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.
Sounds like a soprano. She changes a lightbulb by holding the bulb having the whole universe revolve around her.
NEW Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution, Washington University Law Quarterly. 149 pages (PDF file).
This article is an exhaustive resource. It goes through the history of the ID movement. It discusses the legal precedents. It examines the scientific content of ID. It examines (and quotes) the statements by the ID advocates about their motivations. It's a treasure trove! It could be the source of several stand-alone threads. It's a keeper!
The givens of any system are absolute. If there is nature or the natural, existence is absolute. If there is something as biology, life is absolute. There is no science without constants--and I take that to be the absolutes of a system. In Kantian language, the conditions-for-the possibility-of. The scope is important here. An absolute ruler is a despot as long as s/he rules. Did you have some special sense for the term?
You’re a bit late (like maybe a century or two), if you believe you can appeal to a market place of ideas, scientific or otherwise, to achieve the sort of educational programs you wish. We gave up that option when we surrendered the day-to-day conduct of education to public policy.
So, get in line with all the other supplicants, and clamour for your share of attention.
Sounds like a soprano. She changes a lightbulb by holding the bulb having the whole universe revolve around her.
That's really funny. There was supposed to be a study done at Harvard, where they asked graduating seniors to explain how the solar system works, and there were very few, if any, that could describe it correctly.
The real question is, will USC pull it off, or will they end their winning streak today? lol
All right. 3 seconds left on the clock. Touch down, USC!
Thank You. I was beginning to think most FReepers were...head-in-the-sand types regarding the origin of life. Sure, there's God behind it but God doesn't think the way people do . That's why God's work is such a mystery to people who think as people.
Life happens because it can, not because it's supposed to.
the flat earth is a tetrahedron?
In Kantian language, the conditions-for-the possibility-of. The scope is important here. An absolute ruler is a despot as long as s/he rules. Did you have some special sense for the term?
I really think you can say that "there are no absolutes", although not absolutely. LOL There are always exceptions to any rule. That might be an absolute. Any constant is subject to change. Mathematically, recall that 1 + 1 does not equal 2 because of limit theorems. Recall that there is no such thing as perfect, only more perfect.
I haven't heard about Kant for a long time. Doesn't possibility imply the lack of absolutes?
Interesting notion.
And which category would you correlate the statement: "...it (evolution) nevertheless did happen."
It seems to me that...and without any direct indictment of intent...there are valid semantical complaints on both sides of this issue.
You must be one big dude.
Then how do you have sufficient evidence to know that?
That's an interesting riddle. How could Socrates be the wisest, when he claimed ignorance. I could give you no better answer than he. But this question must be treated carefully, for there are kinds of knowledge.
Not only do the scientists that I worked with generally believe that conservatives are anti-sciemce, they also believe that the anti-science stance is growing. To be fair, most of these scientists consider liberals to be just ignorant of science.
Yes. It's amusing, albeit dangerous, to observe two differing absolute TRVTHs colliding.
In a democracy, there is a prevailing cultural antagonism against advanced knowledge. We should also note that each class has its own peculiar vices. Scientist themselves forget the Ph part of their PhD.
Naw, then it would look like a four-sided die.
If that worked with any consistency then why do we need doctors? Go to the church, tithe and be healed.
I once heard that religion was created to control the masses.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. - Karl Marx (somebody has no doubt beat me here, I just couldn't resist)
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.
Religion did NO such thing. First of all this is Assertion Without Proof. Second, Religion continued to destroy human beings until the introduction of Aristotean logic, and the subsequent development of science and the scientific method that actually changed the lot of men. Islam killed how many Americans in the last 2 decades?
It is through Man's raising of our consciousness levels, that we become closer to what our ideal perception of what God might be.
Are you a hippy? "Raising consciousness?" How, exactly, is consciousness "raised"? How do you know it has been "raised"? When it agrees with you?
I thought we gave up this touchy-feely stuff ages ago.
Did you really say that? Did you really mean that?
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