Subject: Re: evolution dead !
Date: 17 Aug 1999 07:23:06 GMT
From: Chris Ho-Stuart <>
Organization: Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Newsgroups: aus.religion,aus.religion.christian,nz.soc.religion
In aus.religion.christian beyond.help <>
wrote:
> Tigger wrote:
> 
> > >> An educated guess on extremely well-educated scientists' parts,
> > >> which more closely matches the available evidence than any other
> > >> hypothesis so far put forward.
> > >
> > >Then you are not up on your evolution status, "The paterns that we
> > >were told to find for the last 120 years does nott exist." Dr. Niles
> > >Eldridge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History.
> > 
> > I strongly suspect that if we had the entire quote and knew what it
> > was Dr Eldridge was referring to, you would be embarassed.
>
> Suspect what you like, i in no way misrepresented what he said.

The quote is probably accurate (except the extra "t" in "nott" and
he incorrect spelling of Dr Eldredge's surname).

However, the quote simply does not address Tigger's words, and it
is a misrepresentation to pretend that they do.

Eldredge -- like every other well-educated scientist -- is quite
aware that the fossil record is ample confirmation of evolution. His
beef is only with phylectic gradualism: which is a certain kind of
pattern of descent. Dr Eldredge says that stasis is the norm in
the fossil record, and that change is rapid but intermittant.

The misrepresentation is when you represent this as criticism
of evolution. It is not. It is criticism of what Eldredge calls
"phyletic gradualism"; something which was not ever integral to
evolutionary theory in any case (as Eldredge himself is at
some pains to point out).

Eldredge himself is, like every other competant scientist
concerned with origins of biological diversity, an evolutionist.
Here is a recent interview with the man:

http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/archives/sum98/niles.htm 

Extract:

My position is the same as Darwin's on this: Evolution works
through processes such as natural selection and speciation. If
someone wanted to say that life started three and a half billion
years ago with bacteria, then God saw to it, using natural
processes such as evolution, that other things would come along,
including the Cambrian explosion, I would have absolutely no
problem with that. But not if he says that Darwin said evolution
is slow and gradual; Eldredge and Gould say it proceeds by fits
and starts. Ergo Eldredge and Gould don't believe in evolution.
Evolution is the idea that all organisms descended from a single
common ancestor. Period. Though we can argue about mechanisms,
I have no doubt that selection and speciation are the heart and
soul of the evolutionary process.
[Niles Eldredge]

Hence "beyond.help" certainly did misrepresent Eldredge to say
that Eldredge said evolution is dead, and his quote above, though
most likely accurate, is a complete red herring as far as trying
to refute Tigger.

Cheers -- Chris Ho-Stuart