XPost: sci.skeptic, alt.atheism, alt.conspiracy   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian   
   From: andrew.321.remov@usa.net   
      
   "Mitchell Holman" wrote in message news:XnsB34E51EEE839A629555@69.80.101.19...   
   > "Andrew" wrote:   
   >   
   >> "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   
   >   
   > Many species now going extinct may   
   > vanish without a fossil trace   
   > March 21, 2016   
   >   
   > The researchers were shocked to find   
   > that more than 85 percent of the mammal   
   > species at high risk of extinction lack   
   > a fossil record.   
   >   
   > Viewed from the perspective of the fossil   
   > record alone, the magnitude of the current   
   > mammal die-off thus appears markedly reduced.   
   > The picture may be even more distorted for   
   > other land-dwelling vertebrates: only 3   
   > percent of today's threatened bird species   
   > and 1.6 percent of threatened reptile species   
   > have a known fossil record.   
   > https://today.uic.edu/many-species-now-going-extinct-may-vanish-without-   
   > a-fossil-trace/   
   >   
   >    If a species never gets fossilized   
   > can you claim it never existed?   
      
   No, but neither could one claim that they did.   
   And that does not negate the fact that there is   
   no empirical evidence of transitional forms   
   ever existing.   
      
   Bottom line, you have been deceived. Which   
   would not have happened if you had not been   
   so gullible.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)