Posted on 10/15/2005 3:44:16 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A paleontologist testified in the Dover school board trial about how fossils connect species.
The ancestor of the whale and its first cousin the hippopotamus walked the Earth for 40 million years, munching on plants, before dying out in the ice ages.
Known as the anthracotheres, it became extinct 50 to 60 million years ago, but not before its evolutionary tree diverged — the whale forging into the oceans, the hippopotamus to the African swamps.
Kevin Padian, a University of California-Berkeley paleontologist, told the story of the whale’s journey, along with the travels of its closest living relative, in U.S. Middle District Court Friday to illustrate how the fossil record connects us to our past.
In the First Amendment lawsuit over Dover Area High School’s intelligent design policy, Padian was the plaintiffs’ final science expert to testify. The defense will begin to present its side Monday.
Padian’s testimony was essentially a response to intelligent-design proponents’ claims that paleontology does not account for missing links and the fossil record belies evolutionary theory.
“The problem is that there are no clear transitional fossils linking land mammals to whales,” the pro-intelligent-design textbook “Of Pandas and People” states.
“How many intermediates do you need to suggest relationships?” Padian wondered.
He pointed to numerous transitional fossils as he traced the lineage of the whale to its early ancestors, a group of cloven-hoofed mammals of a group named cetartiodactyla, illustrating the gradual changes of features along the way.
“We think the transitions are pretty good,” he said.
One of Padian’s concerns with intelligent design — the idea that life’s complexities demand an intelligent designer — is that it shuts down the search for answers, he said. “It worries me that students would be told that you can’t get from A to B with natural causes,” he said.
One of the complaints of 11 parents suing the school district is that, after Dover biology students are told about intelligent design, they are referred to “Pandas,” which is housed in the high school library.
While the connection between the whale and hippopotamus is recent, Padian said some of the fossils linking whales to land-dwelling mammals go back to the Civil War but were ignored by the authors of “Pandas.”
The curator of Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology and author of the “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” also testified to the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.
“Pandas” states, “Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agent, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.”
But Padian, at times affectionately, showed numerous pictures and diagrams of different reptiles evolving from ones possessing scales to ones possessing feathers.
Of a fossil of an archaeopteryx found in the 1860s, Padian said, “Now this is a beautiful critter.”
He also criticized the book’s assertions on homology — the study of similar characteristics of living organisms used to explain their relationships to other organisms.
As he cross-examined Padian, Dover’s attorney Robert Muise brought up one of science’s most ardent evolutionists in raising questions about the fossil record.
Muise asked Padian about the late Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, the idea that rather than Darwin’s characterization of evolution as slow and gradual change, it may be better described as taking place in fits and starts.
Gould offered the idea as an explanation for the patterns found in the fossil record, which shows abrupt appearances of new species, followed by long stagnant periods with little change.
While “Pandas” argues that intelligent-design proponents consider punctuated equilibrium unprovable, Padian said Gould offered the theory as an explanation to gaps in the fossil record.
“Is natural selection responsible for punctuated equilibrium?” Muise asked at one point.
“That’s a great question,” Padian said. While it may raise questions about the mechanism of evolution, he answered, it doesn’t contradict the idea of common descent.
How about, "If there were no Man would there still be a God?"
Here's an alternative: Why don't we return to the traditional conservative stance of demanding high and hard-nosed academic standards in all secondary education subjects, including biology but also in the social sciences?
Of course this means that we can't support the teaching of "creationism" or "intelligent design" unless and until some such view genuinely prevails in the market place of scientific ideas, but it ALSO means we can consistently and more effectively fight and reverse the accumulation of leftist, revisionist and identity group oriented pablum everywhere else in the curricula. (And in the sciences too, for instance by pointing out that whereas genuine ecological science can and should be taught, ideologically oriented "environmentalism" must and should be excluded.)
It's called a "smear by association" usually a leftist tactic.
The prevalence of Latin and Greek in sciences doesn't mean we use them correctly. Check out the dictionary. The plural of virus is viruses.
I suspect that the effort was essentially unproductive, as that wasn't a serious problem. (If I'm wrong, and the flagellum issue has lead to something of value, I'll be delighted to be corrected.)
Although the effort expended in rebutting Behe has proved him wrong, it hasn't slowed him down. Or his followers. Like all creationist arguments, this one just won't go away. The reason for this is that creationists don't care about evidence, only their peculiar version of things. And reality never gets in their way.
This is why most serious scientists don't waste their time on such silliness. Alas, sometimes it's necessary, as when the Dark Agers try to destroy the teaching of science in government schools, as a necessary first step in their mad goal of establishing a theocracy.
Other people's faults should be no occasion for yours.
Well said.
Interesting. Creationists will deny something that has substantial evidence for existence but will hold as truth something which they have zero proof of.
A hostile review of Behe's book gave him credit for this. I'll see if I can find it.
They're onto us! Can exposure of the germ-theory-of-disease-con be far behind? Even the gravity-con is in danger! CAN'T YOU SEE WE CAN'T KEEP THIS UP!! It's insane. You're all mad. I can't be part of this anymore. I'm going public. I'm going to finally TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING. I'm [...shot rings out.../] dfsajklj;e aa [ijjJ/
placemarker
The Grand Master has put you on indefinite leave.
Your "universe" is limited. Moreover, "Conservative" is a political concept. And you know the ditty about opinions.
Ichneumon only winged me, and then injected something into my arm. The impulse to shout, "the earth is FLAT, all FOUR SIDES of it," is gradually fading... (Ooops.)
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