Final stumpers for Creationists

Here is an article written by S. J. Gould which covers his opinion of creationists misrepresenting his work.

Evoltution as Fact and Theory

We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual transformation within lineages, but must arise from the different success of certain kinds of species. A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuated and stasis) than rolling up an inclined plane.

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled "Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax" states: "The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge…are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible."
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
seems pretty clear cut to me...and I have no idea who this Gould guy is.

Seems like he admits that Darwinian evolution is silly. He just doesn't like bible thumpers. Even if they agree with him on some points.

I don't think Gould has any problem with Bible-thumpers in general. He just doesn't like the ones that splice his words to give the false appearance that he thinks "Darwinian evolution is silly." The fact that these folks have made it seem "clear cut" to you that this is, in fact, his position, is a testament to their dishonesty. Gould is a paleontologist and is very friendly to Darwinian evolution: his controversy is over the tempo of Darwininan evolution - relative uniform gradualism versus long periods of comparative stasis with brief periods of relatively quick evolution interrupting them.

His statements about the fossil record are meant to support his view that gradualism is less well-supported than "punctuated equilibrium" - they do not point to anything that falsifies darwinian evolution.
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by papakapp
seems pretty clear cut to me...and I have no idea who this Gould guy is.

Seems like he admits that Darwinian evolution is silly. He just doesn't like bible thumpers. Even if they agree with him on some points.

But they don't! They merely misquote him and take his words out of context to try to make it appear that there is the slightest doubt in his mind about the underlying methods of evolution; the only dispute he's involved in is whether or not there are brief periods of faster change.
 
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papakapp

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Gould, like all scientists, makes observations and then draws conclusions.

Observation 1: There is a lack of transitonal forms between major kinds.

Observation 2: there is a multitude of transitional forms between minor kinds.

Goulds conclusion: Therefore evolution must have occured in leaps.

A creationists conclusion: Therefore a God must have created the major kinds.

Just because a creationist draws a different conclusion doesn't mean the observations must be different. In fact, attacking the conclusion is a very common and acceptable way to debate.
 
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papakapp

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Ah, simple A kind is any animal that is now, or whose ancestors ever were interfertile.
Interfertility can be determined by the existence of transitional fosils. If there are to transitional fosils from one species to the next, they were not of the same kind.


For exapmle, a dog, cyote, wolf, and dingo are all the same kind of animal since they shared a common ancestor.

Likewise a horse, mule, donkey and zebra are all the same kind of animal since they shared a common ancestor.

A good rule of thumb for defining kinds is to not over-complicate the matter.
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
Gould, like all scientists, makes observations and then draws conclusions.

Observation 1: There is a lack of transitonal forms between major kinds.

Observation 2: there is a multitude of transitional forms between minor kinds.

Goulds conclusion: Therefore evolution must have occured in leaps.

A creationists conclusion: Therefore a God must have created the major kinds.

Acutally you have it backwards. In the fossil record, there is a (relative) lack of transitional forms between "minor" kinds (species), and a plethora of transitional forms between "major" kinds (genera, class, order).

Goulds conclusion that evolution must have occurred in "leaps" is necessitated by the fact that the occurrance of evolution is proved by several independent lines of evidence, and that mere gaps in the fossil record are terribly insufficient to falsify evolution. He seeks to explain the gaps in terms of known fact by postulating a variation in the tempo of evolution. He may or may not be correct: his evidence from the gaps is somewhat inconclusive.

Just because a creationist draws a different conclusion doesn't mean the observations must be different. In fact, attacking the conclusion is a very common and acceptable way to debate.

You must attack a conclusion in terms of the observations that went toward making it: either showing that the observations are inaccurate, or that the conclusion doesn't follow from them. But you can't just pick some isolated observations like "gaps" in the fossil record. Almost nothing follows from the gaps, since the gaps are what we expect to find no matter what theory of life we are examining. You must look at the evidence that can serve to confirm or falsify your theory.
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
Ah, simple A kind is any animal that is now, or whose ancestors ever were interfertile.
Interfertility can be determined by the existence of transitional fosils. If there are to transitional fosils from one species to the next, they were not of the same kind.


For exapmle, a dog, cyote, wolf, and dingo are all the same kind of animal since they shared a common ancestor.

Likewise a horse, mule, donkey and zebra are all the same kind of animal since they shared a common ancestor.

A good rule of thumb for defining kinds is to not over-complicate the matter.

So you concede that humans and chimps are the same "kind"? Or do you argue that we had no ancestors that were interfertile? Bear in mind, we are fairly close to being interfertile as it stands now: if one chromosome had not undergone a fission event to become two, we could probably successfully mate with chimps (although I'm sure that I wouldn't want to...)
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
I think we need a little more than the same number of chromosomes to be interfretile.

Of course, if you would like to prove me wrong then just breed a dog with a duck (They both have 78 chromosomes)

True that more than the same chromosome number is necessary to be interfertile, but we are so close to chimps genetically that it wouldn't take much more than reversing that one fission to restore our ancestral interfertility. We do share 98% of our genome with chimps, and there is no room for doubt that our ancestors were interfertile with the ancestors of chimps. So, are chimps and humans the same "kind?"
 
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papakapp

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Originally posted by Jerry Smith


True that more than the same chromosome number is necessary to be interfertile, but we are so close to chimps genetically that it wouldn't take much more than reversing that one fission to restore our ancestral interfertility. We do share 98% of our genome with chimps, and there is no room for doubt that our ancestors were interfertile with the ancestors of chimps. So, are chimps and humans the same "kind?"

actually, I think there is plenty of room for doubt.
I am sure you would agree that hominid fossils are the most sought after fossils. This fact alone is enough to bias some palentologists when they unearth... say... a pigs tooth? Or perhaps they might even blatantly lie and file down bones so they fit together.
In fact the entire hominid fosil record has information only at the tips of the branches. Everything else is suposition.

At any rate, this whole debate is too esoteric for me. I believe what I believe because of observation of changed lives; People alive today, not observation of bones buried long ago.
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by papakapp

actually, I think there is plenty of room for doubt.
I am sure you would agree that hominid fossils are the most sought after fossils. This fact alone is enough to bias some palentologists when they unearth... say... a pigs tooth? Or perhaps they might even blatantly lie and file down bones so they fit together.
In fact the entire hominid fosil record has information only at the tips of the branches. Everything else is suposition.

This is rather far from accurate; the rest of the record isn't hugely filled in, but there's enough to make it pretty clear.


At any rate, this whole debate is too esoteric for me. I believe what I believe because of observation of changed lives; People alive today, not observation of bones buried long ago.

I don't see how observation of people alive today would lead to any conclusions going back more than a couple thousand years. Belief in God, and faith in Christ, are not in any way incompatible with recognizing the well-established age of the earth and process by which life arises.
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
This fact alone is enough to bias some palentologists when they unearth... say... a pigs tooth?

Just a little question. Have you actually compared pigs' teeth to humans'? I haven't done the comparison myself, but I have been told by people more knowledgeable in this than me that such mistakes are easy and reasonable to make. Because we and pigs are omnivores, some of our teeth are suprisingly similar. In the US, archaeologists usually hope they don't find human remains because that results in the closing down of the dig by NAGPRA.

I also would like to mention that "Nebraska Man" was corrected by the same scientist who first discovered the tooth. I haven't read the original paper, but I seriously doubt that the original, erronous identification was as definate as people like to claim it was.

Of course, his mistakes are minor compared to Carl Baugh's claim that a well-characterized fish's tooth was from a human.
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
I believe what I believe because of observation of changed lives; People alive today, not observation of bones buried long ago.

I agree that the living evidence of changed lives is rather compelling for those who can see it.

But I don't think it's such a bad idea to go digging for bones buried long ago. In fact, I heartily recommend that these folks start searching for the bones of Christ. ;)
 
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Originally posted by papakapp
actually, I think there is plenty of room for doubt.
I am sure you would agree that hominid fossils are the most sought after fossils. This fact alone is enough to bias some palentologists when they unearth... say... a pigs tooth? Or perhaps they might even blatantly lie and file down bones so they fit together.

Yes, there is bias within the scientific community. There is also dishonesty. The nice thing about science is that it recognizes these human traits and supplies a rigorous means for culling biased research. As Vork noted Nebraska man was debunked by those methods by the very scientist who made the mistake. Piltdown man was a fraud debunked by scientists.

Multiple specimens of Australopithecus afarensis and Homo erectus have been found and have been rigorously scrutinized to verify that they are indeed what the discoverers claim they are. These finds are independently confirmed, and have been passed around from museum to museum. Every paleontology department in every university, and every paleontologist in every museum knows that there is fame and fortune for the team that can debunk these finds, yet they have been around for decades and have undergone intense scrutiny and they show no signs of being discredited any time soon. That leaves little doubt of their authenticity. Between those, the other less important fossil hominids, DNA evidence, and near-identical morphology, there can be know educated doubt that humans and chimps share ancestors.

In fact the entire hominid fosil record has information only at the tips of the branches. Everything else is suposition.

The picture is bigger and more detailed than you are aware of. Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, A afarensis, A boisei, A africanus, a robustus, Homo habilis, H ergaster, H sapiens neanderthalensis: these are most, but not all of the fossil hominids. The may not all be ancestors of modern humans (only H habilis with 100% certainty), but they prove that H sapiens sapiens are not the only homonid species ever to exist, and they show that not all homonid species were as different from the great apes as we are - the older ones being nearly identical to the great apes.

There really isn't much room for doubt.

At any rate, this whole debate is too esoteric for me. I believe what I believe because of observation of changed lives; People alive today, not observation of bones buried long ago.

I can appreciate that the debate is too esoteric for you. It is probably too esoteric for me: only scientific curiosity keeps me involved in learning about the history of life.

I hope that you don't feel that your faith is threatened by scientific fact. I know seebs and many others do not feel that way at all: they believe in Christ for one set of reasons, and accept the facts of evolution because of the scientific evidence, and do so quite reasonably.
 
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Greeter

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Originally posted by maninastrangeland
has anyone given evidence for creationism yet?

Yeah, we exist and we have the Bible to tell us how it happened :D

I know, I know, not what you are looking for.

Creationism as a science . . . A tough one that is.

I am a fundamentalist and I enjoy science. I think creationism was a mistake trying to correct another mistake. People were looking for a way to correct the wrong doing of taking religion out of schools while allowing evolution to remain. As a result we have something that appears to be causing more harm than good(in both respects).

In all I have read or heard about science, I have yet to find anything that shakes my faith.

I haven't found anything yet that leads me to believe creationism should be pursued. It seems like we are trying to make believers out of non believers using the tools they use to not believe. If someone doesn't want to believe in the Bible they will find ways and excuses.

I think Christians should concentrate more on the Truth and the Word.

One other thought, if we had hard evidence to creationism, we wouldn't be acting on faith. Granted, to me the Bible is hard evidence but it could be argued that is based on faith :D
 
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