Indeed. AIG has already answered a lot of these questions, but the answers they give are not always accepted…
Do you know of any reference where AiG has defined their criteria for differentiating between human and non-human fossils?
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Here’s a link to a page of AIG writings regarding transitional fossils (or at least, I thought you were asking for a link). On their website, you could also type [quote=“T_aquaticus, post:22, topic:36386”]
reference where AiG has defined their criteria for differentiating between human and non-human fossils
[/quote]
And you would probably get something.
I don’t see any criteria for determining if a fossil is transitional or not. What I do see is this statement:
“Paleoanthropology cannot provide an eyewitness account of transitions from ape to human.”
They seem to be saying that they will never accept any fossil as being transitional, no matter what it looks like.
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Truth doesn’t require dogmatic belief. What AiG has is a dogmatic belief that there are no transitional fossils. They can’t list what their criteria are for determining if a fossil is transitional because they have already decided that it isn’t transitional before they even look at it.
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A transitional fossils has a mixture of features from an ancestral group and a descendant group. They are alternately described as having a mixture of features from two divergent taxa. Therefore, a fossil with a mixture of more ape-like features not found in modern humans and human-like features not found in other apes would be a hominid transitional fossil.
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@T_aquaticus
I see.
What do you think are some good examples of transitional fossils (preferably with pictures so we can examine and discuss them here)?
Let’s start with something simple and specific. Here are four pelvises.
The one on the left is a modern human pelvis. The one on the right is a chimp pelvis. Notice the differences? The human pelvis is broader and shorter. The blades of the pelvis are more on the sides than seen in the chimp pelvis. This is what allows humans to swing their legs around their midline while keeping their pelvis in line with their spine which is an adaptation for bipedal walking. Chimps don’t have that adaptation.
The two pelvises in the middle are from Australopithecines, one of which is from the transitional fossil called “Lucy”. Would you say that a completely unbiased examination would conclude that the two pelvises in the middle are more like the pelvis on the left than the pelvis on the right?
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Wait a moment…
They had to use a power tools to make (a cast) of Lucy’s pelvis look that way…
Other than that, I (rather) get your point.
Please explain. btw, What is your Natural History Museum?
Here’s another link to Answers in Genesis:
In which it says this:
In other words, Genesis 1 says that God created man in His own image. In light of this fact, we would be justified in looking to the products of human design to understand the principles that God might have employed in designing life. Since humans design “transitional forms,” why wouldn’t God do so as well?
Thus, while the existence of “transitional forms” might fail to reject the hypothesis of evolution, it also fails to reject the hypothesis of design. As we observed in a previous post, this is a type-3 experiment—in other words, pseudoscience.
This fact applies to Venema’s additional claim about fossil gaps being filled in. Since both YEC scientists and evolutionists predict the existence of “transitional forms,” it doesn’t matter how many fossil gaps are filled; none of these filled gaps will distinguish between creation and evolution. (Of course, if gaps never were filled in, evolutionists would have a lot of explaining to do, as Darwin’s own writings reveal. In formal terms of a previous article, the gaps in the fossil record represent a type-2 experiment—the existence of gaps would spell trouble for evolution; the lack of gaps would say nothing about either model.)
In other words, Answers in Genesis is now claiming that YEC predicts the existence of “transitional forms” after decades of denying that such a thing even exists.
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The first part of the following debate, with Bill Ludlow, is really good if you want an overview of evidence-based human evolution. Unfortunately, Ludlow is debating fundamentalist tax fraud Kent Hovind so things get really ridiculous.
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Why don’t you try it first? Taq’s question was simple enough.
Which caste? Brahmin?
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I will do my best to find that…I believe it was PBS…episode where they talked about Lucy’s pelvis.
I am a bit confused as to your second question…(What is your natural history museum)