Subject:
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Re: Macro-Evolution - Impossible!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 25 Jan 2001 06:37:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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553 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Jon Kozan writes:
> Ok -
>
> REVISED AGAIN:
> 1) Do strata (layers of sediment) support a progressive, over millennia,
> approach which reveals the progression (simple forms leading to more
> complicated forms, or vice versa: one type changing into another type) of life
> through time? Or is there a better explanation (hypothesis) which fits the
> evidence?
>
> 2) Does the fossil record support (not contradict the predictions of)
> macro-evolution as a mechanism - a life-form progression whereby simple forms
> of life lead to more complicated forms, or vice versa: one type changing into
> another type?
IANAP (I am not a paleontologist), but I'm not sure that the fossil record
shows either of these things. It shows the spatial and historical pattern of
life on earth (what lived where, when), but we can only infer the
evolutionary process from those observations. Further, we don't see fishy
thing becomes lizardy thing becomes ratty thing becomes apey thing as a
"progression". What we see are certain shared characteristics between the
different fossils (and extant organisms) that lead us to infer that they had
a common ancestor. So a human and a chimp share a lot of characteristics.
That doesn't mean that a human evolved from an organism identical to a
chimp, it means that a few million years ago there were no humans or chimps,
just a population of creatures some of whose descendants would put their
cousins in the zoo.
In other words, evidence from the fossil record can't prove or disprove
evolution. But since it can produce testable hypotheses, evolution is a more
powerful explanation of what we observe in the fossil record than creation
"science" is.
--DaveL
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Macro-Evolution - Impossible!
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| (...) Ok - REVISED AGAIN: 1) Do strata (layers of sediment) support a progressive, over millennia, approach which reveals the progression (simple forms leading to more complicated forms, or vice versa: one type changing into another type) of life (...) (24 years ago, 23-Jan-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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