Transitional fossils

Dear Discovery Institute,

Today we will talk about your stance on transitional fossils once again. As suggested in my earlier post on transitional fossils, at least some of your members think that there are no transitional fossils. However, when a transitional form such as Tiktaalik comes up, obviously falling right between phases that were supposed to have had not transitional phases, you seem compelled to comment. We will consider an attack on mainstream scientists and Tiktaalik linked on your site in this letter.

First, here is a link to the article being discussed:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/04/one_step_forward_two_steps_bac.html

Now, for our first quote:

"I love it when new "missing links" are discovered, because it's then--and only then--that Darwinists admit how precious little evidence had previously existed for the evolutionary transition in question. When reports came out this week of an alleged example of a fossil representative of the stock that might have led from fish to tetrapods -- Tiktaalik roseae -- evolutionists finally came clean about the previous lack of fossil evidence for such a transition"

I don't see the major issue with scientists admitting to not having a transitional form. An argument of this type is about as valid as attacking a scientist's background by claiming that the individual did not have a strong background before recieving an education. Just because Tiktaalik was not known initially does nothing to undermine it's validity as a transitional form. In fact, it serves to support evolutionary theory; evolution predicts the presence of a transitional form, paleontologists find exactly that in the rock record, and then claiming that the transitional fossil is invalid because scientists don't have the transitional fossils that fall between this transitional fossil, less complex fossils, and more complex fossils. But I guess this is the sort of attack that the Intelligent Design movement must resort to when any "evidence" of a Designer in the fossil record is completely and totally insignificant. Attacking admissions of the lack of transitional fossil A when we have B, C, and F does nothing to undermine the scientific validity of evolution. Rather, it shows that scientists aren't making up transitional fossils. Scientists have the transitional fossils that they claim exist. I guess this is the type of attack that must be resorted to when there is no scientific validity behind the claims of the attacking party.

The general trend with this type of argument is as follows: First, mention a transitional fossil, then make some sort of weak attack against modern science (often selectively quoting from technical papers that appear to support their claims when in actuality the article itself doesn't; I suggest referring to the link posted and checking out the papers discussed for more on this). Then, we see the argument from personal incredulity...ie "well I can't see how this can be a transitional fossil, so it must not be", ignoring that the scientists who studied the fossil may actually know more about paleontology than the author of the article debunking the science does. Funny. Does the article linked in this blog use this type of end claim? Of course!! Let's see it!

"But only now that we have Tiktaalik will we hear evolutionists boast about the size of the previously large "gap" in this transition, and how Tiktaalik solves all these previously unanswered questions. I'm super skeptical that this new fossil is good evidence that a transition took place: Acanthostega was truly a tetrapod, but Tiktaalik is a fish. As Clack and Ahlberg write, there's still a large gap (and any usefulness a fin had for walking was the result of a lucky pre-adaptation)"

My advice, trust scientists who have worked on the fossils, and not some random person writing on a website that claims that Tiktaalik can't be a transitional fossil because of some preconcieved devotion to the "wrongness" of evolution. I'll link some of the articles here. Have fun Discovery Institute, they make the author's points in the linked article above look extremely weak.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/abs/nature04637.html

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~karowe/tetrapod%20fish%20brief%20summary%20NAture%20April%202006.pdf

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/abs/nature04639.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5770/33

There's 4 peer-reviewed, scientific journal articles that support Tiktaalik's validity as a transitional form. I challenge you to show me even one peer-reviewed article debunking this fact.