justintime said:
Most of the fossil variations have been eventually proven to be variations within the same species either a result of deformities, dwarfism, diseases or wrongly identified bone fragments belonging to other species.
Funny how neither I nor any of my colleagues agree with this. In fact, there's an entire field, paleopathology, specificaly devoted to examining deformity and disease in the fossil record. I never got into it; parasitology is facinating, but I can only talk about parasitic castration and forced sex-changes for so long before I need some fresh air (that was a rather disturbing class....). Deformities and diseases often have osteological signitures that can be examined. Paleontologists specifically exclude such features from taxonomic analysis.
As for misidentification, it does happen from time to time. However, it's not nearly as common as people think. The morphospecies concept is what practicing field biologists actually use in day-to-day identification (had a few fun conversations about that), and is a fairly good way to differentiate between species. Perfect? No. But then again, no species concept is.
Paleontological identification is not done with "bone fragments". It's done with diagnostic material (
see here for a brief discussion). These can be fragmentary remains, but only certain fragments. In mammals, teeth are extremely diagnostic; each species has its own tooth structure (tested via analysis of modern organisms). If you find teeth, you can identify the species (again, deformity and pathology are very clear, and can be used to draw conclusions about the ecosystem). Reptiles don't have diagnostic teeth, but other parts of the organism are much more diagnostic than in mammals. We want the full organism wherever possible, but once you have enough material to differentiate it from all other species it's perfectly justifiable to name a new species.
Iamme said:
We dont all have PH.D`s in a certain field, to know everything, so we need to listen to all sides of an argument.
This is a false equivalency. Creationism is, simply put, no where near on par with evolutionary biology or paleontology. And you don't need a Ph.D. to know that. I don't have one. All it takes is a careful analysis of the data. You need to put some legwork into this. Read some textbooks on biology. Read some on geology. Read some on paleontologist. If you can, get ahold of things like "Principles of Geology", which was published prior to Darwin's work (he had a copy of it with him on his voyage). I can highly recommend "Darwin's Century"--it's a fantastic overview of the history of evolutionary theory, including a general overview of the lines of evidence that led Darwin to his most famous conclusions. "Evolution, Time, and Man" is even better if you can find it, because it goes into more depth about various controversies in the hsitory of evolutionary theory.
Listening to an online argument is not sufficient. You are attempting to learn multiple fields of science. This format is simply incapable of providing such in-depth information. You need to put some additional effort--a great deal of it--into this if you wish to have an informed opinion.
I will say this, though: look at the two sides in terms of character. justintime has been shown to be a liar on numerous occasions, and has no problem twisting and distoring other people's statements in order to make them appear to support what he says.
This is standard Creationist operating procedure. In contrast, the scientists and those who accept evolutionary theory have been remarkably patient with their explanations, and have been willing, at every step, to back up what they say with evidence and references. This is a very strong hint about which side is actually right.
