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.
congratulations, boss
Just as a technical matter, is this all ice, or at some point does it become supercooled water?
Super cooled water is water that has been lowered below the freezing point but remains liquid. So, no.
Also, it is very unlikey that supercooled water to exist since ice crystals (which there are many of there) are great starters for the nucleation process.
Well, one, you're nonsense is showing. And two, I don't think I ever said anything about Kent Hovind being a Doctor, much less an "actual" one. Nor do I really care one way or the other to be quite blatent about it.
I never said anything about tree rings. And if you'd bothered to read what you were responding to instead of making up the nonsense you responded with... Then again, this is short attention span theater for you guys, isn't it.. read just far enough to find something you think you can pick at until you step in something... seems to be the way it's gone so far. For "smart" people, you sure don't seem to learn too well.
Right. Carbon dating rests upon assumptions that were proven wrong some time ago. There is no constant amount of 14c in the atmosphere and it is a moving target even now. Given that you have no data to base proper readings off of that don't amount to an assumption as wild as the one that 14C was constant.. Problem. 14C can only work based upon knowns, not assumptions, and even then it isn't reliable. I understand you guys want to quibble over that point, but then If I had moutains of figures derived from it that lent an appearance of being scientific.. I might be fudgin too.. then again, nope.
Yall didn't learn though.. you calibrated most everything to everything else, so when one fails, they all fail because they all end up tied to the same underlying unsupportable assumptions. To the extent that isn't the case, there are still more assumptives that can't be proven, like whether half-lives have remained constant. Given that the speed of light isn't constant, I'd say all bets are off.
Well if you're going to pick knits on scripture, at least you could get your facts straight as to what it says. If you're going to pick knits on observations, It didn't take much time for flood waters to recede in the Spirit lake region. And trees are settling vertically into the sediment at the bottom of Spirit lake even now. So it's not as though we've no model for what's being discussed. You guys just still wan't to discuss it in terms of begging credulity - even though people now can see with their eyes how it happens. Keep talkin. This nonsense of yours is why people believe the likes of a Kent Hovind - He can show them what actually happens while you sit and theorize about how impossible or improbable or absurd it is.. Seeing is believing.. not hearing about it or seeing some cartoon animations; but, witnessing how these things actually happen in nature. As I said, when people can see a St. Helens episode and what it actually did, all your talking is worthless. When people can see that your "annual" rings in ice cores aren't anywhere near what they are claimed to be for telling anyone anything, they understand right away. Glacier Girl is just a great example for illustrating it. When we show them that you can't argue the case without knowing snowfall data for the time period, it folds your hand for you.. cause you don't have that for what you'd proffer to be "ancient" times. Keep explaining though, cause from what I've seen on another thread, yall think you aren't "getting your message out" and that's why people aren't voting for you, I mean believing you.. lol.
Did you know that some early bible texts were used to benchmark the c-14 technology? hmmm.
Keep repeating a lie often enough and some will start to believe it.
I guess we have to throw out some of the early bible texts because based upon your analysis they are not thousands of years old, they are only a few hundred years old and thus must be fakes.
Wolf
It is a semantic problem; but, not one of my making. That's the beauty of it. If anyone can appreciate that it's me.. and those on my side of the aisle as it were.
1. Science authored the terminology.
2. All here were apparently ignorant of that.
3. In ignorance, Evos attack a "creo" for something authored by Science.
Now, tell me that isn't funny. It's a hoot. I'm glad we got to the understanding now that the semantics games aren't getting us anywhere - now, that is, that the semantics game has turned into an open and obvious liability - essentially backfiring.
We should be arguing science. We should be arguing logic, fallacy, etc.
As for noticing dust and clear layers, that doesn't solve your problem for you anymore than your notions about averages might. The problem here is that you don't know what the layers or the sediment in them properly represents.
You don't know how much time rests between them because you have no data as to melts or the extent of them. Today I can go look at USGS data for any region and get as picky as I want to on precip facts for that region and land mass. I can see weather forecasts for expectations on the short term and I can review forecasts and actual data on the outcomes.
What i can't do is review that information for January 1 through December 12, 1200BC in Columbia. As I noted before, you can have anything you want in the ice - an airplane or bits of sand. None of it tells you how old the other is unless you can establish chain of custody for the evidence. Where did the evidence start, when, and how did it get there. Without that, you're just a fiction writer selling bad copy.
I can have three layers of Ice in an area that date 1200bc, 1000bc - 300AD. And you couldn't account for it. You don't know what you're looking at, and in absence of facts, you seem to think labeling it and pretending to know is better than admitting you don't know. That is where the two of us diverge on the path.
Yep, you can take all kinds of things into consideration. That still leaves you not knowing how or when the sediments arranged themselves where you found them. Beyond snowfall, it's anyone's guess. You stating yours dogmatically doesn't make your findings any less arbitrary.
Let's try laundry pile archeology for a moment to illustrate a point. Here's the conclusion and question: You now have a layer of socks laying on the floor, covered by towels and a few shirts. Which is the oldest layer and how old is it.
This is the part you don't have in only looking at the conclusion:
You drop a pile of shirts on the floor by the washer.
The next day, you toss your work clothes on top of the pile.
Your wife drops hers as well. The next day, you drop the linens from the bedroom and towels from the bath on the pile. At week's end, wifey picks the linens out of the pile and drops the towels back on top, then adds more clothes to the pile while washing the linens. By day's end, she has sorted the clothes into layers - angered at inefficiency. She throws in a pile of socks and three shirts after washing down everything else but the towels. You now have a layer of socks laying on the floor, covered by towels and a few shirts.
You can play whatever games with the laundry you like - date it if you will, that doesn't dismiss assumptions you still have to prove for precision. You can say what you will about the sediment, the sediment is no different from the clothes pile or the ice "rings"/layers. There is no chain of custody for how, when and why they arrived where they are. And given the dating technologies, neither is there any reliable evidence to be found in the technology. Inference and assumption don't cover this one.. not by far.
Despite how you'd paint it, there is plenty of outright misinformation about the accuracy and reliability of your technical dating methods. People aren't dumb and reject the conclusions based on the error rates and other factors that you wouldn't give them credit for understanding. It isn't that the technology is misrepresented. It's just that you have a looser standard for proof than the public - that largely being none at all in the case of evos. When proof boils down to a week point being a pile of assumptions, it doesn't matter how educated the person assuming is.. it's still an assumption. It also doesn't help that the assumption is colored by bias in that Evos start from their conclusions, then beat up everyone else on the basis that they do; but, evos don't. It isn't that you don't like people starting from their conclusions. You don't like the conclusions. That is where the problem lies.
There may be people incidentally involved in Science that have been roped into their position in the mess of evolution. We all would hold them harmless if they would stop being part of the problem and start demanding better standards. People reject evolution not because it's merely offensive, not because it merely challenges their beliefs. They reject it because it doesn't pass the sniff test most people in modern time have developed against charlatans as a second nature or sixth sense. There is a high standard to be met for proofs. That can't be overcome by people who try to spend their energies selling copouts about proof and pretending provisioals are good enough where the person's soul is concerned. You may not be worried about their souls; but, they are. Most don't have much respect for that, seemingly. If you knew your audience, you'd know these things and more. This is why evolution is doomed. Evolution cannot survive other than an authoritarian system.
As long as people have the right to think for themselves, they will reject evolution by and large. People escaping authoritarian systems are shocked to see that puppet of Communism being sold in the free world.
Since we're beyond semantics, you should know your audience better and perhaps review your standards for proof. Cause we're never going to see eye to eye on accepting assumptions as a proof.
It is a non-sequitur for you, perhaps; but, the average joe sees the sense of it plainly. You don't know your audience.
And don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you how you can sell to the audience, I'm telling you why you're failing to. You don't understand that proof is required for otherwise outlandish claims. You may have defined for yourselves some set of rules in science that you think gives you a free pass on proof because you set the rules; but, people understand the sham that is. There burden is proof, your version of it is, well, substantially more lax. If there standard is, 'the room will be clean by the time we get home.' yours, to them, amounts to 'you won't put more than four more candy papers in the corner before we return, jr.' How you define
authority for yourself isn't acceptable anywhere else in the world for anything else. But you think you get a free pass because you want to argue it's the only way to work. People balk at that instinctively. And it is not a reaction you will change.
;)
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