Thanks Russ,

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An evolutionist would have to answer the problem of how symmetrical features evolve, whether wings or flaps of skin.
Not really: we can observe that symmetrical features exist, so the evolution of wings from existing symmetrical features does not depend on explaining symmetry.

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Again, the mathematical probabilities of this occurring are not problematic. They are fundamentally absurd.
And if you want to start a thread demonstrating the math of this assertion, I will be glad to show you what is wrong with the calculations. Math does not govern how reality behaves, it can only model, but the model is not reality, and if the model tells you, for instance, that hurricanes cannot occur south of the equator, then when a hurricane does occur south of the equator it is not reality that is wrong, but the mathematical model.

Again, though, when we look at existing features, the information needed to produce symmetry is simpler than non-symmetry, and indeed we see that duplication of features is a common aspect of biology, evident in some of the earliest organisms. We also see several different types of symmetry with starfish etc showing radial symmetry.

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"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion [of halfway species] instead of being, as we see them, well-defined species?"
—Charles Darwin, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 139.
Red color mine to show that this is not part of the actual quotes from Darwin, but the insertion of H.Enoch, while the other colors show quotes from different sections, order, etc.. Thus the quote is not Charles Darwin but a fabrication by H.Enoch, and we don't have the reference from Enoch to read the REAL quote. Did you check them?

Is this where you get all your quotes from?
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA: SCIENTISTS SPEAK ABOUT EVOLUTION? It certainly seems to contain a lot of your favorites. You do realize, don't you, that when a site like this has been demonstrated to post false material that it becomes unreliable for any further reference, don't you? You should check your references and validate them, if you are going to be honest in your search for truth (assuming this is your purpose).

Here's a better source for quotes from Darwin:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
Of course you may have to read the work to get to the quotes, but then you have the advantage of context.

They have a search feature too:

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Results 1-6 of 6 for « +text:"as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed" »

100% F373 (page sequence 190)
Book: Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
London: John Murray. 1st edition, 1st issue.

... Hence, if we look at each species as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form. But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? It will be much more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on ...
There are several editions noted with slight variations in the wording but not one of them continues with "Why is not all nature in confusion ..." after "Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth?" (which also is not an accurate quote).

Curious that you need to quote an author, H.Enoch, who can't get the facts right in his own book. The quote by this esteemed author of yours also does not mention that Darwin goes on to explain the reason/s ("It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; ..."). Posing a question that you then answer does not make the question unanswered now does it?

Continuing with the search feature:
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Results 1-7 of 7 for « +text:"why is not all nature in confusion" »

100% F373 (page sequence 189)
Book: Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
London: John Murray. 1st edition, 1st issue.

... why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined? Secondly, is ...
So the "quote" of Darwin is actually a fabrication of several small quotes and the insertion of "[of halfway species]" and rewriting the last phrase. It is an invention of H. Enoch, a misrepresentation of what Darwin said. A lie.

Let's see what Darwin really said there:

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LONG before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory.

These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following heads:— Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?
And he then goes on to explain each of the possible fatal arguments to show that they do not in fact prove fatal at all:

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On the absence or rarity of transitional varieties.—As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less-favoured forms with which it comes into competition. Thus extinction and natural selection will, as we have seen, go hand in hand. Hence, if we look at each species as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form.

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? It will be much more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the geological record; and I will here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed; the imperfection of the record being chiefly due to organic beings not inhabiting profound depths of the sea, and to their remains being embedded and preserved to a future age only in masses of sediment sufficiently thick and extensive to withstand an enormous amount of future degradation; and such fossiliferous masses can be accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the shallow bed of the sea, whilst it slowly subsides. These contingencies will concur only rarely, and after enormously long intervals. Whilst the bed of the sea is stationary or is rising, or when very little sediment is being deposited, there will be blanks in our geological history. The crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been made only at intervals of time immensely remote.

But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the same territory we surely ought to find at the present time many transitional forms. Let us take a simple case: in travelling from north to south over a continent, we generally meet at successive intervals with closely allied or representative species, evidently filling nearly the same place in the natural economy of the land. These representative species often meet and interlock; and as the one becomes rarer and rarer, the other becomes more and more frequent, till the one replaces the other. But if we compare these species where they intermingle, they are generally as absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of structure as are specimens taken from the metropolis inhabited by each. By my theory these allied species have descended from a common parent; and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and exterminated its original parent and all the transitional varieties between its past and present states. Hence we ought not to expect at the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded there in a fossil condition. But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me. But I think it can be in large part explained.

In the first place we should be extremely cautious in inferring, because an area is now continuous, that it has been continuous during a long period. Geology would lead us to believe that almost every continent has been broken up into islands even during the later tertiary periods; and in such islands distinct species might have been separately formed without the possibility of intermediate varieties existing in the intermediate zones. By changes in the form of the land and of climate, marine areas now continuous must often have existed within recent times in a far less continuous and uniform condition than at present. But I will pass over this way of escaping from the difficulty; for I believe that many perfectly defined species have been formed on strictly continuous areas; though I do not doubt that the formerly broken condition of areas now continuous has played an important part in the formation of new species, more especially with freely-crossing and wandering animals.

In looking at species as they are now distributed over a wide area, we generally find them tolerably numerous over a large territory, then becoming somewhat abruptly rarer and rarer on the confines, and finally disappearing. Hence the neutral territory between two representative species is generally narrow in comparison with the territory proper to each. We see the same fact in ascending mountains, and sometimes it is quite remarkable how abruptly, as Alph. De Candolle has observed, a common alpine species disappears. The same fact has been noticed by Forbes in sounding the depths of the sea with the dredge. To those who look at climate and the physical conditions of life as the all-important elements of distribution, these facts ought to cause surprise, as climate and height or depth graduate away insensibly. But when we bear in mind that almost every species, even in its metropolis, would increase immensely in numbers, were it not for other competing species; that nearly all either prey on or serve as prey for others; in short, that each organic being is either directly or indirectly related in the most important manner to other organic beings, we must see that the range of the inhabitants of any country by no means exclusively depends on insensibly changing physical conditions, but in large part on the presence of other species, on which it depends, or by which it is destroyed, or with which it comes into competition; and as these species are already defined objects (however they may have become so), not blending one into another by insensible gradations, the range of any one species, depending as it does on the range of others, will tend to be sharply defined. Moreover, each species on the confines of its range, where it exists in lessened numbers, will, during fluctuations in the number of its enemies or of its prey, or in the seasons, be extremely liable to utter extermination; and thus its geographical range will come to be still more sharply defined.

If I am right in believing that allied or representative species, when inhabiting a continuous area, are generally so distributed that each has a wide range, with a comparatively narrow neutral territory between them, in which they become rather suddenly rarer and rarer; then, as varieties do not essentially differ from species, the same rule will probably apply to both; and if we in imagination adapt a varying species to a very large area, we shall have to adapt two varieties to two large areas, and a third variety to a narrow intermediate zone. The intermediate variety, consequently, will exist in lesser numbers from inhabiting a narrow and lesser area; and practically, as far as I can make out, this rule holds good with varieties in a state of nature. I have met with striking instances of the rule in the case of varieties intermediate between well-marked varieties in the genus Balanus. And it would appear from information given me by Mr. Watson, Dr. Asa Gray, and Mr. Wollaston, that generally when varieties intermediate between two other forms occur, they are much rarer numerically than the forms which they connect. Now, if we may trust these facts and inferences, and therefore conclude that varieties linking two other varieties together have generally existed in lesser numbers than the forms which they connect, then, I think, we can understand why intermediate varieties should not endure for very long periods;—why as a general rule they should be exterminated and disappear, sooner than the forms which they originally linked together.
Purple for emphasis.

Note that he first discusses reproductively isolated but related species, each with distinct traits and no hybrid forms intermediate between them. Then he discusses the effect of geological isolation on the evolution of sub-populations, such that when reunited after sufficient time has passed that they have evolved differences, that they do not recognize the other populations as potential mates. Next he hypothesizes how populations can become reproductively isolated while inhabiting large but different areas while still having small hybrid zones with intermediate forms. Finally he notes that this pattern in time would result in small transitional populations between large established populations.

This in effect predicts both "punctuated equilibrium" and what actually we see in ring-species. In the The greenish warbler ring species we see this pattern of inter-relationships:

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Greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides) inhabit forests across much of northern and central Asia. In central Siberia, two distinct forms of greenish warbler coexist without interbreeding, and therefore these forms can be considered distinct species. The two forms are connected by a long chain of populations encircling the Tibetan Plateau to the south, and traits change gradually through this ring of populations.
[Linked Image]

Map of Asia showing the six subspecies of the greenish warbler described by Ticehurst in 1938. The crosshatched blue and red area in central Siberia shows the contact zone between viridanus and plumbeitarsus, which do not interbreed. Colors grade together where Ticehurst described gradual morphological change. The gap in northern China is most likely the result of habitat destruction.
Thus we see precisely the pattern that Darwin said we should see: large areas dominated by each variety and small zones of overlap, zones that we call "hybrid zones" because rather than an intermediate variety we see a mix of traits between the two adjoining areas, so they don't qualify as a separate variety. We also see two isolated populations, and we see that in the final overlap between viridanus and plumbeitarsus varieties there is no hybrid zone, because there is no mating: each variety does not see the other variety as mate material, so they are reproductively isolated.

Not only do we see the intermediate varieties predicted by Darwin with small zones of intermediate (hybrid) forms between large areas of dominant varieties, but we see how geographic isolation of populations leads to reproductive isolation when they do overlap. Geographic isolation over time does indeed lead to reproductive isolation and the separation of a parent species into two (or more) independent and ever diverging species.

Thus - in spite of the false implications - what Darwin said involves an explanation of why there may be missing fossils, and how speciation can occur with geographical isolation. The astute reader will see that H. Enoch has put the quote from pg 190 before the quote from pg 189, changing the sequence of the argument, as well as inserting "[of halfway species]" in the middle, where no such thing was said and mixing up the last phrase.

But this irresponsible misrepresentation of reality, typical of creationist quote-mines, does not affect the fact that since Darwin's time we have found literally millions of intermediate varieties that fit his definition. Millions of species part way between an old species and a newer one.

Thus the evidence since Darwin's time validates his prediction. Again and again and again, as this thread has documented. Evolution is not stuck in the past, it grows every day with new added information that validates the process, the theory and the science.

As we learn more about evolution we see that populations are constantly changing from generation to generation, so we can look at a population of organisms over a series of generations and see a change in hereditary traits between each generation and that the traits in population 2 are intermediate between population 1 and 3, that the traits in population 3 are intermediate between population 2 and 4 and that the traits in population 4 are intermediate between population 3 and 5, that each of the populations 2, 3 and 4 are intermediate between 1 and 5.

Thus all organisms are transitional organisms, intermediate between parent and offspring organisms. Thus all fossils are transitional fossils.

Indeed when we look at the fossil record we see this: no species remains constant over time, it is just the rate of change that is different.

Even supposedly "fossil species" like the Coelacanth have evolved over the last 65 million years, with the (3) modern species not being found among all the ancient fossils species.

So we can add (hundreds of) Coelacanth fossils and (thousands of) Asian Greenish Warblers to the ever-growing list of transitional forms, with forms intermediate between older forms and the modern forms.

Enjoy.

Last edited by RAZD; 09/20/08 08:44 PM. Reason: expanded end
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