THE CHALLENGE OF THE FOSSIL RECORD
A Reply to Creationist Students
by
Steven Schafersman
1996The halls of the biology building at the university where I am a professor of geology were plastered with flyers bearing the provocative titles, "Macroevolution . . . Philosophy or Science?" and "The Case Against Neo-Darwinism . . . Examine the Facts for Yourself," and knowing my interest, a zoology professor kindly gave two of them to me. The sheets advertised a website [which is no longer active, presumably because the writer is no longer a student at the university] titled "Evolution Reexamined: A Survey of the Scientific Case Against Darwinism" and written by Josh Anderson. The website requested that comments be sent to Josh Anderson or another student, and so after quickly reading their website, I obliged with the following email message sent to Mr. Anderson:
Your creationist website is filled with all the classic methods used by creationists: quotes out of context, misleading quotes, irrelevant quotes, out-of-date quotes, quotes of creationist pseudoscientists posing as scientists, quotes of legitimate scientists used misleadingly to support contentions they did not intend and that are not true, quotes by "authorities" (such as Phillip Johnson) who are not scientific authorities but rather creationist apologists and polemicists, deliberate misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the evidence for evolution, willful misrepresentation of the theory of evolution, willful ignorance of evidence and decisive counter-arguments of your positions, deliberate ignorance of all the evidence and anti-creationist arguments presented in dozens of books by evolutionary scientists in recent years, illogical arguments, specious reasoning, half-truths and untruths presented as truths, sophistry posing as scholarship, and pseudoscience posing as science. You should be ashamed of yourselves.Steven Schafersman
I soon received the following email reply, alternately impudent and courteous by turn, from Mr. Anderson:
Thanks for your response. I'm just about to leave for spring break so at the moment I don't have time to respond to your claims. However, for the moment allow me to say that to the best of my knowledge I did not misrepresent any of my sources. I can't think of any quotes that are taken out of context. The vast majority of them are self-contained statements that express concise ideas. When Steven Stanely said he didn't see any major phyletic transitions in the fossil record, that is what he meant. When molecular biologist Michael Denton said that the molecular data contradicts the theory that's what he meant. When Gould said that the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record was the trade secret of paleontology I don't think he was joking. When Crick and Hoyle say that prebotic evolution seems mathematically and conceptually very problematic I think they were expressing a concise, straight-forward truth. I could go on and on and on. The point is, you'll have to be much more specific if you accusations are to hold any water. Please examine the ideas themselves and don't dismiss them because you believe they come from unworthy sources like Phillip Johnson. If you can criticise the statements and propositions in the paper themselves then we can talk. Until then realize that I am aware of the arguments that are used by evolutionists to support macro-evolution. Ultimately I believe they are empty. If you think I have used illogical arguments or half-truths tell me, in the name of truth, where? Friend, I respect you position but so far you have only been making bold statements without any real backing or counter-arguments.After break I would be more than happy to go dialogue with you about any of these issues. If you think I would help I would be more than willing to get together with you. I stand behind my research. In a sense you have payed me a very large but misguided compliment. If you think that I have the rhetorical power to manipulate hundreds of quotes and sources to say something that they do not in fact say then you have greatly over-estimated my capacities.
Again thank you for the response. No one could write so passionately unless they were concerned for the truth. That commands my respect. If you haven't done so read the entire paper and think things through again. I hope to hear from you after break.
Josh Anderson
I expected such an answer: creationists really desire to be taken seriously by others--in the same way they see themselves! They are always asking scientists to respond to their criticisms of evolution, and when scientists do so, creationists bring up more off-the-wall arguments, and so it never ends. Entering into a dialogue with creationists is like stepping into a black hole where logic and evidence have meanings different than in the natural world of objective reality that we live in, and no ultimate agreement is possible. It is disingenuous for Mr. Anderson to want me to respond specifically to his creationist arguments, as if there was actually a controversy within science about the fact of evolution. He challenges me to be "specific" and "criticise the statements and propositions in the paper themselves then we can talk," as if I don't have anything better to do with my time. While such a request seems fair, in fact any effort of mine to do this would be useless in argument with Mr. Anderson, since his reasons for accepting creationism and disbelieving evolution have nothing to do with "statements" and "propositions," that is, with evidence and logical arguments, because the scientific evidence and logical arguments for evolution are well-known and equally well-documented in scientific journals and books, and they haven't convinced him yet. What more does he think I can do?
Creationists like to get into public arguments with scientists because, when they do, it appears to the scientifically-untrained public that a genuine controversy exists within science about the truth of evolution, when actually that is not the case. This is the reason creationists are always seeking to debate scientists about evolution; no matter what the scientist says and how strong are his or her arguments against the creationist, the scientist will lose a debate because debating a creationist makes it appear to an audience that there must be a legitimate controversy concerning evolution and creationism, for the scientist was willing to publically debate a creationist over the issue. Just convincing an audience of the appearance of a scientific controversy is a victory for the creationist, even though it is a lie, and the scientist gives that to the creationist just by showing up. I have been active in opposing pseudoscience in the United States for over twenty years, and I have frequently advised scientists to not debate creationists in most circumstances.
The truth is that the existence in nature of evolution, natural selection, microevolution, and macroevolution have been well-established by scientists for over 100 years, there is no legitimate scientific objection to them, and no reason to debate or "dialogue" about them. Scientific issues are not decided that way, anyway, especially when they have been non-issues for over a century! Evolution is a fact, as factual as the existence of gravity and drifting continents, and its factualness has been a noncontroversial subject of instruction at all major universities in the world since the 1870's. In the United States, only Bible colleges teach that evolution is not true. The genuine scientific controversy about evolution--and its opposition by creationism--was the battle fought over a century and a half ago, and creationism lost then. As Thomas Henry Huxley said in the previous century about this battle, "We can't go on taking the time to slay dragons that are already dead." There are, of course, still problems, uncertainties, and mysteries about the mechanism of the evolutionary process, and these are objects of genuine investigation and controversy among evolutionary scientists today, but no legitimate scientist today questions the facts of evolution and natural selection, no matter how hard creationists try by the use of selective quotes to make it appear that they do.
Although I am under no illusion that my efforts below will convince Mr. Anderson of the error of his creationist arguments and beliefs, I nevertheless am going to ignore my own advice and write replies after each paragraph copied directly from the website created by Mr. Anderson (his website, no longer available, contained citations to his references). My remarks will be in blue text. I am undertaking this for the education and caution of college and university students who are not trained in science and who have not already been indoctrinated by creationist polemics and sophistry, and who may thus fall prey to the superficial and specious arguments that Mr. Anderson uses in his website. I am both a scientist and a public opponent of pseudoscience, so I take a personal as well as professional interest in seeing that correct science is taught to students and other educated citizens. Furthermore, unlike most scientists, I am knowledgeable about creationist arguments; in fact, I have seen Mr. Anderson's specific arguments many times before. His arguments have been examined and refuted in books and essays written by a number of legitimate scientists, including myself, but these may not be readily available to the average person, so I am going to repeat some of those analyses here.
Another major problem that scientists have to deal with when answering creationist arguments is the sheer density of untruths, half-truths, illogical arguments, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, etc. that are found in most creationist literature. It quickly becomes an enormous effort on the part of the scientist to cogently refute creationist arguments--which is why most scientists just ignore the stuff, despite the fact that the material angers them, especially when they think of how it confuses and misleads students and other individuals who have a real curiosity about the workings of nature. In most cases, not only must a scientist respond to every factual and logical error, but one often finds oneself obliged to explain scientific data, hypotheses, theories, methods, philosophy, and history to adequately impart an understanding of why the creationist is wrong. In short, often the only way to refute a creationist is to give the listener or reader a basic science education: the science education that that person should have already received during his or her primary and secondary education--but usually did not. And this is an enormous effort on the part of the scientist writing the reply: notoriously, it is usually necessary to write much more than the creationist to correct his or her errors, confusions, misrepresentations, and illogical arguments. This is why (sigh) almost all scientists ignore creationist propaganda, to the detriment of the non-scientifically-trained public who read this stuff and fall prey to its superficially convincing arguments.
I am a professional paleontologist who specializes in problems concerning the process of evolution in the fossil record, so to make my task easier I am only going to respond to two of Josh Anderson's sections, "The Challenge of the Fossil Record" and "Punctuated Equilibrium," because I know these topics quite well and can respond to them easily without having to look up his citations or consult references of my own. But I assert that the other sections of his website are equally as bad as these two, and I could write similar responses to these if I wanted to take the time. I will provide some general scientific references at the end of my remarks (these would be a few of the ones that I claimed--in my original email response to Mr. Anderson--that he ignored in his attack on evolution) as well as the addresses of some good websites that discuss and refute creationist claims. My own email address is at the bottom of this page. As a geology and biology educator, I would be happy to answer any email message from any student about this topic (as I would about any geological or paleontological topic, and I might add that I get questions from individuals from all over the world who have seen one of my geological and paleontological websites, and I try to answer them all). Anything you send me, however, may be added to this website along with my response, so be nice!
Excerpted from Evolution Reexamined: A Survey of the Scientific Case Against Darwinism
by Josh Anderson:The Challenge of the Fossil Record
Anyone who has sat through a biology course in the last century has learned that the fossil record is the firm foundation upon which the edifice of Darwinism stands, an inexhaustible source of undeniable evidence for the truth of the theory. However, when we get past textbook rhetoric it becomes clear that things are not quite that simple. In fact, from the perspective of the evolutionist, the hard data provided by the fossils is one of the most unsettling and vexing dimensions of the theory. From the beginning Darwin's fiercest opponents have not been philosophers and clergymen but fossil experts. (72)
The fossil record is NOT the firm foundation upon which the "edifice of Darwinism" stands. Darwin himself recognized this, as his chapter (in the 1859 Origin of Species) on the fossil record clearly shows. He used that chapter to essentially explain away the fact that the fossil record did NOT show gradual transitions between species, because of (1) the incompleteness and thus poor record of fossilization, (2) the incompleteness of the stratigraphic record caused by gaps in deposition and periods of erosion, and (3) the speed of speciation compared to the slow accumulation of sediments. Darwin himself used comparative anatomy, embryology, plant and animal breeding, vestigial organs, odd and poor adaptations, biogeography, variation within populations, the presence of a taxonomic hierarchy (groups within groups of taxa), etc. to demonstrate the occurrence evolution--evidence that was so well accepted by the scientific community as sufficient proof of evolution that it came to be regarded as a fact by 1870--and has been ever since. Today we can add a fourth reason--our modern understanding of the process of speciation by geographic isolation of subpopulations of a species--to the reasons why transitional fossils between species are rare.
Despite the fact that transitional fossils were known in Darwin's day (such as Archaeopteryx, the link between dinosaurs and birds), these existed at higher taxonomic levels than species, so we had transitional fossils between families, orders, classes, etc. It has only been within the last two or three decades that intensive analysis of complete and continuous sedimentary records has demonstrated the gradual and punctuated speciation revealed by completely continuous records of transitional fossils between different species. Most of these records are of fossil microplankton, since they accumulate in the excellent strata of tropical marine oozes, but some are of land organisms, mostly mammals, and some of marine macroinvertebrates. The result is that modern textbooks CAN use the fossil record as evidence for evolution. Although Darwin demonstrated the fact of evolution, his proposed theory to explain it--natural selection--was not widely adopted until about 1940. The fossil record has been and still is consistent with a number of theories of evolution (there are more than one). The mechanism of evolution cannot be understood solely from the fossil record or from any single piece of evidence.
The statement that Darwin's fiercest opponents were fossil experts (such as Louis Agassiz) is wrong: Darwin basically ignored them. His fiercest opponents were zoologists, and let's be clear: they were opponents of his theory of evolution (natural selection), NOT the fact of evolution. Most of them proposed their own theories of evolution--ones not relying on natural selection, which until the 1930s was considered inadequate as a means of generating new species. After 1870, the most prominent critics of the process of evolution were clergymen and other religionists; the last opponent of evolution who was also a legitimate scientist died in 1901 (this history is very well known). It is common for creationists to confuse the terms "Darwinism" and "evolution." Josh Anderson does this repeatedly throughout his website. These are two different things. Darwinism is more properly called neo-darwinism or the synthetic theory of evolution--it is the most popular evolutionary theory today, held by most but not all biologists and paleontologists. This theory EXPLAINS evolution. Evolution is a natural process that is usually defined as change in the genotype of a population through time. Evolution is an observable and testable fact whose predictions have been repeatedly corroborated.
There are a number of types of evolution, the most important of which is speciation--the generation of new species during evolution. Evolution within a species is termed microevolution: its climatic result is a new species; microevolution often results in speciation, but not always. Evolution within higher taxa is termed macroevolution; its climatic result is the generation of new genera, families, orders, etc. A major controversy among evolutionary scientists today is the degree to which microevolution and macroevolution are linked. The classical synthetic theory states that macroevolution results by the effects over time of microevolution. New evolutionary theories, such as species selection, state that macroevolution results from more than microevolution. (I will discuss the details of this and other legitimate evolutionary controversies later in my remarks.) It is important to note that microevolution, and its ultimate outcome--speciation, have been directly observed in both nature and the laboratory. Macroevolution, however, occurs too slowly to observe on human time scales, so it must be studied like other historical sciences (geology, cosmology, astronomy, etc.) with secondary observation and inference, without the benefit of contemporaneous observation and experiment. This difference in scientific methodology has led to confusion among nonscientists--especially creationists!--about the factual standing of macroevolution, but let's not confuse this with controversies among scientists about the connection between micro- and macroevolution. The former is a mistake resulting from ignorance, the latter is legitimate.
Darwin himself was well aware of the state of affairs. He knew that his theory required that "the number of intermediate and transitional links between all living and extinct species must have been inconceivably great."(73) At the same time, he was very forward about the facts: "As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them imbedded in the crust of the earth? Why is all nature not in confusion instead of being as we see them, well defined species? Geological research does not yield the infinitely many gradations between past and present species required by my theory."(74) This, according to Darwin, was "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be raised against my theory."(75)
Darwin noted that "all the most eminent paleontologists...all our greatest geologists... have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability of species."(76) He later writes: "I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor a record of the mutations of life, the best preserved geological section presented, had not the difficulty of our not discovering innumerable transitional links between species which appeared at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory."(77)
These quotations from Darwin's Origin of Species are correct and well-known among paleontologists. As I discussed above, Darwin and his successors did not use the fossil record as evidence for evolution or any specific theory of evolution until the 20th century, because the "innumerable transitional forms" between species were not found as fossils in his day. But Darwin's argumentative style was to state anticipated objections to his theory, only to refute them in his next paragraph. Creationists like Josh Anderson love to quote Darwin's self-criticism--the objections--but always artfully omit Darwin's refutation of that same criticism. The classic case of this involves Darwin's discussion of the evolution of the eye: Darwin acknowledges that critics will say that intermediate steps can be of no use to an organism, but then Darwin explains in detail how the intermediate steps ARE useful and also gives examples of all those found in nature. Creationists always leave out the second part in their tracts: Darwin's refutation of his own rhetorically-presented objections! In the present instance, Mr. Anderson omits Darwin's own explanation for the lack of transitional fossils: poor fossil preservation, gaps in the stratigraphic record, and the rapidity of speciation in comparison to the slowness of sediment accumulation--reasons that are still valid today.
These three reasons are the main explanation of why transitional fossils are rare. In addition, as I stated above, we now understand the speciation process better, and most species form allopatrically, that is, by the geographic isolation of a subpopulation--a peripheral isolate--from the main species population, and this type of speciation automatically creates circumstances that make it extremely unlikely for all the transitional forms between separate species to be preserved as fossils. Typically what happens is that the descendent species re-enters the range of its ancestor, and it appears in the fossil record suddenly without the transitional forms, which must then be inferred.
If Darwin's theory is true the fossil record should consist almost entirely of transitional forms with modern animals themselves snapshots on a continuum of perpetual change. One or two possible candidates will not suffice. The theory inarguably calls for "innumerable" intermediates, an "infinitude of connecting links." However, although over 140 years of extensive exploration and research has yielded what George Neville called an "unmanageably rich fossil record" no clear transitional forms are found. To say that convincing evidence that these forms once existed is conspicuously absent is something of an understatement. As Darwin put it: "Nature may almost be said to have guarded against the frequent discovery of her transitional or linking forms."(78)
The first sentence is the above paragraph is a creationist misrepresentation. Speciation occurs rapidly on a geologic time scale, while species usually persist after they form; after all, they adapted to a new environment, and stabilizing selection will preserve them in their original form as long as the environment remains constant (speciation is usually driven by environmental change). This means that the pattern we should expect to find in the fossil record is species stability through time (stasis) with gaps during the speciation events in most cases. Niles Eldredge and Steven Jay Gould called this pattern "punctuated equilibrium," as if this natural process needed a name, but they soon gave this name to their own hypothesis of how evolution works (more on this later). Think about it: if one really expected to see "innumerable intermediates" and an "infinitude of connecting links," this would mean that both the stratigraphic and fossil records would be perfect, allowing complete fossilization of all stages of all subpopulations' change, preserving them perfectly in a complete and continuous sedimentary record, during all speciation events of the billions of species that existed on Earth. This is patent nonsense, and it would be irrational to expect to see such a thing. Darwin, of course, was using a common literary device in his writing, that of rhetorical hyperbole, i.e., deliberate overstatement, meant to put the opposing argument in its strongest form.
And yet we do have many transitional fossils, thousands of them in fact. These are well known to paleontologists, have been extensively investigated, and are widely discussed in the paleontological literature. Mr. Anderson's statement that "no clear transitional forms are found" is blatantly untrue. Because of the "140 years of extensive exploration and research" he disparages, paleontologists have identified thousands of transitional fossil species. These have been recognized by inference and hypothesis during stratophenetic analyses (studies of stratigraphy and morphology) and cladistic analyses (studies of primitive and shared derived characters) of fossils. (In the case of a cladistic or phylogenetic analysis, taxa are usually said to share common ancestors rather than be transitional, because to infer ancestral-descendant relationships adds an unnecessary extra hypothesis to most studies.) For good and easily accessible discussions of the facts about the existence of transitional fossils, simply go to the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ by Kathleen Hunt on the Talk.Origins Archive website and to the discussion of Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record by Keith Miller on the American Scientific Affiliation website (the ASA is an organization of Christian scientists who are interested in the study of natural origins, so young creationists can visit this site with confidence!). Another site with transitional fossil examples and references, including the classic land mammal to whale transition, originally predicted by Darwin in the Origin of Species on the basis of anatomical similarities between the two groups, is here. Checking these sites on the Web will save the interested reader from the necessity of actually visiting a library and locating a book about paleontology or evolution.
As I mentioned earlier, most transitional fossils are transitional between genera, families, orders, classes, phyla, i.e. between taxa higher than species. But some fossils transitional between species are known from sedimentary records that are so complete and continuous that this level of detail is possible. Most frequently this is the record of tropical pelagic sediments during the Cenozoic in the oceans, so studies of fossil microplankton (planktonic foraminifera, radiolarians, diatoms, coccolithophores, etc.) have yielded fantastically preserved and complete fossil records revealing the details of phyletic transitions between species. As I said, both gradual anagenetic and punctuated cladogenetic change are observed during speciation among these protist lineages. These studies have taken place only in the last two decades (they require that cores from the sea floor be taken by deep-sea drilling), so many non-paleontologists are unaware of them. Certainly Darwin and his contemporaries could only imagine that we would see these "innumerable intermediates" with an "infinitude of connecting links," but now we can! The most recent paleontology and micropaleontology textbooks discuss these. In addition, detailed studies of the best continental stratigraphic records had yielded transitional mammal fossils between species. Finally, an enormous amount of effort has been devoted to discovering and studying the hominid fossil record in east Africa, so we now possess an excellent record of all the species leading up to our own, along with many of the intermediate stages (see theTalk.Origins FAQ on Fossil Hominids).
For many years proponents of the theory of evolution have argued that the imperfection of the fossil record or an insufficient search on our part explains the otherwise perplexing lack of transitional forms. However, in light of what we now know, this reasoning can no longer be considered valid. In fact, this position becomes increasingly weaker with each passing day as large tracts the fossil record from around the globe are closely examined and our knowledge of the history of life grows.
Transitional fossils were present in the fossil record known in Darwin's day, they just weren't recognized as such. The reason for this is because scientists explain nature by using theory--without a theory of evolution to explain the transitional fossils, they were not recognized and identified. Soon after the Origin of Species was published, however, paleontologists began to publish descriptions of such fossil transitions. A famous example is Archaeopteryx, suspected on and off of being the transitional link between dinosaurs and birds. This claim was first made by Thomas Henry Huxley in the middle 1860's, soon after the first Archaeopteryx specimen was discovered, and only a few years after the publication of the Origin. The "imperfection of the fossil record" is the excuse paleontologists still use for why we don't have millions of transitional fossils between hundreds of millions of extinct species, but we don't use this excuse for a lack of ANY transitional fossils--because we have so many of them, no excuse is necessary!
One of the means by which we can ascertain the quality of the fossil record is to look at the degree to which living species have been preserved and discovered as fossils. According to studies made by paleontologists these figures are quite high. For example, the number of living orders of terrestrial vertebrates found as fossils is approximately 97.7%. (79) The number of living families of terrestrial vertebrates found is roughly 87.8%. (80)? According to G. G. Simpson, without question one of the most prominent Darwinists of our century, the record with respect to extant species is almost complete in certain regions. (81) This information reveals a great deal about the nature of the fossil record as a whole, for we have every reason to believe that its formation was very similar in the past.
Now the real fun begins! Mr. Anderson is using the bait-and-switch tactic beloved by creationists to mislead their readers and win arguments. He wants to demonstrate the degree to which "living species" are preserved as fossils, so that we paleontologists can't claim that conditions in the past were so different that we have a good reason to explain why we can't find sufficient fossils to show evolutionary transitions. But what is his evidence? Percentages of "living orders" and "living families" of "terrestrial vertebrates" preserved as fossils! First, orders and families are not the same thing as species; second, many of these higher taxa are represented as fossils by a single species of a living form, so this hardly constitutes almost perfect preservation; third, the fossil record of terrestrial vertebrates is far, far better known than most fossil records; fourth, the fossil percentages listed are for the Quaternary, the geological period just before the present, and such percentages decrease enormously as one goes back in time, because more ancient rocks--and their fossils--are far less common due to erosion, burial, and breaks in the record.
And what are we supposed to think about George Gaylord Simpson, the most important evolutionary paleontologist of this century (and my personal scientific hero!), when he says that the fossil record of extant species "is almost complete in some regions"? This is such nonsense that I actually took the time to look up Josh Anderson's reference: Table 8 in Simpson's 1953 book The Major Features of Evolution. Unfortunately for Mr. Anderson, this table, on page 34, shows the estimated rates of evolution of different horse genera through the Cenozoic, and has nothing to do with the topic he claims. This, and the fact that both Simpson and Romer (references 79 and 80) discuss transitional fossils in some detail, makes me wonder if Josh took the time to check his references, or whether he just took this paragraph's arguments from some creationist source verbatim. If he did, he should cite the creationist reference, not the scientific ones--then it, and not he, would be guilty of incompetence or duplicity. Mr. Anderson's implication that the record of fossil species almost mirrors the quality of the record of living species is so far from true, that such a claim can only be described as laughable.
With regard to the fossil record, the orthodox theory of evolution is guilty of relying on an argument to the future, that is to say, appealing to evidence not yet discovered. More than this, hostile evidence is simply ignored. Even if we give the theory of organic evolution every benefit of the doubt, an imperfect fossil record could never account for what we see and more importantly what we fail to see. Gould has stated that "the failure to find a clear 'vector of progress' in life's history is the most puzzling fact of the fossil record." This may be a considerable understatement. In terms of empirical support, Paleontologist Francois Jules Picet writes that the theory is "inconsistent with the observed facts."(82) He wisely asks:
Why don't we find these gradations in the fossil record, and why instead of collecting thousands of identical individuals, do we not find more intermediary forms?(83)To look at the wealth of fossils we have found throughout these many years of careful searching is to see great redundancy, many thousands upon thousands of examples of the same specimens and a complete absence of transitional forms between major biological divisions. Moreover, according to Denton, the "fundamental problem in explaining the gaps in terms of an insufficient search or in terms of the imperfection of the record is their systematic character."(84) If macroevolution were a sound concept we should expect to see incomparably more intermediate forms between the major divisions of life than between minor divisions. No one will argue with this. However, what we do in fact find is precisely the opposite.
The failure to find a "clear vector of progress" is only an impediment if one equates progress with evolution, and evolutionary scientists do not do this (since the turn of the century, anyway). Gould knows this and has said so many times; his recent book Full House is about the very fact of the non-directionality of evolution in the history of life. His quote above was a rhetorical prelude to just this claim. The expectation of progress and directionality in evolution is a popularly-held myth. There is no decisive, uncontroversial definition of progress in nature, not even an increase in the complexity of the nervous system. Furthermore, the theory of evolution is not inconsistent with the known facts of the fossil record; it is, rather, just the opposite: very consistent. G. G. Simpson became famous as one of the architects of the synthetic theory by demonstrating precisely this in his voluminous writings: natural selection, population biology, genetics, etc., used within a neo-darwinian theory, was quite sufficient to explain the facts of the fossil record as they were known. Almost all paleontologists and biologists would continue to claim this.
Picet's quote was answered by me in a previous discussion: the fossil record is not good enough to see all the gradations, and most species exhibit stasis after they appear because they are adapted to a persistent, stable environment. And let's again be clear: the infrequency of gradational forms is between species--we have thousands of transitional forms between higher taxa. Josh's statement above--questioning the "complete absence of transitional forms between major biological divisions"--is disingenuous: the evolutionary transitions between animal phyla--which I take to be his "major biological divisions"--took place at a time when hard body parts, made of calcite or silica, had not yet evolved, so actual fossilization of these transitional forms would be quite unlikely. After the appearance of organic calcareous and siliceous skeletal elements, the fossil record became very rich, and transitional taxa were discovered--but before this time the major phyla had already differentiated, so they appear separately in the fossil record, without intermediates, over a geologically-short time period of about ten million years at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, the so-called Cambrian Explosion. (The appearance of almost all phyla during this geologically brief time period is commonly claimed by creationists to be "sudden" or "instantaneous," although it occurred over many millions of years, leading many of them to look at this as the moment of creation, surely one of the greatest examples of confusion, misunderstanding, and misattribution in "scientific" creationism.)
Here Mr. Anderson forgets himself and claims that, if macroevolution were true, "we should expect to see incomparably more intermediate forms between the major divisons of life than between minor divisions," but "what we do in fact find is precisely the opposite." So, Josh, are you now admitting that we at least find intermediate forms between the minor divisions of life?
While there does seem to be evidence in the fossil record to support relatively minor diversification, there are enormous chasms, unbridgeable gulfs between the major divisions of the biological world. Once again relatively trivial differences between animals like rats and mice or wolves and dogs, phenomena explicable in terms of microevolutionary diversification, find support while macroevolutionary change is not borne out by the hard evidence. The fossil record is more than adequate to demonstrate this fact beyond a reasonable doubt. To be sure, a record of far poorer quality would allow us to draw similar conclusions. As one British writer notes:
If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little...then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expect to fill when rock strata of the proper age have been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. (85)Rats and mice are different genera, so their differentiation would have to be due to macroevolution. All dogs are one species and are descended from one species of wolf, so that is indeed microevolution. As I stated above, there is an enormous amount of "hard evidence" for macroevolution; if you want to learn what it is, obtain and read an evolution textbook. There are some very good modern ones available written by some of our most eminent scientists. But maybe Josh did read them, and just didn't believe them. But if he didn't believe them, then why would he believe me? Josh prefers to believe a creationist writer to a British newspaper--surely no scientist--who flatly claims that transitional fossils have never been found. As I explained, this claim is false.
David Raup, curator of the famous Field Museum of Natural History which contains 20% of all of the fossil species known, writes the following in an article entitled, "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology:"
...most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument made in favor of Darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true.Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded...ironically we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information. (86)
David Raup has not been a curator at the Field Museum for many years. He is a professor at the University of Chicago, which has perhaps the finest group of evolutionary paleontologists in the country. The first quote above is true, as I maintained earlier. His second quoted excerpt is not true when read literally: we actually know many more evolutionary transitions from the fossil record today than we did in Darwin's time. True, some of the classic cases--such as the evolution of the horse--have had to be revised from the nineteenth century, but this is irrelevant: we revise the details every generation as we learn more from our research in the fossil record. We still believe today that horses evolved, just as we did in the nineteenth century, but the details of the pattern are different today. Dave Raup believes in evolution, as do all scientists. His seemingly weird statement about evolutionary transitions is due to its being taken out of context by Josh Anderson. Dave is not a strict neo-darwinist: he doesn't believe that microevolution explains all or even most of macroevolution, and he doesn't believe that natural selection is necessarily the most important cause of macroevolution. Actually, his (and my) friends Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge share these idiosyncratic beliefs. All three of these paleontologists, however, have been quite explicit in criticizing creationists for mining their writings and extracting quotes out of context to make it seem that they are making statements against evolution, rather than statements against the modern synthetic theory (neo-darwinism, advocating selectionism as the primary cause of adaptation and evolution, a position held, for instance, by the equally prominent evolutionary scientists Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, Francisco Ayala, Douglas Futuyma, and Mark Ridley).
If evolution had occurred we should fully expect to see organisms of an unmistakably transitional character in both the fossil record and among the extant species of the earth. As it turns out we find them in neither. Even the rare species that exhibit a taxonomically unconventional or curious combination of attributes (like the lungfish or the platypus) are by no means intermediate in an evolutionary sense. Taken individually all of their systems and organs are fully formed, correspond to a specific taxonomic division, and are in no way transitional.
As I have shown in detail, the second sentence in this paragraph is false. (I should mention that we also have many good examples of transitional forms among the extant species on Earth.) I agree that the lungfish and platypus are not transitional or intermediate in an evolutionary sense: they are rare living representatives of almost totally extinct ancient taxa, more properly called "living fossils." This is an example of a "red herring" argument by Mr. Anderson.
According to Denton:
Even if a number of species were known to biology which were indeed perfectly intermediate, possessing organ systems that were unambiguously transitional in the sense require by evolution, this would certainly not be sufficient to validate the evolutionary model of nature. To refute typology and securely validate evolutionary claims would necessitate hundreds or even thousands of different species, all unambiguously intermediate in terms of over-all biology and in the physiology and anatomy of their organ systems.But surely no purely random process of extinction would have eliminated all ancestral and transitional forms, all evidence of the trunk and branches of the supposed tree... (87)
Michael Denton is a notorious anti-evolutionist whose ignorant and sophistic book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, stands as one of our generation's monuments to pseudoscience. His arguments above are specious: of course we would need more than intermediate forms to validate an evolutionary model--we have lots more, he just neglects to mention them; of course we would need hundreds or thousands of intermediate species to validate evolutionary claims--we had them, but almost all are extinct, with only the termini of the lineages living today; of course no purely random process of extinction would have eliminated all ancestral and transitional forms--the process was not random at all, but deterministic and probabilistic, the result of natural selection. It is easy for me, a trained and experienced evolutionary scientist, to see through these shoddy arguments, but the vast majority of individuals who might read Denton's book would be easily fooled. I assume this is Mr. Anderson's excuse for using quotes from Michael Denton.
In the last analysis, nature seems to be radically discontinuous in both an empirical and a conceptual sense. Since evolution is essentially an untestable hypothesis based on "historical reconstruction," we must either point to a sequence of convincing intermediates or at least be able to show hypothetically how such a process could have occurred. As it is, we can do neither of these in a way that is, by any stretch of the imagination, satisfactory. In terms of the fossil record, as we have seen, the evidence demanded by macroevolution simply does not exist. Steven Stanley, Paleontologist at Johns Hopkins University writes:
The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid. (88)Evolution is not an "untestable hypothesis based on 'historical reconstruction.'" Evolution is eminently testable by experiment, model, and observation. Evolution, speciation, natural selection, and extinction are occurring in nature today, they can be observed, and they have been documented in literally thousands of studies. True, historical evolutionary events--such as macroevolution or ancient events and processes studied by paleontologists--can only be observed retrospectively and modeled by historical reconstructions, but that doesn't mean that hypotheses and theories explaining them cannot be tested. Of course they can. Steve Stanley's statement is partly true and partly false: we do not have an example of *phyletic* (i.e. gradual) evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition, although we have plenty of examples of *cladogenetic* (i.e. punctuated) evolution doing so, and since we have examples of phyletic evolution accomplishing *minor* morphologic transitions, it is not strictly correct to say that the fossil record "offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid." Steve is an advocate of species selection, a controversial hypothesis that predicts that all evolutionary change will take place by cladogenetic speciation events. Not many evolutionary scientists believe this, and *in context*, Steve's quote above was an over-generalization by him to help support his hypothesis.
In their book, Paleobiology, Gould and Eldredge maintain the following:
At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, although it remains the "official" position of most western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record. (89)In his book The Panda's Thumb, Steven Jay Gould comments on both the fossil evidence and the conceptual difficulties. He offers his assessment of the situation in the following statements:
The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches. The rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. (90)...can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms - that is, viable, functioning organisms - between ancestors and descendants in major structural transitions? I submit, although it may only reflect my lack of imagination, that the answer is no. (91)
Steve Gould's voluminous writings are a gold mine for creationists to pick out juicy quotes that seem to support their creationist doctrine. But Steve has publically and emphatically criticized creationists for doing exactly what I claim Josh Anderson does: use quotes out of context to mislead and confuse their readers. Steve is the planet's most public opponent of strict neo-darwinism: the idea that natural selection is the primary force behind evolution, that its actions are the primary cause of microevolution, and that macroevolution is simply microevolution telescoped over geologic time. For that reason, it is easy to find sentences written by Gould that criticize this or that aspect of the synthetic theory of evolution--but Gould is a strong supporter of most aspects of evolutionary theory, and he has frequently stated that evolution is a fact. In the first quote above, he says just what Steve Stanley said: there is no evidence of gradualism between basic morphological designs (Baupläne). While this statement is undoubtedly true, but I hope the reader now understands that this is not the same as saying that no evolution occurred between these basic morphological designs--of course it did.
Most of the examples of gradualism we have in the fossil record are between species and genera, not between basic morphological designs, which are higher on the taxonomic hierarchy. The second passage is not always true--it depends on the level of the tree in an evolutionary hierarchy. The evolutionary trees in textbooks are usually at high taxonomic levels, and here, in the context he was using, Steve's statement is true. But trees of individual species plotted on smaller time and morphologic scales could show enough detail that the points between nodes and tips could have fossil evidence. The third passage is true: we humans cannot invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms in major structural transitions, because natural selection does not work by reason: it works as an undirected, deterministic, mechanistic process acting on both the inherited and random variation of a species population and driven by the totally independent and often random changes in the environment. Again, nothing in this quote suggests that evolution is untrue; Mr. Anderson only wants you to think it does, which is why he selectively quoted it.
Even the most die-hard Darwinists are aware of the difficulties. In the biological equivalent of the Big Bang, the "Cambrian explosion," virtually all of the animal phyla appear suddenly and, as Richard Dawkins, perhaps evolution's fiercest modern advocate admits, "It is as though they were just planted there without any evolutionary history."(92) If this is true and, as paleontologist Steven Stanley asserts, "The fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another"(93) why has Darwinism continued to flourish?
As I explained above, the Cambrian Explosion is no evidence against evolution: the diversification of phyla took place in the Precambrian before hard body parts had evolved, so preservation was unlikely. I note that a few weeks ago--in early February, 1998--the discovery of the first evidence of the phosphatized embryos of a number of different phyla in very late Precambrian rocks was announced, justifying the predictions of all paleontologists that the early forms were there, and we might someday discover their fossils (sometimes soft-bodied organisms are fossilized by a variety of methods, in this case phosphatization). Stanley's quote is very misleading unless one understands the context: he means *gradual* transition, since he believes in and advocates cladogenetic transitions, and he uses the weasel-word "convincingly"--what would it take to convince him?--since others have demonstrated just such gradual transitions from one species to another in the fossil record, usually, as I said, among marine planktonic microfossils.
Philip Johnson comments on the "fossil test" of evolution and sheds light on the issue:
The test would not be fair to the skeptics, however, unless it was also possible for the theory to fail. Imagine, for example, that the belief in Darwin's theory were to sweep through the scientific world with such irresistible power that it very quickly became an orthodoxy. Suppose that the tide was so irresistible that even the most prestigious of scientists - Harvard's Louis Agassiz, for example - became an instant has-been for failing to join the movement. Suppose that paleontologists became so committed to the new way of thinking that fossil studies were published only if they supported the theory, and were discarded as failures if they showed an absence of evolutionary change. As we shall see, that is what happened. Darwinism apparently passed the fossil test, but only because it was not allowed to fail.Paleontologists seem to have thought that it was their duty to protect the rest of us from the erroneous conclusions that we might have drawn if we had known the actual state of the evidence. (94)
Phillip Johnson, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, has by now achieved a prominent place in the pantheon of pseudoscience by his unending attacks on naturalism, materialism, and evolution. His pro-creationism, anti-evolution, books have been ripped to shreds in reviews by legitimate scientists, but he remains optimistic that the end of evolution is just around the corner, and he has inspired the modern school of intelligent design creationists who have adopted him as their mentor (a big mistake in my opinion!). Professor Johnson's books indulge in all the many types of specious, illogical creationist arguments, and it is obvious--despite his own and his many supporters claims to the contrary--that he doesn't really understand science and the natural evidence that underlies scientific explanations (or he understands it but doesn't believe it, which is worse). His quotes above are deliberately misleading, since he assumes the possibility that the fossil record could reveal evidence that casts doubt on evolution, when scientists have already demonstrated the fact of evolution. Note too that Johnson willfully and repeatedly conflates "Darwinism" and "evolution" and the "fact" and "theory" of evolution. It is very important not to confuse these terms. According to a number of eminent paleontologists (Gould, Eldredge, Stanley, Raup), for example, the fossil record does indeed cast doubt on orthodox neo-darwinism, but not on the fact of evolution. Other scientists can accept this possibility, even if they don't believe it (most don't!), because our theory of evolution is subject to revision as new evidence is discovered or new inferences are made. As I have stated above, the fossil record today strongly supports the fact of evolution, and most but not all paleontologists would say it is consistent with the neo-darwinian synthetic theory of evolution. But Johnson constantly confuses these necessary distinctions in his deliberate effort to defend his thesis by misleading his readers. Again, a trained and experienced evolutionary scientist who is familiar with creationist arguments--like myself--can see through these sophistic efforts, but most individuals cannot.
For generations evolution, especially its popular presentation in textbooks, has borrowed support from a sparse stock of highly debatable when not entirely erroneous "facts." For example, since the early days of Darwinism students and scientists alike have been impressed by Archaeopteryx, an ancient bird with certain features that resemble those found in reptiles. The question, however, becomes whether an entire scientific theory of the magnitude and scope of evolution can be built around a handful of hotly debated remains. If we were to give Archaeopteryx the benefit of the doubt we would see one lonely possible candidate among what Darwin and reason itself tells us must be inconceivable numbers of transitional forms leading to the millions of distinct species we have today. All things considered, it is quite likely that the creature was simply a mosaic of different structures like the platypus or modern birds that likewise have grasping protrusions on their wings. (95) In the end, we find that Archaeopteryx is a poor intermediate, possessing fully formed and functional organs including a highly developed airfoil like wing, structures that do not themselves indicate transition.
Michael Denton writes:
As to Archaeopteryx, although it had certain reptilian characteristics, its wing possessed normal flight feathers, and may have been as capable of powered flight as a modern pigeon or crow. Archaeopteryx was probably the best intermediate that Darwin was able to name, yet between reptiles and Archaeopteryx there was still a very obvious gap. (96)Let's discuss the evidence. Archaeopteryx is ONE among thousands of transitional, evolutionary links known between higher taxa. Its prominence lies in the fact that it allegedly links the dinosaurs and birds, not that it is the best such example. Contrary to creationist statements like those of Josh Anderson and Michael Denton, Archaeopteryx is not a poor intermediate form, but a really good one. Archaeopteryx shares dozens of derived characters with small, meat-eating, bipedal dinosaurs, so there is no question that it is descended from dinosaurs. However, Archaeopteryx also has two features that, until recently, only birds exhibited: feathers and a furcula (wishbone). This combination of characters has led most vertebrate paleontologists to state that Archaeopteryx is the evolutionary link between the dinosaurs and birds. This and much other evidence, easily accessible in five major new books that have appeared within the last six months about this subject, is extremely convincing that this is the case. In addition, in the last few months, new fossil discoveries of other small dinosaurs with feathers and a furcula have been published. These new fossils have greatly strengthened the dinosaur-bird ancestral-descendent relationship.
Other stock examples, like the famous evolutionary line of the horse, have been known for some time to be false. The origin of this standard Darwinian icon is a museum exhibit dating from 1905 which attempted to put together a possible lineage. What is seldom discussed, however, is that the specimens and their corresponding artistic renderings are taken from widely different times and locations. (97) Simpson of Harvard speaks of it as "flatly fictitious," and adds, "There was no such trend."(98) John Bonner, a Princeton biologist called the conventional textbook discussions of decent lines (phylogeny) "a festering mass of unsupported assertions."(99) Others have called the multiple lines, largely artistic conjectures, an "embarrassment."
Denton's statement (97) is, again, specious: of course the horse fossils were taken from widely different times and places--that is how fossil lineages are constructed. On the other hand, the statements about the 1905 lineage are correct: it was indeed "fictitious," although it was supported by some evidence. What Josh Anderson fails to mention--but I will--is that a lot of new fossil evidence found in this century has allowed vertebrate paleontologists to construct a much better and more detailed phylogeny of horse evolution. Let me emphasize that all the nasty quotes about the horse evolution phylogeny are about an old one that scientists abandoned decades ago, and we have a much better one now that is widely accepted.
A bit closer to home is the debate about hypothesized human evolution. Fortunately for the non-expert, those who know the theory best are often quite candid. Philip Johnson writes:
Physical anthropology - the study of human origins - is a field that throughout history has been more heavily influenced by subjective factors than almost any other branch of respectable science.From Darwin's time to the present the "decent of man" has been a cultural certainty begging for empirical confirmation, and world-wide fame has been the reward for anyone who could present plausible fossil evidence for the missing links. (100)
Taking into consideration the considerable desire that is associated with finding fragments of ones own ancestry, he writes:
I can't think of anything that is more likely to detract from the objectivity of one's judgment. Descriptions of fossils from people who yearn to cradle their ancestor in their hands ought to be scrutinized as carefully as a letter of recommendation from a job applicants mother. (101)Many scientists like Roger Lewin have described the subjective factors that can be seen in the search for man's lineage. (102,103) By anyone's estimation it is a highly controversial, hotly debated subject. Many of the leading figures in the field are in complete disagreement about the facts and how to interpret them. These scientists often argue over who is right but neglect to question the original proposition.
Josh Anderson, following Phillip Johnson, treats the "controversial, hotly debated" character of hominid fossils and human evolution as something bad. On the contrary, this is science at its best. These topics are right on the frontier of human knowledge about the origin of ourselves, and any conclusions that a scientist reaches are bound to be controversial. Paleoanthropology is one of the most exciting areas of paleontological research, with plenty of questions still to answer and mysteries yet to solve. We know a lot about human origins, but new discoveries are made every year. This situation is good--not something to disparage.
The pressure and desire to see positive results has led to incidents like the "Piltdown man" hoax and the "Nebraska man" episode. (104) Piltdown man, a convincing intermediate between man and lower primates was discovered to be a forgery, a carefully crafted composite of a man's skull and the jaw of an ape that escaped detection and shaped public opinion for forty years. Nebraska man was a highly acclaimed member of the human line that was only later discovered to be based on bone fragments of an extinct pig.
Piltdown Man was a sophisticated hoax perpetrated on some scientists, and other scientists later exposed the hoax. Piltdown Man was always a controversial fossil, not universally accepted by paleoanthropologists. Nebraska Man was accepted by almost no legitimate vertebrate paleontologist, and its true affiliation was quickly exposed by one of the skeptics, the mammal fossil expert at the American Museum of Natural History. Creationists are always bringing up these hoary old stories, but they are useless in their intended task of proving creationism or disproving evolution. The most they show is that intelligent people can be fooled, a lesson that I hope everyone who reads this understands.
Zuckerman, among Britain's most influential scientists and an expert in primatology, regards much of the alleged evidence as ridiculous. (105) He, with uncommon honesty, compares physical anthropology to parapsychology and notes that the history of unwarranted and reckless speculation "is so astonishing that it is legitimate to ask whether much science is yet to be found in this field at all."(106)
Josh is claiming that Solly Zuckerman, a physical anthropologist, is equating his own scientific discipline with parapsychology, and questions whether "much science is yet to be found in this field at all." Does anyone besides me think that this quote is an exaggeration or out of context in referring to the whole of physical anthropology? Zuckerman is not one of Britain's most influential scientists; in fact, many of his beliefs are flatly wrong, such as his conclusion that Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) was not bipedal.
Johnson wisely remarks:
...evidence of ancestral relationships is in general absent from the fossil record. That being the case, it should be cause for suspicion rather than congratulations if there were a surfeit of ancestors in the one area in which human observers are most likely to give way to wishful thinking. (107)This is an excellent point and should not be over-looked. The fact that we fail to see transitional forms elsewhere in the fossil record should lead us to consider with uncommon caution and healthy skepticism claims of human ancestry.
Johnson, as noted before, is not a scientist but is a creationist, and his statements and analyses should not be credited with any deep insight. We have many examples of ancestral-descendent relationships in the fossil record, including the hominid lineages that explain human ancestry.
In considering all of the data, it is important to keep in mind the relative plasticity and variability of our species and that of other non-human primates. In humans, for example, cranial capacity has been seen to fluctuate between the extremes of 800 and 2,000 cubic centimeters. A. H. Schultz writes:
This quite unusual lack of interspecific stability in so many characters of recent man-like apes has unfortunately not always been taken into consideration in the interpretation and classification of the fossil hominoid fragments. (108)Dr. D. T. Gish agrees:
This failure to take into account the considerable variability among primates has led some anthropologists to attribute significance to differences between fossil specimens that lie well within the variability of a single species. (109)Schulz's comment is just, but most paleoanthropologists are careful workers and do take interspecific variability into consideration. Duane Gish is a notorious Young Earth creationist who makes his living working for a Christian ministry, the Institute for Creation Research. He is quite ignorant about different aspects of evolutionary science, and his many distortions and deceptions have been exposed by scientists in books and journals. I have never read anything he has written that is wise, logical, pertinent, reasonable, or scientific--and his statement here is no exception. Paleoanthropologists judge hominid fossil on the basis of many characters, not just one or a few that might be within the variability of a single species.
The results of all the investigation into this matter have been confusing to say the least. Gould, perceptive as always, asks:
What has become of our ladder if there are three coexisting lineages of hominoids..., none clearly derived from another? Moreover, none of the three display any evolutionary trends during their tenure on earth. (110)Most people don't know that two and possibly three or more separate lineages of hominids existed simultaneously in Africa 1-4 million years ago. Only one of these lineages led to our species, Homo sapiens, but the other lineages must have had an important influence on our ancestors' evolution. And Steve Gould is incorrect about none of the lineages displaying evolutionary trends: the Homo lineage shows a distinct increase in brain size from H. habilis->H. erectus->H. sapiens.
The amount of imagination that is involved in the search for our ancestors is surprising. Anthropologist J. Hawkes writes: "..it still comes as a shock to discover how often preconceived ideas have affected the investigation of hominoid origins." An article in Science News reported that Tim White claims another scientist, Noel Boaz had mistaken a dolphin rib for the shoulder bone of a hominoid. To make matters worse, Boaz asserted that that the subtleties of the bone may have indicated habitual bipedalism. In 1984 what was thought to be the skull fragment of the oldest human ever found in Europe, "Orce Man" is now thought to be from the skull of a four month old donkey.
The discrepancies, the history of radical changes, the many bold claims that have later been overturned; all these things give us more than enough reason to be exceedingly cautious in the realm of "hominoid evolution." Many earlier ancestral candidates have since been shown decisively to be dead-ends. The debate continues with new developments like the recent "mitochondrial Eve" hypothesis which seems to eliminate many possible candidates from human ancestry. (111) What is clear is that the link between mankind and even the most likely ancient subhuman primates is a far cry from plain. As Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of natural history explains:
We've got to have some ancestors. We'll pick those. Why? Because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidates. That's by and large how it has worked. I'm not exaggerating. (112)Science, unlike most human enterprises, recognizes its mistakes and corrects them. This is a strength--not the weakness Mr. Anderson tries to imply. Gareth Nelson, an extremely radical systematist, has made numerous provocative, unusual statements about evolution in the last two decades. His claim here is nonsense. It is true that the recognition of ancestors is not usually good procedure in paleontology, but sometimes the evidence is overwhelming. The problem is that Nelson is speaking from within a strict cladistic framework where recognition of ancestors is forbidden (cladists recognize that two or more taxa share a common ancestor, not identify the specific ancestors of those taxa, an important and correct distinction within taxonomy). Within other types of taxonomic frameworks, the recognition of ancestors is acceptable. So Anderson is quoting Nelson out of context, implying that Nelson does not believe in the existence of ancestors (of course he does!), and not explaining this to his readers. This is deceptive.
Following and in light of a conference in the 1980's which brought together many of the top evolutionists in the world, one writer stated plainly:
The missing link between man and the apes...is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule...The more scientists have searched for transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated.Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans were taught in high school. (113)
These quotes are from an article in Newsweek written by a reporter, not by a scientist. The truth is that the more scientists have searched for transitional forms between species, the more they have found. A number of spectacular new hominid species, including some that could be called "missing links," have been discovered and published in recent years. One of the coauthors of the radiometric dating companion paper to one of the discoveries is a member of our own university's geology department. The statement, made in 1980, that the hominid fossil evidence "now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans" learned is nonsensical for several reasons. First, most Americans were never taught about evolution in high school, let alone a "classical Darwinism." Second, what does the author mean by "classical Darwinism"? Classical Darwinism hasn't been a viable theory since the time of Darwin; the modern theory is called neo-darwinism or, simply, the theory of evolution. If the author simply meant phyletic gradualism, then the statement might be true, since this mode of evolution was popular years ago, and the hominid fossil record doesn't support that.
Paleontologist, Colin Patterson, speculates that the attempts of the theory to explain much of what we see in nature are "empty rhetoric." Patterson notes that, regarding transitional ancestors in general, "they exist not in nature but in the mind of taxonomists, as abstractions... yet they are always discussed as if they have some tangible realty."(114)
Colin Patterson, a distinguished British systematist, was speaking in the context of cladistic taxonomy, a system of taxonomic analysis and classification that does not recognize specific ancestors, but rather the sharing of common ancestors. In this system, a system I support by the way, transitional ancestors are not recognized in nature because a cladistic tree (cladogram) is a hypothesis that must allow for additional taxa and different tree branchings, and a specified transitional ancestor is an unnecessary hypothesis that prevents this. Other taxonomic analyses and systems, however, allow the specification of ancestors. I actually agree with Colin Patterson: most specified ancestors, transitional or otherwise, are abstractions. But that doesn't make them unreal or nonexistent--rather, it makes them hypothetical or theoretical, subject to evidence, conjecture, testing, and rejection or corroboration, just like any other hypothesis or theory in science. In fact, cladist systematics often proposes that two or more taxa share an ancestral "common ancestor;" this common ancestor is abstract (i.e. it is not named or identified), but its attributes can be specified, so it makes no sense for Dr. Patterson to criticize "abstractions"! Creationists love to take quotes from the cladist systematic literature and use them out of context to support the idea that specific or transitional ancestors do not or cannot exist; I want to emphasize that such claims are only valid in a formal cladistic analysis, not in nature.
Steven Jay Gould of Harvard is considered by many to be among the most prominent and distinguished evolutionists in the world. According to Gould the distinctive features of the fossil record are stasis and sudden appearance. In his own words:
Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record pretty much the same as when they disappear, morphological change is usually limited and directionless.In any local area a species does not arise gradually by steady transformations of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed.
Other scientists have recognized the absurd ramifications of these facts within a Darwinian framework. Paleontologist Steven Stanley writes:
Let us suppose that we wish, hypothetically, to form a bat or a whale... [by a ] process of gradual transformation of established species. If an average chronospecies lasts nearly a million years, or even longer, and we have at our disposal only ten million years, then we have only ten or fifteen chronospecies to align, end to end, to form a continuous lineage connecting our primitive little mammal with a bat or a whale. This is clearly preposterous... A chain of ten or fifteen of these might move us from one small rodent like form to a slightly different one, perhaps representing a new genus, but not to a bat or a whale! (115)Gould's statements are generally correct. The operative words here, however, are "usually" and "local area." Steve is qualifying his remarks to make them fit the evidence that supports his view of how evolution works on a geologic time scale, a process he and Eldredge call "punctuated equilibrium." It is important to note that there are exceptions to his statements: sometimes fossil lineages do change through time, sometimes a new species does arise by a steady transformation of it ancestor. But these are rare for reasons already discussed, and under no circumstances do Steve's statements cast doubt on evolution, only on the concept of pervasive phyletic gradualism (which he claims was the prevailing belief among paleontologists prior to his analysis). Steven Stanley's quote is also used misleadingly by Mr. Anderson to make it appear Stanley is casting doubt on evolution, when in fact he is also only criticizing the concept of phyletic gradualism. Both Gould and Stanley advocate a punctuated form of evolution caused by species selection, a controversial type of selection that can operate much faster than slow phyletic gradualism. The hypothesis of species selection is one of the exciting areas of evolutionary research in paleontology today, and a good example of how science advances by the proposal of seemingly radical ideas. Who knows how this controversy will end.
Punctuated Equilibrium
In the end, the fossil record presents an enormous problem for Darwinism. It has become a liability rather than a confirmation, something that has to be explained away. In order to reconcile the theory with the facts of stasis, sudden appearance, and the absence of transitional forms Gould and others have proposed an amendment to Darwinism called punctuated equilibrium. (116) According to this hypothesis evolution must have occurred rapidly in small, isolated, peripheral groups that broke off from the original populations. Because these groups were small they were less likely to leave fossil remains and they only appear when they replace the ancestral population.
The fossil record's "enormous problem" and "liability" for evolution was indeed something that had to be explained away--in the mid-nineteenth century. In our century, however, and especially since the 1940's and the efforts of George Gaylord Simpson, the fossil record has been seen as providing strong support for the synthetic theory of evolution. Eldredge and Gould did indeed propose a model to explain the prominence of sudden appearance and stasis of fossil species and the rarity of transitional forms between species in the fossil record. This model, which they named "punctuated equilbrium," was based totally on Ernst Mayr's allopatric speciation model, which involves the geographic isolation of subpopulations in the process of speciation. The allopatric speciation model is still the number one explanation of speciation, especially among animals, so Eldredge and Gould did a service to paleontology by bringing its fossil evidence in line with modern biological theory. For a good discussion of this topic, please visit the Talk.Origins FAQ on Punctuated Equilibria by Wesley Elsberry, and check out a paper published in Skeptic by Donald Prothero, Punctuated Equilibrium at Twenty: A Paleontological Perspective.
If this explanation sounds like a stretch it should. If this sounds at all plausible go to any major library and find diagrams of the skeletal structures and body-plans of the most "primitive" members of almost any major biological division and the most "advanced" members of the group from another division that is considered ancestral. What you will undoubtedly find is that the discontinuities and dissimilarities are so profound that a series of many thousands or perhaps millions of intermediate species would be required to bridge the gap. Common examples that illustrate this point are the earliest amphibians and the Rhipidistian fishes, the earliest known bat and the insectivores from which they are thought to descend, or early whales and their closest possible terrestrial "relatives." These examples and countless others should demonstrate to the satisfaction of any unbiased observer the radical nature of the discontinuities. As Scottish Zoologist D'arcy Thompson quipped in brutal honesty: "... to seek for stepping-stones across the gaps between is to seek in vain for ever."(117)
I encourage readers to do exactly what Josh Anderson recommends: locate a vertebrate paleontology book and check out the fish->amphibian, reptile->mammal, land mammal->whale, and small grazer->large horse transitions. What you will find is that the "discontinuities and dissimilarities" are so SMALL and the intermediate forms so complete and wonderfully preserved that the evolution of the former into the latter are easily seen and appreciated. The reptile->bird and insectivore->bat transitions have bigger gaps because flying organisms are so rarely fossilized, so more inference is needed here. D'arcy Thompson was a notorious anti-Darwinist who didn't believe in the gradual transformation of one taxon into another by natural selection acting over time; he was a saltationist who advocated other mechanisms of evolution. He was also wrong.
Even if some evolution could be explained through the proposed mechanism of punctuated equilibrium, which Johnson incidentally describes as "ingenious excuses," is it really possible that the only thing bridging the enormous gaps between organisms are "invisible peripheral isolates?" In the end, the most impressive aspect of the hypothesis seems to be the catchy name which has a forbiddingly technical ring to it. In the traditional scheme Darwinism we are told that evolution occurs at a rate that is far too gradual for experimental confirmation. Now it seems that it occurs too quickly and in such small numbers that it never leaves so much as a trace. If this is the best that we can do, retreat to maintaining that evolution only occurs when were not looking and doesn't leave a bit of convincing evidence, then perhaps we need to reevaluate the whole theoretical project.
Evolution occurs at different speeds: sometimes fast, sometimes slowly. Contrary to the Mr. Anderson's claim above, microevolution occurs at rates fast enough for experimental confirmation, both in the laboratory and in nature, within human time frames. Numerous examples of speciation by microevolution in nature have been observed and documented. Darwin and later paleontologists pointed out that this speed is too fast for the transitional forms between species to normally be fossilized and preserved in the slowly-accumulating sedimentary record, and Eldredge and Gould also emphasized that the allopatric nature of speciation works against finding these transitional forms in one area. As I pointed out, in some cases we actually have such transitional forms preserved, but this is admittedly uncommon: the great majority of species transitions in the fossil record can only be inferred from the ancestral and descendent termini. Macroevolution occurs at rates too slow for experimental confirmation in nature within human time frames, and all of the transformations occurred in the past, so the transitions between taxa higher than species--including all major groups--can only be inferred by the analysis of shared derived phenotypic characters, of genetic similarities using molecular techniques, and of the fossil record. These techniques are very powerful, however, and they often (but not always!) give congruent results, so evolutionary systematists have great confidence in their hypothetical phylogenies of life's history on Earth.
What would push Gould and Eldredge, cofounders of the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis and among the most knowledgeable experts on evolution by anyone's standards, to postulate such a theory? Is the fossil record really that uncooperative? According to Gould:
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. (118)Niles Eldredge more than agrees:
We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports [the story of gradual adaptive change], all the while really knowing that it does not. (119)These quotes are misleading: Gould's context is of transitional forms between species, so of course he is correct--they are rare (but not nonexistent). On the other hand, Gould himself on many occasions has discussed the wonderful record of transitional fossils we have between many higher taxa, such as between reptiles and mammals and between terrestrial mammals and whales. Eldredge is also correct: the history of life does not support a story of gradual adaptive change--it supports a story of both gradual and punctuational (geologically-sudden but ecologically-gradual) change, mostly the latter! Again, Josh Anderson uses these quotes--as he has throughout his website--to make it seem to an inattentive or uninformed reader that the fossil evidence does not support neo-darwinian evolution. Of course it does, and quite well, so I leave the matter of the appropriateness of such "scholarly" polemics to the reader.
Last ditch efforts like punctuated equilibrium and the molecular clock hypothesis are powerful demonstrations of the lengths to which some will go to preserve the orthodox position. However, when the facts are in it is undeniable that the theory of evolution is almost as empirically bankrupt as it is possible to conceive. R. Danson writes:
...Neodarwinism is now acknowledged as being unable to explain anything more than trivial change...despite the hostility of the witness provided by the fossil record, despite the innumerable difficulties, and despite the lack of even a credible theory, evolution survives. Can there be any other area of science, for instance, in which a concept as intellectually barren as embryonic recapitulation could be use as evidence for a theory?(120)According to R. L. Wysong, who holds three doctorates in the sciences:
Evolution is not a formulation of the scientific method. They [scientists] realize that evolution means the initial formation of unknown organisms from unknown chemicals in an atmosphere or ocean of unknown composition under unknown conditions, which organisms have then climbed an unknown evolutionary ladder by an unknown process leaving unknown evidence. (121)Dr. Arthur C. Custance, author of the ten volume Doorway Papers, and a member of the Canadian Physiological Society, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the New York Academy of Sciences describes evolutionary doctrine as an "irrational faith." He writes:
Virtually all the fundamentals of the orthodox evolutionary faith have shown themselves to be either of extremely doubtful validity or simply contrary to fact.... So basic are these erroneous assumptions that the whole theory is now largely maintained in spite of rather because of the evidence...As a consequence, for the majority of students and for that large ill defined group, 'the public,' it has ceased to become a subject of debate. Because it is both incapable of proof and yet may not be questioned, it is virtually untouched by data which challenges it in any way. It has become in the strictest sense irrational...Information or concepts which challenge the theory are almost never given a fair hearing... (147)Josh Anderson closes this section with quotes from three supposed scientists--but they are not! Two are well-known creationist pseudoscientists, and Danson is also a creationist. Wysong and Custance have scientific credentials, as all real pseudoscientists must, but credentials do not make one a scientist. A scientist is a person who believes in and follows the scientific method, which is based on free inquiry and critical thinking, and these gentlemen do not believe in or follow that method. These creationists have an overriding prior belief in religious supernaturalism AND, since that alone is not enough to reject evolution (many religious supernaturalists believe in natural evolution), a belief in the literal truth of the Bible and its story of divine creation in Genesis. I'm afraid it all boils down to that. Their quotes above are nonsense and totally at odds with science as it is known and taught in legitimate scientific institutions throughout the world.
I recommend that visitors to this page--if you are a creationist with an open mind and a true desire to investigate the creation/evolution controversy--obtain and read three excellent books written by scientists and philosophers. These books examine and refute "scientific creationism" in detail, and also explain the theory of evolution in ways accessible to most people.
Scientists Confront Creationism edited by Laurie Godfrey, Norton
Abusing Science by Philip Kitchner, MIT Press
Science on Trial by Douglas Futuyma, Sinauer
Religious creationism, on the other hand, is purely a religious doctrine and--even though it conflicts with science--it does not pretend to be what it is not; these books therefore ignore it, as have I in my remarks here. Supernaturalistic religion and naturalistic science are two completely different ways of looking at the universe and understanding nature, so they are and will remain in eternal conflict; the conflict only ends when a person gives up one or the other, although many individuals--including some scientists--choose to live with the conflict. (Let me emphasize that it is the supernaturalistic religions that conflict with science, not religion in general. There are many non-supernaturalistic religions that do not conflict with science, and many members of traditional supernaturalistic religions who will admit that they don't really believe the supernatural parts of their own religion. It is possible for religions to provide positive benefits without insisting that its members believe unusual supernatural doctrines.)
Finally, let me reiterate my remarks in the original email message I sent to Josh Anderson (which is reprinted at the top of this webpage). Josh asked for specifics, and I believe I have demonstrated that my criticisms about his quotes out of context, misleading quotes, specious and illogical arguments, misunderstandings, misrepresentations, etc. are true. It gives me no pleasure to identify a university student's scholarly efforts as "sophistry posing as scholarship and pseudoscience posing as science," but this is unfortunately the case. All scientific creationist literature is like this: it is meant to mislead and confuse unsuspecting readers, cause them to doubt the findings of science, and perhaps convert them to a fundamentalist religion. Creationists engage in this activity as a ministry for their religious faith, but I question whether these efforts are really a wise ministry for one's religion, since they are the antithesis of the careful and honest scholarship that should characterize a university and does characterize science.
I received a reply from Josh Anderson about one week after I posted the comments above on the Web and sent him an email message telling him I had done so. Josh indicated that it would be all right to post his reply below as well, so I am doing that along with my further--and somewhat briefer--comments. I am posting Josh's email message to me unchanged and--since I think it worked well--using the same format of posting my responses in blue between the paragraphs.
Dr. Schafersman,
I was pleased to receive your e-mail and read the comments you posted on the internet. I've gotten a substantial number of responses but you, I can confidently say, are the the first who has offered anything more than superficial comments. It is evident that you took a great deal of time to carefully consider what I had written (at least in two of the sub-sections of the paper) and for that I thank you.
As I'm sure you've anticipated, I disagree with a great deal of what you have written. I apologize for not responding sooner. I can't say I've had as much time as I would have liked to study your critique or the web-sites you suggested but I wanted to offer a few preliminary responses to your bold and unflattering accusations. Please feel free to incorporate any or all of this in your page.
I will, but I am afraid that my additional comments may be even bolder and more unflattering than my earlier ones.
In your reply you say that I desire to be taken seriously and you're absolutely correct. Who can blame me? This topic, although scientific in nature, is clearly saturated with philosophical, and existential import. I can think of few other academic issues that are as momentous. It would be difficult to exaggerate importance of the ramifications that this solitary issue has for mankind. If you'll grant that there is even the remotest possibility (or not so remote I would argue) that life is the product of something other than blind natural forces, then why should it not be taken seriously? Anyone who does not concede this possibility because of certain philosophical presuppositions or biases is being about as unscientific and irrational as it is possible to conceive. Of course, I am unaware of your personal feelings on this point.
The evolution of life in general and the evolutionary origin of humans in particular is indeed heavily laden with philosophical, existential, personal, as well as scientific, import. It is the fact that we humans are ourselves the result of the evolutionary process that motivates the desire of scientists like myself to see that scientific information and conclusions about evolution are made available and correctly presented to all students and citizens, and not hidden or perverted by the activities of creationists. In our free and open society, creationists have the right to present their doctrines to all who will listen, so why do you insist on trying to make it appear--through the use of disreputable arguments--that evolution is problematic and inadequate to account for the facts of life? Of course scientists have considered the possibility that life is the product of something other than blind natural forces: the history of evolution is replete with scientific attempts that hypothesize precisely this--its pure materialism was the main stumbling block that prevented Darwin's theory from achieving fairly universal acceptance until the 1940's (and some still won't accept it!). Scientists have been obliged by the evidence--often against their own hopes or wishes--to their conclusion that the process of evolution is blind, mechanistic, purposeless, goalless, unplanned, and completely natural and material. Let me turn your question around: Would you or have you ever entertained the possibility that evolutionary scientists could be right--that the universe and life is devoid of immanent meaning and purpose? As Oliver Cromwell once said (in a different context), "I beseech thee, by the bowels of Christ, to consider that ye may be wrong."
You appear shocked when I ask you to consider views that differ from your present understanding of things "as if [you] don't have anything better to do." Allow me to respectfully suggest that you don't and that neither do I. These issues are so weighty that they demand consideration.
These "issues" were settled in the nineteenth century, as far as I am concerned. There are important new and unresolved issues to consider now.
Your comments that "entering into a dialogue with creationists is like stepping into a black hole" is amusing. I assure you that I am quite interested in evidence and logic, the very same kind that you value. You may challenge my arguments, but how can you confidently make statements about my character and motives? You repeatedly accuse me of trying to be deceptive and fabricate something that isn't really there. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Twenty years ago, I might have accepted your protestations of innocence, chalking your errors up to ignorance or naiveté. But no more--we are far, far past the point when aggressive creationists can be considered ignorant or naive. All of the creationist objections to evolution, including yours, have been fully answered and refuted by legitimate scientists in a massive anti-creationist literature that was written in response to the creationist political and polemical attacks of the last two decades. Until you take into account, and respond to, this massive literature (such as the three books I listed earlier), I cannot take your claims of innocence seriously. I say again that your misrepresentations, specious arguments, etc. about evolution are seriously misguided at best, willfully duplicitous at worst. I realize that this questions your character and motives--this is the point to which we have come, and I take no pleasure in saying it.
I don't quite know what to make of your statement that there is no controversy about "the fact of evolution" in the scientific world. Perhaps if you define it in the relatively harmless way that you do as "change in the genotype of a population through time" then you're right. But if you mean hardcore, molecule to man, proto-cell to professor style evolution then I must disagree with you.
The "change in the genotype of a population through time" is precisely the same thing as protocell to professor evolution. There exists overwhelming evidence of a genetic connection and continuity among all organisms through time: we humans have genetic sequences in our nuclear DNA identical to that in the most primitive bacteria--sequences preserved through more than 3.5 billion years of evolution due to their essential control of basic life processes. Surely this fact is more remarkable and inspiring--because it has the additional attribute of being credible--than the idea that species were created by a supernatural creator.
The really curious part is that I'm sure you'll agree that virtually every theory and every element of every theory is contested to some degree. But, of course, you maintain the "fact" is never called into question. There are many who dispute even the fact, but those you deem pseudo-scientists. Your statement sounds roughly like this: ' All reputable scientists (defined as those who agree that macro-evolution is a fact) agree that life came about as the result of purely material forces. Only pseudo-scientists (defined as those who disagree that macro-evolution is a fact) disagree with the fact of evolution.'
I agree that all aspects of scientific theories are questioned at some point in time, but some aspects, including the fact of evolution, are not questioned today. Issues do get resolved in science--that's why light bulbs work and bridges don't collapse.
Even if the entire world were convinced that complex life evolved from non-living elements apart from any intelligence this wouldn't necessarily make it true. As I'm confident you know, truth is not a democracy. As you yourself note, "intelligent can be fooled." For a deeper exploration of this phenomenon you may consider reading "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" which I believe was written by Kuhn or the writings of Paul Feyerabend.
I advise you and other religionists not to invoke the authority of postmodernists such as Kuhn and Feyerabend so easily: their critiques apply to religion much more than they apply to science--and it is questionable that they apply to science at all.
I am really at a loss for words when you assert that "there is no legitimate scientific objection to [macro-evolution]" or that it is "a fact, as factual as the existence of gravity." You can't possibly be serious. You concede that there are "problems, uncertainties, and mysteries about the mechanism" and yet you see no room for doubt. Amazing. As I see it the conceptual, mathematical, and biochemical dimensions of the matter alone, even apart from the fossil evidence, make it excessively questionable. For details you can consult the first thirty or so pages of my paper.
I did read your entire paper, and as I previously said, all of your arguments are valueless--and therefore unconvincing--and have been answered by other scientists. I also know that you have received criticisms by email about your paper from other science professors here at our university--do you think that they were trying to tell you something, too?
I agree with you that the fossil record is not the firm foundation upon which the theory of evolution stands (or falls). Unfortunately, if you ask the man on the street that's probably what he will tell you. Of course, different people are persuaded by different amounts of evidence. You seem to be much more easily persuaded than I.
I admit it: I am easily persuaded by empirical evidence and logically-reasoned arguments--the tools of the scientific method. And I am also extremely skeptical--of claims that lack evidence and that are based on illogical arguments.
I can't say that I'm at all surprised that most of the evidence of continuous change is to be found among microscopic plankton. Can changes like this really lead us to the incontrovertible fact that a material process fueled by utter randomness wrought sentient beings like you and I? As a scientist I'm sure that you know that extrapolations of this kind and magnitude can seldom be made with any confidence.
Extrapolation has nothing to do with it!
You seem to think that from phenomena like diversification and speciation we can explain innovation. Are you really prepared to say that you are absolutely certain that chance plus selection (or any other purely material force or forces) can create literally millions of irreducibly complex, highly sophisticated,ultra-specific, multistage, highly integrated systems from the level of biochemical molecules and pathways to the human brain? If so then, your faith is greater than mine.
Yes, and I define my faith as confidence in the scientific method, not blind faith, which is belief with no evidence or belief in spite of the evidence. This faith issue is really quite simple: institutions and ideologies only ask participants to have faith because they don't have any facts. If they actually had facts, they would appeal to those and not to faith.
Your assertion that I quote Darwin without elucidating the solutions he offered is empty. In terms of fossil record, although I don't specify that Darwin used this argument, I state that the the imperfections of the record or an insufficient search seem to have been the most widely appealed to explanations for the rarity of fossils that might be interpreted as transitional.
As far as the problems Darwin had with structures like the mammalian eye, I think that expounding upon his apparent solutions would only insult the man. Darwin's understanding of the image producing eye, while sufficient to perplex him and many others, was grossly oversimplified. Simply naming a number of light sensing organs found in nature that have varying degrees of complexity and that employ widely different physiological structures and chemical systems is hardly an explanation that we can entertain.
We are far beyond--about 140 years beyond--Darwin's simple analogies, but his conclusion persists despite the abundance of new knowledge in molecular biology, comparative anatomy, and systematic analysis. That's why Darwin is so honored and respected today: the basic insights he inferred from the limited evidence available to him have only been confirmed by modern evidence. The same is true of other great scientist--such as Galileo, Newton, Hutton, and Einstein--and their inferences.
Dr. Schafersman, you know far better than I how controversial and tenetive most if not all paeolological hypotheses are. I'm sure you could speak at length on the weaknesses and intrinsic limitations of your discipline. In the past century many bold statements have been made, only to be utterly over-turned later. Like all of science is and should be it is in a constant state of flux. Ideas are introduced and they are reworked or discarded many times. You seem to indicate this when you claim that "we revise the details every generation." Of course, as far as this whole matter is concerned, there are many intrinsic problems that are practically unavoidable. Examples include the fact that we are seldom able to see the soft matter of organisms, which is where all of the really interesting things take place.
Throughout your response you seek to offer explanations of why transitional forms are, as you concede, rare. This is completely legitimate. It's certainly an important issue. By the way, I totally disagree with you that Darwin was using "rhetorical hyperbole" or "deliberate overstatement when he claimed that we should see "inummerable intermediates" and an "infinitude of connecting links." Read those statements again in context. What could possibly lead you to the conclusion that he was exaggerating? If you think that I'm trying to deceive people just because I didn't know that a man who lived in the 19th century was exaggerating (which I don't believe he was) then it is you yourself who is being deceived on this point.
I stand by my earlier remarks.
Your assertion that there are thousands of clear transitional forms is dubious. In many ways the problem may be (as many often are) definitional in nature. However, even the way that you put it causes me to wonder how sound all of this alleged hard evidence is. You state plainly that they have all been "recognised by inference and hypothesis."
Most, not all. The fact that inference is required at all is why cladistic analyses refuse to specify ancestral or transitional taxa, a viewpoint I fully endorse. But even cladists identify taxa that share a common ancestor, because they recognize the genetic continuity among ancestral-descendent relationships.
For the record, upon reflection I agree with you that the paragraph in my paper regarding the comparison of the fossilization of living orders with those in the past is a thin argument. To be honest, although I am certain that there was sufficient reason for my statement about Simpson, you are right that table eight in that particular volume was not the correct reference. I intend pull that portion soon as possible until I can find the proper reference. You'll have to take my word for it that the mistake was unintentional. The rat/mouse thing was also an error on my part. The argument was and is valid but the example seems to have been poor.
At the top of page eight in your response you claim that the fossil record was consistent with the synthetic theory propounded by Simpson and others. However, if this is true then why was punctuated equilibrium such a necessary amendment? Everything that I have read leads me to believe that the conclusions that can be drawn are far less certain than you seem to be suggesting. Even your own statements seem to imply the great number of unknowns. For example:"the evolutionary transitions between animal phyla...took place at a time when hard body parts, made of calcite or silica, had not yet evolved..." As far as I know, even when a great number of ancient fossils displaying soft parts is found (as in the Burgess shale) we see little or no clear evidence of the kind that would be required.
Many paleontologists, including Simpson himself, did not think the concept of punctuated equilibrium was necessary or useful. Soon after proposing it, Eldredge and Gould implicitly admitted this themselves, since they greatly extended the concept to include species selection and a disconnect between micro- and macroevolution. In fact, the punctuational pattern and species stasis predicted by punctuated equilibrium was already recognized and explained by the synthetic theory, as Simpson himself pointed out, although admittedly most paleontologists, including Simpson again, were primarily gradualists, and it looks now that punctuation is more common.
The whole matter is very complex when we take into account the hundreds of millions of species involved and the fact that we can often analyse skeletal remains alone. Further complications come about when consider the plasticity of individual species. The genome of individual organisms is enormous. Minor diversification and relatively trivial changes like differences in proportion tell us next to nothing about how or if complex innovations might come about by chance and natural selection, changes in reproductive systems, respiratory systems, biochemical pathways, complex instincts or sensory systems like echo-location.
Your statements seem convoluted and overly confident to me. Take for example the following statements on your page: #1 "As I mentioned earlier, most transitional fossils are transitional between genera, families, orders, classes, and phyla, i.e. between taxa higher than species." #2 "Most of the examples of gradualism we have in the fossil record are between species and genera, not between basic morphological designs, which are higher on the taxonomic hierarchy." I'm not sure but this is either simply confusing or a flat contradiction. If there is a solution I'm sure your response will involve punctuated equilibrium which seems to be a cure-all these days.
There is no contradiction here. Transitions can be either gradual (anagenetic) or punctuated (cladogenetic), and transitional fossils can be at any taxonomic level. Phyletic gradualism has been observed in species lineages, but not unambiguously in longer lineages of higher taxa.
I think that it was presumptuous and wholly unwarranted that you suggest that I have tried to be intentionally deceiving or have simply manipulated quotes. This is especially unconvincing when one notes that when responding to virtually all of the citations you say that the author was exaggerating, that the statement is not literally true, true only in a very special sense, or that you simply think that they are in error.
For example, you claim that when Raup says "ironically we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time" that this statement is not literally true. In an other place you say of Stanley's statement: "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic transition accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.",that it is "partly true and partly false." You go on to say that "we do not have an example of 'phyletic' evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition, although we have plenty of examples of 'cladogenetic' i.e. punctuated evolution doing so..." From what I've seen punctuated is virtually a synonym for invisible or at best theoretical-guesswork. You go on to say that his statement is "not strictly correct" and that it is an over-generalization. To be honest, its difficult to know whether this is true or that you simply disagree.
I tried to point out that the apparent literal interpretation of selected quotes from scientists is not necessarily the correct interpretation in the original context or purpose. I tried to make clear the distinctions that are obvious to me in such quotes (because of my knowledge of paleontological research and familiarity and friendship with the scientists quoted) but would not be obvious to the layman. I also pointed out that some noted "authorities" exaggerate or make radical, irresponsible, and even mistaken statements that other paleontologists ignore. David Raup, in particular, has long been a source of creationist quotes, much to my dismay. Dave just likes to make provocative statements, and he's not the only one. But science is nonauthoritarian--another scientist can question and disagree with scientific "authorities" no matter how eminent they may be, IF one has good evidence or arguments--and I assure you, I do!
The degree to which you accept molecule to man evolution as an a priori fact is unsettling. You write: "...there is no evidence of gradualism between basic morphologic designs (Bauplane). This is quite true, but I hope the reader now understands that this is not the same as saying that no evolution occurred between these basic morphological design-of course it did." Of course? Is that how science works?
Of course.
You say that you agree with Gould that as far as taxonomic levels above species (the domain of microevolution) is concerned, evolutionary trees are "inference, not the evidence of fossils." I think that this is an important point that should be considered before dogmatic statements are made. Furthermore, when Gould said that it may be impossible for us to come up with "viable, functioning organisms" between different major morphological forms I think that his lack of faith in our ingenuity certainly reflects the depth of the conceptual difficulties.
All scientific knowledge is inference. All scientific knowledge--indeed, all knowledge--is obtained indirectly, and inferences must be made to reach conclusions.
In other places you simply disagree with statements made by scientists like Stanely such as "The fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another." You write: "And in any event he's wrong: we know of a number of gradual transitions from one species to another in the fossil record, usually, as I said, among marine planktonic microfossils." Microfossils, interesting. You also simply disagree with others like Zuckerman who held that A. afarensis was not bipedal and Harvard's Gould at the bottom of the same page. (Incidently I think that Zuckerman has since changed his views.)
Frankly I don't know what to think when you say that you agree with Patterson and say that "most specified ancestors, transitional or otherwise are abstractions." So much of what you say seems highly debatable and opinion oriented. You say that the discontinuities and dissimilarites found in many of the major transitions is small. Perhaps we are looking at different diagrams. In many cases it seems as if many thousands of significantly different forms (presumably invisible peripheral isolates) would be needed to bridge many of the gaps.
Incidently, Patterson,who you describe as a "distinguished British systematist" has made a number of remarkable statements regarding evolution and its empirical backing. Instead of citing them here I suggest you look in the final portions of my paper where you'll find a several of intriguing examples.
I am aware of Patterson's many "statements" about evolution. Patterson is a radical and rigorous cladist: he literally believes that all ancestors and transitional fossils are abstractions that cannot legitimately be specified. In a cladistic world, he is right and I completely agree with him. But I can assure you that Patterson believes that there ARE ancestors to descendent taxa, and he believes in evolution. Furthermore, other forms of systematic analysis (which I agree with Patterson are scientifically inferior to cladism!) readily allow the recognition and specification of ancestors. Again, you have to understand such statements in context, and not use isolated quotes to make totally unwarranted points. Your tactics may work in a courtroom (which is why Phillip Johnson knows them so well and likes to use them), but science is not practiced by trying to fool the person you are trying to convince.
The way that you dismiss the arguments of men like Denton, Johnson, Custance, Wysong and others is truly regrettable. Your attacks are ad hominem not scientific. Have you even read the works of Johnson or Denton in their entirety? Perhaps you have. Are you really prepared to utterly dismiss the entire corpus of what they have written just because you disagree with their conclusions? You methodically and without hesitation dismiss all arguments offered by those who believe in intelligent design? Is it then any wonder that you maintain the views that you do?
I have read their works. I don't have the time to refute all their specious arguments in detail as I did with yours, so ad hominem remarks will have to do. As I mentioned, their books have been reviewed by legitimate evolutionary scientists and have been shown to be the con jobs they are. Read the reviews if you want to know the scientific details. As far as intelligent design is concerned, I am writing a number of papers about that school of creationism and their beliefs.
You accuse thinkers who disagree with you of having supernatural presuppositions (Denton, by the way, describes himself as an atheist/agnostic). Is it not equally valid to say that you smuggle in philosophical naturalism? Even if we assume for a moment science may have to limit itself to naturalistic explanations in practice, but does this mean that we can allow it to be the supreme arbiter of truth and make sweeping statements about the ultimate nature of reality?
Science does not make statements about the ultimate nature of reality, but about the proximate nature of the universe. Those are two quite different sets of statements. In my experience, dogmatic and transcendental religions--not science--are the ones making all the "sweeping statements about the ultimate nature of reality."
I know that you yourself have written about the role of naturalism in science. I would be very interested to here your views on the matter. My views are expressed in part in the final sections of my paper. If you have any additional comments or critiques regarding what I have written I gladly welcome them. The comments that you have already put forth were helpful and interesting. I hope to here your response to some of what I have written today.
Josh Anderson
My views about philosophical naturalism are on the Web in a paper that is being revised for publication. You can read it there.
Josh, I want to offer you some serious advice--professor to student. You are obviously intelligent and motivated to learn, and are curious about the world. Please try to channel your intelligence, motivation, and curiosity into disciplines and areas that will benefit humanity--ones that help improve the human condition. Creationism does not meet those criteria. Good luck in the future.
Steven Schafersman
Steven D. Schafersman May be reached by email at the address at freeinquiry@gmail.com. This webpage was originally on my academic website, but was moved to my Free Inquiry website on 2 November 1998. I have removed specific references to my former university and corrected some typos and spelling errors of mine, but otherwise the essay has been left unchanged.