(September 1, 2008 at 7:34 pm)Pete Wrote: 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.
