It’s a really bad idea to cite authors you haven’t read. Sooner or later you’ll claim they wrote something that was actually a misrepresentation or fabrication by some-one else, at which point your credibility will evaporate like lemon juice on a hotplate.
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I am reminded of Behe’s testimony at the Dover trial, when he finally pleaded to be allowed to put down the books demonstrating what he claimed had never been demonstrated, because they were too heavy.
In any event, you miss the point. Even if it were the case that it had not yet been demonstrated how such systems had evolved, it does not follow that Behe had demonstrated that they could not have evolved.
Oh dear. You really know almost nothing at all about the theory of evolution. It does not predict that, say, the tetrapod limb would evolve thru a series of malformed, incomplete, non functional versions of the limb. That’s just a silly notion. Rather, it evolved thru a series of fully developed forms well-suited for the functions it performs for the organisms that possesses it. Which is exactly what the fossil record shows:
How did fins evolve into feet? (nbcnews.com)
Well, you could ask Michael Behe, since he believes common descent to be “trivially true.” But, otherwise, I will simply page @John_Harshman.
(BTW, does it appear to anyone else that it is almost only creationists who have trouble figuring out the quote function?)
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You have to call my name three times while looking into a mirror. But I’ll try.
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“Faith” is not a word scientists use. “Conclusion” would be better. Now, before that happens, we need to know more about what your alternative hypothesis would be, because science is a matter of comparing multiple hypotheses to evidence. In order to know what to compare, it would be useful if you would answer some questions.
How old do you think the universe is? How old do you think the earth is? Was creation really done in 6 days? Was there a worldwide flood that killed all life not on the ark, a few thousand years after creation? What is a “kind”? Does it correspond roughly to a species, a family, an order, or something else? Were humans and chimps separately created?
That should get us started. Then I can try to present evidence of common descent that goes beyond what you have stated. Thanks in advance.
Please show one physical or chemical fact from which that is entailed. Point to just one such physical or chemical fact Tour has used to demonstrate it.
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@rtmcdge
You’re replies would be easier to follow if you quote the relevant text. Here’s how:
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Your perspective on evolution is based on a misrepresentation of the facts. Evolution is a working science, and it gives us inventions, patents, medical treatments, and opens up fruitful new areas of discovery. These are all hallmarks of good science. You are welcome to believe the science is somehow wrong, but the science works nevertheless.
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“No @rtmcdge, it is you who appear to have been “kidded”. “Patterson, Gould and Eldredge” have all been misrepresented by out-of-context creationist quotemines.”
Patterson stated more than once, using different words, to different individuals but said the same thing.
Here is even an audio version of one such occasion, along with the transcript.
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/colin-patterson-can-you-tell-me-anything-about-evolution-that-is-true/
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our text- books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:
“The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps, He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.”
Darwin’s argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never -seen- in the rocks.
Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.
[Evolution’s Erratic Pace - “Natural History,” May, 1977]”
― Stephen Jay Gould
Source: Quote by Stephen Jay Gould: “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the...”
And I can provide more statements form both Gould and Eldredge and they are saying the same thing.
No, Gould is not burning his evolutionist card. But, he and Eldredge have both stated that the fossil record does not satisfy the prediction of transitional fossils made by Darwin.
How about you trying to produce the evidence that disputes what I’ve said. You have no idea the years of study I have dedicated myself to.
And I’ve plenty of evidence that soundly contradicts the common descent of evolution, of the evolutionists.
I missed the part where these scientists said there were no transitional fossils. No as in none, zero, not a single one at all.
[Extremely rare] does not equal [not a single one]
Transitional fossils are comparatively rare, but they do exist. None of your quotes say that transitional fossils do not exist. But you claimed they do not exist.
Ironically we now have both Gould being directly quoted as saying that creationists are misrepresenting him when they quotemine him on transitional fossils, and you yourself have brought pictures of actual transitional fossils.
Archaeopteryx, Tiktaalik, and everything from Ambulocetus to Dorudon are textbook examples of transitional fossils.
You are confusing “no transitional fossils” with a theory of phyletic gradualism envisioned by Darwin, whereby in between two distinct groups of organisms it was hypothesized a long and smooth transition over long periods of geological time.
Gould and Eldredge instead postulated that these transitional periods were much shorter and more jagged than the smooth transitions envisioned by Darwin.
Gould directly and literally testified in the 1980 Arkansas creationism trial that creationists were misrepresenting him:
On transitional fossils:
Q Does that exhibit contain a chart illustrating punctuated equilibrium?
A Yes. I have two charts here. The first, your Honor, illustrates the principle of gradual-
Q What page would that be?
A That is on page 642. —illustrating the slow and steady transformation of a single population. The next page, page 643, illustrates punctuated equilibrium in which we see that in geological perspectives, though remember, we’re talking about tens of thousands of years, that in geological perspective, species are originating in periods of time that are not geologically resolvable and are represented by single bedding planes and, therefore, appear in the record abruptly.
I might say at this point, if I may, that there are two rather different senses that would turn gap into record. The first one refers to an existence of all interceptable intermediate degrees. And to that extent, those are gaps, and I believe they are gaps because indeed, evolution doesn’t work that way, usually. They are gaps because that is not how evolution occur. There is another sense of gaps in the record claiming, in other words, there are not transitional forms
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A (Continuing) whatsoever in the fossil record. It’s, in fact, patently false.
Indeed, on page 643, if you consult the chart, we do display an evolutionary trend here on the right, and evolutionary trends are very common in the fossil record. Punctuate equilibrium does not propose to deny it. By evolutionary trends, we mean the existence of intermediate forms, structurally intermediate forms between ancestors in the sense that we don’t have every single set, and we find transitional forms like that very abundant in the fossil record.
But the theory of punctuated equilibrium says that you shouldn’t expect to find all interceptable intermediate degrees. It’s not like rolling a ball up an inclined plane, it’s rather, a trend is more like climbing a staircase, where each step would be geologically abrupt. In that sense that are many transitional forms in the fossil record.
I might also state that when the geological evidence is unusually good, that we can even see what’s happening within one of these punctuations.
Later:
Q Professor Gould, you have just talked about a transitional form, Archaeopteryx. Could you give an example of an entire transitional sequence in the fossil record?
A Yes. A very good example is that provided by our own group, the mammals.
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Q Would it assist you in your testimony to refer to an exhibit?
A Yes. I have a series of skulls illustrating the most important aspect of this transition.
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Byers Point™ reached.
Creationists are so used to supporting doctrines by proof texts, that they think the same approach to quotes works just as well in the empirical world. Science is about evidence and not rhetoric, and in the end what Darwin, Dawkins, or whoever sayes, is judged by consistency with observation.
That said, creationist quote mines, including your offering, are indeed misrepresentations. Regarding Patterson:
Patterson did not support creationism, but his work has been cited by creationists with claims that it provides evidence of the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. In the second edition of Evolution (1999), Patterson stated that his remarks had been taken out of context:
Because creationists lack scientific research to support such theories as a young earth … a world-wide flood … or separate ancestry for humans and apes, their common tactic is to attack evolution by hunting out debate or dissent among evolutionary biologists. … I learned that one should think carefully about candour in argument (in publications, lectures, or correspondence) in case one was furnishing creationist campaigners with ammunition in the form of ‘quotable quotes’, often taken out of context.
A more extended discussion of the creationist distortion of Patterson’s position is in this article from the National Center for Science Education.
Why even bring up a moot talk given over forty years ago, unless you are more interested in apologetics than the actual history of life on earth? An enormous amount of transitional fossil discoveries have been made since then. Read the books I suggested, and there is still more since those were published.
Studying what, exactly? You’ve obviously spent no time with the evidence.
Yet all you’ve presented is hearsay. When will you be presenting any evidence?
I think “incorrectly attributed to Darwin” is more accurate. Darwin’s actual views seem to have been closer to Punctuated Equilibria,
E.g
although each species must have passed through numerous transitional stages, it is probable that the periods, during which each underwent modification, though many and long as measured by years, have been short in comparison with the periods during which each remained in an unchanged condition.
On The Origin of Species 6th Edition Chapter 11
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I don’t know if you’re responding to me or not. But if you are:
I don’t need to until you produce evidence that supports what you’ve said. So far you’ve produced (i) quotes of opinions, and (ii) pictures of fossils that you claim didn’t exist.
During those years, did you ever get round to reading Darwin’s Origin? Or Gould’s essays?
Then present it.
You can try and downplay this all you want. There are scientists who do not accept common descent evolution, both from the Creation side, and among those of the atheists, who are just as good in science as there are those who accept evolution. They have received their diplomas and accolades and they still reject evolution.
A more extended what? I’ve given you a recording of the speech offered by Patterson. You can listen to it for yourself. In it he clearly reveals his FALLING OUT OF LOVE with common descent evolution, and HE GIVES REASON FOR IT.
And when noted famous evolutionists stand up and categorically denounces the EVIDENCE that supposedly supports common descent evolution, then it is not something to dismiss.
“I think “incorrectly attributed to Darwin” is more accurate. Darwin’s actual views seem to have been closer to Punctuated Equilibria,”
And you would be thinking wrong. Because both Gould and Eldredge, came up with PE, because of the lack of transitional fossils.
But, just as there was no evidence to support Darwin’s common descent evolution, they could offer no evidence that the reason why there was a lack of transitional fossils was because evolution was occurring too fast for the fossils to form.
This still does not negate the possibility that the reason why there were no transitional fossils was simply because COMMON DESCENT EVOLUTION IS NOT A SCIENTIFICALLY SOUND SPECULATION.
Darwin proposed common descent evolution was a SLOW AND STEADY phenomenon.
But Darwin’s prediction of transitional fossils was not coming to fruition.
Which is why Gould and Eldredge propose an alternate pathway for common descent evolution. As stated in what follows.
" Instead of imperceptibly gradual change in a species over time (the view Darwin proposed, though Darwin did note in the Origin that evolution could also be rapid), Eldredge and Gould proposed that the pace of evolution was jerky, with big changes occurring relatively rapidly over evolutionary time little evolution"
Source: Punctuated equilibrium is dead; long live the Modern Synthesis – Why Evolution Is True
But, this is what Gould actually did say.
" > ‘Eminent biologist hits back at the creationists who “hijacked” his theory for their own ends’.
So says the headline of an article by Steve Connor, Science Editor in The Independent (UK), April 9, 2002, referring to the imminent release of Professor Stephen Jay Gould’s new book, a 1,400 page treatise called The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. 1 Gould is a high-profile professor of zoology from Harvard University, well-known for promoting the controversial view that the fossil record contradicts the slow-and-gradual transformation idea of classical Darwinism. More recently, he has become more famous for revealing Darwin’s Real Message, but at the same time trying to pacify ‘religious’ people by asserting that religion and science have ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (NOMA).2 The following quotes are from Connor’s article.
‘Professor Gould accuses creationists of having exploited the sometimes bitter dispute between him and his fellow Darwinists …’
I guess we’re ‘guilty as charged’ on this one. It seems that Gould would have it that only evolutionists be permitted to use the arguments of evolutionists. Only those ‘in the club’ can legitimately discuss these things, it would appear.
Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have almost universally maintained that the supposed change from one basic type of organism to another occurred slowly, gradually, in tiny steps. The fossils did not support this idea, and Darwin blamed incompleteness of the record. Others repeated this excuse, right up to the present day, including Richard Dawkins, the ‘archbishop of atheism’ at Oxford University in the UK.3
Gould and Niles Eldredge, a former student of Gould, actually faced up to the fossil record and decided it did not support the gradualist dogma.4 They argued strongly against some of the classical claims of gradual transformation. In doing this they were inadvertently agreeing with creationists. Naturally, creationists used their admissions.
In 1977 Gould wrote,
‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. … to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’5
In 1980 Gould said,
‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.’6
It would be difficult to find franker admissions to the lack of evidence for gradual transitions in the fossil record."
Source: https://creation.com/gould-grumbles-about-creationist-hijacking
Now, please provide the evidence that what and anyone else has said has been taken out of context, made up or anything other than the fact that it was actually stated by the author of the quote in question.
Already did.
The quotes are demonstrably taken out of context as shown by Gould’s testimony in the Arkansas 1980 creationism trials, and they being used to support a case that they do not support.
You are once again confusing a dispute between phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium, as if it supports the claim that there are no transitional fossils, and that the fossil record does not support common descent.
Both those claims are false. There are transitional fossils and Gould thinks so, and the fossil record supports common descent.
The fossil record can support common descent without supporting phyletic gradualism, and transitional fossils can be rare without being non-existent.
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Okay, what did he say, that shows what he said was taken out of context?
Did he not say what it is quoted he said?
Did he provide a variant way of looking at what he said?
Why is it that what he has been quoted to have said, has been done so over and over again, and found that he was saying the same thing?
Now, did he not say what follows? "Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have almost universally maintained that the supposed change from one basic type of organism to another occurred slowly, gradually, in tiny steps. The fossils did not support this idea, and Darwin blamed incompleteness of the record. Others repeated this excuse, right up to the present day, including Richard Dawkins, the ‘archbishop of atheism’ at Oxford University in the UK.3
Gould and Niles Eldredge, a former student of Gould, actually faced up to the fossil record and decided it did not support the gradualist dogma.4 They argued strongly against some of the classical claims of gradual transformation. In doing this they were inadvertently agreeing with creationists. Naturally, creationists used their admissions.
In 1977 Gould wrote,
‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. … to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.’5
In 1980 Gould said,
‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.’6
And is not the question that follows, a offering a clear understanding of what is implicated by what Gould has been quoted to have said?
“It would be difficult to find franker admissions to the lack of evidence for gradual transitions in the fossil record.”
Is he not actually saying that Darwin’s prediction of transitional fossils has been a bust?
Now, please tell me what is wrong with this, that follows.
" Now it is a powerful and legitimate debating tactic, employed by all, to use the admissions of ‘hostile witnesses’. Clearly, Gould is not a creationist and has no sympathies whatsoever with us. He appeared on behalf of the evolutionary thought police, the ACLU (which incongruously contains the word ‘liberties’ in its title), at the 1981 trial over the teaching of origins in schools in Arkansas. Both he and Eldredge have used quite intemperate, insulting language in referring to creationists, especially since 1981. See a refutation of Eldredge’s latest anti-creationist foray."
Now, where is the evidence that he didn’t say what he said, or that it was taken out of context?
Simply produce what else it could have been saying?
And while you are at it, why is it these quotes, many from other evolutionists are saying what Gould, Eldredge and even Patterson had been saying.