Has Evolution Ever Been Proven? Has Creation ever been disproven?

Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else.--Colin Patterson

Ican understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects -- through opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

EXCERPT FROM THE ABOVE REVIEW OF GOULD'S BOOK

The "cone" refers to the view of how life evolved on Earth which prevailed until the late 1960's. The theory postulates that there was a constant progression of primitive to more advanced organisms on earth, and was changed little from the time that Darwin first proposed the theory in the mid-nineteenth century. Diagrams showing the relationships between successive epochs of life were drawn as an increasingly wider branching tree, which invariably resembled a cone.

The fossils in the Burgess Shale shattered that view. Scientists found that of the twenty-four types (phyla) of arthropods (essentially insects) discovered there, only four exist today. Not only were there more types of creatures then, the differences between them were far greater than the differences between the plants and animals alive today. Thus, the cone of progress was completely contradicted. The graphics and photographs in the book of the creatures from the Burgess Shale show animals that are almost unbelievably strange. They make it very clear how vastly different the world was then.

Chapter 1:THE LADDER AND THE CONE: ICONOGRAPHIES OF PROGRESS

Familiarity has been breeding overtime in our mottoes. producing everything from contempt (according to Aesop) to children f as Mark Twain observed). Polonius, amidst his loquacious wanderings, urged Laertes to seek friends who were tried and true, and then, having chosen well, to "grapple them" to his "soul with hoops of steel."

Yet, as Polonius's eventual murderer stated in the most famous soliloquy of all time, "there's the rub." Those hoops of steel are not easily unbound, and the comfortably familiar becomes a prison of thought.

Words are our favored moans of enforcing consensus; nothing inspires orthodoxy and purposeful unanimity of action so well as a finely crafted motto--Win one for the Gipper, and God shed his grace on thee. But our recent invention of speech cannot entirely bury an earlier heritage. Primates are visual animals par excellence, and the iconography of persuasion strikes even closer than words to the core of our being. Every demagogue, every humorist, every advertising executive, has known and exploited the evocative power of a well-chosen picture.

Scientists lost this insight somewhere along the way. To be sure, we use pictures more than most scholars, art historians excepted. _Next slide please_ surpasses even _It seems to me_ that as the most common phrase in professional talks at scientific meetings. But we view our pictures only as ancillary illustrations of what we defend by words. Few scientists would view an image itself as intrinsically ideological in content. Pictures, as accurate mirrors of nature, just are.

I can understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects--though opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures arc incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These arc the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things.

The familiar iconographies of evolution arc all directed--sometimes crudely, sometimes subtly--toward reinforcing a comfortable view of human inevitability and superiority. The starkest version, the chain of being or ladder of linear progress, has an ancient, pre-evolutionary pedigree (see A. O. Lovejoy's classic, _The Great Chain of Being_, 1936). Consider, for example, Alexander Pope's _Essay on Man_, written early in the eighteenth century:

In the early days of the Piltdown discovery, Smith Woodward and I had been open antagonists – enemies, I might almost say. As years went by we were gradually, drawn together by two circumstances: he and I never differed as to the genuineness and importance of the discovery made at Piltdown; and we had both the same love and respect for Charles Dawson, the lawyer-antiquarian, the man who discovered the site on Barkham Manor which yielded the fossil remains of Piltdown man ~ Arthur Keith

Isolated teeth, single bones, fragments of skulls: for the most part, these are the clues from which the story of human prehistory must be reconstructed. ~ Richard Leakey

From which you shamelessly quote-mine.

Looks like bevets is here with his dishonest quote-mining INSTEAD of evidence. (AGAIN!)

Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else. ~ Colin Patterson

1. Let's begin with the Patterson MISQUOTE, so beloved by creationists and "quoted"(well sort of) here by bevets:
The above bit of dishonesty is debunked at Patterson MISQUOTED: A Tale of Two Cities

I can understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects -- through opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

2. Here is bevets' Gould "quote":

This bit was LIFTED OUT-OF-CONTEXT from Chapt. 1-The Iconography of an Expectation/A Prologue in Pictures (Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by S. J. Gould). In the first chapter, Gould was stating the traditional biological positions (often translated into cultural attitudes) that the Burgess Shale challenged, primarily one known as the biological "cone of progress".

The bit quoted by bevets comes from a part of Chapt.1 that has NOTHING to do with the transitional fossils:

What Gould was criticizing was how the pictures/images from the Burgess Shale were being used to promote the notion of the "cone of progress" (similiar to Aristotle's Great Chain of Being), NOT a criticism or presentation of evidence against transitional fossils/evolution.

In the early days of the Piltdown discovery, Smith Woodward and I had been open antagonists – enemies, I might almost say. As years went by we were gradually, drawn together by two circumstances: he and I never differed as to the genuineness and importance of the discovery made at Piltdown; and we had both the same love and respect for Charles Dawson, the lawyer-antiquarian, the man who discovered the site on Barkham Manor which yielded the fossil remains of Piltdown man ~ Arthur Keith

3. Oh pulleezze! The Pildown man was a hoax perpetrated on scientists, not an intentional fraud concocted by scientists as I explained IN THIS POST.

The real liars here are creationists who continue to portray these mistakes as though they were COMMON when if fact they are RARE events because any scientific claim is under continual scrutiny.

Isolated teeth, single bones, fragments of skulls: for the most part, these are the clues from which the story of human prehistory must be reconstructed. ~ Richard Leakey

4. I will assume that since you view the above as insufficient for reconstructing human prehistory, that you wouldn't consider any kind of forensic anthropology used to solve crimes as being sufficient either, because both human palentology and forensic anthropology often rely on "isolated teeth, single bones, fragments of skulls". I am still trying to figure out where this isolated out-of-context quote from the PREFACE (p. ix) ot The Origin of Humankind is supposed to be evidence against the validity of palentology or forensic anthropology though.

"nevertheless evolution is a fact because it has been observed."
Mutations have been observed, but no one has seen a alligators evolve into a birds, they will only give you simularitys.

Quote:There remains to be no link between any two species. Scientists have yet to find a missing link.
Not so. You've seen the skulls. We have plenty of fossil series showing links between one species and another, and generalised fossil schema also showing the major transitions between larger groups.

You do NOT have the skull of whatever species it was that man was suppose to have evolved FROM, so you are still missing the missing link. Every skull on that conglomerate of photos has one thing in common, there is no fossil of whatever it was they were suppose to have evolved from. In fact, they do not even KNOW what they evolved FROM other than a "common ancestor". At least I have never seen a referace to what sort of a species man was, before he "evolved" into a man.

I can understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects -- through opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

In the early days of the Piltdown discovery, Smith Woodward and I had been open antagonists – enemies, I might almost say. As years went by we were gradually, drawn together by two circumstances: he and I never differed as to the genuineness and importance of the discovery made at Piltdown; and we had both the same love and respect for Charles Dawson, the lawyer-antiquarian, the man who discovered the site on Barkham Manor which yielded the fossil remains of Piltdown man ~ Arthur Keith

Isolated teeth, single bones, fragments of skulls: for the most part, these are the clues from which the story of human prehistory must be reconstructed. ~ Richard Leakey

Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else. ~ Colin Patterson



Evos have their own sacred scriptures...