Evolution Irrationality, Part Two

In part one of this post, I did two things.  First, I gave some very specific examples of transitional fossils.  Second, I challenged the creationists who continuously claim that all so-called transitions are dead ends or separate species to put their money where their mouths are and specify what exactly would qualify as a transitional (if not a four-limbed walking creature with gills like Acanthostega, for example).

In response, Bud left a comment with some quotes – one by no less an authority than Ernst Mayr - that seem to profess problems locating certain transitional fossils.  This is one of the clearest illustrations I’ve seen of creationists cherry-picking quotes that seem to fit their belief, and ignoring all others that contradict it.  Anecdotes do not make science, Bud, and neither do they comprise a rational argument.  Ernst Mayr, as you pointed out, is one of the biggest defenders of Darwinism alive on the planet.  Why don’t you quote any of the bazillion different things he’s said in support of evolution and the fossil record?  Or do you only take him seriously when he says something you like?

What’s interesting is that you also admit that Mayr points out “a few alleged transitions where millions should exist.”  Oh really?  Why should millions exist, Bud?  Because it fits with your view?  As a matter of fact, plenty of fossil transitions should not exist.  The fossil record not only has gaps, but it’s biased.  Some animals fossilize better than others.  Animals don’t simply fall on the ground and become fossils.  Fossilization is a rare event.  These are simple facts of geology and paleontology, and by ignoring them, you’re taking the argument away from reality to fit your preconceived notions.

What’s also interesting is that you completely ignored the examples I gave, and my challenge.  The fossil record has many missing transitional forms – that’s no surprise to anyone, least of all evolutionary scientists.  But that doesn’t change the fact that there are still a great many beautifully clear examples to be found.  What’s your counter for all of them?

Your comment was also indicative of yet another common creationist tactic:  Interpreting debate about evolution in the scientific community as a weakness in the general theory.  This is like tossing out all of modern cosmology because a scientist says we don’t understand black holes or dark matter.  Maybe there should be a creationist movement against the germ theory of disease, because we can’t fully understand the vectors of certain viruses.  Or how about we doubt the theory of gravitation, because we haven’t observed the graviton?

When are creationists going to learn?  But, you can’t honestly believe that a quote like, “The question of the origins of dinosaurs is one that has puzzled paleontologists for many years,” is some sort of evidence that the fossil record is irrelevant, can you?  The equivalent would be an atheist like me finding some random quotes from Christian apologists questioning the meaning of biblical verse and proclaiming, “Aha!  This guy here can’t even explain the Trinity, and this guy can’t know for sure what Jesus really meant in this particular verse!  Therefore, Christianity is obviously a big sham!”

Get real.

Evolution Irrationality

It’s difficult to imagine that in this day and age, with information so readily available, and with so many exquisite examples that continue to be uncovered, some evolution-denying Christians are still out there blithely saying, “Where are the transitional fossils?”

Even the most diehard anti-evolutionist out there has heard of Archaeopteryx and Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy).  They may not have heard of Acanthostega (a tetrapod with gills) or Tiktaalik (a fish with precursor elbow, shoulder, and finger joints) or Abulocetus natans (a transitional form between land mammals and whales) or Pikaia (an ancestor of early vertebrates).  They also may not know that in the fossil record, they earliest known tetrapods (four-limbed walking creatures) still had tail fins like fish, or that the earliest known limbs look like modified fins, or that the earliest known jaws look like modified gill arches.  They could be unaware of the dozens of fossils showing a clear evolutionary history of the elephant, each successively more like modern elephants.  they might not know our evolutionary past is stamped on our bodies in the form of duplicated genes and junk DNA, the appendix, the empty and useless yolk sac all human embryos develop, our faulty spines and knees, wisdom teeth, and even the wonderful gift of hemorrhoids.

Okay, I’m straying a bit from transitional fossils.  The problem is not that they don’t exist – the creationists can go look at all of them.  I’ve just named a few fairly well-known examples.  Despite the gaps in the fossil record, there are still plenty of clear-cut examples, examples so beautifully and obviously showing evolutionary change that the only real opposition is from fundamentalists.  The problem is that these fundamentalists simply don’t accept these examples as transitional.  They ask for traditional fossils, but when they’re presented, they say, “That’s just a separate species or a dead end.”  Of course, they have no evidentiary basis for such a claim.

But fair enough.  I challenge these people to put their money where their mouths are.  What exactly would qualify as a transitional fossil to you?  How do you define transitional?  Can you name on clear example of something that would convince you that possibly there was evolutionary change?  If you can’t answer these questions, you have no business even speaking about this subject in rational discourse.

If you can, let’s hear it.  Creatures like Acanthostega walked around on four legs yet still had gills.  The oldest amphibians in the fossil record still look a lot like fish, while the later ones look much more like modern amphibians.  If this is not transitional, what exactly would transitions between aquatic creatures and tetrapods look like?

Why Ann Coulter Thinks Evolution is False IV

“There are no transitional species in the fossil record.”

A pervasive theme throughout Ann Coulter’s criticism of evolution in her book Godless is the supposed rarity of transitional species in the fossil record.  This is perhaps the most common creationist argument against evolution and – like most of them – it is driven not by the facts but by a spiritual need to deny something that makes them uncomfortable.

Fossilization is a rare event.  Animals don’t just fall on the ground and become fossils.  Most of them are eaten by predators and scavengers, then broken down by parasites and bacteria.  Fossilization requires organisms dying in particular ways, sedimentation being distributed correctly, and preservation for millions or hundreds of millions of years.  Even when fossils are laid down, time periods of ten million years or less are generally too small in the fossil record to be viewed by paleontologists, so transition fossils between species in these time frames are rarer than not.  The fossil record has many gaps.

This is unfortunate, but these are facts, not excuses.  Another fact is that transitional species are abundant in the fossil record, especially between large groups of animals.  Creationists do not acknowledge them for a very simple reason that I’ll return to in a moment.  Here are three prime examples that immediately come to mind.  Archaeopteryx is a fossil transition between reptiles and birds.  It has feathered wings like a bird, but teeth and a tail like a reptile.  No modern bird has teeth.  Tiktaalik is a 375-million-year-old fist with the precursor structures for shoulders, elbows, and even fingers.  Acanthostega is an amphibian-like creature with legs and full gills, a transitional species between fish and amphibians.

I chose these for the creationists because they present clear structures that are precisely the definition of “transitional.”  I could go on, pointing out the many species of hominids such as Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy’s species) and Homo habilis; the transitions between reptiles and mammals like the therapsids and cynodonts; the clear transitional history of the elephant, horse, and rhinoceros; transitional species between land mammals and whales like Ambulocetus natans; and fossil portraits of ancient shellfish and crustaceans.  None of it will matter.  No amount of transitional data found in the fossil record will ever convince a diehard creationist.  To every such example, Ms. Coulter and those of her ilk say, “That’s just a separate species.  It was a dead end.  It’s not transitional.”

Yes, but based upon what evidence?  Your creation story?  Your discomfort at the possibility of not being the crowing achievement of a designer?  The fact that you must deny each and every one?

Here’s a question:  What exactly would qualify as “transitional,” Ms. Coulter?  For example, the transitional fossils between fishlike creatures and the first tetrapods (four-limbed walking animals) are numerous and quite demonstrable.  The earliest of them still had tail fins like a fish.  The first limbs to show up in the fossil record look like modified fins.  The first jaws in the fossil record appear to be modified gill arches.  Creatures like Acanthostega walked around on four legs and still had gills.  Later amphibians in the fossil record look much more like modern amphibians than fish.  Even today there are fish that gulp oxygen from the air and walk on land and climb trees with their fins.

If this is not transitional, what exactly wouldt ransitions between aquatic creatures and tetrapods look like?  How many examples must be shown before Coulter and her intellectual peers consider them transitional?

My guess would be that no amount of evidence will ever be sufficient.  Some creationists will continue to say “separate species” until the end of time, denying that these examples are exactly what evolution predicts will be found, denying even the possibility that they are evidence for common ancestry.  And why?

In the words of Jim Carrey in the movie Liar Liar: “Because it’s devastating to my case!”

Why Creationists are Delusional About the Fossil Record

No one seems to have let the creationists in on this, but the fossil record is loaded with transitional species.  Here are a few that creationists either don’t know about or choose to ignore.

1. For the evolution of human beings, we have many examples, beginning with the oldest known hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus.  There are the many Australopithecines such as anamensis, afarensis (Lucy’s species), africanus, and ghari.  There is the Homo genus: rudolfensis, habilis, ergaster, and erectus.  All of these species – at least from the standpoint of intelligence, walking upright, tool-use, and language and culture - are more advanced than modern apes and less advanced than humans.
2. Archaeopteryx is a prime example.  It had feathered wings like a bird, but it also had teeth and a tail like a reptile.  No modern bird has teeth.  This is clearly transitional between a reptile-like creature and a bird.
3. Tiktaalik is another beautiful portrait of evolution.  It was discovered just a few years ago in Canada.  It’s a 375-million-year-old fish that has the precursor structures for shoulders, elbows, and even fingers.  This is clearly a transition from fish to land animals.
4. We have a good description of the evolution of even-toed land mammals into whales, with clear transitional fossil species such as Ambulocetus natans.
5. Pikaia is a Cambrian transitional species between invertebrates and vertebrates, and there are older protovertebrates in the Lower Cambrian, as well.
6. Acanthostega, an amphibian-like creature with full gills, is a transitional species between fish and amphibians that is often described as a “fish with legs.”
7. We have a great many fossil transitions between reptiles and mammals such as the therapsids, they cyndonts, and the ictidosaurs.
8. We have an excellent picture of the evolution of the elephant, from little Paleomastodon 34 million years ago, to Gamphotherium, Primelephas, the extinct Mammuthus, to the twenty-two distinct species over the last six million years, to the modern Elephas maximus (the Indian elephant) and Loxodonta africana (the African elephant).

Of course, the creationists always say the same thing:  These are separate species, not transitional.  Perhaps they should be asked how they know this.  Perhaps they should be asked what standard of evidence they utilize for determining if a fossil is transitional or not.  Perhaps they should be asked how many such examples have to be shown before they’re willing to admit even the possibility.  Perhaps they should be asked that if the above examples are not transitional, what exactly a transitional species would look like.

There are many gaps in the fossil record, especially between closely-related species.  One reason is that times frames shorter much than ten million years are difficult to view in the geological record; there isn’t “room.”  Another reason is that fossilization is simply a rare event.  But a plenitude of transitions between large groups of animals is present.  The supposed rarity of transitional species in the fossil record is a myth.  Don’t ever let a creationist try to tell you otherwise.

Where’s the Evidence for Evolution?

With all the hoopla over evolution in America today, I think many people have lost sight of the foundation.  Evolution is a powerful theory because it has powerful evidence to support it.  Let’s go down a laundry list.

1. Natural selection.  We know it works.  We’ve watched it happen.  Even the creationists admit that it works (they just don’t think it can make big changes like transform one species into another).  Genetic variation exists among offspring, and since only some of those offspring can survive, certain genetic traits will be favored over others.
2. Speciation.  We’ve watched the goatsbeardplant evolve into two separate species.  We can see the different species along with their intermediates in a “ring species” like the herring gull and black-billed gull.  We’ve watched reproduction isolation arrive in fruit flies.  We see reproductive isolation in donkeys and horses and lions and tigers.
3. Transitional fossils.  The fossil record is chock full of them.  Ambulocetus natans, Archaeopteryx, Tiktaalik, Acanthostega and Pikaia are a few.  The earliest land creatures in the fossil record still had tail fins like fish.  The earliest limbs look like modified fins.  The earliest amphibians look much more like fish than later amphibians.  Take your pick, go down the line; the evidence is everywhere.
4. Appropriate fossil distribution.  No anachronistic fossil has yet been found.  No horses in the time of the trilobites or humans in the time of dinosaurs.  The fossil record is laid out in order, detailing a history of evolution.
5. Vestigial evidence.  Humans have an appendix and wisdom teeth.  Human embryos have an empty and useless yolk sac.  Human infants have the grasp reflex (that chimpanzee babies have to hold onto their mothers’ fur).  Some whales have tiny femurs and hipbones.  Snakes have nonfunctional limbs with hip girdles.  DNA is full of useless junk, enzymes that don’t code for any protein.
6. Genetic similarities.  Chimpanzees have twenty-four chromosomes.  Humans have twenty-three, and one of them happens to be a “folded” version of two chromosomes (meaning we once had twenty-four like our closest relatives).  The hemoglobin gene-split that occurred about half a billion years ago in jawless fish means that every descendant of that line (including nearly all modern animals) should have that same gene split.  Those that are not the descendants (like modern hagfish and lampreys) should not have it.  This is precisely what has been found so far.
7. Enough time.  If you have doubts about carbon dating, forget it.  It only measures a few thousand years anyways.  The rubidium-strontium, uranium-lead, and potassium-argon methods of radiometric dating all measure millions or billions of years.  Considering the geological record, plate tectonics, erosion, the age of the universe, the age of the solar system, the distance of stars from us, the fact that all the shorter-lived radioactive elements are missing from our solar system – the earth is not ten thousand years old.  Natural selection had about four and a half billion years to play with.
8. Last but not least:  promising beginnings.  Organic compounds form with ease out of inorganic materials.  Even protein molecules can perform rudimentary “trial and error” processes.  Even the inorganic things like clay crystals can manage a primitive form of “heredity.”