The fossil record shows that evolution never happened

[Eliyahu]

Bs'd


Stasis, or non-change, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. .... The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, non-evolution)."

Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.


********************


"Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ... That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, .... prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search .... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserly fossil record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46
Niles Eldredge is an evolutionist en co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory


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"Paleontologists have paid an enormous price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. .... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed."

Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.



***********************


".... we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."

Eldredge, Niles "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p. 44


*************************************


"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163


************************************


"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion .... it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. .... Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species."

Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.

Schwartz, Jeffrey H is professor anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and also evolutionist, writer of boek about evolution: Sudden Origins, a provocative new theory on how evolution works by sudden leaps and bounds:
http://www.post-gazette.com/books/revie ... iew395.asp


**********************************


"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95, speaking about the Bighorn basin in Wyoming USA.

S.M. Stanley is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium which has been published in Geological Society of America
For more info about prof Stanley look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Stanley


*****************************


"The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide acceptance among paleontologists. It attempts to account for the following paradox: Within continuously sampled lineages, one rarely finds the gradual morphological trends predicted by Darwinian evolution; rather, change occurs with the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldredge and Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these events are not preserved. .... The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. Apart from the obvious sampling problems inherent to the observations that stimulated the model, and apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground."

Ricklefs, Robert E., "Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution," Science, vol. 199, 1978, p. 59

Robert E Ricklefs is an evolutionist and professor biology at the University of Missouri te St. Louis:
http://www.umsl.edu/~ricklefs


*********************************


"Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. .... If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants."

Bengtson, Stefan, "The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle," Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990), p. 765-766

Stefan Bengtson is an evolutionist en head curator of the Swedish museum of natural history in Stockholm Zweden.
For more info about S. Bentson look here http://palaeo-electronica.org/staff/stefan.htm


*****************************


"Modern multicellular animals make their first uncontested appearance in the fossil record some 570 million years ago - and with a bang, not a protracted crescendo. This Cambrian explosion marks the advent (at least into direct evidence) of virtually all major groups of modern animals - and all within the minuscule span, geologically speaking, of a few million years."

Gould, Stephen J., Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, 1989, p. 23-24

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.


*******************************


"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in lifes history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59

Niles Eldredge is an evolutionist en co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory


*********************************


"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40

S.M. Stanley is an American professor, paleontologist, and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For most of his career he taught geology at Johns Hopkins University (1969-2005) He is best known for his empirical research documenting the evolutionary process of punctuated equilibrium in the fossil record.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
For more info about prof Stanley look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Stanley


***********************


"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.


*********************************


"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large."

Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record."

Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34

Rudolf A Raff is an evolutionist en professor biology at the Indiana University in Bloomingdale, Indiana, USA, and also Director"Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Distinguished Professor, Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science.
More info about prof Raff can be found here: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/sb/page/normal/608.html


********************************


"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured .... The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwins stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation. .... their story has been suppressed."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71

S.M. Stanley is an evolutionist and professor at the John Hopkins university in Baltimore.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium which has been published in Geological Society of America
For more info about prof Stanley look here: http://www.jhu.edu/~eps/faculty/stanley ... l#research


*****************************


"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all new categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."

Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution, 1953, p. 360

Simpson George Gaylord is anevolutionist and professor paleontologie in Columbia and Harvard.


****************************


"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwins postulate of gradualism .... and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record."

Mayr, E., One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, 1991, p. 138

Ernst Mayer was one of the leading evolutionistic biologists of the 20th century, see here: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ernst_Mayr


*******************************


"The record certainly did not reveal gradual transformations of structure in the course of time.
On the contrary, it showed that species generally remained constant throughout their history. New types or classes seemed to appear fully formed, with no sign of an evolutionary trend by which they could have emerged from an earlier type."

Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, 1984, p. 187

Peter J. Bowler, a scholar of Darwin and evolution, is a prolific author and professor of the history and philosophy of science at Queens University of Belfast.
http://www.americanscientist.org/author ... ter-bowler


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"The paleontological data is consistent with the view that all of the currently recognized phyla had evolved by about 525 Ma. Despite half a billion years of evolutionary exploration generated in Cambrian time, no new phylum level designs have appeared since then."

"Developmental Evolution of Metazoan Body plans: The Fossil Evidence," Valentine, Erwin, and Jablonski, Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0033, 1996, p. 376


*********************************


"Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks .... One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood."

Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832,1981

David Raub is an evolutionist, and professor emeritus (former Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor) in Geophysical Sciences and former curator Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History at the University van Chicago. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Raup


*******************************


"A major problem in proving the theory (of evolution) has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God."

Czarnecki, Mark, "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade", MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56
Czarnecki Mark is an evolutionist and a paleontologist.
.

********************************


"It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. .... Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and (we) both reject this alternative."

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987, p. 229.

Richard Dawkins is very well known evolutionist en author and professor zoology at the Oxford university.


*******************************


"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record."

Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p.189

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.


*****************************


"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwins time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact its rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find."

Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23

David Raub is an evolutionist, and professor emeritus (former Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor) in Geophysical Sciences and former curator Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History at the University van Chicago. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Raup


*********************************************************


"But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

[Eliyahu]

Can you accept the simple fact that the fossil record shows the opposite of evolution, namely sudden appearance of new species without any link to supposed predecessors, followed by stasis, non-change, for their whole stay in the fossil record?

The fossil record hints at what the genetic research and direct observation proves beyond all reasonable doubt: Evolution.

Bs'd

That's what you say.

And now what the experts say:


Stasis, or non-change, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. .... The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, non-evolution)."

Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.

Hmmm.... the great Gould doesn't agree with you. He says the fossils show "non-evolution".

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163

Eldredge also doesn't agree with you.


"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion .... it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. .... Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species."

Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.

Schwartz, Jeffrey H is professor anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and also evolutionist, writer of boek about evolution: Sudden Origins, a provocative new theory on how evolution works by sudden leaps and bounds:
http://www.post-gazette.com/books/revie ... iew395.asp


You see that? "there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species"

Doesn't sound like evolution to me.....

"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95, speaking about the Bighorn basin in Wyoming USA.

S.M. Stanley is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium which has been published in Geological Society of America
For more info about prof Stanley look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Stanley


Look at that! "In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."


"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all new categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."

Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution, 1953, p. 360

Simpson George Gaylord is anevolutionist and professor paleontologie in Columbia and Harvard.

Sounds to me like no evolution in the fossil record.

Strange that people cannot accept the simple facts staring them right in the face...

[Eliyahu]

And we have another cut/paste job that you spam to all the forums.

https://sites.google.com/site/777mountzion/fossiles

Hum. They dealt with your objections quite completely here

Bs'd

No they didn't, just like you don't.

It was also pointing out that your quotes were dealt with in the quote mine project, where it shows that those quotes are taken OUT of context, and misrepresenting what the potions of the author was.

Nonsense. There is not one case where it can be proven that the author of the quote intended something different than what the quote says.

If you think different, just give one example.

Oh, and I'm not arguing "the position of the author", I'm arguing the fossil record.

Please don't attack a straw man.

Bs'd

Goat, are you going to give some examples of where the context of my quotes shows that the author really meant the opposite of what the quote says?

How hard can it be? You have the whole quote mine project of the Talk Origins Archive to take them from. All the work has been done already for you.

So don't wait any longer and give me some.

Prove me wrong!

[Goat]

Can you accept the simple fact that the fossil record shows the opposite of evolution, namely sudden appearance of new species without any link to supposed predecessors, followed by stasis, non-change, for their whole stay in the fossil record?

The fossil record hints at what the genetic research and direct observation proves beyond all reasonable doubt: Evolution.

Bs'd

That's what you say.

And now what the experts say:


Stasis, or non-change, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. .... The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, non-evolution)."

Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15

Stephen J Gould was on of the most well known evolutionists and the inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory, and professor geology en zoology at Harvard university.

Hmmm.... the great Gould doesn't agree with you. He says the fossils show "non-evolution".

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163

Eldredge also doesn't agree with you.


"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion .... it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. .... Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species."

Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.

Schwartz, Jeffrey H is professor anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and also evolutionist, writer of boek about evolution: Sudden Origins, a provocative new theory on how evolution works by sudden leaps and bounds:
http://www.post-gazette.com/books/revie ... iew395.asp


You see that? "there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species"

Doesn't sound like evolution to me.....

"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95, speaking about the Bighorn basin in Wyoming USA.

S.M. Stanley is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He wrote many articles, also together with Niles Eldredge, de co-inventor of the punctuated equilibrium theory.
One of his articles is Paleontology and earth system history in the new millennium which has been published in Geological Society of America
For more info about prof Stanley look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Stanley


Look at that! "In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."


"In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all new categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences."

Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution, 1953, p. 360

Simpson George Gaylord is anevolutionist and professor paleontologie in Columbia and Harvard.

Sounds to me like no evolution in the fossil record.

Strange that people cannot accept the simple facts staring them right in the face...

Sure.. From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/ ... rt1-2.html

"Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. ...The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). (Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15)

First of all, a more accessible source for this quote is: Gould, Stephen J. 1995. "Cordelia's Dilemma", Dinosaur in a Haystack. New York: Harmony Books, p. 127-128.

Note that the above starts with the unmarked deletion of "Before Niles Eldredge and I proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972, the . . .".

The very next paragraph is, in its entirely:

"But Eldredge and I proposed that stasis should be an expected and interesting norm (not an embarrassing failure to detect change), and that evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation. Under our theory, stasis became interesting and worthy of documentation -- as a norm disrupted by rare events of change. We took as the motto of punctuated equilibrium: "Stasis is data." (One might quibble about the grammar, but I think we won the conceptual battle.) Punctuated equilibrium is still a subject of lively debate, and some (or most) of its claims may end up on the ash heap of history, but I take pride in one success relevant to Cordelia's dilemma: our theory has brought stasis out of the conceptual closet. Twenty-five years ago, stasis was a non-subject -- a "nothing" under prevailing theory. No one would have published, or even proposed, an active study of lineages known not to change. Now such studies are routinely pursued and published, and a burgeoning literature has documented the character and extent of stasis in quantitative terms.

This is yet another example of creationists misconstruing a debate among scientists (once again, about Punctuated Equilibria) as something more. Quite simply, Gould is chiding scientists for a misinterpretation of the fossil record bearing on the tempo and mode of evolution, not the fact that it occurred. If they really had an argument that the peculiarity of the fossil record that Gould is describing is evidence against the fact of evolution, then they should make the argument openly, so it and its ramifications could be tested, instead of trying to hijack the words of real scientists. But blowing smoke is so much easier.

The rest of them can be found in that section too. But , one quote is enough to show that you got your information from creationist web sites that had a theological axe to grind, and were not into full disclosure of truth.

I could do that with each and every one. If I do so, would you promise not to use these mishmash of quotes again?? it's embarrassing that a fellow Jew is so.. badly educated that they resort to these tactics.

[Eliyahu]

"Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. ...The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). (Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15)

First of all, a more accessible source for this quote is: Gould, Stephen J. 1995. "Cordelia's Dilemma", Dinosaur in a Haystack. New York: Harmony Books, p. 127-128.

Note that the above starts with the unmarked deletion of "Before Niles Eldredge and I proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972, the . . .".

The very next paragraph is, in its entirely:

"But Eldredge and I proposed that stasis should be an expected and interesting norm (not an embarrassing failure to detect change), and that evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation. Under our theory, stasis became interesting and worthy of documentation -- as a norm disrupted by rare events of change. We took as the motto of punctuated equilibrium: "Stasis is data." (One might quibble about the grammar, but I think we won the conceptual battle.) Punctuated equilibrium is still a subject of lively debate, and some (or most) of its claims may end up on the ash heap of history, but I take pride in one success relevant to Cordelia's dilemma: our theory has brought stasis out of the conceptual closet. Twenty-five years ago, stasis was a non-subject -- a "nothing" under prevailing theory. No one would have published, or even proposed, an active study of lineages known not to change. Now such studies are routinely pursued and published, and a burgeoning literature has documented the character and extent of stasis in quantitative terms.

This is yet another example of creationists misconstruing a debate among scientists (once again, about Punctuated Equilibria) as something more. Quite simply, Gould is chiding scientists for a misinterpretation of the fossil record bearing on the tempo and mode of evolution, not the fact that it occurred. If they really had an argument that the peculiarity of the fossil record that Gould is describing is evidence against the fact of evolution, then they should make the argument openly, so it and its ramifications could be tested, instead of trying to hijack the words of real scientists. But blowing smoke is so much easier.

Bs'd

So what do we learn from this? First: The quote is correct, it is what Gould said.

Second, what is the context telling us? Nothing. It changes NOTHING about the fact that the fossil record is showing STASIS, non-change.

Gould says "We expect stasis, we study stasis, we love stasis, we got stasis out of the closet, yadda yadda yadda" but still, the STASIS, the NON-EVOLUTION, is there.

They say: "evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation". Nice of them to say so, but do they find that evolution in the fossil record? NO!!!

What they find is STASIS, NON-CHANGE, NON-EVOLUTION.

So the context doesn't change anything, the evo's blowing some smoke in their comment doesn't change anything; the fossil record still shows STASIS, NON-CHANGE, NON-EVOLUTION.

So the quote is totally correct, totally to the point, and not refuted.


I'm ready for the next one Goat.

Bring it on!

[Goat]

"Stasis, or nonchange, of most fossil species during their lengthy geological lifespans was tacitly acknowledged by all paleontologists, but almost never studied explicitly because prevailing theory treated stasis as uninteresting nonevidence for nonevolution. ...The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution). (Gould, Stephen J., "Cordelia's Dilemma," Natural History, 1993, p. 15)

First of all, a more accessible source for this quote is: Gould, Stephen J. 1995. "Cordelia's Dilemma", Dinosaur in a Haystack. New York: Harmony Books, p. 127-128.

Note that the above starts with the unmarked deletion of "Before Niles Eldredge and I proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972, the . . .".

The very next paragraph is, in its entirely:

"But Eldredge and I proposed that stasis should be an expected and interesting norm (not an embarrassing failure to detect change), and that evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation. Under our theory, stasis became interesting and worthy of documentation -- as a norm disrupted by rare events of change. We took as the motto of punctuated equilibrium: "Stasis is data." (One might quibble about the grammar, but I think we won the conceptual battle.) Punctuated equilibrium is still a subject of lively debate, and some (or most) of its claims may end up on the ash heap of history, but I take pride in one success relevant to Cordelia's dilemma: our theory has brought stasis out of the conceptual closet. Twenty-five years ago, stasis was a non-subject -- a "nothing" under prevailing theory. No one would have published, or even proposed, an active study of lineages known not to change. Now such studies are routinely pursued and published, and a burgeoning literature has documented the character and extent of stasis in quantitative terms.

This is yet another example of creationists misconstruing a debate among scientists (once again, about Punctuated Equilibria) as something more. Quite simply, Gould is chiding scientists for a misinterpretation of the fossil record bearing on the tempo and mode of evolution, not the fact that it occurred. If they really had an argument that the peculiarity of the fossil record that Gould is describing is evidence against the fact of evolution, then they should make the argument openly, so it and its ramifications could be tested, instead of trying to hijack the words of real scientists. But blowing smoke is so much easier.

Bs'd

So what do we learn from this? First: The quote is correct, it is what Gould said.

Second, what is the context telling us? Nothing. It changes NOTHING about the fact that the fossil record is showing STASIS, non-change.

Gould says "We expect stasis, we study stasis, we love stasis, we got stasis out of the closet, yadda yadda yadda" but still, the STASIS, the NON-EVOLUTION, is there.

They say: "evolution should be concentrated in brief episodes of branching speciation". Nice of them to say so, but do they find that evolution in the fossil record? NO!!!

What they find is STASIS, NON-CHANGE, NON-EVOLUTION.

So the context doesn't change anything, the evo's blowing some smoke in their comment doesn't change anything; the fossil record still shows STASIS, NON-CHANGE, NON-EVOLUTION.

So the quote is totally correct, totally to the point, and not refuted.


I'm ready for the next one Goat.

Bring it on!

I am sorry.... but you have no concept of the fact the way you used to quote mine has been shown to show you are giving incorrect information. That level of of understanding (or lack of trying) makes it not worth my while to attempt to proceed.

[Eliyahu]

I am sorry.... but you have no concept of the fact the way you used to quote mine has been shown to show you are giving incorrect information.

Bs'd

Right. That's because there is no such thing.

That level of of understanding (or lack of trying) makes it not worth my while to attempt to proceed.

Glad you saw the light and realized that the context doesn't change the meaning of the quote at all.

Too bad you're running out of the discussion, but anyway, the facts are clear: The fossil record shows the opposite of evolution, namely STASIS, non-change.

[Hatuey]

[Replying to post 16 by Eliyahu]



If the environment doesn't change much, the species doesn't change much. The issue is not time alone, but time in conjunction with changing conditions in the environment. And that is exactly what the fossil record and the geological column prove.

Evolution is fact. There might be parts that need to be adjusted for clarity's sake, but the theory itself is beyond reproach. It is probably the most true thing we know. To attack it is profoundly more absurd than the Greeks originally denying the number zero and punishing those who used it as a number to perform calculations.

[Eliyahu]

[Replying to post 16 by Eliyahu]
Evolution is fact.

Bs'd

Or so you think. Fact of the matter is: The fossil record shows the opposite of evolution: STASIS, non-change, non-evolution.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 16 by Eliyahu]
Evolution is fact.

Bs'd

Or so you think. Fact of the matter is: The fossil record shows the opposite of evolution: STASIS, non-change, non-evolution.

Yet, the technique you attempted to use (quote mining) to show that, is the exact same thing that Christians do to Isaiah to show it's about Jesus.

[dianaiad]

Can you accept the simple fact that the fossil record shows the opposite of evolution, namely sudden appearance of new species without any link to supposed predecessors, followed by stasis, non-change, for their whole stay in the fossil record?

The fossil record hints at what the genetic research and direct observation proves beyond all reasonable doubt: Evolution. I'm not going to debate the FACT of evolution with you for the same reason that I will not debate the fact that 2 2=4. You are welcome to disbelieve evolution for the same stupid reason that you might disbelieve that 2 2=4. In fact, I welcome it, and I hope you do so. The more god believers that believe ridiculous things, the better it is for me and other nonbelievers who know and understand the facts as they are. Please continue exactly as you are, now. I beg you. It helps our side, your opponents. And I thank you.

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