The Colin Patterson quote: No Intermediate Fossils

[Stethacanthus]

If there WERE any real intermediate fossils, Steve Gould, Niles Eldredge, and Ernst Myer would not have gone to the trouble to concoct an entire new variant of evolution(ism) (Punc-eek) in an attempt to EXPLAIN that total lack, would they?

Are you referring to the quote mining done on a ton of their work? They did not devise a new Theory of Evolution at all. Where did you hear that?

Actually, second question: Do you even understand the Theory of Evolution? If so demonstrate and if not then stop wasting everyone's time including your own and study it before you overstep any further.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Wait, is gungasnake trying to blame the holocaust on Darwinian evolution?

Has he forgotten that Hitler was a Christian and probably a creationist too? He clearly has forgotten that he banned the works of Darwin and others that supported the theory of evolution.

 

[Stethacanthus]

That's a pretty common misconception. I honestly don't think this person knows wha they are talking about.

 

[gungasnake]

Are you referring to the quote mining done on a ton of their work? They did not devise a new Theory of Evolution at all. Where did you hear that?

.....

The Gould/Eldredge Myer version of evolution is called "Punctuated Equilibria" or 'punc-eek' for short. It amounts to an attempt to get around two overwhelming problems, i.e. the lack of intermediate fossils, and the Haldane dilemma (which says that it would take impossible spans of time to spread ANY genetic change through any sort of a large herd of animals).

 

[Stethacanthus]

Gungasnake

I know what you are referring to and assume that you haven't read it but have decided to take someone else' word for it. That is academically dishonest and frankly lazy.

If you actually understood science, then you would understand that it changes as new information is uncovered.

If you actually did read it, then you are oversimplifying and are therefor academically dishonest as well.

I warned you about overstepping yourself.

 

[gungasnake]

Gungasnake

I know what you are referring to and assume that you haven't read it but have decided to take someone else' word for it. That is academically dishonest and frankly lazy....blah, blah, blah....

How old are you? 12? 13??

 

[Stethacanthus]

How old are you? 12? 13??

That is irrelevant, but I'll give you a hint. I am a volunteer EMT and Rescue Diver, as well as a student of Biology, Ecology, and Psychology.

Let me ask you now. Why would that even matter except as an attack? Dare I say I pinned you as being no older than maybe 15, but I don't have enough information to make that claim. All of the posts that I have seen from you here and on other threads have been copy-paste arguments and ad hominid attacks, which are hardly the trademarks of a seasoned critical thinker.

I am going to repeat myself again. Either learn the material you are trying to argue, or don't bother. You have already made a fool of yourself now and have wasted the time of anyone who reads your responses here because you lack any substance to your arguments. They rely entirely on your credibility which I have yet to find confidence in personally.

 

[gungasnake]

Tblah, blah, blah......

YOU made a statement clearly indicating you had never heard of punc-eek; I described it for you, enough to give you something to do a Google search on, and you come back with this stuff about "academic dishonesty(TM)"..

Who do you expect to take you seriously??

 

[Stethacanthus]

YOU made a statement clearly indicating you had never heard of punc-eek; I described it for you, enough to give you something to do a Google search on, and you come back with this stuff about "academic dishonesty(TM)"..

Who do you expect to take you seriously??

What such statement? Or are you referring to my lack of explaining it to you.

Punctuated Equilibrium. I am aware of it. I am also aware that it is often misrepresented.

 

[gungasnake]

What such statement?

"....They did not devise a new Theory of Evolution at all. Where did you hear that?...."

Anybody would interpret that as meaning that you had never heard of punc-eek.

 

[Stethacanthus]

Anybody would interpret that as meaning that you had never heard of punc-eek.

Really now? Believe it or not I never refer to it as "punc-eek" because that's not its name. Even so I did point out the very same argument and explicitly asked you to explain some of the most fundamental concepts of evolution, and you have failed to do so. That doesn't mean that you do not know it, yet you take my lack of spelling everything out as an indication of ignorance.

But here you go. Smaller populations are more susceptible to selective forces and therefore will adapt more rapidly (less genetic variability, but greater chance of a trait becoming prominent) This can lead to what we would perceive as "jumps" in the fossil record in cases such as a greatly reduced population or isolation of two populations of organisms.

There is the most basic explanation I can offer.

 

[USincognito]

YOU made a statement clearly indicating you had never heard of punc-eek; I described it for you...

You were not describing Punk Eek. You're erecting a straw man that has no relationship to the actual postulation or the facts.

From Gould himself:
Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" 1994

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am—for I have become a major target of these practices.

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record—geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)—reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond. It represents much less than 1 per cent of the average life-span for a fossil invertebrate species—more than ten million years. Large, widespread, and well established species, on the other hand, are not expected to change very much. We believe that the inertia of large populations explains the stasis of most fossil species over millions of years.

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."​

bold mine

 

[gungasnake]

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

• It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). In other words, the clowns promoting this BS are claiming that the very lack of intermediate fossils supports the theory. Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...
  
  
  
  
  
• PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...
  
• PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.
  
• PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.
  
• For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldredge's claims:

They don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek"

They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:

ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!

Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?

 

[gungasnake]

Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups [Gould]

That's worse than idiotic and I take that as a clear indication that Gould viewed all evolutionists as idiots and was simply trying to placate them. That's saying, for instance, that you could view a fish as transitional between bacteria and humans.....

Do you view eating fish as disrespectful to your ancestors??

 

[gungasnake]

There is also Alexander Mebane's (Tampa Bay Skeptics) critique of PE:

But it may be questioned, on obvious probability grounds, whether
this way of accounting for the observed absence of intermediates
will really wash. Admitting that every intermediate stage "must
have" a small population, we may nevertheless observe that there
must have been a far greater number of them than of the stable, "
finished" species known to us, since (according to the Darwinist
picture) every species-transition must necessarily pass through
several intermediate stages. That greater number would increase
the likelihood that some intermediate forms, here and there, would
chance to be preserved as fossils. And the dogma further requires
that the larger transitions - between different genera, families,
orders, classes, and even different phyla, must all have come about
in just the same gradual and continuous manner, simply by a long-
continued succession of normal species-transitions! We have all
seen "genealogical trees" drawn by evolutionists, to show the
order in which these taxonomic groups have all come into existence
over a long period, by successive "branchings from a common root".

But it must be asked: Where are all the fossils that should have
been left by the many millions of species that this tree requires
to have once existed on its trunk, boughs, and branches, before
its final branchings took place? Why are none of these seen in
the fossil record of the period during which the evolutionists'
tree requires them to have lived? (That this perhaps surprising
charge does not exaggerate the real situation will be seen under
"First Taxonomic Disconfirmation", where the explicitly contra-
Darwinian testimony of the "transformed cladists" will be
presented.)

Moreover, why have none of this great multitude of Darwinian intermediate
species chanced to survive unchanged to our own time, among the
considerable number of ancient life-forms that, as we know, have
had the luck to do so? You may perhaps have read that that actually
ts the case: the lungfishes, the monotremes (platypus) and the
hoatzin, among others, were at one time said to show us "living
fossils" of "primitive" life at a stage that was still intermediate
to two different later forms, and ancestral to both of them. But
those claims are no longer heard; for, on closer investigation,
all of these creatures turned out to be curious "mosaic" constructions
of a kind that could not rationally be seen as representing the
real historical transitions between one group and another. (See
Denton's book for a detailed exposition of these cases.) The recent
discovery' of that living fossil par excellence, the coelacanth,
was an exciting event for evolutionists, because these "lobe-finned"
fish were supposed to have already begun to "evolve toward amphi-
bians"; but when a well-preserved specimen was obtained, examination
of its fins and its internal organs (previously unknown and only
guessed-at) quashed that fond hope for some real confirmation
of Darwin's ideas, and I think that you will no longer find coelacanths
called "pre-amphibians".....

......The most recent episode of great changes, the advent of the modern
(Cenozoic) mammals after the death of the dinosaurs, is the one
that we should expect to have left the best-preserved fossils
of intermediate species. At the catastrophic end of the Cretaceous,
65 Myr ago, mammals were small nocturnal "tree-shrew"-like animals,
none larger than cats; roughly ten million years later, we find
essentially "modern" bats*, bears, and lions18. "All modern orders
of mammals seem to have arisen independently and at about the
same time": Wesson, p. 40, quoting Bonner 1988 and Carroll 1988.

If these vast changes really proceeded in the manner prescribed
by Darwin, surely many hundreds (at the least!) of intermediate
species in each lineage must once have lived during that protracted
period of radical transmogrification. None of them have ever showed
up in the fossil record.

And not only are all traces
of intermediate species' missing, but anyone who seriously tries
to imagine a believable sequence of viable intermediate animals
between a tree-shrew and a bat-every one of which, according to
Darwin, supplanted its predecessor by virtue of being "better
adapted"! -wiII very soon be convinced that such a sequence is
simply inconceivable: "What use is half a wing?" as everyone since
Mivart (including even Gould) has asked. The reason we have found
no trace of them is simply that they never existed, and the reason
they never existed is that it would be impossible for them to
have done so. It was this unavoidable conclusion that led Simpson
in 1944 20 to publicly acknowledge his heretical conviction that
these megaevolutionary" transformations, at least, must have
occurred in some rapid and entirely non-Darwinian way. For this
he was censured, and forced to recant, but it is safe to assert
that no one has ever been able to sketch out, with even the slightest
semblance of credibility, any Darwinian route to the already-"
modern" bats that appear-twice over! in the early Cenozoic, roughly
55 million years ago.

There are in fact two distinct suborders of bats, the Microchiroptera
and Megachiroptera, so pervasively different in structure that
everyone agrees that they must have "evolved" quite
independenty: Wesson, p.i82.

 

[USincognito]

That's worse than idiotic and I take that as a clear indication that Gould viewed all evolutionists as idiots and was simply trying to placate them.

I supposed one could take it that way if one didn't understand what Gould was actually saying or why he was saying it.

That's saying, for instance, that you could view a fish as transitional between bacteria and humans.....

One would only say such a thing if one didn't understand evolution, Punk-Eek, what transitional actually means or that humans, fish and bacteria share a common ancestor.

Do you view eating fish as disrespectful to your ancestors??

Did vaudevillian schtick like this play well on other forums?

 

[lasthero]

Did vaudevillian schtick like this play well on other forums?

Nope.

Evolution 101

 

[Stethacanthus]

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

• It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). In other words, the clowns promoting this BS are claiming that the very lack of intermediate fossils supports the theory. Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...
  
  Interrupt quote. Please note that there was an image link here that I could not repost. I apologize for the inconvenience and feel free to check the original post.
  
  
• PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...
  
• PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.
  
• PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.
  
• For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldredge's claims:

They don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek"

They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:



Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?

Riddled with straw men, false analogies, and ad hominid attacks. Not even worth a detailed response, but I will shoot it in the knee with one VERT brief paragraph.

The Origin of the Species is not an accurate representation of the modern Theory of Evolution. Darwin was wrong about a lot and we don't worship his work like prophecy. He is well known because he had an idea that was closer to the nature of biodiversity to anything else in his time and inspired the study of evolutionary biology. Science changes its mind as evidence comes in so that it works. Theories are refined, not declared.

 

[Heissonear]

Really now? Believe it or not I never refer to it as "punc-eek" because that's not its name. Even so I did point out the very same argument and explicitly asked you to explain some of the most fundamental concepts of evolution, and you have failed to do so. That doesn't mean that you do not know it, yet you take my lack of spelling everything out as an indication of ignorance.

But here you go. Smaller populations are more susceptible to selective forces and therefore will adapt more rapidly (less genetic variability, but greater chance of a trait becoming prominent) This can lead to what we would perceive as "jumps" in the fossil record in cases such as a greatly reduced population or isolation of two populations of organisms.

There is the most basic explanation I can offer.

Humm, new poster. Or old poster with new account.

Anyway, this is not the theoretical or imagination science section.


.

 

[Heissonear]

Riddled with straw men, false analogies, and ad hominid attacks. Not even worth a detailed response, but I will shoot it in the knee with one VERT brief paragraph.

The Origin of the Species is not an accurate representation of the modern Theory of Evolution. Darwin was wrong about a lot and we don't worship his work like prophecy. He is well known because he had an idea that was closer to the nature of biodiversity to anything else in his time and inspired the study of evolutionary biology. Science changes its mind as evidence comes in so that it works. Theories are refined, not declared.

That is called crabbing. Chunk the old after it has initiated the worldwide deception.

Introduce the "new" to perpetuate the deception.

Did I miss anything?


.