Truth hurts doesn't it Baggins?
That you think that taking peoples comments out of context to make a point they didn't intend is "truth" is illuminating, but not suprising given your track record.
So you pull out the sarcasm to combat.
I've always found sarcasm a very useful tool, although I think I was being more humorous here rather than sarcastic.
Thanks for the article though. Very revealing!
This Quote Mine Project kind of reminds me of my minds visual of what I used to refer to as the E/A Manual. Maybe someone should do a E/A Quotes Project .... oh and then put it in book form with the title
The Evolutionist / Atheists Manual I'm sure it would be a best seller. Anyways ....
It is very sad that the scientific world needs a quote mine project in the first place; it is, after all, to prevent misrepresentation by people who claim to be moral because they are religious.
But as long as there are Christians ready and willing to lie for Jesus I'm afraid there will have to resources so their lies can be revealed for what they are.
In fact I don't think James was lying, he just trawled a creationist source and thought he'd found a handy stick to beat the opposition with, too bad he didn't do a quick google search to make sure that the quote meant what he hoped it meant.
First it didn't sound to me like he didn't have ANY problems with the fossil record.
We all have problems we the fossil record not being as abundant as we'd like. In Gould's case it comes because his "big idea", punctuated equilibrium, requires speciation over ( geologically ) short periods of time, which are unlikely to be abundant in the fossil record as it it isn't a complete record of every animal that ever lived. He bemoans the fact that while transitional fossils are common enough at higher taxonomic levels they are rare at the species level.
That isn't the sort of problem with the geological record that you think it is. he doesn't think it doesn't show evolution and even punctuated equilibrium, just that the specimens at species level are rare rather than abundant.
This one is particularly good.
And then you go and do a bit of quote mining yourself, how sad, you'd show yourself in a better light if you actually read what the man wrote in full rather than quote mining bits that you think support your claims that evolution is a lie.
Gould was a masterful writer and a great scientific communicator, you'd be a better read person if you read what he wrote and not what some creationist resource quote mined.
Secondly why is "there is a scarcity of transitional fossils between species, there is no such lack of transitional fossils between major groups"?
I have explained that above, it is particular problem with punctuated equilibrium as it is theorised to occur quickly and thus leaves less chance of transitional forms than changes at higher taxonomic levels which must take longer and are therefore more likely to show up.
The transition from dinosaurs to birds took many millions of years and left many intermediate fossil forms, so did the change from fish to terapods, land mammals to whales etc. the change due to punk eek of snail spA to snail spB may only have taken a few thousand or tens of thousands of years meaning there was a much lower chance of transitional forms being fossilised.
