Transitional creature?

Arletta
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Transitional creature?

I've been re-watching the debate and I just saw the part about transitional creatures.  I must be confused about what exactly a transitional creature is, because I've seen with my own eyes a fish turn into a land animal.  It actually happens quite quickly.  Starts as a normal little fish and swims around and acts like a fish, eats like a fish, and breathes thru gills like a fish, and no one would deny it's definitely a fish.  Then back legs pop out but it still looks like a fish.  Then the front legs pop out and the tail starts to shrink.  Most amazing of all is the gills disappear and it grows lungs, and before you know it, there is no longer a fish and you have a frog.  Is this not a transitional creature?  These little fish go thru a complete and total transition and turn into a land animal.  Is this not evolution in fast forward?  If evolution doesn't exist, then what is this?  How do theists and creationists explain why fish can turn into frogs?  How about catapillars that turn into butterflies, or maggots that turn into flies?  Why are these not considered "transitional creatures"


Cpt_pineapple
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Arletta wrote: I've been

Arletta wrote:

I've been re-watching the debate and I just saw the part about transitional creatures.  I must be confused about what exactly a transitional creature is, because I've seen with my own eyes a fish turn into a land animal.  It actually happens quite quickly.  Starts as a normal little fish and swims around and acts like a fish, eats like a fish, and breathes thru gills like a fish, and no one would deny it's definitely a fish.  Then back legs pop out but it still looks like a fish.  Then the front legs pop out and the tail starts to shrink.  Most amazing of all is the gills disappear and it grows lungs, and before you know it, there is no longer a fish and you have a frog.  Is this not a transitional creature?  These little fish go thru a complete and total transition and turn into a land animal.  Is this not evolution in fast forward?  If evolution doesn't exist, then what is this?  How do theists and creationists explain why fish can turn into frogs?  How about catapillars that turn into butterflies, or maggots that turn into flies?  Why are these not considered "transitional creatures"

 

That's a tadpole.


Arletta
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Cpt_pineapple

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

That's a tadpole.

A tadpole is not a fish?


Havenfall
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A tadpole is an amphibian,

A tadpole is an amphibian, I'm pretty sure. Much like a human changes very rapidly after conception, the difference is the tadpole's takes place outside of it's mother.

 I believe what Kirk was trying to get across at the debate was this for example. If a common ape ancestor evolved into humans, then in theory we should find various stages in between. Same for certain dinosaurs into common birds.

Though we've found many variations of species like that, there's not been a discory linking two species exactly. Though take into effect that not every corpse can be preserved.

Flawed or vague as that might be, that's the point he was trying to make. I'm pretty sure development from birth is different from evolution.


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Havenfall wrote: I

Havenfall wrote:

I believe what Kirk was trying to get across at the debate was this for example. If a common ape ancestor evolved into humans, then in theory we should find various stages in between. Same for certain dinosaurs into common birds.

The problem is that Kirk wasn't trying to get that across. Instead, he was presenting a childish strawman of what a 'transitional' actually is....

Furthermore, not only was his argument irrational, it was disrespectful to his own audience: it spoke to their ignorance and vanity (their need to believe that they are correct and intelligent). A respectful person would never present a self serving strawman of science to people who couldn't know any better, just to futher his own views.

 From: 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

 

Transitions to New Higher Taxa

As you'll see throughout this FAQ, both types of transitions often result in a new "higher taxon" (a new genus, family, order, etc.) from a species belonging to a different, older taxon. There is nothing magical about this. The first members of the new group are not bizarre, chimeric animals; they are simply a new, slightly different species, barely different from the parent species. Eventually they give rise to a more different species, which in turn gives rise to a still more different species, and so on, until the descendents are radically different from the original parent stock. For example, the Order Perissodactyla (horses, etc.) and the Order Cetacea (whales) can both be traced back to early Eocene animals that looked only marginally different from each other, and didn't look at all like horses or whales. (They looked rather like small, dumb foxes with raccoon-like feet and simple teeth.) But over the following tens of millions of years, the descendents of those animals became more and more different, and now we call them two different orders.

There are now several known cases of species-to-species transitions that resulted in the first members of new higher taxa. See part 2 for details.

 Kirk Cameron couldn't even be bothered to read the introductory pages of a book on transitionals.... yet he thinks he can debate 'evolution'.

Quote:

Though we've found many variations of species like that, there's not been a discory linking two species exactly.

Not really sure what you mean here.

There's quite a record of transitionals already, as you probably know:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

However, a major flaw in thinking about 'transitionals' that is imported by the scientifically illiterate (such as Kirk Cameron) is the imported implication that evolution is goal directed - this leads to the presumption that we should be finding 'half fish/half reptile' hybrids in a the fossil record of the sort Cameron was holding up....

In short, if you (not you havenfall, but a general "you&quotEye-wink get your science from Kirk Cameron, you can't be taken seriously. I can't fathom why anyone would think that a science as complex as biology could be debated over five minutes, by a former tv sitcom character and a minister with no formal training in science. All that can be raised in such a debate is questions, and the questions need to be answered by serious study... not rhetorical soundbites

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'


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Dr. Zach does a nice job

Dr. Zach does a nice job explaining it IMO

http://ia310133.us.archive.org/1/items/115__What_are_Transitional_Species/115_What_are_Transitional_Species.mp3

If you want to hear more, link to his freethought media profile

http://www.freethoughtmedia.com/evolution101.ftm

He actually addresses a similar idea to what you mentioned in his podcast on EvoDevo

http://ia310106.us.archive.org/3/items/107__What_is_EvoDevo/107_What_is_Evo_Devo.mp3

 

Hopefully it might clear things up, or will just be nice to listen to. Smiling

From what I understand, evolution does not apply to an individual, but rather its species overall. The best way I think the idea of transitional form would apply is to say that your mother is a transitional specimen between you and your grandmother. The further apart points A and C are, the more specimens that can serve as examples of transitions. Your great great grandmother being A and you being C, your great grandmother would be more like A, your mother would be more like C and your grandmother would be somewhere in the middle, to put it in what’s probably a very simplistic way, should let more scientists at it, maybe I too will get corrected, and we both learn for the better. Smiling

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ShadowOfMan
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It seemed like Brian and

It seemed like Brian and Kelly we struggling a bit to get that point across, and that is a very good metophor (your mother is a transition between your grandmother and you).  BUT, we ARE talking about large popuations of species.  Whole gene pools transitioning into other, seperate gene pools.  Modern frogs may appear to be a transition between fish and reptiles, but it's important to remember a few key points. 

Modern frogs are at the end of their evolutionary branches.  They are the most evolved organisms in their particular lineage.  The links between the reptiles of today and the fish that they started out as, were probabily amphibious-like, though they may not accuretly fit into the catagory of what we classify modern amphibians today. 

You probably heard it before:  Humans didn't evolve from chimps.  Humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor.  We are both at the evolutionary end of our own lineages.

All living things on the planet are in a transition to becoming our next evolutionary species, but this happens only through reproduction over many generations.  Speciation (the act of becoming a new species) can only occur if the gene pools are isolated, hence offording them the oppurtunity to diverge genetically down different lineages.

On a whole, the tree of evolution does end up appearing as you would expect it to.  Single cells formed colonies.  Colonies formed multicelluar species.  You eventually get to invertabrates.  Vertabrates like fish form.  Fish to amphibians to reptiles.  Reptile split in to birds and mammals, ect.  You'd mostly be right to guess the lineage of a particular species, but some things defy the obvious.  You wouldn't expect the hyrax to be so closely related to the elephant just by looking at them.  DNA testing will sort it all out eventually.

A daughter of hope and fear, religion explains to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. -Ambrose Bierce