Are there Any Depths to Which the Darwin Lobby Will not Sink?

_{Barry Arrington

December 12, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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I have used the following quotation from Eldredge and Tatterson extensively on these pages in the last several days:

Darwin’s prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.

On December 11, 2013, someone who goes by “REC” at antievolution.org posted the following:

Had to stop by the library for other reasons, but apparently, Barry was right. The quote he used to pillory people with wasn’t mined, it was fabricated

The post was cross-posted at The Skeptical Zone.

Then, REC posted this:

TLDR version: the quote is in there, on another page

Dear readers, everywhere I post I do so under my real name. I have been accused in front of the entire world of fabricating a quotation. This is an extremely serious matter indeed.

I call on both websites immediately to take down every reference to the fabrication accusation.

Does anyone know who REC is?

Comments

NM: Pardon, but the focal issue in this thread is an accusation that mutated from quote mining to quote fabrication -- then had to be corrected. Above, you tried to pile on, and the evidence is that something wrong has been done but there is an absence of serious attempt to make amends. This speaks volumes. KFkairosfocus_{December 14, 2013
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65 BoxDecember 14, 2013 at 1:05 pm // about horse evolution:
Paul Garner: The evidence of fossils, along with the study of horse embryos, indicates that the horse series is a genuine record of biological change over time. Evolutionary scientists point to this as evidence of Darwinian evolution. However, non-evolutionary scientists say that this simply records changes within the horse basic type and that there is little evidence to suggest that horses developed from a non-horse ancestor. Since the magnitude and type of change represented by the horse series can be accommodated by both evolutionary and non-evolutionary theories it cannot, therefore, distinguish between them. At best, in terms of the origins debate, the horse series is neutral data.
Wow -- so if the evolution of the entire Order Perrisodactyls, of horses and rhinos from a common ancestor, is just trivial evolution within the "basic type" (i.e., within the creationist "kind"), then this REALLY proves that all the hubbub on UD about Eldredge talking about mere species-to-species transitions falsifying Darwin really was nuts. You've admitted that new species, genera, and even new families are easy to evolve naturally, and that plenty of transitional fossils exist to show how this happen. Simultaneously, other people on UD are trying to make hay out of the tiny-little jumps in the fossil record between very similar sister species! Inconsistency, thy name is antievolutionism.NickMatzke_UD_{December 14, 2013
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“So what?” Really? The post you just made compares the creation of new species to the creation of new machines by humans. The creation of new machines by us humans certainly is a sudden process, with new ideas and designs taking hold over night. In terms of the “design” of new species that you would like to believe in, your designer takes hundreds of thousands of years to form a new species. A far cry from the intelligent designs leaps we as humans make. The idea of intelligent design in biology is a joke.
The only reason I'm responding to your comment is that I would not want the casual reader to think that you had something intelligent to say. In my experience, Darwinists are stupid as feces. So, according to your superior intellect, the evolution of wheeled transportation went from the horse-drawn carriage to a Lamborghini overnight? Do you know how much money and how long it takes for a corporation to design a new smart phone? Did the iPad appear the next day after the Apple IIe? Wasn't there an evolution of design and experiments that took decades? So what if the designers who designed new species took a hundred thousand years to introduce a new batch of complex organisms into the environment? Do you understand the ecological problems they were faced with? Maybe they had to rethink their design strategies as they went along, eh? Maybe some things did not go as planned and they found a better way to achieve their design goals, eh? That's the intelligent part in intelligent design, by the way. Intelligent designers learn from their mistakes. They learn from their experiments. That is what makes them intelligent. There is no need for you people to park your brains in the closet when discussing the evolution of lifeforms on earth, you know. Just be cool and all will be well with the universe.Mapou_{December 14, 2013
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AVS#68: “sudden” appearance of new designs? I hope you realize that the context of the word “sudden” when used by evolutionary biologists still means many thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
What do you mean? “Sudden” simply means the introduction of novel body plans without evidence of related ancestral forms in the earlier layers below.Box_{December 14, 2013
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Mapou RE 70 Agreed, its a rabbit trail and cannot answer the main issue which is "mechanism" Vividvividbleau_{December 14, 2013
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"So what?" Really? The post you just made compares the creation of new species to the creation of new machines by humans. The creation of new machines by us humans certainly is a sudden process, with new ideas and designs taking hold over night. In terms of the "design" of new species that you would like to believe in, your designer takes hundreds of thousands of years to form a new species. A far cry from the intelligent designs leaps we as humans make. The idea of intelligent design in biology is a joke.AVS_{December 14, 2013
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AVS @68:
“sudden” appearance of new designs? I hope you realize that the context of the word “sudden” when used by evolutionary biologists still means many thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
So what?Mapou_{December 14, 2013
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In my opinion, ID proponents should stop questioning transitional fossils. It's a serious mistake on their part. Transitional fossils do not invalidate intelligent design. They should be seen as evidence for it. Why? Because this is what we observe when human designers design objects over time.Mapou_{December 14, 2013
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Nick RE 62 1) How is this relevant to the subject of this thread? 2) The fossil record does not answer the question of mechanism. Vividvividbleau_{December 14, 2013
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"sudden" appearance of new designs? I hope you realize that the context of the word "sudden" when used by evolutionary biologists still means many thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.AVS_{December 14, 2013
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TheisticEvolutionist @59:
Mapou I am no fan of neo-Darwinism but what occurs in the fossil record is not against evolution. I disagree about mutations not being able to be hidden for millions of years because there is evidence that genes can be hidden or “suppressed” for hundreds of millions of years and then be activated. You can read about it in the book The Great Evolution Mystery by Gordon Rattray Taylor, I have just spent 40 minutes typing these quotes from the book so even If you disagree at least appreciate the research. He called it the “masking theory”.
Look, man. Gordon Taylor's rationalization for stasis is just a pile of unfalsifiable pseudoscientific cr*p. The theory of evolution never predicted any of this. What Taylor is doing is being true to his religion by forcing the data to fit the theory rather than the other way around. It is obvious that living organisms have gene repair mechanisms that protect against mutations. How can random mutations and natural selection decide which genes to preserve for tens of millions of years and which genes to modify for necessary adaptation? This is silly to the extreme.
Yes it would be considered a non-Darwinian evolutionary theory. But it is not anti-evolution and certainly doesn’t support creationism.
Why doesn't the fossil record support creationism? Are you kidding me? It may not support young earth, 6-day, omniscient-God, Christian fundamentalist-style creationism but I don't see why the sudden appearance of new designs falsifies the intelligent design hypothesis. How in the heck do you figure? This is precisely what one would expect from intelligent design over time. The designers apparently designed a bunch of new lifeforms and introduced them to the environment. Then they waited millions of years to see how the whole thing unravels. There are sequential processes that are so complex that they cannot be determined/computed in advance. It is because they are mathematically intractable by nature. To find out whether or not they are successful, they just have to be allowed to run their course. Once the designers were satisfied with the result, they were ready to introduce a whole new batch of complex organisms. This is what the fossil record shows. And it is obvious that they kept building on previous designs as any smart designers would do. This is why life on earth follows a hierarchical structure. But is not the strictly nested hierarchy predicted by the Darwinists. Darwinists have a habit of tying their shoelaces together and conjuring up all sorts of cockamamie, superstitious just-so stories to explain why they keep falling on their faces. Common descent is a perfect example of their bad shoe lacing habits. We are finding instances of extensive lateral gene reuse in species that share distant branches of the hierarchy. For example, the Darwinists are hard pressed to explain how up to 200 genes for echolocation (somebody please find a reference to this finding) are shared between certain species of echolocating bats and whales. These species hopped onto different branches of the tree of life millions of years before echolocation appeared in both. If you guys don't think that this is the result of intelligent design, you need to get your brains redesigned. This throws the common descent hypothesis into the septic tank of failed hypotheses where it belongs.Mapou_{December 14, 2013
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However, non-evolutionary scientists say that this simply records changes within the horse basic type and that there is little evidence to suggest that horses developed from a non-horse ancestor.
But it's only because of the discovered intermediates that anyone would consider the multi-toed, collie-sized Hyracotherium as being of the same "type" as the modern horse.goodusername_{December 14, 2013
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// about horse evolution:
Paul Garner: The evidence of fossils, along with the study of horse embryos, indicates that the horse series is a genuine record of biological change over time. Evolutionary scientists point to this as evidence of Darwinian evolution. However, non-evolutionary scientists say that this simply records changes within the horse basic type and that there is little evidence to suggest that horses developed from a non-horse ancestor. Since the magnitude and type of change represented by the horse series can be accommodated by both evolutionary and non-evolutionary theories it cannot, therefore, distinguish between them. At best, in terms of the origins debate, the horse series is neutral data.
Box_{December 14, 2013
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Mr. Matzke, I have no problem with accepting the example you provided as accurate no matter who made it and yet I am a strong supporter of ID. What I would be interested in is the changes to the genome and epigenetics that led to the changes outlined. I find that the more interesting question. For just the horse sequence, there might not be that many and the final answer might be ho-hum. As I said in another thread, it would be interesting to see where rhinos and horses diverge genetically. Was is possible or even probable that some process could explain this divergence. You replied that would be a lot of dissertations or research. My point has been for several years that most of the answers are in the future to such things as the horse and rhino lines. My guess is that you would bet that they will be explained. That may be true but as of now we do not know that. For example, if there are different proteins in each species, what is their origin? For this and a lot of other things, we can only speculate. Am I wrong?jerry_{December 14, 2013
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Professor Matzke, And now back to the second small blue planet and what you can imagine based on what you know . . . By "spectrum," I mean that the human-designed species are incredibly numerous due to the fact that college classes frequently design new species---under the supervision of a qualified professor such as yourself---to observe and analyze the results. -QQuerius_{December 14, 2013
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Alright folks, pop quiz. Who wrote the following, and when?
[T]he fossil record, though far from perfect, presents a compelling pattern of change in the development of life that cannot be ignored. [...] The celebrated Eohippus (dawn horse), more accurately called Hyracotherium, is the oldest horse so far found. The size of an average domestic dog, dawn horses resembled the generalized mammals of that remote time far more than do our modern, advanced horses. Their teeth were very similar to those of their contemporary close relatives who were to become ancestral to rhinoceroses and tapirs, the extinct titanotheres, and the chalicotheres. Horses, rinos, titanotheres, tapirs, and chalicotheres are a natural evolutionary group, all descended from a single common ancestor. The genealogical production of this array was recognized far back in human history: tapirs, rhinos, and horses (including wild asses, donkeys, and zebras) have an odd number of toes on their feet -- modern horses having but a single toe. Deer, cows, pigs, sheep, and antelope -- the mammals most likely to be confused with horses and rhinos as large herbivores -- have an even number of toes -- two, the cloven-footed animals of the Bible. We call the odd-toed group perissodactyls, the even-toed group artiodactyls. And more similarities than merely toe number unite each of these groups. One would predict that progressively older fossils should resemble the primitive, ancestral condition more and more closely. Eocene perissodactyls should look more like the common root of the entire stock than do the widely different looking modern horses, tapirs, and rhinos. And they do. Dawn horses had three toes on the front feet, and four on the hind feet (the odd-number scheme had not yet become fully entrenched back then). The primitive mammalian complement is five fingers and toes, the number we ourselves retain. As we trace fossils from a single lineage, such as the horses, up through the rock sequence, we should be able to see them assume their present form. We do. Horses are an excellent example because they have left a dense fossil record. Anyone untrained in biology or paleontology, if asked to line fossil horses up according to their degree of "modernness" (in size, complexity of dentition, number of toes, and a host of other features), would put them in the proper order of their geologic age knowing nothing of the actual geologic positions of the various fossils. The only source of confusion is the occasional persistence of an ancestor after its descendant has come and gone. This is not to suggest that the reconstruction of evolutionary history is a casual affair: horse evolution was apparently labyrinthine, with many twigs and side branches on the family evolutionary tree. It takes someone skilled in mammalian anatomy to unravel the details and precise course of horse evolution. But as far as the basic aspects of change in horse evolution over the past 50 million years are concerned, the simple truth is that the older the rock, the more primitive the fossil horse we'll find in it. Thus the overall picture presented by the fossil record confirms the most basic predictions we can make to test the very notion of evolution: if all organisms are related by a process of ancestry and descent, older rocks should contain more primitive members of a group than younger rocks. We should be able to document progressively more advanced forms as we look in correspondingly younger rocks. This is what we find.
NickMatzke_UD_{December 14, 2013
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TheisticEvolutionist #59,
Taylor: Is it possible that the fish carries or carried a battery of genes specifying ‘amphibian’ in a surpressed state and that these were suddenly activated? And similarly for other major evolutionary advances. If so, a great many puzzling facts suddenly fall into place.
What Taylor is saying is this: During the course of millions of years, it is formed a battery of new (mutated) genes, which are then suddenly activated. Before their activation these new battery of genes were in 'suppressed state', which means: untouched by natural selection. The obvious question is: why would the battery of genes be coherent? It is not designed - not even by a blind watchmaker. Another question is: How about the epigenetic supplement of the new battery of genes? What are the odds that this is also in place?Box_{December 14, 2013
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what occurs in the fossil record is not against evolution.
What do you mean by the term "evolution?" That new organisms have occurred is not debated. The question is how? The rest of your comment is about epigenetics and assumes some sort of front loading which many ID people have proposed. Then the issue is how are these non used genomic sequences conserved. What is the mechanism? You have ruled out selection. If there is an internal mechanism to conserve these unused genomic sequences then that would be a code on top of a code (control mechanisms) on top of a code (DNA). What you are describing is just another form of ID, an incredibly complex one.jerry_{December 14, 2013
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TheisticEvolutionist, give it a rest, man. Nobody is claiming that evolutionists are denying stasis. Of course, they know about it. It’s in their faces; how could they deny it? They are simply acting as if it’s not a major refutation of their false religion. I am making the point that stasis falsifies Darwinian evolution. Why? Because there is no reason for random mutations (the very creative source of evolutionary theory) to go into hiding for hundreds of millions of years. That is absurd.
Mapou I am no fan of neo-Darwinism but what occurs in the fossil record is not against evolution. I disagree about mutations not being able to be hidden for millions of years because there is evidence that genes can be hidden or "suppressed" for hundreds of millions of years and then be activated. You can read about it in the book The Great Evolution Mystery by Gordon Rattray Taylor, I have just spent 40 minutes typing these quotes from the book so even If you disagree at least appreciate the research. He called it the "masking theory". Yes it would be considered a non-Darwinian evolutionary theory. But it is not anti-evolution and certainly doesn't support creationism. Here's what Taylor writes;
But the astonishing fact that the genome can carry complete batteries of genes devoted to very different structural ends has not received the attention it warrants, perhaps because it was so difficult to fit into the primitive picture of genetics as it existed a generation ago. Now that we know there are regulator genes which control the expression of workhorse genes it becomes easier for the unimaginative to accept the idea. From it arise new possibilities in interpreting the mechanism of evolution. There is an evident parallel between transformation of tadpole to frog and the transformation of fish to amphibian. 'The frog tadpole is essentially a fish', says Earl Frieden of Florida State University. Is it possible that the fish carries or carried a battery of genes specifying 'amphibian' in a supressed state and that these were suddenly activated? And similarly for other major evolutionary advances. If so, a great many puzzling facts suddenly fall into place. It becomes easy to understand why twelve mammalian lines began to exhibit similar characteristics. All were carrying the same or similar, sets of masked genes which began to be activated about the same time, perhaps because they were triggered by the same environmental circumstances. All instances of parallel evolution become understandable. We have seen that molelike creatures, almost indistinguishable anatomically developed independently in Asia and in South America. Is it not easier to believe that they did so by unmasking, in similar situations, of similar genes than to suppose that the same group of mutations occurred twice, in different places, by pure chance? And when we are asked to believe that it occurred four times, as with the anteaters, credulity fails.
So it certainly is not absurd. More from Taylor
Again, the concept enables us to understand why so few intermediate forms are found. If the transformation occurred very rapidly, not necessarily in a single generation but at least rapidly on the evolutionary scale, the chance of transitional forms encountering the geological conditions necessary for preservation would be enormously reduced. When the mammals decided to return to a marine existence in the form of dolphins and wales, the fact that they developed flippers very like those of the ichthyosaurus, which existed in the Mesozoic long before, it explicable as a new unmasking of the genes which had in the interim been suppressed. That genes should be preserved, unutilised for millions of years instead of gradually vanishing or mutating to some quite different form may seem strange, but we have proof that this can happen, in fact, already mentioned, that primitive organs, such as gills, reappear for a while during the course of the embryo's development. Here once more, we see the unmasking of genes long disused, though why this 'recapitulation' of earlier forms should occur remains wholly mysterious. It seem that suppressor genes are subject to their own necessities. 'Masking theory', as I shall this notion, also helps to explain the periods of evolutionary quiescence and bursts of variation ('radiation') which we discussed earlier.
Gordon Rattray Taylor. (1984). The Great Evolution Mystery. Abacus. pp. 180-181. This theory needs more looking into to.TheisticEvolutionist_{December 14, 2013
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Lifepsi: Poiiiiint . . . KF PS: Please look at the weak argument correctives, for the brand new no 40 on "quote mining!" . . . you'll love it! (And let us know about the attempted rebuttals at Talk Origins and similar sites! Case A vs case B (ii) is a real issue.)kairosfocus_{December 14, 2013
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Seriously, Nickie-boy. You are looking more and more pathetic. You cannot refute the point, so you try to refute the quote. You cannot refute the quote, so now you are attempting to refute the citation format? The quote IS what Barry said it was, and it fits in his argument as a whole. It seems as though you are trying to find if Barry purchased the quote from a secondary source in hopes it was from some anti-NDE work so that you can employ the genetic fallacy. There's two options here, Nickie-boy. You are either too stupid to see what you're doing, or so petulant and insecure that you cannot admit this one point and are willing to stand like General Custer.TSErik_{December 14, 2013
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Barry noted of NickMatzke_UD:
Yet, you come in here and defend it anyway. I guess that makes you kinda slimy. But then, we already knew that.
You know, I'm willing to bet professor Matzke imagines himself as a bringer of enlightenment to the superstitious and misled. Certainly, the spinning, kicking, ducking, and squirming of a karate master and defender of Truth, Science, and the American Way requires no justification. ;-) I would appeal to professor Matzke to imagine. Imagine where the data would lead him if he would let his mind be pried free from Darwin's cold, dead 19th century hands: If a small blue planet were indeed ***seeded*** with an amazing spectrum of human-designed organisms, leaving them to adapt, migrate, or die, what would the result look like, after thousands, or perhaps even millions of years, and how would it differ from our own small blue planet? Dr. Matzke, what would you imagine? -QQuerius_{December 13, 2013
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Had to stop by the library for other reasons, but apparently, Barry was right. The quote he used to pillory people with was not mined. It was fabricated:*
Clearly, the critic who wrote this comment was trying to raise the stakes from quote mining to fabrication. The word placement is calculated to intensity and dramatize the false charge with a last minute punch. The asterisk is the escape clause. Nick writes, ------"Not even your original critic was accusing you of fabrication, he was saying the quote appeared to be fabricated, since it wasn’t where you said it was." Appeared? For whom does the phrase "it was fabricated" mean "it seems fabricated?" Apparently, only for Nick Matzke. Now for the author's escape clause:
DOES not appear on pages 45-46. Not with ellipses. The words are just not there. There appears to be 1 and only 1 edition of the book. *Or comes from some other source/place in this book. I don’t have time to read the whole book right now, or go on a wild-goose-chase through the literature on Barry’s behalf.
Translation: Even though I took the time to find this book, it isn't worth an extra three seconds to turn the page to make sure it isn't close by. I must protect my theme at all costs. Nick writes, ------"You can’t just quote the first part and not the asterisk and what came after. Not if you want anyone who can read to take you seriously. Furthermore, the very same author wrote another post soon after, saying that the quote is in the book, just on page 48." Yes, when he realized that the passage was, indeed, readily available, and that he could no longer support his false charge, it was time to do a little damage control. Nick continues, ------"So he’s not even making the claim that the quote was fabricated anymore. This all happened days ago, yet you are pretending like it didn’t." Oh, so now we are back to "is was fabricated?" Whatever happened to "it seems fabricated?" How soon we forget. ------"In the meantime, you still haven’t explained: ------1. Why you got the reference wrong." Because the matter is of absolutely no importance. ------2. "Why you refuse to admit that the quote, in context, is just about the rarity of transitions between very similar species, and does not indicate that transitions are rare across larger morphological differences, nor does it indicate a general lack of support of the fossil record for evolution." Because the quote is clearly about gradualism and the big picture and is not about your narrowly-focused distinctions.StephenB_{December 13, 2013
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Eldredge’s answer to B: Transitional fossils are known in a great many cases.
What makes the species or fossils referred to as a transition? Could you elaborate how one identifies such an entity as a transition between species X and species Y.? Some examples with the particulars of how they are so classified would be helpful. I am not asking for minutiae but what is it that allows for these classifications?jerry_{December 13, 2013
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Nick @ 49: You steadfastly refuse to answer the question. That’s answer enough. The reason you steadfastly refuse to answer the question is that you know what was done to me was wrong, and you wouldn’t want it done to you. Yet, you come in here and defend it anyway. I guess that makes you kinda slimy. But then, we already knew that. Barry Arrington_{December 13, 2013
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Let me repost Box's quote of Eldredge @37 (emphases added):
NE: No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting of cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change — over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution. - Reinventing Darwin (1995) p.95
So Nickey, you can put that in your Darwinist pipe and smoke it. You keep harping on transitional fossils. Why? I am not denying scattered transitional fossils. I love them. They are precisely what I would expect from intelligent design over time. Designs evolve, no? [I'm not a six-24-hour-day, young-earth creationist.] The point is that the fossil record completely refutes the usual Darwinist expectation of a gradual evolution. Even worse, in my opinion is that complex species appear suddenly and remain the same for tens and even hundreds of millions of years, as if to say mockingly to the frustrated Darwinist, "Is that all the mutations you got?" If Eldredge is still a Darwinist after writing the above, I am forced to speculate that he's either a gutless coward or he has some kind of mental disorder.Mapou_{December 13, 2013
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@Nick, so the following quote somehow does not indicate a general lack of support of the fossil record for evolution:
Darwin’s prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.
But how about this?:
No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting of cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change — over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.
Box_{December 13, 2013
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Matzke: (...) nor does it [the quote] indicate a general lack of support of the fossil record for evolution.
Are you serious? You cannot be serious!Box_{December 13, 2013
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Oh, I see, it is OK to say that someone fabricated a quote at the top of a post so long as way down in the body you include some weasel words about how it might be somewhere else in the book.
So, for you, "way down in the body" means, let's see, about 25 words later?NickMatzke_UD_{December 13, 2013
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42 MapouDecember 13, 2013 at 7:25 pm Box @40, You’re right. In this case, context is not Nickey’s friend. That quote is a killer, a Darwinist’s worst nightmare. LOL. The mystery here is, why is Eldredge still a Darwinist? Peer pressure? Fear of being ostracised? Who knows? The fact is that his and Gould’s punctuated equilibrium hypothesis is just a bunch of BS. Random mutations do not wait millions of years for anybody, especially paleontologists.
Eldredge fearing being ostracized? You really have no idea about this entire issue. Eldredge is a professional making detailed distinctions between different questions. These are all different questions: A. In the fossil record, what do minor transitions between very similar species look like? B. In the fossil record, what do major transitions between very different organisms look like? Eldredge's answer to A: Transitional fossils are relatively rare. Eldredge's answer to B: Transitional fossils are known in a great many cases. B is a strong confirmation of the reality of common ancestry. A is about transitions so small even young-earth creationists accept that they trivial for standard evolutionary processes to produce. Why is this is so hard for you guys to get? You've got the whole process of reading backwards -- you assume that some random tidbit of an expert's work vindicates your creationist views, without knowing much at all about that experts actual views, actual body of work, or how that expert is using terminology and distinguishing different questions -- and then you just hang on to that misunderstanding like it was a direct revelation of God.NickMatzke_UD_{December 13, 2013
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