A formal statement of Intelligent Deisgn

The plain fact of the matter is that @stephen_33 has made more acknowledgements than you have @TruthMuse, so it's a little hypocritical for you to respond so harshly as if you're the epitome of only believing what you can demonstrate when that's hardly the case. There are tons of things that you accept on faith without any evidence to back it up; including some things that are flatly contradicted by the observational facts. You still won't acknowledge that living things do not all appear at the same horizon in the fossil record. You still won't acknowledge the evidence for human-chimpanzee common ancestry from endogenous retrovirus and yet can provide no equal or better explanation. You still won't even say, hey, I don't believe it myself but I can at least understand the logic and rationale of someone concluding humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestry based on evidence such as endogenous retroviruses. You cannot accuse someone of ignoring facts and evidence when you do it all the time.

I'm not responding harshly, Do you think my saying he believes things without any reason to other than he wants them to be true is wrong? You have something he has said I missed that he points to that shows abiogenesis could actually occur because of X? You do seem to run interference for a lack of evidence being evidence quite a bit.

You seem to keep missing my point entirely that YOU keep doing the same thing that you accuse Stephen of doing.

And this is hardly the first time it's been pointed out. (And your last statement is completely uncalled for and you know it to be false: "You do seem to run interference for a lack of evidence being evidence quite a bit," when I do no such thing and you know it. You've seen me and Stephen go at it many times with the OOL. I constantly raise the lack of evidence for abiogenesis and that we have no empirical verification that it's possible for life to spontaneously emerge by natural causation alone. By contrast, you still have yet to acknowledge the slightest bit of evidence for evolution and pretend that there is absolutely no evidence for evolution at all.)

And yet when I call him out on it, I'm the bad guy.

No one's the bad guy. You just can't expect him to own up to things when you don't yourself. You still won't acknowledge the slightest bit of evidence for evolution and pretend that there is absolutely no evidence for evolution at all. By all means, if I'm misstating then prove me wrong. What evidence for evolution and common ancestry do you recognize?

What have I not owed up to? You have again as far as I'm concerned are repeating a lie, if not a lie it simply shows you have not grasped the points I have made.

What have you not owned up to? Did you not read my post 41 above where I listed some examples?

Here's another one. Read the first couple pages or so of my "No Transitional Forms" post. You refuse to acknowledge simple observational facts (like that dinosaurs are not found in Cambrian rocks). And with regard to that OP on the fish-tetrapod transition you wouldn't even address the evidence at hand, but raise a question about similar life today, instead of dealing with the fossil evidence. Instead of saying, you know I still disagree, but I can at least respect and understand how someone could come to that conclusion about the fish-tetrapod transition. The criticism that there are no transitional forms, and yet here is a transition that we keep filling in more and more of the gaps for and in labs have discovered changes in a single gene that instantly causes bones and muscles to form in fish fins. Even if you don't find it conclusive, a reasonable fair minded person would acknowledge the increasing evidence for the fish-tetrapod transition instead of insisting that there is no evidence at all.

But if I'm wrong and misstated things then feel free to correct me. If I'm wrong, then I'm open to correction. Am I wrong about you never acknowledging any evidence for evolution and common ancestry? If I'm wrong, then feel free to set me straight. What evidence for evolution and common ancestry do you or have you ever acknowledged?

Those carrying out research into OOL are not stupid or ignorant people. Most know considerably more about the subject than you, tbwp and me combined.

You may think that your understanding of this subject is superior to them all but I don't agree and while that community continues to reseach natural causes for OOL, I'll continue to keep an entirely open mind!

Apart from anything else, and as I've said before, the alternative is in many ways the worst of all dead-ends.

Not agreeing with your assessment of data is not ignoring the truth, I have addressed those things and given cause, but conveniently I now assume you don't recall.

Smarter than me doesn't matter, what the facts say matters and those that disagree with them in academic circles are not also not stupid people, and simply because someone tells me they shouldn't be questioned because of their degrees or how smart they are, you are approaching cult status.

You insist that all lifeforms were created at the same time, a claim that is demonstrably false, and you accuse me of 'cult' thinking? I'm not sure what 'cult status' is supposed to be in the context of OOL research.

Actually it does and very much if what you're claiming to be a fact (life cannot have a natural cause) is not accepted as such by those that study and research the subject. I'd sooner listen to a research scientist who can report the latest findings as of 2023, than to someone who seems to base his beliefs on what he read in a book written in about 1000 BCE.

And you've just proven my point: you refuse to acknowledge that there is the *slightest* bit of evidence for evolution and common ancestry. Seriously? Can you really say with a straight face that there is ZERO evidence for evolution and common ancestry? Are tens of thousands of scientists hallucinating or pretending that such evidence exists when it doesn’t?

Try to look at it from the other side: What would you think of someone who says "NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED!"

And then we discover this...

And the person still insists "NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED!"

And then we discover this...

And the person still insists "NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED!"

And then we discover this..

And the person still insists "NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED "

And then we discover this...

And the person still insists "NO TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED."

I'm asking you a serious question. Look at it from the other side. Can you not recognize how this looks to the rest of everyone else? That you talk about the truth, but are willfully refusing to acknowledge the truth? The truth of what is right in front of you?

EVEN IF YOU STILL REJECT EVOLUTION, can you not AT LEAST recognize the fact that SOME transitional fossils have actually been discovered? That SOME of the former 'gaps' have been filled? Are you unable to acknowledge the fact (the TRUTH!) that some "missing links" are no longer missing?

Showing me a few that look alike I could show you some within kinds all alive today, hit and miss, doesn't mean one came from the other, this type of thing would be present today in mass for every lifeform.

No one's saying that "one came [directly] from another." Only that they're related. That's why the lines connect to the longer line instead of connecting to each other.

So no one's arguing that they are direct descendants of one another, only that they are related. You believe the same thing "within kinds" based on morphological similarities. You don't think one came directly from another, but you still believe they're related based on their similarity. It's the same logic here.

But even if you don't consider it *sufficient* evidence it still constitutes *some* supporting evidence. You can argue that it's not *enough* evidence, but you can't say that there is *no* evidence or *zero* evidence, because this is exactly what Darwin predicted: that we would find intermediate forms that are a combination of fish and tetrapod traits, and that's exactly what we've found. (And there is nothing alive today like this, not even amphibians, with this combination of traits. Amphibians still have feet, not fins with developing leg bones to prop up.)

Bottom line: even if you still don't believe it's *sufficient* evidence enough to prove evolution, it is still *supporting* evidence, so you can't say there is zero evidence. You can't say that no transitional forms with a combination of fish and tetrapod traits have ever been discovered, because they have. We have fossils that are literally half-way in between fish and tetrapods. They are literally 'fishapods.'

And even if you don't believe it's sufficient evidence, surely you can at least recognize, and appreciate how *someone else* could draw that conclusion when we keep finding more and more transitional 'in-between' forms. Can you not?

So I ask you: have we or have we not discovered fossils that have a combination of fish and tetrapod traits?

The point is being related happens in the here and now, having some less complex also here and now. So just those two criteria does not automatically mean common ancestor.

In addition depending on how some fossils are found, when an EXPERT puts them together, how do they know if the fossils that they find, unless found intact, are not more than one that they are stringing together as one?

It isn’t like they come with instructions with little labels say connect A to B?

In the case of Tiktaalik, the fossils were found intact and show a combination of fish and tetrapod traits.

So, we have in fact found fossil intermediates that are intermediate between fish and tetrapods that have a combination of fish and tetrapod traits. There's no real way to deny it (or any reason to deny it---it exists, it's been found). Fossils have been found that possess a mix of fish and tetrapod traits. That's a fact.

The most impressive thing is that they went digging in this specific spot, because of evolutionary predictions, which predicted that if a 'fishapod' intermediate exists it should be in rocks of this time period. They then tested those predictions and confirmed them. That is the hallmark of a good scientific theory: if it makes testable predictions, and those predictions are confirmed.

So, like I said, if what I say about your unwillingness to acknowledge even the slightest bit of evidence for evolution is wrong, then you can prove me wrong with a simple acknowledgement. Like, for example, saying, "I acknowledge that fossils with a combination of fish and tetrapod traits have been discovered."

*A simple acknowledgement like that would be a way to prove me wrong

I have said you find a fossil in tact that is something, does it mean what you claim it does? Only the arrogant who thinks they cannot be wrong would say so.