Re: Theory and Fat [sic]

Jim Bell (70672.1241@CompuServe.COM)
24 Dec 96 13:54:32 EST

Glenn cites some "evidence" on fish-amphibians, then says:

<<And Jim, don't try citing that Lower Devonian trackway from Australia. That
slab was found in a courtyard of a 100 year old house, They don't know where
it came from so they can't be sure of the age. Second, there are no digit
marks on this slab and they aren't really sure it is a tetrapod rather than a
fish.>>

I love this. Not only do you get to choose your own evidence and interpret it
as you please, you get to choose MY evidence and how it may be viewed!

Judge, jury, executioner--Texas style. I ain't crossing THAT border, pal.

Of course, your "evidence" is subject to massive interpretation. We all know
this. That you choose to view it as "proving" true transitionals is your
privilege. But it's sort of funny--when a paleontologist like Eldredge speaks
about evolution he never talks about trilobites (his specialty) or fish to
amphibian. He tells stories about hominids! That's how strong this "evidence"
is!

Here is just one example. You continue to rely on Ahlberg and Milner re:
panderichthyids. Is there interpretation going on there? Most decidely. They
didn't even refer to the Lower Devonian trackway you won't let anyone mention.
That's telling in and of itself, since it has been around since 1986.
Convenient to leave that datum out.

I remember back to the days when Ashby Camp stomped you on this issue (this is
MY interpretation of that debate). He pointed out how you held the trackway
evidence to a much higher standard than you did the Ahlberg and Milner
evidence, which has you doing what you accuse so many others of doing:
conveniently ignoring the problems to your view. He put it well when he wrote:

"At the risk of stating the obvious, the matter boils down to whether one
believes that the morphological gap between any of the sarcopterygians and the
earliest tetrapod was crossed by Darwinian processes without leaving a trace
of the forms that must have existed between them. As the evolutionist sees it,
the gap is too small and the vagaries of fossilization are too great to
expect, let alone demand, fossil evidence of the transition. As the
creationist sees it, the gap is so large that the number of transtional forms
needed to cross it would be too great to completely escape fossilization and
discovery. These differences in how one weighs the evidence have much to do
with on'es philosophical or theological commitments.

It is in this context that statements from internationally known
evolutionists, such as Robert L. Carroll and Keith Steward Thomson, that there
are no transitional forms between fishes and tetrapods take on such
importance. Their philosophical lenses are finely ground for seeing
transitional forms. If with full knowledge of -Acanthostega- and the
panderichthyids, Dr. Thomson can declare that 'we still do not have any really
intermediate fossil forms between fishes and tetrapods,' how can creationists
who hold that same opinion be viewed as zealots who care nothing about the
data?"

Ashby's question to you, Glenn, is still good today.

These stratomorphic forms are not true "intermediates" in the Darwinian sense.
There is no gradual sequence which should show the morphing of new species, as
Darwin predicted there should be. You have even admitted such in the past.
Thus, you face the same dilemma as Dr. Eldredge:

"Either you stick to conventional theory despite the rather poor fit of the
fossils, or you focus on the empirics and say that saltation looks like a
reasonable model of the evolutionary process--in which case you must embrace a
set of rather dubious biological propositions."

I guess in your case you choose dubious. In fact, back in the whale debate
days, you wrote that gradual transitionalism was "an unreasonable expectation
and requires that one ignore the environmental and adaptational needs of the
transitional animal to survive."

This ipse dixit still amazes me. It's in the same league as "imagined
selective advantage" in that it is easy to say without any proof whatsoever.
It is there to bridge the unbridgable. It is a convenient rhetorical ploy to
ignore the major problems.

In this case, the major problem is the lack of true transitions. Why aren't
they there? Glenn says it's unreasonable to expect them! (Gee, that Chuck
Darwin. What an unreasonable lout he was.)

But when you read texts on fish-amphibian transition, and see the
reconstructions they make, it is exactly this sort of morphing transition they
are arguing for (e.g., Volpe, -Understanding Evolution 2d.-, pg. 123).
So-called "intermediates" are ALWAYS depicted as points on a "continuum"
(e.g., Stanley, -The New Evolutionary Timetable-, pg. 151)

But when the fossils aren't there, Glenn says it's unreasonable to expect
them. Further, when they show something odd, Glenn claims an imagined
selective advantage. Example:

In Thewissen et al., "Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Aquatic Locomotion in
Archaeocete Whales," Science, Jan. 14 1994 at 210 ff. and Berta, "What is a
Whale?" Ibid., at 180 f., we have a most interesting conundrum. Mesonychids
had small feet and leg structures in keeping with land locomotion. Ambulocetus
natans, however, had HUGE feet in front and back--aquatic leg design. But on
land the semipronated elbow of Ambulocetus natans (according to Thewissen)
"left the hands sprawling when the shoulder was abducted." IOW, they stuck out
from the head where their size would have INTERFERED with land locomotion.

But I when I asked Glenn several times what "selective advantage" there was in
this, I got silence.

If you'd like to answer the question now, Glenn, please do! But if you don't,
please don't expect us to be compelled by both your "unreasonable to expect"
and "imagined selective advantage" propositions. In the world Darwinians want
us to believe in, it is reasonable to expect true fossil transitions. And good
science requires more than the chimeras of the mind.

Jim