Düane's Blog
Refuting 25 creationist claims - Claim 11 through 15
Huh? Perhaps someone can explain why "created kind[s]" are relevant to evolution? That's a creationist term. And I think the extinction of "kinds" would pose more of a problem for creationism than evolution, since "kinds" are what they see as responsible for the variety of life we see today.
12. The fossil record contains no transitional forms of animals, only extinct forms. The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that it is safe to conclude that the alleged "gaps" or "missing links" will never be found.
Since TalkOrigins can go much more in depth (and has already done so) on the subject of what transitional fossils are and what we've found, I'll be happy linking to them. I'd like to point out that we have been digging for fossils for a blink of an eye in geological time. It's a bit premature to proclaim something will "never" be found. After all, creationists haven't given up on finding Noah's Ark and they know where it's supposed to be.
13. The so-called "evolutionary tree" has no trunk. In the earliest part of the fossil record (generally the Cambrian sedimentary layer), life appears suddenly, complex, diversified and fully developed.
The Cambrian era does have a significant amount of complex organisms that we do not find as easily in earlier eras. That doesn't mean that no significant organisms have been found to pre-date that era. We are also talking about a period of time in the millions of years. Not quite something I would call "sudden". And other time periods have had their own "explosions" in the fossil record. The Cambrian is just one of the earliest to have significant amounts of fossilized remains. And that could just be because organisms started to evolve harder (and easier to fossilize) body parts.
14. Insects have no known evolutionary ancestors.
Well at least this one is brief, if mistaken. While we find most insects appeared in the Carboniferous period, we have found remains of insect progenitors in the Silurian period, which is about 20 million years after the Cambrian period. That is a 40 million year period between the first appearance of insects and the variety of insects we start to find in the Carboniferous period. Plenty of time for evolution of insects to occur.
15. Many different forms of life are completely dependent upon each other (symbiotic relationships). Even members of the honeybee family, consisting of the queen, workers, and drones, are interdependent. If one member of each interdependent group evolved first, it could not have survived. Since all members of these groups have survived, they must have come into existence simultaneously. The only possible answer for their existence is "intelligent design".
I admit, I had to laugh at this one. That we see interdependence today does not mean that it has always been this way. Once again, the author looks at what is, and assumes that that is how it must have started. This is just another form of the irreducible complexity argument, and it fails for the same reason. Evolution allows for the development of interdependence. The author also mistakes the honey bee's society for interdependence. It's really called eusociality, as found in many insects.
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