IrishRockhound
Member (Idle past 4466 days) Posts: 569 From: Ireland Joined: 05-19-2003
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Message 42 of 316 (90057)
03-03-2004 2:12 PM
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Reply to: Message 1 by kendemyer
03-02-2004 1:01 PM
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Re: Why creationism is valid and the macroevolutionary hypothesis is not valid
Whew, this is a lot to get through - Ken, it's like you've tried to fit the whole forum into a single thread! Ok, let's have a go then... To make it simple, I'll put my comments in italics.
quote:
THE FOSSIL RECORD SUPPORTS CREATIONISM Completeness of the fossil record: "There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and identified, in museums around the world."*Porter Kier, quoted in New Scientist, January 15, 1981, p. 129.
True. "Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track.
What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record."
Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma (1988), Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9
Possibly true, what with punctuated equilibrium and all. Nevertheless, the fossil record still supports evolution - and you will notice that he does not say otherwise. OTHER COMMENTS REGARDING THE FOSSIL RECORD "The gaps in the record are real, however. The absence of any record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement or one by another, and change is more or less abrupt." Robert G. Wesson,
'Beyond Natural Selection', 1991, p. 45
Punctuated equilibrium again. Refer to my earlier comment. Quote regarding the general state of the fossil record from a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History: "Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on the linethere is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record." Dr. Colin Patterson,
Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History (Dr. Patterson is a evolutionist but honest enough to make this declaration), London "Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems," [1984], Master Book Publishers: El Cajon CA, Fourth Edition, 1988, p89
Was it Loudmouth who already handled this? Quote from author, paleontologist, evolutionist, and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, Niles Eldredge and co-author Ian Tattersall who is Curator, Deptartment of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History and who is also a evolutionist). "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."
Niles Eldredge & Ian Tattersall,
'The Myths of Human Evolution', 1982, p. 45-46
Punctuated equilibrium again, Ken. Please notice that they never said that evolution is false! A widely read evolutionist and scientist states the following regarding the fosssil record: "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." Mark Ridley, 'Who doubts evolution?', New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831 (Mark Ridley is an evolutionist)
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Mis-representation, ken. Check this site to see the whole thing. Some quotes regarding the fossil record that are more specific: "...I still think that to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favour of special creation." - E.J.H. Corner, Prof of Botany, Cambridge University, England.
E.J. H. Corner, Evolution in Anna M. MacLeod and L. S. Cobley (eds.), Contemporary Botanical Thought (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), p. 97
Forty years out of date, and also false. The fossil record of plants clearly supports evolution - and I challenge you to prove otherwise, if you can. "If the genealogies of animals are uncertain, more so are those of plants. We cannot learn a great deal from petrified plant anatomy which shows different spades at different times, but no real phylogeny [transitional plant species changes] at all. There are simply fascinating varieties of the plants we have todaysome new species of courseplus many extinctions: but algae, mosses, pines, ferns and flowering plants are all clearly recognizable from their first appearance in the fossil record." Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), p. 181.
Puctuated equilibrium (I am getting tired of typing that) and AGAIN he does not say that evolution is false as a result. "We do not know the phylogenetic history of any group of plants and animals." *E. Core, General Biology (1981), p. 299.
Still nothing about evolution. "Fossil remains, however, give no information on the origin of the vertebrates." *Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 7, p. 587 (1976 edition, Macropaedia).
Out of date, and still says nothing about evolution. "No fossil of any such birdlike reptile has yet been found." World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 291 (1982 edition). (regarding reptiles becoming birds)
Before the discovery of Archaeopteryx - go figure. "Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that." Dr. J. Alan Feduccia,
Prof. Avian Evolution and world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina. Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can of Worms by V. Morell, Science 259(5096):764—65, 5 February 1993.
Correct. It is a primitive bird, as far as I'm concerned. But it still has reptile features, and this does not disprove evolution. "For use in understanding the evolution of vertebrate flight, the early record of pterosaurs and bats is disappointing: Their most primitive representatives are fully transformed as capable fliers." Paul C. Sereno,
The evolution of dinosaurs, Science 284(5423):2137—2147 (quote on p. 2143), June 25, 1999
Still says nothing about evolution being false. "The fossil record does not give any information on the origin of insects." *Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 7, p. 585 (1978 edition; Macropaedia). "Insect origins beyond that point [the Carboniferous] are shrouded in mystery. It might almost seem that the insects had suddenly appeared on the scene, but this is not in agreement with accepted [evolutionary] ideas of animal origins." *A.E. Hutchins, Insects (1988), pp. 3,4.
Again, nothing about disproving evolution. "The common ancestor of the bony-fish groups is unknown. There are various features, many of them noted above, in which the two typical subclasses of bony fish are already widely divergent when we first see them." *A.S. Romer, Vertebrate Paleontology (1988), p. 53.
See above. "....squirrels have evolved in patterns that seem to differ in no important ways from their living relative Sciurus. Since Sciurus is so similar to what is apparently the primitive squirrel morphotype, it seems to fit the concept of 'living fossil.’" —*R. Emry and *A. Thorington, "The Tree Squirrel Sciurus as a Living Fossil," in Living Fossils (1984), p. 30.
See above. "Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans - of upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings - is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter." - Dr. Lyall Watson, Anthropologist. 'The water people'. Science Digest, vol. 90, May 1982, p. 44.
See above. "Unfortunately, the fossil record which would enable us to trace the emergence of the apes is still hopelessly incomplete. We do not know either when or where distinctively apelike animals first began to diverge from monkey stock . . Unfortunately, the early stages of man's evolutionary progress along his own individual line remain a total mystery." *Sarel Elmer and *Irven DeVore and the *Editors of Life, The Primates (1985), p. 15.
See above. "No fossil or other physical evidence directly connects man to ape." *John Gliedman, "Miracle Mutations," Science Digest, February 1982, p. 90.
Out of date - and false, seeing as recent genetic analyses indicate that chimps are closely related to us. "Even this relatively recent history [of evolution from apes to man] is shot through with uncertainties; authorities are often at odds, both about fundamentals and about details." Theodosius Dobzhanski (he was an evolutionist), Mankind Evolving, Yale Univ. Press, 1962, p168.
See above.
I'm going to ignore the links because of the sheer volume of stuff here...
quote:
SOME EVOLUTIONISTS COMMENT ON THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IN THE EVOLUTIONIST CAMP "So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are times when he thinks about going into a field with more intellectual honesty: the used-car business."
-Sharon Begley, "Science Contra Darwin," Newsweek, April 8, 1985, p. 80.
Out of date - and says nothing about disproving evolution. "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, .... in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Richard Lewontin, Professor, geneticist. "The New York Review", January 9, 1997, p. 31
Hideously out of context, Ken! Lewontin was reviewing a book by Carl Sagan - and he was arguing that true science requires a prior commitment to both methodological and philosophical naturalism. Still nothing about evolution.
quote:
THE FAILURE OF THE ABIOGENESIS HYPOTHESIS BECOMES MORE EVIDENT WITH NEW INFORMATION
I get so tired of telling creationists that abiogenesis does not impact on evolution as a theory, so whether it is disproved or not makes no difference to evolution.
quote:
THE IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY FOUND IN NATURE SHOWS ITSELF TO BE A STRONG CASE FOR CREATIONISM
No, it doesn't. Irreducible complex systems can be evolved - therefore it makes no case at all for creationism.
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Why Darwinism is Theologically Unsound
quote:
Why Creationism Uses Sound Biblical Exegesis
This is completely irrelevent to the validity of the ToE. The theological soundness of a theory makes no difference to whether or not it is scientifically sound. Finally, you ARE using quotes out of context, despite what you say, Ken. For those of you who managed to plow through all that and are still reading, I saved a copy of Ken's original post as it stands right now, while I'm writing. If anyone would like to read it, just say the word and I'll post it. The Rock Hound
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 1 by kendemyer, posted 03-02-2004 1:01 PM | | kendemyer has not replied |
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