I hate to comment-node, but I'm afraid someone is going to take this guy's blather for truth...

1. There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present.

Ever been to a museum of any sort of ancient history? They have bone remains of our predecessors, as well as a number of other animals (Sabertooth tigers / Modern tigers) who have changed over time. Of course, nothing would be found in the modern world because the old ones are extinct. Duh. The closes can be found in Darwin's recording of the species by the Galapagos Islands.
You go on to say that "...none of the supposed links of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, blah blah." Plant to animal: Sponges. They have survived as such, but continued to evolve into more complex creatures. Most of these transgressions have taken place in the ancient past on a multicellular level (Study the different Kingdoms, you'll hopefully understand.) Your problem seems to be that you refuse to acknowledge any entities but the ones currently on this world.

2. Natural selection (the supposed evolution mechanism, along with mutations) is incapable of advancing an organism to a "higher-order".

Again, you don't seem to know what you are talking about.

"This could not produce evolution, however, since mutations do not create new genetic potential, they just alter what is already there. Furthermore, mutations are small, random, and harmful alterations to the genetic code. This also makes evolution from mutations impossible. For example, a working wristwatch does not improve but is harmed when its inside parts are randomly altered."
Mutations do create a LOT of "genetic potential," exactly BY altering what is already there. They are not neccessarily harmful, for example a seal that has a defect for a white coat might survive better in snowy regions and have more children with that gene.
BTW: Wristwatches do not reproduce, therefore no evolution can take place. Also, if you had millions and millions of wristwatches and each was altered a slight bit, you might end up with a more efficient one. That one would have to reproduce, proving your allegory pointless as evolution can not apply to an object.

"Natural selection also contradicts the second law of thermodynamics which states that, left to themselves, all things tend to deteriorate rather than develop, while evolution wants to go in the opposite direction. "Survival of the fittest" demonstrates only how an organism has survived, not how it has evolved."
The second law of thermodynamics applies only to closed systems. RTFM. By the way, it's reproduction of the fittest.

3. Although evolutionists state that life resulted from non-life, matter resulted from nothing, and humans resulted from animals, each of these is an impossibility of science and the natural world.

"Life coming from matter would violate the law of biogenesis and the cell principle which state that life must come only from life." Life coming from matter? I am assuming you're trying to say "Life coming from non-life." At this point we enter philosphy, but I think that the chances in an infinite universe for life to come to being are larger than god creating man and beast out of clay.

"Secondly, we find that the first matter could not simply have come into existence from nothing."
No one ever said that matter came into existance from nothing. You're pulling this discussion from evolution to the big bang theory, if you knew your stuff you would be aware that these things are completely un-related. I happen to have done some reading on metaphysics, mainly just Steven Hawking's stuff, but - Where did God come from? - Right, that's rational.

From there on out he gets really wild, making opinionated claims and merely commenting on the finds without proper references. Highlights include: (On evolution:> "It demands total annihilation of anything weaker than necessary and the ruling of anyone more powerful than others. People exhibit mercy, pity, and morality, all of which inhibit natural selection."
Man does not propel the machine of natural selection, nature itself does - In Africa, people with darker skin happened to get less sunstrokes, therefore they survived and had offspring. In the north, blond hair absorbed all natural sunlight, keeping the skull warm. People occasionally exhibit mercy, pity and morality because they feel a sense of kinship to their species / race / countrymen. "much better explained by the fact..."
The last three points are basically substitutions of accepted scientific beliefs for religious "facts"... again without proper support. "If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow."
If your definition of cannibalism includes the murder of a species whose closes ancestor is several million years away and looked like neither you nor the cow, yes.

There are few things in this world that piss me off. One is tailgating, the other is disguising an ill-supported opinion in "scientific" language to sell it to the gullible masses.

  1. Transitional links from plant to animal
    Ok, what do you want? Here is a half plant half animal? What distinguishes the plants from animals? Neither of these two cellular artifacts would be preserved in a fossil record. However, lets look at an existing member of the protozoa kingdom: the euglena. A single celled something, that has some plant like qualities, and some animal like ones too. There are also several species of animals that have symbiotic algae that grow within them from simple hydra to more complex corals.

    A key concept though is that plants and animals diverged at a very early point in the history of life. To hold a fossil of such a single celled thing, the rock grains must be smaller than the size of the thing. Over a billion or so years, these rocks have been distorted from their original form and lost much of their original information. To find a single good cell in a rock that is about a billion years old and has gone through metamorphic stresses is akin to finding a needle in a field of hay that has tossed about by a tractor.

    For transitions between one species of animal to another - these are all around us. From fossils of ancient tetrapods which show fish leaving the water to modern horse shoe crabs. Darwin's finches on the Galapagos islands are all seperate species, yet they clearly all evolved from a single species of finch some time ago - that was a transition species. As such, every species alive today that does not become extinct will likely some day become a transition. Species are not the 'final product' but rather part of the process of life.

  2. Natural Selection
    Species and hybrids. At one time, there was an animal. This animal looked a lot like a horse, bit a bit smaller, more like a donkey. Over time and separation of genetic pools, these two populations driftedapart from one another.

    This can easily be demonstrated. Take a handful of marbles of different colors. Drop them on the ground. This assortment represents different populations with slight differences between them. Now, all the ones on one half, select for 'red-ish'. The ones on the other half, select for 'green-ish'. As the gene pools separate, their ability to have young that are fertile diminishes.

    Today, the horse and the donkey can reproduce, however the offspring (known as a mule) are always infertile. There is no way to get the genes from the donkey population back into the horse population, or vice versa.

    This is prohibited genetically since all of the information for the development of an organism has already been encoded in DNA of its parent.
    First off, a correction - the DNA of its parents. Unless we are talking asexual reproduction, it is the combination of genes from its parents. Next, What is 'more than a dog'? Or something a bit closer to us, is a lemur more than a shrew? Is a monkey more than a lemur? Is an ape more than a monkey? Is a human more than an ape?

    Not all mutations are harmful. There are times when a mutation can be beneficial, helping an organism to adapt to its environment better. Consider the blind cave salamander. A distant ancestor of it could see, however some mutation took away its sight, which really didn't help it. If anything, not having to confuse the brain with constant darkness and spending energy keeping the eyes in top form could be considered a beneficial mutation.

    Thermodynamics. It is indeed the case that entropy and disorder tend to a maximum. However, this does not mean that things cannot get better from this. There is a device called the hydraulic ram. This sits in a river running downhill, and uses the energy of disorder to force a small portion of water up. This in no way violates thermodynamics.

    There are trillions of mutations, and billions of species. Many of these die out, but those few that do survive and pass on their genetic information have succeeded. This does not violate thermodynamics either.

    BTW, what is a basic kind? And what basic kind is the platypus and spiny ant eater?

  3. Life from Non-Life
    What constitutes life? or non-life? These terms must be defined. Lets take a shot at it. Life is a system of molecules that are able to replicate themselves. It is possible for some combination of molecules to do this. Systems of molecules that don't do this are non-life. The only way for life to arise would be from something that is non-life. Cells came from organizations of these molecules.

    And what is this "first matter" stuff you're talking about? What is so absurd about it? Where is this logic you are talking about being absurd?

    Morality in humanity? You imply that other creatures have no morals or feelings? Do not dolphins mourn the loss of companions? Or the other primates? Our mental capacity is dwarfed by that of whales. Why does our ability to dominate the environment (which we are not alone in, just the most obvious) set us apart from the rest of the world? Many other species use tools, yet we just happen to have the most free time on our manipulative appendages to come up with unique ways to throughly destroy the world we live in.

    Feel free to read The Blind Watchmaker.

  4. Hominid Fossils
    Once again, what do you expect. The population of the various hominoids has been very small. Consider the entire population of gorillas alive today - there are only a few thousand. Of all the gorillas that die, how many of them die in a place where fossilization would happen. Not everything that dies becomes a fossil, the right conditions are necessary for such a process to happen. The early hominoids most likely also had small populations. It hasn't been until homo sapiens that the population has exploded into the millions and billions. Think about it, we are lucky as it is to have a jawbone.

    Yes, there have been hoaxes and misunderstandings in the past. A lot of research has been done in the past 50 years, and a greater understanding of what has actually happened has arisen.

    Footprints that date back to before homo sapiens took its place in the evolutionary latter. Footprints of a being that walked upright. What other explanation could there be?

  5. Apes, Monkeys, and You
    Where do you draw the line between ape and human ancestor. Yes, they very well may have been closer to the ape than the modern homo sapiens. So?

    Now two years after the original node, a debate wages about if the chimpanze should be placed in the homo genius rather than the pan genius and thus quite literaly our cousins.

  6. More monkey business
    Do you expect hominoids to live in different places than apes and monkeys? Even today humans live in places that are in close quarters to apes and monkeys. Do you really expect our ancestors to have lived in a different place?

  7. Social implications of making a monkey out of you
    Society's fitness is not determined by survival, but rather passing on the memes (rather than genes). Domination is one way that this can occur, and the Romans did it very well. Today's societies don't look well upon people who pass on memes by domination of others. This can be seen in how the Iraqis were handled with their conquest of Kuwait. It is necessary for a society today to be good and show others that it is the best for others to follow its way. In this new paradigm mercy, pity, and morality are the best ways to pass on these memes.

    1. It is possible for a slightly hindering mutation that does not prevent a creature from reproducing to act with another later mutation to provide a MUCH better organism. This is important. Read that again. It is possible to have a mutation that does currently hinder an organism that later leads to its survival. Hypothetically, a butterfly that eats a wide variety of plants. A mutation prevents this butterfly from eating all but one plant of its normal diet, a bad thing. But in eating this one plant, it becomes poisonous to other animals, a very good thing.
    2. Any animal that cannot pass on its genes is a failure in natural selection.
    3. Order from disorder. A salt solution is a disordered state. A salt crystal is a highly ordered state. The salt crystal comes from a disordered state. I have also shown how an ordered state can be reached through the motion of disorder.

    Once again, please read up on The Blind Watchmaker

  8. Logic and Natural Selection
    1. In our lifetime, we have seen organisms change to adapt to their environment. The classic example of this is a moth in London that had its coloration change from white to gray because it was easier to camouflage itself with the coal dusty environment it lives in. Was the pigeon created for the glass and steel world of modern cities?

      The dogs and cats that we know and love as pets were originally much larger beasts that happened to settle down with people to get easy food by chasing away those that would steal it.

      The lovely mule, and the liger (half lion, half tiger) are creatures that could not have originally been created, because they are infertile. There are several species of dolphins that also can breed to form hybrids. This extends also to the plant kingdom, where there are many breeds of corn that are infertile but better adapted to the environment than is found in nature.

    2. Birthday Fallacy. The eye of the human and the eye of the octopus are quite similar. However, there is nothing about either of these that says there is only one designer. There are millions of species, and uncountable numbers of similarities. To claim that all these similarities are because of one entity is not logically valid. Whats to say that Prometheus designed the humans and Epimetheus designed the animals?
    3. Cannibalism is defined as eating a member of the same species. Where would you draw the line for murder and cannibalism - we have the same building blocks as that wheat that is part of the bread you are eating, and the juice from the orange you are drinking, and the syrup on your pancakes.
    4. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? At one time, there was a thing that was not a chicken, it was a proto-chicken. It laid an egg. The thing that hatched from it was a chicken. There was a thing that at one time was not an oak tree. It dropped an acorn. The tree that grew from it was an oak tree. Your children will not be exactly like you, nor are you exactly like your parents. The line between the proto-chicken and the chicken is very fuzzy, but it is there.
    5. Hedonism is the basis for all of what we do. Our desire to be happy, and our desire to flourish. If we need to feel loved to be happy, that is what we will do. Our happiness is part of our long-term survival. Think about it, things that don't make us happy or help us cope with sorrow, generally aren't good for our long term survivability. Though this is certainly more into the realm of philosophy and psychology than evolution. The human mind is a complex thing.
    6. Order in interdependence argue for a world where many things happen at similar times. The flowering plants didn't evolve until the methods for them to transmit seeds (insects) evolved. Maybe there were flowering plants before there were insects, but they didn't survive. The world is a very complex place, with many parts that have grown up together. There are many mistakes in the lineage of history.

  9. Rock Strata and Floods
    A large flood is not necessary for the formation of fossils. Fossils do not require quick tremendous pressure. They require a nice place that is very dead. Tar pits are excellent places to find fossils. On the bottom of ancient sea beds everything can be found, big and small. The key thing is, that old always is lower than new. New does not always mean more complex. After the extinction of the dinosaurs, many less complex creatures had fossils.

    The protuding tree. Picture a flood plain with trees on it. Each year the floods lay down a layer of dirt. These strata of dirt grow up around the tree. Eventually the tree dies. More layers of dirt cover it. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation for a fossil tree protuding from layers of sediment.

    The flood recorded in the bible (and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Greek mythology) was the flooding of the Black Sea after the Ice Age. There were no dinosaurs that got buried in this flood. It was not a global flood (though the people at the time had a rather small view of the world).

  10. Evolutionary Bias
    If we are to believe creation, who's mythology should we follow? There are as many different creation stories as there are different cultures. Are we the dreams of gods? Did a giant egg break in half and become the heavens and the earth? Which theory of creation is right? When all the religions of the world can decide that, please come back with a unified voice.
7. Natural selection can be seen to have insurmountable social and practical inconsistencies.

The law of gravity, while disputed by few, has failed to convince most people that it is our moral obligation to lie on the ground rather than standing, jumping, or climbing as we see fit.

8. Natural selection has severe logical inconsistencies.

Natural selection has these and many other logical inconsistencies: (a.) Although evolutionists say that organisms are suited for their environment because they evolved into it, being suited for the environment is much better explained by the fact that they were created for the environment rather than that they evolved into it.

There have been cases of animals evolving to an environment during the period of written history. There is a species of dwarf elk that live on an island up north. Now the dwarf species doesn't make much sense to begin with. The elk needs its large size to protect itself from predators. But on this island the elk has no predators. However its snowy environment hinders its ability to find food, so its large size becomes a hinderance. The large elk that used to reproduce and pass off their "large gene" are no longer living as long and not passing this gene on enough. However the slightly smaller animals are better adapted for their environment and reproduce more often, passing along their "smaller gene". This process repeats itself(yes things are cylclical) but that doesn't discount evolution. Eventually you end up with a dwarf species.
You know there is this thing on the TV called the Discovery Channel that presents scientific information in a very non-threatening manner, maybe you should check it out

(b.) The fact that living things have similar patterns and design points to a common designer better than to a common ancestor. In fact, such variety in the world could not have been produced if we all come from the same ancestor.

Previously in your post you used the example of the dog. Are you saying that there is no great variety in dogs? We consciously evolved them as we saw fit(Personally I don't see why creationism and evolution can't go hand in hand). Are you saying there isn't much of a difference between a chihuahua and a great dane or even a basset hound.

(c.) If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow.

What is illogical about murder and cannibalism. You seem to be stating that these things are impossible. I have news for you, people get murdered every day. Moral dilemas are caused by your brain. The human species evolved these things so that a greater number of offspring could be created(we don't breed in litters you know). We needed to spare as much offspring as we could to increase our numbers.(I say it's worked, we need a harsher society to bring about a stronger gene pool. That however is an opionated statement, much like the ones I am refuting).

(d.) While small and underdeveloped things do become grown and developed (a baby to an adult, a seed to a tree) it is also true that the small and underdeveloped first come from the developed (a baby from its parents, a seed from a tree). The pattern of growth is circular not simply from the crude to the developed as natural selection proposes.

Once again yes nature is cycliclal, so is evolution. If you want smaller circles read The Fourth Turning it is sort of unrelated but shows the cyclical nature of things. We will someday destroy our world and it will all start over.

(e.) Our needs exceed those of survival. Needs for love and friendship, for example, cannot be explained if all that we do is for survival.

Yup, we need friends. We have a tribal instinct. Have you ever heard the saying "There is strength in numbers" well it is true. Wolves hunt in packs, it is needed for their survival. We at one point needed this same mentality, we still do(we have a government to protect us from others). As for love, it encourages reproduction, does it not. It also encourages us to protect our young so that our genes will get passed on to another generation. If we were created why did I have to get six wisdom teeth pulled? It seems to be a bad engineering decision for the "Man Upstairs" to design me in such a way(I'm a little pissed as well, being a mutant hurts, except when you have positive evolution such as not having any wisdom teeth).

(f.) Order and interdependence in the world argues for a designed and against chance.

This is a somewhat philosophical/religous tangent. I believe that our world is governed by a higher power, some type of god. I consider myself a non-denominational christian/agnostic. I believe that our world is governed by something, to please any Taoists out there I call it the way. In the way there exists both order and chaos. Some things happen because they are supposed to, and sometimes stuff just happens for no reason at all. You seem to be coming from the christian standpoint. I have a problem with most what I call "traditional christians", they believe that God is some guy sitting up in the clouds waiting to chat with them when they die. These are the people who don't understand infinite series and don't believe that .9 repeating = 1. God is infinite that is why no one can look directly at him in the bible, humans aren't really capable of comprehending the infinite. I apologize for going on my own religious rant, but that seems to be the purpose for this node.

Natural selection has severe logical inconsistencies. ... If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow.

That is not a logical inconsistency, it is a logical consequence. I speak as an atheist vegetarian here. You can debate if it actually is a consequence or not (if the creature is not sentient, is the killing murder?), but where is the inconsistency?

You seem to be using this brand of logic: "If x is true, then that would mean that I am a bad person, therefore x must be wrong."

Thank you for playing, better luck next time.

Another fine writeup as reply

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