XPost: sci.skeptic, alt.atheism, alt.conspiracy   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian   
   From: andrew.321.remov@usa.net   
      
   "I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one   
   could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements   
   about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record.   
   Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no   
   there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make   
   up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons   
   why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such   
   stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to   
    the test."              ~ Dr. Colin Patterson, paleontologist   
      
      
   "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record   
   persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary   
   trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and   
   nodes of their branches; the rest is inference..not the evidence   
   of fossils."               ~ Stephen J. Gould, paleontologist   
      
      
   "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and   
   paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore   
   be a contingent feature of the record."   
               ~ David B. Kitts, Ph.D, zoologist, paleontologist   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)