(The earth was created 6500 years ago and it was made to look like it was more than 4 billion years old in what looks like a 14 billion year old universe. That is much more likely than a book written by bronze age goat herds being wrong.)
And certainly much more likely than some story about a lizard turning into a snake.
Makes a bit of a mess of your so - called theory of evolution, doesn't it?
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And remind me: Why do you mock what you do clearly not understand, instead of trying to educate yourself?
'Nah, fool, I've got no clue as to what this theory of evilushun really seys either, but mah pastor yonder says te make fun of it 'til it goes away'.
The fundy solution to things they don't understand:
1/ Kill it.
"And I don't think that you ever came up with a credible answer about why it was better to have no legs?"
So the animal can slide through tight spaces under leaf litter to avoid predators. Duh.
When the genes controlling the development of the neck and forelimb bones were switched off.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=dbio.section.5413
Dumbass.
You are certainly entitled to your beliefs, Mr. Woolf, however you must realize that beliefs can and do obstruct knowledge. You must apply and expand your mind through study in order to enhance and strengthen your beliefs or revise and refute them.
Come, come, sir. You have not applied yourself diligently. For shame, sir.
Having no legs makes it easier to squeeze through tight spaces, obviously.
And as for how it happened, a group of lizards started crawling into small spaces, to catch prey or avoid predators, those that were better at it were more likely to reproduce, gradually over many generations they became more streamlined and ultimately lost their legs entirely, except for vestigial hip bones which show that their ancestors once had legs. Then they spread out and diversified into the group of species we now call snakes.
Ever hear of a legless lizard? Look up any species of glass lizard, it is not a snake, but rather a lizard without legs. Snakes evolved separately from lizards, dipshit.
Wait. The Earth looks like 4 billion years old but it's only 6,500. However, a snake is always a snake, not a lizard, no matter what?, WTF?
Actually Mr. Woof if you believe that the earth is 6500 years old and God made it to look like it was 4 billion years old, I would say that makes considerably more than a bit of a mess of your whole religion (instead of evolution) by turning your "perfectly good" God into a lying deceiver, thereby destroying the whole premise of your religion. You lose either way!
I'll bet you dollars to donut-holes that the most recent common ancestor of modern snakes and lizards was neither a snake nor a lizard.
But Creationists have a hard time with this whole "branching tree of speciation" concept.
Legless lizards?
Had one in my back garden a few years back. It's known colloquially as a Slow Worm. Scientific name Anguis fragilis .
Then it decided to pay my neighbour a visit. He thought it was a snake and called me round to take a peek at it. so I collected it, and handed it over to the local wildlife trust for safe release in a suitable location (i.e., one where it would find food and more Slow Worms to breed with).
From the Wikipedia page on this animal:
"Although these lizards are often mistaken for snakes, there are a number of features that differentiate them from snakes. The most important is they have small eyes with eyelids that blink like lizards. This is a feature that is not found in snakes. They also have ears like lizards do, which snakes do not have. They also have notched tongue rather than a forked tongue, which is a common feature of a snake. They shed their skin in patches like other lizards, rather than the whole skin as most snakes do."
Oh look ... it's that thing creationists keep saying doesn't exist ... a TRANSITIONAL FORM!
@Mr. Smith-- Nice.
Snakes probably did evolve from a lizard-like ancestor, and some have argued that the selective advantage of leglessness is greatest in fossorial animals (Mr. Woolf: fossorial means living underground). Others disagreee and argue that limbless snakes evolved from marine lizards. Regardless, there are several plausible scenarios. Further, it has been discovered that the genetic change from legged to non-legged is actually quite simple-- simple enough that such patterning can be reversed resulting in pythons with limbs. I take it Mr. Woolf that you are not a big reader, but for those fstd readers that dig Evodevo, here is the reference for a cool paper.
Cohn, MJ and C. Tickle. 1999. Developmental basis of limblessness and axial patterning in snakes. Nature 3;399(6735):474-9.
Transitional fossils of snakes with vestigial limbs have been recovered. Snakes are optimized for certain prey.
Now go become extinct, moron.
"And certainly much more likely than some story about a lizard turning into a snake."
Or a snake that could talk , for that matter.
Makes a complete fuckup of your Biblical so-called 'Creationism'. Doesn't it.
This is one of those evolutional similarities that, for some reason, creationists think they have a valid edge over the actual evidence that is STILL observable.
Lizards and snakes can be very different but also very similiar. Dolphins and Whales have five definite hand bone structures in their fins, sharks and most fish don't. There aren't just vestible remnants in marine mammals, there are fully functional limbs that have evolved to sea life.
If you had to pick an obscure evolutionary path, you wouldn't pick snakes. Lizards have lost their legs independently at least a half-dozen times . The snake lineage is simply the oldest and most diverse one, but there are many others. The skinks are particularly notable, because forms with a wide range of leg lengths are currently extant. And they are all transitional forms.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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