Originally Posted by Bex
One needs to consider that the fossil record shows the animals that we still have to this day (the ones that have not become extinct) are the same as they were then. Those whom have become extinct, should not automatically = transitional forms, simply because they're lost to our past.
Exactly the case! Note how RAZD showed that the eohippus can just as easily be used as a "transitional" ancestor for dogs. When one is working only from skeletons (partial skeletons in nearly all cases, and often merely teeth) one can essentially pretend any thing is similar to anything else. RAZD thinks this makes his argument stronger, and I'm content to let him believe it until the day he repents.

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There are numerous creatures today that share very similar qualities/appearance with others! Should any of those have been extinct, and were not observed in our times, you can guarantee they would have been placed into the same transitonal evolutionary senario as though they were primitive/inbetween one and the other, but on the way to the "modern day" versions of today.
Speaking of living animals, Darwin claimed there were lots of examples of "living transitionals". I have noticed, however, that all the really, really important imaginary critters all seem to be extinct. There must have been an abundant supply of reptiles with hair or feathers, for example, on their way to becoming mammals & birds. But they all went extinct, every last one of them. Only the "more primitive" types of reptiles survived. Puts an odd twist on 'natural selection'.

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Can you imagine what the Platypus would have done to an evolutionist had it become extinct before we had observed it living alongside the many creatures it shares traits with? If shared/similar traits in one creature with others, means it is a transitonal form. Then what would they have attributed to the Platypus? Consider the following: It has a bill and webbed feet like a duck for swimming, claws for digging, lays eggs like a snake/bird, eggs like a reptile, has milk glands like a mammal, has fur and tail like a beaver, yet unlike most mammals, it keeps its testes safely inside its abdomen. I think this creature is like God's wink to evolutionists wink
The platypus is all anyone needs consider to dismiss evolutionism. Darwin had no excuses that could withstand scrutiny, and nobody's ever come up with any since.

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You've given one example of an ancient bat which you've then assigned the word "primitive" to it, due to it having longer limbs and more claws.
Cracks me up how they love redefining terms, but won't touch "primitive" these days.

I suspect the "longer limbs" & the claim about the wings is are results of cherry-picking which extant bat(s) one compares the thing to, just as the echolocation hype was. But no, I won't waste my time verifying it. I see no evidence that anyone cares.

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But that's not the only problem. Since there are different species of bats around (some 900 species), how can you be certain it's not another species of bat?
Indeed, with such a huge swing & miss on echolocation, one wonders how well they did their homework. Would anyone be surprised if it turned out this species is still alive? Anyone at all?

Originally Posted by RAZD
And yet I have already provided evidence of this kind of transition with the therapsids, and the transition from reptile to mammal. One wonders why you ignore that evidence to focus on the bat fossils: this is a much larger transition than one mammal lineage.
And none of these critters survived conditions that their "primitive relations" were able to handle.

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Expect many excuses for why these ancient fossils defy the expected signs of evolutionary change/transition. (here are some examples of their kind of excuses)

"you do not understand Evolution"
"you just don't understand how evolution works"
"the pictures only show the man who stayed at home, not the man who walked around the world (analogy to prove some evolved, some didn't. Or at different rates etc and that it's just coincidence that all the fossils we see that haven't changed (much if at all) and were the ones that "stayed at home")
"they have evolved significantly, just because they don't show obvious external signs"
"They evolve at different rates"
"Evolution doesn't happen in the way you might imagine"
Nice recap.

Dark Matter + Dark Energy = Dark Truth

"We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution." - Judge Jones Kitzmiller case
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Falsify.cfm

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