Hi CoooCaw, sorry to keep you waiting, but I need to say a couple of things as a preamble.
First, the phrase 'missing link' has fallen out of use as it leads to an erroneous understanding of evolution. By way of explanation I recently heard about a woman who made a photographic record of her child, taking a picture a day for a number of years. She then assembled the images using an photo editing program and put them together as in a film strip. The result, I heard, was quite spectacular. In a matter of a minute or so the child matures before our eyes.
Now let's imagine that we randomly pull one image of the child and examine it. Would you be better to describe the picture as a missing link or as an intermediate stage in the child's development? Which description is the more accurate?
Now as a thought experiment let's say for a moment that evolution is true. Start with a living person and trace that lineage back and by magic let's collect a photo record of each of that person's male ancestors going back to the beginning of life on Earth (and remember, we are assuming evolution is true). If we then assembled the images in the form of a film strip and watched them run through we could see a lower life form transforming into a man. If then we were to pull a single image of that organism and examine it would we be looking at a missing link or at an intermediate form?
Creationists often jest about crock-a-ducks but my point is that they seem to think that an evolutionary jump takes place in which one form of animal miraculously gives birth to an animal very different from the parent stock. Anti-evolutionists speak of missing links, that point at which they imagine a new species is supposed to have evolved. I hope by my thought experiment I have made clear that evolution is seen by evolutionists to produce intermediate forms, not sudden transformations.
First, the phrase 'missing link' has fallen out of use as it leads to an erroneous understanding of evolution. By way of explanation I recently heard about a woman who made a photographic record of her child, taking a picture a day for a number of years. She then assembled the images using an photo editing program and put them together as in a film strip. The result, I heard, was quite spectacular. In a matter of a minute or so the child matures before our eyes.
Now let's imagine that we randomly pull one image of the child and examine it. Would you be better to describe the picture as a missing link or as an intermediate stage in the child's development? Which description is the more accurate?
Now as a thought experiment let's say for a moment that evolution is true. Start with a living person and trace that lineage back and by magic let's collect a photo record of each of that person's male ancestors going back to the beginning of life on Earth (and remember, we are assuming evolution is true). If we then assembled the images in the form of a film strip and watched them run through we could see a lower life form transforming into a man. If then we were to pull a single image of that organism and examine it would we be looking at a missing link or at an intermediate form?
Creationists often jest about crock-a-ducks but my point is that they seem to think that an evolutionary jump takes place in which one form of animal miraculously gives birth to an animal very different from the parent stock. Anti-evolutionists speak of missing links, that point at which they imagine a new species is supposed to have evolved. I hope by my thought experiment I have made clear that evolution is seen by evolutionists to produce intermediate forms, not sudden transformations.
