Posted on 07/22/2006 5:35:21 AM PDT by DouglasKC
Here is what you included in your post (back in #212):
All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.
Here is the rest of the passage (source):
Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record.Happy now?Although I reject this argument (for reasons discussed in ["The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change"]), let us grant the traditional escape and ask a different question. Even though we have no direct evidence for smooth transitions, can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms -- that is, viable, functioning organisms -- between ancestors and descendants in major structural transitions? Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing? The concept of preadaptation provides the conventional answer by permitting us to argue that incipient stages performed different functions. The half jaw worked perfectly well as a series of gill-supporting bones; the half wing may have trapped prey or controlled body temperature. I regard preadaptation as an important, even an indispensable, concept. But a plausible story is not necessarily true. I do not doubt that preadaptation can save gradualism in some cases, but does it permit us to invent a tale of continuity in most or all cases? I submit, although it may only reflect my lack of imagination, that the answer is no, and I invoke two recently supported cases of discontinuous change in my defense.
[snip--follow the link for more]
I will leave it to you and the lurkers to decide whether this changes any meanings.
Your links to the Discovery Institute I did not follow. I do science, not apologetics.
LOL. That confirms it for me. I'm certainly glad to see that someone besides me understands the ramifications. Knotts dead; Limpet found. Coincidence? I think not.
Two points. That's not my website, but that is it's name. If you don't approve, take it up with the owner.
IF you'd read the site http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm, you'd have seen that it's a long (though hardly exhaustive) list of, well, suboptimal "designs" in various animals. Examples:
Why is hemoblobin better at linking up with carbon monoxide than it is with oxygen?
Why do platypuses have teeth in their jaws that never erupt?
Why is the recurrent laryngeal nerve af a giraffe 15 feet longer than it needs to be?
Why do fetal marsupials have egg teeth that they never use?
And so on. Read the site, it has some very interesting natural history.
Thanks for the ping!
mistaken placemarker.
Darwin is a god like figure in the pantheon of great scientists. So what do you do? Trash the god? Or punt? He punted. Understandable human reaction. Scientists know that Gould was right. But the name "Darwin" is a powerful franchise. And you don't dump the name for something ephemeral like "punctuated equilibrium" with out paying a price.
Good point. Very similar to Freud - father of Psychology - a god in the field, yet by today's standard, hopelessly unaware - a condition shared with Darwin. A condition that doesn't take away from either man's greatness...
Science the lazy way: "Naturedidit." Better to assume intelligent design and start asking how the Intelligent Designer did it. At least we'll come up with some useful knowledge. The Intelligent Designer enjoins humankind to "fill the earth and subdue it" and is thus the true Friend of applied science.
Darwin wasn't hoplessly unaware. He understood the problem and considered both options. And both options are correct. Evolution is rapid after mass extinctions and slow for the majority of the time.
Microwave, chocolate & ZeusDidit placemark
Point 1 - Refer to reply 148
Point 2 - If you can't read the Bible as a work of fiction and decide whether God is he/she/it, your powers of comprehension are suspect.
Point 3 - The fact is, the rocks are here. The arrangement of these rocks is just a pattern that a lot of evos like.
Point 4 - What does the theory of evolution add to the condition of mankind? Scientific theories, relating to the physical world, actually manifest themselves in tangible ways. What does the toe do? Why not leave the can of alphabet soup in the can instead of tryiing to write War and Peace with it?
Typical of a smarmy narcissist (in the clinical sense). Whose post is it anyway and who made you the gatekeeper and detector of crap, lies, and bromides.
All you have is a pile of rocks - that's a fact. The way you arrange them is purely an intellectual mastrubation to gratify the evos sense of order. Having made a choo-choo train out of your rocks, what then? What do you really have? What great achievements have been launched off that springoard?
The main article of this thread is the usual creationist hodgepodge of distractions, quote mines, fallacies, misstatements, and evasions concerning the fossil record evidence. It is a web article authored by "Various" from a creationist web site. It is not a serious report of an ongoing controversy within mainstream science. It's what I told you before, "the controversy" is not in science but in school board rooms, manufactured and sold to ignorant yahoos by charlatans.
Here are real articles on the fossil record by real scientists:
The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation".
Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.
Apparently, the good Doctor, who, of course, is a believer, feels confident that an open-minded investigation into God conducted with scientific rigor will lead to belief.
No one has actually identified a test for God and the good Doctor has not proposed one. For all that, he's still saying what I pointed out he said and it's clear what it means. He accepts evolution and is sharply critical of creationists who feel entitled to sabotage science and science education because they do not.
As for the pressure to conform ...
Your good Doctor would seem to be part of this. Read your own link. He decries that some 40 percent of scientists who believe as he does are not as he did writing articles about it. That is not the same as decrying oppression by atheists. There are probably innocent explanations for the silence of the many, not the least of which is that "the many" are practically always going to be silent about anything and let "the few" write the articles. Not everybody who believes a thing is awash in the glow of the discovery, etc.
Could it be because of having to endure abusive language like this...
You wimpy little crybaby!
There is nothing abusive about accurately describing a situation. Absolutely none of your quotes is anything but an accurate and objective description, with the possible exception of saying "Bronze Age" when "Dark Ages" would have sufficed.
Pay attention to the text of what I'm telling you and dont' just catalog it as "Here's another thing that sounds mean! Evo brutaaaaaaliteeee!!!" While you're at it, stop trying to shuck and jive me. When you want to show me evidence for something, have the evidence or admit you don't have it. Don't fill up my screen with a bunch of stupid blah blah. I can read, I can parse, I can see where's the beef.
Didn't mean to leave this STILL unanswered. You can't use the absence of dissenting views (my point) to prove a massive conspiracy to suppress all the dissenting views (your point).
You don't have dissenting views within science. You just have an excuse, the massive conspiracy, to explain why you don't have the controversy in the scientific literature where it should be if the main article of this thread were accurate. But you have no evidence for your massive conspiracy, either, only the lack of dissenting views.
Pathetic. The lack of dissenting views is evidence for the lack of dissenting views. It's what I said. The controversy is not in science. If forty percent of scientists were being suppressed, they would not passively suffer this. Another thirty percent would protest even if the suppression was not targeted at them. That leaves only about 30 percent to suppress seventy, in my model.
Pathetic.
So how to they determine the truth from the analogies?
Then wouldn't God have stopped the earth from revolving and make the earth stand still, not the sun? Yet that is not what the Bible says.
You can believe whatever you wish. Just quit peddling this "snake oil" evolution THEORY you worship!
As soon as you stop trying to demonstrate your faith and call it science.
Paradigm drift, perhaps?
Please enlighten me. Translate it from Hebrew, please, so I can get the full benefit of the original intent by the writer.
God can do as He pleases. He doesn't have to observe your laws of nature, nor obtain your permission to change things. He made them.
You trust your science, but it is about as exact as the person positing!
Now, refute what the article has to say about all those missing links. While you are at it, simplify your ideas about evolution and show some proof that he is in error!
You can poo-poo my faith in God all day long, but your faith in man is surely destined to fail you...
Agreed.
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