Why do Creationists enjoy quoting Collin Patterson when it comes to flaws in evolution?

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

Some have noted that creationists like to quote Collin Patterson as being an evolutionist who admitted to certain flaws in the argument for evolutionism.

Can you see why that might be?

Please take a look at post #2 and answer the 3 questions or comment on why you think they would be difficult to answer... Just looking for conversation on those points.

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Evolutionists often argue that they don't think creationists should be allowed to quote Patterson because no creationist has the ability to do it well enough that evolutionists would agree to it - can you see why that might be?

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Let's imagine for a moment that some place on the web you find that Patterson was a world famous evolutionist who lived and died as a diehard scientists promoting evolution... but you also found these verbatism quotes on the web.



first example:

Regarding: Collin Patterson (atheist and diehard evolutionist to the day he died in 1998) - Paleontologist British Museum of Natural history speaking at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 - said:



Patterson - quotes Gillespie's arguing that Christians

"'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"


Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact (saying): 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"


"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...,Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge , apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

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IS there any reason/scenario/situation at all that you can think of where:
1. Creationists might be inclined to quote such an evolutionist as evidence that even evolutionists themselves have some concerns?
2. Evolutionists might not want to see those quotes especially if a creationist is quoting it?

For example: I can find places on the web where evolutionists publish those quotes and they don't seem to mind when they quote those statements because they always try to add some sort of "well it is not as bad as it looks at first" story to it.

second example: that you might find on the web some place


Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution) in a talk given at the American Museum of Natural History 1981


--------------------- Patterson said -


“Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing…that is true?

I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural history and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the University of Chicago, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said “I know one thing – it ought not to be taught in high school”

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolution and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolution as revealed truth in some way."

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Question 1 -- if you were an evolutionist could you find a way to put "a happy face" on such quotes? - if so how might they do it?

Question 2 - can you in your wildest dreams imagine finding a set of quotes like that being stated by a 20th world-class scientist in the field of chemistry or physics, or advanced mathematics??

Question 3 -- if you were a creationist would you ALSO be happy to find those quotes some place? If so -- why?

Can you see why the evolutionist Patterson might not want his statements to be seen by creationists as some sort of argument in the least - showing a flaw in evolution stories "easy enough to tell but they are not science"??

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Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

April 10, 1979 Letter from Colin Patterson to Sunderland


“ I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them.

You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?

I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it.

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 line- there 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. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job “

[Ref: Patterson, personal communication. Documented in Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland, Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1988, pp. 88-90.]

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Once that information gets out into the public - what would be the best way to cover it up???

visionary said:

Intelligent Design, is one of the more sophisticated alternative theories to evolution

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true but I.D. is not actual Creationism. Rather it is just the bare-mininum almost-non-atheist statement that things in nature "appear" to have been designed with too many aspects indicating that some sort of design is in place not merely "random chance".

One could be agnostic or theistic evolutionist and be I.D.

But Patterson was pure atheists not I.D. in his support of evolutionism.

Friedrich Rubinstein said:

Scientists tend to lose their reputation rather quickly when they question evolution or even make pro-creationist statements. I guess that is one of the main reasons why Collinson "revoked" his statements and said he doesn't want to be quoted by creationists.

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I am not aware that he ever "revoked" his statement or claimed that he lied or claimed that he forgot to tell the truth at that point.

His statement was more like "I should have been more crafty, more cagey" it was not of the form "my criticism was wrong, invalid, not correct".

His personal opinion is that the person who put his words in the public domain was not ethical -- but evolutionist today currently quote those same words on evol websites - and he is on record pointing to them in public as well.

Patterson:
"I was too naive and foolish to guess what might happen: the talk was taped by a creationist who passed the tape to Luther Sunderland... Since, in my view, the tape was obtained unethically, I asked Sunderland to stop circulating the transcipt, but of course to no effect. There is not much point in my going through the article point by point. "


Three "details"
1. He is not saying that it is not a verbatim quote of what he said.
2. He is not saying what he said was a lie.
3. He is not saying that the evolutionist websites that currently have that up on their site should remove it.
4. He is not saying that the letter he sent to Sunderland should be a secret from the public.

What he is saying is that creationists should not know about it.

Imagine a field of science physics/chemistry where the scientist says "I wish only atheists knew of my comments in at the "Evolutionary Morphology Seminar" ... what sort of "religious nonsense" is that?

The religious nature of his complaint is hard to overlook.

Patterson: "I was putting a case for discussion, as I thought off the record, and was speaking only about systematics, a specialized field. I do not support the creationist movement in any way, "

This is not a "religious test" for Patterson -- it is simply a view of his criticique of that branch of science and how he "wishes" creationists did not know of any comments about branch of science made by him - which would any sort of negative reflection on it. Again .. a religious position on his part not a scientific one.

Patterson on crusade:
" in particular I am opposed to their efforts to modify school curricula."

Nobody uses his quote to claim that Patterson wants us to teach creationism or wants schools not to teach evolutionism.

Patterson on crusade:
"In short the article does not fairly represent my views. "

Patterson makes not a single point about the quote or the article showing it to be inaccurate in some fact/detail/claim about his POV. The article never claims that Patterson is a creationist or that Patterson wants people to stop "believing in" evolutionism.

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Friedrich Rubinstein said:

Yet it does not change the fact that the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, which is a very prestigious body of evolutionists by the way, could not say a single thing that they knew of is true about evolution.

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Another point that Patterson does not deny -- but indicates he wishes it was hidden from creationists.

Imagine if in math or physics they had said "can you tell me any one thing that is true about physics" and none of the leading scientists in that field could think of anything other than "I know one thing - it ought not be taught in high school".

Patterson never refutes that event took place just as recorded on tape.

Friedrich Rubinstein said:

When experts of evolution say "it should not be taught in school" then you know there is something very wrong with this "scientific theory".

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True - a very strong reason to want that info not to get out to creationists

visionary said:

Yep, but one step closer to admitting there has to be a smart one who did this.

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If you say so... he died an atheist ... never wavering ... his comments reflect some dissatisfaction with the way his views/belief/science was being handled by him and his peers...

Like a Russian tank commander complaining about something or other with his tank - but not at all thinking about defecting over it. I think he was hoping that someone would find a way to get the problem fixed... rather than "ignored".

visionary said:

That is one idea of what goes on in the mind of another.

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It is a matter of "cases" -- some cases are that of a person asking "I wonder if there is a god after all".

But other "cases" -- as when someone dies still-atheist- still-evolutionist where they are simply lamenting the state of the science because they have been telling themselves that it is all just unbiased objective science... only to find out "oops! there are a few bumps in this road".

coffee4u said:

Never heard of the man, do I want to?

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depends on how effective you might want to be at reaching atheists with the Gospel where the first thing they will want to do is claim that Christians reject common sense, science fact etc so how can Christian be trusted to think logically.

Read the first few posts and tell me what you think.

coffee4u said:

I will try and study this when I am well, I have something going on with my left ear right now.
But I do know that I don't use science. I use scripture when I reach out. I believe scripture is a two edged sword whether the atheist believes it or not.

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Jesus taught with reason and nature and parables to draw people in that would not sit still and listen to his direct teaching from scripture.

Paul appealed to reason and and logic to point to the creator of the universe.

In my threads I ask atheists to contrast the idea that God is the one that turned this lifeless planet into a world of many diverse species by creating animals in a single evening-and-morning vs the idea that rocks can transform into a horse given enough billions of years. I take advantage of the fact that no matter what they say the Holy Spirit still "convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment" not "just Christians" ... and we need this skill because as it is - a great many Christian kids are going to the university studying science, buying into the false idea that science and Christianity are at war and then eventually like Darwin, Dawkins, Provine and others dumping Christianity.

It is not just that Christians are not good at reaching out to atheists under certain conditions - it is that atheists are excellent at reaching out to the children of Christians once they get them under their thumb in a science class.

The weakness for the atheist argument is not only in the Bible, it is also in science.