Final-Fan said:
No, we cannot reasonably reproduce the evolution from non-flying animals to flying ones in laboratory setttings. |
I know scientists can't reproduce macroevolution. That's why it isn't hard science because of lack of observational data.
There are no transitional fossils according to scientists:
"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from one ancestral form to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series. New types often appear quite suddenly, and their immediate ancestors are absent in the geological strata. The discovery of unbroken series of species changing gradually into descending species is very rare. Indeed the fossil record is one of discontinuities, seemingly documenting jumps (saltations) from one type of organism to a different type. This raises a puzzling question: Why does the fossil record fail to reflect the gradual change one would expect from evolution?"
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 14
“We have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chosen to fob it off upon an imperfect fossil record.”
Gould, Stephen J., “The Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology,” Paleobiology, 1985, p. 7.
“In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be ‘wrong.’ A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?”
Kemp, Tom S., “A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record,” New Scientist, vol. 108, 1985, p. 66-67.
George Gaylord Simpson, another leading evolutionist, sees this characteristic in practically the whole range of taxonomic categories:
“…Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.” [George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press]
The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record.
R. A. Raff and T. C. Kaufman, Embryos, Genes and Evolution: The Developmental Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 34
“Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ... That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself ... prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. ... The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor’s new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin’s predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.”
Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46.
“It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. ... Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and (we) both reject this alternative.”
Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, p. 229-230)
“In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.”
(Ridley, Mark, “Who doubts evolution?” New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831.
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.”
Gould, Stephen J., ‘Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?’ Paleobiology, Vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127.
“The true origin of birds is still up in the air.”
Alan Feduccia, New Scientist, 16 December 2000, p. 25.
“In the absence of fossil evidence, paleontologists can say little about the date at which these [sixty-nine living families of Passeriformes] … appeared.”
Stahl, Barbara. 1974. Vertebrate history: Problems in evolution, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. p. 386
“Of all the classes of vertebrates, the birds are least known from their fossil record.”
Colbert. E. H., M. Morales, and E. C. Minkoff. 2001. Evolution of the vertebrates: A history of the backboned animals through time, 5thed., New York: Wiley-Liss, Inc. p. 236.
And That's why scienitists have postulated Punctuated Equilibrium (that there were rapid evolution going on in different periods of history) because the fossil record contradicted their predictions of transitional fossils. Yeah right.
Scientists have tried to replicate their evolution under lab setting but have failed miserably. They reproduced many generations of fruitflies (drosophilia) equivalent to millions of years. They have been experimenting with fruilfiles for decades. What did we get?
"Fruit flies refuse to become anything but fruit flies under any circumstances yet devised."—*Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong
"The clear-cut mutants of Drosophila, with which so much of the classical research in genetics were done, are almost without exception inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility, longevity."—*Theodosius Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man (1964), p. 126.
"Most mutants which arise in any organism are more or less disadvantageous to their possessors. The classical mutants obtained in Drosophila usually show deterioration, breakdown, or disappearance of some organs. Mutants are known which diminish the quantity or destroy the pigment in the eyes, and in the body reduce the wings, eyes, bristles, legs. Many mutants are, in fact lethal to their possessors. Mutants which equal the normal fly in vigor are a minority, and mutants that would make a major improvement of the normal organization in the normal environments are unknown."—*Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man
Many will be puzzled about the statement that practically all known mutant genes are harmful. For mutations are a necessary part of the process of evolution. How can a good effect-evolution to higher forms of life-result from mutations practically all of which are harmful? - Warren Weaver et al., "Genetic Effects of Atomic Radiation", Science, vol. 123
"Take the example of fruit flies (Drosophila). Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller, and other geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists' monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type."—*Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), p. 70.
Yep, still a fruitfly, albeit a weaker kind.
Evolution - the story that you evolved from goo and evolved to you by the way of the zoo, doesn't hold up under the scientific method.
Hit me up when real, hard scientific evidence is produced. I'm willing to look at it with an open mind.
