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In reply to #20: You must not have heard of the minimalist movement in biblical archaeology. These scholars take the biblical stories as starting points for history but not as literal retellings of history. One of the most prominent minimalist scholars is Israel Finkelstein, who claims that the Bible was written centuries after the stories it retells and casts the historical events in the light of the later era. For instance, he believes that the Jerusalem of David and Solomon was not a great city but a mere village.

It is possible to have faith in God and Christ and still not take the stories in the Bible as 100% accurate. The Bible is a handbook for living the right life. The stories were passed from generation to generation by grandparents telling stories to their grandchildren. It is inevitable that some changes were made along the way, especially when the stories were finally written down.

Linda-Allen, i was accepting of your post until you discredited the bible. i will tell you this, there is a passage of scripture is Revelation 22:18-19 that says "For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." Translation: You will spend enternity in Hell if you add or take away from the bible. I don't know how your grandparents and parents told you the stories but mine actually had a bible open in front of them reading it, so, that tells me the story was not miscontrewn. You may say words get lost in translations, but you're wrong. The bible was originally written in Hebrew, if it still appeared that way nobody would be able to read or understand it. When different translations were made of course words are lost here and there, most languages, like Hebrew, do not have all the words we have, their vocabulary is not that big, so, you need to rethink that comment you made. The bible was ordained by GOD therefore it is 100% accurate and 100% holy!

As far as the idea of pi being 3, that is exactly what pi was considered to be in ancient times.  The Babylonians considered the circumference of a circle to be three times the diameter, ie that pi equals 3.  So did the Roman Vitruvius, one of the founders of architecture as a science.  By 1800 BC the Egyptians had pi to 3.1604, but it was not until 1789 that pi was proven to be an irrational number, and 1882 that it was proven to be what is termed a transcendental number, by Lambert and Lindemann respectively.  It seems shortsighted of us today to make fun of people in the past for believing what everyone then believed, even their contemporary mathematicians.

The theory that the Bible was told and retold orally for centuries before it was written down, although widely believed, seems odd if you think about it.  Writing was quite common in the ancient world, widely used by the public at large and taught in school to children as a matter of course at least as far back as the third millenia BC.  The city of Akkad, scene of the first "empire" of history, was also known as Sippar, which means "scribe town."  Excavations, starting with the first in Sumeria by Rich, Botta, and Layard found tablets and inscriptions at every site.  This has continued to the present.

Moses was raised as a prince in the house of Pharoah, at a time when writing had been in use for thousands of years, and he was educated at the court.  He then lived in an area of southern Arabia where writing is known to have been common for centuries.  If he felt what he was doing was important, can we rationally believe he didn't have it all written down?

As for transitional forms in fossils, sorry frizzy, but nothing has been found to support the quotes you cite.  Wikipedia's not much of a source, except for pop culture.  Try some of these books:

Collin Patterson, the Listener (Patterson has retired as head paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History- his book is probably the one you should start with);

Salet, Hasard et al, Certitude: le Transformisme devant la Biologie Actuelle;

B. Leith, the Descent of Darwin;

N. MacBeth, Darwin Retried;

Stephen Jay Gould, the Panda's Thumb;

H. Nielson, Synthetische Artbilding;

Luther Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma;

well, I could list a couple dozen more just to start with, and a long selection of articles from mainstream and specialized scientific publications, many involving paleontology and archaeology, but that'll do to get you started.  You may not recognize the names some of these authors, but if you don't recognize Gould and Patterson you probably don't really know this field very well.  Oh, and check out the centennial edition of Origin of the Species, the one with the introduction by Thompson, or the 1971 edition with the introduction by L. H. Matthews.

This discussion seems to have degenerated into nothing but opinions, usually set forth with no regard to proof or courtesy, which seems useless in terms of learning anything.

Hi1954! :-) You're right, we should be courteous, I get carrried away sometimes!

Yes, Wiki isn't perfect, but it's extremely useful as a link to primary sources. I'm a big wiki fan, it is evolving (ho ho) into a very powerful tool.

I find the Pi = 3 thing an interesting argument for Biblical accuracy. The scholar who measured that circular pot/jar showed great accuracy... for his/her era. I feel churlish and petty for sniping at their accurate work. But they weren't exactly right. And as we see from Estodd1809's post, some people will threaten you with lakes of fire if you suggest The Bible is wrong. Which means this quibbling error is important. It is perfectly clear those numbers are inaccurate, even if only slightly. It is an error in the bible.

...

Technically, all species are in transition, so a "transitional fossil" is a misconception for genuine scientists. But if we lay-scientists are refering to fossils which show clear stages of development between animal groups, then here's a list from, yes, Wikipedia. It shows several separate lines of fossils displaying evolutionary development. It includes the world famous Archaeopteryx, a lizard/bird creature - a very real, very beautiful 'missing link' fossil 'between' reptiles and birds. There are lots of undeniable, conclusive fossils which show important stages of evolutionary development. Why do think there aren't?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

1. SCIENTISTS, and HISTORIANS have investigated the Bible and found no flaws, no blemishes, or inconsistancies! (sic)
2. Hell is a real place my friend and the bible says the all who do not believe will be cast into the lake of fire!!!
3. You will spend eternity in Hell if you add or take away from the bible.  Estodd1809

No.1 is an outrageous, unsupportable claim. There are many scientists and historians who believe they have found factual errors in the bible and you know that as well as I do. Scince and History do not universally support the stories in the Bible. Far from it. God said Christians shouldn't lie. You appear to be guilty of bearing false witness and so, therefore, also hypocrisy.

Nos.2 and 3 Threatening people with extreme violence (even in the afterlife) does not convince me of Christianity's good qualities (and it certainly makes me wonder about yours). I do not like to be threatened by religious people. I am protected by the Constitution from your intolerance and you can't touch me or threaten me in any way. Your dire warnings of a terrible hell awaiting anyone who disagrees with your version of Christianity are frankly pathetic. I reject your threats utterly and feel sure that if their is a truly benign creator he would dislike the aggression you vent in his peaceful name. And if there is a heaven and a hell, I suggest you worry about your own final destination rather than damning others.

To your dismay, for your critique of my number 1, they have investigeted it and found nothing out of place. People that have found stuff that is out of place are basing that on opinion rather than fact. Plus i was not threatening people. Christianity has good qualities but the real truth is Hell is a literal place and it pains me to know that people who reject the free gift of salvation will suffet there. That is not a threat that is a promise. Only God, the almighty creator can protect you, your's and my Constitution is an instalment, an inatimant object you put your faith it. I am not a religious person. You need to look up Christianity, it's not a religion it is a head belief and faith. I'm not worried about my final destination, I know where I am going! I am commissioned to make disciples of all nations to make sure that I know where they are going. I present the gospel and let God do the convicting. Deuteronomy  30:19 says I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;. Choose life my friend do not visit the place God has made for those who don't!

You may not recognize the names some of these authors, but if you don't recognize Gould and Patterson you probably don't really know this field very well. Hi1954

In another post you repeat the importance of Gould and Patterson. Yes I know them. Gould is one of the modern fathers of evolution and his work is entirely in support of evolution and the common descent of modern complex life from common ancestry. He reshaped our understanding of evolutionary processes commonly called 'evolution by jerks'. 

Patterson is a minor but serious scientist, regularly abused, misquoted and taken out of context by creationists. He has spoken on record to say that his intentions have been distorted and he is repeatedly misquoted by creationists.

http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/colpat171.htm

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

HI1954, you said, "This discussion seems to have degenerated into nothing but opinions" and you implied my knowledge may be lacking from which I infer that you feel your knowledge is highly informed. Fine. 

Specifically, with factual explanation, why do Archaeopteryx and Lucy not convince you of evolution and why do you think they don't qualify as transitional fossils.

In reply to #22: You are very mistaken in saying that I "discredited" the Bible. It is the Holy Book of Christianity, and it should be respected as such. To call the stories in the Bible "stories" is not to discredit their power. Jesus himself was a storyteller and used stories in his teaching. The parable of the prodigal son should not be taken literally. Jesus was not reporting on an incident that he witnessed. So also, Old Testament writers were not reporting events they had witnessed but were relating stories their elders had told them. As I said before, it is inevitable that some stories got changed or embellished.

In reply to #28: How do you know that the stories and laws were changed or embellished? Were you there or are you just assuming?

frizzyperm, I don't know what your level of expertise is. I probably could have phrased that better, though, and I did not mean it as any sort of insult. Gould is a believer in his Punctuated Equilibrium theory, not the "General Theory." I like his work because of his disdain for the 'just-so stories' type of evolution. "In honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic design than a saga of accumulating excellence,"  from his article in Natural History, February 1984, sums it up. It was Patterson's book which first caused me to question the theory, although I'm not sure being the head paleontologist of the world's foremost natural history museum makes him a "minor scientist."

There are eight examples of Archaeopteryx, some so well preserved the details of the feathers are visible, and soft tissue. Among the soft tissue are the lungs. Avian lungs do not have a bidirectional air flow, like mammals or reptiles, which breath in and out through the same bronchial tubes. Birds have lungs which are small and rigid, with a flow-through arrangement of nine interconnecting flexible air sacs between the muscles under the skin.These aren't involved in oxygen exchange, but act like a bellows pumping air unidirectionally through the lungs. This puts more oxygen content into the bloodstream and keeps the volume of the lungs relatively constant, which helps birds stay level in flight. Archaeopteryx has these lungs. What soft tissue evidence found in therapods had convinced many paleontologists and evolutionary biologists by the late 1970s that they had bidirectional lungs. The remains of a Sinosauopteryx, a supposed ancestor, was found in the 1990s with the visceral cavity in excellent preservation, and has a diaphragm-like muscle seperating the lungs and liver, like an alligator. This is the best preserved of these examples, but it confirms what many others indicated long ago, that the lungs of therapods were like reptiles, not those of birds (J.A. Ruben, T.D. Jones, N.R. Geist, and W.J. Hillenius, Lung structure and ventilation in theropod dinosaurs and early birds, Science 278:1267–1270, 1997).

One of the most striking features of Archaeopteryx is the three long fingers in the wings. Most terrestrial vertebrates have this five-fingered hand in embryo, and in both therapods and birds two are greatly reduced or lost in embryonic development. Therapods retained fingers 1, 2 and 3 (counting the thumb as 1), but birds retain 2, 3 and 4.  Archaeopteryx has the bird structure (A. Feduccia, T. Lingham-Soliar, and J.R. Hinchliffe, Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence, Journal of Morphology 266:125–166, 2005).

Then there are feathers. Dinosaurs being essentially reptiles, we have known since fairly early fossil examples of skin that they had scales. Compsognathus is a dinosaur supposed to be an ancestor of birds, and an excellently preserved example found post-2000 has scales, but no feathers (U.B. Gohlich and L.M. Chiappe, A new carnivorous dinosaur from the late Jurassic Solnhofen archipelago, Nature 440:329–332, 2006). The so-called "feathered dinosaurs" were found largely in Liaoning Province of China, and both Sinosauropteryx and Sinithosaurus have what are called "proto-feathers," interlaced structures with no real resemblance to feathers. These turn out to be collagen, connecting tissue in the deep dermal layer of skin. As it was put in one article, “The major and most worrying problem of the feathered dinosaur hypothesis is that the integumental structures have been homologized with avian feathers on the basis of anatomically and paleontologically unsound and misleading information.”(Feduccia, T. Lingham-Soliar, and J.R. Hinchliffe, Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence, Journal of Morphology 266:125–166, 2005).The Archaeoraptor of National Geographic's November 1999 issue was a fraud. Making all this more complicated is the fact that true birds were found in the same rock strata in China as their supposed ancestors, and that two taxa (Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx) orignally thought to be dinosaurs are now considered large flightless birds (op cit). That the supposed ancestors are 20 million years more recent than Archaeopteryx is certainly an issue.