Transitional / intermediate

[Audie]

We often hear it said that there are no intermediate or transitional forms to be found, and that all fossils are of "fully formed" organisms.

I wonder if those who think this to be the case could say what would be the characteristics of an intermediate form, such that they would say it is intermediate / transitional.

Also, what about "fully formed"? What is being visualized as an example of
a not-fully-formed organism? Something with half a wing?

[Kurieuo]

I believe you're right, the argument put forward isn't just lack of major transitional forms, but often combined with what of existing species which all appear fully formed. What would be your response?

[Audie]

I believe you're right, the argument put forward isn't just lack of major transitional forms, but often combined with what of existing species which all appear fully formed. What would be your response?

Ive been sick, maybe it slowed my brain. I cannot figure out what you are asking.

People talk of "fully formed" seemingly referring to some concept of not fully formed?

I am trying to figurd out what they might be thinking.

A fish with simple lungs and the ability to move about on land was in its day the toughest
predator on land. The terror of the savannah. Fully formed, no pieces missing or made wrong.

Its ancestors were fully aquatic, its descendants fully terrestrial- of so a rather complete fossil recorc indicates.

What is the thing about "fully formed" that I keep seeing? Preasd exprain, someone.

[AirBetweenTheNotes]

Having been raised out of doors in the woods, fields & farm plus time around water n' gravel pits I find the subject of fossils & rock formation so simple in relation to the devastation cased by the world wide flood.
Devastation by water & gigantic earth crust movement on a scale we have not encountered since makes for much sediment & the settling out of that takes out the most fragile living forms 1st & keeps laying down layer upon layer as larger & larger organisms succumb/carried away & their bodies settle out or down with the muck (plant & animal).
Life won't allow a dead organism to settle out the way fossil fields appear as the natural long time order of things person sees it. Life left behind feeds on the death & body parts just don't pile up in the way evolutionists would have us to believe.
Small buildups could occur as the result of earthquakes & volcanic eruptions but not continual gradual buildup of fossil records of layer upon layer, it just can't come about that way & so we are not looking at timeline of the evilnotion but the fragility of bodies to withstand the flood/earth movements & their settlement down to the bottom as well as currents moving bodies around on mass like the materials pulled back out to see rafting around after a tsunami & however volcanic activity ties into all that as well.

[crochet1949]

I believe you're right, the argument put forward isn't just lack of major transitional forms, but often combined with what of existing species which all appear fully formed. What would be your response?

Ive been sick, maybe it slowed my brain. I cannot figure out what you are asking.

People talk of "fully formed" seemingly referring to some concept of not fully formed?

I am trying to figurd out what they might be thinking.

A fish with simple lungs and the ability to move about on land was in its day the toughest
predator on land. The terror of the savannah. Fully formed, no pieces missing or made wrong.

Its ancestors were fully aquatic, its descendants fully terrestrial- of so a rather complete fossil recorc indicates.

What is the thing about "fully formed" that I keep seeing? Preasd exprain, someone.

Why would an animal be considered a 'fish' if it had lungs and the ability to move on the land. And Another 'something' was totally aquatic -- supposedly it's ancestor. A whale is considered a mammal even though it lives in the water -- it breathes with lungs and nurses it's young. But it can't survive on dry land. I'm using that as an example because for a Long time I considered a whale to Be a fish --living in the water all the time.

But something Won't change from being fully aquatic to being fully terrestrial. Gills aren't going to magically change into lungs -- even given thousands of years to do so -- supposedly.

I can see a complete fossil record of a fully aquatic existing --- And a complete fossil record of the fully terrestrial existing.
But Not of the two somehow blending together.

[abelcainsbrother]

First off the reason a lack of transitional fossils is brought up is because Charles Darwin was proven wrong that transitional fossils would be found,they never were found and yet this did not stop evolutionists from pushing evolution,instead they just made up their own chart and made a chart and called them transitional fossils and it shows how dishonest scientists are in their attempt to push the ToE on the world as true science. Evolutionists might have ignored this and came up with talking points to explain it away,but the bottom line is there are no transitional fossils like Darwin predicted would be found. This is why it is brought up when it comes to evolution.

All of your points about what a transitional fossil should look like is just a talking point you've picked up from somewhere. It is evolutionists playing dumb because they should already know what a transitional fossil should look like based on Charles Darwin's book "The origin of species" because it tells us what Darwin meant by transitional fossils and atheists know all about Charles Darwin,they have read his books,they know all about evolution,yet play dumb when called on something he was wrong about.It is to try to cover up the fact Darwin was wrong.

A Lie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCl4p6dp6OA

[Kurieuo]

I remain unconvinced Audie, that you really don't understand. Yet, take Darwin I suppose,

• ...if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye)

Why if I took a guess, I'd say we don't see "imperfect" eyes in species, but rather each species has fully formed organ that is an eye no matter how simple, or if not an eye sonar, smell or some other fully functioning apparatus that allows that particular species to live.

[hughfarey]

Having been raised out of doors in the woods, fields & farm plus time around water n' gravel pits I find the subject of fossils & rock formation so simple in relation to the devastation cased by the world wide flood.
Devastation by water & gigantic earth crust movement on a scale we have not encountered since makes for much sediment & the settling out of that takes out the most fragile living forms 1st & keeps laying down layer upon layer as larger & larger organisms succumb/carried away & their bodies settle out or down with the muck (plant & animal).
Life won't allow a dead organism to settle out the way fossil fields appear as the natural long time order of things person sees it. Life left behind feeds on the death & body parts just don't pile up in the way evolutionists would have us to believe.
Small buildups could occur as the result of earthquakes & volcanic eruptions but not continual gradual buildup of fossil records of layer upon layer, it just can't come about that way & so we are not looking at timeline of the evilnotion but the fragility of bodies to withstand the flood/earth movements & their settlement down to the bottom as well as currents moving bodies around on mass like the materials pulled back out to see rafting around after a tsunami & however volcanic activity ties into all that as well.

Dear me. For someone raised out of doors, you don't seem to have observed much. Perhaps you have never seen the results of a major flood. Almost nothing of what you claim is actually true.
"much sediment & the settling out of that takes out the most fragile living forms 1st & keeps laying down layer upon layer as larger & larger organisms succumb/carried away & their bodies settle out or down with the muck (plant & animal)." No, it doesn't. Try going down to a place where, say, four or five feet of sediment have been dumped by a flood and looking. Have you done that? Clearly not. Floods are characterised by turbulence on a grand scale, and big floods are characterised by bigger turbulence. Whatever is swept off is dumped all higgledy-piggledy, not in neat layers at all.
"Life won't allow a dead organism to settle out the way fossil fields appear as the natural long time order of things person sees it." I'm not sure what this means. If you mean that dead organisms always get eaten by live ones so fossils are impossible, then you're wrong. Even today, organisms which are quickly buried, or left in the absence of oxygen, or bacteria, or in extreme cold, are not decomposed. True, there aren't many of them, but then, there aren't many fossils either. Those we do have appear to have endured exactly these conditions.
"Small buildups could occur as the result of earthquakes & volcanic eruptions but not continual gradual buildup of fossil records of layer upon layer, it just can't come about that way" Yes it can. Indeed it does. One way of illustrating this is to look at glacial cores, from which specific geological events from historical times can be identified in exactly that gradual buildup you deny.
"we are not looking at timeline of the evilnotion but the fragility of bodies to withstand the flood/earth movements & their settlement". No. On the whole fragile bodies contain a greater proportion of water than more solid ones, and are relatively less dense. If you hurl a pile of dead jellyfish, prawns and crabs into a bath of water and shake it about, the crabs land first, followed by the prawns, and lastly the jellyfish. In exactly the opposite way we actually find them in the fossil record.

[note to readers: I admit I have not actually carried out this last experiment!]

[abelcainsbrother]

I actually think both YEC's and evolutionists are wrong about fossils. YEC's want us to believe the flood buried all the life that produced fossils,while evolutionists would have us believe that dead life can lay out in the elements and not decay away and then be buried in a layer of strata over millions of years. The truth is fossils are rare first off,and in order to have fossils the life has to be buried quickly under tremendous weight and pressure in order to prevent decay,or it has to be frozen or protected from the elements to prevent it from decaying,but the amount of coal seems and oil really shows how much life once existed on the earth,both plant and animal life.

[AirBetweenTheNotes]

We are not talking of a few feet of depth of waters but that of thousands of feet. If you spent time around rivers & digging in their muck or observing what & how things move around on their surface "hughfarey", you would see the idea of time without biological interaction on what settles out is erroneous. There is so much alive in the bottom to feed on what is left it that things don't survive unless there is great devastation the likes of which we just don't see in a natural observation of time & assuming that is how things always go on as time unfolds. It takes a great cataclysm to bring about what evolutionists see as great amounts of time passage. Look to the depths of the sea, enough weight of water there to compress sediment into rock but still we see life feeding on the bits falling down to them whether it be dust or a whale.

[hughfarey]

We are not talking of a few feet of depth of waters but that of thousands of feet. If you spent time around rivers & digging in their muck or observing what & how things move around on their surface "hughfarey", you would see the idea of time without biological interaction on what settles out is erroneous. There is so much alive in the bottom to feed on what is left it that things don't survive unless there is great devastation the likes of which we just don't see in a natural observation of time & assuming that is how things always go on as time unfolds. It takes a great cataclysm to bring about what evolutionists see as great amounts of time passage. Look to the depths of the sea, enough weight of water there to compress sediment into rock but still we see life feeding on the bits falling down to them whether it be dust or a whale.

So is all that experience of the great outdoors any use or not in determining what might have happened in a global catastrophe? In line 1 you say that I can't tell you what would happen in a global flood because my experience of flood detritus doesn't compare to a global catastrophe, while in line 2 you say that you can tell me what would happen in a global flood because your experience in rivers does compare to a global catastrophe. Don't you think that's a little contradictory?
"It takes a great cataclysm to bring about what evolutionists see as great amounts of time passage." Could you relate this statement to my observations regarding the layers in Greenland and Antarctic ice?
"Look to the depths of the sea, enough weight of water there to compress sediment into rock but still we see life feeding on the bits falling down to them whether it be dust or a whale." We see life feeding on the soft parts, agreed, but not on shells or bones. That's why it's shells and bones that are fossilised, and not the soft parts, except in the exceptional circumstances I mentioned in my previous post.

[hughfarey]

By the way, I've just noticed you're a 'newbie'. Welcome to the site. There's a lot of sensible discussion about so many things you could spend all day just browsing the new posts. I only comment on the "God and Science" forum, mostly because there aren't many scientists here, and a little rationality is needed from time to time, but interesting stuff turns up on the other forums too. I hope you find it worthwhile.

[Audie]

Having been raised out of doors in the woods, fields & farm plus time around water n' gravel pits I find the subject of fossils & rock formation so simple in relation to the devastation cased by the world wide flood.
Devastation by water & gigantic earth crust movement on a scale we have not encountered since makes for much sediment & the settling out of that takes out the most fragile living forms 1st & keeps laying down layer upon layer as larger & larger organisms succumb/carried away & their bodies settle out or down with the muck (plant & animal).
Life won't allow a dead organism to settle out the way fossil fields appear as the natural long time order of things person sees it. Life left behind feeds on the death & body parts just don't pile up in the way evolutionists would have us to believe.
Small buildups could occur as the result of earthquakes & volcanic eruptions but not continual gradual buildup of fossil records of layer upon layer, it just can't come about that way & so we are not looking at timeline of the evilnotion but the fragility of bodies to withstand the flood/earth movements & their settlement down to the bottom as well as currents moving bodies around on mass like the materials pulled back out to see rafting around after a tsunami & however volcanic activity ties into all that as well.

There is much I could say to this, tho mostly it would be summarized by saying it is a pity you've never studied any geology. I am not an outdoorsy type, but I find the landscape comes alive so
when a person understands how to read it. A weatherman knows how to read the sky, a fishrrman or boater lesrns to read a river. You miss so much if you dont know the subject. Like, I'd not have a clue
what goes on in a football game!

That said, the topic is about what those who do not understand evolution havd in mind when talking about "fully formed" as opposed to "transitional". Id be glad to explain some geology, or fossil formation, if you like, but elsewhere. Ok?

[Audie]

I remain unconvinced Audie, that you really don't understand. Yet, take Darwin I suppose,

• ...if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye)

Why if I took a guess, I'd say we don't see "imperfect" eyes in species, but rather each species has fully formed organ that is an eye no matter how simple, or if not an eye sonar, smell or some other fully functioning apparatus that allows that particular species to live.

You dont need to assume I am being dishonest. I would like to find out what people think.
I hear things like "half a wing".

As to the substance of your post, I think it a mistake to get too concerned with the writings of a mid 19th century gentleman naturalist and your literal 21st century reading of a word.

Those who want to make issue call him a racist and the father of eugenics and nazism,
related to his use of the word "race" and how they want to interpret it.

There is no such thing as "perfect", so all is imperfect. The human eye is certainly flawed as a design,
and flawed in execution.

One can see that living things have eyes in all stages of deve,opment, from single cell organism that
can detect light, thru more and mkre complex ones.

Leave Darwin be, leave "perfect" in the dictionary, and see if you have an issue with
eye structures that are intermediate between light sensitivity and a eagle's eye.

The topic tho, is how you or another might conceive a "not fully developed" or
"transitional" structure or organism from what we see in the fossil record, or in modern
descendants of those forms.

[Audie]

I believe you're right, the argument put forward isn't just lack of major transitional forms, but often combined with what of existing species which all appear fully formed. What would be your response?

Ive been sick, maybe it slowed my brain. I cannot figure out what you are asking.

People talk of "fully formed" seemingly referring to some concept of not fully formed?

I am trying to figurd out what they might be thinking.

A fish with simple lungs and the ability to move about on land was in its day the toughest
predator on land. The terror of the savannah. Fully formed, no pieces missing or made wrong.

Its ancestors were fully aquatic, its descendants fully terrestrial- of so a rather complete fossil recorc indicates.

What is the thing about "fully formed" that I keep seeing? Preasd exprain, someone.

Why would an animal be considered a 'fish' if it had lungs and the ability to move on the land. And Another 'something' was totally aquatic -- supposedly it's ancestor. A whale is considered a mammal even though it lives in the water -- it breathes with lungs and nurses it's young. But it can't survive on dry land. I'm using that as an example because for a Long time I considered a whale to Be a fish --living in the water all the time.

But something Won't change from being fully aquatic to being fully terrestrial. Gills aren't going to magically change into lungs -- even given thousands of years to do so -- supposedly.

I can see a complete fossil record of a fully aquatic existing --- And a complete fossil record of the fully terrestrial existing.
But Not of the two somehow blending together.

Why something is called a "fish" is a matter of their anatomy and physiology.
This isnt the place for detailed discussion of that. You might, tho, google
"Devonian fish" images. Even a person with no particular knowledge of fish
would be startled to catch such a creature, if any remained today.

I will asdume tho that you know there are fish that climb out of the water,
and move about quite well on land, living today.

Perhaps you know too that there are lungfish, so named because they, yes, have lungs.
No claim is made of "magical replacement". Some fish have both. Too much detail fo go into now,
but I certainly could.

There is in fact a fossil record that shows in considerable detail the development from "fish"
( quite unlike any today, but clearly fish) to animals clearly capable of moving about well on land.

I am sure you do not ( have not) seen it; but like many other things you've not seen, that does not mean they are not there.

Do you have some idea that directly relates to my question in this thread?