In the fossil record! Indeed, the fossil record supports the saltationist view of the history of life much better than the gradualist one.
Let me suggest that you know very little of the fossil record, and particularly the fossil record of tetrapod limbs.
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The hypothesis that the history of life mostly results from a controlled developmental process is compatible with what is observed in the fossil record, ie., the abrupt appearance of fully formed species or biological innovations. On the other hand, under the neodarwinian hypothesis, we would expect the fossil record to document a plethora of transitional forms, which it doesnât.
⊠does.
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Those arenât the same thing at all. S.J. Gould is often quoted on this subject, and you really should pay attention: âSince we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists â whether through design or stupidity, I do not know â as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.â Thus we see in, say, Acanthostega a fully formed Acanthostega, and yet the transition from fish fin to tetrapod limb is amply documented. If the fossil record documents saltation (it doesnât) it would be between closely related, similar species, not the sudden appearance of major innovations you claim. Further, wouldnât a controlled process of development imply a continuous series of small changes? Discontinuity is the opposite of that. As usual, your hypotheses are incoherent.
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Why would a controlled/programmed process necessitate an abrupt appearance of âfully formedâ* species?
This is why my first question was how the process itself would work. Without knowing how the process functions, it seems premature to speculate as to what the outcome should look like.
Therefore I re-iterate my first question: How would a controlled/programmed process work?
*(Note: Iâm not sure what âfully formedâ is supposed to mean in this context. Since species categorization is discrete, there is no such thing as a partially formed species.)
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Then your reinterpretation of the fossil record is entirely unlike development as it is observed in the life-history of any organism, or experiment, including domestic breeding.
That is so confused it boggles the mind. The whole thing is nonsensical.
Development doesnât anywhere result in the abrupt appearance of fully formed species. What would that even look like? The magical and instantaneous appearance of an entire population of adult, interbreeding organisms? What is âdevelopmentalâ about that?
Does every organism in the previous generation suddenly gives birth to an entirely new species at the same time, with no geneflow and exchange of alleles between individuals from the previous and new generations? No overlapping generations? Genes are suddenly lost, and new ones all magically appear in parallel in millions or billions of individuals in a single generation?
Development is the incredibly gradual transformation of an individual organism from a single cell, into a multicellular adult.
Even worse, itâs not clear what a not fully formed species is supposed to be. Could such a thing even exist? What am I supposed to imagine here, a dog literally without a head? Every morphological attribute is stunted in growth? Why should evolution produce such a thing, as you seem to be suggesting it should when you contrast development with evolution in this way?
There was never a time at which a species wasnât âfully formedâ in the history of life. Itâs insane.
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I may very well know little of the fossil record, but it is certainly not the case of Gunter Bechly, Ernst Mayr, Hickman or Gerd MĂŒller.
By âfully formedâ, they mean every form that is currently represented by a fossil.
Whereas the âtransitional formsâ are the ones that would have existed between the âfully formedâ but whose fossils we do not have.
The beauty of this idea is that, once any of these âtransitionalâ fossils are found, they immediately join the category of âfully formedâ, as should be evident from the definition given above.
In this way, the creationist never has to acknowledge the existence of a transitional fossil, since these by definition are only ever the ones of whose existence we have no knowledge.
See, never say that creationists donât understand logic.
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I would suggest that Ernst Mayr knows less than you do, being long deceased. The fact that other people may know something is irrelevant. They arenât here, and thereâs no sense in you appealing to their credentials. Nor is there any sense in appealing to a creationist web site.
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Let me also point out that Bechly, in the article you link, repeats a famous quote-mine of S.J. Gould, one that I mentioned to you only a few hours ago. Does no creationist have any shame whatsoever?
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I donât know about shame, but I would suggest that this quotemine demonstrates that Bechly has no credibility whatsoever â that he is just another dishonest apologist more interested in winning an argument than in the truth.
If anything even vaguely resembling ID hopes to ever achieve a degree of scientific respectability, it will need to lose this culture of dishonesty that permeates the movement. As things stand, just by seeing evolutionnews.org in the URL, or reading the names Dembski, Behe, Meyer, etc I can tell that, with as much certainty as that I know the Sun will rise tomorrow, I will be able to, without too much effort, uncover misrepresentation.
Yet Gilbert Thill, @Giltil, keeps on citing these irredeemably-flawed sources at us, over and over again. This brings to mind the following quote frequently misattributed to Einstein:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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Because it is more important to Creationists that the conclusion is âGod not Evolution did itâ than that the argument to get to that conclusion is even internally coherent, let alone supported by the facts.
âAbrupt appearance of âfully formedâ* speciesâ is necessitated, because only by this means can it be made clear that it was God unassisted by Evolution that was solely responsible.
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I didnât say that a controlled/programmed process necessitates an abrupt appearance of fully formed species but that it is compatible with this outcome, contrary to neo-Darwinism.
I donât know. But I think part of the mystery may resides in the non coding elements of the genome that has been wrongly labeled « junk ».
You may have a point here. Maybe I should have talk of group of animals rather than species, as Hickman said below:
Most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group.
Pointing and laughing seems the only appropriate response at this juncture.
Letâs face it, youâve never read your claimed source. Youâre just repeating something you saw quoted, and thereâs no assurance that the quote is even real or that it was backed up by any evidence at all. Iâve searched the 11th edition of that book and couldnât find anything like it.
Do you even know whatâs meant there by âmajor groupâ? For the record, I doubt that even the 8th edition said that. The closest I can find in the 11th is a figure caption, referring to the Cambrian explosion, and it never says anything like âfully formedâ. Which is good, because it would be wrong. See Budd G.E., Jensen S. A critical reappraisal of the fossil record of the bilaterian phyla. Biological Reviews 2000; 75:253-295. The authors point out that almost all the phyla and classes that appear there are not âfully formedâ, i.e. not members of their crown groups, but are lacking some features diagnostic of the modern group. They are almost all, in short, transitional forms.
Incidentally, Bechly references the 8th edition of Integrated Principles of Zoology, published in 1988, but the current edition is the 19th, published just last year. I wonder why he prefers old sources to more recent ones.
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Did Hickman really say that? Is it in context?
You havenât the faintest idea, do you, because you havenât read Hickman, you copied it from Luskin or Bechly or some other quote-miner.
Stop lying about your sources.
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The quotemine in question has been bouncing around the internet for decades. The earliest use of it I could find was by Casey Luskin in 2006 â which would still have made the 8th edition oddly outdated. I likewise checked the 11th edition (the oldest edition I could find online), and couldnât find it.
The most likely explanation is that Luskin simply accidentally misattributed the quote all those years ago, and nobody in the apologetics echo chamber has ever bothered to confirm it before reusing it.
However the mental picture of an old, venerable and dog-eared copy of this book sitting in the Discovery Instituteâs office in Seattle, to be reverentially passed from one apologist to the next over the years, with each new initiateâs reaction, on being pointed to the passage in question, being to exclaim in an awed and hushed tone âHickman actually said thatâ, is highly amusing. 
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Youâre assuming heâs aware that there are more recent ones, which he might not be if he cribbed that quote from Luskin.
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Then the question transfers to Luskin. Why did he prefer old sources to more recent ones. The 8th edition was already 18 years old when Casey quoted it (if indeed it was a real quote).
One hypothesis: Luskin took the âquoteâ from a previous and unknown creationist source, mistaking a claim supported by reference to the textbook, likely garbled, for a direct quote.
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Ok. But what I am interested in is whether the fossil record generally documents discontinuity in the history of life, ie., non gradual forms of transitions. What is your take on this issue?