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.


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"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.



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".... 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


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"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


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"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


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"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


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"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


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"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


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"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.


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"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


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"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


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"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


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"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.


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"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


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"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


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"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


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"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.
.

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"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.


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"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.


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"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


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"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

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 60 by dianaiad]

Do you mean that we should, through legal or forcible means, ensure that creationism isn't taught in any school, no matter who owns it and what the parents want? What about homeschoolers? Are you proposing an 'education police' that will monitor such things in home school situations?
....

Actually, that's already been tried. It was messy and lowered the world population by a fairly significant percentage. I don't get your point here. Why should I "want" you to say such a thing? Do you mean it? Is that really one of the options you propose?

All I 'want' is for you to be specific about what should be done, by you and by society, about the idea of literal biblical creationism and those who believe in it. I mean, your real honest thoughts about that.
....

Actually, that's a good idea. It should be taught somewhere. Religious teaching should be outside of the public school classroom. Wait. Isn't that the law now?

Y'know, I like it. I really like the idea of the bible being taught in mythology classes. The problem is, few grade and high schools offer mythology classes, and I have a problem with restricting what can be taught, and how, to college students since they have the choice as to what classes to take.

Diana has done a good job of showing the dark side of restricting information and what can be taught. Beyond any other single ideal enshrined in our Constitution and in the culture of America is the idea that there should be a free exchange of ideas and robust debate.

I say this with some reluctance because of the cockamamie, screwball ideas that get floated out in to cyberspace and worse, private class rooms that can influence young minds. Creationism is one of those nutty ideas. But our freedom of expression trumps the idea of restriction of information.

But when it comes to the youth of our Nation, as opposed to people of voting age, some restrictions on public education do apply. That is why we have court cases such as Dover.

I agree that mythology should be taught in public schools. All myths should be taught, including the Sumerian/Hebrew creation myths presented in Genesis. We probably do a disservice to truth by segregating Biblical creation myths from all others, thus giving the myths in Genesis a separate and elevated stature.

[dianaiad]

I agree that mythology should be taught in public schools. All myths should be taught, including the Sumerian/Hebrew creation myths presented in Genesis. We probably do a disservice to truth by segregating Biblical creation myths from all others, thus giving the myths in Genesis a separate and elevated stature.

I'm in full agreement with this, actually. All mythology should be taught, because mythology is the soul of any culture. You can learn the facts of history, who fought whom, what trade routes went where, What ruler did this or that or conquered the other...but if you want to know the truth of the culture and the attitudes of the people in it, study their creation stories; the mythology.

Freely acknowledge that some of the students believe that there is more than cultural and anthropological truth in some of 'em, but that the search in the classroom is for a different sort of truth....and those who want to take such things as gospel (pun intended) should learn from their religious leaders in a venue outside of public school.

Of course, doing that means that one must teach the stories of mythology as if they are true. That is, 'what can we learn from this story and the way it was/is taught to the believers,' not 'how can we promote or debunk it?

THAT isn't going to make anybody happy.

[Danmark]

Of course, doing that means that one must teach the stories of mythology as if they are true. That is, 'what can we learn from this story and the way it was/is taught to the believers,' not 'how can we promote or debunk it?

THAT isn't going to make anybody happy.

I'm with you except for "... one must teach the stories of mythology as if they are true."
The issue is not that these myths are true or that they should be promoted or debunked. As you say, the myths are part of the culture that created them; an important part. The myths have power. There is an assumption that the myths represent something very different from true historical events. Mythology lends meaning to a culture and satisfies the need for meaning. The problem comes from mistaking the myth for actual events of history. We get meaning from the myth of Sisyphus. We get meaning from the various myths of the hero's quest.

This meaning and value is separate and apart from the claim that these myths 'actually happened.' They didn't.

There is value in the story of Adam and Eve and the myth of a serpent tempting them with knowledge and wisdom. The mistake comes when the naive accept the mythology and the stories and mistake them for actual historical events. By insisting that these myths represent actual events, the literalist actually weakens the lessons these powerful and instructive myths offer us.

[dianaiad]

Of course, doing that means that one must teach the stories of mythology as if they are true. That is, 'what can we learn from this story and the way it was/is taught to the believers,' not 'how can we promote or debunk it?

THAT isn't going to make anybody happy.

I'm with you except for "... one must teach the stories of mythology as if they are true."
The issue is not that these myths are true or that they should be promoted or debunked. As you say, the myths are part of the culture that created them; an important part. The myths have power. There is an assumption that the myths represent something very different from true historical events. Mythology lends meaning to a culture and satisfies the need for meaning. The problem comes from mistaking the myth for actual events of history. We get meaning from the myth of Sisyphus. We get meaning from the various myths of the hero's quest.

This meaning and value is separate and apart from the claim that these myths 'actually happened.' They didn't.

There is value in the story of Adam and Eve and the myth of a serpent tempting them with knowledge and wisdom. The mistake comes when the naive accept the mythology and the stories and mistake them for actual historical events. By insisting that these myths represent actual events, the literalist actually weakens the lessons these powerful and instructive myths offer us.

That's what I meant when I wrote about teaching mythology as it was/is taught to the believers, not "how we can promote or debunk it."

The proper study of mythology is entirely apart from any purely religious truth it may have...that is an entirely different situation.

Mythology is not history...but it is a reflection of the psychology of those who lived that history.

Mythology is not just religion, and should not be studied as religion except in the churches and belief systems devoted to it.

Mythology; the creation stories of a culture and society, are worthwhile and important parts of that culture and society. To study it in order to prove it factually true (even when it might be) or to prove that it is NOT factually true (even when it might not be) is to miss the whole point.

Who CARES if it's historical fact? It doesn't matter; that's not why we should study and respect it. All of it. This is a matter of psychology and anthropology, not religion, even when it is also religion.

Besides, all mythology is true, in that it gives us very true glimpses into the minds and hearts of those who formed it and believe it.

Can we investigate even our own mythology in this way, the mythology that we might firmly believe in as religious Truth? Absolutely...and we don't have to cease to believe it as religious truth in order to do so, either.

[Danmark]

That's what I meant when I wrote about teaching mythology as it was/is taught to the believers, not "how we can promote or debunk it."

The proper study of mythology is entirely apart from any purely religious truth it may have...that is an entirely different situation.

Mythology is not history...but it is a reflection of the psychology of those who lived that history.

Mythology is not just religion, and should not be studied as religion except in the churches and belief systems devoted to it.

Mythology; the creation stories of a culture and society, are worthwhile and important parts of that culture and society. To study it in order to prove it factually true (even when it might be) or to prove that it is NOT factually true (even when it might not be) is to miss the whole point.

Who CARES if it's historical fact? It doesn't matter; that's not why we should study and respect it. All of it. This is a matter of psychology and anthropology, not religion, even when it is also religion.

Besides, all mythology is true, in that it gives us very true glimpses into the minds and hearts of those who formed it and believe it.

Can we investigate even our own mythology in this way, the mythology that we might firmly believe in as religious Truth? Absolutely...and we don't have to cease to believe it as religious truth in order to do so, either.

I agree with you with one exception. It DOES matter if the historical facts the myth is based upon are true. I agree that the myth itself, as myth, is important, and instructive, and perhaps even has its own 'truth.' But it is still important to distinguish between what really happened and the validity of the myth as myth.

Perhaps it is valuable to take an example:

Let's take the pivotal example of Jesus Christ. We can all agree that the story of a man who also exists as a God who died to save us from the penalty of sin is a powerful story that can enhance our understanding of the world and our devotion to following the commandments and ethical principles Jesus taught.

His story gives us value and can inspire us and unite us and give us meaning even if we understand that no such person ever existed. His story can inspire us and give us meaning and authenticate our lives whether or not we conclude he was God or that he existed as a real person of history.

This is a powerful mythology, but it still matters to us if Jesus was real or not. His deeds and his teachings have value for us even if we conclude he is not and never was a 'God' and even if we believe he never existed or that the image we have of him is based on a composite of several real people.

Even tho' I am a non theist, I have no embarrassment in saying 'I love Jesus.' In SOME respects it makes no difference to me whether he really was a god or not; or whether he existed as portrayed in the book of Mark.

Having said that, I still have to concede it makes a difference if he is a mythological figure, or if he really was god incarnate.

I'm not arguing [here] that Jesus was or was not a god; or that he did or did not exist. What I'm arguing is that his person and the stories about him have meaning for me and for our culture even if he exists solely as a mythological character.

[Ooberman]

Di,
I thought of another way to express my point.

Imagine you had some Good Idea. Would you suggest I keep that Idea covered and hidden, like a light under a basket?

Do you think that Idea should told to all corners of the Earth?

Now, I'm not suggesting we kill and torture people for not believing it - as Jesus says about his Idea.

The point is, Creationism is the bad idea. Evolution is the Good Idea. Like Jesus told people to tell the good idea (which, as it turns out is a mixture of good and bad ideas), and that all other ideas are unproductive, I am saying that focusing on proven science is a good idea that deserves being spread, and Creationism is a bad idea that is unproductive.

Would you agree with Jesus that good ideas should be disseminated over bad ones?

[dianaiad]

Di,
I thought of another way to express my point.

Imagine you had some Good Idea. Would you suggest I keep that Idea covered and hidden, like a light under a basket?

Do you think that Idea should told to all corners of the Earth?

Now, I'm not suggesting we kill and torture people for not believing it - as Jesus says about his Idea.

The point is, Creationism is the bad idea. Evolution is the Good Idea. Like Jesus told people to tell the good idea (which, as it turns out is a mixture of good and bad ideas), and that all other ideas are unproductive, I am saying that focusing on proven science is a good idea that deserves being spread, and Creationism is a bad idea that is unproductive.

Would you agree with Jesus that good ideas should be disseminated over bad ones?

Jesus said to "let your light so shine," Ooberman. He did not say. as far as I can tell, 'Keep other people from shining their lights."

I think that the principle to be used here is 'truth outshines.'

That is, the guy next to the theatrical spotlight doesn't really worry about the guy with the penlight out illuminating the star on stage, does he?

That's the thing; we don't have to attack the bad ideas; they attack themselves. I have faith that people will see the difference between two ideas, especially when they are so disparate, and one of them has so much evidence for it, as the ideas regarding the processes of creation have. I don't know anybody who has gone from believing in evolution to believing in literal biblical creationism, if they actually know anything about geology and biology............

but I know quite a few who have gone from literal biblical creationism to an acceptance of the science, and by no means did all of those folks lose their faith in God in the process.

I guess I'm pointing out, not that literal biblical creationism is a good idea; it's obvious that I think it's a bad one. The point I am attempting to make, here, is that it is not only a waste of time to attack it, it's counterproductive. Literal biblical creationism is not a scientific stand; it's a religious one, and nothing cements religious opinion like opposition to it.

The best way to 'battle,' since that seems to be the mindset you are in, 'bad ideas' is simply and only to promote good ones. Shoot, you don't even need to ADDRESS the bad ideas. Simply present your evidence for what you think is true and let your listener make up his or her own mind.

In sum, I get really, really nervous at the slightest hint that we...any of us...have the right to depress, attack or otherwise eliminate 'bad ideas,' no matter how that opposition begins as civil or kindly. It never remains civil and kindly. Ever...and as I wrote, it doesn't work.

What does remain 'civil and kindly,' and does work, is support for the good ideas. This works in many ways, including this one: your good idea may be someone else's bad one, and being human, you COULD be wrong. Of course you don't think so now, but neither do the folks you are railing against.

Nope, if you have the good idea, present your case, and let the bad idea folks present theirs, and the good ideas, generally and eventually, win.

[Ooberman]

I don't disagree with personal freedoms and freedom of speech. To me, it's a given. Nowhere ever did I suggest we should have Thought Police.

However, it is very clear that simply allowing bad ideas to proliferate (think of the anti-vaccination movement) based on the freedom of speech we hold dear actually robbed people of that freedom - it killed them.

People actually die from bad ideas. Heck, they can die from good ideas, too, but I hope we don't need to have a pedantic discussion about that. This thread, to me, isn't about identifying every idea on the planet and judging whether it's good or not.

I am talking about Creationism. There is simply no debate over it. Certainly YEC.

I am, apparently, the sole voice in this because after having been on these boards for over 10 years, it still comes up and then 50 pages later, it's dropped for a few months, then springs up again - robbing good people of their valuable time.

My solution: I petition, in the most democratic way, that any time some one wants to discuss YEC that we simply link to a website that addresses it and that's it.

What else needs to be said? It's been covered, and in great detail.


That is my proposal, that some Ideas - the bad ones - only need to be responded to in a way that says "this is not an issue. Let's move on."

[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?

If not then you are simply not able to accept the facts of life.

This is the stupidest comment on the fossil record.

Bs'd

Here is what the fossil record shows, you seem to have a hard time to understand it, so I'll show it again:

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


"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.



"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


The keyword is STASIS.

[Eliyahu]

The point is that evolution deniers are almost 100% exclusively fanatical religionists.

Bs'd

The point is that the fossil record shows that evolution never happened.

The point is that the fossil record is completely in agreement with the creation narritive in Genesis.

"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.

Richard can reject it as much as he wants, but the facts are clear.


"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.


"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