@Jimmy,

The Answers in Genesis article regarding the evolution of new enzymatic function in E. coli has a very telling statement in the concluding section.

“Richard Lenski and I are looking at the same evidence but drawing different conclusions based on our source of truth—man’s ideas or God’s ideas.”

Georgia Purdom, the creationist, has exposed the reason that no creationism will ever be taught in American public schools. She has “looked” at Lenski’s research but not seen it. She will never see it because it is not in the Bible.

@Jeb
I like your take on where religion, if it were to be taught in school, would be grouped. I believe that religion and science can somewhat go hand in hand, but that is partly because they are entirely different subject matters altogether. About the big bang though… i thought the universe was expanding at an increasing rate. It is accelerating outward. Doesn’t that mean it will never contract back in upon itself? Maybe I am wrong idk. I am kind of skeptical about it. I gotta say I do admire your look on creation. You admit that the origin of matter cannot be proven or disproved and therefore neither can God. You just eliminate God as an unneeded belief for something greater than matter. I can definitely respect that although my personal beliefs do not agree.

I am a Christian but I am definitely not for any part of religion to be taught in school for several reasons. First of all, many parents want to take on the responsibility of teaching their children their religion, and if it were taught in schools, it might not get taught the way the parents want. Other parents may not want their children to be taught that specific religion or any religion at all. And if you were to teach religion in a class (hopefully not a science class) you would have to teach every creation story from all of the major religions in the world. Otherwise, it is holding a group special above others (such as Christians if thats what creation story you are teaching) and that is not the equality that America was founded under. And I am not even gonna mention separation of church and state because there are so many other problems that could be addressed that you don’t even need to go there.

Lets say that it were to work. I think it would only work if it was an optional class outside of the core criteria that is taught. Also, it would have to cover all major religions (unless you wanted a separate class for each religion). And lets be honest… what does that sound like? To me it sounds like a private school with religious motives. For those who want their children to learn about ANY religious matters at school, public school is not the answer. Enroll your kids in a private school or home school them.

Let’s look deeper into ‘Lucy’. There were only four small fragments of skull found. So small that nobody could say what the animals’ head would look like. The scientist identified the animal as a female by one bone and said it was capable of standing on two legs because of the hip structure. But chimps have that same capability and structure. Some of the bones were found over 200 feet away and the bones were found at different depths in the ground. Boy, that is very convincing. An article in Pravda 2008 said, “Many experts are not convinced that ‘Lucy’ was an ape-man because they’re not convinced all of the bones belong to the same individual or even the same species. Many leading authorities have said that ‘Lucy’ is really an extenct ape.” So that ends ‘Lucy’.

Now, evolution violates two laws. The Second Law Of Thermodynamics and Law of Biogenesis. These cannot be explained away.

Now Dr. Colin Patterson stated in a letter to Luther Sunderland, “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. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from?….Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils….You say I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived. I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”

Robert Wesson, “The gaps in the fossil record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal.” Eric Baptest, “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality.” Mark Pagel, “Paleobiologists flocked to these scientific visions of a world in a constant state of flux and admixture. But instead of finding the slow, smooth and progressive changes Lyell and Darwin had expected, they saw in the fossil records rapid bursts of change, new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then remaining unchanged for millions of years-patterns hauntingly reminiscent of creation.” Ernst Mayr said, “The discontinuites are even more striking in the fossil record. New species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates.” Robert Carroll said, “Despite more that a 100 years of intense collecting efforts since the time of Darwin’s death, the fossil record still does not yield the picture of infinitley numerous transitional links that he expected.” E. Colbert and M. Morales said, “There is no evidence of any Paleozoic amphibians combing the characteristics that would be expected in a single common ancestor. The oldest known frogs, salamanders, and caecilians are very similar to their living decendants.”

Most of all don’t you think if there were any transitional fossils found that the atheists would be all over the TV, newspapers and magazines claiming that not only is Creation been destroyed but the Holy Bible has been proven wrong?

@Gary
Theses are not “fake” quotes. They are quotes that can be verified in letters, books and magazines. I notice you did not take on the two laws that evolution violates. Or even that atheists would be all over the TV, newspapers, magazines and internet saying that Creation and most religions are wrong, if there were any transitional fossils. I have intentionally not mentioned Intelligent Design or religion in my discussions. So why are you trying to bring religion in the discussion? I say again, I set out to prove Rick wrong. He said that evolution was a fact. I have proven that evolution, as being discussed in this article, is not a fact.

Dear Bret,

Please read others’ posts in full as they answer many of the questions you ask and arguments
you make (or at least the ones in response to you, that would include this one). Also please cite
whatever website you are getting your information from as the wild internet goose chase to find
your sources is becoming tedious. Or, even better, post the original source (as a link).

Now for Lucy. “The scientist identified the animal as a female by one bone” (you). Now the
bone that was found that identified Lucy’s gender was the pelvic bone. The pelvic bone is the
simplest identifier of gender in mammals. It is the best identifier because mammalian birth is
from the vagina, which is located in the pelvis. Vaginal birth requires a wider pelvis which
makes the gender of the pelvis easy to identify. Next you said “and said it was capable of
standing on two legs because of the hip structure. But chimps have that same capability and
structure” (you). No shit Sherlock. This backs the whole idea of transitional fossils that you
seem so stuck on. From talkorgins (citation is on the page http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/
lucy.html) “The humerofemoral ratio, or length of humerus divided by length of femur, is 84.6
for Lucy, compared to 71.8 for humans, and 97.8 and 101.6 for the two species of chimpanzee” .
This evidence suggests that Lucy is somewhere in between a human and a chimpanzee, both of
which can stand on two legs, but Lucy is not a chimpanzee due to the ratio. “Some bones were
found 200 feet away” (you). Lucy is 3.2 million years old. The land has shifted and water has
probably moved things in those 3.2 million years, both horizontally and vertically which would
explain the distance and different depths. You cite Pravda. Do you know what Pravda is? If not
I suggest you look it up on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda). Tl;dr: It was the
USSR’s leading paper until Yelstin shut it down in 1991 and now is a tabloid (like those in our
grocery stores that claim Bush was probed anally by an alien, and Elvis is still alive, and your
grandma is actually 800, not much journalistic integrity to be found here). The reason scientists
are convinced that Lucy is all from one individual is that there are no duplicate bones which
is exceedingly rare in fossil sites (http://iho.asu.edu/lucy.html#skeleton). (Notice the use of
an .edu domain). Also who are the “experts” Pravda (a tabloid) cites, and who are your “leading
authorities”?

Ok now to the laws. I’ll be honest with you this part made me weep a little bit. First lets start
with the second law of thermodynamics. It states “In any cyclic process the entropy will either
increase or remain the same” (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html).
This law rides on a “system is closed, it is complete in and of itself. There is no opening, no
entrance, no exit”(http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/entropy.htm). Earth
is not a closed system. The universe for example would be, however earth has openings, entries,
and exits where entropy can be changed. So the second law is not applicable in Earth’s situation.

You also cite the law of biogenesis. This is no longer used, scientific “laws” can be disproven
or improved upon, much like Newton’s 3 laws of motion were improved upon by Einstein.
Abiogenesis has supplemented the law of biogenesis due to evidence for the origin of life (look

at the RNA experiment that James cited earlier in response to your question. It disproves the law
of biogenesis).

For your Patterson quote please look here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html.

As for the rest of your quotes please provide your source as the tediousness is really getting to
me.

I do have point one out though. You quoted Robert Carrol saying “Despite more that a 100 years
of intense collecting efforts since the time of Darwin’s death, the fossil record still does not yield
the picture of infinitely numerous transitional links that he expected”. Darwin did not claim this.
In the Origin of Species he said “We have no right to expect to find, in our geological formations,
an infinite number of those fine transitional forms, which, on our theory, have connected all the
past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life (Origin of
Species p. 448 http://books.google.com/books?id=t0jb8-
O6efoC&pg=PA448&lpg=PA448&dq=darwin+infinite+transitional+origin+of+species&source=
bl&ots=Dpd7sMKJWv&sig=VxUkN01_mnElXZlXtV_BWzP6L2Q&hl=en&ei=iEPKTPGgDYX
GlQe-
v9idAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&
f=false). Even if Darwin did say that he is allowed to be wrong about certain aspects. He is not
infallible, however his Evolution framework has stood the test of time and allowed great
advances in the field of science.

You also quoted Pagel saying “…new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then
remaining unchanged for millions of years-patterns hauntingly reminiscent of creation”. How
is new species appearing out of nowhere reminiscent of creation? Correct if I’m wrong but the
creation story has the creation of all animals at the same time, which wouldn’t allow a new
species to “appear out of nowhere”.

Every time a very significant transitional fossil is discovered, you hear about it if you go to
a source that actually pays attention to science (like this one http://www.sciencemag.org/).
Scientists don’t care about your religion it has no impact on their work which is why they don’t
go out on tv, or appear in your newspapers or magazines to tell you how wrong the creation story
and the bible are (obviously some exceptions exist like Dawkins).

@Bret
1. “The Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to all systems, open or closed, and to all actions and chemical reactions, from molecules to galaxies.”

The Second Law applies to closed systems. Living organisms are open systems. Not applicable.

2. “There are NO transitional fossils!”

I honestly have no idea how you can make this ridiculous statement. I’m not one to reference Wikipedia to prove a point, but this is really something that a high school biology course should have taken care of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

3. “Where are the species changing into another species today?…Or in the past three thousand years of human records?”

Understand that macro-evolution occurs on a time-scale that our brains were not really meant to operate on. Micro-evolution, on the other hand, is readily verifiable. You have to look no further than current publishings to find all the cases you need to close the book on any doubts you may have.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20adapt.html
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/citrate2008/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10476962

@ Brandon
1. The laws of themodynamics and entropy are defined in trems of isolated systems, because that is the simplest way to express them. A procedure called the Legendre Transform mathematically converts entropy to a variable called Gibbs free energy that is useful for working with real-world systems. For example, even though a bacterium is an open system, modeling it as a closed system makes it easier to understand chemical reactions in it. Evolutionists believe that all we need is an open system with sufficient energy flowing into it for evolution to succeed. If that were so, you could just stand behind a jet engine as the aircraft perpares for takeoff, absorb that blast of energy, and evolve to a higher life form.

2. I can’t believe people still use wikipedia!! There are no transitional fossils!
These have been proven false.

3. Nobody is disputing microevolution. But macroevolution is a fantasy. Let’s look at bacteria. There is much variation in bacteria. There are many mutations. But they never turn into anything new. They always remain bacteria. Fruit flies are more complex than bacteria. In the lab, fruit flies are studied under every conceivable condition. There is much variation in fruit flies. There are many mutations. But they never turn into anything new. They always remain fruit fies.

Let’s take breeders of animals and plants. Whenever variation is pushed to extremes by selective breeding the line becomes sterile and dies out. And as one characteristic increases, others diminish. Do a little studying of DNA and RNA. DNA has mechanisms of repairing or destroying and replacing mutated DNA strands.

@Peter
Your late to the dance and your debating the wrong subject. We are debating macroevolution. Not microevolution. In macroevolution there are NO transitional fossils. And the jet engine example is simple so everybody can understand the fallacy of macroevolution.

@David
God created man.

@Bret
By the way, your argument about the second law of thermodynamics is foolish. I have taken Thermodynamics I, Thermodynamics II, and Thermal Power Systems.

“Evolutionists believe that all we need is an open system with sufficient energy flowing into it for evolution to succeed. If that were so, you could just stand behind a jet engine as the aircraft perpares for takeoff, absorb that blast of energy, and evolve to a higher life form”

So you are saying that animals and plants can absorb heat energy, and that’s how they sustain themselves? Animals get their energy from food and water. Plants get theirs from sunlight and water. They can’t get it any other way. Why would you even come up with such a ridiculous example?

You write:
“Most of all don’t you think if there were any transitional fossils found that the atheists would be all over the TV, newspapers and magazines claiming that not only is Creation been destroyed but the Holy Bible has been proven wrong?”
The Bible pretty much has been proven wrong.