Creationist offering $7.5 trillion if you prove evolution

[Are_grits_groceries]

Palaeontologists: this could be your lucky day. Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar has just offered ten trillion lira - a mouth-watering $7.5 trillion - to "anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution".

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/palaeontologists-this-could-be.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specrt10_head_Easy%20money?

Hope somebody can find something definitive!

[SoCalDem]

1. Kook..

people who offer outlandish "rewards" have no intention of ever paying them...He might as well be offering ruby slippers & magic beans :) NO amount of evidence would ever "satisfy" these freaky folks:)

[MrScorpio]

2. Like the check won't bounce

Wooo, I'm impressed!

[Botany]

3. where do I get my money?

Evolution = the change in gene frequency over time.

[bigendian]

4. I'll see that and raise it to $8 trillion.

Just "prove" intelligent design.

[Winterblues]

5. Knows absolutely zero about biology...

:shrug:

[Richard D]

6. And, um . . .

. . . he'd get the money from where? Warren Buffet is only worth 62 Billion.

[evlbstrd]

7. These guys win.

http://ecoworldly.com/2008/10/07/scientists-discover-fish-in-act-of-evolution-in-africas-greatest-lake/

In what could be a first in the world, a fish species in the cichlid family has been observed by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake and one of the world’s biggest fresh water bodies.

This may be remarkable because what is causing them to diverge are adaptations to their vision as animals and plants try to cope with increased pollution and the effects of climate change. The change is also happening without geographical isolation, which was thought to be a precursor for evolution.

The Pundamilia nyererei is a haplochromine type cichlid native to areas in the Mwanza Gulf region of Lake Victoria. This region consists of many islands where each island region has its own color variant of the fish.

In a report published in the journal Nature, researchers from Tokyo’s Institute of Technology and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology have observed the cichlid evolve into a new species better adapted in sighting its prey and predator.

But the scientists have also tabled evidence indicating that it is not pollution and over-fishing alone that are responsible for the disappearance of some fish species in Lake Victoria and the evolving of others like the cichlid into new species.

The report summarizes that new species may be born because of vision differences and what fish see at least in one African lake could be the driving force that causes them to evolve into new species.

This may explain the very rapid loss of pundamilia in Lake Victoria over the past 30 years. The study says the eye adaptations have also affected mating patterns.

Researchers looked at two species, conspicuous by their red or blue colours. They determined through lab experiments that certain genetic mutations helped some fish adapt their vision at deeper levels to see the colour red and others in shallower water to recognise shades of blue.

The researchers showed that the eyes have adapted to this difference so that fish that live in deeper water have a pigment in their eyes that is more sensitive to red light, while shallow-water fish were sensitive to blue.

Generally, the evolutionary process of speciation (the formation of new species) occurs when one species is split by a physical distance or barrier, allowing each group to develop different traits. The observations of Lake Victoria’s cichlids provide evidence of an unusual form of evolution known as sympatric speciation, which occurs without the physical separation of a population group.

[rurallib]

8. his money is as good as his beliefs, I betchya

[Lifetimedem]

9. You mean there is nothing "definite"?

[BuyingThyme]

10. Got it...

http://www.bushorchimp.com/

[southernleftylady]

11. Doesn't the caterpillar turning into a butterfly show that evolution CAN happen?nt

[Justyce]

12. I wonder if my old college Biology textbook is proof enough. It

convinced me...

[Lifetimedem]

13. You mean there is nothing "definite"?

[Warren Stupidity]

14. There are plenty of intermediate form fossils.

On the other hand I rather doubt Oktar actually has access to 7.5 trillion dollars.

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossil

Pay Wiki 7.5 trillion Oktar, a fucking platypus is an intermediate animal and there are fossils of platypus.

"Transitional forms vs. 'intermediate' forms
The terms 'transitional' and 'intermediate' are for the most part used as synonyms; however, a distinction between the two can be made:

"Transitional" can be used for those forms that do not have a significant number of unique derived traits that the derived relative does not possess as well. In other words, a transitional organism is morphologically close to the actual common ancestor it shares with its more derived relative.
"Intermediate" can be used for those forms that do have a large number of uniquely derived traits not connected to its derived relative.
According to this definition, Archaeopteryx, which does not show any derived traits that more derived birds do not possess as well, is transitional. In contrast, the platypus is intermediate because it retains certain reptilian traits no longer found in modern mammals and also possesses derived traits of a highly specialized aquatic animal.

Following this definition, all living organisms are in fact to be regarded as intermediate forms when they are compared to some other related life-form. Indeed there are many species alive today that can be considered to be transitional between two or more groups."

The idiot probably meant transitional anyway. Wiki (same link) goes on about that as well.

"Misconceptions
It is commonly claimed by critics of evolution that there are no transitional fossils.<5><3><6> Such claims may be based on a misunderstanding of the nature of what represents a transitional feature,<5> or according to Dondald Prothero, may be a tactic actively employed by creationists seeking to distort or discredit evolutionary theory.<3> Prothero has called that claim the "favourite lie" of creationists and further said that it was "manifestly untrue".<3>

A common, though fallacious, creationist argument is that no fossils are found with partially functional features. Vestigial organs are common in whales for example. Also, there is evidence that a complex feature with one function can adapt to a wholly different function through evolution in a process known as exaptation. The precursor to, for example, a wing, might originally have only been used for gliding, trapping flying prey, and/or mating display. Nowadays, wings may still have all of these functions, while also being used for active flight.

Although transitional fossils elucidate the evolutionary transition of one life-form to another, they only exemplify snapshots of this process. Due to the special circumstances required for preservation of remains, only a very small percentage of all life-forms that ever have existed can be expected to be represented in discoveries. Thus, the transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, but it will never be "caught in the act" as it were. Creationists often argue against this, claiming it is merely a convenient way to explain the lack of 'snapshot' fossils that show crucial steps between species. However, progress in research and new discoveries continue to fill in such gaps, and in modern thinking evolution is pictured as a bush of lines of development, not the simplistic ladder of progress that was common before Darwin published his theory and still influences popular opinion.

The theory of punctuated equilibrium developed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge and first presented in 1972<7> is often mistakenly drawn into the discussion of transitional fossils. This theory, however, pertains only to well-documented transitions within taxa or between closely related taxa over a geologically short period of time. These transitions, usually traceable in the same geological outcrop, often show small jumps in morphology between extended periods of morphological stability. To explain these jumps, Gould and Eldredge envisaged comparatively long periods of genetic stability separated by periods of rapid evolution."

Or the idiot could read Finding Your Inner Fish which starts out with the search for one of the seminal transitional fossils from fish to amphibian.

[El Supremo]

15. I win!

Can I donate the money to erase the national debt?

[hobbit709]

16. Show me the money

[daninthemoon]

17. they don't have museums in Turkey?

[Crunchy Frog]

18. There is nothing that he would accept as proof

hence the offer is completely meaningless.

[geomon666]

20. Exactly right. Totally meaningless media stunt. n/t

[Phred42]

19. Show me the Money - First!

[regnaD kciN]

21. It won't matter...

...because I know the creationist game here. After asserting that there are no "intermediate-form" (for example, between dinosaurs and birds) fossils, when confronted wtih any of several hundred such fossils, they'll simply declare that the example in question isn't intermediate-form at all. In the example above, whatever you produce, they'll say it's "obviously a dinosaur without any trace of bird features," or "clearly a bird with no dinosaur characteristics," and then go on to repeat that "there still has never been an intermediate-form fossil discovered."

:eyes:

[baldguy]

22. Let me pick the judges.

[On the Road]

23. Is It $7.5 Trillion in *Turkish* Dollars?

That would buy you a hamburger.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

24. Just write the check and get in touch with me. K.

You want proof of Evolution. Prove it to yourself, then send me those gobs of cash.


Explain the Polar Bear.

Even if it was Created, describe How, in a natural world it was created by an all-powerful being. What's his recipe. What other methodology would he have used, based on all the evidence available as to how Nature works, other than natural selection.

In other words, tell me how the Polar Bear came to be.

Usage of the term "simply created" or anything synonymous will result in an automatic F.

And I still get the cash. :)

[rug]

25. I'll show him an intermediate fossil when he shows me ten trillion lira.

[TZ]

26. Why doesn't he just go to a local hospital and find

a MRSA or other drug resistant bacteria..Hell there is ECOLI that develop resistance IE EVOLVE within a single patient sometimes!
M-O-R-A-N