Quote:

1. There is no scientist who is 400 million years old.



It was a joke. And I know that the evolution of the whale doesn't extend that far back, but if I was trying to be accurate, I also wouldn't be making comments about ancient scientists.

Quote:

2. The Pakicetus fossil does not look like a whale.



Its called the earliest whale, when its obviously a hyena-like land animal. My point is that evolution is so dumb that evolutionists can't help but make themselves look stupid by calling one of the most un whale-like animals 'the earliest whale.'

Quote:

3. It was not complete.



That's right. Evolutionists are infamous for the misinterpretation of partial fossils. For instance the pig's tooth that they thought was early man. Another example being pakicetus having fin like appendages and swimming through the water much like a whale. Then it turns out its a terrestrial four-legged animal. Then the filed and stained skull that was used as proof of evolution for 50 years before they finally realized it was a hoax. The archaeoraptor that some magazine paid something like $50,000 for until they realized it was also a hoax. The lack of transitional fossils over the last 150 years has made evolutionists desperate to find anything, otherwise everything they've devoted their lives to is worthless.

One of the major problems is that they lack a hip bone and most of the spine. So they imagined in the rest of the creature as being low to the ground, based only on part of its legs. I wouldn't be surprised if a more complete fossil find made them revise their whole thinking on that one (which is exactly what happened with pakicetus if the information I read is correct...in that case they had part of a skull and imagined a sea creature). Its not like it would be the first time.

Quote:

4. It could have been a fake.



I must have said something that made you think this is what I meant. It was probably just bad communication on my part. I don't think any of these fossils are fake. If they're all real, it still does little for whale evolution.

Quote:

5. It was a land animal, while the whale is a water animal.



In that diagram I showed you, the first three are clearly designed for land locomotion. Then all of the sudden you have a creature that's designed for aqueous locomotion. Where was the transition?

Quote:

6. I don't trust scientists.



I trust scientists. I think they really believe they've discovered whale evolution, and I trust that they believe they have. What I don't trust is their imagination. Its made them the laughing stock of non-evolutionists for years because they don't just keep getting it wrong. They keep getting it WAY wrong and every time we investigate nature further, they either have to keep completely revising things to save their theory, or explain away the evidence as unimportant. I've never seen a job where you can get things wrong over and over and over again and there are no consequences. Well...except politicians of course. Oh, snap!

Quote:

I hope I didn't overloook an argument.



You did. The molecular DNA evidence links whales with hippos, camels, pigs, etc. There is no fossil evidence of this link. If you believe the DNA evidence, then the fossil record is strangely silent on whale evolution.

I also made a mild objection to them resizing the skeletal evidence to make it look like these animals line up nice and neat, like its an unbroken line. The fact of the matter is even assuming these are peices to the puzzle, evolutionists are missing way more peices than they're willing to let on.

Quote:

Pakicetus lived 50 million years ago, not 400 million, and it was probably amphibious, not a land animal.



I know it didn't live that long ago.



I'm not scientist, and I don't claim that this is a scientific argument. But if you had to guess if this animal was amphibious or completely terrestrial, what would you say?

I think the idea of it being amphibious comes from their guess that it had fin-like appendages and the like before we discovered a more complete skeleton. Here's an illustration of the animal before we had more evidence.



That's from a creationist website, of course, but it shows you how individual animals actually can evolve when you just put in a whole lot of imagination. Look! The pakicetus evolved right before our eyes.

If my arguments seem semi-amateur, its only because I was purposely avoiding any creationist literature on this one. I just wanted to voice my own personal objections to whale evolution without being 'tainted' by any outside creationist sources just yet.

But as long as I'm here, here's a comparison of the reconstructed ambulocetus and what they actually found.



If it did have much bigger hind legs, it might have a hard time walking. But based on the BBC diagram it looks like it wouldn't be that bad. However, their fossil looks just slightly different from the other picture in the forelimbs. Kind of a strange animal. But! Even given their interpretation, going from ambulocetus to a whale-like animal seen in my diagram just below it is a huge jump. I would think that actual transition would be in between those two. I mean, having what appears to be fully developed legs, and then completely losing the hind legs (for the genital anchors) and having fully formed fins seems like quite an extensive change.

Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 07/02/06 18:43.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."