Summations Only

The thing to remember is that the fossil evidence is not the foundational evidence for the Theory of Evolution -- that is the evidence we see in the world around us -- it is the test for the prediction of the theory, that the process of evolution is sufficient to explain all the fossil evidence.What this means is not that each fossil must demonstrate evolution, but that every fossil tests the theory of evolution -- meaning each fossil is an opportunity to falsify evolution.So it doesn't matter how fast or slow evolution appears to be in the geological strata.This is also why it doesn't matter that the fossils are in the deep "unwitnessed" past ... or that they can be absolutely dated ... all that is needed is relative dating (which cannot be altered by flood fantasies due to the law of superposition).

But the evidence in Message 5 is not something said by people -- it is objective evidence presented for you to see, and you can follow the links to articles about the evidence and if you are truly interested you can look up the peer reviewed scientific articles and even contact the authors if you have any questions. So you say, but you have yet to demonstrate that you know how this works or that you have taken the first step. They developed a new hypothesis that had a better fit to the evidence, something all scientists try to do. They didn't make the rest follow, scientists accept new approaches when they work, when they explain the evidence better than the previous approach.Some, like Dawkins. don't accept PE as being a significant new idea, that the idea of different rates has been around for a long time, even being mentioned by Darwin, and when you look at the punctuated events they are only brief on a geological time scale, but still take many generations to occur, and that this fits in well with the known variation rates of evolution. A risk any good scientist will gladly take if they develop a new approach or develop a new hypothesis, because that is what science and the scientific method is all about. It's not for people who want to stay in their comfort zone with a fixed set of beliefs. To correct the common misunderstanding that Darwin proposed only gradualistic evolution (which came into the field with genetics), to revisit his view that evolution could occur a different speeds depending on evolutionary pressure, and to look at how this actually works in the evidence.You need only understand how the process of evolution works to understand this, as I mentioned in Message 63:

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... the fossil record shows the opposite of evolution, namely STASIS, and sudden appearance ...

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Curiously stasis is predicted by evolution, but I have to wonder if you know what stasis really means (on top of your ignorance of how evolution works).

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(1) The process of evolution involves changes in the composition of hereditary traits, and changes to the frequency of their distributions within breeding populations from generation to generation, in response to ecological challenges and opportunities.

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The selection process means that those that have better adaptation to an ecology will have higher reproductive and survival success and their traits will become predominant in the breeding population if there are no changes to the ecological pressures.

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Thus in a stable ecology selection will occur against detrimental changes (that make individuals less fit) and for stasis (for the average population traits being reproduced).

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Even during stasis the process of evolution continues, and this will still allow neutral traits to develop and be dispersed within the breeding population -- new traits that are not under any selection process but which increase the diversity of the breeding population -- traits that may enable individuals to make use of a wider range of ecologies in the surrounding areas.

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As the population breeds, normally with more offspring than necessary to replace deaths, there will be pressure for individuals to move into surrounding ecologies to expand the breeding population further. This virtually ensures that some individuals will move into less optimum ecologies where selection pressure will be different than the main body of the breeding population.

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This is where "punctuation" comes into the picture.

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... and sudden appearance ...

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Sudden in geological timescales of course. You would not recognize it as sudden if you were living at the time and observing it, ...

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Here are two more pictures of the Pelycodus fossil data, now with some additional Copelemur fossil data from a neighboring ecology: These show the "gradualistic view" on the left, and the "punctuational view" on the right. Both show the data is the same: the horizontal bars represent the size distribution of the fossils in each layer, and these size distributions are seen to evolve from one generation to the next, from level to level, even when only size is measured (there are other differences as well, but this is a convenient way to document the data).Note that the only "interpretations" here are how the lines are drawn, not where the data is plotted.Note further that the first branching, between Copelemur praetatus and Pelycodus trigonodus either ends abruptly (with the extinction of Copelemur praetatus) or that Copelemur praetatus is absorbed back into the main breeding population as that population shifts strongly to the left just above the Pelycodus trigonodus labelled layer.The horizontal bars are the fossil data, not any persons interpretation nor are they "something that somebody says" ... and I can provide further links to scientific articles with this data as presented by Gingrich in the original scientific articles. There you go falling back on putting more 'faith' in quotes\statements than on the objective data again ...... so when Gould commented on the Foraminifera (as noted in Message 5), that indeed it showed gradualistic evolution, we can be reasonably sure about it? Curiously I am not swayed by Gould's opinion but by the fact that the Foraminifera demonstrate gradualistic evolution in a continuous and virtually complete picture covering 65 million years of evolution.Curiously, the data of Foraminifera does not show the same rate of evolution at all times, but a varying one dependent on evolutionary pressure, fully in accordance with both Darwin and modern thinking. We know that this represents gradualistic evolution because we can follow all the lines of development, all the speciation events, and observe how new species arise and then come to dominate the ecological niche that Foraminifera inhabit. Again from the reference in Message 5: Foraminifera evolution

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"The forams may not be representative of all organisms but, at least in this group, we can actually see how evolution happened," says Parker. "We can see transitions from one species to another. And that's a very rare observation."

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Had Darwin been able to examine the fossil record of forams, he could have fortified many of his arguments on how new species come into being, and perhaps eased a nagging worry about the terribly incomplete fossil record yielded by terrestrial research.

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In the hands of less scrupulous observers, the foram record may have been construed to support Gould's hypothesis about the suddeness of speciation. Darwin would have been shocked to find out just how fast the great family of forams churns out new species, says Parker. Through dating analysis, he and his colleague showed that the forams could produce a whole new species in as little as 200,000 years--speedy by Darwinian standards. "But as fast as this is, it's still far too slow to be classed as punctuational," says Arnold.

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One of the last great extinctions occurred roughly 66 million years ago and, according to one popular theory, it resulted from Earth's receiving a direct hit from a large asteroid. Whatever the cause, the event proved to be the dinosaurs' coup de grace, and so wiped out a good portion of the marine life--including almost all species of planktonic forams.

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This period of massive death, which ended the Cretaceous Period, ushered in the modern chapter of biological development. Earth entered the new era, the Cenozoic, with a wide range of ecosystems virtually deviod of life (and thus competition between species), yet quite fertile and primed for repopulation.

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Other scientists have theorized, but never been able to demonstrate, that in the absence of competition, an explosion of life takes place. The evolution of new species greatly accelerates, and a profusion of body shapes and sizes bursts across the horizon, filling up vacant spaces like weeds overtaking a pristine lawn. An array of new forms fans out into these limited niches, where crowding soon forces most of the new forms to spin out into oblivion similar to sparks from a bonfire.

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The ancient record of foram evolution reveals that the story of recovery after extinction is indeed busy and colorful. "What we've found suggests that the rate of speciation increases dramatically in a biological vacuum," says Parker. "After the Cretaceous extinction, the few surviving foram species rapidly evolved into new species, and for the first time we're able to see just how this happens, and how fast."

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So there you have it: rapid evolution when selection pressure is low and slower evolution as selection pressure increases. All documented in the Foraminifera fossil record Denial of the evidence does not make it go away. Curious that you build your arguments solely on your interpretations of the words you quote, but don't want to look at the evidence presented in these articles.That's the logical fallacy of special pleading, also known as hypocrisy. Then look at the data, look at what the scientists that you are so fond of quoting say about the evidence, look up the scientific articles and look for reviews by scientists -- do some actual research rather than cherry pick quotes with confirmation bias and misrepresentations. Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, cherry picking and ide fixes, are not the tools of an open-mind or an honest skeptic, and continued belief in the face of contradictory evidence is delusion.

Also note that I have not seen a single original quote by Eliyahu -- his quote-mines can be found complete with ellipse etc on the webQuote Mine Project: "Sudden Appearance and Stasis"

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Quote #37

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"Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ...That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ...prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ...One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. ...The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46)

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In the passages quoted, Eldredge and Tattersall are discussing the merits of gradualism, something the quote miner has left out, as we can see:

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The main impetus for expanding the view that species are discrete at any one point in time, to embrace their entire history, comes from the fossil record. Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. Instead, collections of nearly identical specimens, separated in some cases by 5 million years, suggested that the overwhelming majority of animal and plant species were tremendously conservative throughout their histories.

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That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, troubled by the stubbornness of the fossil record in refusing to yield abundant examples of gradual change, devoted two chapters to the fossil record. To preserve his argument he was forced to assert that the fossil record was too incomplete, to full of gaps, to produce the expected patterns of change. He prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search and then his major thesis - that evolutionary change is gradual and progressive - would be vindicated. One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.

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The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way. Rather than challenge well-entrenched evolutionary theory, paleontologists tacitly agreed with their zoological colleagues that the fossil record was too poor to do much beyond supporting, in a general sort of way, the basic thesis that life had evolved.

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Note the claim that the fossil record supports evolution.

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And we know that there are examples of evolution and speciation transitions in the fossil record, The record being "poor" does not mean it is non-existent -- the conclusion Eliyahu falsely derives from the abbreviated quotes.Further it doesn't look like he has actually read anything but these quotes as quoted from creationist websites.Nothing new there.

That's a conclusion I've reached as well -- there isn't enough other argument to support his interpretation, and his refusal to review evidence but to dismiss it as fake is just more of same old same old.But it just makes the case for evolution stronger.

Or that we can't figure out what picture this represents: ... or make an educated guess on where the hands belong ... so I guess creationists can't do jigsaw puzzles ... because they don't know where to start.Edited by RAZD, : ...

At least the spelling is now corrected in half of them ...

Curiously, Eliyahu has been told this previously, but his worldview bubble doesn't allow reality to make a dent. Prediction: the quote mines will continue ... without shame.

Of course Faith (and Ham) would likely argue that you are making assumptions about the unknowable deep past that are not valid because you weren't there ... of course that would also hold for Eliyahu ... but why would creationists worry about that eh?

Then we are in agreement -- we don't call what creationists do science either. Proving again that you are not doing science but engaging in wishful thinking, fantasy, delusion. Actually we just need to make scientific observations.Edited by AdminModulous, : subtitle edit

Nope, only someone badly ignorant about evolution, which you keep demonstrating, thinks this is how evolution works. New species occur when subpopulations become reproductively isolated. This has nothing to do with the evolution of organs which is a different time in the development of life on earth. All mammals have the same organs, they don't need "new" ones for speciation.You can begin learning about the real science of evolution hereAn introduction to evolution - Understanding Evolution

Wrong. The amount of change is unlimited: all DNA is composed of 4 bases repeated many times, any new arrangement -- which can occur during recombination -- can occur.You need to demonstrate that there is a limit, not blindly claim it. And curiously, evolution theory predicts that you cannot breed a hamster into a crocodile ... because that is not how evolution works. Which tells you how new genes are evolved. So show us where that limitation is ... if you are up to doing science that is, otherwise just babble on in ignorance. Correct, they evolve over generations.You are wandering away from the fossil record into modern life, and in the process demonstrating even more ignorance than before -- keep up the good work in demonstrating how invalid creationism is for learning about the real world.Edited by AdminModulous, : subtitle size minimized, obnoxiously large

And gradualism was discussed in the same vein So you think the fossil record is complete? So you think the fossil record is complete? "No that was not a prediction is was an assumption" -- you can't have it both ways and not be a hypocrite. Do you think that the fossil record was completed in his lifetime now? Which is a different evolution from gradualism only in the difference in rates of evolution, a difference in quantity rather than the quality of evolution. And even then, the rates are not all that different. Repeating your ignorance after you have been told it is wrong is delusional, and still doesn't affect reality in any way.Edited by AdminModulous, : subtitle

By evolution.But you will need to learn about evolution to understand. What you think you know is full of falsehoods and misrepresentations, and you need to forget ALL of it and start over with studying the science and the scientific approach.Start here: Evolution 101If you have trouble with any of it feel free to ask questions.Edited by AdminModulous, : No reason given.

So you DO think that the fossil record is complete? And yet you have been shown many instances of evolution in the fossil record, so you must be either delusional or willfully ignorant. And where would that be? Read all the posts on this thread except yours.Then read all the ones that show evolution in the fossil record.Then read An introduction to evolution - Understanding EvolutionWho knows, you might learn some real knowledge.Edited by RAZD, : ..

Well, unless you ignore stratigraphy and relative ages of layers (via the law of superposition), in which case you can claim almost anything. But then you are believing in a lying creator.One wonders how Eliyahu explains deep time.