The joke is on the creationist! If you accept any serious degree of microevolution then you have accepted all of the starting conditions in order for Darwinian natural selection to act. Moreover, there is no inherent stopping point in the light of modern genetics. (Before modern genetics demonstrated otherwise, it was thought by some that small changes would be swamped out before they got very far.)

In some cases life forms have been connected by "microevolutionary" steps at the genus level, let alone between species! As for smooth, living gradients between good species, check out "ring species." Ring species are species whose ancestors have spread out over a vast ring of territory (such as some trees bordering the North Pole or a certain lizard whose close relatives form a ring around the central valley in California). Each step around the ring represents only a change in subspecies, but the two endpoints are distinct enough to qualify as two certified species!

Evolution was originally viewed as a slow, step by small step process that went on at a continuous rate. For some "lower" life forms that is actually the case. However, various problems led Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to argue that most of the really big changes (macroevolution) proceeded in a wholly different manner. A species (one reasonably well adapted) mainly sat around doing nothing (it would have to evolve away from its ideal environment if it evolved further), then because of a dramatic change in the environment (weather, predators, a big meteorite, etc.) everything suddenly went into an evolutionary overdrive. In most cases it was probably a small subgroup that had colonized a new environment; evolution can move rapidly in small groups moving into new environments. Thus, evolution stands still for many species but, on occasions, takes big leaps. (These "big leaps" don't skip any steps. It's just that evolution is moving at a much faster rate. If you are pushed into a new environment, it's adapt quickly or die.) Steven Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge's idea--not a refutation of evolution but a modification--is accepted by many biologists today though some debate continues. Punctuated Equilibrium, the idea advanced by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, gives a natural explanation for statistical gaps often (but not always) documented at the species or genus level. (At the highest taxonomic levels fossils between major types blend into each other so smoothly that, in some cases, paleontologists are stumped as to which side of the line to place a fossil! Doesn't sound like the creation of unique kinds (with later small variations) to me!

More recently it has been discovered that some surprisingly big changes can happen "overnight" if certain control genes are hit by a mutation. The details at the DNA level proceed step by step, aside from segments being swapped or inserted, or a misalignment, but even a small change in DNA can be translated into a major change in the structure of an animal. There is strong evidence that some of the biggest changes in the evolution of "higher" life may have involved some fairly large but survivable steps!

By the way, if a creationist wants to personally witness 20 million years or more of evolution (macroevolution) then he had better plan on living a long, long time! However, if that creationist wants to see compelling evidence for 20 million years or more of evolution, he need go no further than Hawaii--or a hundred other places.

I apologize for the late reply.

OK... it seems this will be a long post so I posted it here instead.

@Greensnake

Thank you for taking the time to reply.
I have to admit that at least you did try to reply to "some" of the points I raised, but I am disappointed with the way you answered them.

1)First thing, it is basically evident in your claims that you fail to understand who has the burden of proof here.
2)Second, is that you seem to not understand how to support your claims.
I am the one challenging the claim of macro-evolution for evidence on some aspects of it's extraordinary claims.

You cannot do what my local priest does, when someone challenges your belief you cannot send him to read a book or a site.
Even though it might contain the answer, you should point out the answer and where it is located(not from a book but a paper.)

If you think you know something, then you should find no problem in quoting/referencing(papers) and finding the evidence that has been requested to support your claims/beliefs.

Ok, that being said I will now address the points you raised one by one in your first long posts.

"I believe (after reading many of your posts) that you don't really understand the fossil evidence for evolution"
It is possible, I certainly do not understand every aspect of them or even know more then 10% of all fossils.
Does that say anything about the subject at hand?
(1)NO, the burden of proof is on you to support your claim that macro-evolution(label) is supported by evidence.
", evidence that is absolutely decisive."
Please deliver the very best you have.
I am still waiting.

"I hope that you can read this book since it is one of the best books on the subject"
(2)thanks for the suggestion, I will try, but this is not the way you support your claims.

"Dr. Donald Prothero, with whom I made two trips, is a humble geologist of international fame who is associated with Caltech. He knows what the fossil record is all about!"
Now here lies the crux of the problem which hinders progress.
You thought that by mentioning this, it would make your belief more credible, and it truly does to most mindless people.
For me it says something like this:
"This guy might be influenced too much by fame/propaganda/bias to be scientific in his opinion."

Now I am not saying you are unscientific, but saying something like that in a mature debate does not help your case but it hinders it.
It is called an argument of popularity fallacy.

I do not care if the entire world believes in Jesus Christ, including the president and kings or the entire scientific community for that matter.
For true scientifically minded people, those petty things are insignificant.

"Also, you should try to follow up on the resources offered by Nyarlathotep as they are excellent."
I do not read troll posts, + if you think anything he said is worth mentioning, then claim it for yourself with proper quoting and referencing and we will check it out.

"Microevolution mostly refers to sub-species evolution, evolution within a species that does not go outside its borders. Macroevolution refers to evolution leading to new species, especially to higher taxonomic categories such as families or phylae."

They are terms that are not as fixed as most would want them to be, but I can agree with your label explanation, they were invented after Darwin postulations to distinguish the claims between the researchers when the research was still so young, thus the vagueness.
So we agree on the terms, where did you disagree with what I said on this subject?

"Therefore, there is no such thing as "microevolutionary theory" and "macroevolutionary theory."
yep Macro-evolution Theory does not exist in fact, only Micro-evolution or Evolution Theory exists.
Macro as you said is a label for a postulation(extension) of evolution(micro-evolution).
"Those words describe how much evolution has occurred, not how it has occurred. They are not important scientific terms, only terms of convenience."
Nope, Evolution theory DOES NOT describe how much evolution has occurred but IF it does occur.
Micro-evolution is the minimum type of evolution, the type described by Darwin in his explanation of how Nature Selects(evolution), completely explained in Natural selection paper.

Later researchers ascribed labels to "how much evolution has occurred" Micro and Macro.
Micro(the one Darwin explained well) is shown to exist and Macro(the one Darwin failed to explain), is still hanging.

"Microevolution mostly refers to sub-species evolution, evolution within a species that does not go outside its borders. Macroevolution refers to evolution leading to new species, especially to higher taxonomic categories such as families or phylae."
I do not see how this definition contradicts what I have said?
We are agreeing that they are labels introduced AFTER Darwin.

[If there should be a gradual change like Darwin proposed, why doesn't it appear in the fossil record?]
"It most certainly does appear in some cases!"
(1) Burden of proof.
+ If you go and read the punctuated equilibrium paper, it was attempting to explain exactly that question.

"Keep in mind that evolution proceeds most rapidly in small, outlying groups living under different environments."
(1)Evidence for it to apply to all species? Why not large groups under different environments?

"If a small group of plants or animals evolves for a long time, through many stages, and then becomes very successful and large, the fossil record will usually show fossils from the originally successful population followed by the later successful population."
We agree, the most successful are more likely to leave fossils then the less successful ones.
(1)But again this only means that you are failing the burden of proof for your claim and putting an excuse for it.
You cannot do that when trying to support a claim with evidence.
I can claim that the moon is made of cheese at the core and we don't have evidence because we haven't reached the core yet.
I am putting an excuse to cover the fact that I cannot support my claim.

"The in-between fossils, belonging to small populations in small areas, will usually not be found."
true but, you are assuming many things here, you are assuming that this applies to every situation the fossils are missing, which is not the case. In fact this excuse only holds if there is evidence to suggest that a specie is "belonging to small populations in small areas". Failure to show that, it means that punctuated equilibrium does not account for those.

Apart from that minor problem, punctuated equilibrium also has the problem of containment which you failed to address yet.
Apart from fishes in ponds how does a specie get a totally new environment and "is belonging to small populations in small areas"?
The "WHY" of the hypothesis is completely ignored thus not even reaching the level of a scientific Hypothesis for macro-evolution using punctuated equilibrium.

" That is one way to get a "gap" in the fossil record."
Yes of fishes in ponds, You again failed at showing how this applies to other species with an explanation.

"Conditions are rarely so good and consistent as to preserved a long series of gradual changes in the fossil record, especially for larger animals."
True, but a specie needs to be successful for enough time to adapt and evolve to an environment, and with enough time, it is bound to leave a fossil eventually like it happens.
This is why we found so many ape fossils, because they were everywhere and very very successful contradicting your point of
"belonging to small populations in small areas".
Apes were migratory creatures, they moved from 1 environment to the next, their body could survive most environments on earth.
It simply contradicts the idea of an isolated environment making drastic changes to a small group.
Apes(facts) simply contradict punctuated equilibrium.(their stasis does not happen in a contained small group thus the hypothesis is proven not working for all species)

"If you calculated the depth of earth needed to bury one horse fossil every 10,000 years, then another layer on top of that, etc."
Awc
OK first of all, I assumed you knew how fossils are made in practice, which seems I was wrong.

Fossils are made mainly in 2 main ways:
-Your body is buried in mud by a flash flood and you become a fossil.
-Your are attacked and killed by an animal and before the animal eats you, another bigger animal comes along and scares your killer and stumbles upon your body burying you in mud and the same process occurs.

Yes it is a miracle to become a fossil.
It is another miracle to find one without destroying it.

Basically it is a miracle on top of another miracle to preserve a fossil, but they do happen because of the popularity and time evolution takes to happen. Thus we should be able to see this evolution.

AND WE DO SEE IT for Micro-evolution, yet when it comes for macro-evolution we fail.
Which should be easier then micro-evolution, yet somehow we don't, and thus we have to come up with excuses like punctuated equilibrium.

After knowing this you should know why you should scrap the horse analogy. All you need is a horses dying in a flash flood, the layers of sedimentation will always happen if the horse is buried in mud.
So yes if horses became dragons, then it is very likely that we should observe this transformation in the fossil record given the long time needed for such a transformation to occur through Macro-evolution.

"However, you don't need every single step to see the trend."
(1)Not every step, but enough steps to serve as evidence to support the claim of macro-evolution.
Not enough steps have been presented for any specie yet, not even the fishes in the pond described by punctuated equilibrium.

"What you see statistically in the fossil record are the very successful species whose fossils have a chance to be preserved. You don't usually see the intermediate fossils left by small, rapidly evolving populations."

You are assuming there are intermediate fossils, it is your belief based on what you have been told.
If there wasn't at all, the fossil record would be exactly as it is right now.

Science works like this:
You go where the evidence leads.

The evidence seems to indicate that species just appear and intermediate species seem never to be popular enough to enter in the fossil record to the point that one can consider them to not exist.

Punctuated equilibrium does not account for any other specie except the fishes in ponds, thus it fails at helping the gap in the fossil record.

"Another possibility (as was true for some trilobites in New York) is that a species may do its evolving elsewhere before returning to the original home grounds, that being the location checked by the geologist. Therefore, new species often (but not always) seem to appear out of nowhere in the fossil record."

This is like debating a creationists where instead of having a god of the gaps argument, I am having a macro-evolution of the gaps.
(1) the burden of proof is on you to support such a claim.
It is an excuse for providing no evidence, that macro-evolution is even happening.
The Cambrian explosion is a problem because there is not enough time for the standard Darwinian evolution to happen and generate such an explosion of new species through adaptation of the previous species recorded in the fossil record.
Apart for offering no explanation of WHY it happened.

(1)Now you are claiming that it must have happened, but the burden of proof is on you to show that such a thing could even happen.
Remember a hypothesis is an explanation, and the explanation is simply not there.
I do think species evolve and change to adapt to environments, but claiming that new more complex species emerge form different less complex ones is pushing it.
It is like saying: since a car can move, it can fly too, ignoring the complexity of aerodynamics, weight distribution etc...

"By the way, the Cambrian "explosion" probably took 10 to 30 million years. It didn't happen overnight! "
It did happen Overnight in evolutionary terms. I thought we were having a mature debate and you would understand that statement since it is often used in the scientific community to mean just that.

"Just prior to that time the Earth seems to have been frozen over, and one idea is that it thawed to a degree that allowed life to take off"
Lol, yea nice explanation, soon we will hear that the earth burned to a degree that it allowed life to take off.
These are not even scientists, the drunk around the corner could come up with at least an explanation rather then a dodge.

This is not an explanation, you wish to say that if we thaw a piece of land from Ice NEW MORE COMPLEX species will just Macro-evolve in little time from SIMPLER older ones and then suddenly stop macro-evolving, but continue with the normal Darwinian evolution(part-stasis).
(1)Where is the evidence of this absurdity?
This is what I call making stuff up to fit a 140 year old hypothesis that contradicts the laws of nature that demand a reason for something to happen. New complex species do not magically evolve from simpler ones without reason in such a shot time and then stop sudenly, especially if the reason is the effects of a natural habitat not even explained.

"Another idea is that oxygen reached a critical level and allowed more complicated life to develop"
yea that did happen but no explanation is given how oxygen kick started a boost in evolution that was never seen ever again in history,
(1)Oxygen did allow for more complicated life true, but it did not do miracles. It does not completely transform new species, this has not been shown in labs to occur. The burden of proof is on you to show that oxygen does speed up evolution instead of just effecting evolution.

"We don't have the final answer, but there is no problem here for evolution."
True we do not have answers and not true, it does hinder Macro evolution since macro-evolution is trying to explain the origin of species and the Cambrian explosion is evidence that shows that something else happened in that case, NOT macro-evolution.

Thus a true scientist must look for other options that give an actual explanation.

"Since your knowledge of the fossil record is very weak, you should be careful about saying "there is no evidence.""
Well, if you think so why not provide the evidence?
(1)Remember I am the one doubting your claim, the burden of proof is on you not me.
You sound like my local priest when he says you do not know the entire bible(just claiming that I do not) to excuse him to discredit my argument and not providing the answer for my question.

I only asked for the evidence you are so confident that exists.
I am still waiting.

"My guess is that there is plenty of evidence, which would explain why punctuated equilibrium is widely accepted by biologists and paleontologists. Note that Stephen Jay Gould was not talking about "overnight mutations." He was talking about a period of rapid evolution driven by environmental pressure."
Overnight meant not in a single day, but in evolutionary terms, very very fast.
Human evolution from pre-humans is considered Overnight too since it is considered less then a million years at the moment by the scientific community. Not a single bone matches in just 1 million years.= Overnight.

[Fish are easy to isolate but how can you apply the same principle with apes which are migratory creatures?
It is true that mutations occur at a faster rate with interbreeding and sudden change of environment but Stephen Jay Gould failed at showing positive mutations to occur.]
"Mutation rates have nothing (little) to do with the environment or interbreeding!"
Really?, Are you saying that mutations occur less with interbreeding and sudden change of environment?
Because that would contradict all the facts we know about interbreeding mutations and also the latest evidence in mutations for bacteria which are direct result of environment changes.
It is basic knowledge that if everybody marries his sister/brother, mutation rates are higher.
If the environment changes eg; radiation field, mutations are also higher.

"It is natural selection working on existing genetic variability"
I did not say natural selection was not also involved or that it was not the main factor, I just stated that some other 2 factors increase the mutation rate, that you seem to agree with it here:
"driven by environmental pressure, that sets the rate (among other things). Interbreeding merely concentrates mutations already existing."

I don't even know why you even bothered to oppose that statement, it was the basis for punctuated equilibrium.
An accelerated micro-evolution that would not show up in the fossil record because of the little time for the intermediary species lived.(just 1 million years or so. "overnight evolution")

While you ignored completely the point that was relevant to the subject:
"Fish are easy to isolate but how can you apply the same principle with apes which are migratory creatures?"

"Of course positive mutations occur!"
(1)Evidence?
"How else did desert plants become adapted in wonderful ways to desert environments?"
God of the gaps?
Just because we do not know something, it does not mean, god did it, or macro-evolution did it, or that "positive mutations occur!"
That is not science.

About desert plants, you do not need fast positive mutations(punctuated equilibrium), instead one could use micro-evolution to explain a very slow adaptation/mutations to less watery areas of some plants. Even if micro-evolution could not explain it, it does not matter since it would be a god of the gaps argument.

I only claimed that "Jay Gould failed at showing positive mutations to occur."
You seemed to commit a straw-man fallacy here, and competently ignore the point I raised.
I know he failed to show it in his paper since he never even tried to show it, he postulated it as an assumption.

"I don't know what type of fish Stephen Jay Gould was studying, but I do know that fish fossils grade smoothly into amphibian fossils which grade smoothly into reptile fossils.
(2)Good finally something you think to know but again you fail to show the evidence for it.

[Stephen Jay Gould failed also to show how those new fish actually outlived the rest of the fish which was the basis of Natural Selection. Survival of the fittest.]

"There is no such requirement!"

Lol Natural selection, is riddled with the idea/explanation that the fittest in the environment survive and the rest eventually die out, thus the species evolved to fit better that environment.
It is the explanation of how Natural Selection occurs naturally in nature.

If you do not know about that you need to read Natural Selection.

Then after the survival of the fittest happens one has to show how the new specie managed to become the majority when reunited to the rest of the world.(sea/river)
The small fish in the pond did not explain how they become the majority, thus punctuated equilibrium does not explain the facts that apes went extinct while humans did not. (new specie shows up in the fossil record while old ones disappear)
How did a more adapted to nature specie go extinct compared to a specie adapted to a particual environment, not the most common one?
When the fish in the pond joines the rest of the other fishes in the sea/river, how did those fare against a more adapted fish at sea/river?
How did the fish of the pond(the end result, new specie) show up in the fossil record while the older ones go extinct?
Basically how does punctuated equilibrium explain the gap in the fossil record compared to the extinction of older and more adapted to the usual environment?(I know that not all the older versions go extinct but some do and punctuated equilibrium makes a contradiction when this happens)

"You need to hit the books and gain a basic understanding of evolution. "
Seriously man, stop making claims about me that you constantly fail to support.
It does not help your case at all.

"Most evolution is a branching out process that does not require the extinction of the original population."
I did not say it requires the extinction or that the less fitted MUST die out, but they should die out in the new environment according to Natural selection prediction. A theory is a prediction.
NATURE SELECTS the ones who will survive in a particular environment.
(the ones that remain in the old environment should survive though, assuming the old environment still exists)

"(An excellent, beginning book to read is: "Undeniable" by Bill Nye (known as the science guy in the U.S.).)"
Books are interpretations of the papers, you should start reading those instead, look at the references of the books, and compare the references with other papers. Check the authors papers own remarks and criticisms.

"Today, Punctuated Equilibrium is widely accepted among biologists and paleontologist because it explains so many facts. To better appreciate it you need to study a good site on the Internet."
Lol man seriously, I pointed to you contradictions in Punctuated Equilibrium that do not explain the facts which you ignored.
A hypothesis(explanation) should explain all the facts, it does not, and that is why it fails to support macro-evolution.

"Punctuated Equilibrium explains a lot of facts, especially why new species "just appear" in the fossil record without links showing a gradual change."
We agree it fits some of the facts(no intermediate fossils) with its stasis hypothesis(explanation), but fails in presenting the hypothesis of the sudden explosion of new species that occur in the Cambrian explosion.

The failure in presenting an explanation for those species is the problem.
How do species which are not trapped fishes suddenly stop the stasis period and decide to do a rapid macro-evolution?
Remember the trapped fishes did only a rapid/fast Micro-evolution not even a macro-evolution.
He did not even show how or why the fish in the pond became a reptile or something in his paper.

Also fails to explain how the stasis seem to be happening all at once for all species just after the Cambrian explosion which is also very unlikely.

"Why wouldn't evolutionists want to address scientific problems in their theories? Isn't that what Darwin did, something that all good scientists do?"
Not if politics is involved and too many people have their job/reputation based on it to give it up.

You need to look at the scientific community to be as dogmatic as a church, to understand why all of them(100%) would go and persecute the Wright Brothers when they proved mathematically that humans can fly in their scientific paper. The scientific community came up with papers and mathematical formulas to discredit them, and this kept going until finally they managed to built the first plane themselves.
Also the reason why 98% of the scientific community was also against Darwin when he published the paper Natural Selection for 10 whole years until the creationist used politics to try and teach creationism in schools. Suddenly Darwin's hypothesis became a better alternative, not because it was scientific but because it was convenient to them at the time.
Since then we have been repeating the same things over and over again regardless of all the new conflicting evidence we find.

Darwin was a good scientist, but most in the scientific community are conformists, they are fans of what they learned, they found jobs because of papers they published on what they learned.
If someone comes along to show that their papers are based on nonsense, they might lose their reputation and jobs.
That is why they are mostly not really scientists that care for the truth but care for themselves first.(human trait)

There are good scientists but most of them fear ridicule and persecution from the establishment, and one cannot blame them if they just ignore the subject entirely. It is a career breaker not a maker for sure.

It is up to the people who care about the truth to be scientific and challenge the dogmatic views with intelligent questions so there could be progress.

"The shape of the adult human face is that of an immature chimp's. "
LOL this was awesome.

Did you know that; that cannot happen for the simple fact that chimps have so many different things.
-Huge brow ridges compared to humans
-Circular eye sockets compared the the squarish eyesockets of humans
-Huge chin, sticking out of the face where humans don't.
-Nearly flat nose, huge nose cavity where humans have a small cavity with a nose sticking out.
-Chimps have low and small forehead while humans have a huge forehead as if it hit a truck or something.

So yes, you would be right if you give that poor human a hell of a beating in the face to completely restructure the bone of his skull, then you might not distinguish him from an "immature chimp" when he is still an embryo lol.

One should not rely on interpretations.

You should have said that IT WOULD LOOK LIKE an immature chimp's for someone who doesn't know anything about the subject.
If you know what to look for, it is very clear what a chimp looks like and what a human looks like.
The younger a specie is, the more similar it is to other species, that does not mean at all that other species could have evolved from it, thus it is not evidence for macro-evolution of apes to become humans.

When you go eat a rabbit at a restaurant, the chef could cook you a cat and it does indeed look like a rabbit when it is served, unless you know what to look for.
Did the rabbit evolve into a cat?
This is the kind of evidence you are presenting to me and it is not evidence.

Evidence is when one looks at the bones and compares similarity in detail(structure, thickness etc..).

"If you can't, I can try to help you."
Yes, it be nice to see how they mange to transform an chimp head into a human and leaving it as a chimp.

"You mean they are stumped at what to label them?]

Yes."
That was irony on my part, as if anyone should care about the label we give them.
One should focus on the differences, labels change when new conflicting data arrives and when most are of the same OPINION about the change.

"Some fossils may be hard to distinguish from others because of the reasons you cited. Usually it is not a problem since multiple fossils are usually available and, in some places, even whole."
yes but how does this support your point that this is somewhat evidence of macro-evolution?:
" paleontologists are stumped as to which side of the line to place a fossil"

I see it evidence for micro-evolution and the confusion is for the reasons you and I discussed.

I will reply to the other post in a new post since this one is become too long.
(I have not even read the other posts)
I apologize for mistakes I might have made that are addressed in the other post but I don't have time to reply to it so I won't read it else I could not resist to reply.

(1)In short you need to provide the evidence for your claims instead of sending me to read books(/entire sites) hunting for the evidence relevant to your claim.

That does not mean I would not try and get those books but it would be for my own research not to try and check if your claims are supported.

Greensnake Sat, 05/14/2016 - 23:48
"I thought I'd try to answer some of your previous questions."
I will reply to all the answers to SOME of my previous questions.

It is important to note that all my questions must be answered to make the claim that the hypothesis is supported by logic/science, not just some of the questions.
Everybody can pick and choose what to ignore when he knows he cannot support his claims.

"Early ape and hominid fossils are rare!"
Not really, all fossils are rare, but apes are one of the few species which we have quite a few. But it is true that some parts(eg: the feet, are indeed rare since they are the hardest to preserve).

"All are extinct now except for one member of that family--us.)"
That is an assumption, since we have, not found any yet, and since 1/3 of the deep wooded areas of the planet was never foot surveyed once, it is a pretty bold assumption.
These are migratory creatures, that can smell and hear anything a mile away.
Claiming they are extinct because we haven't found them yet is an assumption.
Also fossils are not made in deep forests since anything that dies there gets recycled by nature.

The Panda is a fine example of how easy it is for us humans to not know about an existing specie. (took us 60 years to find it after knowing it was there)

"The necessary quick burial in sediment is hard to come by."
"Nevertheless, over the years a considerable number of hominid fossils have been found."
As I said in my previous reply, fossils are usually made when an animal is buried in mud, and apes were everywhere and in huge numbers else we would not have found so many fossils of them.
Yes fossils are incredibly hard to find, but luckily for us, apes where everywhere since nothing was hunting them, thus eating and reproducing for millions of years shows up in the fossil record.
They could take out 2 lions with ease(the human size ones).(each was around 10 times stronger then a human)

Their Micro-evolution also shows up in the fossil record, it is their Macro evolution(going to humans) that is completely missing.
Thus the evidence is simply not there.

"The older hominid fossils show a distinct mix of human and ape characteristics."
Where? What characteristics?

"Did you know that some human populations have a significant number of Neanderthal genes?"
Yes, so what?
Showing that Neanderthals are somehow related to us, does not show that we macro-evolved from their ancestor, or that they macro-evolved from an ancestor at all.
It just shows that we and Neanderthals are compatible enough that somewhere along the line in history a Neanderthal could have mated with a human and their genes appear in some humans.

Extrapolating that, to support the idea that we share a common ancestor is pushing it.
Our DNA is different, drastically different, maybe we can mate like a donkey can mate with a horse to produce an offspring that can reproduce(unlike the mule).
There is the story of ZANA, a possible Neanderthal that was captured by a Russian tribe(1890's) and they used her as a sex slave.
She bore children and one of them was excavated.
His skull looks like a Neanderthal skull.(more ape-ish)
https://exemplore.com/cryptids/Mystery-Files-The-Story-of-Zana-Do-Neande...

"In Darwin's time the hominid fossil finds were practically non-existent."
Actually they were coming at a faster rate then expected.
Though compared to what we have found after 150 years from his paper one could say your phrase.
"I'd like to see what he really said."
I did not quote him, I summarized what he estimated but I won't be bothered to go dig which paper/letter did he make that estimation since it does not hinder my point at all which you did not even address.

150 years looking really hard for a very specific something and coming empty handed is absence of evidence to support the claim.

Just so we are on the same page, here are some quotes that show how much lack of evidence there is, and if you wish to say that by now we found new evidence then please present it.

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."
Charles Robert Darwin,
The Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, 1st edition reprint.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology (study of fossils). In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors, it appears all at once and fully formed."
Dr. Stephen J. Gould, Prof of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. Mentioned in one of his regular columns in Natural History Magazine (1977) and also in The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182

"The record certainly did not reveal gradual transformations of structure in the course of time. On the contrary, it showed that species generally remained constant throughout their history. New types or classes seemed to appear fully formed, with no sign of an evolutionary trend by which they could have emerged from an earlier type."
Bowler, 'Evolution: The History of an Idea', 1984, p. 187

"http://evolution.berkeley.edu and http://www.talkorigins.org
Talk Origins has a lot of good material, some of it dealing with evolution."
As I said in my previous post to you, you need to properly support your claims and understand the burden of proof.
Even a priest can send me to read the bible on bible hub claiming that it "has a lot of good material, some of it dealing with evolution."

"Enough fossils and other evidence will make the case--even without knowledge of the environment. "
That right there is faith.
That is not science.

First of all there ISN'T even a single fossil that could NOT be explained by something else, rather than a transitional fossil of macro-evolution.
Second, even if you find the transitional fossil, not knowing HOW this transition occurs or WHY, means only that MYSTERIOUSLY a specie similar enough to look like a transition, appears in the fossil record.
This is like saying, "OHH wow one person is sick and now another person is sick, so demons exist."
"Enough" sick people "and other evidence will make the case--even without knowledge of the environment. "

If you can see the "Not a Cause for a Cause" fallacy in the demons analogy, you should see the fallacy in your macro-evolution.
https://bookofbadarguments.com/

"Perhaps that had something to do with the evolution of upright humans."
You were wise to use the "Perhaps" here, because the hypothesis presented for upright walking always was ridiculous.
Fist of all there is no evidence that apes did not walk upright from start.
But during Darwin times upright walking was considered a human only trait.(dogmatically)
Today scientists are at least accepting that walking upright is no biggy, it does not give us any advantage unless we are climbing trees which went against the Savannah hypothesis and also problematic since the apes/monkeys are better at climbing trees then us.

You should look at the aquatic ape hypothesis, it is an eye opener for people truly interested to find the truth on this subject.

https://books.google.com.mt/books?hl=en&lr=&id=le-bKIl85EAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP...

"[When it comes to scientific papers the evidence in them falls short to 0 my friend.
But I would be happy if you prove me wrong. This is a subject I have huge interest in.]

I must completely disagree! As I mentioned earlier, over the years quite a few hominid fossils have been found and they all get reported in various scientific journals. Please read Dr. Prothero's book and decide whether the evidence is still near zero"

I asked for scientific papers and the evidence they present.
I do not want to go and read an entire book to find the evidence you think it contains.
If you wish to claim that there is evidence because you know there is evidence, then quote and link me to the part of the paper that supports your claim.
Burden of proof.

"How are they proof of macro evolution?]

Dr. Prothero describes the case for the giraffe nicely. In the giraffe the laryngeal nerve is an incredibly clumsy "design" that actually can endanger the giraffe to some extent.
yes I had this subject raised already when Richard Dawkings used the giraffe dissection to show something like this.
It only shows how much we do not know about the brain and it's connection to some organ functions.
The "laryngeal nerve is clumsy" because we do not know yet why it is like that, we think it is clumsy if we assume macro evolution caused a clumsy evolution, like the appendix in humans (not working).
This is not evidence of macro-evolution, but only a possible explanation of such occurrences assuming macro-evolution.
NOT THE ONLY POSSIBLE EXPLANATION.
An easier expansion is that they serve a function we have not yet discovered like what usually happens.
A more easier explanation is that we do not know yet why some organs stop functioning.

(Evolution can sometimes recycle a vestigial organ for another purpose.)
LOL
Wanna see you supporting that claim.
"another purpose" Like what?
You know how ridiculous that claim is?
or you believe everything they claim because they say it?

"If an animal has a vestigial organ that only makes sense in a wholly different animal, then that is prime evidence of macroevolution."
What?
It only shows that the animal is a wholly different animal.
We humans have an appendix which is not working, other animals(apes) have it working= evidence that somewhere along the line our appendix stopped working/or was never working.
It is not evidence that we evolved from other animals.
It is evidence against macro-evolution actually, it shows clearly that we are different, we have a very important survival organ not working which all other animals have it working to survive.
It shows an anomaly that does not happen in the wild.(in the natural environments we know of).
We should be adapting to 1 or more of those environments not be worse at them.
Evidence against macro-evolution and that is why they don't popularize much about it.

"Indeed, whale fossils trace back to a four-legged river animal"
I could come up with 100's of other possibilities for "vestigial remnants of hind legs" on whales.
As I said those can be dismissed as a completely different species unless you find the transitional fossils to show that one is slowly evolving to become the other.
We see the fossil of a tiger and then we see the fossil of a cheetah, they look similar but the structure is different, just because we know the structure of a dog/wolf, we know that the cheetah is not related to the tiger, else we would say:
Look how similar they look, even though the legs are a bit off, macro-evolution happened, speed was in damand and the tiger evolved into a cheetah (dog type of legs).
Why not say it is a different specie when we see the same thing happening to a whale?
Can a whale have legs/flippers without we imposing our explanation that it must have been a land animal before?
This is bias.
This is no evidence at all.
Who said that the back flippers are "vestigial remnants of hind legs" as a fact?
They could have served a purpose before some catastrophic events that shaped the entire planet and then micro-evolution could have made them inert or extinct, while others without "vestigial remnants of hind legs"(flippers) survived.
I grant that macro-evolution could explain the situation but it is just 1 of many possible explanations.
This is not evidence, it is speculation.

"[Yea that is what Darwin proposed in his paper:
"NATURAL SELECTION" (postulated micro-evolution )
Then he made another paper named:
"Origins Of Man"(postulated macro-evolution)]

As I mentioned in a later post, and I think it good to repeat it here, microevolution and macroevolution are not explanations.They are labels."

Labels of explanations, explanations of:
"Microevolution mostly refers to evolution that does not go beyond the species level and it results in sub-species, varieties, or just some small changes. Macroevolution refers to evolution that has exceeded the species level, especially evolution that has exceeded the higher taxonomic levels."

You just EXPLAINED what the labels refer to.

"They are words of convenience and not important scientific terms."
Yea we agree, and that is why I am using them, and so are you.

"Darwin's first book identifies natural selection as the main engine of evolution."
True

"Today, we know that there are some other factors at work,"
Nope, we don't know, we expanded on that theory and came up with new ideas that add to it, than and we gave them labels.

"but natural selection is still the main engine."
True, but you cannot call natural selection if you don't explain the natural selection part can you?
What natural habitat selected a particular specie?

"Natural selection applies to human evolution as well,"
Nope it does not, they claim it does, yes.
What natural habitat selected humans out of the other apes?
AHH, you cannot follow the paper now!, can you? since it is a different claim based not on the science of Darwin, but on a label called macro-evolution that gives NO explanation, NO SCIENCE.
Just believe it, and your sins are forgiven.

"but Darwin (already fearing loud protests) saved the matter of human evolution for a much later book."
That is your humble opinion, he did certainly fear protests and it was wise of him to go baby steps with things which are based on evidence first before putting forward things which are not based on evidence.

" Darwin is not offering two different theories in his two books. He offers one theory that applies to two subjects."
No, they are different claims and deserved 2 different papers, the latter is however assuming the first as an assumption.
Darwin first proposed the idea of evolution(it exists), then he proposed the idea that human origin could be explained by an evolution process.

Darwin just proposed the idea which is very scientific, but people that think that both claims are the same thing are wrong and commit this fallacy:
A Not a Cause for a Cause Fallacy
https://bookofbadarguments.com/

"But it is the truth! "
Missing links are not what you think you are, I have explained them and you did not address my explanation at all, and instead you just insist that my "definition of a missing link is not the point."

"We are concerned with a paleontologist's understanding of a missing link."
Again an argument of authority fallacy.
I explain why some subjects are not touched or even admitted in my previous post.
(politics,money, power, job security, pride, fame)
The idea that the scientific community is immune to these things is patent nonsense, it is dogmatic as a church especially on a subject that creationists are so heated upon.( a 150 year war)
They would prefer to say nothing rather then say a word too many, that might cost them their job.

"an "evolutionary tree" diagram! "
Yes we agree, that is a micro-evolution, there should be no big changes there.
EG: types of bees.
"This is the primary prediction of macroevolution!"
NO NO NO NO
This only shows Micro-evolution, it should not predict that some branch will eventually completely change.
It does not predict that a honey creeper will eventually(with enough splits) will become a crow.
You will always have a split which would survive in the environment which is in, unless the environments demands it, there should be little to no change(stasis).

"There is no way to get such a diagram without obvious fudging unless life arose from primitive cells."
WHAT?
I say "obvious fudging" is the business of the day, since no evidence what so ever was presented to support any of the claims.
primitive cells???
Where does the "primitive cells" come into?
Man seriously you need to study the subject more because you are taking assumptions that have been hammered in your head as facts and you are not making any sens.
There is no link between "primitive cells"(like prokaryotes) and basically any other specie/bacteria on earth.
There is to this day no explanation supported by evidence for their macro-evolution.
Why did they change when for millions of years they remains virtually the same?

Infact some scientist would admit that at least one of the prokaryotes could have come from a meteorite, since 2 different types of prokaryotic bacteria appear on earth virtually at the same time and that contradicts how Abiogenesis or evolution should happen.

"(Life might have begun with a number of different cells in different locations, but one line survived and all life today bears its stamp.)"
Seriously you did not even explain anything in that statement.
I bet the book of Mormon gave a better explanation than you did.(never even read it)
What stamp? seriously just take the prokaryotes and try to imagine how the hell did the cell nucleus come from the prokaryotes by a natural environment?
How do you get something so complex that we can beryl replicate it from scratch by some random effects of the environment.
If we had their stamp, then we would not have cell nucleus but just prokaryotes.
What we have instead is the same prokaryotes + a lot more stuff.

"no reason in the world for thinking that unrelated life forms would all use the same DNA code."
The key is "in the world"
Living on the same planet is a very valid reason why we would have very similar structure and DNA.
Maybe only the ones with that type of DNA could survive on this planet.

["DNA has proven that were are all descendants from the same single cell."
Nope it did not, where is this proof?]

You still did not give me any proof but just a very bold claim, that it must have happened.
Just because you don't know how or why it happened.

"It's true that prokaryotes (bacteria, for example) don't have a nucleus, but they still have DNA which often forms a loop in the cytoplasm."
Yes, but you are claiming that somehow, after millions of years, Prokaryotes become Eukaryotes naturally(miraculously).
No cell nucleus went to very complex cell nucleus just like that, nature can do everything.
No explanation needed, just believe it.

The truth is that both the Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes just appear in the fossil record with no transitions in between.

Your explanation is not supported by evidence. it is a nice idea if the fossil record shows what you are claiming, since it doesn't, throw it in the bin already and start looking for an actual explanation that fits the facts.

"What hasn't been found (yet) is a clear pathway from non-living to living."
Yes, finally we agree on something, how does it feel when you don't know something?
Is it not better to accept it, instead of trying to defend a claim which is indefensible?

"that you could probably switch the two and never know the difference!"
Yes we are all carbon/silica based lifeforms I know, it does not show macro-evolution.
Just because Cytochrome-C are so similar it only means that we both do survive on this planet, and thus similarities are bound to arise.
This is like comparing cats and dogs and being amazed that both have 4 legs and have have hair.

we can study the similarities and differences between the cytochrome-C of different species, and the same "evolutionary tree" relationship (with only minor differences) pops out! If not evolution, then what?

I have not studied the cytochrome-C in particular so I need a bit of clarification here.
Is this video representing your evidence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLV_fSXO6So

So you are saying that the difference pattern in mutations of cytochrome-C follows the evolutionary tree pattern right?
Well that is not evidence of macro-evolution but evidence that cytochrome-C has been effected by those mutations throughout history in those species tested.
About the video claim of inheriting it from our common ancestor:
Yes it is a possible explanation but not the only explanation either.
It is one of the few times where the hypothesis conforms to the facts, it is not evidence though.

I could make a claim that I can fly since I know the earth is a sphere, how else would I know it is a sphere?
Therefor my knowledge is evidence for my claim that I can fly.
See the fallacy there?
It is one of the few times where the hypothesis(flying) conforms to the facts, it is not evidence though.

"[It was shocking to me that almost all papers just refer to Darwin original paper on the subject as a reference and just move on the specific area they are building a hypothesis on.]"

"Are you kidding me? Modern scientific papers would have no reason to cite Darwin unless it is an historical note."
No I am not, most papers whenever they use macro-evolution(assume it) they just put Darwin's paper as reference, with no explanation of how it works.
"If you are a scientist you cite the most recent research relevant to your paper. "
Yes you would, but when you go and look on that paper to see where it is getting the evidence to support its claim, you notice that they all assume macro-evolution and cite a paper which cites another paper, etc.... until you finally reach the paper referencing to Darwin's.

"Sorry, but you don't speak for me! Elsewhere--very briefly--I have given the main proof for macro-evolution, i.e., evidence that has no reasonable alternative interpretation."
Lol I can come up with an alternative not supported by evidence in less then 5 seconds,
You have not presented evidence, much less proof.

"The fact that you cannot imagine how something happened is not an argument against it!"
You sound like my local priest.
"The fact that you cannot apply logic to god is not an argument against god."

If I cannot imagine it, it means it is so illogical that nature does miracles that no one can imagine it.

Isn't that what we call the "argument from ignorance?"
Argument from ignorance is when, one does not have the information and makes a claim.
Here the one making the claim is the guys that think macro-evolution happens without having the information to claim it.
I am just a skeptic and asking for evidence for the claim.
I am still waiting.

"At one time not even the best scientists had the slightest clue as to what made the sun shine."
I could imagine what makes the sun shine and I'm sure most people could imagine flying with bird feathers.

"Ask for the sake of knowledge, but don't offer your limited imagination as proof against macroevolution."
Burden of proof.
I offered nothing, I asked for an explanation since you claimed it is part of the theory of evolution and you failed at delivering it.
I also failed at trying to find one, by trying to imagine it and thus stated why I did not believe such nonsense.

"No it doesn't. Ape ancestors came in a variety of sizes and many of them, no doubt, were hunted. "
Straw-man?
I though we were mature enough to understand that we were talking about the human sized apes here, since we were talking about human origins.

"The heavy evolutionary lifting was done by 300,000 years ago,"
lol you mean complete transformation?

"At 60,000 years ago we start finding art, that also being about the time Neanderthal Man disappeared."
Nice picture but that does not mean that 300 000 years before they did not have art too, this is speculation.

30 000 years ago is the last neanderthal fossil/tools if you ignore the ZANA story I mentioned above.

"But he isn't totally gone--we share some of his genes!"
You know that before year 2000 the scientific community believed that we humans evolved from Neanderthals right?

Then DNA proved them wrong and they came up with the common ancestor and we are still stuck with it to this day.
This time they won't name which one though, lesson learned.

People will believe they know what they are talking about anyway so why bother.

"Where in this long process do you find a sudden change from primitive ape to modern man?"
100 000-300 000 BC cro-magnon(humans) seem nothing like the other apes.

"No doubt many changes in the environment have played a role, so why do you imagine only one environment? "
For evolution to take effect you need a long period of time, the time is simply not there, not even for 1 type of environment to make such changes to the body structure, more then 1 is even less realistic.

"Your idea of environment should also go beyond geography and weather to include interaction with other hominids and animals, with diseases, with plants."
The environment includes all those things.
1 environment justifies some changes or all the changes at once if need be.
The more different environments claimed the more time is needed.
First the specie is exposed to 1 environment and then to the other one, or both together if they are compatible(unlikely).

"Why so much emphasis on environment when unimpeachable evidence for macroevolution is at hand? "
You have provided no such evidence, only some aspects that seem to make macro-evolution conform to some of the facts.

Why are you ignoring the explanation when it is the basis of every scientific hypothesis?

"Please think about those things, the whole picture."
A whole picture:

You have a specie which is not adapted well in any natural habitat currently known on earth, but they claim that he does come out of those habitats somehow.

They never explain how though, so we must accept it on faith.

I am sorry, if one wishes to claim he is scientific one must use the scientific method and explain what happened, else admit that he does not know what happened and not just claim it must have been evolution since nature can do anything.

Claiming that evolution did it without an explanation, is like saying that god did it because god can do anything, and I cannot accept that, since it is not science.

Jeff - "The Panda is a fine example of how easy it is for us humans to not know about an existing specie. (took us 60 years to find it after knowing it was there)"

The 'discovery' of the panda pre-dates recorded history.

I have friends who have done the years and years of work and study to be called PhDs in anthropology and paleozoology. They are field scientists and university professors. I trust their word far, far more than I would trust the word of someone who spouts information gleaned only from various internet sites including YouTube. And interestingly, none of them is a pawn to the conspiracies some posters have accused scientists to be.

Thanks for the replies.

"Perhaps, English is a second language for you."
Yep it is, does it mean that it was not understandable?
Certainly not.

When someone doesn't understand something, he should ask for further clarification, not just ignore it.
Unless ignoring it was the real intention, and my claimed bad English was just the pathetic excuse.
If it was just on 1 or 2 of my points, I would never mention it, but you seem to ignore like 2/3 of all my points on purpose.
It is becoming too irritating at this point.

"Jeff, keep in mind that this is a forum!"
Yes, this is a place where people debate, and in mature debates people that make claims need to support them with proper quoting and references.

"I'm not going to write a textbook for you!"
I never asked you to do so.

Your reply to my questions should be in this manner:

My question:
Where is the evidence for claim a?
Your answer:
Here it is: "Quote" + Reference of paper.
(so some 4 lines on average)

What do I get instead:

-More unsupported claims
-Go read this/that book because you think it contains the reply for my question.
-pages and pages of accusations, contradictions and fallacies that you end up ignoring the moment I point them out to you.

"I'm not going to dig up endless references for common, scientific knowledge that was established many decades ago."
You BELIEVE that it is "common, scientific knowledge", while I am just challenging that belief.
People BELIEVED the earth was the center of the universe too and they too BELIEVED it was "common, scientific knowledge".

Now we learned the scientific method so we don't need to BELIEVE things anymore, we can go and actually support our claims in mature debates.

I am just asking you to support your claims.

If you do not wish to do it, then accept that you don't know the subject enough to defend your claims using the scientific method, thus you prefer to BELIEVE in it just like Pragmatic does.

"Even if I had the time, I would not waste it by duplicating any of the excellent works already in existence."
As I said, if there was evidence it would only take you 4 lines of text( for each claim) to point me to the evidence.
You do not need to explain anything at all.

"mining them for quotes!"
Lol, The evidence is self evident.
It is usually the main argument of any paper, you do not need to mine anything.
Books/sites that have interpretations and are filled with bullshit, yes they could make you mine for the actual evidence if there is any at all.
You basically proved my point.
(http://evolution.berkeley.edu and http://www.talkorigins.org)
Again, I have read some parts of those sites for other reasons, they are generic and anything related to macro-evolution is mostly either completely false or partially true.

They are not a reliable source of information on our topic at hand. Essentially they are propaganda.

If you wish to claim differently, then quote where they support your claims.
(eg how do those sites present evidence that prokaryotes macro-evolved in eukaryotes?)

[[It is important to note that all my questions must be answered to make the claim that the hypothesis is supported by logic/science, not just some of the questions.]]
[[1)First thing, it is basically evident in your claims that you fail to understand who has the burden of proof here.]]

"Not true! Suppose a flat-earther used the same logic and declared that his long list of questions all had to be answered in order for you to make the claim that the spherical earth hypothesis is supported by logic/science? Is that a sound argument?
OW man, this is becoming too irritating."

Can you stop the Straw-mans please?
How DARE you compare my lack of making a claim, to the claim of a "flat-earther".

I just asked questions about the facts that any hypothesis MUST explain.

YOU CANNOT MAKE/DEFEND A HYPOTHESIS/THEORY IF IT DOES NOT EXPLAIN ALL THE FACTS IT IS RELATED TO.

A hypothesis is an attempt at explaining ALL the facts with an idea/claim using evidence.
When enough evidence is presented it could become a theory.

Now, if with time new facts emerge, the hypothesis MUST also incorporate those facts if it is valid.

So you cannot dismiss and ignore ANY of my questions regarding those facts I pointed out.
YOU MUST ADDRESS THEM FOR THE HYPOTHESIS TO BE SCIENTIFIC.

"Regarding macro evolution, most attacks......"
I do not care what other attacks did or did not do.
It is irrelevant to your unsupported claims.
This is a typical "Guilt by association" fallacy.

"insignificant details and irrelevant points"
That is what you believe, not what you have demonstrated so far.
So far you have showed you cannot present a scrap of evidence for your claims and instead you have to resort to fallacies.

"Serious questions will rise to the attention of the scientific community (sooner or later) and be presented in the scientific journals, which allows other scientists to test them or plan further research."
Yes we agree, but what happens in reality is that "Serious questions" get ignored if they are not popular enough.
History proves it.
Over and over again, geniuses/skeptics that pose "Serious questions" get killed/ignored/ridiculed because they are not popular enough.

"(sooner or later)" could apply to your belief in macro-evolution too.

"Show me recent issues of "Nature" or "Science" (the leading scientific journals in the English language) that feature any "debate" over the basic fact of evolution."
Yep that is the problem of dogma.
You are basically proving my point, that it must be the truth since it is so popular not because it is scientific.
Argument of popularity fallacy.

"There is no hint of a debate over the fact of evolution."
Yes, that is a serious problem that should be addressed, that is why I am raising the issue in the first place.
How long can we afford to ignore the facts just because it is convenient to believe in macro-evolution?
Think how much more could we have advanced in any fields(related), if the money wasted on a contradictory hypothesis was spent on a hypothesis that actually explains all the facts not just some?

"In the scientific world evolution above the species level (macro-evolution) is treated as a settled issue. It is the starting point for today's research."
Yes, though they been at it not just today, for more then a 100 years, the progress in it is basically the same.
Nothing to present as actual evidence, but more contradictions to the facts when it comes to the explanation(that the hypothesis should have delivered from start).

"overthrow long established knowledge"
No, overthrow long established belief and dogma.
It is an uphill struggle, I do understand how the Wright brothers felt.

"meaning that you have to do more than pose questions and riddles as creationists do."
If creationists pose serious scientific questions on this subject they are more scientific then the Neo-Darwinists on this specific subject.
What motivates them is irrelevant if the questions are logical and scientific.
You should not have a bias and commit a Genetic Fallacy.

I do not see how the burden of proof is on me just because the majority thinks otherwise when THEY make a claim?

" The burden of proof is on your shoulders for the same reason that it is on a flat-earther's shoulders."

I am not making any claims, I looked at the facts and the facts say that species just appear in the fossil record without any intermediate fossils, many like me have noticed it( I quoted them).
Thus macro-evolution hypothesis to be scientific it MUST explain how that happened if Macro-evolution is what happened and not something else.
It fails at explaining even after putting the excuse for a 100+ years that the fossil record was incomplete.
Time proved that it has nothing to do with the incompleteness of the fossil record but that if there are intermediate fossils they seem to avoid getting in the fossil record for some unknown reason.

Punctuated equilibrium fails at giving a valid explanation for any species except the small fish in the pond apart from lacking an explanation for other aspects of their hypothesis.(which you failed to address in my previous posts)

"At some point a scientific debate often reaches a firm conclusion after which it would be silly to continue rehashing old arguments."
So if it is an old conclusion we must accept it as gospel truth? As if the scientific community was never wrong on old debate conclusions right?
(yes I used the word gospel on purpose :))

You know how religious that sentence sounded right?

"After that point, if someone wants to object, they have to convince the scientific community that they have a really hot argument."
yea, the belief that that is even scientific and not dogmatic, is also another problem with the scientific community.
That is why I said that you have to look at the scientific community as a Church when it comes to some topics which have been accepted as gospel truth for a long time.

"(knowledge that has passed rigorous tests)."
You BELIEVE it has passed through rigorous tests.
In fact to this day we still cannot even replicate a single macro-evolution in the lab.
So where are the rigorous tests?
Where are the artificially made eukaryotes from prokaryotes?
If nature did it randomly(by chance), it should be easy to replicate in a lab when we know what things are missing from a prokaryote.

All you need is to find the paper with the experiments, no need for a text book, just a quote and a link to the paper.(2 lines?)
I'm sure that those "excellent resources!" you wanted me to read make it very easy to find.

"Do all that and you can be another Einstein"
You know that Einstein lost most of his Nobel nominations because he died before his ideas were even accepted even though he had the scientific method and evidence to back up his theories?
Why?
Mainly because the scientific community is not as scientific as they wish to make you believe, but they are more about popularity at the time.(basically money/power/status)
"The size of the deflection was exactly as Einstein had predicted from relativity in 1915. The prize should have been his, but the committee snubbed him again."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/08/eins...

"I made my arguments and I referred you to this excellent summary of the evidence. Nothing wrong with that! Referring to a body of factual evidence is not a cheap substitute for reasoning!"
A summery is an interpretation, while if you have any evidence you would just go strait to the evidence.
You do not need interpretations, go to the paper that describes the experiment,
Show what the book presents as evidence.

"lists numerous fossils and their observed relationships"
Yes point them out, since I am actually challenging those "observed relationships".
I studied some of them and they are not evidence but could be easily dismissed as another specie entirely, like the whale case.

"Nothing wrong with that!"
Yes it is wrong, I am asking for evidence and you are giving me the opinions of people on those claimed evidence.
This is like asking to talk to god and they would say that ONLY through the interpretation/priest you can talk to god.

I am sick and tired of asking the same questions over and over again, I want the evidence, not the opinions of people on the evidence.

You have to understand that most of these guys have been thought this as a given, they do not think outside of the box they were caged in, what appears to them as evidence might be their biased opinion because they assume macro-evolution.
This shows up in their papers too so i tend to expect that books authors do the same.

"Referring to a body of factual evidence is not a cheap substitute for reasoning!"
It is if the evidence is represented by a guy who filtered the ones he likes because he is biased on macro-evolution.
He does not have the perspective of an open minded person that takes everything into consideration.
Thus if he finds something that does not help his case, he will ignore it and miss that it actually hinders his case instead of just being irrelevant.
This happens often in any line of research, since it is very easy to miss important aspects when you are not looking for them.

Evolutionists are looking just for aspects to support macro-evolution, not for aspects that challanges it, that is why you don't find books written like Darwin's own paper, where he tries to challenge his own ideas.
That is a true scientist.

"(Yes, some people do have a habit of referring us to this,..."
You won't believe how every single evolutionist does it to me.

"(Some of your questions and points led me to believe that you might benefit from this book.)"
Thanks, I will read them for my own research.

"Am I ignoring something important?"
yes, You are ignoring the most important.

If macro-evolution is a scientific hypothesis, it MUST explain the facts. It must offer an explanation of the facts.
It is its main purpose.

Yet, it does not explain anything at all, it does not explain why or how it happens, it just doesn't.
There is no science behind it, there is no Nature Selected this or that. There is no this mutation does this or that.
Nature can do anything, who needs science?

If you cannot even show that macro-evolution cannot even reach the level of a scientific hypothesis, then you cannot say it is scientific.
It is a belief, you have to believe it on faith that it happens.

I can come up with better hypothesis in minutes which are not supported by evidence, but you do not need to believe them on faith either since they fit all the facts, not just some.

"When debating Bible-believers I often point out that serious Bible scholars reject the notion that the Gospels"
Yes but Bible-believers are not skeptics that are asking for evidence from an Evolutionist believer.
They are making a claim and the burden of proof is on them.

"If it is widely accepted by the experts, then I don't always feel a need to dig up some token quote."
That is an argument of Irrelevant authority fallacy.
You assume someone is an expert on this subject but in truth none is. A lot think they are yes and they write books on it.
This is a highly theoretical subject and practically everybody is shooting ideas left right and center.
The scientific community thought we descended from Neanderthals just 15 years ago and they were proven wrong by geneticists.

Jeff-"I do not read troll posts"
"Why do you disparage them by calling them "troll posts"? "
Straw-man?
I did not call them troll posts, I call Nyarlathotep posts as "troll posts".
He trolls and tries to provoke a flame war and some most disgraceful forum members think that this is acceptable on a forum. They also encourage him to do it more by claiming that he is not trolling at all. Shameful but one would expect it from dishonest people.

"Judging by many of your questions and arguments, you definitely need to study them along with Dr. Prothero's book."
Yea I respect your judgments even though I disagree with it, I think you should be the one actually learning to filter the bullshit.

"Fail to support? Half this post is spent correcting your basic misconceptions about evolution!"
I am pretty sure I addressed every single point you raised and nowhere there you corrected any misconceptions I had, more like pulling fallacies one after the other and thinking they are misconceptions.

"What background do you have?"
This is the problem.
You still cannot be scientific about the subject.
What background could I possible have to help me on this subject which deals with so many topics?
Or are you going for the genetic fallacy?

This is a topic that unless you did a full thesis on(for yourself), you won't get the necessary knowledge about it since it is so big, that usually what happens is that they specialize in a workable components of it like genetics, ethnology, archaeology etc...
So you either love the subject(search for the truth) or you won't know much about it.
No field of work will get you anywhere close on the full picture.
(for the evolution topic alone I had to study: bacteria, skulls, footprints, fossils, dna, rna, history of some animals, dating methods, the solar system, tectonic plates, catastrophic events/extinctions, most apes discovered, teeth, etc...)

"Research papers would be hard for a layman to read and they are very narrowly focused. Most people would not get much good out of them. Bill Nye's book covers all kinds of common misconceptions about evolution in a very friendly way."
Friendly way means, let him filter the evidence for you.
You should stick to the papers when it comes to important issues like the evidence for macro-evolution.
If Bill Nye's book is a good book as you claim, then it should make it easy to access where it is supported in the papers.

"Sometimes scientists may be slow in accepting something new, such as Darwin's evolution or Einstein's relativity, but that is only temporary."
Yes but some aspects of Einstein's relativity have not been accepted to this day.
Sometimes they may just bury it completely like what they did to Tesla, when he was proposing energy via wireless.
NO ONE funded his research even though he showed it is possible and also had credibility with his previous discoveries.
Why?
Politics/money/power were not on his side, his idealism was not popular at the time with the scientific community.

You are naive to think that the scientific community is not shaped around those factors.
If science is in accordance with those factors it happens and if not, it simply stops being scientific.
This is not some major conspiracy, it is human nature, everybody looks after his own interests.
Few would choose to lose their job by researching a subject which hinders their employers.(like what Tesla did)
Even fewer would succeed like the wright brothers.(they had to build the plane themselves).

"They are not nearly as dogmatic"
I did not say all scientists are dogmatic or that scientists are dogmatic.
I said the scientific community is dogmatic on some old concepts.

"Scientists win awards by finding errors in accepted ideas, not in defending them!"
Yea, only if the errors are accepted by the scientific community which decides what is OK or not.
Can't you see that if I find an error in macro-evolution, I won't get an award because that subject is not OK to find errors.
I will get ridiculed, called a conspiracy theorist, called that I know nothing on the subject, asked to go read a book etc...

"Scientists rejected Darwin at first because the scientific community, itself, was almost entirely creationist!!"
That is a myth, yes a good part was, but most were not.
First of all Darwin published his paper in a way to be liked by creationists.
He mentions god both at the beginning and at the end of his paper Origin of Species.
Eg:"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one"
https://www.goodreads.com/reader/3861-on-the-origin-of-species?percent=9...

In fact just 10 years later after his release of the paper they must have converted from creationist to Darwinist/naturalists right?
Since they made a U-TURN and most supported Darwin's idea now.
"especially younger scientists"
It had nothing to do with younger scientists more to do with politics.
The idea was liked by both the scientific community and the creationists, thus it did not cause much inter-denominational religious strife except for some fundamentalists.
"by the time Darwin died, his theory had been accepted by the scientific establishment and was well on the way to being accepted by the Church too."
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwin-and-religion-america

Seriously man filter the bullshit.
The scientific community never wanted religion thought in schools because of religious differences and this predated Darwin's paper. Then later in 1925 a heated debate started and the scientific community chose to side with Darwin's idea instead of removing it until there was concrete evidence because it was convenient.
The creationists main argument was:
If you (scientific community) do not know what happened, let us teach the children a possible scenario.
Darwin's idea was a better alternative against this argument.

"I am shocked!"
You should be, the scientific community first adopted the idea because it was convenient and then it kept macro-evolution thought to children without any real evidence to back it up, again for convenience.

"10,000 scientific papers all based on hidden nonsense??"
If they all just assume macro evolution and just build on it, yes they are as based on nonsense as a castle built on sand.

"it is very clear to me that the vast majority of scientists go into science because they want to explore the unknown."
Yea that surly is the case at first, but when you get down to reality, and understand that you need to feed your family, you start to think differently.

"They are very much interested in the truth!"
Sure but some are but very few are motivated enough to risk ending up on the streets jobless.
In the end most of those who are "interested in the truth!"would just avoid the subject in an official capacity.

"Science is a self-cleaning operation."
Science is, but the scientific community is not especially when it is influenced by politics, power and greed.

"But isn't it also your duty to know something about the subject that you criticize it?"
It is my duty to know the subject, it is not my duty to read all the interpretations of those subjects, just like it is not my duty to read all versions of the bible when debating a creationist.

That is why I am very insisting for you to go strait to the evidence(source) instead of sending me to read books and sites which are probably filtered interpretations that influenced your current belief.

I apologize if there are some replies which are addressed in the next posts which I haven't read yet.
I will reply to the rest of your posts when I have time.