Summations Only

Bs'dThe fossile record clearly shows that evolution NEVER took place. It shows that species pop up suddenly, without any link too supposed predecessors, and they stay unchanged during their whole stay in the fossile record.This should be enough to settle the whole evolution vs creation debate.Here are some statements of evolutionistic scholars on that subject: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. 15Stephen 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 I 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. 181-182So there we have it: NO evolution, but sudden appearance and stasis.That is totally in line with the creation story, and rips apart the evolution theory.

Note to participants: The opening post is a cut-n-paste from fossils - MountZion with a few new sentences added at the top and bottom.Strangely, every page at that website has "Bs'd" near the top. I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean what English speaking readers might think, but I don't know what it does mean. The authors (Rabbi Yitschak Goldstein and Eliyahu Silver) use the non-word "en" to mean both "in" and "and", and from looking at other pages at their site (echadnl - MountZion) it would appear that their native language is likely Dutch.

Thread copied here from the The fossile record conclusively disproves evolution thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

It either means

quote:

---

Besiyata Dishmaya (Aramaic: בסיעתא דשמיא) is an Aramaic phrase, meaning "with the help of Heaven".

---

or

quote:

---

Big Swinging Dick. A front office 'player' in sell-side or a hedge fund. An executive who is personally responsible for bringing revenue in.

---

HBD

Welcome to this fray Eliyahu,But I have to wonder how well\ill prepared you are to answer questions raised by those that reply to your (albeit shortened) lengthy cut and paste from a website of questionable value given that you have not provided us with your understanding of these matters ...Ignorance is not an argument, Eliyahu, nor is being deluded by others, but these are conditions that are curable:
An introduction to evolution - Understanding EvolutionA good place to start for remedial education in evolution. Pasting PRATTs copied from a creationist website without researching to see if they are PRATTs is intellectual dishonesty. Pasting material from a source not your own without citation of your source is plagarism, another form of dishonesty.Fossils are like snap shots of prehistory. If you walked across the US and took a picture each day of you in your then current location, and plotted them on a map, you would see that you just "pop up suddenly" in different places without any link to previous locations. So why are no two fossils identical? And the evidence for punctuated equilibrium.Do you know that not all fossil records behave according to punctuated equilibrium?web.archive.org/web/19990203140657/gly.fsu.edu/tour/article_7.html

quote:

---

EVOLUTION AT SEA COMPLETE FOSSIL RECORD FROM THE OCEAN UPHOLDS DARWIN'S GRADUALISM THEORIES
Tony Arnold and Bill Parker compiled what may be the largest, most complete set of data on the evolutionary history of any group of organisms, marine or otherwise. The two scientists amassed something that their land-based colleagues only dreamed about: An intact fossil record with no missing links.

​

"It's all here--a virtually complete evolutionary record," says Arnold. "There are other good examples, but this is by far the best. We're seeing the whole picture of how this group of organisms has changed throughout most of its existence on Earth."

​

Punctuated equilibrium holds that new species may arise fairly quickly (over thousands instead of millions of years) from small animal populations that somehow become isolated. Intermediate stages are too fleeting to become fixed in the fossil record--thus the conspicuous gaps or so-called missing links. (Darwin blamed the "imperfection in the geological record" for the gaps in the fossil record.)

​

But in the near-perfect record exhibited by the forams studied at FSU, the highly touted Eldredge-Gould theory of punctuated equilibrium apparently doesn't work. The record reveals a robust, highly branched evolutionary tree, complete with Darwin's predicted "dead ends"--varieties that lead nowhere--and a profusion of variability in sizes and body shapes. Transitional forms between species are readily apparent, making it relatively easy to track ancestor species to their descendents. In short, the finding upholds Darwin's lifelong conviction that "nature does not proceed in leaps," but rather is a system prepetually unfolding in extreme slow motion.

---

oops.When punctuated equilibrium occurs there is an explanation for it, but it isn't a universal occurrence.A Smooth Fossil Transition: Pelycodus

quote:

---

​

The dashed lines show the overall trend. The species at the bottom is Pelycodus ralstoni, but at the top we find two species, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus. The two species later became even more distinct, and the descendants of nunienus are now labeled as genus Smilodectes instead of genus Notharctus.

​

As you look from bottom to top, you will see that each group has some overlap with what came before. There are no major breaks or sudden jumps. And the form of the creatures was changing steadily.

---

oops again eh?So if there IS evidence of actual evolution actually taking place, then why are there instances of punctuated equilibrium? Differential Dispersal Of Introduced Species - An Aspect of Punctuated Equilibrium

quote:

---

One of the problems that creationists seem to have with evolution is how new species can disburse and displace existing species. This is especially true for the punctuated equilibrium ("punk eek") model of Gould and Eldridge. This article is to discuss the dispersal aspects of small populations into a new environment, removing the issue of new species evolution from the discussion.

​

Bird species introduced into North America, both intentionally and accidentally, have shown different levels of dispersal across the continent. In some cases we know that they had only small initial populations located in one place, the point of release. We also know that they were not here before being introduced. Thus such species are good models for new species dispersal behavior into a new environment.

​

(1) European House Sparrow

​

From only 50 sparrows to continent wide in less than 150 years (maximum - probably more like 50 years).

​

(2) European Starling

​

From only 50 starlings to continent wide in less than 50 years.

​

(3) English Skylark

​

Those skylarks did not survive. Others introduced to Vancouver Island (BC, Canada) in the 1900's have established a resident population on the island.

​

(4) Crested Myna

​

Now getting down to the point where sightings are rare and they are expected to die out soon -- the last count only found two birds. One of the reasons for the decline is competition with the European Starlings: the decline started in the 1930's and that was about when the Starlings showed up.

​

(5) Chukar

​

Numbers and range expanding in spite of being hunted.

​

(6) Budgerigar

​

Peaked and now in decline

​

(7) Rose-ringed Parakeets

​

Established in 3 different locations and apparently growing in one of them.

​

Conclusions

​

Thus we see two extremely successful dispersions and others of limited success and finally some that succeeded only to lose out to later competition. Obviously not all introductions are successful, and just as obviously not all newly evolved species will win out in similar circumstances.

​

Native species are being impacted by the "successful" introductions (Starlings and House Sparrows) but they are still viable at this time (probably most impacted is the Eastern Bluebird). There was no eco-niche vacuum for the newcomers to fill and there was competition, but they have been able to disperse across the continent.

​

Any one of these would have appeared "suddenly" and "without any transitions" in the fossil record.

​

(Once a new species has evolved it could disperse in much the same way, and if they evolved in isolation in a small area or an area that didn't make fossils then there would be no record of any transitions)

---

So punctuated equilibrium does not occur all the time and when it does it is not a problem for evolution to explain.Edited by RAZD, : pratts: An Index to Creationist ClaimsEdited by RAZD, : +Edited by RAZD, : subT

Gould was not arguing against evolution, he was arguing for his own ideas about how evolution happened.The idea of Punctuated Equilibria is that speciation occurred via Mayr's mechanism of allopatric speciation. A small population would be cut off from the main body, and would rapidly evolve through drift and differing selection pressures. In some cases the new species that resulted would be able to expand past the barrier that had isolated it and replace the parent species.Since this evolution would take place in a relatively small population, and a restricted geographical area it would be expected to be usually absent from the fossil record.However, according to this view the "missing" fossils would be intermediates between palaeontological species. Intermediates between higher taxonomic groups should still appear, in accord with evolutionary theory. And this is what we find.The fossil record, therefore, provides very strong evidence for evolution.

Hi Eliyahu,In case other people are wondering, "Bs'd" appears to be an abbreviation for the Aramaic phrase "B'Sayata Di'shamaya," which means "With the Help of Heaven." (Source: GoDaddy Security - Access Denied, et. al.)Aren't those quotes arguing against gradualism, not evolution?--Percy

So you quote Niles and Gould, two evolutionists, as support for your position that evolution is disproved. Did that not strike you as odd? That the people you are quoting concluded the exact opposite than you have seems to suggest they know or at least believe something you don't, right? But your debate opening simply does not include discussion of this, as if you were ignorant of it somehow.But this is unusual, as these ideas have been known and accepted for decades. Did you earnestly think we were unaware of these things? If not, why did you not tackle modern evolutionary thinking as part of building your case?Punctuated equilibrium is an attack not on evolution, but on something akin to phyletic gradualism.

quote:

---

Phyletic gradualism is a model of evolution which theorizes that most speciation is slow, uniform and gradual. When evolution occurs in this mode, it is usually by the steady transformation of a whole species into a new one (through a process called anagenesis). In this view no clear line of demarcation exists between an ancestral species and a descendant species, unless splitting occurs.

---

(from wiki)As Darwin said:

quote:

---

These several facts accord well with our theory, which includes no fixed law of development, causing all the inhabitants of an area to change abruptly, or simultaneously, or to an equal degree. The process of modification must be slow, and will generally affect only a few species at the same time; for the variability of each species is independent of that of all others. Whether such variations or individual differences as may arise will be accumulated through natural selection in a greater or less degree, thus causing a greater or less amount of permanent modification, will depend on many complex contingencies--on the variations being of a beneficial nature, on the freedom of intercrossing, on the slowly changing physical conditions of the country, on the immigration of new colonists, and on the nature of the other inhabitants with which the varying species come into competition. Hence it is by no means surprising that one species should retain the same identical form much longer than others; or, if changing, should change in a less degree. We find similar relations between the existing inhabitants of distinct countries; for instance, the land-shells and coleopterous insects of Madeira have come to differ considerably from their nearest allies on the continent of Europe, whereas the marine shells and birds have remained unaltered. We can perhaps understand the apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial and in more highly organised productions compared with marine and lower productions, by the more complex relations of the higher beings to their organic and inorganic conditions of life, as explained in a former chapter. When many of the inhabitants of any area have become modified and improved, we can understand, on the principle of competition, and from the all-important relations of organism to organism in the struggle for life, that any form which did not become in some degree modified and improved, would be liable to extermination. Hence, we see why all the species in the same region do at last, if we look to long enough intervals of time, become modified; for otherwise they would become extinct.

​

In members of the same class the average amount of change, during long and equal periods of time, may, perhaps, be nearly the same; but as the accumulation of enduring formations, rich in fossils, depends on great masses of sediment being deposited on subsiding areas, our formations have been almost necessarily accumulated at wide and irregularly intermittent intervals of time; consequently the amount of organic change exhibited by the fossils embedded in consecutive formations is not equal. Each formation, on this view, does not mark a new and complete act of creation, but only an occasional scene, taken almost at hazard, in an ever slowly changing drama.

---

Eldredge and Gould just really nailed this idea down (though they were mostly under the impression that biologists were strict phyletic gradualists which may have had some limited truth to it), that's all.Their model basically supposes that one large population gets split somehow (getting stuck on an island, in an isolated rock pool or what have you). The chance of any individual being fossilized is low. It is therefore true that we are more likely to find fossils left behind of the large population than of the smaller one.But biologists have done a good job of showing that mutations are more likely to become fixed in smaller populations. So that would seem to indicate that smaller populations, if they survive long enough, are able to evolve quicker toward some solution. If this isolated area has specific demands that the other lacks in some way, we would anticipate the comparative rapid adaptation of the smaller population (as compared with the rate of change of the large population).Let us suppose this process continues for a long time, but then circumstance reunite the two populations. They are now quite different morphologically and genetically and cannot interbreed. They are thus competitors. This may play out in a number of ways, but let us consider the outcome where the smaller population acts as an invasive species and is better adapted at life in the large populations environment than they are. Then as we know from introducing invasive species ourselves, they can completely decimate the native species within a few years possibly driving them to extinction or to leave their old haunts, if they are able.The chances that any fossils exist of this changing population? Lower than the chances of fossils from the larger one. The chances that we'll find the fossils? Much greater with the larger population.But at the end - the sizes of the populations effectively invert. And now 'suddenly' the new species starts getting fossilized more often as there are more opportunities. And so, educated guesses into where to look for fossils are more likely to strike upon this new population which seems to 'suddenly' appear in the fossil record.If you were interested, these kinds of processes do have mathematical models around them, you could go look some of them up.Disproving phyletic gradualism as the normal mode of evolution does not falsify evolution. Which is why most evolutionary biologists accept evolution but do not accept phyletic gradualism. Rates of morphological change are not constant, as the rates depend on complex contingencies. The chances of us finding fossils is related to the number of fossils there are, and the area we're searching over. Small isolated populations leave less fossils in a smaller area making coming across them quite improbable. Therefore - we should expect to see new paleo-species 'appear' quite suddenly in our limited fossil record if evolution works how we believe it does.

Your argument seems to rely on quoting real scientists out of context and then daydreaming that they mean what you want them to mean. Perhaps we should let them, in their own words, supply some context, and explain what they meant.---"In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record." --- Gould, Evolution's Erratic Pace, Natural History 86(5):12-16."Our theory holds, as a defining statement, that ordinary allopatric speciation, unfolding gradually at microevolutionary scales, translates to punctuation in geological time." --- Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am - for I have become a major target of these practices." --- Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory"Stasis had continued to be ignored until Gould and I showed that such stability is a real aspect of life's history which must be confronted - and that, in fact, it posed no fundamental threat to the basic notion of evolution itself." --- Niles Eldredge, Time Frames"My version of how the evolutionary process works lines up very well with Darwin’s. [...] this new picture is not un-Darwinian, let alone anti-Darwinian. [...] I confess that I am a true Darwinist." --- Nile Eldredge, Confessions of a Darwinist."Q: Does the fossil record provide evidence for the existence of transitional forms?
A: Yes, it does.
Q: Are there many such examples?
A: Yes, there are." --- Stephen Jay Gould, sworn testimony in McClean v. Arkansas."Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact." --- Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory"I think they [creationists] proceed by misquotation, by selective quotation, and by invoking supernatural intervention to produce the basic kinds of life, all of which are not only unscientific, but represent skill and rhetoric rather than science." --- Stephen Jay Gould, sworn testimony in McClean v. Arkansas.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

It doesn't matter what Gould or any others themselves meant, if what they said has implications for creationist views that's a perfectly valid way to use their quotes.

Really?It doesn't matter what anyone says then, Faith -- especially you and your fantasies about the Grand Canyon and the age of the earth ... So it's okay if we "misrepresent" your statements to make counter arguments because "that's a perfectly valid" way to use quotes.And you claim to be honest, but scream about not being properly understood.Really?

quote:

---

It doesn't matter what Gould or any others themselves meant, if what they said has implications for creationist views that's a perfectly valid way to use their quotes.

---

So distortions and misrepresentations are acceptable if they serve your cause ? If the creationist use is at odds with Gould's meaning then it must be - at the least - an unintentional misrepresentation.

Misrepresentation isn't the point in this case, the point is only that some things they said can be shown to point to different conclusions than theirs. I don't see that Eliyahu claimed they meant what he got iout of them anyway. This is an entirely different situation. But I'm not following this thread, I just thought it was illogical to claim somebody's observation can't be used for a different purpose than it was intended.In the case of the other thread I HAVE been misrepresented and I don't think anybody has ever fairly and honestly recognized the point I've been making. And what I've said isn't being used for any other conclusion, it's just being misrepresented in such a garbled way it makes no sense.But this is typical, what you've said, just not getting the point in either case. Bad logic, bad thinking. Typical./Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

quote:

---

Misrepresentation isn't the point in this case,

---

Then what Gould meant IS relevant.

quote:

---

the point is only that some things they said can be shown to point to different conclusions than theirs

---

I don't believe that that is true, if the statements are properly understood.

And, for you, "bad logic, bad thinking" is defined as not accepting your interpretation of the bible.