Living fossils expose evolution

The problem with fossils is that normally (ie, in the overwhelmingly vast majority of fossils) only the shape of the hard parts are preserved, the organism's morphology. We rarely get soft tissue or genetic material. It is in the genetic material that evolutionary change happens and that change is more directly exhibited in changes in the proteins.Back around 1990, give or take half a decade or so, I read an article in either Science or Nature about green fossils. These "green fossils" were magnolia leaves that had been encased in mud that had preserved them. From those preserved leaves, botanists were able to extract proteins and thus were able to compare those proteins with proteins taken both from modern magnolias and from other "green fossil" magnolia leaves. The result was that they were able to construct a family tree on the basis of the evolutionary changes in those "green fossil" proteins, even though the mere morphology of the leaves exhibited practically no change.Mere morphology just begins to tell the story. It does not tell the whole story.BTW, you stated in the OP that you're "an ex-evolutionist". One what do you base that statement? Are you saying that you used to study and/or practice an evolutionary science? Which one?For that matter, since my three decades of experience with "creation science" has taught me that "evolutionist" is a creationist buzzword that creationists use incessantly and yet avoid having to actually define it, what do you mean by that term, "evolutionist"?

Dude! Today I just completed the US Navy's course on Microwave Principles. Mind blowing! A frequency range where common electronics are incapable of functioning at all! That is the realm in which radar functions! Seriously, a lot of what I was reading looked much more like it belonged in Star Trek (TNG and beyond, whose techo-babble made oh-so-much-more-sense). Just the klystron schematics looked so much like the matter-anti-matter core schematics on the shows!An organic entity that makes use of radar? Sorry, but NFW ("no way!"; exercise left to the student to figure out what the "F" is).Now, a decade or two or three ago there was a PBS series called "Super Sense" which attempted to visualize for the audience how different extant species perceived the world through their senses which are different from our own. Such as bees and other insects being able to see ultra-violet frequencies that we cannot (seeing flowers and spiders' webs at those freqs reveals a lot that we mere humans cannot). What they presented was that mammals such as rats use echo-location to help them maneuver through pitch-darkness.Sound, yes. Microwave radio-frequencies? Anyone who would even begin to think of suggesting such a thing is a complete and utter idiot!Edited by dwise1, : The very final statementEdited by dwise1, : "begin to"

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)It is a well-known fact that reality has a definite liberal bias.
Robert Colbert on NPR

Calypsis4, you have indeed completely and utterly failed to make any kind of case. We have all witnessed that. Now, I have been involved in creation/evolution for about 30 years, so I know that creationists do not want to make any kind of case; they only want to attack evolution and to deceive others into converting. Yes, I know that you most likely do not realize that you are employing lies and deception in your effort to proselytize, but you are indeed employing such methods. I have long had severe reservations about what Christian doctrine says about the role of lies and deception being used in the service of God, but the Christians I have asked have abjectly refused to provide an answer other than a "nothing is higher than the truth", but that was from a local creationist who not only had proven to be a pathological liar, but who has knowingly posted lies on his creationist webpage.Calypsis4, you have indicated that you have been a creationist for about 40 years, which dates you back around the 1970, around the time that the ICR had invented "creation science". That is also around the time that I had first encountered "creation science", since I was a "fellow traveller" of a number of friends who had converted to fundamentalism as part of the "Jesus Freak" movement (their own name for it). About 7 years prior, I had left Christianity because I had started to read the Bible and found it so utterly incredible that, since I could not believe what I was reading, I could not be a Christian -- true, I was applying a navely literalist interpretation, but even though it was for the wrong reasons at least I had made the right decision by having become an atheist; though the object lesson is that you should never leave a child alone with a Bible. As a "fellow traveller", I learned a lot about fundamentalist theology and I had very serious problems with a lot of their theology, problems which are only worse as I have learned more.Well, back when you had converted, I also encountered creationism for the first time. Mainly through vague claims that geologic evidence supporting Noah's Flood (which have since then all proven to be completely and utterly false) and through two very specific claims:
1. Living clams were radio-dated as being thousands of years old.
2. A NASA computer tracking the moon's orbit through history abruptly stopped about 6,000 years ago and announced that nothing existed before then.It was that second one that, even though hardly anybody in the general public knew anything about computers back then, I immediately could see as being a complete and utter and absolutely blatant lie. The other claims I just rejected out of hand as ludicrous, though I must admit that I did not check them out at the time (though I did check them out later and, yes, they are lies).A decade later when I was stationed in North Dakota, a creationist from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) gave a presentation at the local university (Gish, I believe it was). Having duty that night, I could not attend, but the very fact that they were still around and kicking a decade later told me that maybe they really did have a valid point. So I started studying "creation science." And found it to be a complete and utter lie. The first time I saw creationists in action was on a CBN show around 1980/1981; as I later described it to a creationist:

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I first saw creationists in action one night in 1982 on CBN. A Tennessean host would run various debates (I believe it was David Ankerberg). This particular night, a creationist was debating a scientist (kind of looked like Drs. Morris and Awbrey, though I cannot be sure since I didn't know of either of them at the time). I remember that the scientist showed several slides of hominid fossils, such as knee joints (to show evidence of developing bi-pedalism). Then he showed slides of a human pelvis and chimpanzee pelvis side-by-side. First from the side, then from the top, he pointed out two sets of characteristics that clearly distinguish the one from the other (i.e. whether viewed from the side or from the top, the pelvis could be positively identified as human or chimpanzee). Next he showed both views of a hominid pelvis. From one view it was definitely ape, from the other it was definitely human; thus demonstrating it to be a intermediate form. The creationist then proclaimed the hominid pelvis to be 100% ape and not the least bit human by completely ignoring the human characteristic (even when reminded of it repeatedly by his opponent) and concentrating solely on the view that displayed the ape characteristic. Of course, the host declared this to be a creationist victory and threw in the standard gross misinterpretation of punctuated equilibrium for good [?] measure.

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This event made a lasting impression on me. The creationist's steadfast ignoring of the blatantly obvious evidence that was repeatedly pointed out to him is a selective blindness that I have found to pervade much of the creationist literature.

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In this thread, I watched you doing basically the same thing as that creationist had done.OK, Calypsis4, it's time to explain to you how the cow ate the cabbage (a Texas-ism that my father used all the time, much to the confusion of my older son; it basically means that I'm going to give you the unvarnished truth, whether you want to hear it or not). You want to disprove evolution? Well, you need to know everything you possibly can about evolution. You want to disprove any other branch of science? Well, you need to know everything you possibly can about those branches of science. So far, you have demonstrated abject ignorance of those subjects, even though you claim to have taught those subject.OK, I'm going to quote some Scripture to you right now. You're not going to like it, in part because it's not your own personal choice of Scripture:

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Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):

31. Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
32. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
33. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."
    

(Sun Tzu The Art of War, translation by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963)

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Do you know the enemy? No, obviously not. Do you know yourself? Also, obviously not. You are therefore most certainly to be in peril. Sorry, but it was your choice.You became a creationist forty years ago! Hello? What did you do during those 40 years? Nothing! Shouldn't you have been learning everything about evolution that you possibly could? Well, why didn't you? You should have been learning everything you possibly could about geology, and about astronomy, and about physics, etc. Well, why didn't you? Hello??? You say you were a science teacher for most of that time, so you had all kinds of motivation to learn everything you could. So why didn't you??? You have completely wasted those 40 years of your life!PS
A lot of the "evolutionists" here (an over-loaded creationist term that they use to lie with) used to be creationists. Until they started checking out and verifying the claims. You should listen to them, for they have learned the truth.PPS
My first discussions were on CompuServe, where I met my first honest creationist, Merle Hertzler. Within a year, he was on the evolution side. He has something interesting to say about the fossil record:

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I also "met" Merle Hertzler online on CompuServe in 1993-94. He is a former fundamentalist and ex-Christian. In 1993, he argued on CompuServe for young-earth creationism and was one of its better, more coherent advocates. But he found that position indefensible and within a year went over to the side of evolution. From his web site (No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve2.html; my emphasis added):

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I argued in the CompuServe debate forum, basing my arguments on Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crises. My favorite illustration was the difference between mammals and reptiles. The differences between living mammals and reptiles are substantial. Mammals all have hair, mammary glands, a four-chambered heart, and the distinct mammalian ear, with three little bones inside. These features are found in no living reptiles. I argued that this is because there is no viable intermediate between the two, that an animal could have either the reptile genetic code or the mammal code but could not be in the middle.

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An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould's Ten Little Piggies . I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children's book, I should be able to find that book. (I thought I was so funny). I borrowed the book, and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals' ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, "Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38." That's it. That's all it said. But it was soon to have a huge impact on me. You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to the University of Pennsylvania library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet, and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn't believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously, but, before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.

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On my next trip to the university, I found my way to the biomedical library and located the journal archives. I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligently sorting out the evolutionist lies while learning medical knowledge? How could so much error have entered this room? It made no sense.

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. . .

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The impact of that day in the library was truly stunning. I didn't know what to say. I could not argue against the overwhelming evidence for mammal evolution. But neither could I imagine believing it. Something had happened to me. My mind had begun to think. And it was not about to be stopped. Oh no. There is no stopping the mind set free. I went to the library and borrowed a few books on evolution and creation--diligently studying both sides of the argument. I started to read the evolutionist books with amazement. I had thought that evolutionists taught that floating cows had somehow turned into whales; that hopeful monsters had suddenly evolved without transitions; that one must have blind faith since transitional fossils did not exist; that one must simply guess at the dates for the fossils; and that one must ignore all of the evidence for young-earth creation. I was surprised to learn what these scientist actually knew about the Creationist teachings of flood geology, of the proposed young-earth proofs, and of the reported problems of evolution. And I was surprised at the answers that they had for these Creationist arguments. And I was surprised to see all the clear, logical arguments for evolution. I read with enthusiasm. I learned about isochrons, intermediate fossils, the geologic column, and much more.

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I would never see the world in the same light. Several weeks later I found myself staring at the fossil of a large dinosaur in a museum. I stared with amazement. I looked at the details of every bone in the back. And I wondered if a design so marvelous could really have evolved. But I knew that someone could show me another animal that had lived earlier and was a likely predecessor of this dinosaur that I was observing. And I knew that one could trace bones back through the fossil record to illustrate the path through which this creature had evolved. I stared and I pondered. And then I pondered some more.

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Within days, I had lost interest in fighting evolution. I began to read more and speak less. When I did debate, I confined my arguments to the origin of life issue. But I could no longer ignore what I had learned. Several months later I first sent out an email with probing questions to a Creationist who had arrived on the scene. He never responded. I have not stopped questioning.

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(No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve2.html)

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You wanted to see those fossils? Well, now you know where to go to see them. Of course, you won't, because creationists have a vested interest in keeping themselves ignorant of the facts. Ignorance equals "God", right?Years after I had become an atheist, I read the entire New Testament, twice. The Gospels were interesting and felt good (this expressed having learned about Rabbinic literature, eg the Talmud). Acts was kind of questionable. The rest felt too depressingly Paulist, expressing a religion about the Christ instead of about the religion of Jesus. The imagery of the Mysteries was especially apparent in Jesus' parables. The teachings were meant to be indecipherible by the uninitiated, so Jesus preached in symbolism that was unintelligible to the uninitiated, though he deliberately initiated his disciplines. What was the device he invoked? "Let those with ears hear, those with eyes see." Do you have the ears to hear? The eyes to see? Are you that sure? When the truth is involved, are you really that sure that you have the eyes and ears?With all due respect. If I were to be put on the spot to become a Christian, I truthfully could not. Because to become a Christian, I would need to embrace a complete and utter lie as being true. And I simply cannot do that. I have studied "creation science" for the past 30 years. It is a complete and utter lie. And to become a Christian I need to embrace that blatant lie?You came here to convert us? Well, it's not going to happen. We are very familiar with the shoddy substandard snake oil you're trying to peddle; several of us used to feed on it regularly, having been creationists until they finally learned how their creationist handlers had been lying to them all along. The only ones here who are going to buy any of your snake oil are the other snake oil peddlers.If there is any part of that that you do not understand, then do please express the appropriate explicit questions.In the meantime, you got a lotta learning to do, boy!Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.Edited by dwise1, : slight clean-up

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)It is a well-known fact that reality has a definite liberal bias.
Robert Colbert on NPR

IOW, Calypsis4, the creationist position is indefensible.Do please make some kind of effort to defend your position.

No, evolution is adaptation to the environment. Which will result in change over time when that is needed to adapt to the environment. Or statis when the population is already adapted well enough to its environment.Are you at all familiar with electronics? Power supplies maintain a constant voltage output regardless of how much current is being drawn (within its design parameters, of course). That's accomplished by the voltage regulator which samples the output voltage and adjusts that voltage accordingly by subtracting a portion of the output voltage from the output voltage. That's called a "negative feedback loop".Another example of a negative feedback loop is a missile or a torpedo that's designed to track its target. The missile senses where its target is, measures how far off it is from heading towards that target and in which direction, and subtracts a portion of that error from it's current heading to redirect it towards its target.Adaptation to the environment also operates via a negative feedback loop. Now obviously, there's no actual device nor explicit mechanism that implements that loop. Rather, it's implicit in how life itself works. The population produces the next generation of offspring who are very much like their parents, yet a bit different. A lot more offspring are produced than will survive to reproductive age; the ones better adapted will have a better chance of surviving and reproducing than the less well adapted will have. Thus, the better adapted ones will be more likely to survive and to breed the next generation. In effect, that is the negative feedback loop. In this manner, the population will track its environment. If the environment is changing or the population is moving into a new environment (read "niche"), then that tracking will result in change. But if the environment is not changing and the population is already well enough adapted to that environment, then that population will not change; in fact, in that case it's evolution that's actively keeping the population from changing.So you see, we do view evolution differently. Those who accept evolution view it in terms of how it actually works, whereas those who believe that it violates their religious beliefs view it in terms of what the creationists say it is. Let's face it, those who accept evolution are interested in figuring out how it works, whereas creationists are mainly interested in disproving it. So it should come as no surprise that creationists will present evolution in as negative a manner as possible. For that matter -- and I'm speaking from 3 decades of experience with "creation science" -- , most creationists will even present a distorted view of evolution which is designed to be easier to "refute". A caricature. A strawman.So we're looking at evolution in two very different ways. The one side is viewing it as it is, whereas your side is viewing it as creationists have mis-taught you. Rather than each side thinking that both side is talking about the same thing, we need to be open about what we mean and understand by "evolution" and be ready to hammer out a commonly agreed-upon definition.So you have stumbled upon Cal's problem here. He has, after all, been feeding on creationist misinformation for about 40 years now. He has one distorted definition of evolution in mind, one which his mindless photos would indeed refute. The problem is that that is not what evolution actually is. He thinks that all he needs to do is to show that uniform gradualistic change is not the norm and evolution is refuted. Whereas we already know that uniform gradualistic change is not the norm, so his "atomic bomb" is a big dud. Cal needs to be open about what his assumptions about evolution are and why he thinks that, according to those assumptions, his "evidences" are supposed to be so devastating. He apparently doesn't think that that should be necessary, not knowing that his ideas about evolution are different from ours.So to answer the basic question: stasis is not damaging to actual evolutionary theory. It is damaging to certain misconceptions of evolution, such as is taught to creationists, but not to actual evolutionary theory.Good eye! Thank you for bringing this up! I hope it gets through to Cal! Why? Punc Eq makes an enormous amount of sense. And, to be honest, I'm sure that most "evos" here agree with it to some extane and do not see it as a minority view. Again, you only know what your creationist handlers have hand-fed you. Time to get out of the yard and see what the world really looks like. Engaging other members of this forum would be a good opportunity for you.Now, I'm not so sure about you, but Cal has talked about "evolutionist" views he had encountered. Of course, that begs really big-time the definition of "evolutionist" (which is a creationist buzzword that I have, for the past 3 decades, found most creationists to be especially loathe to define). Cal himself even declares that 40 years ago he was himself an "evolutionist", but he has not yet revealed just what he means by that. I have also over the decades seen many other creationists also present themselves as "ex-evolutionists", also without ever offering any kind of definition or explanation. There's even a local creationist activist who falsely proclaims that evolution had turned him into an "atheist" so that he could indulge his "bubbling teenage hormones" guilt-free -- yet he also states that he prayed to God every single night, so he wasn't really an atheist, but rather was only pretending to be one, in accordance with Christian doctrine.The thing is that many people accept many philosophies and viewpoints and positions. Just because they decide that they accept something doesn't mean that they know anything about it. I have most certainly seen far too many "creationists" and Christians who had no clue what they were talking about, so the idea that there are "evolutionists" out there who are ignorant of the basic science should come as no surprise.When my web-site was up, I included a quote from the then-governor of Mississippi that I heard one day on NPR. Even though I had grown up and lived most of my life in Orange County, Calif, I was stationed in Mississippi for the better part of a year. It was a culture shock ... and that was long after it had immensely improved (one former Air Force brat told us that in the late 60's, the most popular bumper sticker on the Gulf Coast was "Keep Biloxi Clean. Kill an Airman"). This governor said was a very strong advocate of education reform. His justification for his position was: "We've already tried ignorance, so we already know that that does not work!"Arphy, Cal! You have already tried ignorance, so you should already know that that does not work.