Posted on 04/09/2002 11:31:41 AM PDT by JediGirl
Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great evolutionary biologists of our time, will publish his "magnum opus", this month, in which he lambasts creationists for deliberately distorting his theories to undermine the teaching of Darwinism in schools.
Professor Gould accuses creationists of having exploited the sometimes bitter dispute between him and his fellow Darwinists to promulgate the myth that the theory of evolution is riven with doubts and is, therefore, just as valid as biblical explanations for life on Earth.
The distinguished professor of zoology at Harvard University, whose 1,400-page book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, has been 10 years in the writing, was intimately involved with the fight against creationist teaching during the 1970s and 1980s in the American Deep South.
The arguments have resurfaced in Britain after the news that a school in Gateshead has been teaching creationism alongside evolution, arguing both are equal valid viewpoints.
Creationists still use Professor Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" – which argues for the sudden appearance of new species – to support their view that Darwinism is being challenged by some of the leading thinkers in biology.
Although Professor Gould never disputed the central tenet of Darwinism, natural selection, his explanation for how new species might rapidly arise is often presented by creationists as a direct challenge to the scientific orthodoxy at the heart of Darwinism.
Evangelical creationists in particular have argued the universally accepted gaps in the fossil record and the frequent absence of intermediate forms between fossilised species are evidence that evolution cannot fully account for the diversity of life on Earth.
They have used Professor Gould's theory – which proposes long periods of stable "equilibrium" punctuated by sudden changes that are not captured as fossils – as proof that Darwinist "gradualism" was wrong and it should therefore be taught, at the very minimum, alongside creationism in schools.
Stephen Layfield, a science teacher at Emmanuel College in Gateshead, which is at the centre of the row, used the lack of intermediate fossils between ancestral species and their descendants to question Darwinist evolution.
Professor Gould says creationists have unwittingly misinterpreted or deliberately misquoted his work in a manner that would otherwise be laughable, were it not for the impact it can have on the teaching of science in schools.
"Such inane and basically harmless perorations may boil the blood but creationist attempts to use punctuated equilibrium in their campaigns for suppressing the teaching of evolution raise genuine worries," Professor Gould said.
Fundamentalist teaching reached its height in the United States in the early 1920s and culminated in the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in Tennessee in 1925 when John Scopes, a biology teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution in contravention of state law.
A second creationist surge occurred in the US during the 1970s, which led to the "equal time" laws for the teaching of creationism and evolution in the state schools of Arkansas and Louisiana. The rule was overturned in two court cases in 1982 and 1987.
At the same time, Professor Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium was being debated among scientists. With the fellow Darwinist, Niles Eldredge, who cited the unchanging nature of Trilobite fossils in support of the idea, Professor Gould presented the theory at a scientific conference in 1971. A seminal scientific paper followed a year later.
"But I had no premonition about the hubbub that punctuated equilibrium would generate," Professor Gould said. Some "absurdly-hyped popular accounts" proclaimed the death of Darwinism, with punctuated equilibrium as the primary assassin, he says.
"Our theory became the public symbol and stalking horse for all debate within evolutionary theory. Moreover, since popular impression now falsely linked the supposed 'trouble' within evolutionary theory to the rise of creationism, some intemperate colleagues began to blame Eldredge and me for the growing strength of creationism.
"Thus, we stood falsely accused by some colleagues both for dishonestly exaggerating our theory to proclaim the death of Darwin (presumably for our own cynical quest for fame), and for unwittingly fostering the scourge of creationism as well," he said.
Not every scientist, however, would agree that Professor Gould was innocent in the dispute, which was exploited by evangelical creationists.
What was essentially an arcane argument between consenting academics soon became a public schism between Gould and his Darwinist rivals, whose position was best articulated by the Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins.
At its most simplistic, the idea of punctuated equilibrium was presented as an alternative to the "gradualism" of traditional Darwinism. Rather than species evolving gradually, mutation by mutation, over a long period of time, Professor Gould argued they arose within a period of tens of thousands rather than tens of millions of years – a blink of the eye in geological terms.
Professor Dawkins savaged the Gould-Eldredge idea, arguing gaps in the fossil record could be explained by evolutionary change occurring in a different place from where most fossils were found. In any case, Dawkins said, we would need an extraordinarily rich fossil record to track evolutionary change.
Gould and Eldredge could have made that point themselves, he said. "But no, instead they chose, especially in their later writings, in which they were eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian synthesis," Dawkins writes in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker.
"They did this by emphasising the 'gradualism' of the Darwinian view of evolution as opposed to the sudden 'jerky', sporadic 'punctuationism' of their own ... The fact is that, in the fullest and most serious sense, Eldredge and Gould are really just as gradualist as Darwin or any of his followers," Professor Dawkins wrote.
The subtleties of the dispute were, however, lost on commentators outside the rarefied field of evolutionary theory.
It was certainly lost on many creationists who just revelled in the vitriolic spat between the leading Darwinists. (The dispute was so vitriolic it became personal – in his book, Gould relegates his critics to a section titled "The Wages of Jealousy".)
Richard Fortey, the Collier Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Bristol University, says Professors Gould and Dawkins are closer than many people realise.
With some of Britain's leading scientists and theologians writing to the Prime Minister to voice their concerns about the teaching of creationism, the issue has come to the fore.
"It's absurd we are now facing this creationist threat," Professor Fortey said. "It's a debate that belongs to the 1840s. Evolution is not just a theory, it's as much of a fact as the existence of the solar system."
It is not a fake fact that homo sapiens has only been around for some 50,000 years. DNA analysis cannot tell exactly when something happened, it can trace relationships back, but it cannot tell how long ago that took place so your 200,000 years is highly disputable, my 50,000 years is not disputable.
We are going to go back and forth on this a million times. I only insulted you because I have shown a couple of times information pointing to 200,000 years as the actual time for Mitochondrial Eve, but you ignore the evidence and quote 50,000 because you can not get past the fact that evidence points to pre homo sapiens. That is not my problem, you are claiming the science, but refusing to admit that your point of view on the matter is incorrect. I would love to talk science. Please give me scientific proof to back up your answers to my questions in post 201.
Well your post#201 specifically shows your total disregard for Christianity and its teachings for sure. As to your belief in God, I doubt it very seriously.
First off, I must apologize for my crack on you in post 201. But the questions, there in, are in no way a crack on Christianity. I find your questioning my belief in God a bit insulting. But please tell me what is so damaging to Christianity in the following questions:
1) Explain how the photons of light that originated millions of light years away are hitting my eyes when I look at the Andromeda Galaxy.
2) If the Earth is only 6,000 years old, find me a fossilized Rottweiller, Great Dane, Bull Dog, Pug, etc... Because man bread the hundreds(thousands?) of different varieties of dogs within the past 2 thousand years, where are all of those breads in the fossil records? Since some of those breads have existed for 1/3 of the total age of the universe there should be some found under layers upon layers of sediment.
3) Where did Cain's wife come from in Genisis 4:17? And what of the origins of her people?
You want to talk science, so lets talk. Start with these questions and we can have a civilized discussion about whatever topic you like. I have thrown down the gauntlet.
Nobody thick enough to believe that should be insulting other people...
It is statements like these which lead me to believe creationists are not nearly as well versed in evolutionary science as they think they are. For example, for some reason creationists think that a trait or behaviour (such as sex) arises in a single generation and then rightly pooh-pooh such a strawman. The reality of the situation is a bit more complicated.
The first thing one must do is cease viewing the introduction of new traits or behaviours as singular events. The easiest way to do this is to picture a species as an amorphous cloud of dots, with each dot representing how close an individual is to the "norm" of that species. The cloud will be denser toward its middle and sparser toward its fringe. As conditions change, the center of the cloud may move in one direction or another. Occassionally parts of the cloud's fringe or even center, may slowly break off to form their own clouds. This is speciation.
Now, let's take sex, which you've brought up. Bacteria are known to occassionally swap genetic material -- even with bacteria of unrelated strains. This is sex at its most primitive. As bacteria are still asexual reproducers, it wouldn't be difficult for this mutation to propogate through a population, especially if rapidly changing conditions favored more adaptable creatures over less adaptable ones, and sexual creatures, because of the genetic crapshoot of combining one's genes with another's, are far more adaptable than asexual creatures.
As for your contention that male and female would have to arise at the same time, I would point out to you that many of the most primitive multicellulars (and several more advanced species) are hermaphroditic and specialization among the sexes is a bit more recent (geologically-speaking) development.
Yes, I'm quaking here in my boots. Why don't you read some of my posts on this thread and come back when you can tell me what cellular engineering is, then maybe I'll answer your silly little questions. Until then, I'll ignore your gestapo tactics.
2) If the Earth is only 6,000 years old, find me a fossilized Rottweiller, Great Dane, Bull Dog, Pug, etc... Because man bread the hundreds(thousands?) of different varieties of dogs within the past 2 thousand years, where are all of those breads in the fossil records? Since some of those breads have existed for 1/3 of the total age of the universe there should be some found under layers upon layers of sediment.
3) Where did Cain's wife come from in Genisis 4:17? And what of the origins of her people?
1. Always a fun question. Obviously the light photons were created instantaneously in place, along with the fossil record, partially decayed radioactive elements, etc. -- just to pull our chain.
2. See my previous post on this fascinating subject.
3. Cain's wife was a democrat from Arkansas, attracted to him by his determination to succeed despite the tragic loss of his brother.
For science you need evidence, you have none. Now as to the theory of evolution, it certainly is a difficulty which they have not explained very well. The problem of random changes spreading through a population is quite difficult. Even Darwin thought that evolution could more easily take place in small populations. The problem is that any change has to be small so that the individuals can still mate with each other. The changes also have to occur evenly throughout the population. In other words, the whole species sort of has to evolve together. This is all much easier said than done - and that is why the examples you give are only of asexual populations. In fact, this problem by itself, seems to me to completely destroy Gould's punk-eek.
I gave you an answer on the above which you have completely ignored. The 50,000 years ago for homo sapiens is well established by science. Science has also established that none of the other known species was close enough genetically to be ancestors of man. I don't have the vaguest idea at to how the 200,000 was figured out on this research. I do know that mitochondrial DNA can track ancestry back but there is no way to tell how fast or how slow those changes occurred, what the ages were of the ancestors of each at reproduction. Such are only guesswork and you have no way of backing it up. It seems to have been made up totally of whole cloth by the evolutionist who wrote that article. Now if you have proof of how the dating was ascertained with certainty, let's see it.
Your questions are totally irrelevant as to whether evolution is true or not. It is just a diversion technique designed to avoid answering serious questions about the scientific evidence for evolution. In fact it is totally Clintonian. Note that the article did the same thing regarding punk-eek - attack, attack, attack, but do not under any circumstances show the evidence supporting punk-eek - because there is none.
It was his sister.
Changes in species does not imply descent. Furthermore, there is strong evidence against such change. The simplest creatures, one celled organisms, are still around, still reproducing like crazy, and are in fact the most successful species on earth. After some 3 billion years of supposed evolution, one would think they would have gotten on with the program, they have not.
This biased, one-dimensional article, framing the debate as "Evolution vs. Creationism", is the childish and shallow tactic of an atheist, materialist media so-called elite that knowingly avoids allowing the dearth of scientific support for evolution to be discussed. To shore up the nonsense, they root around and find some fool, unknown "Professor" Fortey who simply repeats the bald lie that "evolution is a fact".
What trash. Surely the Evols can do better than this.
Nobody thick enough to believe that should be insulting other people...
So you will use science when it suits you, but shy away from it when it disproves anything you believe in?
Your questions are totally irrelevant as to whether evolution is true or not. It is just a diversion technique designed to avoid answering serious questions about the scientific evidence for evolution. In fact it is totally Clintonian. Note that the article did the same thing regarding punk-eek - attack, attack, attack, but do not under any circumstances show the evidence supporting punk-eek - because there is none.
I promosed to discuss anything you want after you answered my questions. You could not and can not answer my questions. The gauntlet was thrown and you have run away from my questions. So now I say this to you with all sincerity - Buh Bye
I was disappointed with Junior's response (#252) to your post here. What you mention above is not something I've heard before. It makes a whole lot of sense, at least to me. Unless Junior responds with something other than insults and offers evidence that disproves your point above, I'd say you have an excellent point here.
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