The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 2 of 6

Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010

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I have debated with Ark Times Bloggers many times in the past on many different subjects. Here are some of the subjects: communism, morality, origin of evil, and the Tea Party. I have always loved to post about evolution and I have had a chance in the past to correspond with scientists such as Carl Sagan and George Wald and also had the opportunity to write reviews of science related books that were published.

Recently I got into the subject of evolution on the Ark Times Blogand the subject came up on the Ark Times Blog. I go by the username “Saline Republican”:

I stated on March 18, 2013:

Archaeopteryx and the outlier are right about Steven Jay Gould not being a creationist but what he did was undercut traditional Darwinism. Take a look at this big battle that he started.

Henry Morris wrote in 1995:

A fascinating new book1 has recently been published in England with the intriguing title, The Darwin Wars. The author, Andrew Brown, though himself an atheistic evolutionist, in 1995 won the Templeton Prize as the best religious affairs correspondent in Europe.

The title of his book does not refer to the long warfare between evolutionists and creationists, as one might first suppose, but rather to the internecine battles between various groups of evolutionists against each other. Although they close ranks when doing battle with creationists, they wrangle bitterly among themselves.

The most publicized battle at present is between the neo-Darwinians and the punctuationists. Richard Dawkins (of Cambridge University in England) is the best-known protagonist for the neo-Darwinists and Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University for the punctuationists.

These two parties need names, and I propose to call them Gouldians and Dawkinsians.2
Like the gingham dog and the calico cat, these two groups seem bent on eating each other up. The Gouldians argue vigorously that the fossil record proves that evolution did not occur slowly and gradually and progressively, as neo-Darwinianism requires. The Dawkinsians, on the other hand, insist vehemently that there is no possibility genetically that sudden evolution after long periods of “stasis” (i.e., no change) could ever happen at all, as the punctuationists allege. Both are right!

One prominent Gouldian makes the following flat assertion that paleontology proves stasis, followed by wide extinction events, followed by rapid evolution of new kinds.

I make the very strong claim that nothing much happens in biological evolutionary history until extinction claims what has come before.3
This scenario then postulates that rapid evolution suddenly generates a new complex of flora and fauna to fill the vacant ecological niches.

But there is no biological mechanism that can do such marvelous things. Dawkins had correctly pointed out the following fact:

Complexity cannot spring up in a single stroke of chance. . . . Gradualness is of the essence. . . . If you throw out gradualness, you throw out the very thing that makes evolution more plausible than creation.4
And so Gouldians and Dawkinsians are actually (although unintentionally) helping to prove creationism, one disproving gradualism, the other disproving punctuationism. The house of evolution is badly, and eventually fatally, divided.

Niles Eldredge, the partner of Gould in their notion of stasis and punctuated equilibrium, has acknowledged this internal warfare.

Geneticists and paleontologists are still very much at each other’s throats.5

FOOTNOTES: 1 Andrew Brown, The Darwin Wars: How Stupid Genes Became Selfish Gods (London: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 241 pp.
2 Ibid., p. 56.
3 Niles Eldredge, The Patterns of Evolution (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1998), p. 4.
4 Richard Dawkins, “What Was All the Fuss About?” Nature (vol. 316, August 22, 1985), p. 683.
5 Niles Eldredge, op. cit., p. 10.

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The person using the username Elwood noted:

Just a quick note to help our uneducated Saline understand the idea of “theory.”
A theory is simply the best explanation for a collection of facts. Because it’s science and not religion-faith the theory is tested and should should contrary evidence arise through discovery or testing the theory is discarded. There’s nothing sacred about scientific theory whether it’s gravity, wavelengths or evolution.

The Outlier stated:

Saline, Religious faith is belief in something that cannot be confirmed by any of one’s senses.

Trusting an airline pilot is not having “faith” in him. It is knowing that the FAA has standards for both the mechanics of the airplane and the ability of the pilot. Faith has nothing to do with it. Trust and faith are not the same thing in this discussion.

Archaeopteryx asserted:

Saline, you’re a liar. You took that quote right out of context, as has been amply demonstrated in this very thread. And if you truly believe the things you’ve written about the fossil record, you’re an idiot, besides. Guess there’s no reason you can’t be both.

I responded:

Archaeopteryx you call me a liar and you say that I took the Gould quote out of context. Why don’t you read what I said and then you can apologize if you have any class at all.
Here is the source and here is what it said:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_G…

Because of his support for the theory of episodic evolution rather than gradual evolution Gould is a popular target for creationist quote-miners.[6][7] For example creationists pretend that Gould asserted that there is little or no evidence of evolutionary change in the fossil record with the following:

The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change…
— Stephen J. Gould, “The Return of Hopeful Monsters”, Natural History 86:22 (1977)

What he actually said, in context, was:

Many evolutionists view strict continuity between micro- and macroevolution as an essential ingredient of Darwinism and a necessary corollary of natural selection. Yet, as I argue in essay 17, Thomas Henry Huxley divided the two issues of natural selection and gradualism and warned Darwin that his strict and unwarranted adherence to gradualism might undermine his entire system. The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change, and the principle of natural selection does not require it — selection can operate rapidly. Yet the unnecessary link that Darwin forged became a central tenet of the synthetic theory…

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Elwood it really does trouble you that Evolution is just a theory doesn’t it? Couldn’t be better you are right about “micro evolution” having plenty of evidence and I firmly believe that it is true. However, “macro evolution” has a whole fossil record of missing links that are still missing. THAT IS WHAT MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR STEVEN JAY GOULD TO MAKE SUCH A SPLASH!!!!

I watched the Nova show “Did Darwin get it wrong?” in Nov of 1981 and then I gave my evolutionist professors in college fits because they hated Steven Jay Gould and they did not like that program at all!!!!