You said you have evidence. You’ve only presented hearsay, much of it false, so far.
When do we see the evidence?
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Patterson himself has said that his statements have been misinterpreted and misrepresented by creationists. This article is over 25 years old, and still creationists are spreading the same lie. Shameful.
Patterson Misquoted: A Tale of Two ‘Cites’ (talkorigins.org)
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I did not downplay your quote mine. I explained how you misrepresented it, and I explained why it is no longer relevant.
References please.
By the way, the alternative to creationist is not atheist.
Fine, deal with the EVIDENCE, rather than quote mine.
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Name one such scientist (not a creationist; someone else). Colin Patterson certainly wasn’t. We could go into his actual views if you wanted. I’m quite familiar with them.
That’s not at all what Patterson was doing. You just have no idea what he was saying. You also hae no idea what Gould, Eldredge, or Darwin was saying. People could help you with that if you would just listen. Have the humility to realize that others may understand a few things better than you do, notably things they have studied at greater length and in more depth. Is that at least a possibility? So get your fingers out of your ears and stop shouting. It might do you good.
That seems very unlikely. He would never use the term “basic type”, which is creationist terminology, and I have serious doubts he would ever call Dawkins he “archbishop of atheism”. When you quote from a source, please cite the source explicitly.
…nothing about punctuated equilibria. This was him flirting with saltationism. He was just wrong about that, and in fact he had failed to recognize a great many of the transitional forms he claimed there didn’t exist. One might mention Anomalocaris, for example. He also had some silly notions that brachiopods wouldn’t work without mineralized shells. Not his finest moment.
No. Sorry.
Gould (1980) is referring there to transitions between phyla, and PE refers to transitions between species in a genus. The transitional forms he says are plentiful are those between groups higher than species and lower than phyla: classes, orders, families, genera. Plenty of those. So even if we believe everything Gould says, creationists still have no support.
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Except that in the audio of Patterson is NOT “sa[ying] the same thing” as your claim that “there not being any transitional fossils” – the highlighted passage doesn’t even mention transitional fossils.
Patterson appears to be asking a ‘gotcha’ question – expecting his listeners to condense down the mountain of disparate information they know on the subject of evolution down into a quick verbal answer – a task that would closely resemble Monty Python’s ‘Summarise Proust’ sketch:
That Denyse O’Leary is misrepresenting Patterson is hardly surprising – she is an obscure journalist turned rabid Intelligent Design propagandist, and one with no scientific background or expertise.
The extreme rarity of transitional forms [remains of this dishonest creationist quotemine omitted.]
I have already given you Gould’s opinion on your behavior:
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists – whether through design or stupidity, I do not know – 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.
The only question remaining would seem to be which of those two labels best applies.
And I can provide more [dishonest, out-of-context creationist quotemines] form[sic] both Gould and Eldredge and they are saying the same thing.
Why would I care for such carefully confected drivel, especially when the existence of transitional forms is a fact. Here’s a brief summary of them:
If you want more detail on them you can look up the species involved to find more information on them – e.g.:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Pikaia+gracilens
I am somewhat bemused that the ID movement would go to the trouble of digging up a 40yo quotemine of a 20-year dead paelontologist, when the claim can be demolished by a web search in under a minute. This is perhaps why Larry Moran calls them “IDiots”.
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The part where he explains that there are transitional fossils, yet you began by claiming that there are none:
“Patterson, Gould and Eldredge all leading evolutionists following Darwin, all echoed Darwin’s doubt about the there not being any transitional fossils to support Darwin’s prediction of transitional fossils in the fossil record.”
Do you understand that quoting someone in support of a statement they literally directly reject, and which they do not actually say in your quote, is to quotemine someone?
Do you understand the distinction between fossils that support a specific version of the theory of evolution known as phyletic gradualism, versus fossils that are transitional but support other versions of the theory of evolution?
You said there were no transitional fossils. You invoke the names of Patterson, Gould and Eldredge" to support your statement that there are no transitional fossils. But their claims concern the gradual transformation of species in a particular theory known as phyletic gradualism, not the theory of evolution more generally, nor common descent.
Technically common descent can be supported even with no transitional fossils. Relatedness can be shown even without surviving intermediate generation members of a particular lineage in a family. I can show I am related to a distant cousin even with none of our parents or grandparents being alive or any of their remains being found.
I have already quoted Gould saying explicitly that there are transitional forms, and that there are good examples where they support gradual evolutionary transitions (not to be confused with the specific version of evolution known as phyletic gradualism).
Do you understand the distinction between fossils that support a specific version of the theory of evolution known as phyletic gradualism, versus fossils that are transitional but support other versions of the theory of evolution?
Once again, you are confusing Gould criticizing a lack of support for a particular theory of evolution known as phyletic gradualism, with Gould not saying there is no support for gradual evolutionary change. Gould thought the fossil record supports gradual evolutionary change, just not the theory known as phyletic gradualism.
Do you understand that there are different theories of evolution that posit rates and lengths of gradual transformation and stasis, that are different in scale? So when Gould is criticizing a particular theory of transformation, he is not criticizing all theories of gradual transformation of species.
Read his words I quoted. He explains exactly the sense in which he thinks the fossil record, and transitional fossils, support gradual evolutionary change.
Can you show some sign of understanding this concept of different theories, and a dispute between proponents of different theories arguing about which of these different theories the fossil record best supports, does not mean they are saying the fossil record does not support any theory of gradual evolutionary change? Can you make an effort to understand that saying transitional fossils are extremely rare is not the same things as saying transitional fossils do not exist at all?
There are transitional fossils, and the support common descent and gradual evolutionary change. Gould and his colleagues simply did not think they supported a particular version of the theory of evolution known as phyletic gradualism.
Do you now understand what your mistake is?
To pick an example, Gould explicitly stated he thought Archeopteryx was a transitional fossil. He explicitly stated he thought we had an entire series of transitional fossils in the evolution of mammals.
It is no use to go hunting for quotes from scientists arguing there is a lack of transitional fossils for the theory of phyletic gradualism. These same scientists still think there are transitional fossils, and that they support common descent of major groups, and that they support gradual evolutionary change.
Do you experience the emergence of understanding in your mind?
I quote Gould again and emplore you to read with comprehension:
Gould: (…)There is another sense of gaps in the record claiming, in other words, there are not transitional 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.
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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More importantly, transitional fossils continue to be found. The most spectacular example of this is whale evolution.
@rtmcdge, are you ever going to produce any evidence?
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So, now you are claiming expert testimony is not evidence?
I’ve asked you to produce the evidence that contradicts what I’ve supplied.
And all you seek to do is hide and minimize the evidence instead of providing anything that empirically shows it not to be evidence
Where us this transitional fossil. How many in between fossils can you produce leading up to it being a transitional fossil.
There are none. Darwin, Gould, Eldredge and more evolutionists have already admitted that there was a lack of transitional fossils.
Certainly there are none that amount to those that Darwin had predicted would be found.
And 160 years later, the quest is still on going.
Now, provide the evidence that disputes this. Provide not just one fossil but the many that we can use as a step by step guide showing how legs of some land animal, slowly over millions of years became whale fins.
Produce the hundreds of millions of step by step fossils showing how the back legs of some mythical land animal slowly evolved into a whale fluke.
Please don’t just pick a fossil and then declare, “Look a transitional fossil that led to giving birth to the first whale”.
Great, produce the exhibit. Not just what he seemed to have said.
" But the theory of punctuated equilibrium says that you shouldn’t expect to find all interceptable intermediate degrees"
Then you are not producing a transitional fossil trail. All you are doing is picking a few fossils and making the claim that they are transitional fossils.
Gould and Patterson and Eldredge all echoed Darwin’s alarm for not finding what Darwin had predicted.
And most importantly, there are no transitional organisms being found today.
All dogs mate and reproduce more dogs. Cats, birds, apes and humans all reproduce others of their own kind.
This is observable science that contradicts what evolutionists claim occurred in the past.
Here you go:
That would be more difficult, because whale flukes aren’t legs, they’re the tail. Also, demanding hundreds of millions of transitional fossils is way too fine-scale for the fossil record to show, and it’s much finer-scale than would actually have happened.
But thanks for confirming that you are the most stereotypical of creationists, preserving all the familiar PRATTs, in this case the response to every transition by demanding transitions between transitions, and transitions between those transitions, so we end up with a Zeno’s paradox of evolution.
Not sure why I bother, since you seem to be ignoring me entirely.
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Can you show some sign of understanding this concept of different theories,
Once you can demonstrate how any of the theories posited actually has caused common descent evolution to have occurred.
An explanation is not evidence.
If I tell you how the moon was made into cheese, this does not mean the moon was actually made up of cheese.
Where’s the empirical evidence that apes or something ape like could have been the common ancestor of apes and man.
Because to date all we know is that apes give birth to apes. And humans give birth to humans.
If this is what has been observed for thousands of years, then there is no empirical science that can support what is observed today, and what has been observed in the past, was not what had been occurring when we were not looking.
You really need to understand the scientific process.
No, expert testimony is not in itself scientific evidence. Period. Scientists present evidence. Authoritative scientists who are recognized for their expertise have earned a platform and hearing - that is it. All your quote mining does is call in question your integrity or your grasp of the material.
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It is when those who you accept as part of your group, stand shoulder to shoulder with those who you do not accept.
And they both are telling you the same story, using scientific evidence to dispute what you believe.
And when they claim the evidence that you thought supported common descent evolution, does not do so, then you should take them seriously.
No. It calls into question what you believe. Because those who are well known scientists in their fields of study have contradicted what you believe.
Wow. Is this sarcasm or do you actually think that evolutionary biologists claim that the whale fluke is a modified leg structure???
Have you EVER made any effort to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of evolution?
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I met Patterson once, at a symposium at the Field Museum, at which he spoke. Afterwards there was a question and answer session among the various speakers. Anyway, his subject was that one should not assume evolution in phylogenetic analysis so that one could later use that analysis as evidence for evolution without fear of circularity. If anyone knows the term, he was a transformed cladist. But he also clearly believed that the evidence of evolution was strong, and that organisms actually were related by descent. Creationists have no clue.
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“Expert testimony” is not evidence, it is the opinion of an expert about the evidence.
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What you have been presenting is not “expert testimony”, but rather quotemines that dishonest creationists have carefully cherry-picked in order to misrepresent the experts’ opnions.
Why do you keep spamming this silly video?
Neither Jonathan Wells nor Casey Luskin is a working scientist.
Neither of them have any expertise whatsoever in Paleoanthropology.
The video is published by the Disco 'Tute – a bunch of charlatans, cranks and incompetents of which Wells and Luskin are among some of the more notorious.
“Are we ‘modified monkeys’?” is a fallacious strawman of the evolutionary position.
None of this BS adds any credibility to yourself or your claims.
Your endless parroting of every half-baked, half-witted, half-arsed, half-remembered creationist talking point, many of which we’ve seen repeatedly on this forum before, and a number of which we’ve seen debunked decades ago, simply renders you a crashing bore and a complete snooze.
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Not sarcasm in the least bit. Do you really think it matter what part of that mythical land animal would have become the fluke? The fact is there are no transitional fossils that demonstrate anything of any part of that mythical land animal slowly became the whale fluke.
It does seem big things like this do not seem to bother the evolutionists. They make up speculations and always fail to supply the evidence to support their speculations.
“Have you EVER made any effort to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of evolution?”
Why do you know how evolution would have done something, even though evolution doesn’t even have an intelligence for you to guess what it would have done?
By, the way, you have read how there are evolutionists who are rejected Ambulocetus as a possible ancestor for the whale, haven’t you?
" The ‘walking whale’ is portrayed as an intermediate between Pakicetus and Rodhocetus . Dr Hans Thewissen, former student of Dr Gingerich, said that there were eight characteristics that showed that Ambulocetus was a whale ancestor. We have also reported on Ambulocetus (figure 2),4 but Dr Werner recorded on video Dr Thewissen admitting that a key evidence of whale ancestry, the sigmoid process of the ear-bone apparatus (again), was actually nothing like a whale ear bone. Also, the cheek bone, which Thewissen claimed is thin like a whale cheek bone, is actually not thin at all; a horse, for example, has a much thinner cheekbone than Ambulocetus (see figure 3).
Furthermore, Dr Thewissen’s lab has supplied models of Ambulocetus to various museums that show a blowhole in the snout of the skull, but there is no fossil evidence of a blowhole. Dr Werner says, “All eight characters he reported as whale features are disturbingly non-whale features.”
Source: https://creation.com/whale-evolution-fraud
In fact even Pakicetus doesn’t fare well either with true science. "We have already pointed out the extreme story-telling that occurred with Pakicetus, involving Dr Philip Gingerich.3 An incomplete skull fossil was imagined to be that of a whale-like creature, displayed as an artist’s impression on the cover of the prestigious journal, Science, in 1983. Some years later the rest of Pakicetus was found, published in 2001, and it proved to be nothing like a whale. Contrary to what Dr Gingerich had imagined, there was no blowhole, there were no flippers (only hooves), and there was no whale neck (just a neck typical for land mammals). Even so, Dr Werner reveals that the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Natural History Museum in London have not stopped using the falsely-reconstructed skull that shows a blowhole (see figure 1).
In a National Geographic documentary in 2009, Dr Gingerich still claimed that Pakicetus should be classed with whales, based on its ear-bone. However, the ear-bone is not like a whale, which has a finger-like projection (sigmoid process), but is plate-like, like the fossils of land animals known as artiodactyls."
Source: https://creation.com/whale-evolution-fraud
It’s like he never even sees anything I post. Weird. Perhaps he’s just here to testify, not to have any sort of dialogue.
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“Why do you keep spamming this silly video?”
How is it spam. It is not selling anything. It is providing information for all to know.
If you have a problem with it, simply produce the evidence that shows what is provided to not be true.
And have you gotten any messages stating about how rude you are becoming?