Transistions vs Stasis

8/16/09

Dear Lagomort,

I have wanted to write back many times but time and priorities have prevented me. My apologies.

To answer you question about scientists that lie and cover up the truth: there certainly are people in the scientific community who are simply wrong in their interpretations of the facts. Most are honest and sincere, but a minority are outright lying. People who don't flow with the mainstream are ostracized which creates pressure to conform.

Ramaphithecus
Ramaphithecus is a good example. This supposed ape man was accepted for over 50 years in universities from 1915 to 1968 until Evolutionist themselves rejected it as a transition. The same could be said for many other supposed transitional creatures that were accepted for a time and then rejected by Evolutionists. If only they would have listened to Creationists, they would have saved themselves many years of delusion.

Concerning quoting Evolutionists: I did not misquote four Evolutionists in a row in my last message. They all expressed the same fact, namely transitional forms which they expected to find were missing. Why else did Gould come up with Punctuated Equilibrium in the first place? The links that Gould talked about were few and highly controversial even among his fellow Evolutionists.
Steven J. Gould, Harvard
You quoted Gould as stating, "Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups." The essence of his statement is species are the links between higher taxonomic groups, and this does not hold water at all. Darwin certainly would disagree. Darwin said, "Why then is not every geological formation full of such intermediate links. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic change, and this is the most obvious and serious objection that can be urged against the theory."

Just because people can be misquoted does not automatically discount all quotations. Each quotation must be evaluated on its own merit. If you want to get into the details of the validity of each quoted statement, I would respect that.

You also wrote, "Patterson was not stating there are no transitional fossils. He was stating, due to the extensive nature of the branching bush of life, exact ancestry is not possible to establish." Not being able to identify exact ancestry was not his primary point. Finding no transitions was his main point. Not knowing ultimate ancestry is simply derived from not having evidence of transitions. For example Patterson said, "I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them." The essence of his statement was that Science does not support Gradualism (or Gradual Evolution). His final statement is, "What is the evidence for continuity?' you would have to say, 'There isn't any in the fossils of animals and man. The connection between them is in the mind.' " What does he mean if not the obvious. This was his honest assessment against his own desire for the contrary. A powerful statement from the man who wrote the text book titled, "Evolution".

That said, we fully agree as to examining the details of scientific propositions. You want to look at the transitional requirements for a reptile to become a mammal. Let's do it.

Unicellular to Multi-cellular life
But first let me remind you that you have not responded back to me on the giant gap between the single cell life forms and multi-cell life forms. Precambrian rock layers have single cellular life, and suddenly Cambrian layers have an explosion of diverse multicellular life forms. How do you explain one celled creatures changing by chance into creatures with multiple thousands of cells? How do you explain reproduction from asexual single-cell division to sexual reproduction by chance? Where is the evidence, fossil or living?


REPTILES and MAMMALS
Reptiles produce reptiles. Mammals produce mammals. In essence, Kind produces kind or Like produces like. This is science. It is observable, repeatable, and testable. Yet the claim is that kinds change into different kinds.

For a reptile to turn into a mammal, first of all, you have to get two brand new mammals who have mutated identically, yet are of the opposite sex, in the same location, at the same time. And seeing how these are freshly mutated from reptiles, they must also both be fertile. This is significant because it is common for mutations to also include sterility. All this would be true not only for the first two mammals, but also for each step-by-step change along the way.

SOME ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCES
The mandible or lower jaw of a reptile is made of 12 bones, 6 on each side. Reptiles also have quadrate bones, one on each side, which make the joints between the the lower jaw and the upper jaw. This bone is not found in mammals. Mammals have 2 mandible bones: one on each side. A transition would require a perfectly good reptile jaw to slowly loose 10 mandibular bones and 2 quadrate bones and still maintain its ability to chew. Any creature with a 50/50 reptile/mammal jaw would starve to death less than a month after coming into the world. It has to be a strong fully functional jaw or death.

Somewhere in the transitional phase from reptile to mammal we would get a creature that would not be able to chew his food. Ligament and tendon attachment points, bone shapes, bone count, jaw fulcrum positions, articulation points, etc. can't be changed without adversely effecting the creatures ability to eat. Reptile jaws are strong and functional. Mammal jaws are strong and functional. But to transform from one to the other would require going from a strong phase, though a weakening phase, through an incapable-of-use phase, back through a weak phase, and finally to a new strong phase. This is simply an impossible chain of events.

And do we find any fossils of reptiles with some other number of bones in its jaw? No. All reptiles, fossil and living, have the same compliment of bones in their mandible. I take that back. Their may cartoon illustrations of reptiles that may have a different number.

A reptile has one ear bone and a mammal has 3. The transitions would have to go from one ear bone to 3 without loosing the ability to hear.

Somewhere in the transitional phase from reptile to mammal we would get a deaf creature that could not hear a predator getting ready to pounce on him from behind. And if not him, then his mate, because they both must survive to maturity at the same time.

You are asking me to believe one kind of hearing apparatus transformed into a different one without going through deafness. And you are asking me to believe that this same chance process transformed a 12 bone reptile jaw into a 2 bone mammal jaw and the creature always had a fully functional bite. You have a lot of faith.


I see stasis in the fossils and in living creatures. Science doesn't show a "tree of life" every branching into new creatures. Science shows a field of individual plants branching only within a distinct kind. Dogs are very diverse, yet represent a single kind. The same could be said for cats, pigeons, crickets, apple trees, etc.

God made kinds to produce after their own kind. That's what I believe, and it fits the observed facts well: genetic homeostasis and limited variation.