for transitional fossils."
Every fossil, without exception, is "transitional".
And, depending on where you live, the chances of you finding a fossil in your back yard are not so bad.
Of course, you may have to dig down a long ways -- many thousands of feet in some areas, down as far as layers of rock formed when life first began.
But there's no need for that. Plenty of fossils have been found already. You can see them at museums most anywhere. ;-)
big black dog: "So now science is defined as if you can't disprove it, then that is affirmative evidence something is true?"
Not at all.
But remember, you are the one claiming there is no way that fish can evolve into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles, reptiles into mammals, mammals into primates, primates into apes, etc.
I'm only pointing out that there are tons of scientific evidence showing that's just what happened, and not a single piece of evidence proving it could not happen.
Seems to me, that's a pretty good case for saying that evolution is "settled science."
big black dog: "Actually it has happened numerous times and been rationalized away."
Sure, if at some point, a stream cuts through a hill side and washes mammoth bones downstream into a bed of dinosaur fossils, then our intrepid paleontologists might later dig them up, finding them buried together.
But my condition was, the fossils had to be in their original deposits, and that can be determined scientifically by careful analysis of the surrounding sediments.
That's not "rationalizing," it's simply good science.
There are also places (ie, mountains) where the sediment layers themselves have been folded over to the point that younger layers are below some older layers.
Again, careful science reveals all these things, and none of it is "rationalizing."
Finally, human error is always possible, but to my knowledge there has never been a scientifically confirmed case of fossils found "out of place," or in gross violation of evolutionary theory.
Just explain how evolution is falsifiable if you believe it is science. The only explanation I have ever seen was if the fossil record was found out of order, and it has been, and it is always rationalized away in the most illogical ways:
Are the Oldest Rocks Always On the Bottom?
Evolutionary geology is built around the presupposition that our earth consists of layers of rock found in succession as they were deposited over aeons of time; that the very oldest rocks, containing no fossils, are at the bottom; that the “Archeozoic” rocks contain only “simple” life forms; that “Mesazoic” rocks contain ever more complex life forms until one arrives at the most “recent” strata, such as the ice ages (Eocene, Miocene, Pleistocene, and so on), where one finds mammoths and man.
Further, evolutionary hypotheses are based upon the supposition that all these rocks were laid down over vast aeons of time; that the fossils in the rocks were not laid down suddenly, as a result of great catastrophes, like a worldwide flood! Catastrophism, or the evidence that mass death and sudden extinction of species occurred, is anathema to many evolutionists.
Evolutionists are fond of arranging the fossils from “simple to complex” in museums and in illustrations in textbooks. There are insurmountable difficulties with the so-called “geologic succession of strata,” however. Let’s take a look at only a few of them.
First, there is no place on earth where the entire geologic succession of strata can be found. Obviously, the concept of the earth’s sedimentary rocks being found in orderly form, from most ancient to most recent, is impossible to begin with. Where did the rocks come from?
Rocks are either sedimentary (water deposited), metamorphic (formed by changes caused by faulting, pressure, and so on), or igneous (volcanic). Since there are no fossils in igneous rocks, and since there are virtually no fossils in metamorphic rocks, scientists are limited to investigating the water-borne deposits, such as limestone and shale, to establish an age for the strata.
The strata are dated according to the fossils found in them.The fossils are dated according to the strata in which they are found. Does that sound rather arbitrary? It is. As we shall see, evolutionary geology immediately discards data facts-evidence in the amount of billions of tons of rock, whole mountain ranges, mammoth regions of the earth, where the fossils found in the rocks contradict their theories.
True science always alters the theory to accept proven facts. Not so with evolution. Facts—tons upon tons of them—are ignored in order to cling to a foolish theory. To illustrate this point, let’s get right to one of the most poignant, and embarrassing, proofs.
“Upside Down”
When you walk into your bedroom and see the bed made, you probably suppose your wife spread the sheet on the bed prior to the cover, and the cover prior to the bedspread. She would look a little silly putting the bedspread on first, and then burrowing beneath it, attempting to spread the sheet. If she had done so, out of caprice, there would probably be evidence pointing to the fact, for it would be virtually impossible to do a neat job unless she once again straightened the bedspread.
When you view layers of rock as exposed in highway cuts, canyons (like the Grand Canyon of Arizona) and river banks, and you see massive layers, sometimes twenty or thirty feet thick, seemingly as smooth and cohesive as if they had been mixed in a blender, lying conformably atop each other in orderly succession, it is logical to assume the layers on the bottom (if no evidence of faulting, such as tilted, fractured strata, isoclines, geosynclines, and so on, is present) were deposited first, then the ones immediately above them, and, lastly, the layer on the top.
You would be quite correct, of course. However, evolutionists often tell us we are wrong to assume the younger strata are always atop older strata. Why? Because the fossils found in so-called “younger” strata are often found BENEATH so-called “older” strata. When this occurs, as it quite frequently does, evolutionists become incredibly inventive. In order to tenaciously cling to their theories, they seek to explain away billions of tons of contrary evidence. In many places on earth, their arrangement of fossils is challenged by miles of rocks where the fossils are out of proper order, sometimes “upside down.” Not that they are really “upside down,” please note, but that it appears “older” fossils are found in rocks above “younger” fossils, when these “older” fossils were supposedly extinct for millions of years! Yet, the layers appear undisturbed! Problem! The rocks appear to have been smoothly laid down, and are conformable to each other, showing no evidence of massive faulting, over thrusts, or any other activity.
What kind of force would be required to superpose massive layers of rock, weighing millions of tons, atop other layers? Why, the kind of forces associated with mountain-building: over thrusts, isoclines, synclines, massive earthquakes on a scale never experienced in the history of mankind—the kind of earthquakes which caused the upheavals of the Alps, the Andes, Himalayas, and the Rocky Mountains, all of which have fossil shells at their highest elevations, showing they were once covered by shallow seas.
Any such movement of vast land masses would cause grinding, crushing destruction of the rocks closest to the moving layers, reforming them into “metamorphic” rocks, destroying most, if not all, fossils. Certainly, there could not survive such delicate fossil forms as worm tracks, ferns and leafs, ripple marks, and the like. Even a layman could look at two layers of rock, and determine if “slickensides” and various metamorphosed rocks were present, showing clear evidence of massive movement.
But what if the layer of rock (stratum) containing the so-called “older” fossils, and the stratum containing the so-called “younger” fossils beneath it show absolutely no evidence of any twisting, faulting, or movement? What if there is perfect conformity between them? You and I know that when mud is deposited by flooding, then gradually hardens, it begins to crack. Then, it erodes. Animals walk about upon it. Wind blows. Summer storms come along. In other words, any deposit of alluvial soil, slowly drying as the water which carried it there recedes, will show obvious evidence of the passage of time. Especially when that “time” is assumed to be measured in the millions or even billions of years!
Yet, in many cases, the two layers with their so-called “upside down” fossil record are lying perfectly, smoothly, uninterruptedly together, as if the tide of mud which had deposited the bottom layer had no sooner receded when another flow of different mud, containing different forms of life, came from another direction and was deposited immediately atop it. As if, obviously, the life forms imprisoned within the two layers of mud lived contemporaneously, and died in the same catastrophe, instead of the life form atop the other being millions of years “older” then the “younger” fossil form beneath!
Any forensic scientist, when presented with such folly during a murder trial, would rip it apart in seconds. No jury would ever say, as do evolutionists, that the fossils in the upper layer are obviously millions of years older than the fossils beneath them!
When one cannot even slip a thin knife between two smoothly-mixed layers of sandstone; when there is absolutely no evidence of any erosion, or overthrust faulting (which would crush the rock, grind it, metamorphose it, and cause a completely different kind of rock structure), then one must assume the rocks were deposited exactly as they appear—the older on the bottom, and the younger on the top, like your sheet and bedspread.
It must irritate evolutionists to no end that there are many, many places in our earth where supposedly “older” fossils are found ON TOP of supposedly “younger” fossils. Encountering these puzzling occurrences caused evolutionary geologists, long ago, to invent excuses as to how such an embarrassing aberration could have come to pass. Further, evolutionary geologists assert that such strata are merely guilty of “deceptive conformity.”
How do evolutionists arrive at such a conclusion? Once locked in to their theory, once denying there could have been zoological provinces containing vastly different species (such as coelacanths and man) contemporaneously, once insisting that their supposed “geologic succession of strata” is correct, they stolidly refuse to alter the theory to suit the facts.
Instead, they ignore the facts, or twist them into grotesque shapes, then invent incredible fairy tales, which are fallacious on their face, in order to cling to their empty theories. That this is patently dishonest, and anything but “scientific,” seems not to bother them in the least. Like mesmerized, wide-eyed fanatics listening to a demented cult leader, they plod along their chosen path zombie-like, refusing to listen to logic or reason, denying what their own eyes plainly tell them.
Now, how do evolutionists know which fossil forms are “oldest”? Supposedly, because they are found “on the bottom,” or in that layer of rock lying atop ancient granites and schists, the oldest layer containing fossils. But evolutionists have not truly found the “bottom” layer!
Which Layer of Fossil-Bearing Rock is on the Bottom?
Which stratum is the oldest of all fossil-bearing rock, and therefore (according to evolution) contains the “earliest” and “simplest” of all life forms?
Long ago, evolutionists used the order of fossils found in a few regions in Western Europe and New York State to establish their evolutionary column. They have assumed that fossil forms of ancient life are invariably found in the same order all over the world.
Such is not the case. In fact, evolutionary geologists have not yet determined, with any degree of certainty, which layer of rock is the “bottom” insofar as the fossil record is concerned.
As an eminent geologist says: “For any given limited locality, where stratigraphy can be followed out, the lowest beds are certainly the oldest. But we can make no progress by such a method when we come to deal with the world at large, for actual stratigraphical relationships can be proved over only very limited areas.
“These beds may be the lowest in this locality, may rest on the granite or crystalline schists, and have every appearance of antiquity. But other beds containing very different fossils, are in precisely this position elsewhere, and where stratigraphical order can no more prove the relative age of their fossils than the overlap of scales on a fish proves those at the tail to be older than those at the head” (Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism, by Price: p. 78,).
Price goes on to show how “any kind of fossiliferous rock whatever, even ‘young’ Tertiary rocks, may rest upon the Archaean or Azoic series, or may themselves be almost wholly metamorphosed or crystalline, thus resembling in position and outward appearance the so-called ‘oldest’ rocks” (ibid., p. 79).
In his chapter on “Finding Bottom,” Price concludes, “I see no escape from the acknowledgment that the doctrine of any particular fossils’ being essentially older than others is a pure invention, with absolutely nothing in nature to support it” (ibid., P. 87).
Evolutionary geology operates on a false assumption that the layers of rock on the earth are invariably found in the same order, like the layers of an onion. Obviously the whole world is not like an onion, with the oldest rocks on the bottom, progressing upward until arriving at the most “recent” rocks, for the earth is round, after all, and each layer of sedimentary rock was water borne, and had to come from some other area, where the materials the water carried were scoured by massive floods, tides, rivers, and so on. Logically, the area so scoured is now absent the exact amount of materials when were deposited elsewhere.
“Bottom” is naturally where there are no fossils in evidence, according to evolutionary theory. Bottom means, usually, “bedrock” of granite and various schists; metamorphic rock, atop which one finds sedimentary rock, containing various fossil forms. But, as Price proves: “Since the life-succession theory [evolution] rests logically and historically on the biological form of Werner’s onion-coat notion that only certain kinds of rocks (fossils) are to be found at the ‘bottom,’ or next to the Archaean, or Primitive, and it is now acknowledged everywhere that any kind of rocks whatever may be thus situated [including Tertiary rocks, containing fossils of mammoths and men!], it is as clear as sunlight that the life-succession theory rests logtheory and historically on a myth, and that there is no way of proving what kind of fossil was buried first” (ibid., p. 87).
In spite of such overwhelming evidence, evolutionists cling to their false theory. Students who intend entering the teaching field in the subjects of anthropology or paleontology are not taught from books such as those by Nelson, Price, Whitcomb and Morris, and a host of others. They are never told about such books, which are dismissed, completely ignored, by evolutionary geologists.
Yet, there are many studious works which completely dismantle the evolutionary theory. Outstanding examples are Darwin On Trial, by Phillip E. Johnson, published by Regnery Gateway, Washington, D.C., and Evolution—Possible or Impossible? by James E Coppedge, published by Zondenran, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Price conclusively shows, most of the rocks of our earth prove great catastrophes occurred in the past; and most of the sedimentary rocks, including miles and miles of coal beds, show very recent catastrophes, such as massive floods. Only a fool would ignore the obvious message of the rocks. It requires, on the average, about a forty foot thick layer of vegetation, ripped up, and water borne to then be crushed beneath subsequent layers of mud to form a seam of coal only one foot thick. Coal beds prove gargantuan catastrophes in the past, as do many, many other strata, such as marbles, which are sometimes formed from solid masses of sea bottom life.
But now, another of evolution’s inventive excuses: When they find their fossil record out of order, even though there is no evidence of any faulting or overthrusts to explain how “older” strata ended up atop “younger” strata, they tell their students this is a “deception”! Their stolid refusal to see the truth before their eyes reminds one of the cultic blatherings of a Jim Jones.
Why Are the Rocks “Out of Order”?
Look at the charts which show the so-called geologic succession of strata, and the assumed arrangements of fossil life found in the rocks.
Then, imagine the difficulty to a young, enthusiastic believer in evolution who reported his findings along a railway cut in Canada. He wrote: “East of the main divide the Lower Carboniferous is overlaid in places by beds of Lower Cretaceous age, and here again, although the two formations differ so widely in respect to age [?], one overlies the other without any perceptible break, and the separation of one from the other is rendered more difficult by the fact that the upper beds of the Carboniferous are lithologically almost precisely like those of the Cretaceous [above them]. Were it not for fossil evidence, one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with.”
Of course. But, because of the “fossil evidence,” these geologists decided that, even though one bed of rock containing “older” fossils lay atop another bed of rock containing “younger” fossils without any perceptible break; even though they were lithologically almost precisely like those...above them, they had to deny what their own eyes told them, and cling to their utterly false system of dating the fossils.
Therefore, though their conclusion was contrary to all observable facts involving millions of tons of rock, they clung to their theory, and discarded the facts.
This is commonplace among evolutionary geologists. It is also dishonest.
The truth is that the so-called “geologic succession of strata” claimed by evolutionists to have been laid down over immense aeons of time—was laid down very rapidly, almost simultaneously! This fact, proved by countless billions of tons of evidence in the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the Himalayas-all over the world—completely destroys the evolutionary hypothesis that life gradually evolved from “simple to complex.”
“Deceptive Conformity”
All over the world, massive examples of so-called “deceptive conformity” exist. Evolutionary geologists would have us believe nature is “deceiving” us by having deposited in perfectly even, smooth, conformable fashion fossil-bearing strata containing so-called “older” fossil life forms atop much “younger” strata. It is not the strata which are upside down, but the theories of evolutionists.
Study the “geologic succession of strata” carefully as you note the following:
(1) In Wyoming, a massive section of mountain consisting of Ordovician strata (dated, of course, by the fossils found therein) is found resting conformably atop Tertiary strata. Ordovician is supposedly more than 900 million years old, while Tertiary is a mere 100 million years old! Eight hundred million years supposedly passed between these layers, which are allegedly upside down, with the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic all missing between them!
How could this be? How could hundreds of millions of years pass with no evidence of rains, winds, floods, or erosion?
No such thing occurred. The rocks are telling the truth. Evolutionists are not.
(2) In Montana, a vast layer ofAlgonkian (pre-Cambrian, and thus allegedly more than 1 billion years old) rests conformably atop Cretaceous strata.
(3) In Alberta, Canada, the same incredible phenomenon is observed, with Algonkian atop Cretaceous.
(4) In Switzerland, Tertiary is below Jurassic, which is below Permian, with no evidence of erosion, faulting, tilting, upthrusts, overthrusts or any other dynamic action to account for such a situation. There are literally thousands of such cases, all over the world (see The Deluge Story In Stone, by Nelson, pp. 137-151 ff).
Nelson says: “The different ‘ages’ when strata are supposed by modern geologists to have been laid on the sea bottoms are named in order in the so-called geological column...since the one ‘age’ supposedly followed the other, the strata of each ‘age’ should follow the other in regular order. So one would naturally think. But strata which are said by modern geologists to be of ‘Carboniferous Age’ Ecoal-bearing] are, it is admitted by them, found to rest in many places on the earth on suata of ‘Ordovician Age, and suata of ‘Pleistocene Age’ found to rest on strata of ‘Permian Age,’ and strata of ‘Cretaceous Age’ on strata of ‘Devonian Age,’ evenly and smoothly...where such things occur, i.e., where two strata, supposed to have been deposited in ‘ages’ that did not follow one another in natural succession, modem geologists say there exists ‘deceptive conformity”’ (Ibid., p. 150,151).
Deceptive? How so? The evidence of the rocks, the evidence of massive mountains, and whole ranges of them is positive, absolute. Whether layman or professional geologists, the layers cry out, “We were deposited in precisely the fashion you see us now!” But because evolutionary geologists find fossils from socalled “older” strata, bearing trilobites and other “very ancient” life forms on top of Cretaceous strata, bearing fossils from very “recent” ages, such as horses, mammoths, camels, and the like, they insist the mountains are lying to them, “deceiving” them! One can only marvel at this kind of cultic, superstitious “faith” in an empty theory—marvel at the blind stupidity of human beings who will deny what their own eyes tell them.
It is proved beyond the shadow of doubt that the “geologic succession of strata” which is like an evolutionist’s Old Testament, is absolutely false!
All over the world, there are millions of tons of evidence which utterly destroy the neat arrangement of strata, and the ages attached to them.
Yet, the chart remains, like the idols of savages, the tarot cards of wizards, and the assertions by medieval “scientists” that flies came into existence by “spontaneous generation.”
No doubt, you will be reading in your newspapers or seeing on television within a few weeks information about the latest discovery: a bone, or part of a skeleton of yet another dinosaur, or some fragment of human remains.
You will be confidently told of its incredibly great age. You will be told how it fits into the evolutionary pattern.
When you do, ask yourself a few questions. Where did they find the bone? How far down was it? In what “stratum” was it allegedly lying’! What life forms were above it, and below it? How was its age established?
If it was established by the so-called “geologic succession of strata,” you are watching just so much entertainment, complete fiction.