“People saying “macro evolution” isn’t a working thing, might as well be saying nuclear theory doesn’t work (which of course would mean that nuclear power isn’t real, or is magic). It’s that wrong. And it’s that cringe, TBH.”

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I’m just asking where’s the evidence in the fossil record.

There should be examples all along the continuum, over the course of millions of years, where fins gradually developed into legs (or vice versa).

Except how does it work that way? Because when the land mammal with legs first went into the water, it didn’t have time for his legs to turn into fins, and its legs weren’t any good in the water.

Or if the water animal crawled onto land, how did it get around on fins for a million years, while the fins gradually (very gradually) turned into legs?

Same with the way it breathes.

Not only does it not make any rational sense, where are all these gradual mutations in the fossil record? There must be hundreds of millions of fossils, going back hundreds of millions of years, and yet (as far as I know) the fossil record is empty when it comes to proving any gradual transition.

Same with a land mammal that turns into a bird. It can’t just run off a cliff and hope it grows wings on the way down, it either has them or it doesn’t. Where is the fossil record showing the arms gradually transforming into wings, and why would they?

What purpose would proto-wings serve, why would the mutations occur in the first place, if they served no purpose until they were fully formed into wings?

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“People say it because you “have to” say it to belong to many “Bible-believing” churches.”

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Not where I go to church. Nobody has any reason to take a do-or-die stand on something where God hasn’t spoken. Everyone is encouraged to think for himself.

I’ve just always been curious about this, like we’re just supposed to argue from the lesser (micro-evolution) to the greater (macro-evolution) without any way to get from here to there.

Normally, someone would just say “Here are the fossils showing the legs in a proto-fin state, and here is another fossil from a hundred thousand years later, showing the same animal with the fin more developed, and here is another fossil showing the same animal with a three-quarter developed fin 500,000 years later, and then a few hundred thousand years after that, here’s a fossil where the leg has completed the transfer into a fin.”

I just don’t know where those fossils are. We have animals with legs, and we have animals with fins, but as far as I know, we don’t have any fossils for the in between.

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“But what happens is that EVERY example that is brought forward – just like what happens with the flerfers – is rejected (badly and wrongly, IMO) by the hardcore YEC people, and the rest of Christianity BUYS THE IDEA that whatever the debate was, was either “won” by the YEC folks – or at least “kept debatable”.

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But I’m not talking about any of that stuff, I’m just asking what should be obvious, rational questions, and wondering where the answers are in the fossil record.

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“The YEC folks just cannot offer better explanations. They can’t even really offer worse explanations. I defend their free speech and their bad science, because people have a right to do bad science, but I have a right to call it bad science, too! 😂 ”

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But I’m not a YEC, and I’m not offering any explanations, I’m just asking a couple simple questions.

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“The YEC folks will say this, but it’s not true. The similarity to the flat earth situation is uncomfortably close.”

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I’m not making a claim, or a counter-claim, I’m just asking where is the evidence in the fossil record, and how could it even happen, if evolution is an adaptive process over millions of years, but in order to survive in the new environment (e.g. from water to land, or from land to water) you need those adaptations / evolutionary changes pronto, as in immediately, or you can’t survive.

So it’s an evidentiary question, and a logic question.

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“They don’t, just like most people don’t explain the globe to people who don’t believe it.”

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But that’s a cop-out. When we were kids, someone had to explain it, that the earth was round, and it had to withstand casual scrutiny. As we got older, it had to withstand a little more than casual scrutiny.

Why should this be different?

Why should anything be different?

I’m not arguing that macro-evolution didn’t happen, I’m just asking where is the evidence in the fossil record, and what is the logic behind it? If changes are adaptations which happened over eons, but the kinds of changes in order to survive in the new environment are necessary are ‘right now’, as in if you are a land mammal, and you go in the water without gills, you’re not going to survive for a hundred million years while you develop gills to become a fish.

You need the gills pronto, Trapper John.

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“They know that evolution writ large is the only good explanation for what they observe, and they simply don’t bother to argue with people who nitpick at it, without offering even just a better hypothesis that MIGHT explain things.”

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But it has nothing to do with me offering a better explanation.

If you tell me that pigs fly, but you won’t show me any flying pigs, I don’t have to come up with an explanation why pigs don’t fly, the burden of proof that they do fly is on you.

If “evolution writ large is the only good explanation for what they observe”, that doesn’t sound very… sound.

Scientists thought all kinds of things like that about the universe before the new James Webb space telescope became operational, and since then, what has been observed has blown up lots of previous thinking, which at the time had been “the only good explanation for what they observe”.

It may have been the best explanation at the time, but it was also wrong.

So in the absence of real evidence, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to just extrapolate.

And it seems like a good reason not to just accept a ‘best explanation’, especially in the absence of evidence, or logic as I have mentioned previously.

Macro-evolution should be a simple thing to explain, without requiring any ‘just trust me’. The explanation should be provable in the fossil record, and it should make sense logically.

It’s not like the flat earth thing. The evidence for a globe is overwhelming, it’s visible to the naked eye if you go up high enough, some of the math is over my head but credible people who understand the math don’t dispute it, etc. And you can prove it by going to the south pole.

That seems like the hard way to prove it. You could just get in a plane, and start flying east or west, and keep flying (landing for fuel or getting refueled in flight) until you get back to where you started.

That wouldn’t work with a flat earth, but it would work with a round one.

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“Because the YEC explanations don’t work worth shit. I really challenge people to look at them – like I did, years ago. They’re all obviously premised on “preserve 6000 year-old earth using whatever can be thrown at anything else.”

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That’s not my argument, I’m not making that argument, I’m just asking about the fossil record and the logic behind the assumption of macro-evolution.

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“For me, science and the Bible is no problem, because Genesis is remarkably close to what science has found, and that’s good enough for me.”

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Me too, I just don’t understand what appears to be a leap of faith from micro-evolution (which is observable and makes rational sense) to macro-evolution (which to my knowledge, is not observable, and doesn’t make rational sense).

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“I don’t let “perfect accord” be the enemy of “astoundingly good”.
IMO part of the problem is that our minds are too simple and weak to see “causality” the way God sees it, so we are scared that evolution isn’t “intentional” enough for God to have been behind it, if it’s an adaptive program.”

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I don’t mind if it’s intentional enough for God to have been behind it, I’m not starting with an end in mind, I just want to understand the logic behind macro-evolution, and see the evidence, which should be abundant, in the fossil record.

It should be a simple thing.

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“Evolution looks like a “mob attack” forcing random changes through chaos – we don’t see the big picture – that there might be a general and a strategy and some long intelligence behind it.
To me, young Earth is “forcing God to be like us, so that we can understand” – which while understandable, is likely to be wrong.”

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Agreed, but that doesn’t address what I’m saying or inquiring about.

The fossil record should show hundreds of different creatures that underwent macro-evolutionary changes, like going from water to land (or vice-versa), and since such changes necessarily take place over a very long period of time, the fossil record should show these gradual changes taking place.

As far as I know, they don’t. They show a water animal and a land animal, and scientists draw the conclusion that the one morphed into the other because there is ‘no better explanation’.

If there is a giant hole in the fossil record, that seems like a cause for legitimate question.

And the rationale or logic of it remains unaddressed as well.

Why does a land animal want to go into the sea? But supposing it did, how is it going to survive in the sea for a couple million years, while its legs get the clue that they need to turn into fins, and its lungs get the clue that it needs to grow gills?

It doesn’t make any sense, from a logic standpoint.

It’s as if people don’t have the answer, but the assumption is the best explanation they have, and then decided that it’s foolish to question it.

I question everything.

The Scopes Monkey Trial wasn’t the first scientific and legal sleight of hand, and neither was Piltdown Man, and they definitely weren’t the last, either.

There are all kinds of things Man gets wrong. This subject has always been curious to me, because it seems like there are some big holes in the macro-evolution argument.

And whenever I bring it up, instead of providing the evidence and making a rational explanation for why (or how, with regard to what I have asked above) it would happen in the first place, there isn’t any good answer.

And that is what gets my attention, every time 🙂