There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present.
You'd think these people would get tired of being wrong. This is not only yet another rebuttal, it's pretty exciting news: from NYT:
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
It's still a fish, unlike Archaeopteryx, which was classified as a bird because it had feathers. Now we know that some dinosaurs had feathers. But this one, Tiktaalik roseae is just as much a transitional fossil as Archie.
Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in this country, but other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. . . .
Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."
Gish, as usual, is full of beans, and he's being fairly dishonest about it. The point is, we haven't found that particular sequence of fossiels yet. We may never find them, the processes of fossilization and discovery being what they are. That's doesn't mean those creatures never existed. The present-day lack of a transition between invertebrates and vertebrates isn't a problem for evolution, even if it is a problem for idiots like Gish. (And how is he going to prove they didn't exist? He can't.)
To go back to our original quote: in the face of examples such as Archaeopteryx, a whole group of transitional whales, a solid sequence of fossil horses, and now this, (and there are more) when you keep insisting on something that's not objectively true, that makes you either a nutcase or a liar -- or both.
The evidence is there:
Archaeopteryx lithographica:
And a reconstruction:
Mesohippus (notice the toes):
And Ambulocetus, a whale that walked:
And, as a closing comment, it's really a sad statement about the state of America today when a news article on an important fossil find has to cater to the whackjobs on the ignorant right by even mentioning them. We used to have a thing in this country called journalism. C'mon guys -- the find itself is news enough. Are you trying to generate some controversy by interviewing charlatans like Gish, who have been completely discredited?
Puh-leeze!
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