Aron,
You obviously believe in evolution with a passion and that is fine by me and I really don't want to spend hours in an angry debate which will not really lead us anywhere. However, I would like to address a few of points, but will not respond to future E-mails. You can take that as cowardice or inability to face the truth, that is up to you.
1. With respect to Joe Baker, if you have any issues with him please contact him, the same applies to Kent Hovind, Kylie and Craig.
2. I take your point about transitional fossils, but belief in them does rely on the assumption that one form changed to another. We have no living evidence of macro-evolution today, only micro-evolution. Such so called intermediates could also be other species that existed long ago and became extinct. Additionally there is the problem of sometimes working with only a few bones and constructing a whole creature from a few bones. I enclose two quotes concerning the evolution of man and the examination of skeletons.
"Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether". (Henry Gee, Nature 2001).
Professor G. von Koenigswald, an ardent supported of ape theory made the following statement (Baker, 1996):-
"Working from skeleton alone, it is not so easy to define a man in comparison with an anthropoid ape. Actually, the anthropoid's skeleton differs only quantitatively from our own. The number of cranial bones and teeth is the same; the difference in the structure of the hands and feet is of degree only........ The only distinguishing character left therefore is the size of the brain".
I also add something about the Toumai skull, and I believe this can be applied to other finds from the reading I have done:-
TOUMAI - "Skull turns the clock back on evolution" read a headline of the Times newspaper on July 11th 2002. This headline followed an article in the 10th of July 2002 issue of the prestigious science magazine "Nature" about a new species of archaic human being or hominid found in Chad in the form of a skull. The find comprised a near complete cranium, jawbone and teeth and was described in Nature magazine as belonging to the oldest human like creature yet discovered, dated at about 7 million years old (for details see links page, Toumai skull).
However, this find provides good example of how speculative such discoveries are. By the 12th of July an article appeared in the Science / Nature section of BBC news on-line claiming the skull was not as it seems (for details see links page, Toumai skull). In this on-line article, Dr Brigitte Senut of the Natural History Museum in Paris said the skull looked to her like the skull of an ancient gorilla. She told Reuters news agency that the creature's short face and small canines merely pointed to it being female and were not conclusive evidence of it being hominid. She also said "Moreover, other characteristics such as the occipital crest (the back of the neck where the neck muscles attach) ... remind me much more of a gorilla". The fact that experts can disagree about such a find lends weight to the early quote on this page about the similarity between ape and human skeletons.
What was also interesting was how the skull was dated at 7 million years old. In the Times of 11th July 2002 the article stated that the skull could not be dated by radio-active dating techniques, as there were no layers of volcanic ash near the skull which would normally provide the necessary argon and potassium for radio-active dating. As such, the skull was dated on the basis of the fossils found near it, which included "primitive" versions of elephants, giraffes, horses, rodents and monkey's. However, such dating techniques are based on an assumption of certain layers in the geological column corresponding to certain time periods. Such an assumption is based on a circular argument that evolution is true. If such dating techniques are wrong, then not only could the skull be a gorilla, rather than an early form of man, but it may also have come from a different time period.
Something more on transitional fossils:-
It's important that the reader understand up front thatin spite of such a clearly defined definitionthere is much disagreement among the leaders in palaeontology concerning which specimens qualify as "transitional" and which supposed "transitional forms" fit into which lineages, and where.
What one authority defines as a "transitional form" between lineage A and lineage B can be (and often is) just as authoritatively declared not so when it is said to better fit between lineage X and lineage Y, or when a specimen is found in a position stratigraphically "older" than the first occurrence of lineage A or "younger" than Band all of these are common occurrences.
Other experts in morphology further complicate matters when they point out differences in physical characteristics so significant that evolutionists are forced to scrap one or another theory in phylogeny (developmental history) in spite of any existing similarities
3. With regard to your comment about antibiotic resistance being evidence of evolution please see the paper:- Saunders J. R. (1984). Genetics and evolution of antibiotic resistance. British Medical Bulletin, vol. 40, pp 54-60. In this paper it states that antibiotic resistance genes were around before antibiotics were introduced, the use of antibiotics has just made them more common. Additionally, bacteria have mechanism of passing genes around akin to sexual reproduction (e.g. transfer of plasmids). Thus, the transfer of such mobile elements is micro-evolution, not macro-evolution. There is historical information about bacteria for at least 4,000 years (e.g. leprosy) and despite the rapid replication of bacteria enabling one to study billions of bacteria in a short period of time there is no evidence of bacteria becoming anything but bacteria. Additionally, there is no evidence for increase in complexity from the genome of a bacteria to a genome of a human providing along the way every know species of plant and animal. With respect to chromosomal mutations in bacteria giving rise to resistance to antibiotics such as quinolones, there is plenty of evidence that such strains are less "fit" that strains without mutations and as such would be out competed in an environment without antibiotics.
4. With respect to my background being microbiology, I did study general biology to degree level and this included study of genetics, biochemistry, botany, physiology etc. as well as microbiology. At this stage unsure of your Science credentials? However, as the generally accepted Theory of Evolution rests on Abiognenesis giving rise to so called simple cells (e.g. bacteria like) and these then giving rise to all other life forms, I think my microbiology background is of relevance, for without the ability of bacteria (or simple cells) to form by chance and without the ability of these bacteria to change from bacteria, we have no evolution. I have never heard of any proven Science supporting either abiognenesis or the changing of bacteria to more complex organisms although I have been a microbiologist for over 20 years. Is this refusing to hear the truth?
I enclose again a quote, although for some reason anything I quote seems to be irrelevant to you (fingers in ears??)
"The development of the metabolic system, which, as the primordial soup thinned, must have "learned" to mobilize chemical potential and to synthesize the cellular components, poses Herculean problems. So also does the emergence of the selectively permeable membrane without which there can be no viable cell. But the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its translation mechanism. Indeed, instead of a problem it ought rather to be called a riddle. The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation. It is the modern _expression of omne vivum ex ovo [everything that lives, (comes) from an egg]. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine." Jacques Monod (Nobel prize for Medicine in 1965, biochemist, Director, Pasteur Institute, France. "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", [1971], Transl. Wainhouse A., Penguin Books: London, 1997, reprint, pp.142-143. Emphasis in original).
5. I really don't believe I have my fingers in my ears, I just look at the data differently from you. Is that not permissible in Science? You believe you are objective and we are dogmatic. It is a shame you can not accept that others with differing opinions may be just as objective as you claim to be, but interpret things differently.
At the end of the day I have no problem in you believing in evolution, but there are many well qualified Scientists who think the evidence for evolution is poor, and not all of them have any religious faith. If you choose to see all those people who question the theory of evolution as religious and dogmatic fanatics, that is up to you.
Once again, I will not respond to future E-mails. How you take and represent that is up to you. However, as you will not take seriously any scientific quote I send you that disagrees with your viewpoint, there is honestly no point in both of us wasting a lot of time and energy in communicating.
If you do put things on your site or elsewhere, please post all of this or none of it.
Thanks
