Anti-Evolution Theories?

D

Dinosaur

Rational Skeptic
Valued Senior Member
The fossil record provides significant evidence for evolution.

Eohippus to modern horse & early primates to modern Homo Sapiens are only two examples.
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Do the anti-evolutionists have any alternative explanation for the pertinent fossil record. I suppose that "God did it" might be the explanation provided by the fundamentalist religious types.

Are there other explanations by those who are against the theory of evolution?
 
It would be folly.

Evolution is an observable fact, as any bacteria-culture tech, dog breeder and fish breeder knows.

What is a theory, is evolution by natural selection.
 
Michael 345 said:
No one has found a missing link
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I trust your tongue is in your cheek. The whole fossil record arguably consists of missing links. The hackneyed and brazen statement that "no one has found a missing link" is one that always reminds me of the Big Lie strategy. What do people think Archaeopteryx is, for example?

In Robert Asher's book "Evolution and Belief", there is a table (Table 8.1, pp. 144-149) of about 150 fossil types that are known to have living relatives today but also have a mosaic of features displayed by other living species today, i.e. they are "links" between two or more current species. In other words, they are real "missing" links.

Of course the fact they have been found means they aren't actually "missing" any more. Maybe that's what you mean: a missing link is by definition one that nobody has yet found! :D

But seriously, when one thinks of the probability of a dead creature becoming fossilised and then the probability of that fossil being close enough to the surface to be found and then the chance of someone actually finding it, it is amazing how much of the fossil record has been pieced together. So the fact there are gaps is not much of an argument - it's bleedin' obvious!
 
Michael 345 said:
Firmly

Just thought of another tombstone inscriptions to add to my thread The Purpose of Death

Here be the missing link

Give future archos a bit of a hint

:)
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I always rather liked what Spike Milligan did.

He had "I told you I was ill!" inscribed on his tombstone - but in Gaelic, so nobody realised he was taking the piss.
 
exchemist said:
I always rather liked what Spike Milligan did.

He had "I told you I was ill!" inscribed on his tombstone - but in Gaelic, so nobody realised he was taking the piss.
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I remember that now you have jogged one of my 2 brain cells
 
Devolution? Stagnation?
Braincase volume increased rapidly from h. habilis ≈ 600cc to h.(s?) heidelbergensis where it topped out at about 1800cc circa mis.11(400k years ago).
The average for h.s. neanderthalensis and h.s. sapiens grew steadily, so, our average is higher than h.(s?) heidelbergensis, but we share the maximum.

whither hence?
 
sculptor said:
Devolution? Stagnation?
Braincase volume increased rapidly from h. habilis ≈ 600cc to h.(s?) heidelbergensis where it topped out at about 1800cc circa mis.11(400k years ago).
The average for h.s. neanderthalensis and h.s. sapiens grew steadily, so, our average is higher than h.(s?) heidelbergensis, but we share the maximum.

whither hence?
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The average brain size of neanderthals was greater than modern man.
Even if the average brain size was decreasing over time in the human species it would be an example of evolution.
 
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origin said:
The average brain size of neanderthals was greater than modern man.
Even if the average brain size was decreasing over time in the human species the would be an example of evolution.
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In my time it was said is not the size but the density of wrinkles
 
sculptor said:
Devolution? Stagnation?
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There is no such thing.

Organisms are always adapting to suit their environments, never "de-adapting".
If brain sizes got smaller (for example), it is because the resources devoted to large brains could be better devoted somewhere else.

The only way "devolution" could exist is if organisms were being selected for a lack of survival adaptations - which is a paradox.

Whales did not "devolve" from four-legged land creatures (they evolved).
Coelacanths did not "stagnate" from their 250My ancestors (they are well-adapted to an environment that hardly changes).
 
DaveC426913 said:
There is no such thing.

Organisms are always adapting to suit their environments, never "de-adapting".
If brain sizes got smaller (for example), it is because the resources devoted to large brains could be better devoted somewhere else.

The only way "devolution" could exist is if organisms were being selected for a lack of survival adaptations - which is a paradox.

Whales did not "devolve" from four-legged land creatures (they evolved).
Coelacanths did not "stagnate" from their 250My ancestors (they are well-adapted to an environment that hardly changes).
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Tell that to Nicola Sturgeon.

And why are these Scots politicians all fish?
 
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