Why is it that genetic similarity = common descent? Isn't that an interpretation not an observation?

[pevaquark (Matthew Pevarnik)]

So if transitional fossils were all that existed, then yes you would have some point but there are loads of other evidence.

But let’s start with each of these folks and my analysis of whether they were quote mined (also see the Talk Origins link on quote mining)…

Mary Leakey - 22 publications with 621 citations (pretty good record) - she laid a lot of the foundational work for early bipedalism in the transition from walking on four limbs to two. Why would she work on this for decades if she believed we were spontaneously popped into existence? - QUOTE MINED

Richard Lewontin - 116 publications with 10,000 citations (very impressive!) - what does he actually think about evolution? Well he coauthored a paper in 2004 called ‘Teaching Evolutionary Biology.’ So yeah, to use a quote of him like that - QUOTE MINED

Colin Patterson - 35 publications with 1,288 citations (also very good) - what does he think about evolution? One of his most cited papers ‘Congruence between molecular and morphological phylogenies’ discusses how any potential gaps in morphological phylogenies have been supplemented by molecular phylogenies (i.e. molecular evidence supports fossil evidence) - QUOTE MINED

Pierre Grasse - 14 publications with 780 citations (quite good as well) - what does he think about evolution? I don’t know French but this paper kind of sums it up (L’évolution de la symbiose chez les Isoptères). - QUOTE MINED

Niles Eldredge - 48 publications with 1601 citations (if you include his books with Steven J Gould and others he’s up to 20,000 citations). Anyways, here’s a book he coauthored: https://research.amnh.org/vz/ornithology/pdfs/Eldredge%20Cracraft80.entire%20book.pdf (the goal of the book was to unit systematics, the ordering of the Earth’s biota and evolution) - QUOTE MINED

George G. Simpson - 39 publications with 277 citations (a decent career) - just read his paper titles. It is so ironic that he is quote mined when he helped establish the impressive story of the fossil record - QUOTE MINED

Bruce McFadden - 160 publications with 2,364 citations - the quote from him about straight line evolution is a good quote as straight line evolution isn’t even a real thing and it is misleading! I agree. Also, he’s written about evolution and the chemical origins of life - QUOTE MINED

David Raup - 64 publications with 4,865 citations - just look at his publications ‘Fossil preservation and stratiagraphic ranges of taxa’ (i.e. Noah’s flood wasn’t global), or the ‘Role of Extinction in Evolution’ - QUOTE MINED

Robert Barnes - 3 publications 25 citations (though his textbook is on its 5th edition) - not exactly an expert but it’s pretty obvious given his focus on invertebrates (and their beginnings) we don’t have too much on them - this was also written first in the 1950s before many many many many transitional fossils were formed - SOMEWHAT QUOTE MINED

E.J.H. Corner - One major paper called ‘The Durian Theory or the Origin of the Modern Tree’ - the quote mine is mysterious as he writes ‘but I still think that.’ I wonder what came before it. Maybe he was comparing the Durian Theory to special creation (in 1949) and you can read about it on the Wikipedia article if you like - DEFINITELY QUOTE MINED AND IRRELEVANT TO FOSSILS

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Dredge

Why did He make the sky blue, grass green and Dredge super-handsome?

But the question with “why nested hierarchies” is not “why did God do something seemingly arbitrary that could have been done differently” The question is why would God do something deceptive? Why would he intentionally plant clues that lead people in totally the wrong direction? How does that fit with his revealed character?

[Bill_II]

@Dredge

Perhaps God knew His creation would one day be interpreted as evolution and so He is using it as a test to see who will stick with Him and who will reject Him in favour of the great minds of science.

False dichotomy. There is a third option. God created using evolution and those of us who believe that are right and those that don’t are wrong. And since this is a test you know what happens to the people that fail.

[T_aquaticus]

@Dredge

or if there is a Creator God … who is quite capable of coming up with a nested hierarchy.

Why would we expect separately created species or “created kinds” to fall into a nested hierarchy? Please explain.

[T_aquaticus]

@Dredge

Where are the “innumerable” transitionals that Darwin predicted but have never been found?

Darwin wrote an entire chapter in “Origin of Species” explaining why we don’t see innumerable transitional fossils in the fossil record. Perhaps you should read it:

"For my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, in which the history is supposed to be written, being more or less different in the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the apparently abruptly changed forms of life, entombed in our consecutive, but widely separated formations. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear. "

The Origin of Species: Chapter 9

The reason that we don’t have innumerable transitional fossils in our collections is that the geologic record is not complete, and we have only searched a tiny, tiny fraction of that incomplete geologic record. In many, many cases there are millions of years between sedimentary beds where no sediments were laid down.

[T_aquaticus]

@Dredge

Why did Gould state that the fossil record is characterised by two things, “sudden appearance” and “stasis”? And this, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology”?

“Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.”–Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Theory and Fact”
http://wise.fau.edu/~tunick/courses/knowing/gould_fact-and-theory.html

[T_aquaticus]

@Dredge

Why did He make the sky blue, grass green and Dredge super-handsome?

If you can’t explain why a deity would have to create species so that they fall into a nested hierarchy, then you can’t claim that a nested hierarchy is explained by special creation.

A nested hierarchy is the only pattern of shared derived features that evolutionary mechanisms can produce when there is a lack of any significant amount of horizontal genetic transfer. Since vertical inheritance is the dominant form of inheritance in eukaryotes, we would absolutely expect to see a nested hierarchy if complex eukaryotes evolved as the theory proposes. What do we see? A nested hierarchy. The evidence supports evolution.

This is why we say that similarities are due to common ancestry, because that is what the evidence supports.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

Resorting to the sad creationist tactic of quote mining, are you? And you clearly just cut/pasted them instead of finding the sources yourself.

Does a creation of separate kinds predict convergent nested hierarchies? Do any designed objects fit in a single nested hierarchy that is superimposable on the nested hierarchy that comes from a mathematical analysis of their components?

The key words here are single and superimposable.

Think for yourself instead of cutting and pasting, please.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@T_aquaticus to Dredge

Darwin wrote an entire chapter in “Origin of Species” explaining why we don’t see innumerable transitional fossils in the fossil record. Perhaps you should read it:

Fine advice. It would be far more productive (and sincere) than cutting and pasting quote mines from creationist web sites, for certain.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@Dredge

… or if there is a Creator God … who is quite capable of coming up with a nested hierarchy.

…using evolution. I believe that’s a concise summary of the Biologos position.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@Dredge

Yes, unfortunately it is a stumbling block for many folks. I remember a nun from my highschool days who told us, “They lied to us. We weren’t created, we evolved”. A few years later she left her order and became a civlian. I’m sure evolution presented some kind of crisis of faith to her.

The stumbling block is not evolution. The stumbling block is being lied to about it.

That’s the big concern that most of us share round here. Bad arguments do not build faith: on the contrary, they undermine it. If you are trying to support the Bible — or, to put it more accurately, your interpretation of the Bible — with claims that turn out to be untrue, or misleading, or ignorant, you won’t be upholding it; on the contrary, you will be undermining it.

Evolution doesn’t necessarily mean that the Bible is false. It just means that we’ve misunderstood it. The parts of the Bible that evolution rubs up against are parts that leave a lot of things wide open to interpretation anyway.

@cwhenderson

I don’t really know enough paleontology to be considered a novice, but my general impression is that the fossil evidence for transitional species exists, but still not to the extent that scientists of previous generations expected or hoped for. Maybe @jammycakes can add some actual knowledge.

I’m not sure why you’re citing me as a particular expert. I’m not a paleontologist myself and I don’t have any more understanding of the fossil record than anyone else round here. Other than that @Joel_Duff has a fairly comprehensive blog about that sort of thing.

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

Joel has some great articles. Here is another blog that addresses the fossil issue and has a lot of other neat information, some totally unrelated to evolution:

Realistic Expectations for Transitional Fossils

[cwhenderson (Curtis Henderson)]

@jammycakes

I’m not sure why you’re citing me as a particular expert.

My mistake, I had somehow formulated in my head that you worked in geology and were probably much more familiar with paleontology than I.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@jammycakes

The stumbling block is not evolution. The stumbling block is being lied to about it.

That’s the big concern that most of us share round here. Bad arguments do not build faith: on the contrary, they undermine it. If you are trying to support the Bible — or, to put it more accurately, your interpretation of the Bible — with claims that turn out to be untrue, or misleading, or ignorant, you won’t be upholding it; on the contrary, you will be undermining it.

Evolution doesn’t necessarily mean that the Bible is false. It just means that we’ve misunderstood it. The parts of the Bible that evolution rubs up against are parts that leave a lot of things wide open to interpretation anyway.

This should be up on the home page!

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@Dredge

It’s not a stumbling block to me … and many other creationists. Any explanation I could offer as to why God’s creation is as it is would just be a childish and pointless guess. I don’t ask why the Lord made the sky blue and the grass green, I just accept it.

The greatest minds in creationism don’t have any explanation either. That’s why they misrepresent the evidence by calling it vague similarity instead of what it really is.

[Chris_Falter]

@Dredge

don’t ask why the Lord made the sky blue and the grass green, I just accept it.

Curious scientists have asked why the sky is blue and grass is green, and they have discovered elegant explanations. Do you think scientists are impious for having investigated these questions? Are do you think they have done well?

And are you interested in the scientific explanations, Dredge? I could provide more detail if you would like.

Grace and peace,
Chris Falter

[Socratic.Fanatic]

@jammycakes

The stumbling block is not evolution. The stumbling block is being lied to about it.

Amen to that! It was certainly a shocking realization when I came to where I had a grasp of what had happened to me. The lies were shocking, not just with evolution but with the age of the earth and all sorts of “creation science” myths that were presented as if they were facts.

[dscottjorgenson (Scott Jorgenson)]

@Chris_Falter

Curious scientists have asked why the sky is blue and grass is green, and they have discovered elegant explanations.

Yes, and what makes those explanations so elegant is that they don’t merely explain why the sky is blue and the grass is green. They explain why, given the chemistry of our atmosphere and of photosynthetic plants, the sky must be blue and the grass must be green. That is one reason we find those scientific explanations so compelling - for any explanation that necessarily entails certain observed consequences, is by definition more persuasive than any competing explanation that only possibly, or optionally, entails those consequences. This is true in any walk of life, and is why the observed nested hierarchies in physiology and the genome are particularly compelling evidence for evolution versus any theory of hands-on design by an utterly free designer (ie, special creationism).

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Dredge

Still looking forward to your response…

Why is it that genetic similarity = common descent? Isn't that an interpretation not an observation?

@Dredge, These quotes are taken out of context - - and I think you know it. And in those cases where they aren’t taken out of context, the person being quoted is taking the findings out of context. To prove me wrong, all you have to do is explain why there are no horse fossils mixed in dinosaurs, or dinosaur fossils mixed in with horses, and why all the other large mammals follow exactly the same pattern disproving contemporary existence. Let me know when you have something.