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1. There is no fossil evidence. Henery Gee and others tell you this much.
And the only thing that is overwhelming, is your belief that such evidence exist. And if such evidence existed, and was overwhelming, all believers in evolution would be on the same page, and this debate would not be taking place. Your evidence, exist only in your mind.
2. And what Gee is pointing out, is there is no missing link, because there is no evidence to be found in the fossil record. Of course he believes it was once there, yet he clearly points out, that science cannot find them. And that is because to much time has passed, and they (are gone.) And he also points out, that if they could find them, they could never put them together, because that knowledge was lost. And if anyone did put them together, that would amount to nothing more than (STORYTELLING,) which is not scientific.
3. Legions of Ape-men? You just missed Gee's entire arguement. You can't string anything together from the fossil record and try to prove evidence for evolution. That's nothing but (STORY TELLING). This is what Gee is telling you. (DID YOU MISS THAT POINT?) Or do you just ignore what Gee's saying and dismiss his own words? And then try to add to your arguement by copying someone's else's material? Which suggest that (GEE WAS JUST COMPLAINING THAT WE KNOW LITTLE OF THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION). What Gee really said, is that the fossils that would prove evolution (ARE GONE). I have not distorted Gee's words. I have imbraced them. Yet, it appers to me, you have ignored them. And that is why rather than state what Gee actually said, you posted someone else's spin on Gee's clear statement. Which reduced what Gee actually said. To him simply complaining about the lack of knowledge of human evolution. While they fully ignored Gee's statement about the fossils being gone from the fossil record . Who's playing the shell game here?
I am bought into the Bible, because we do have historical evidence for it's reality. And that evidence is not disputed by the greater body of Archeologist. And you will not see the firestorm of debate over that evidence, because it is clear and obvious. Unlike what is presented as evidence for evolution. And I might add here, I personally have bought into the Bible, because I have had some real encounters with it's Author.
And my faith in the Bible is built on evidence, not STORYTELLING.
Jesus Christ. I am going to say this once more and then I'm done.
Gee and the others do not say there is no fossil evidence. Nothing like.
There is no missing link in that that is too simplistic. Knowledge had moved on.
That story is a 'story' based on a popular misconception of what evolution is saying. You also don't know any better, and so because Gee does say that the popular monkeys to men idea is a bit of a fairy tale, you leap to the desirable conclusion that the whole evidence for evolution is also a fairy tale. Understand what he is really saying.
You should check the source I gave which quotes the part of Gee's own words that your source left out. They are Gee's own words. not someone else's spin. I posted them for you. Why do you ignore them?
For the last time, "he is pointing out and arguing against the tendency, even among scientists, to "see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent" instead of as a "bush" with many collateral cousins. Thus, there are no "missing links", not because evolution is false, but because simple chains are poor metaphors for the prolific nature of life."
You Have Taken Gee's Words Out Of Context. You have even amended them to reflect your own views.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 09-01-2009 at 01:56 PM..
This is what he said, by your own admission. So you when you say different you are caught in one of your own lies.
Once again, different from what you are claiming.
I can now confirm it to be true that you have suppositional tunnel vision, seeing only what you want and supposing it to be true.
Once agian, different from what I am claiming?
Everything I have stated, was stated by Henery Gee. He may not of said everything at the sametime, yet he said everything here. And here's another one of his statements.
Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution, (IS WRONG). Do you agree with that statement? YES or NO.
Jesus Christ. I am going to say this once more and then I'm done.
Gee and the others do not say there is no fossil evidence. Nothing like.
There is no missing link in that that is too simplistic. Knowledge had moved on.
That story is a 'story' based on a popular misconception of what evolution is saying. You also don't know any better, and so because Gee does say that the popular monkeys to men idea is a bit of a fairy tale, you leap to the desirable conclusion that the whole evidence for evolution is also a fairy tale. Understand what he is really saying.
You should check the source I gave which quotes the part of Gee's own words that your source left out. They are Gee's own words. not someone else's spin. I posted them for you. Why do you ignore them?
For the last time, "he is pointing out and arguing against the tendency, even among scientists, to "see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent" instead of as a "bush" with many collateral cousins. Thus, there are no "missing links", not because evolution is false, but because simple chains are poor metaphors for the prolific nature of life."
You Have Taken Gee's Words Out Of Context. You have even amended them to reflect your own views.
Gee is telling you much more than monkey to man is a fairy tale. Gee states, that for anyone to claim a line of fossils represent a linage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested. He tells us, that such assertion carries the same validity as a (BEDTIME STORY)-amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not (SCIENTIFIC.)
And maybe, that is why the famous Mary Leakey, who spent the better part of her life doing just that, putting fossils together trying to make such a fossil linage made this statement according to the Assoiated Press three months befoe she passed away.
"Since scientists can never prove a particular scenario of human evolution," Leakey said "all these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, (THAT'S A LOT OF NONSENSE.)" 12/9/1996
Gee believes in evolution, I do not. Yet Gee makes clear the fossil record cannot be used for conformation of evolutions reality. And it's time others stop pretending that the fossil record some how supports evolution, when it clearly does not.
Gee states. That once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution (IS WRONG).
Campbell, have you ever read an actual book about evolution? This doesn't mean books that advocate creationism, it means books by experts in the field such as Ken Miller, Michael Shermer or Richard Dawkins. What evolution actually says is completely different from what you and other creationist/IDer's advocate it is.
BTW, Campbell, please post the authority by which you suppose this Gee fellow to be the principle (ONLY ONE TO BE BELIEVED AND MISQUOTED) expert in the field, to the exclusion of all others.
Gee, is just one of many who are now coming out of the closet here. The fact that he is considered a high profile person in science, may be do to the fact that he is the editor for Nature magazine. Gee truly believes in Evolution, yet, his beliefs may be considered by some evolutionist as heresy. Yet, his beliefs are consistant with the evidence. And unlike others in his field, he appears willing to share those beliefs, especially on the fossil record, and what it does not reveal about evolution.
See, unlike you theists, we "darwinists" as you like to call us do not necessarily adhere to one scientist's POV. After all, they are mere humans and can be wrong from time to time. That still does not prove evolution is not true and your buybull is.
As you have been shown to have quote-mined , which you do with your own buybull, in fact all your arguments are a load of codswallop (you may need to look that up)
Based on your participation in this thread, I am sure (as some have indicated) they are cringing with the BS approach you take. In fact your attempt at apologetics leaves much to be desired. You are in no way convincing except maybe to the partakers of your brand of koolaide.
You know, anyone can make broad accusations. It's easy to do, and often those who participate in such behaviour, do so only because they themselves cannot formulate a specific and coherent defense of their own. I would suggest you forget your simplistic quote-mine defense, and actually try answering a questions put to you.
Case in point. Henry Gee states. Once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution (IS WRONG)...
Being the editor of Nature magazine does not make one "high profile" in science.
Nature, is one of the worlds most distinguished science publication on earth, and Henry Gee, the British paleontologist and evolutionary biologist just happens to be the senior editor. And gee, is also considered a leader in the field of evolutionary science.
To suggest Henry Gee is not a (high profile) person in his field. Your really telling me. You don't know what your talking about.
Gee states. That once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution (IS WRONG).
I've already pointed out that you are conveniently ignoring the word in bold, which makes an enormous difference in what Gee is saying. You either don't understand it or you're intentionally ignoring it. So let's think about this for a second. Are numerous people in this thread who actually know how evolution and science works misinterpreting Henry Gee, or is it the guy who has proven he doesn't understand either misinterpreting him? Hmm....I'm sure I know your answer. You think you are the only one in this entire thread who truly understands what Henry Gee is really saying here, because you've read a few sentences of his work. Never mind the fact that, if you read all the sentences surrounding the ones you quote, his words take on a whole different meaning. I'd also like to know this: If Henry Gee and Steven J. Gould don't believe the fossil record provides any evidence whatsoever for evolution, why do you think they believe it to be true?
Gee is telling you much more than monkey to man is a fairy tale. Gee states, that for anyone to claim a line of fossils represent a linage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested. He tells us, that such assertion carries the same validity as a (BEDTIME STORY)-amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not (SCIENTIFIC.)
And maybe, that is why the famous Mary Leakey, who spent the better part of her life doing just that, putting fossils together trying to make such a fossil linage made this statement according to the Assoiated Press three months befoe she passed away.
"Since scientists can never prove a particular scenario of human evolution," Leakey said "all these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, (THAT'S A LOT OF NONSENSE.)" 12/9/1996
Gee believes in evolution, I do not. Yet Gee makes clear the fossil record cannot be used for conformation of evolutions reality. And it's time others stop pretending that the fossil record some how supports evolution, when it clearly does not.
Gee states. That once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution (IS WRONG).
Do you believe Gee's statement? YES or NO
One last effort. And then I am going to give up trying to get you to look at the whole context instead of quotemining.
Gee wrote:
"People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap ...
[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable."
(Arq) It is not about primate evolution being wrong or having no evidential support. It is about over -simplification of the monkeys to men idea. The only answer to your 'agree with that quote or not' trick is no, I don't and neither did the person who wrote it - not in the way you are interpreting it.
Gee asks:
"Does this mean we have, at last, a sign that the roots of humanity go directly back to the divergence with chimps, and that the legions of ape-men and near-humans discovered over the past 70 years are a side-issue, irrelevant to the main course of human evolution?"
Gee's answer is "no". He maintains that Toumaï is a "very small tip of a very deep iceberg, just a sample of what might have been a huge diversity of creatures living between four and 10m years ago."
(Gee is discussing Sahelanthropus tchadensis, commonly known as "Toumaï", a mostly complete cranium [1] found in Chad in 2001 that is, at the very least, a specimen from at or around the time of the split between humans and our closest relative, the chimpanzees.)
Gee:
"The conventional portrait of . . . the history of life . . . tends to be one of lines of ancestors and descendants. We concentrate on the events leading to modern humanity, ignoring or playing down the evolution of other animals; we prune away all branches in the tree of life except the one leading to ourselves...
Because we see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent, we tend to ignore the possibility that some of these ancestors might instead have been side-branches; collateral cousins rather than direct ancestors. The conventional linear view easily becomes a story in which features of humanity are acquired in a sequence that can be discerned retrospectively; first an upright stance, then a bigger brain, then the invention of toolmaking and so on, with ourselves as the inevitable consequence."
It goes on with the quote that is taken out of context.
"New fossil discoveries are fitted into this preexisting story. We call these new discoveries 'missing links', as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. In reality, the physical record of human evolution is more modest. Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps"
Clearly Gee is not saying that evolution is a fairy story, but the popular and non-paleontological views of human evolution is. And he is right - these ideas took a long time to overcome.
Clearly you and the Creationists who faked up this misrepresentation are not only misreprenting Gee's view but what the infomation actually says. You or they are taking some valid questions about the massive amount evidence for evolution and pretending that it discredits the whole theory.
It doesn't support your suggestion that evolution has no supportive evidence. Your oversimple 'yes or no ' is a 'beating your wife fallacy. We have to say No, it is not as you say.
Do you understand this? Are you willing to look at the pros and cons of the evidence In Context or do you still insist on peddling the misrepresentations of creationists?
Her's one example of misrepresentation. Have you the courage to look at others and see how you have been misinformed and decieved by your Creationists Gurus?
"There is, however, no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin; the oldest insects known show no transition to other arthropods"
other evidence, which Carpenter feels is relevant to the question of insect evolution, such as morphological and embryological studies, is ignored. It's a common mistake of creationists to believe that the only evidence for evolution is from the fossil record,
But is it true that there is no fossil evidence for the evolution of insects? Perhaps in Carpenter's day, but now transitional forms are known all the way back to 400 million years ago."
Creationist apologetics are not only quotemined, misrepresented and selective but often out of date. Notably the old 'Darwin knew of no transitional forms', or his worries about the eye.
Creationists lie too.
"Creationists have been making the claim that Donald Johanson found the knee joint of "Lucy," a 40%-complete skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis, in a location "Sixty to seventy meters lower in the strata and two to three kilometers away" (Willis 1987).
The claim is not only false, it is clearly shown to be false in Johanson's published writings about "Lucy" (e.g., Johanson and Edey 1981, ch. 7-8) and it has been pointed out repeatedly to its proponents that it is false. Despite this, none of the major proponents of the claim has publicly retracted it. One major proponent has privately agreed that it is false, and a few creationists have agreed to stop repeating it. One minor proponent made a public retraction...
To summarize: At least eighteen creationists have made this bogus claim. Three have never responded in any way to questions about it (Girouard, Menton, Willis). Another two have not responded to further inquiries (Brown, McAllister). Only five have shown a willingness to discuss the matter (Chittick, the Nuttings, Sharp, Taylor), but one (Chittick) cut off correspondence. Four have agreed that the claim was in error and agreed to stop making it (Hovind, McAllister, Sharp, Taylor), and two agreed to stop making it if further investigation showed that the claim was bogus (the Nuttings) but have continued to repeat it. One (Arndts) has indicated a willingness to believe that the claim is in error but no interest in researching further or offering a correction because the article in which he made the claim just used it as an example of a type of error in reasoning. One (LaHaye) has insisted that the claim is not in error, but agreed to stop making it at the request of the Institute for Creation Research. Three (Baugh, Huse, Mehlert) have not yet been contacted for comment. One (Brown) now denies having made the claim at all. Only three (Menton, Morris, Sharp) have issued public corrections or clarifications."
This is not a one - shot wins thing and I have no faith - investment in evolution as you have in YE Creation. If evolution turned out to be all balls it would not do anything whatsoever to prove God, Jesus or divine creation because there is still no good evidence for that. I'd wait to see what the evidence would indicate was correct. And if that was YE creation, so be it.
But it isn't. Science does not support Creationism. But there is much evidence for evolution and I'd be happy it to discuss it honestly with you - the weaknesses, the gaps, the problems and the speculations, if you could only stop leaping on those points, using the false claims of those Creationist dissemblers and demanding that we accept that it disproves he whole thing.
Quote:
Gee states. That once we realize that Deep Time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution (IS WRONG).
Let me ask you to be honest. "(IS WRONG)." Is that what Gee wrote or is that a interpretation by you or by some Creationist?
Quote:
"Since scientists can never prove a particular scenario of human evolution," Leakey said "all these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, (THAT'S A LOT OF NONSENSE.)" 12/9/1996
Is "(THAT'S A LOT OF NONSENSE.)" what Mary Leaky wrote or is it your addition or that of some creationist sticking their own view onto a scientific quote that at least can be made to look as though it supports it?
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 09-02-2009 at 05:17 AM..
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I am going to say this once more and then I'm done. 
