Liars, Damn Liars, and Creationists

How can you tell when a creationist is lying? He starts to quote an evolutionist.

Creationists have pioneered an especially annoying technique of lying. It is called "quote-mining". Creationists scour the literature, which would normally be a good thing. But instead of doing it to gain understanding, they do it to obtain sound bites. They do not care what the author is ACTUALLY saying, they only care about extracting a sentence or two that can be used to imply the author is casting doubt on evolutionary theory. It is my opinion that this is one of the worst forms of lying. It intentionally distorts a person's argument to imply that he means the opposite of what he is really saying

We have a creationist in our midst, Nigel Harrison who is becoming adept at using this technique. To be fair to Nigel, I doubt that he is doing it intentionally. I suspect that he is just repeating what he has gotten off of creationist websites. He didn't originate the lie, he just helps spread it. I don't think he knows enough to realize it is a lie. But while this may be an explanation, it is not an excuse. His ignorance is not a license to quote the work of others without an attempt to understand it. He does bear responsibility and in my mind reflects poorly on his integrity.

Now that I have made the charge, let me substantiate it. Nigel's first use of quote-mining was an effort to claim that the fossil record does not support modern evolutionary theory.

Evidence of evolution - are you talking about the fossil record, surely not. No evidence there of gradual change - in fact the fossil record seems to show life forms fully formed.

Stephen Jay Gould "In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors: it appears all at once and 'fully formed'" (Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).

The late Stephen Jay Gould was a noted paleontologist and a strong proponent of evolutionary theory. But here it SOUNDS like he is supporting what Nigel claims, doesn't it.

But here is another quote from Gould (from here):

Since we [NIles Eldredge & Gould] proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

This is a rather strident statement that Gould believes there are transitional forms. It also expresses his annoyance at creationist's quote-mining. So this raises the question ... What the hell was Gould talking about in Nigel's quote?

He was talking about punctuated equilibrium. I will explain that later in this blog, but first let's look at his second quote-mining since it too is related to punctuated equilibrium.

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long," . "It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up 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: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, 1995, p. 95, emphasis added). - Niles Eldredge

Notice two things about this quote. (1) It is by Niles Eldredge, Gould's coauthor on the 1972 SCIENCE paper proposing punctuated equilibrium. and (2) Nigel's use of the phrase "emphasis added". That phrase is used when one wants to emphasize a particular part of another's quote. That allows the reader to understand that YOU are making the emphasis and not the original author. The interesting thing in NIgel's quote of Eldredge is that there was no emphasis added. I highly suspect Nigel cut-and-pasted the quote from a creationist website and the formatting for the emphasis did not transfer. In other words, Nigel is quoting something he did not read. He has no idea of the context.

By now I hope the reader is able to make a guess about the context. It concerns punctuated equilibrium. Now Nigel DOES know that. In fact, Nigel considers himself somewhat of an expert on punctuated equilibrium. Here are his statements on the matter.

Punctuated Equilibrium - Now you are getting closer to the Christian position that life forms appeard in sudden bursts.

Yes I know punctuated equilibrium - yes that is what Genesis says as well, just not in the same language. Bursts of creation.

Those are incredibly ignorant statements. I'm afraid poor Nigel doesn't know what he is talking about.

(1) I doubt that Chrsitians like Kenneth R. Miller, biologist at Brown University and author of FINDING DARWIN'S GOD, a staunchly pro-evolutionary book, would agree that Nigel's position reflects his Christian view.

(2) Punctuated equilibrium is to creationism as astronomy is to astrology. One makes sense, the other is nonsense.

So, what is punctuated equilibrium? It is a theory proposed by Eldredge and Gould to explain a pattern in the fossil record. Fossils can be found in fossil beds. These fossil beds can have numerous strata in them, each containing fossils. And with very rare exceptions, the lower the strata the older the fossils. These fossil bearing strata are called bedding planes.

Here is the pattern that is often seen. Species A will appear in an early bedding plane (ie a lower stratum). It may be found in several adjacent bedding planes essentially unchanged. Then in the space of a single bedding plane it disappears, but is replaced by a very similar fossil species B. B will go along unchanged for several bedding planes then disappear to be replaced by species C. The pattern repeats C to D, D to E, and E to F.

Eldredge and Gould described the period that fossils species remain unchanged as "stasis" and the period of relatively rapid change as "punctuations". In those quotes of Gould's that creationists use to imply there are no transitional fossils, what Gould is REALLY saying is that there are no transitional fossils between Species A & B, between species B & C, between species C & D, etc. In the quote that I used where Gould claims there are transitional fossils he is talking about Species B, C, D, and E being transitional between Species A and F. And there are excellent examples of this.

Obviously, it is not Gould's intent to cast doubt on the tenets of modern evolutionary theory. He is trying to extend the theory. Punctuated equilibrium is Eldredge and Gould's mechanism behind that observation. It remains controversial today. Gould views punctuated equilibrium as an example of MULTILEVEL SELECTION. And that requires some explaining in itself.

Traditionally, Natural Selection has been postulated to operate at the level of the individual. Richard Dawkins says not really ... it operates at the level of the gene. David Sloan Wilson says that it operates at individuals and also groups of interacting individuals. Gould says that it can operate at the individual level and beyond all the way up to species level.

He sees the pattern of punctuated equilibrium as being due to species selection. The daughter species being selectively advantaged drives the parent species extinct as it RAPIDLY evolves into a morphologically distinct species.

But what does he mean by 'rapid"? Obviously, since he is talking about fossils he means over a period that encompasses a single bedding plane. How long is that? Well it depends upon the bedding plane. It can be as long as a million years. Even the shortest time frame spans tens of thousands of years.

This is NOT "what Genesis says" at all. This is not "getting closer to [Nigel's] Christian position that lifeforms appeared in sudden bursts". It is still modern evolutionary theory's position of common ancestry. Nigel doesn't know what he is talking about.

Now let's look at Eldredge's quote. Nigel has the first paragraph garbled but Eldredge is making an allusion to the early history of Paleontology. Let me discuss it briefly.

Charles Darwin was a prolific letter writer. He was friends with a number of people in the world of British science and corresponded with them regularly. One such friend was the early British paleontologist, Hugh Falconer. Falconer had reservations about Darwin's theory. His reservations concerned (1) the earliest fossils know to him were from the Cambrian Period and they were complex fossils. He thought that if Darwin was correct life must have been much simpler and if that is the case then, where were the fossils? and (2) he was a believer in the French Anatomist/Paleontogist, Baron Cuvier's idea that there were multiple creations. He believed this because the fossil record at that time already showed evidence of what we now consider to be mass extinction events. There have been 5 of them in the past. What happens is that somewhere between 70 to 95% of all species get wiped out in a short period of geologic time ... the best known event is the Cretaceous/Tertiary meteorite extinction of the dinosaurs. Cuvier interpreted the pattern as God killing everything and then starting over with a new "day" of creation.

So yes, paleontogists were hesitant at first to jump on Darwin's bandwagon. But then they discovered fossils that transcended the extinction events. So God didn't kill off everything. The fossil record got extended back billions of years once we became able to recognize microfossils. And the lifeforms were indeed simple just like Darwin had predicted. Furthermore, the fossil record, though still somewhat spotty, got fleshed out to show clear examples of fossil transitions. So since the initial hesitancy, paleontolgist have become outspoken proponents of modern evolutionary theory.

What was Eldredge talking about in his second paragraph? The "introduction of novelty" refers to the pattern of punctuated equilibrium .. the appearance of morphologically distinct species over the span of a single bedding plane.

While Eldredge and Gould's mechanism of multilevel selection can explain it, it is not the only explanation. One competing explanation is called "ALLOPATRIC SPECIATION". Under this scenario, a small group of species A becomes geographically isolated from the main group. It undergoes its separate evolution. This isolated group can evolve into a morphologically distinct species over any time scale one wants to imagine (although there are theoretical reasons to believe that small isolated groups will evolve faster than the main parent group). Eventually the parent species goes extinct. This opens up a niche that the newly evolved species can take advantage of and replace the parent species. Thus the punctuated equilibrium pattern is an artifact of immigration and emigration.

Eldredge is arguing against this view when he says that "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." He is saying that such an explanation may be OK for SOME instances of punctuated equilibrium, but it is unlikely to be the explanation of ALL cases of punctuated equilibrium.

The last part of that paragraph, "Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution" describes how Eldredge sees paleontology that doesn't acknowledge his and Gould's idea of punctuated equilibrium. In other words, he is saying that the pattern is REAL. Species do have extended periods of stasis followed by the rapid evolution during the punctuations. THAT solves the problem of all those "forlorn paleontologists".

Neither Gould not Eldredge are advocating or even questioning the core tenets of modern evolutionary theory. They both support it strongly. And if anyone would have actually read the whole article these quotes were taken from and tried to understand what it said, they would know that.

The fact that creationists present such quotes in a misleading way is one of the BIG reasons scientists have such an animosity to them. It is somewhat ironic that these people professing allegiance to the 10 Commandments would bear such false witness to the intent of the authors true meaning.

This is NOT a small problem within creationist literature. It has even done by the "sophisticated" Intelligent Design creationists. And these lies have a life of their own. One can take all the time in the world and carefully rebut these quote-mines (as I have tried to do), but it will not stop. The take home message for anyone reading this blog is:

If a creationist quotes an evolutionist, it is almost certainly a lie.

That is why I try to present the EVIDENCE for evolution. When someone quotes Gould to imply that the fossil record is a problem for modern evolutionary theory, I present them with my fossil challenge. Look at how Nigel responded to it. I present a picture of the data, and he puts up a quote implying that it is a problem. He makes no attempt to address the actual data. Instead he starts spouting off nonsense about presuppositions. He questions the dating of the fossils. These are all famous fossils from the Smithsonian so they were more than likely dated by the gold standard ... potassium/argon radiodating (although some of the younger ones may have been dated by Carbon-14 dating). But even that is not important. The only thing that is important considering the dating is that they are arranged not by any similarity to each other but by their dating. In other words, the important thing is that the ones earlier on the list are the older fossils. and the ones later on the list are those that are closer in time to modern humans. For there to be a problem one would have to argue that there is a systematic flaw in dating techiques such that similar-looking specimens just so happen to be dated closer together.

Nigel doesn't address the data at all. He tries to deny it. He tries to obsfucate it. And he tries to go off on tangents hoping to avoid it. That is not honest debate, and neither is quote-mining.

Cheers,

Darwin's Beagle