You do realize the idea of providing the missing link is an impossible standard of proof?
But the missing links are getting shorter and shorter as more transitional fossils get discovered. But here is why it is a disingenuous argument: In order for there to be no missing link, I’d have to provide all the ancestors of a particular human in a continuous link for 3 million years.
That is absolutely impossible and the evolutionists know it.
I provide you five pictures:
1) In the first, crews are digging a foundation.
2) In the second, you see the same terrain, the foundation has been dug and scaffolds are erected from the ground.
3) In the third, they have started building walls and the metal frame of a five story building.
4) In the fourth, the first two stories have been bricked over and a wooden panneling has been added to the third.
5) Finally, in the fifth picture a full building is standing before you.
I claim a building was constructed on that spot.
A creationist is someone who claims the building suddenly appeared. I show him the picture and he responds: What does that prove? There are missing links. What evidence do you have of the last three stories being bricked over?
Yes I do, but that wont stop dishonest creationists from continuing to bang the missing link drum.
Unfortunately this missing link nonsense is perpetuated by popular media. You can always tell someone hasn’t had a lick of education in the biological sciences when they start asking for missing links.
If I felt this issue is what was keeping you or someone else from getting serious about Jesus, I would debate it. A person cannot be “reasoned” to follow Christ. A person can ask questions his or her whole life and never commit to Jesus. My point; Why would a person just continue to ask questions? What is it about our design that makes us do that about this one topic and really no others.
The creationists are truly one of the most intellectually corrupt, bankrupt and dishonest group that I have ever run across. As you say this burden of proof they require is very onerous–that is–they basically want each and every fossilized remains of each generation over a million generations. I’d confer some intellectually honesty to them if this skepticism were applied with equal vigor to the historical and archeological verification that these mythic people they believe in actually existed. If they actually demanded the same standard for their own bible hero’s they’d be atheists. To me this two faced intellectual dishonesty is an affront to any rational mind.
But I like it when the creationist funnymentalist bible thumpers come around, I get to poke them with a stick.
Well that and the fact is they are asking not for the three stories to be bricked, but for the three stories to magically sprout winged bricks that fly into place themselves.
The creationist definition of a transitional fossil is one that the theory of eveolution does not predict, does not include, and in fact one which would invalidate the theory as it stands if it were found.
What they are asking for is half-man half-ape. No such creature is posited or even imagined in evolution, even the punctuated equilibrium model that posits rapid (geologically speaking) change. Each generation will still just be slightly less hairy and beetle-browed, plus slightly more intelligent and upright, etc. The rate of change even in the PE model does not suggest this “hybrid” creature that the creationists are dishonestly demanding.
It is past time that they can claim ignorance of these things too. Their bald-faced lies that there are no transitionals has been disproved countless times. It would be like my claiming there is no such thing as a book of the Bible written before 1800, hence it is all made up after the fact, because I want to define “book” as a leather-bound wood-pulp paged object with an engraved frontispiece and a Library of Congress number on it.
Even then I’d be MORE honest than creationists, since my definition, while stupidly irrelevant and restrictive, is at least plausibly a real book, whereas their dishonest characterization of a transitionbal fossil is impossible, as they know full well but continue to lie to impressionable kids anyway.
Evolutionists are full of excuses, themselves and hot air
science doesnt know the answer to this one…
Ahem… the analogy is flawed; it’s actually more like creation in that there were crews to build the building. Evolution would propose that the building developed itself out of nothing.
Let’s assume we haven’t seen the five picutres, but we’re standing before the building.
I, the creationist, would assume that because we see a building (or a living organism), there was a Builder.
You, the evolutionist, would assume that the building/organism came about by itself, developing from single-celled organisms and increasing in complexity as billions of years go by.
Frankly, it’s a rather poor analogy, especially since living cells are infinitely more complex than buildings.
I don’t know about other professing creationists, but I’m not asking you or anyone else to provide every ancestor of a particular human. I’m asking for fossils that clearly show a transition between two radically different kinds– e.g., bird-lizard, man-ape, mammal-fish. The best examples I’ve found so far are highly controversial and more often than not include some embellishment: e.g, Ambulocetus. If I understand it correctly, the only pieces found were a partial skull connected to a few verterbrae, a partial ribcage, an hind foot, and part of a leg bone. (see below link) Because the pelvic girdle was missing, no one can say for sure how it moved (whether it walked or swam, or both). But that didn’t stop a professing Christian evolutionist from presenting a complete drawing of the animal, implying that there were indeed enough fossils to guess what Ambulocetus looked like.
Or consider Pakicetus, another proposed whale-mammal transitional fossil. I’d encourage you to visit the second link I posted, scroll down, and check out the pictures; the discrepancy between Pakicetus’ supposed appearance and its actual appearance (based on later discoveries) are particularly striking. Also you’ll note the discrepancy between the finished artwork and the actual fossils found.
Frankly, Archaeopteryx is the best example I’ve heard of, but I’m more inclined to believe it was just an unusual animal, much like the platypus, especially since many of its proposed reptilian features are shared by mammals and other birds; and lacking in certain reptiles as well. (see below link.)