DARWIN'S MACROEVOLUTION: Why Unscientific?

[Cyberman]

STIMBO -to- ALTER2EGO -- ARE YOU RECEIVING

The links didn't go to "entire articles" and if you'd bothered to get off your arse and "do" them you'd have spotted that. They went (or were intended to go) to individual sections specifically addressing the mined quotes you so gleefully dumped all over the carpet like an incontinent and excitable puppy. Since you are too lazy or too scared (either option is on the table at the moment) to take the trouble of clicking your mouse, I shall spoonfeed you. Apologies to everyone else for taking up space in this way.

All emphasis as per original. Quotes have been highlighted in colour for clarity - mined quotes from the Life article; correct context.

According to the Bulletin of Chicago: Charles Darwin "was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would.... the geologic record did not then and still does not yield a finely graduated chain of slow and progressive evolution." (Source: Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Chicago, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," by David M. Raup, January 1979, pages 22, 23, 25)

Raup on the importance of fossils to Darwin's theory

The quote in context in the original source reads:

The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would and, as a result, he devoted a long section of his Origin of Species to an attempt to explain and rationalize the differences. There were several problems, but the principal one was that the geologic record did not then and still does not yield a finely graduated chain of slow and progressive evolution. In other words, there are not enough intermediates. There are very few cases where one can find a gradual transition from one species to another and very few cases where one can look at a part of the fossil record and actually see that organisms were improving in the sense of becoming better adapted.

Thus Raup does not concede that there are no fossil transitions, as implied by Life, but that they are rare.

Scientist Steven Stanley spoke of "the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another." He went on further to say: "The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution.]" (Source: The New Evolutionary Timetable, by Steven M. Stanley, 1981, pages 71 and 77)

Evolutionist Steven Stanley on no gradual transitions in the fossil record

In an effort to advance its claim that the fossil record provides evidence against evolution, the Jehovah's Witnesses' publication Life--How did it get here? By evolution or by creation?, hereinafter referred to as Life, notes:

The failure of the fossil evidence to support gradual evolution has disturbed many evolutionists. In The New Evolutionary Timetable, Steven Stanley spoke of "the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another." (p. 21)

In fact Stanley is explaining Ernest Mayr's modern punctuational view of evolution. The quote in context in the original source reads:

The point here is that if the transition was typically rapid and the population small and localized, fossil evidence of the event would never be found. The other aspect of this argument is that the general failure of the record to display gradual transitions from one major group to another did not reflect a poor record for large, well-established species, but the slow evolution of such species: full-fledged species are not the entities that undergo the majority of major evolutionary changes.

Although Stanley does speak of inadequacies of the fossil record, he offers an explanation as well as noting its strong points. This is not mentioned by Life.

Life continues quoting Stanley:

He said: "The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution]."

Life substituted "slow evolution" for "gradualism" as it appeared originally, thereby changing the sentence to appear to be a criticism of all evolution.

Yet another scientist, Niles Eldredge, also admitted: "The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist." (Source: The Enterprise, November 14, 1980, page E9)

Eldredge on the pattern in the fossil record

To further support the claim that the fossil record does not support evolution, Life notes:

Niles Eldredge also admitted: "The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist." (p. 21)

This quote also comes from the Rensberger article. Despite the implication by Life, the article later explains that Eldredge (and Gould) did in fact see a pattern left in the fossil record:

As they see it, species remain largely stable for long periods and then suddenly change dramatically. The transition happens so fast, they suggest, that the chance of intermediate forms being fossilized and found is nil.

The full page can be found here.

To sum up: it is indeed perfectly laudable to quote your sources and provide proper references where available. However, when your sources are lying to you, or manipluating the truth to suit their own ends which is at least as bad as lying, then you ought to be asking yourself why they feel it necessary to do that. Especially when the lies are so easily exposed at the click of a mouse.

Are you so scared of the truth that you'd rather get false information from (at best) second-hand sources, instead of going directly to the actual source? What does that say about you?

-OVER-