Posted on 04/28/2004 12:57:48 PM PDT by Junior
You mean a classic cut and paste job from talkorg - a repository of hard-core evo essays and just-so stories.
Hunt's work has been heavily scritinized, as I am sure you are well-aware.
More on the lack of transitionals and the fossil record:
Of course, in you and your bretheren's eyes there is no disputing Ms. Hunt - and I think we can all appreciate your devotion. However, when there are so many folks who remain unconvinced, I think it is good that alternative interpretations of the evidence are made available for people to draw their own conclusions from.
Enjoy.
The amount of inference required to understand what is demonstrated there is not large. A bridge of small steps connects fish with elephants in the fossil record. Creationists such as yourself proclaim the lack of expected transitional forms in the fossil record when, upon closer examination, all they can really show is a refusal--their own refusal--to make any inference that leads toward evolution.
The fact of the matter is that nothing to be reasonably expected in the fossil record from evolutionary theory is lacking. Darwin himself figured out and stated nicely that even the rather impoverished fossil record known in his day was about what one would expect. He predicted that as more of the world was explored new fossil finds would further outline the already apparent tree of life and further bolster his theory. He was right in spades. It is total misrepresentation to pretend otherwise.
Please show where evolution does not stand the test of the scientific method (this will come as a shock to the thousands of real scientists publishing real scientific papers on this very subject).
For most scientists all of this seems so obvious that it is difficult to question. It goes against human nature to challenge long held ideas of truth. However, science is suppose to do just that - challenge ideas. Why? Because often what seems obvious initially does not turn out to be true.Science does challenge ideas, it just isn't still challenging the idea that the Earth is almost spherical, or that fire is the result of oxidation and not the rushing out of phlogiston. Some aspects of reality win acceptance and are not seriously challenged thereafter. The areas of doubt are not static but are pushed ahead as an expanding frontier. That Earth's life forms are related by common descent is no longer an area of reasonable doubt. The movement to cast such doubt is religious and political, not scientific.
The article then descends into "data anomaly soup" mode with a little question-begging thrown in. There is nothing funny about Ichthyosaur burials, nothing requiring throwing normal interpretations out the window. The age of dinosaurs is argued against by the apparent survival of some blood chemicals in T-rex bones. The mainstream scientists involved don't seem to have noticed this implication at all.
But here's the amusing question-begging:
Since a single gene pool can produce "drastic" differences in phenotypic forms, how are scientists so sure of their fossil classification models? Often only slight phenotypic differences are enough to place a fossil creature in a different species, genus or even family group than its modern-day counterpart or than its counterpart found elsewhere in the geologic column. The problem is that differences, even fairly significant differences, are known to exist between members of the same gene pool. Because of this fact, taxonomic classification models can be quite subjective and even misleading.The same gene pool? You mean, "common descent," right? Actually, I have trouble deciding whether this is classic question-begging or giving the game away while refusing to see it.
Here's an actual good source on questions of taxononmy and the fossil record: Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.
Moving further up the taxonomic hierarchy, the condylarths and primitive carnivores (creodonts, miacids) are very similar to each other in morphology (Fig. 9, 10), and some taxa have had their assignments to these orders changed. The Miacids in turn are very similar to the earliest representatives of the Families Canidae (dogs) and Mustelidae (weasels), both of Superfamily Arctoidea, and the Family Viverridae (civets) of the Superfamily Aeluroidea. As Romer (1966) states in Vertebrate Paleontology (p. 232), "Were we living at the beginning of the Oligocene, we should probably consider all these small carnivores as members of a single family." This statement also illustrates the point that the erection of a higher taxon is done in retrospect, after sufficient divergence has occurred to give particular traits significance.The link points numerous instances in which forms which are now distinct begin to resemble each other as you go back and down in the fossil record which could just as easily be lumped in one taxonomic bin as the other. Nothing I've seen yet in Creationi/ID literature explains why that should be so, but it occurs again and again and again.
I'll admit that I went into skim mode for the rest of it. Here and there the author stops playing offense and tries to present alternative models for such obvious problems for flood geology as the foramenifera and layered forests. Flood geology has so many more problems than Pitman even acknowledges that I couldn't get very excited about it.
Often yes, but in some cases, and probably this one, I think it's not quite that. I see it like the way a cuckold will refuse to examine the clues about his wife's misconduct, and will continue to comfort himself that she's faithful to him, and is really out shopping with her girl friends all the time.
Deep down, he suspects that all is not well, and that he's probably deluding himself, but he'd rather not go through the turmoil of confronting reality. He'd have to get a divorce, it would be messy, he'd have an unpleasant time of it, his friends would react badly, etc.
An outside observer, watching the tons of evidence of her infidelity, would think that he'd be better off to clear the decks and be rid of her. But he'd have an empty house, no one to cook for him, that sort of thing. Bad as it is, it's what he's used to, so reality is not what he's ready to deal with.
It's not really Hovind-style misrepresentation. It's just compromise.
It's irrelevant whether he had wrong ideas before he got the right idea. The important thing is he got the right idea, made the predictions he did, and the predictions were right, as the succeeding 140-plus years plainly show. Get a grip! Follow along here!
Wrong. If you don't know what he said, here it is. Chapter 10 - On The Geological Succession of Organic Beings. He didn't say there was no evidence. He said the evidence fits his theory.
Blindness and stupidity seem essential to this form of [non] inquiry, at any rate. At least the cuckold isn't insisting that science classes mention how wonderful his wife is.
The link points numerous instances in which forms which are now distinct begin to resemble each other as you go back and down in the fossil record UNTIL ONE REACHES FORMS which could just as easily be lumped in one taxonomic bin as the other.
(Editor needed. Must work for peanuts.)
Right. There are degrees. As long as he's content to live with his comfortable situation, he harms no one. This is phase one -- the Amish scenario. However, if you visit his home and tell him that his wife is getting bonked by everyone in town, he may react with hostility. Understandable, given his preference for fantasyland. I guess this is phase two. At some point he may morph into phase three: an aggressive maniac, forcing his madness onto others.
He had no power to compel the evidence even in his own day, much less after his death in 1881. Hello? Are you really explaining your objections here? Are these the GOOD arguments for your position?
Darwin's theory predicted legged whales, feathered dinosaurs (OK, by the later editions of his books the first of these had been identified), legged sirenians, Precambrian life forms of any sort, fish-amphibian transitionals, amphibian-reptile transitionals, reptile-mammal transitionals, ape-human transitionals, and so forth. In short, a further and further fleshing out and filling in of a tree of life already evident in 1859. These forms must have existed (and some figured to have been fossilized) because said tree is a true phylogentic family tree of common descent. He was right, right, right in spades about all of this this.
All creationism has is to pretend to not understand. Creationism is the "theory" that scoffed from the beginning even as the evidence piled up further and further. Once in a while, someone gets uncomfortable and dodges: "But God could have left it looking like THAT too." Yes, whatever you have, it could have been created five seconds ago with the appearance of age. Not a very useful or testable idea.
Look at your own arguments on this thread. Per the creationist combat manual, you announce that there are no gradual transformations. Confronted with the total falsehood of that statement, you announce that no one can make you infer from evidence when doing so proves you wrong. Then you announce that Darwin guessed wrong (speculated about big leaps) before he guessed right. Another exercise in misunderstanding the question.
You have nothing to offer science and could give a damn about it anyway. You just think it contradicts your hocus-pocus witch-doctor model of how the world formed. It probably does contradict whatever you think happened. Deal with it.
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