Brace for IMPACT!

["Terry Colvin" <colvint@CC.IMS.DISA.MIL>]

Fwd by Terry Colvin <colvint@cc.ims.disa.mil>1246MST/1946GMT(Zulu)/9Feb95.


______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________
Subject: Brace for IMPACT!
Author:  SKEPTIC Discussion Group <SKEPTIC@JHUVM.HCF.JHU.EDU> at smtp
Date:    8/2/1995 2:15 PM


 From: Stephen Carville - pagan@delphi.com

 Garrison Hilliard <ghill@GFSA.LERCTR.ORG> forwards:

 >To be consistent with evolution, the fossil record should show how 
 >organisms slowly transformed one into another through countless 
 >intermediate or transitional stages.

 I don't know why the evolution deniers keep bring this up since it 
 is obviously false.  The fossil record is full of transitional forms 
 displaying mixed characteristics.  Probably the best known is 
 archaeopteryx which is an eerie mixture of bird and dinosaur. 
 Archae's lesser known relative Deinonychus was actually more 
 birdlike in many ways but still retained several dinosaur traits.
 In fact, these two fossils along with the toothed birds (Hesperornis, 
 Ichthyornis) are pretty good evidence that modern birds evolved from 
 the dinosaurs.

 You probably won't see a slow transformation anyway since speciation 
 can occur very rapidly.  I think there was a strain of drosiphilia 
 (sp?) isolated for a few years in the lab that drifted far enough 
 from it's parent specie that it oculd no longer produce fertile 
 offspring.  Mice introduced to islands from sailing ships in the 
 18th and 19th centuries have changed enough in a couple hundred 
 years to be considered different species too.  Of course 
 hybridization followed by cromosome doubling is pretty common in 
 plants.  If Gould is right, rapid speciation is the rule rather than 
 the exception.

 For anyone who is interested, there is a lot of information on the 
 evolution vs. creation controversy available via anonymous FTP from 
 ics.uci.edu in pub/origins.

 >Evolutionists, for example, claim that over one hundred million 
 >years were required for the gradual transformation of invertebrates 
 >into vertebrates; thus we would expect that the fossil record should 
 >show at least some of the progressive stages of this large-scale 
 >transformation.  To be consistent with creation, on the other hand, 
 >the fossil record should show no obvious transitional stages between 
 >distinctly different kinds of organisms, but rather each kind of 
 >organism should appear all at once and fully formed.

 Does anyone here know what the term "kind" means to the 
 creationist?  I often hear the claim that change can occur within
 the created "kind", but one "kind" cannot bring froth another "kind". 
 It seems to be important but I haven't been able to find a definition

 Stephen Carville - pagan@delphi.com
 A cat is what results from giving a dog a college education