Response to Naon Tiotami

Blue is me being quote. Black is his response and Red is my response to his comments

"Um, excuse me. It appears that you are all saying that Tiklaatik is evidence that today's fish and amphibians have the same ancestor but Tiklaatik is not that common ancestor. I so, where is it? What is it? Macro evolution supposes that it is possible to trace an unbroken descent from fish to us, but by everyone's own admission we don't have that evidence. All I said was that we have no transitional fossils which you agreed. We can pretend all we want that one day evidence will be found but so far...na"

The reason why we don't have an unbroken line of fossils is that fossilisation is a rare process, and certain conditions must exist for it to take place. Shallow seas are a great place to find fossils though (accounting for why about 90% of the fossils we have are from marine creatures), so we should probably find more Tiktaalik-esque fossils in the near future.

I have no problem with your explanation as to why we have no transitional records indicating direct descent from fish to amphibians. It's plausible. It's logical. You only omit one possibility: There aren't any to find.

"I don't see any "goal post" moving. Initially, I was only talking about transitional fossils between apes and humanity. Dave brought up the link between fish and amphibians and tried to apply it to people."

Mmm, but you wanted a transition, you got one, then asked for a full, unbroken sequence. You moved the goalpost.

I asked for a transitional fossil proving that apes and humans have a common ancestor. Not for transitional fossils showing common links for today's fish and amphibians. Look at the context in which I wrote that post reviewing Nephilim Rising. I didn't move any goal post. David expanded the playing field.

"Want to know a better definition for the origins of life on this planet: "In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth." Genesis 1:1"

Well, I wouldn't read the Bible for that. It's incompatible with modern scientific findings (if read literally).

I'm not sure what by definition: do you mean "explanation"? If so, I don't have one at the moment, no one does.

The Bible has a explanation. It does not give details as to how He did it. That is what scientific inquiry is for. God allows you to accept or reject this explanation. But nothing else makes sense. Something came out of nothing. Physics agrees with this. Some how Entropy became less than 0. Order came out of nothing. Direction-less, random processes does nothing to explain the origins of reality let alone life. The Bible does not answer all questions and not all of it is to be read literally. There is debate as to what it means to say that earth was created in 6 days. Was each 24 hours as we measure them today? Or was it many eons? We don't know. The Hebrew does not specify. What we do know is that God can do anything. If he wanted to do it in 6 24-hour days, I see no reason why not.

"Not all my rebuttal links are from creationists. One of them is from Evolution News & Views. Also I would like to know what arguments would you guys use against all of these sources that I pointed to against the fossil being used as a "transitional fossils"."

First of all, "Evolution News and Views" is run by the Discovery Institute, a pro-intelligent design thinktank that, for all intents and purposes, is a creationist organisation.

"Intelligent Design" does not equal "creationism". Not everyone who believes in Intelligent Design believe in an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, transcendent, personal God who created everything. I think they're nuts...but at least they have enough sense to know that you don't get anything complex by chance. If you do, then I have some swampland in Florida I'd like to sell to you. I know what you're thinking because you already made the point that evolution is driven by many factors. None of these factors are in a vacuum or can be thought not to interact with each other. Let's say, that the Judeo-Christian God is not responsible as some folks say. Even so don't you think anyone able to design life on earth would also be able to manipulate all those factors too!

Secondly, to debunk the claims found in those articles, I would have to spend time looking up stuff. I don't want to do that now, but I may do that in the near future. Look out on http://naontiotami.com to see if I ever do get around to it (I have to write an essay for the Discovery Institute Academic Freedom Day contest, so it might be after that).

I look forward to seeing you try to explain the holes these scientist who disagree with the theory of evolution easily points out.