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[geogaddi]

SOURCE

Here is an excerpt;

Paleontology

NG leads readers to believe that Darwin thought the fossil record supported his theory. But actually he admitted more than once in his famous book6 that the fossil record is an embarrassment to his theory of descent from a common ancestor. He knew that if his theory was true, there should be countless numbers of transitional forms (e.g., 100% reptile, 75% reptile-25% bird, 50% reptile-50%bird, 25% reptile-75%bird, 100% bird and many transitional forms between each of those). Darwin attributed the lack of evidence to our ignorance of the fossil record. But today our museums are loaded with fossils and the missing links are still missing.

As the late Harvard evolutionary geologist, Stephen Gould, put it:

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, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.7

In a 1979 letter responding to the late creationist, Luther Sunderland, Colin Patterson, then Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, concurred:

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? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader? ... You say that 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.8

Richard Dawkins’ evolutionist disciple at Oxford University, Mark Ridley, is emphatic:

However, the gradual change of fossil species has never been part of the evidence for evolution. In the chapters on the fossil record in the Origin of Species Darwin showed that the record was useless for testing between evolution and special creation because it has great gaps in it. The same argument still applies. ... In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.9 [emphasis in the original]

So I guess the folks at NG are not real evolutionists, or at least not very informed. They certainly offer nothing in this article to negate these statements. Incredibly, NG even admits that “illuminating but spotty, the fossil record is like a film of evolution from which 999 out of every 1000 frames have been lost on the cutting-room floor” (p. 25). So there you have it. Evolution is 99.9% imagination! NG quickly reassures us that “dozens of intermediate forms” have been found, but they only give two examples: horses and whales.

 

[Lathentar]

Awful. All it did was dismiss claims in the article without providing any real information supporting Creationism.

 

[geogaddi]

Awful. All it did was dismiss claims in the article without providing any real information supporting Creationism.

"real" information? What is that?

 

[Gregory]

Ugh, you americans are scary. I bet your government are pushing stuff like this now. Then again I`m sure you don`t need much pushing considering how out of touch with reality you have become.

 

[Iceman]

ha.

The US government pushes creationism like it pushes bibles into everyone's hands.

 

[Manabanana]

Ugh, you americans are scary. I bet your government are pushing stuff like this now. Then again I`m sure you don`t need much pushing considering how out of touch with reality you have become.

Oh come on, a little under half of us are just fine.

 

[Nerevar]

Awful. All it did was dismiss claims in the article without providing any real information supporting Creationism.

That is the basis of every creationist argument ever made though. Nothing else is right - God did it!

 

[Chony]

Ever think Evolution and Creationism arn't mutually exclusive? God man on the 7th day right? Then wouldn't humans be 4.5 billion years old. Christians argue humans that humans have been around for only 6000 years old. There is substantial evidence supporting humans 50,000+ years old, intelligent ones in that. Maybe god just takes his time. Since he has the power of foretelling, and the mind to think up the most complex mathmatics, he knew exactly what would happen by basis of evolution. Maybe I am talking out of my ass, but I can't be proved otherwise.

 

[Deleted member 1159]

Maybe I am talking out of my ass, but I can't be proved otherwise.

...which I think is true of almost all people who argue evolution/creationism. I'll wait till I die to accept the 'thruth'

 

[Ristamar]

Ever think Evolution and Creationism arn't mutually exclusive?

I'd also like to think god/faith and science aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[speedpop]

The best two claims of creationism I ever heard are as follows:

- Old religion teacher that they made semi-compulsary in primary school told us that dinosaurs roamed the Earth with humans at the same time.

- An old woman came upto me in the city a few months ago, stating that there are now two kingdoms in Heaven, one by God and the other by Jesus meaning that once we die, we get to choose which kingdom to go to. She suddenly scorned me when I told her I was a Buddhist though.

 

[Gregory]

Oh come on, a little under half of us are just fine.

Still fewer Americans, only 12 percent, believed that humans evolved from other life-"forms without any involvement of a god."

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/feature1/

I don`t know about that. :/

 

[geogaddi]

Ugh, you americans are scary. I bet your government are pushing stuff like this now. Then again I`m sure you don`t need much pushing considering how out of touch with reality you have become.

Hehehe....actually you incorrectly assumed this was an American-exclusive organization. AiG is actually a massive worldwide creationist organization, take a look at the CEO's of their offices;

Meet the CEOs
Adrian Bates, AiG-New Zealand
Richard Fangrad, AiG-Canada
Ken Ham, AiG-USA
Dr Johan Kruger, AiG-South Africa
Dr Monty White, AiG-UK
Dr Carl Wieland, AiG-Australia

This is their in their "About Us" section of their website;

AiG teaches that ‘facts’ don't speak for themselves, but must be interpreted. That is, there aren’t separate sets of ‘evidences’ for evolution and creation—we all deal with the same evidence (we all live on the same earth, have the same fossils, observe the same animals, etc.). The difference lies in how we interpret what we study. The Bible—the ‘history book of the universe’—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world. When properly understood, the ‘evidence’ confirms the biblical account.

What I get out of this is that AiG takes the pre-suppositionalist approach for interpreting the facts. Philosopher Van Til is the father of pre-suppositionalism and he argues that for every fact or known thing exists a pre-supposition or a pre-conceived starting point of reference to interpret that fact or known thing.

 

[demon]

The Bible—the ‘history book of the universe’—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world. When properly understood, the ‘evidence’ confirms the biblical account.

Hilarious and frightening at the same time.

 

[xsarien]

What I get out of this is that AiG takes the pre-suppositionalist approach for interpreting the facts. Philosopher Van Til is the father of pre-suppositionalism and he argues that for every fact or known thing exists a pre-supposition or a pre-conceived starting point of reference to interpret that fact or known thing.

You can wrap as many big words around the theory as you like; you can call it "intelligent design" until you're blue in the face; but the fact of the matter is that evolution has tangible evidence to back it up, Creationism has a book.

I'll go with the bones and fossils and cave drawings, thanks.

 

[Mandark]

Any argument for Creationism or Intelligent Design that portrays that SJG quote as anti-evolution rather than pro-punctuated equilibrium is killing its credibility.

Hito, our hands may be forced here.

 

[Hitokage]

Mandark: Hey, did I call it or what?