all I want to know is whether or not it was edible

Yeah, most creationists use the distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. AFAIK, there's only just EVOLUTION, which is the process they describe as microevolution but the only reason they reject it(at least the crhristian creationists) is because they think the earth is 6000 years old and macroevolution=dogs giving birth to fish and elks giving birth to bipedal moose with huge spinal cords. Which would be interesting, but yeah, most of them either fail to grasp the concept of something slowly changing from one form into another through time(and there's no such thing as a transitional form, unless you count me as a transitional form between my parents and my offspring in which case you are correct. if I get exposed to toxic waste or radiation that makes my dna molecules diverge and mutate way faster than normal in order to adapt to the environment I have been exposed to, then my offspring will come off slightly more diverse than they would if they were born under normal conditions, and if that process went on for a while, after say, ten generations you could create something way different appearance-wise.).



SUMMARY: tl;dr, fuck yoour dawkins i will readp my bibel it says jesus turned rocks into fish and walkedo n water so he is a xenomorph from the arliens franchisxe

Surprise: science isn't as simple as you thought it was.

This whole "missing link" stuff is nonsense that scientists shouldn't even be paying attention to, but I think they went ahead with this because it's good PR. Which isn't a bad thing, considering the fact too many people still believe that science can rationally be disproven by a religious alternative. It casts further doubts on the idea that only microevolution, and not macroevolution, can be proven at all. (Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this the main line of thinking for religious evolution doubters these days?)

what? as far as i'm aware missing link stuff is the only thing that keeps evolution a scientific theory, otherwise it's completely post-hoc and unfalsifiable. or do you think rationally we should accept evolution as truth without question?

what? as far as i'm aware missing link stuff is the only thing that keeps evolution a scientific theory, otherwise it's completely post-hoc and unfalsifiable. or do you think rationally we should accept evolution as truth without question?

Saying something is a missing link to something else is like saying that the middle segment of a pizza is the missing link between cheese and pepperoni.

EDIT: okay well not really, but I am hungry.

i'm... what?
successive changes give the strongest support for evolution, it's about small successive changes. it takes more than a couple mutations to get from a dinosaur to a mammal and this is a link that was missing in that succession!

yeah he sticks his noodly appendage in the fossil record every time you try and look *pulls out book "dawkins is delusional," pretends to read it but is really watching for your reaction*

So climbtree are you really a pastafari fundamentalist.

i'm... what?
successive changes give the strongest support for evolution, it's about small successive changes. it takes more than a couple mutations to get from a dinosaur to a mammal and this is a link that was missing in that succession!

a link but it really doesn't do anything other than say look a link.

missing link implies we were actually missing something to begin with when in reality it's more like oh cool here's another succession we didn't know about.

asdflkjhasdflkjh MAYBE GOD DIDN'T LEAVE FOSSILS TO TEST YOUR FAITH. if you think the need to find these isn't necessary you don't understand science. this is like saying i have a theory about a 50 drawer desk, every drawer full of socks, because i opened 10 drawers and they're all full of socks so theory AOK. all you need is one drawer of t-shirts and the theory falls apart, so yeah until you've opened EVERY. SINGLE. DRAWER. each one is important in supporting the theory. that wasn't meant to be analagous to the theory of evolution so i suppose it'd be more like each pair of socks starts off brand new and moves from the top drawers down to the bottom the more worn out they get. all you'd need is to find a pair of brand new socks below a pair of worn out ones and the theory is disproven, finding more and more worn out socks below brand new ones is the best support your theory has (though only logically in this example because there's a limited set of drawers). saying "god put all the socks there" is logically as feasible as the theory of worn out sock movement until all the boxes have been opened, though sock-drift theory is more useful for explaining the presence of other socks. both are really saying SOCKS ARE HERE, THIS IS WHY except with the god theory you don't get disgusting things like throwing out all the worn out socks to encourage new ones to trickle down or saying one sock isn't as good for running because it's roots were gathering berries rather than hunting.

i shouldn't even be on here.

in your sock example instead make it a bunch of fucking fossils we've been finding since the 1800s and that no one really doubts anymore at all and finding them is always nice but labeling any of it THE MISSING LINK is misleading because it's just a link, and you can split a hair for a long time it seems.

in your sock example instead make it a bunch of fucking fossils we've been finding since the 1800s and that no one really doubts anymore at all and finding them is always nice

logically and scientifically this isn't defendable though! it seems like your contention is mostly over calling it "the missing link" though, which i wasn't even trying to argue for. dada said that "Which isn't a bad thing, considering the fact too many people still believe that science can rationally be disproven by a religious alternative." when rationally saying 'god did it' is just as strong as evolutionary theory.

changing the socks to fossils that we've been finding for a really long time doesn't change anything in the example, and if widespread belief is a measure of truthfulness then uhhh

lol climbtree, to really put your example into context it would be more like we opened 50 drawers and found socks, then one drawer was missing, but then it continues for 100 more of socks, what on earth would posess you to think it was a draw full of t-shirts?

it seems like your contention is mostly over calling it "the missing link"

yep although I think you're still being captious about evolution in general.