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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.
Like he said it first
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." Seneca the Younger (4BC-65AD)
Example, please.
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However, my little blurb was about friends in grade school. I have quite a number of old friends from high school that are drunks, welders, store managers, mechanics, business men, realtors and so on. The only friends that have gone into the sciences are those that had a childhood interest in science.
Evolution is no less a "human construct" than gravity is. It's a feature of the natural world that existed before humans ever recognized it. He was trying to play a semantic game.
That seems to be the creationists' last stand - having lost the war, they must try to win a battle or two.
Considering the post you responded to, are you agreeing with the poster that common descent is off the table, and do you also agree that this is the prevailing scientific view.
How do you know Socrates existed other than Plato said so? How do you know what Plato said was the truth? How do you know it was accurate? How do you know Socrates was "wise"? How do you know that the bust of Socrates (which I have seen) is actually of Socrates and not somebody else, just mis-named?
How do you know you exist? How do you know that there is such a thing as knowledge? And finally the best, you said:
for there are kinds of knowledge
How do you know there are "kinds of knowledge" and what are they and how do you know in what way they differ? How do you know they are not all different aspects of the same knowledge? How do you know you know?
Yeah, I read Plato. I wasn't impressed.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. - Karl Marx
Like he said it first
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." Seneca the Younger (4BC-65AD)
Non-sequitur.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true.
Religion is the opiate of the masses.
Undistributed Middle.
Since I am a terrible debater, the best that I can do is provide information that is as accurate as possible. I also try to be as accepting of other belief systems as I can and get into name calling as little as possible. Unfortunately I fail at both far more than I would like.
"(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.
The only people I initiate the conversion process with are my children and grandchild. However, if I find others trying to convert my family or me, and this includes actions taken through the educational system, I respond in kind.
Being a relativist here can be dangerous. :)
I'm not sure what technology has to do with anything, but I would disagree with you that there is an inverse relationship between human behavior (or at leat this specific behavior) and technology. I, in fact, see an observably opposite relationship between technology and each new and succesive generation of human beings, who are much more comfortable with complexity than than the previous generation. Besides, if society regresses, or at least our particular type of society, then technology would (or should) reflect that.
There's no scientific debate over the age of the earth or common descent.
What do you mean by being a relativist? IN contrast to an absolutist?
I've tried to convert my kids. For example, I took them to church and Sunday school each week, vacation Bible school, church groups, etc, etc, and then when one of my sons was in high school, he said, oh my the way, I don't believe in God!!!
Well, that threw me for a loop, I congratulate him for being his own person, but any conversion I tried fell on deaf ears. I don't think conversion is possible unless the other person is receptive.
There are many other examples, though, of how the apple didn't fall far from the tree, so my conversion attempts were often successful. Were you successful at your attempts?
Thanks.
Example, please.
Well, of the latter, QED; of the former, you've got to be kidding me...
Then be a man, step up to the table, and back up your words. Provide proof of common descent.
I'd have to agree with that. That is actually very true. The general public has about a 12th grade education, don't they?
A simple solution has great appeal to many people, including educated ones.
The word is Parsimony: Adoption of the simplest assumption in the formulation of a theory or in the interpretation of data, especially in accordance with the rule of Ockham's razor
Why? Even the leader of the ID movement believes in common descent. It's a moot point.
You can start here.
It's off the table. The leaders of the ID movement believe in common descent and publicly state such. If your leaders believe it, you have to believe it also.
So it follows that there is a tendency to find some simple explanation for life.
And if USC can score a winning touchdown in the last 3 seconds of the game today, I will accept what they have to say. LOL
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