Facemarker.
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.
Since you had me in mind, let me respond. Statements about evolution or any other subject, whether true or false, precise or sloppy, do not alter reality. Evolution, the concept, is the product of several hundred years of accumulated evidence and interpretation. It is not going to be overturned by sloppy writing or thinking by any one person or any few people.
It will not be overturned by any critique which points out unsolved problems, unfinished business, or internal squabbling about systematics (classification).
At this point it could only be subsumed by a larger and more comprehensive theory that includes what is already known and offers more comprehensive explanations of details. the things that most disturb creationists -- the age of the earth and common descent -- aren't even on the table.
How can anyone take anything you say seriously when you contradict yourself 5 times within one paragraph?
That might be an absolute. Any constant is subject to change.
Four sentences all contradicting one another, all stated in "Absolute" terms.
Thanks for the demonstration of my occasional tag line.
You must drive a DODGE.
And yet, you, like most other evolutionists, would most likely protest (and that's being kind) when asked for proof.
It's no wonder the general public is confused about what exactly science is saying.
Not at all. Here's a good article on the age of the earth.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html
As for common descent, I say it's off the table because the main ID advocates have accepted it. If ID people thought there was any rational argument against common descent, why would they go on record as taking it for granted?
Did you actually have a point or were you just tossing out unwarranted, fantasical allegations?
We just can't use the concept as an excuse not to deal with the difficulties of all scientific knowledge: it is not exempt from politics, religion, ignorance, etc.
One of the problem is that we don't have direct knowledge for so much of what we would like to claim, just inferential. The other problem is that we have a sense that certain concepts account for phenomena outside of their field. Another problem is that language is not pure, and will always import a foreign nuance. Added to that our impatience and our egocentric boss factor . . .
Only if you insist. You haven't read Plato?
Clarifying language is not going to yield much in the overall critique of evolution. I do believe that as a result of the ID challenge, biologists are going to develop better ways to communicate with laymen.
I doubt if evolution critics will be happy with the result.
Most people are ignorant no matter their political bent. Of the friends I had growing up, any that knew anything of science ended up as doctors, computer scientists, or in the hard sciences. I suspect this is the general tendency. Since those that were science geeks generally end up in the sciences, that pretty much explains the disparity of knowledge between scientists and the general public.
Viewed a certain way, the statement 'scientists consider non-scientists ignorant of science' almost becomes a truism.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Given the weapons available, it can be downright frightening.
Clarifying language will help determine the scope of biological change as a natural cause relative to other causes.
I don't really care about other people's satements. I'm interested in yours, and you either mean it, or you don't. In context, you gave the indication that this is the prevailing scientific view, rather your mere, singular opinion here.
This a point that really frustrates me about this debate, since, on the one, strict compliance to terms and statements made by science are agressively endorsed, yet just as easily abandoned when it suits a given need.
Very frustrating indeed
"It's no wonder the general public is confused about what exactly science is saying.
Did you miss the memos about the difference between proof and evidence?
My old friends:
Those with 4.0's and technical courses: Physics
Those with >3.0 with technical courses: Engineering
Those with rich fathers: Doctors
Those with fathers that were lawyers: Lawyer
Those that fathers owned a bank: Banker
Those wanting a 'free' loan: Teaching
The more complicated the technology, the more confused the general public is and the more there is a tendency to find some simple explanation for life. Hence, the popularity for the ID movement. It's common nature for people to accept a simple solution, even if it has no basis in fact.
Facemarker.
Why does it always have to degenerate into personal insults with you guys? Then you bitch and moan about how badly you are treated by others when you started it and then claiming a non-existent moral high ground. Stay on the subject.
Humans destroy human beings, man kills man, all from the dawn of history and it goes on today. Man does evil in the name of many things.
The assertion was that religion was the cure for this condition. You haven't refuted my point that this isn't true, you have confirmed it.
Man does evil in the name of many things.
Religion included.
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