(Yehren observes that man evolved from other primates, not amoebae)
Do you have any evidence of this?
Yep. The evidence consists of fossil evidence, molecular evidence, genetics, and a few other things. What would you like to hear about first?
Most evolutionists admit that they cannot find the creature that man is supposed to have evolved from.
Depends on what you call a "man." Our particular species (and Neandertals, which have a common ancestor with us) evolved from Homo erectus. There is a rather gradual change over time from H. erectus to H. sapiens. Some scientists think the intermediates between H. erectus and H. sapiens deserve a species designation, others don't.
Seeing how man is the most recent step in evolution,
Nope. Polar bears are more recent, for example.
there should be ample evidence of this change in the fossil record.
Right. The transitions in the past millon years or so are pretty abundant, considering how rarely humans actually fossilize.
In fact, because of the fossil record, Darwin's original theory has been scrapped for newer theories, such as Punctuated Equilibrium,
Nope. Even Gould, who first proposed Punctuated Equillibrium, described himself as a Darwinist. Even Darwin's associate, Huxley described how Darwinian theory predicted saltation.
which, for all intensive purposes, states that the changes in evolution took place too quickly to be observed in the fossil record
Almost. The theory got it's start when Ernst Mayr noticed that aberrant species often lived in geographically isolated places. The observations of a "founder effect"(small groups often by chance had allele distributions that were different than the main population) by the population geneticists was another clue.
So it became apparent that many speciations occur when a small, and perhaps genetically different sub population becomes isolated, and natural selection changes this small population over a relatively short time.
But the small size and limited distribution of the population makes it even more unlikely to leave fossils.
(which makes me wonder why they believe that the changes ever took place to begin with.)
Mostly, because they have examples from other lines of fossils which were numerous, widely distributed, and readily fossilized.
Yehren observes:
It's still being directly observed.
Can you please provide specifics?
Sure, the first example of directly obsrved macroevolution was the evolution of a new species of primrose by DeVries early in the last century.
What I observe is quite different. For example, we see the limits of selective breeding in the case of dogs.
I don't see any limit. New breeds are constantly being produced. Speciations in mammals takes a long time, but the Faroe Island mouse evolved in a few hundred years, an eyeblink in the Earth's history.
We also see this in the fossil record. No new phyla has come into existence since the Cambrian Explosion, in which ALL phyla came into existence within a short amount of time.
No. There are phyla for which we have no record until well after the Cambrian, and there are phyla which arose before the Cambrian. The Ediacaran fauna was widespread and varied, and some of those phyla have survived to modern times.
Most phyla appeared in the Cambrian, or very close to it, however. It appears that the gradual evolution of body armor, having reached the level of complete exoskeletons in the early Cambrian, allowed a rapid diversifiction into previously nonexistant niches.
What exactly is being observed today that convinces you that evolution has some merit?
Natural selection, speciation, ring species, and many other things. Here's a few specific ones:
In therapsid reptiles, (as in all reptiles) the bones in the lower jaw are connected to the ear, and transmitt vibrations from the ground to the "stapes." Over time, we see the bones becoming smaller in these animals, eventually the formation of a second, mammalian jaw joint and the disarticulation of the back bones from the dentary occurs. These small bones then reduce even further in size, but continue to be attached to the stapes, forming the malleus and the incus.
Not long ago, I was surprised and pleased to see that these tiny bones are attached to the jaw of a fetal opossum precisely as they are in the therapisid reptile Thrnaxodon. Later in development, they migrate to the usual mammalian place.
And a little while ago, in the bones of a T-rex, scientists found a little hemoglobin. Injected into a lab animal, it produced antibodies that reacted most strongly with that of a bird, rather than other reptiles. Precisely what evolutionary theory predicts.
There are hundreds of little facts like that, woven into a tough, durable fabric that makes any naysaying pointless. The more one learns, the more facts like this accumulate.
Come and see.
