Um, staunch evolutionist scientists will tell you there is no scientific evidence that evolution exists.
Oh god I fu
cking lol'd. When I read this I was immediately struck with a sudden urge to change off of FOX, but then I realized I was just reading a baseless claim of a deluded lawyer parroting FOX news.
So you please explain to me why it is "basic scientific knowledge."
Oh, you know, it's only basic scientific knowledge because it's the unifying theory of biology.
I think that if your position is that it is scientific fact, it is YOUR burden to prove it is so.
Okay, sure. That's actually not true in this instance since you're the one claiming that a scientific theory supported by decades of research is faulty (and should therefore present evidence that proves your claim to be so), but I'm confident that I know enough about the field to dismiss any confused assertions you might make against it.
And since the basic tenets of science involve such a proof process, the fact that you cannot prove it not only makes you scientifically flawed, but a hypocrite.
The hell are you going on about? Until your post here, you hadn't challenged evolution so I had absolutely no reason to defend it. Do you expect me to preempt your arguments now? Some unrealistic expectations right there.
I think it is truly sad that you consider something "fact" without ANY proof whatsoever.
Yes, because the fossil record, genetic variation, DNA sequencing, natural selection and artificial selection aren't proof whatsoever that evolution is real and takes place all around us. You couldn't be any more right.
That is blind ignorance at its finest.
It's funny you say this, considering you're the religious one.
At least have the academic integrity to require at least some evidence before forming an opinion as to the truth of a matter.
This is just pathetic.
I've been studying evolution continuously (through biology courses and on my own time) for four years now. I dare say I understand it far more than you do, and considering you've yet to present any actual argument against its validity, I'd say I do so quite easily.
So let me leave you with some statements of major scientists who fully believe and support evolution:
"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."
Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127
Ah, Gould. I know about him.
This also isn't the first time I've seen him misquoted like this. Of course, I won't be surprised if this is news to you, because you probably got this quote off the first pro-creationism website Google offered you when you searched "scientists against evolution" or something. Anyway, Gould is not arguing against evolution or the fossil record here. What he's arguing against is the gradualist evolutionary model, which basically says that evolution proceeds slowly but continuously in all species. Gould then goes on to provide an alternative evolutionary view, called
punctuated equilibrium, which he argues fits the fossil record more accurately than the gradualist approach. He never claims that the fossil record is useless, as misquoting him here would lead one to believe.
Nice try, though. If this misquote is any indication of what I'll be dealing with in the rest of this post, I'm not lying when I say I'm really looking forward to making you look like a horse's ass again.
"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory."
Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216
Judging by the order of these two quotes, I'm guessing you're getting at least some of this stuff from creationism.org, which is pretty funny.
Alright, so, Dr. West this time. Sounds good.
So, funny thing: This quote actually has nothing to do with evolution whatsoever. If you read what he's saying carefully, he's not saying that Darwinian (or the gradualist approach to) evolution is unsupported or wrong. What he's saying is that it's intellectually dishonest to say that the fossil record validates the Darwinian model, and then to turn around and say that the Darwinian model validates the fossil record. He's arguing for a different model to be used to understand the fossil record. This is evidenced by him saying there are several other theories to explain the fossil record.
Again, nice try.
Darwin himself said--
"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?"
-Charles Darwin
This is actually answered easily, considering this is just a fine example of creationist quote-mining. Darwin was not posing this as an independent question. Rather, it was the lead-up to a chapter that explained exactly what he asked in that quote (the answer can be found
here). Darwin dedicated an entire chapter of
On the Origin of Species to answering that question he posed. Fair warning, though: It's long. Read it if you want to actually know why that quote is absurd, though something tells me you won't do it.
"In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."
-Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
Oh boy, more quote-mining. How did I not see this coming? /sarcasm
Let's put this bad boy into context, shall we?
"Superb fossil data have recently been gathered from deposits of early Cenozoic Age in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming. These deposits represent the first part of the Eocene Epoch, a critical interval when many types of modern mammals came into being. The Bighorn Basin, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, received large volumes of sediment from the Rockies when they were being uplifted, early in the Age of Mammals. In its remarkable degree of completeness, the fossil record here for the Early Eocene is unmatched by contemporary deposits exposed elsewhere in the world. The deposits of the Bighorn Basin provide a nearly continuous local depositional record for this interval, which lasted some five million years. It used to be assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked together in such a way as to illustrate continuous evolution. Careful collecting has now shown otherwise. 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. Furthermore, species lasted for astoundingly long periods of time. David M. Schankler has recently gathered data for about eighty mammal species that are known from more than two stratigraphic levels in the Bighorn Basin. Very few of these species existed for less than half a million years, and their average duration was greater than a million years."So, if you bothered to read the full quote, you'll see that he was talking specifically of the fossil record in Bighorn Basin, not the entire, worldwide fossil record.
Source:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-1.html, Quote #7
Nice try, etc.
"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed"
-Paleontologist George Gaylord
What he actually said:
"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed. Of course the orders all converge backward in time, to different degrees. The earliest known members are much more alike than the latest known members, and there is little doubt, for instance, but that all of the highly diverse ungulates did have a common ancestry; but the line making actual connection with such an ancestry is not known in even one instance."Here, he's speaking of inferring specific ancestral lines through the fossil record. He's not saying that the fossil record is wrong, or that no transitional fossils exist (which seems to be what the quote is meant to imply).
A major problem in proving the theory 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.
-Paleontologist Mark Czarnecki (an evolutionist)
What he actually said:
"A major problem in proving the theory 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 as described in the Bible."And yet again, this is speaking specifically of Darwinian evolution. As I've already explained, there is controversy over which approach is the most accurate, with evolutionary biologists siding with and against the Darwinian model as they see fit.
What I find funny, though, are two other quotes from Czarnecki. I think you'll appreciate them especially.
When discussing some people's views of theories and facts, he had this to say: "Such a pedagogical approach, though initiated with the best of intentions, strips the corpus of scientific knowledge down to certain facts that can be perceived by the five senses with the aid of technology; everything else is factually suspect because it cannot be directly "observed" - so much for paleontology (fossil study) and all of nuclear physics."
And, a few sentences later, this: "What about history? Past events cannot be observed, records of them are just fallible memories, words - just like the Bible, in fact."
Basically, he's saying that just because you can't see it or observe it directly doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I seem to recall an argument of that caliber being a favorite of the evolution-denying camp.
"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 both reject this alternative."
-Richard Dawkins, 'The Blind Watchmaker', W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1996, pp. 229-230
Okay, I have to admit I laughed when I noticed you quoted Dawkins as if he were criticizing the legitimacy of evolution. Clearly you don't keep up with this man's antics, though you should have gotten a hint that something was amiss when you got a quote from a book called 'The Blind Watchmaker', clearly a title mocking Intelligent Design Theory, that seemed to say evolution's validity was shaky at best. Gotta love blind quote-mining.
Anyway, let's deal with this quote. What he actually said:
"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. Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago. One good reason might be that many of these animals had only soft parts to their bodies: no shells or bones to fossilize. If you are a creationist you may think that this is special pleading. My point here is that, when we are talking about gaps of this magnitude, there is no difference whatever in the interpretations of 'punctuationists' and 'gradualists'. 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."So, there you go. I don't think that really needs much explanation on my part.
Evolutionist Stephen J. Gould of Harvard University put it this way during a lecture at Hobart & William Smith College....
"Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible distress. ....They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it."
Cite your source. I'm fairly certain he never said this, considering it sounds like a mish-mash of his existing quotes.
I could go on and on and on.
Oh, I'm sure you could. There are tons of creationist websites that generate these little gems every day, though I don't think you'd want to continue attempting to use quote-mined, misinformed poop to support your argument. Your call.
But these are just a few misquotes from leading scientists who actually believe in evolution that freely understand the scientific flaws in attempting to call it a "fact" based on the information that exists. that have been deliberately taken out of context in order to support creation myths.
FTFY
It is comical that you won't generally find scientists willing to go that far
Ooooh really?
"In his book, 'The Greatest Show on Earth', Dawkins aims to put the theory of evolution in a factually unassailable position."From
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5244-richard-dawkins-on-why-evolution-trumps-creationism.
I could go on, but I won't.
but so many uneducated laymen like yourself will make such a bold and unscientific conclusion.
I lol'd heartily. You're such a presumptuous, confrontational asshat that you genuinely think everyone has it wrong. Except you, of course. I used to think it was simply an act, but I stopped being that naive years ago. You're actually that guy who can't be wrong, and is perfectly willing to delude himself to preserve a world where he is never wrong. I truly pity you.
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