Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.1

[rossum]

Birds = dinosaurs? Not convincing.

Birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are mammals. Your personal disbelief is irrelevant.

rossum

 

[Kei]

Precisely, what matters is what it says and not what one thinks it means (which I explained earlier!) so long as it is within the Faith.

 

[William_Scott]

Birds are dinosaurs in the same way that bats are mammals. Your personal disbelief is irrelevant.

Rossum you are incorrectly stating as fact something that even some evolutionists question (e.g. Scientists: Bird's Ancestors Likely Not Dinosaurs | Voice of America - English).

In other words, by faith you have leaped across gaps in the evidence that some of your fellow evolutionists are unwilling to cross. I wish the faith of Christians in the straightforward claims of God’s Word were as strong as your faith is in the currently popular claims of evolutionists.

I’m out for at least a week or two because of my schedule. Have a good week all.

 

[Richca]

Here is Gould on transitionals:

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists – whether though 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. (emphasis added)
S J Gould “Evolution as Fact and Theory” Discover Magazine May 1981.

Do your lying creationist websites…

I believe you are misrepresenting the facts and worse yet, falsely slander and misrepresent websites of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Gould is the one who admitted and correctly so that the fossil records lacks the so-called transitional forms: ‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology" (1977). This just four years before his novel and contradictory statement you quote from 1981 ‘Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.’

In 1977 he also said “‘All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.”

Just one year before the novel statement from 1981, he 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.”

Then we have the reply of Dr. Collin Patterson (1979), who was at the time the senior paleontologist (fossil expert) at the prestigious British Museum of Natural History, to creationist Lunder Sunderland when Sunderland inquired of Patterson why he had not shown one single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book Evolution (1978) which Patterson wrote for the museum. Patterson responded:

I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?’

He went on to say:

‘Yet Gould [Stephen J. Gould—the now deceased professor of paleontology from Harvard University] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. … You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

Niles Eldredge and Gould postulated the theory of punctuated equilibrium (1972) as an explanation of the facts of the fossil record, namely, ‘the extreme rarity of [the supposed] transitional forms’, gaps or abrupt appearance of the various species of animals, and stasis. In other words, the fossil record is characterised by long periods of stasis, or equilibrium, where species are clearly identifiable and stable, punctuated on occasions by the sudden, or ‘rapid’, appearance of new species. Hence: ‘punctuated equilibria.’ Oddly, stasis or stability of species is here looked upon as a proof or effect of evolution which involves change.

Gould appears to have changed his opinion or made an about face concerning the lack of the supposed transitional forms in the fossil record in the 1980’s as we see in the quote from the article in 1981. Apparently, he was probably feeling heat from the creationists, his own evolutionist colleagues, the scientific community, and his own evolutionary beliefs. In a fit of anger his bursts out “Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.” He embraced the walking whale tale lock, stock, and barrel and of course the ‘transitional’ dinosaur bird. At the same time, I don’t believe he ever abandoned his punctuated equilibrium idea as the main mode of evolutionary change but mingled it with gradual evolution.

It was just four years prior he had stated “All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” Now he states in 1981 that there are abundant transitional forms between the larger groups. Abundant? Is this guy seeing things or smoking a peyote peace pipe? These so called ‘abundant’ ones he talks about are probably the few Dr. Collin Patterson is talking about when he says there is “not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”

 

[rossum]

The great majority of scientists see Scansoriopteryx as a dinosaur. Feduccia disagrees, but he is in a distinct minority.

However, that is not important for evolution. Most biologists believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs. A few, such as Feduccia, believe that birds evolved from a different type of Archosaur. In all cases, birds evolved.

Yes, scientists disagree, just as Christians disagree. Does the existence of disagreements between Christian denominations invalidate Christianity? Nor do disagreements between scientists invalidate evolution. As Feduccia says in the article:

The evidence, Feduccia says, only adds to the idea that birds did not evolve from ground-dwelling dinosaurs, but from tree-climbing ancestors.

Birds evolved. Darwin was correct, to return to the title of this thread.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Then we have the reply of Dr. Collin Patterson (1979),

The Patterson letter! This is so commonly quotemined by creationists that there is a webpage devoted to refuting it. See Patterson Misquoted. That article is from 1997. Creationists have been quotemining this piece and others for a very long time.

For more deceptive quotemines see the Quote Mine Project.

YEC-style creationism has no scientific support. In order to manufacture the appearance of such support YEC websites have to rely on lies and deception. This is so common that it is worthwhile compiling lists of their lies, as with the two links above.

rossum

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Your comments are cogent, and deserve a considered response.

From the start, although evolution provided an explanation for the known fossil evidence, in conjunction with all the other observations, Darwin, and the next hundred years of evolutionists, agreed that there wasn’t enough of it to resolve a specific objection, namely whether there were really no transitional forms, or whether it was simply a lack of discovery that made it look as if there were no transitional forms.

It was almost always acknowledged that ‘transitional forms’ would be a minority of fossil discoveries, for two reasons.

Firstly, what what we might call ‘intermediate’, or ‘boundary’ environments (such as a coastline - the boundary of sea and land - or a forest margin, the boundary of jungle and plain) are considerably smaller than the domains on either side, so that even in the absence of evolution we would expect to find many fewer ‘intermediate’, or ‘boundary’ species than those belonging to the bigger environments of either side. ‘Intermediate’, or ‘boundary’ conditions could also be temporal, a short period of environmental transition between two relatively stable states.

Secondly, direct ancestry, as opposed to relative ancestry (a word I use advisedly) is also expected to be a vey small proportion of the graveyard of our forebears. The ‘family plot’ of any living animal contains many more uncles and cousins from previous generations than it does direct grand-parents, so that it is virtually impossible, even now, to look at a fossil and claim that it is from a species directly ancestral to any living species, and totally impossible to claim that it is from an organism directly ancestral to any living organism. It may be, however, however, quite reasonable to claim that it is from a genus or family directly ancestral to a living genus or family.

Gould and Eldredge specifically addressed the first reason, and Patterson specifically addressed the second. None of them considered for a moment that the observed lack of transitional forms meant that common descent was a less likely explanation for all the observations that led to evolution.

Many of these ideas have become much clearer in the last thirty years or so. So much so that Gould, Eldredge and Patterson belong as much to the history of the theory of evolution as Darwin and Wallace. It would be very wrong to assume that any of them would make the same comments today as they did then. Some ideas have been explored and rejected, and some explored, embraced and developed.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

I think it is worth commenting a little further on the ‘quote-mining’ issue.

It must be one of the greatest sadnesses of those who truly believe in a more or less literal interpretation of the bible that their champions so often resort to deliberate deception to attempt to further their cause. One must ask oneself why this tactic - the selective quotation from an evolutionist with the direct intention to show that he doesn’t really believe in evolution at all - is so common.

After all, all science is continuously developing, and evolutionists, like other scientists, have been wrong.
Their errors have mostly been pointed out by other evolutionists, and this is one of the ways in which science progresses. So why do creationists make such a dishonest mess of their quotation? Are they all arrant liars, or is there a methodological flaw in their thinking that makes them truly believe that highlighting an incongruous quotation can support their argument. I think there is.

The entire basis of Creationism is to rely on an argument from authority, and their biggest mistake about Evolution is to imagine that evolution does the same. Creationists, of course, have God and the Bible as their authority (which I do not deny them for a moment), and they assume that Evolutionists have Darwin, Haldane, Gould, Coyne and the rest as theirs. This mindset being so, Creationists think that an Evolutionist attack on the literal words of the bible is an attack on their Authority (which of course it isn’t), and that an attack of their own on the authorities of Evolution is a refutation of the theory (which of course it isn’t).

Is seems beyond Creationist thinking to grasp that no evolutionist cares about Darwin or Dawkins as individuals. We don’t care that Haldane said this or Gould said that. It could have been anybody. What is important is whether they have brought out a sensible argument, with sufficient data to support it. The respect we have for them is not that they know something we don’t, but that they thought of if first.

I can only think of one instance of reverse quote-mining, in which an evolutionist has used a quote to show that a creationist doesn’t believe in creation, and that is in the scientific papers of Dr Andrew Snelling, a prominent Australian literal six-day creationist with dozens of creationist books and papers to his name. Remarkably, he is also quite a prominent uranium geologist with several papers to his name in that too. In one of these (‘Koongarra Uranium Deposits’, in Geology of the Mineral Deposits of Australia and Papua New Guinea, 1990) he says:

“The Archaean basement consists of domes of granitoids and granitic gneisses (the Nanambu Complex), the nearest outcrop being 5 km to the north. Some of the lowermost overlying Proterozoic metasediments were accreted to these domes during amphibolite grade regional metamorphism (5 to 8 kb and 550° to 630° C) at 1870 to 1800 Myr. Multiple isoclinal recumbent folding accompanied metamorphism.”

Throughout the paper he continues to discuss the age of mineral deposits in terms of gradual accretion over millions of years, in direct contradiction to all his alleged creationist beliefs.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

Then we have the reply of Dr. Collin Patterson (1979),

The Patterson letter! This is so commonly quotemined by creationists that there is a webpage devoted to refuting it. See Patterson Misquoted. That article is from 1997. Creationists have been quotemining this piece and others for a very long time.

For more deceptive quotemines see the Quote Mine Project.

YEC-style creationism has no scientific support. In order to manufacture the appearance of such support YEC websites have to rely on lies and deception. This is so common that it is worthwhile compiling lists of their lies, as with the two links above.

rossum

This ‘quotemine’ concept is rather meaningless to me. Thank you for the Patterson Misquoted link but it doesn’t really have anything to do with the post I made. And I don’t need some other person to tell me how to read or interpret english, english is my first language and I do just fine with it. As far as what Patterson or Gould say or don’t say about the fossil record or their evolutionary interpretation of it, it really doesn’t concern me much as I don’t believe in macroevolutionary theory anyway, I’m a creationist. I don’t really get how YEC is linked with all this either. I’m not a YEC, but I made the post about the quotes from Gould and Patterson and I stick to what I said in it. I’m not to sure how worried the YEC are about scientific support, maybe some more than others. They believe in the word of God and that’s really all that matters as Jesus said “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Faith in the Word of God is what is going to save us, not science and science can and does error while God’s word is certain.

I also disagree with your opinion that YEC websites purposely try to deceive although I wouldn’t put it pass some in the scientific community. Lying or deception is a sin, it’s demonic and being a child of Satan as he is the father of lies. I’m quite sure many YEC are committed christians trying to live a good life in accord with God’s commandments. They simply don’t believe in everything the scientific community tells them and correctly so. And why should they when much of the so-called science is based on pure or wild conjecture and atheistic interpretations contrary to the word of God.

 

[benjamin1973]

I’m going to say something a little strange. Of those opinions here, the most useful are those of buffalo, edwest, etc. The reason I say this is that while not many people will take them that seriously, science must always have that kind of dissent, or if unchallenged, it really will be in danger of becoming the Scientism that religionists call it.

Science thrives in the face of challenge. But I fear that things like evolution, when the become mainstream, may become a cultural dogma.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

I prefer the more considered objections of Aloysium and Richca to the knee-jerk soundbites of others, but I take your point entirely.

 

[Richca]

Who knows that genera and species were invented to support the fact of evolution?

Bingo! A point I have been arguing right along. Species is a man made concept and speciation is a loss of an ability once had.

From Hugh-Farey: “Who knows that genera and species were invented to support the fact of evolution?” What, I wonder, does this mean? That Darwin invented the terms genus and species? Or that Evolution was the reason for the invention of these terms? My good friend Wikipedia tells me that Augustus Quirinus Rivinus used the terms genus and species around the year 1700, predating the Origin of Species by 150 years. Needless to say, Rivinus most certainly did not believe in evolution. Jerry Bergman knows this perfectly well, and does not claim either of these things in his book.

Although Plato writes about genera and species, Aristotle is called the first father of taxonomy. According to Aristotle’s categories, there are what is called five universal predicables, for example,

Genus : “Socrates is an animal.”
Specific difference: “Socrates is rational.”
Species: “Socrates is a man”
Essential trait or property: “Socrates is risible (i.e., able to laugh).”
Unessential trait or accident: “Socrates is white.”

 

[benjamin1973]

This is the thing that bothers me. It seems to me that theists who will so desperately grasp at every straw (or straw man) they can get think made-up stuff is the best support they can come up with. That stance really seems to me not an expression of faith, but a lack of it: is the God position really so weak that people have to twist words, quote mine, pretend not to understand very basic points, and so on?

Surely God’s hand is writ all over Creation, and studying as much as possible must be a kind of tribute to He who created it? And surely willful ignorance must be the opposite-- a disinterest in all the wonders that God has laid out for us to learn about?

 

[buffalo]

This is the thing that bothers me. It seems to me that theists who will so desperately grasp at every straw (or straw man) they can get think made-up stuff is the best support they can come up with. That stance really seems to me not an expression of faith, but a lack of it: is the God position really so weak that people have to twist words, quote mine, pretend not to understand very basic points, and so on?

Surely God’s hand is writ all over Creation, and studying as much as possible must be a kind of tribute to He who created it? And surely willful ignorance must be the opposite-- a disinterest in all the wonders that God has laid out for us to learn about?

Revelation has to be given the utmost respect. Scientism causes people to doubt the truth of scripture, but yet claims are not empirical. The best science can do is try to reconstruct history from scanty evidence. On the other hand we have a written history to refer to.

 

[Glark]

“Empirical research is research using empirical evidence. It is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience”. Empirical research - Wikipedia 2

Thank you for this information.

Hence ‘direct empirical evidence’ and ‘indirect empirical evidence’.

Please cite an example of the term “indirect empirical evidence” being used formally in science.

Here is an example of how empirical evidence based on an indirect observation leads to a logical conclusion. Finger-prints were found in a car used in a crime, therefore the owner of the finger-prints was in that car.
And another: The mercury in a thermometer placed in water is expanding, therefore the water is getting hotter.

Here are a few examples of how “empirical evidence” via an indirect observation leads to a “logical” conclusion … according to evolutionism:

• Human embryos have “gills”, therefore humans evolved from fish (the “gills” aren’t even an “observation”, but a myth).
• Humans share 89% of the genes with chimps, therefore humans and chimps have a common ancestor.
• Birds have feathers, therefore reptiles evolved feathers.
• The length of finches’ beaks is determined by natural selection, therefore all life evolved from microbes.
• “Evolution is happening right before our eyes!”, so humans evolved from microbes.
• Life exists, therefore all life evolved from microbes.

 

[Techno2000]

This is the thing that bothers me. It seems to me that theists who will so desperately grasp at every straw (or straw man) they can get think made-up stuff is the best support they can come up with. That stance really seems to me not an expression of faith, but a lack of it: is the God position really so weak that people have to twist words, quote mine, pretend not to understand very basic points, and so on?

Surely God’s hand is writ all over Creation, and studying as much as possible must be a kind of tribute to He who created it? And surely willful ignorance must be the opposite-- a disinterest in all the wonders that God has laid out for us to learn about?

We just believe that God didn’t have to use evolution .

 

[Glark]

You trying to convince me the Darwinism is true… would be like me trying to convince you that God is real… it ain’t going to happen

"And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” John 10:4-5

 

[Glark]

I have to work overnights and sleep in the afternoons.

I was a burglar for a while, but I tired of going to sleep at dawn and getting up at 1pm. So I switched to robbing banks instead; the hours were much more congenial.

 

[edwest211]

Interesting assumption about “a disinterest in all the wonders that God has laid out for us to learn about?” I have a significant collection of science magazines, but today, science is this tiny niche in the minds of the people. Landing on the moon in 1969. Before that, I got every book about rockets and space I could get. It was great. Now, man from microbes? Divine Revelation is the missing piece not just for science but for too many living their lives today.

God tells us we matter.

Evolution tells us we’re just biological robots that die, eventually. The end.