Is it okay for Christians to post here?

[Pete]

Thank you Adrian. I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised by the warm reception that I've recieved since I got here. I guess another thing I'm learning is that I had the wrong idea of what atheists were like. I tried a few theist discussion groups and was basically flamed off. My recent run in with an atheist started to solidify my opinion in this area. I guess I just happened to have run into people that gave atheists a bad name. Since it was a newsgroup I had suspected such. Nice to see that's not the case. In real life I don't get into discussions of this nature.

As far as evolution goes, I accept what science has to say about but that doesn't mean that I understand it either. For example; it seems that evolutionists themselves are baffled by certain things like gaps in the fossil records of even explosions of life which seem to come out of nowhere. Stephen Gould called this puncuated equilibrium. Are you familiar with it?

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Pete

[Eilonnwy]

There are always people that perpetuate stereotypes but they are usually few and far between

[solidsquid]

Welcome Pete, good to have you.

[Tiberius]

it seems that evolutionists themselves are baffled by certain things like gaps in the fossil records of even explosions of life which seem to come out of nowhere.

Gaps in the fossil record are expected. Fossilization of skeletons is an extremely tricky process, and we are lucky to have found so many animals. Explosions of life are most likely due to a sudden change in the environment that forced a lot of animals to adapt very quickly.

[Pete]

Gaps in the fossil record are expected. Fossilization of skeletons is an extremely tricky process, and we are lucky to have found so many animals. Explosions of life are most likely due to a sudden change in the environment that forced a lot of animals to adapt very quickly.

Gaps in fossil beds are expected. Not gaps in the fossil record.

If it was as simply as you suggest then Stephen Gould would never have postulated the theory of punctuated equilibria.

[infidel666]

I'm one of those angry atheists mentioned earlier. I'll try not to bite your head off.

Anyway, there is a lot we don't know about biology and heredity and evolutionary mechanisms. I personally get aggravated when soemone tries to argue that existence of Santa Claus is more plausible than evolution because the existence of Santa Claus does not need to be rational. But you don't seem to be doing that, so here goes.

I am not familiar with Mr. Gould's theories and/or hypotheses. But there are a couple of possible explanations of which I am aware for the explosions of new life. As far as I know, natural selection merely eliminates those species that cannot survive in the new environment. For example, there can be climate change that kills off a species not well adapted to that climate. Or a new gene can come along that is dominant to the first and there are no climactic conditions to deselect for that gene. Most people only think of the first case, in which climate change occurs or a new predator migrates to that region from another region.

It might be possible that, when such conditions occur, species are more likely to mutate and change and put out new varieties. That might be possible, that stress of that type trigggers that kind of change. But I think it would be easy to replicate that stress for a population under controlled conditions and observe the explosion in variety, and I don't think that we have been able to accomplish that.

I think it more likely that plagues of retroviruses occasionally explode across lands and across species and rewrite DNA willy nilly with DNA copied from other organisms as well as random code. That mechanism would account for a sudden explosion of new varieties, followed by natural deselection of some of those varieties.

I am not really familiar with the "gaps" in the fossil record, unless you are talking about the expectation of observing gradual change from one species to the next. If that is it, then I think the retrovirus plagues I mentioned account for what we see. Please let me know if that covers it.

[Brick-top]

Unless you're a radical creationist I have no interest in you.

That way I can say I'm against stupidity rather than Religion.

[solidsquid]

For example; it seems that evolutionists themselves are baffled by certain things like gaps in the fossil records of even explosions of life which seem to come out of nowhere. Stephen Gould called this puncuated equilibrium. Are you familiar with it?

Interested in, wanting to inquire more into - definitely. Baffled? I don't quite think that would be an accurate descriptor.

The fossil record is going to have gaps but not for the reasons that evolution opponents normally cite. As I've written here before, there is the issue of fossilization itself - it is not a guaranteed thing even in favorable conditions. Then there is the manpower issue - there isn't a whole army of people digging in the dirt looking for fossils - many finds are made by amateur fossil hunters, miners, construction workers, farmers, drillers and so forth.

The thing with PE is that Gould and Eldredge were hypothesizing that we will see species essentially stay the same for the most part (phenotypically of course - this was back in the 70's and the field of modern genetics was only about 20 years old) in what is referred to as "stasis". They proposed that we would see this stasis in the record along with short bursts of rapid change. Some see it as a change from the idea of phyletic gradualism or even a replacement or opposing idea - it isn't. Think of it more as an accessory. Let me explain.

We humans on average tend to like to think of the world in little chunks. It makes it easier for our primate brain to organize our knowledge of the world. A byproduct of this tendency is to simplify things that aren't so simple - hence we get many people who love to dichotomize things that shouldn't be, people love the black/white idea because it's simple and easy to grasp. People do this with PE and PG as well even though they are both valid explanations, have both been back by evidence in the field and in the laboratory. A good example is an article printed in the journal Science back in 2006. Pagel, Venditti and Meade examined PE and PG from a molecular standpoint - both have been shown and documented in the fossil record, however, molecular evidence could give even more robust substantiation to these models of change. What Pagel et al. found is that PE events were largest for plants and fungi and a fairly low occurrence in animals. Overall, PE events accounted for 22% of changes and the rest being the result of PG. PE is an often misunderstood concept in biology and many evolution opponents latch onto what they think it is and attempt to use it as a tool in arguments. However, just as with many other concepts in science, they do not understand it or have some distorted idea of what it really is and cling to that idea no matter how inaccurate it may be, sadly.

In light of that, yes, we do and will see "gaps" (but not for the reason many evolution opponents claim) in the fossil record - some are there because specimens haven't been found yet. Some are there possibly from the result of lack of fossilization of specimens and some are there because there really isn't a gap to fill, sometimes things change suddenly.

As far as the "explosions", I assume your thinking of the Cambrian explosion? If I am wrong please let me know.

If it is the CE you're talking about then it is a common misconception that we find nothing or hardly anything in the fossil record and suddenly *BOOM*, life everywhere. There actually is a substantial pre-cambrian fossil record. The Precambrian is not an actual frame of geological time - it is just an informal name given to the section of all the time, from the formation of earth, before the Cambrian. Many people like to cite Darwin's assessment where he claimed it was a problem - then they leave it at that and claim victory. I guess they don't read any literature past the 19the century. Many discoveries have been made in many timeframes encompassed by the Precambrian. There is even a Precambrian scientific journal titled "Precambrian Research":

Precambrian Research

Reference:

Pagel, M., Venditti, C. & Meade, A. (2006). Large punctuational contribution of speciation to evolutionary divergence at the molecular level. Science, 314, 119-121.

[Pete]

In light of that, yes, we do and will see "gaps" (but not for the reason many evolution opponents claim) in the fossil record - some are there because specimens haven't been found yet. Some are there possibly from the result of lack of fossilization of specimens and some are there because there really isn't a gap to fill, sometimes things change suddenly.

First off I'm not an opponent of evolution so I could care less about what they think and am not concerned with what their reasoning is. So you don't have to bother mentioning that kind of thing. Okay?

As far as lack of fossilization of specimens; Sorry, while you may be right, I don't find your arguement very convincing. I'm not even sure that it address what punctuated equilibrium is about. I just picked up a book on Evolution and it addresses this question. The author writes

Scientists hypothesize that evolution doesn't occur at a constant rate: It can occur in bursts seperated by long periods when not much happens. If transitional was brief, the chance that such forms would have been fossilized is even more dicey.

I fully understand that fossilization is an extremely rare thing so don't get me wrong. In fact I wouldn't have even thought twice about the gap in the fossil record if it didn't come as such a supprise to evolutionists such as Gould. However, from what I hear, Gould was a genius. As such he was smart enough to take these things into consideration before he hypothesized punctuated equilibrium. I feel very comfortable that Gould was smart enough to consider all the things that one might object to regarding punctuated equilibrium. To suggest that he didn't consider the most obvious explanation is not doing him, or other evolutionary scientists, justice.

Pete

[Tiberius]

The gaps argument is completely useless, but it will never go away. I will explain how it is a genius argument in terms of going around in circles though:

We have fossil 1, and we have fossil 2.
There are similarities in both, so we reckon fossil 2 is a descendant of fossil 1.
"There is a gap!" the creationists cry.
We find fossil 1.5.
Fossil 1.5 is a "transitional fossil" between 1 and 2.
"There is a gap!" the creationists cry.
We find fossils 1.25 and 1.75.
"There is a ga...."

You get the idea. Creationists will always go back to the gaps theory for the simple reason that there are so many different mutations going on you will always find one. They count that as a win. They ignore all the "hits" on the fossil record that we have.

The fossil record is a tiny amount of evidence compared to genetic evidence anyway.