Do you believe in the existence of undiscovered missing links which supposedly fill in the gaps between related known species?

No. I'm kind of skeptical that way. I'll believe it when I see it.

Actually, having just said that, the last one I saw was on the cover of National Geographic a few years back. Turned out to be a hoax. National Geographic was pretty embarrassed as you can well imagine.

http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionfraud.html
http://worthynews.com/news-features/national-geogr...

Maybe.

Had to go with "Other"- it depends on what you believe about the evolution of humanity. If you buy any of Zecharia Sitchins's theories (see my survey http://surveycentral.org/survey/19030.html) there is no need for missing links, the gaps are there because the jump between species was due to genetic engineering by the Nefilim, not evolution.

Not really. I don't think evolution as a theory is a fact. Evolution states that species evolve as they adapt to changes. Why then are some of the species that say humans are supposed to have evolved from still in existence?

No. That's a pretty outdated belief stemming from a time when people believed evolution was a linear progression of one thing into another. We already have fossils that show transition occurring. The evolution of mammals from a branch of the reptiles can be seen in the cleverly named mammal-like reptiles. And so on.

You're thinking of evolution as a single linear progression when it isn't. I doubt very much that any of the species that humans evolved from are still around though - not if you apply the biological species concept. This idea that "we evolved from monkeys so why are there still monkeys" is a very common misconception but it's based on a falsehood - we didn't evolve from monkeys, but both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. Both have changed in the intervening years so that they no longer share as many common features.

I don't really know.

It seems the most likely explanation, given the evidence at hand. Many missing links have already been found, thus I would tend to assume we'd find more. Though, I would also expect us to be surprised by some of what we find and I'd also expect us to never find some links.

I expect the theory of evolution to evolve over time as well. For example, I think more modern theories see evolution as more of a bush than a tree, with interrelations instead of chains. For example, there's some discussion over whether Neaderthals are a dead branch of evolution of humans, or if they got integrated into us over time. Also, it seems plausible that some periods of evolution would appear to be nearly instantaneous or quantum (and thus not recorded very well in a fossil record).

I like your answer

Oh good, I actually added to it after I read your comments (which reminded me of some other stuff I'd read).

It's too early for me to comprehend the question... I've read it four times already, and I still can't tell what it says.

I've really never given it much thought.

I don't believe that all species are known. I believe if we discover them all - we will find some related species to the ones that are known....maybe not very many, but a few. But NO missing links.....
However, I do NOT believe this is because of evolution, I believe this is because of statistics of what we "know and what we don't know". There's bound to be a few undiscovered genuses ....and species relationships left out there.....
I'm a realist not an evolutionist.
There has never, since the beginning of time been one transitional fossil found anywhere. Now don’t you think that if we’d been around for billions or even millions of years, taking into account that there are literally millions of other fossils in museums all over the world, that we’d have at least ONE transitional fossil to show as evidence for this evolution theory?
One would think so. But there are none, much to the evolutionists dismay.
http://www.linda.net/creation.html

Biggles,
Could you give me an example of a fossil that shows a transition occurring? or a few? According to what I've read there aren't any at this point that haven't been disproven.
oh and question 2:
if not linear...then where did that common ancestor evolve from? (the one that the man and ape share)?

Any of the mammal-like reptiles (there are lots, but for example the Cynodonts), archaeopteryx (which you may try and disprove by saying it is already a bird - if you do, I may have to go and bang my head against a wall a few times)....there are just so many, I don't want to sit and list everything. That anti-evolution link you posted is just so full of awful science that I want to cry.

And number 2, I don't even understand the question. I think you're misinterpreting what I mean by linear. I mean that the ancient Greek idea that life consisted of a chain of being is simply not true, even though many people still hold it to be. There is no direction in which evolution must poceed, there is no end goal. Algae did not decide to evolve an eye and millions of years later end up with one. Evolution is a bush or a tree, not a line from this to this to this. There are millions and millions and millions of branches that did not succeed. Where they are fossilised, in many cases they are considered transitional fossils.

does not even a bush have roots somewhere? - That is what I meant by my second question....where are the roots??? It all had to have started somewhere.....

Yes.

yes, possibly. more than likely, evolution had its way to get rid of the moderates, so only the two extremes were left.

That's what I believe too. I just wanted to flush out the morons.

It depends what the question means. If 'related known species' means human beings and chimpanzees for example then the answer is no. We are distant cousins. Separate branches on a dendritic pattern stretching back millions of years. Whilst the branches are closer together than with a human and a fish, they have no direct link and therefore there is nothing actually 'missing'.
If 'related known species' means human beings and homo erectus, australopithecus or any number of known proto-hominids, then the answer might be yes, assuming they were direct ancestors and not offshoots themselves. I've read about this sparingly, so I don't know the details as well as I'd like.

You'll like this... Not a lot!

The best/worst non-sequitur regarding evolution that I have EVER seen.

http://www.bible.ca/tracks/b-time-is-evolutions-ma...

I'm glad to hear it!

You've read about it sparingly, but you seem to understand it well enough!

I believe that current thinking is that several proto-hominids were probably actually offshoots. But they shoot off from different parts of the branch that eventually becomes modern man so they can still be considered transition fossils. People who say they can't tend to not understand the scientific process of assigning character states etc.

As for that link you posted. I want to cry. I mean, I really want to go and knock some people's heads together. And they're sniffy about Mark Ridley. NO-ONE should be sniffy about Mark Ridley - the man is a legend. Richard Dawkins gets all the press, but Mark Ridley is The Man! I wish everyone who criticises evolution would read his textbook first.

(And btw, this time is seems my intruder was legit - had actually signed keys out of college. But it's a woman!!! Who wees like a man )

My main focus at university was politics and 20th Century history. I'm not a natural scientist at heart, but I do like to read up on theories that interest me. Like snowball earth, the Toba supervolcano and evolution in general. I'm a self confessed jack of all trades so I read enough to get the gist of it and then move on to something else. I'm happy to leave the details in the safe hands of clever people like your good self .

I'm glad you're safe and sound. You mentioned that it was a woman that had the flat above you. Is it the same person? If not, is she there with her permission? I know you said the door was open, but I didn't think you'd caught a glimpse. How do you know they were standing up at the time?

Man wee and woman wee sounds different. Women have a constant tinkle, men have an intermittent thunder. Little boys tinkle as well. I could always tell at home who in my family was going to the loo because of that, and at one point, even distinguish between my menfolk when they weren't all grown men. This woman thundered. And with the door open!!!

I don't know who she is though. mentioned someone had come in to my scout this morning so he went and opened up the room and there were woman things lying around like a swimming costume. He called the lodge and they confirmed there was supposed to be someone there. But I think this is a one off - she hasn't been here the other nights there have been people in. It isn't the same person who was there before because she was a good friend of mine and would have let me know if she was coming back. It wasn't my friend's room though - just temporarily over the summer like me in mine.

I like to read around my subject too, but I suppose I go the other way. I try and read up on politics. I'm fairly well versed in political structures in the UK and US because of studying it at A-level, but less so in ideology. We did the ideology of the Conservative Party and Labour during the 20th century, but that's fairly narrow. I wish I knew more about socialism and communism. I keep fairly up to date. I always think that I would very much like to be one of those people who is truly educated - knowing enough about everything to do more than get by. Unfortunately, my brain isn't really one of those brains, but I can try. Currently, I'm having something of a modern literature drive. I'm not snobby about what I read, so a lot of people would say I'm not reading the "right" books, but I seem to have tucked a few modern classics away in the last few months. In the meantime, learning Russian has been put on hold - I should really get back to that because I'll need it for my career.

Perhaps this is because men generally urinate directly into the water thus making a louder sound. A woman's seating position means that it mostly hits the front of the bowl causing a more tinkly sound. Little boys also sound tinkly because up until a certain age they can't reach over the rim so they sit down too. Perhaps the mystery woman has a strange seating position, leaning forward a long way so that it hits the water and sounded 'male'? Or maybe I should stop talking about wee altogether .
If you want to read about communist ideology the natural thing to do would be to read Das Capital and the Communist Manifesto. Then read Hayek's Road to Serfdom. If you want to read something more specific to the UK, then Scotland by Magnus Magnusson and The English by Jeremy Paxman are good insights.
I'm curious to know why Russian is going to be helpful to your chosen career. Or is it because Russia has the best institutes outside the US and UK for research into infectious diseases?

No idea.

A lot of charities, aid agencies and organisations like the WHO require a proficiency in English (so it's really a good job I was born here!) and a good grasp of a second language - usually out of Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, and Portuguese. It's less for communicating with those receiving aid/charity/health advice and more about communicating within the organisation so it doesn't need to be specific to the part of the world you want to work in. I have some French from school, but certainly not enough and I want to work on that too while picking up enough Russian to at least be able to get by. I love the Russian language anyway, so it seemed the natural one to turn to. I have a much more instinctive feel for it than I ever did for French, although I was told I had a good ear for it at school. To be honest, I hated learning French and dropped it as soon as I was able, never even taking it to full GCSE level. I just did the short course. How could they let me do that? I see now how much I should have studied it properly, but it's too late and if I want to improve it I need to do it by myself. To think, my sixth-form had applied for special language college status and was considered one of the best in Europe!! Wasted opportunities...! But that was where I started learning a little Russian with my politics teacher, and I've carried it on when I find time.

I'm also mostly interested in disease brought about by poor living standards, whether that's through poverty or necessity such as with refugee camps. You tend to find macroparasitic infections there such as worms that aren't common elsewhere so a grip of Russian could be useful in Eastern Europe where many officials may be more likely to have picked that up than English.

I know I am rambling on, but...One of the most fortunate things in working with healthcare providers is that English is the language of science, so I should always be in contact with people who know how to communicate with me, even if my languages remain fairly basic. But i still want to try, because it's only polite after all.

Don't worry . In terms of SC that wasn't a ramble. It barely registered on the KR scale
I speak French and Spanish and did both at A-Level. I'm very rusty because I have no cause to use either of them, but I could probably pick up a daily paper and get the gist of it. The hardest thing for me was always understanding what people are saying. Especially real French and Spanish people with real accents and dialects as opposed to teachers speaking in the equivalent of English RP. Reading, writing and speaking on the other hand were relatively easy.
I've never had the opportunity to learn Russian at any level. I'm not sure whether I'd take to it as I have with French. I think one of the things that would daunt me was the different alphabet.
I imagine French would be a very useful 2nd language if you were looking at the kind of macroparasitic infections that derive from the poor standard of living in Africa. Do you have any plans to work there, or do you see yourself primarily working on projects in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc?

I honestly don't know which region I want to work with, but most likely I would want to work largely from a base in the UK or other developed nation. If I was a man, I would feel I could swan off to Africa or wherever for 10 years before returning to do more long distance work based in the UK, but I have this irritating biological clock! It all really depends on what I find as I start working. I'm leaving it fairly open at the moment because I think doors will open for me as I move along the path I'm on. At the moment, I'm thinking about specialising in macroparasites and disease vectors, but it could equally be viral and bacterial infections or even public health (which would be more the social than scientific side of things).

My French is certainly something that I should work on, but I find it hard to get on with learning a language by myself. I've been trying to learn Russian for 3 years now, on top of A-level and university work so it really hasn't progressed much. I enjoy doing it, but there's only so much studying I can do in a day and my degree tends to take priority!

I actually find the different alphabet makes it easier. When I do French, I have to get my "French head" on and start using different sounds for the same letters that are found in English. I took to that better than most people at my school ("manger" never became something the baby Jesus was placed in for me, but it did for many of my friends, m who would also have the occasional "manga" incident...) Writing in cyrillic means you can never, ever make those mistakes. That's especially helpful as Russian has sounds that don't exist in English so having a unique letter helps. The only time it can be a little weird is with the letters that look the same as English ones but have entirely different sounds. In Russian, the letter "m" is pronounced as we would say "t". But interspersed with cyrillic characters and you aren't likely to forget which is correct. It's also a very beautiful language that is relatively simple to string together in an understandable way - there are no words for "the" or "a" although nouns do have a gender and verbs and perhaps adjectives too, change according to that.

But understanding real people with real accents? Ha! I'm sure that's only really possible through immersion.

No way, I put my faith in other things.

Evolution has hypotheses for the earliest origin of life, but it's hard to test these at the moment. They do seem to make sense and be feasible, and we can test them to some degree in a lab environment, but that's not a great test. One day, we may be able to test them properly - especially if we find alien life on another planet.

I would LOVE to find that....and I do believe in it - despite my belief in creation. There's just sooooo much out there, you know? Endless possibility............it fascinates me sooooo much!

I'm sure that it will happen one day. It seems so unlikely that life should have evolved (or come about if you'd rather ) only once. The differences and the similarities will be fascinating - how do they pass on genetic information - do they have DNA, something similar, or something entirely different, like clay crystals.

No, I believe they died out.

Funny enough, I was just reading a chapter on this crap today from my Anthro textbook.
No, I do not believe in it. I just always found it hard to believe in Evolution, or at least in evolution the way it is presented to us.

No, Althought I don't believe that all of modern science is stupid or wrong, but there is a lot of bull in modern science. and the Athiest people lie a lot to prove thier hypothesis and also they are arrogant and fool the people. I was reading a book about evoloution that showed how a lot of sceintific facts are misrepresented to give a certain impression, and also how some theories are bieng stated as facts

Did you also read a book written by an expert in evolution who believes in it? You have to go with both sides of the coin if you actually want to understand. I recommend "Evolution" (4th ed.) by Mark Ridley. I respect anyone who considers such things with an open mind - I know how hard I find that when considering religion (but I do try).

Personally, I think there's a lot of bull in modern religion. And the Christian people lie a lot to prove their hypothesis and they are arrogant and fool the people. I was reading a book trying to trash the theory of evolution, and it contained a lot of very bad science and misrepresented the theory completely to give a certain impression. I also read a book trying to prove Christianity logically, that contained logical errors so glaring that even *I* could spot them! I'm moving onto one that is supposed to be much better now though - The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

No, there are no scientific bases to prove these.