kitten-in-heat wrote...
Here's a debate between a supporter of evolution and a creationist that I found online: http://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.cgi?forum=3&topic=3800
It's about how birds seem to be directly linked to dinosaurs because of the discovery of an ancient bird's fossil, which seemed similar to the bone structure of a reptile.
"In fact, except for the feathers, the bird-like feet, and the fact that it had a wishbone (furcula) it didn't really look like a bird. The jaws had teeth in them, of which no bird today has. It also had the ankle bone fused to the shinbone. Clearly this bird had features of dinosaurs AND birds." --
Rob Nelson
Another theory is that if the birds did descend from the dinosaurs, it's possible that they may have dinosaur-like genes that have been simply 'switched off'. If they could somehow be turned on again, then the movie "Jurassic Park" wouldn't actually be far off from the truth...=P
I was reading through that debate you posted. I think its ironic that the argument by creationists against the evidence is that scientists don't actually have any proof, rather they only catalog similarities between fossils and living species. It would of course be completely inappropriate to draw any logical conclusions from such a compilation of similarities, never mind that the fossils are carbon dated appropriately to be transitional stages in evolution. We can't draw any conclusions from that either. Apparently we need a video documentary and eye witnesses, because nothing else, no matter how obvious, could possibly be conclusive evidence.
Meanwhile, God obviously created us all because someone wrote a book that said so, and it says it doesn't need evidence because you're supposed to have faith. Sounds conclusive to me.