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Talk Origins Deceptions - CC200: No Transitional Fossils

In perusing the talk origins website for some time now, I felt compelled to expose some of the continuing deceptive tactics used on that website to attempt to indoctrinate their impressionable audience.

Response to the "no transitional fossils" claim

This page of the talk origins website is supposed to provide an argument against the creationist's observation that there are no transitional fossils. Here is the stated purpose of the page directly from the talk origins website itself:



Now, let me analyze the first tactic they used to set the premise for their response. Here is the first of the two points of their response:



( http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html , emphasis mine)

The astounding feature of this clever piece is that it attempts to redefine the word "transitional" to a very broad definition that is actually possible to satisfy.

The Hypocrisy

It's not necessary to read this claim carefully to see the hypocrisy here, which is this:

They are redefining the term "transitional" while accusing the opposition of doing the redefining.

Clearly, when you call a fossil a "transitional fossil", you are claiming that the fossil came from a transitional form. To say anything else is clearly intellectually dishonest.

Nevertheless, this is exactly what they are doing.

The Redefinition

Now that talk origins has redefined a transitional fossil, they don't need to actually find anything transitional at all. They simply need to find a fossil that meets their new, wide-open redefinition, which is:

"a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism"

In short, all they claim they need to do to demonstrate the existence of "transitional fossils" is to look for similarities between fossils through time. So, not surprisingly, the vast majority of the remainder of the page is simply a list of fossils that meet this intentionally vague re-definition of the word transitional.

In short, they've redefined the terminology so they can meet the requirements of the test.

This is neither intelligent nor scientific, and it is certainly not honest.

Could Not Be Verified: An Admission

Astoundingly, contained within the previous quote is this statement about direct lineage fossils:



(emphasis mine)

Within their own opening statement is an admission that -- if transitional fossils were found -- they can not be verified. Of course, this is a concession they have to make to maintain the appearance of integrity because this fact is well known.

Most interesting is the phrase, "even if found". Reader, are you hearing this?

Why We Don't Find Any Transitionals

The talk origins dishonesty does not stop there. It continues:



(emphasis mine)

This piece claims that we do not expect to find finely detailed sequences.

The logical response to this vast assumption is, "Why not?"

The evolution story claims that mutations caused very small changes that remained with an organism thousands to millions of years. So, considering the average lifespan of an organism, and thus considering the vast number of organisms that would have existed during this time exhibiting this very small change, then why on Earth would we "not expect to find" them?

Of course, the actual purpose for claiming that we do "not expect to find" them is because they don't exist; Because the talk origins website does not want the burden of admitting we haven't found any, and the propagandist is preparing the reader for the fact that we won't find any in the future.

They are actually attempting to explain the lack of evidence, for the present and for the future.

This is nothing more than soviet style disinformation. It is there to appeal to a reader's emotional predisposition toward evolution without demanding of itself the reasonable and necessary requirement of evidence.

The talk origins website is saturated with this type of deceptive double-speak and is replete with redefinitions which would qualify as effective emotionally-appealing opinions and editorials, but it is not scientific and it does not provide evidence. It is a sad excuse for the kind of truth that science is supposed to represent and is an affront to anyone who values intellectual integrity.

The Rest of the Story

The remainder of the talk origins page is a list of fossils that it claims demonstrate transitional fossils. They are using their new wide-open definition requiring only similarities between fossils -- of course.

The researcher that actually looks into the claims made in the list on a sample-by-sample basis will find that none of these claims are examples of transitionals.

In some cases the samples are clearly different organisms. In other cases, they are minute variations of the same organism from the same or vastly overlapping (or even reversed) time periods.

A sample-by-sample analyzation of these claims goes beyond the scope of this article (we'll save that for a future article). Nevertheless, we strongly encourage you to examine these claims yourself carefully. It's important to look beyond the vast speculation and unsupported liberal artwork utilized. It's important to see what evidence really does exist so you can discover just how much speculation, myth, and propaganda is utilized to make evolution seem like a science, when it's really supported by no science whatsoever.

The Politics of Evolution

A study into the long-term geopolitical affect of a belief in evolution on a society will demonstrate that there are certain corporations and banking cartels that profit from certain very specific changes that are facilitated surprisingly effectively by a societies "faith" in evolution.

In short, a societal belief in evolution is a political issue, offering handsome profits to those who promote it.

Just as some religions promote ideas that facilitate their own long-term profits, evolution-promoters promote a faith that results in their own handsome profits.

Again, this subject is beyond that scope of this article, but we hope this information will inspire a study of this extremely interesting aspect of the bottom-line of the evolution legacy.

Human Nature

The story of the emperor's new clothes was created, not to be a fun fairy tale for people to enjoy. It was created to demonstrate the true nature of humans. When you become familiar with the true principle behind this story, you will see yourself in it. The question is, what character are you playing?

The Truth

"From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjecture as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct."

—Pierre-Paul de Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms (1977), p. 31.


"It is therefore of immediate concern to both biologists and layman that Darwinism is under attack. The theory of life that undermined nineteenth-century religion has virtually become a religion itself and, in its turn, is being threatened by fresh ideas. The attacks are certainly not limited to those of the creationists and religious fundamentalists who deny Darwinism for political and moral reason. The main thrust of the criticism comes from within science itself. The doubts about Darwinism represent a political revolt from within rather than a siege from without."

—B. Leith, The Descent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts about Darwinism (1982), p. 11.


"George Bernard Shaw wisecracked once that Darwin had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. Well, I also have an axe to grind, but I am not pleased. We have suffered through two world wars and are threatened by an Armageddon. We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy."

—Kenneth Hsu, "Reply," Geology, 15 (1987), p. 177.