[LetThereBe]

Quote by: gallo No it hasn't. It has been observed. Science doesn't prove anything. However, the observation of speciation events is an important piece of evidence that supports the theories of evolution. Also, like I said, creationist acceptance of speciation is fairly recent. It is, after all, macroevolution.

I will admit my ignorance in the exact definition of macro evolution. But how can you say speciation has not been proven? We defined the word, and new species have been made.

Quote by: gallo Define "kind." I would classify dogs, cats, brown bears and polar bears as the same kind of animal. They are all vertebrates. Moreover, they are all tetrapods, mammals and carnivora. So what is a "kind" and what are the criteria by which we can easily recognize them.

heh, I will admit that I am embarresed by the lack of a concrete definition for "kind". But as you admit, the current taxonomic system was made by man.

Quote by: gallo Right. But the discussion was about examples of speciation. It is by definition, macroevolution. Now imagine that animals that have become separate species today still have an extant lineage 50 million years from now. Do you imagine that they would be the same? If we can make chihuahuas and Great Danes from wolves in a few thousand years, what to you suppose can happen in millions of years?

Thats a very poor example. That just shows that change can occur without even speciation occuring. Plus, that it doesn't even always take the time dictated by evolution, since we can achieve vastly different breeds of dog in a generation or two.

Quote by: gallo Just an unsupported assertion that has been shown to be incorrect. Suppose there is a witnessed case of evolution that is caused by a corruption in the DNA. Now suppose that we witness a change that is the exact reversal of the first. Is this also a corruption?

You are clearly more knowledgeable in this area, so I won't challenge that.

Quote by: gallo Cladistics. Birds are still dinosaurs and archosaurs. Besides, taxonomy is a device invented by humans. People invented the classifications that put birds and dinosaurs into different groups.

Then would you argue that we all are still monera?

Quote by: gallo Sure we do. It's called the fossil record. Even more documentation is furnished by DNA sequencing. From that we learn that birds are more closely related to crocodilians than to other reptiles. Studies of physiology have shown relationships between various lineages of animals. There is lots and lots of evidence for the common ancestry of life. There is even the fact that lobster DNA and human DNA use exactly the same code to represent precisely the same amino acids. The fact is that there are lots of transitional species. And they were completely separate animals that are now extinct. What exactly do you think that a transitional is? But the point is that if birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs we should be able to find examples in the fossil record with some characteristics of both. Guess what. We do. I think you are trying to prove creationism true because you continue to spout creationist babble and you read creationist literature and pretend that you are learning science. And evolution is the only valid possibility since all others have been shown to be false. If that isn't true, why is it that you say that creationists accept evolution?

You know what I meant by seperate species. The so called transitions do not necessarily indicate a common ancestry. Perhaps I have been misinformed, but I was always told the number discovered is comparitively few to the number that should exist...
Lastly, how can creationism possibly be shown to be FALSE? Without proving that God does not exist that is.