I’m not sure if you really want an answer, since I doubt anyone has ever claimed that jelly-fish, worms, and sponges evolved directly into fish. But if you want to learn more about fish evolution, you can start looking here - Evolution of fish - Wikipedia
There is a lot of information on the page and 152 citations, if you want to learn more.
There is a similar page for insect evolution. I do not doubt that Bechly knows his stuff. However, I also do not doubt that there are many other paleoentomologists that would disagree with his conclusions.
Evolutionists are often so cocksure that they sometimes overstep their boundary into falsehoods - for example, I often hear them claiming that fossils “confirm” Darwinian theory. This is nonsense; the truth is, fossils tell us that some kind of “evolution” has occured, but they confirm nothing about what caused it.
One of my favourite evo’ Tales of Yore is the one that says a mammal’s inner-ear bones evolved from the jaw-bone of a reptile. The “scientific evidence” for this fanciful transition is nothing more than a few reptile bones and a few mammals bones - with a gigantic gap in between! To make matters even more dubious and unscientific, no one has the slightest idea what sort of environmental pressures would cause a couple of jaw-bones from a reptile to evolve into the inner-ear bones of a mammal. Furthermore, evolutionists can’t even begin to explain how each mutation involved in this process conferred a survival advantage. In other words, the whole story is accepted on the basis of a few meaningless fossils and blind faith in Darwinism - as I suspect thousands other evolutionary tales are (eg, ask an evolutionist to explain how a single-circulation heart (fish) could possibly evolve into a double-circulation heart (amphibians, reptiles, mammals)).
All in all, I think Darwinism is such a poor scientific explanation for the fossil record that a better one is that aliens came to earth and performed amazing feats of genetic engineering - and I don’t even believe in aliens!
How mutations might arise is relative easy to explain - now please tell us the rest of the story - how these mutations conferred a survival advantage to the organism involved.
The antifreeze protein could have been a result of biological evolution … but could also have been the result of aliens having fun tinkering with genetic engineering.
You’ve missed the point. Evolution News (evolutionnews.org) sums up Bechly’s findings regarding evolutionary ancestors thusly:
“Dr. Bechly notes three contradictions at odds with Darwinian gradualism: Insects pop into existence at one blow, as do insect wings, as does the phenomenon of metamorphosis."
That is to say, Bechly sees no transitional “evolutionary ancestors” of insects.
Insects have hard bodies that lend themselves to fossilization, but there is no fossil evidence of any transitional ancestors - how does Darwinism explain this?
Bechly himself says,
“I am skeptical of the Neo-Darwinian theory of macroevolution and support intelligent design theory for purely scientific reasons. I do not think that unguided evolution (incl. so-called theistic evolution) is incompatible with good theology, but that it is incompatible with good science and possibly also incompatible with proper metaphysics. I consider intelligent design theory as a valid scientific research paradigm that has decisively refuted Neo-Darwinism, which was the only conceivable option for a naturalistic and mechanistic explanation of biological origins.”
Since I advocate God-Guided Evolution… then I assume you and I can agree that evolution looks more like God-Guided Evolution more than anything else it might resemble, yes?
As for this comment:
You and I agree, yes?, that once you propose God-Guided Evolution… we are no longer discussing Darwinian Revolution.
If you and I can agree to this, it would sweep aside alot of irrelevant disputes that some Creations almost prefer to discuss… than making any progress…
All kidding aside, let’s try to focus on a more narrow part of the fossil record. You’ve tossed around a number of transitions, seemingly unaware of the fossils that we do have, which ones would you like to try to focus on?
This is extremely ungracious talk and I won’t continue in this discussion until you apologize sincerely.
I am a follower of Christ who affirms scientific knowledge as a fruit of God’s common grace to all of humanity and of His creating all humanity in His image. “Evolutionist” I am not. Kindly retract your outrageous slander.
The main alternative to Darwinism (now mostly “Neo-Darwinism”) is Lamarckianism, the theory that acquired characteristics can be inherited. I like the Gould quote above because I think it really points up the difficulties with Darwinian theory. He also seems to suggest that while it might not be a great theory, it’s the only theory we’ve got. Actually not. Because of the disrepute into which Larmarckianism fell after The Origin of Species was published, it remained largely ignored until recently, especially after the theory and evidence for genetics were developed. How could something happening in the body have an effect on genes? Apparently it might. But because of Lamarck’s disrepute, the contemporary version of his theory, “neo-Lamarckianism” isn’t actually even called that. It’s called “epigenetics” and seems to be a burgeoning field in evolutionary biology these days. I’m not an evolutionary biologist, I just play one on BioLogos (though I did drive Stephen Jay Gould home from a lecture once). But anyway, experimental results at the level of microorganisms have shown positive evidence of acquired inheritance. Who knows? At any rate, it strikes me as a better explanation that either Darwinism or Intelligent Design. As to the exact mechanism, well, even Darwinism was without a mechanism for decades after he proposed it.
The genomes of extant organisms can inform us about what happened on earth millions of years ago? How does that work?
Good point - fossils of humans and rabbits and pussy cats might yet turn up in pre-Cambrian strata, so no one should be jumping to theories about evolution just yet.
On the other hand, a world-renowned palaeontologist like Gunter Bechly believes we have enough fossils now to come to definitive conclusions about the history of life on earth - his conclusion is that the fossil record is “discontinuous” and therefore cannot be explained by Darwinism.
Why do I need to pose an alternative explanation? No one needs an explanation for the history of life on earth - and certainly, no doctor of medicine does.
I’m an OEC and I believe science is incapable of explaining the fossil record. Darwinism is a tale that the atheist-ridden scientific community has nurtured into scientific dogma, coz it supposedly vindicates their philosophical worldview and makes them sleep better at night.
I agree with your assessment - the other difference is, evolution relies on a natural process, where pc relies on a unnatural (ie, divine) process. The creation of life on earth began as a supernatural miracle, so it makes sense that a supernatural miracle is responsible for the rest of the history of creation.
In answer to your questions, I don’t believe pc is in operation today. For one thing, thousands of years of animal and plant breeding strongly suggest there are genetic limits to how much organisms can change. Plus I believe - for no good reason - that when man was created, the process of progressive creation - that began billions of years ago with microbes - reached its end-point, at least, as far as this present earth is concerned.
But having said that, I believe the physical creation will eventually be elevated far beyond where it is now, as there will arrive one fine day, “a new heaven and a new earth”, which sounds like a different kettle of fish entirely.
Thanks for the link. This article offers precious little in the way of evidence of evolutionary transitions that led to fish. The best it can do is, a sea squirt to something like a lancet (invertebrate) to a fish (vertebrate) - not exactly a convincing sequence of Darwinian transitionals, is it? Looks like the jumps due to progressive creation to me and another case of evoutionists relying on fossil evidence that doesn’t exist.
And they would very likely be desperate evolutionists clutching at straws, employing their well-known and enormous capacity for wishful thinking and fantasy.
That depends - if you are inclined to discard evidence if it doesn’t support your conclusion, then probably not. But when you consider that sea squirts and lancelets belong to the group of invertebrate chordates, then you can see the logic of the conclusion.
The fossil record is evidence of Darwinian evolution, but doesn’t confirm its mechanism. In other words, the Darwinian explanation for the history of life on earth cannot be tested.
One of my favourite Darwinian Tales from the Days of Yore is the one that says the inner-ear bones of a mammal evolved from the jaw-bones of a reptile. The fossil “evidence” or this alleged transformation is sparse - a few reptile bones and then a gigantic leap to some mammal bones. The gigantic leap is of course bridged with blind faith in evolution. Evolutionists have no idea what sort of environmental pressures would cause this transformation and can’t even begin to explain what mutations were involved, let alone explain how each mutation conferred a survival advantage. These stories (and that’s all they are -stories) can be found everywhere in evolutionary “science”.
So you respect the opinion of the free-speech-hating, evo-fanatics (and probably rabid atheists) and anonymous nobodies at Wiki more an world-renown palaeontologist? Unsurprisingly, the boss of Wiki is an atheist.
But he confirms that the insects evolved from a common ancestor, from the paper I read. I don’t get that that is your position. In fact, it sounds to me like you would disagree with him. Correct? Unfortunately, some folks do make bad choices–and Linus Pauling, a scientist who Einstein said he could not match in some things, really did jump to incorrect conclusions with Vitamin C, etc.
I would think (as a physician, not a biologist) that chitin is not as amenable (by far) to fossilization as bone. It resembles cartilage more than bone in terms of strength, which usually goes away quickly from the skeleton in natural breakdown. When you see a hatch of termites, their carapaces and wings break down quickly, piled though they be afterwards–much unlike bone. That’s my surmise, anyway.
Thank you for this mental exercise. Blessings, Brother.
That’s a pity - I was looking forward to you telling the rest of your evo’ story - you know, how the various “antifreeze” mutations (easy to explain) confer a survival advantage (impossible to explain - without resorting to untestable stories - wihich don’t even qualify as science).
@Edgar - let’s focus on a topic. These discussions I think are getting a little out of hand as far as ad hominins. I apologize if I contributed to this with my wikipedia remark. Can you try to focus on some part of the fossil record which, while sparse in some ways, tells us a remarkable tale of common descent?
Consider what readers of this thread might think about how you value name calling and playground taunts versus how you value obeying the Sermon on the Mount.
If you professed something other than Christianity, I wouldn’t bother bringing this to your attention. Since you do–I think–there is no more important issue right now in this thread.
Just a (hopefully) final note by me on all this. As near as I can see, the problematic character of neo-Darwinian theory – and (as many posters on this thread including myself have pointed out) it is highly problematic (for all the reasons stated) – does not call into question the process of evolution itself or the dating associated with it. I think a lot of “New Earthers” do (incorrectly) draw this conclusion but it’s emphatically not warranted – again, given all the fossil and DNA evidence.
As I’ve said before, there are areas of science – cosmology and evolutionary biology being the two that come immediately to mind – where the nature of the observational/experimental evidence is such that (in my view anyway) no real verification/falsification of theories is actually possible. This means that many hypotheses in these areas tend to remain largely “science fantasy”. Certainly proponents are free to speculate this way but we do have to characterize their theories as in most cases pure speculation. To do so, however, does not obviate the validity of the sheer observations this speculation is based on; for example, astronomical observations indicating that the age of the universe is something around 13.8 billion years. It’s just that when you get into “Big Bang” scenarios that the sci-fi begins. Same for the origin and evolution of life on Earth. Age measurements nail it. Beyond that, not so much…
These stories (and that’s all they are -stories) can be found everywhere in evolutionary “science”.
I believe the correct technical term for them is “just so stories”. (It’s also revealing, I think, that evolutionary biologists themselves refer to them this way, lol…