Quote:
Originally posted by iman
Take the example of a bird's wing. I don't suppose that a fully formed, functional wing would have sprung out of a wingless animal. A little stub of a wing must have grown first. Now, how could a little stubby wing-thingie be at all beneficial to the survival of the animal? Or, how could it make the animal reproduce easier - be attractive? Evolutionists could explain these examples only by sticking to their guns and saying "Well, a stubby wing-thingie MUST have been beneficial to the animal, or the animal wouldn't have survived!!" But that's just saying that evolution is true because the theory of evolution is true. Likewise if wings formed from long appendages spreading out somehow. You could construct some sort of story about gliding animals with flabby-assed arms developing into winged animals, but unless you're really wedded to your account and really want it to work out, you'll probably see that flabby arms probably wouldn't be a good thing or help animals glide.
Sticking to birds - lots and lots of traits must have concurrently evolved in order to make a bird: hollow bones, feathers, wings (probably more). Now, all of these traits seem to work well together (hollow bones make the bird light so it can fly using wings and feathers), but none of the traits seem to be beneficial unless they're paired with the other ones. Quick, name a non-bird with feathers? You mean feathers didn't "stick" as a trait? Okay, maybe the hollow bones came first - name a non-flying animal with hollow bones? Okay, so that doesn't seem to be very beneficial by itself, except as something to help you fly. Wings? Same idea.
I'm not a creationist (not even a Christian/Jew/Muslim), and I don't believe in that shite, but there does seem to be a conspicuous order to the way parts of an organism work together. I know, evolution tries to explain this by saying that the reason the parts work so well is that those traits stuck over time. Step back for a minute and think about something as complex as the eye. Soooo many things have to work in perfect order for an eye to work - how the hell could something like that have evolved the way Darwin says things evolve?
I'm not saying "evolution" is wrong. Of course things evolve. I'm saying Darwin's way of explaining evolution has some problems as far as I'm concerned. I'm happy to be proved wrong, though.
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You picked a bad example.
The evolution of the wing and birds is a very hot topic in biology and there is a LOT of evidence.
Wings didn't start out stubby, they were arms/forelegs.
Feathers didn't start out for flight (note not all birds fly) but for insulation and perhaps coloration.
What you had were small, feathered reptiles, which we now think evolved into birds. There are MANY fossils of missing bird/dinosaur links.
Archaeopteryx, the 'first' bird.
A VERY early feathered, non-flying dinosaur
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A better drawing of the above
Figure 2 Protarchaeopteryx robusta. a, Outline of the specimen shown in Fig. 1a. b, Outline of the left dentary teeth shown in Fig. 1b. c, Drawing of the front of the jaws, showing the large size of the premaxillary teeth compared with maxillary and dentary ones. Abbreviations: Co, coracoid; d, dentary; F, femur; f, feathers; Fib, fibula; Fu, furcula; H, humerus; m, maxilla; P, pubis; pm, premaxilla; R, radius; S, scapula; St, sternal plate; T, tibia; U, ulna. Numbers represent tooth positions from front to back.
There are more flaws with your argument, but I think you get the picture.