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.
Yes, and since you describe the problem in that way, I suggested in the elimination of the distinction theist/atheist as the "middle." Do you have some other middle in mind that you could describe?
The advocates of "intelligent design," spotlighted in the current courtroom battle over the teaching of evolution in Dover, Pa., have much larger goals than biology textbooks.
They hope to discredit Darwin's theory as part of a bigger push to restore faith to a more central role in American life. "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions," says a strategy document written in 1999 by the Seattle think tank at the forefront of the movement.
The authors said they seek "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."
Intelligent-design advocates have focused publicly on "teaching the controversy," urging that students be taught about weaknesses in evolutionary theory. The 1999 strategy document, though, goes well beyond that.
That "wedge document," outlining a five-year plan for promoting intelligent design and attacking evolution, has figured prominently in the trial now under way in federal court in Harrisburg, Pa.
Eleven parents sued the Dover school board over a requirement to introduce intelligent design to high school biology students as an alternative to evolutionary theory.
"The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. ... We are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source," wrote the authors of the strategy plan for the Center for Science and Culture, an arm of the Discovery Institute and the leader of the effort to promote intelligent design.
"That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a wedge that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points."
The center and the Discovery Institute, financed primarily by Christian philanthropists and foundations, have succeeded in putting evolutionary theory on the hot seat in many school districts and state legislatures.
Its critics, including civil libertarians and the nation's science organizations, say intelligent design is not science, but creationism in a new guise.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that public schools could not teach creationism in science classrooms because it unconstitutionally promoted a particular religious viewpoint.
Well, the issue cleaves a number of different ways. Theists, agnostics, even sophisticated atheists can all be in the middle somewhere. As opposed to trying to define the middle I would (as in politics and social issues) recommend unremitting ridicule of the extremes as the best option. Laughter and derision are underrated.
Laughing placemarker.
Don't forget the tragic. Socrates reminded us in the Symposium that the wise man understands both.
The most reasonable idea, and the only conclusion to be drawn from the evidence is that man created God. That however is simply my opinion.
Come-on Johnny. You can't do this. Otherwise you'll make some poster ask where man put him.
What makes you think he would say anything different than he did?
"It's too bad that he hadn't evolved into a cancer-resisting organism."
Strawman building? Individuals don't evolve, populations do.
Come-on Johnny. You can't do this. Otherwise you'll make some poster ask where man put him.
I have been thinking about that. And I hope I don't get struck down by lightening for suggesting it. LOL
What about faith? What about only by grace are we saved. Or through Christ, all things are possible. Talking like "we created God" is discounting too much. It borders on blasphemy, if that word still exists. My parochial school teachers are rolling over in their graves. LOL
In some sense, Man did create the concept of God, but that concept is so much more than just creationism. I once heard that religion was created to control the masses. At the time of Christ, they were barbarians. All three icons of religion arose out of that time period: Christ, Mohammad and Budha?? Religion stopped Man from destroying itself.
It is through Man's raising of our consciousness levels, that we become closer to what our ideal perception of what God might be. Evolution could fit in there as well, because through more knowledge, we are understanding that there is an evolutionary thread.
God has worked wonders in my life through faith and I don't mean to trivialize the concept of God. (There, the lightening bolts have gone away! LOL!)
That really is a great explanation. From a mathematical view, I recognized the random walk of a Markov chain for the random mutation process and the idea of completeness and insufficiency of a proof. A lot of interesting stuff in your writing. Thank you.
It's a tactic I've seen in other debates. If you know you have some attribute that can be used against you, redirect the focus from yourself to the opponent by accusing him of the same attribute. That way either your opponent spends so much time defending himself that he is ineffectual, or he sounds disingenuous when he tries to place it back where it belongs, on you.
True, limited but influential. In Canada, Conservatives are viewed similarly, albeit less anti-science and not as zealous. What happens in the US almost invariably happens in Canada so Canada can be used as a somewhat accurate indicator of the larger picture in the US.
"Moreover, "Conservative" is a political concept. And you know the ditty about opinions.
It's a tactic I've seen in other debates. If you know you have some attribute that can be used against you, redirect the focus from yourself to the opponent by accusing him of the same attribute. That way either your opponent spends so much time defending himself that he is ineffectual, or he sounds disingenuous when he tries to place it back where it belongs, on you.
That makes a lot of sense about the debate tactics. But maybe we are giving Creationalists too much credit. Maybe, they are just stupid and blindly accepting something their parochial school teachers taught them many years ago. They hold tight to those beliefs because they think fire and damnation or hell and brimstone will gobble them up. LOL
A question that obviously be asked before discussing the extremely complicated process of evolution. Like a said a couple times before, if someone can't grasp the (even broader) evidence that supports a 4.5 billion year-old earth, they're not ready for Evolution 101 yet.
I doubt very much that creationists are stupid. Just like on all sides of any debate, there are some very silly people that can be used by the more intelligent members, but the majority are intelligent enough to be aware of what they are doing.
You are right, of course. But don't you think that "guilt" can alter one's perception and make a person appear to be pig-headed and not want to deviate from a long held belief even though they know it is incorrect?
Some of the Creationists' arguments might seem illogical because they were drilled into them, probably when they were young and these beliefs are often incorrigible. Thus they do use transparent debate techniques because that's the only way they can defend a long held belief like that.
I feel stupid about some of the beliefs I have carried throughout life because of preconceived notions that I never challenged. Maybe the Creationists need to be challenged on a level that doesn't involved their guilt complex. (Don't know what that level would be though. LOL)
Absolutely it can. In fact the entire attitude can be the result and the cause of a feedback loop where each statement that triggers guilt makes the person more adamant about their assertions.
"Some of the Creationists' arguments might seem illogical because they were drilled into them, probably when they were young and these beliefs are often incorrigible. Thus they do use transparent debate techniques because that's the only way they can defend a long held belief like that.
This is likely true, and I have been guilty of doing that on a number of occasions. (Not here hopefully). Had the information fed to the creationists been more representative of science's findings and conclusions, and had the tentativeness of theories not been portrayed as a fault, the illogic may have been corrected at that young age. I'm afraid that there are some people who are in such need of support that anything less than the absolute is unacceptable. Those people will never accept science.
"I feel stupid about some of the beliefs I have carried throughout life because of preconceived notions that I never challenged. Maybe the Creationists need to be challenged on a level that doesn't involved their guilt complex. (Don't know what that level would be though. LOL)
How did you challenge yourself? It seems to me that you hold a key to the answer of your own question.
My question is this: Why do those that embrace the absolute of their religion feel they need to convert everyone else to their way of thinking? Is the lack of 100% consensus a threat to their belief system?
Exactly.
I wish I knew what the answer was. I guess a person has to be receptive and willing to be open-minded without being too distracted by the nearest shiny object. LOL How do YOU challenge misconceptions or preconceived notions?
My question is this: Why do those that embrace the absolute of their religion feel they need to convert everyone else to their way of thinking? Is the lack of 100% consensus a threat to their belief system?
I think you answered your own question as well. I'll bet its the feedback loop where each statement that triggers guilt makes the person more adamant about their assertions.
(I'm trying to think when I try to convert everyone to my way of thinking. Is it that they need constant reassurance? Or the negative feedback triggers some kind of insecurity.) If someone embraces an absolute, it has to set up some type of doubt, because we all know there are no absolutes.
I think you are right, it is the insecurity or threat to their belief system which sets up a vicious circle or negative feedback loop. Interesting phenomena.
Of course, it would be more useful to eliminate "natural causes" as an unidentifiable but incurable disease. (We hear people say, "He died of natural causes." We never hear, "He's got a bad case of natural causes."
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