The fact that it cannot be predicted how evolution is going to work is clearly a weakness in the theory.
I didn’t say that it can’t be predicted, but that it isn’t always linear. However, prediction would seem to be difficult because there are so many variables, and I am not aware of the latest and greatest information in that area to know its feasibility. I don’t think it is a weakness, however, because evolution can clearly be simulated with computers to that of a similar complexity, just as pedagogical examples, if not as full fledged models.
You should learn about genetic algorithms and how they work. I’ve programmed a very basic genetic algorithm in the past that does very similar things compared to evolution, but to solve a problem across a different domain. It really helps to actually see something in action like that.
In the case of the Gansus yumenensis, is was virtually identical to a modern duck – living among dinosaurs. Darwinian theory claims that dinosaurs evolved into birds – so, supposedly this all happened prior to that time and then the birds did not change for another 100 million years. The Gansus yumenensis has all the same features as modern birds do.
Your logic here is completely flawed.
First of all, the Gansus yumenensis didn’t have hollow bones, just as one example, so it wasn’t “virtually identical” to a modern duck or have “all the same features”. Birds did change for another 100 million years, some species more, some species less. We don’t have the Gansus yumenensis species anymore, it is extinct, so of course there were changes.
This claim of yours that it was identical to a modern duck is based on scientists, who support evolution, telling you what they thought it looked like, based on some bones, so you are clearly taking one scientific discovery among all the excavations, and using the scientific guesses that suit you, but then dismissing a stronger scientific theory that they support and use in their work.
For this individual case here, they don’t know what the soft tissue looked like, for example, they are just making their best guesses based on the evidence. You just see that artists’ rendering of the animal, and say “man, that thing looks like a duck” and you haven’t even looked at the evidence yourself. But you will eat the evidence right up if it suits your view of the Bible more, but not if it fits the greater evidence based theory of evolution.
Second of all, species evolve at different rates, and so species will be at different levels of evolutionary development and live together during the same time frames. It doesn’t work like how you said, that either you have “dinosaurs” or you have “birds”, and that they can’t live together. The word “dinosaur” refers to a vast number of vastly differing animals, which lived across hundreds of millions of years, and each species developed and evolved at a different rate.
The Gansus yumenensis evolved from much earlier dinosaurs, (and could even be considered a kind of dinosaur, like birds today have been been) and then coexisted with later dinosaurs.
In the same way, humans evolved from lesser primates, but lesser primates still live today. Other more extreme examples are that bacteria still lives today, jellyfish still live today, and crocodiles still live today. Just because one species moves ahead, doesn’t mean that others don’t stay behind evolutionarily, but still live during the same time frame.
Therefore, your simplistic idea that you can either have birds or you can have dinosaurs, but not at the same time, is completely flawed.
Again, I find that extremly imprecise and an after-the-fact claim. There is no scientific consensus on how the Gansus yumenensis evolved or at what speed.
Based only on your lack of knowledge are you making these claims.
But to simply say that evolution sometimes happens fast, sometimes slow or sometimes not at all is to render the theory extremely weak and ill-defined. The same supposed mechanism that produces an amazing diversity of complex and interworking parts of organisms, also will cause zero changes in a species for a period of 100 million years – well after other species have gone extinct. The environment itself has changed in many ways since that time so it’s not reasonable to conclude that the species was “perfectly adapted and therefore didn’t need to evolve”.
You clearly don’t understand how evolution works, and you clearly didn’t even read the wikipedia paragraph that I linked you to.
This also says nothing about mutations that supposedly could have improved various features of the species – but none of those mutations can be found. The bird is the same as modern birds – 100 million years later.
It isn’t the same, this is a straw man argument.
There are many examples like that. I’ve posted items on beetles that are supposedly 300 million years older than dinosaurs, but which look exactly like modern beetles.
Evolutionary theory has no problem with that.
Also, just recently, I posted something on the so-called evolution of peacock’s feathers. The standard evolutionary theory on how they evolved was refuted by observed evidence.
I read about that too, and just because their previous idea was wrong about peacock’s feathers doesn’t mean creationism is right. The peacock example still fits firmly within the context of evolutionary theory, it just occurred due to other factors than what they had thought. We don’t have to explicitly define how every transition of every evolution of a species that has happened for evolutionary theory to be understood or verified.
You can keep focusing on the small number of exceptions to the rule, and I will continue to focus on the vast number of examples that fit within the context of the rule.
