Ah, now you move the goalposts. Earlier you were trying to quote Gould as saying there are no transitional fossils at all, but now you've moved to him saying that a "degree of gradualism" isn't present in the fossil record. Those are two very different things.
How is that moving the goalposts? Earlier quotes and the latest one are all by Eldredge and Gould. All quotes are about the same fact that the fossil record offers no support for gradual change.
That is why Eldredge and Gould proposed punctuated equilibrium in contrast with phyletic gradualism.
They did so because they realized paleontologists were interpreting the fossil record via a speciation model (anagensis) that was contrary to how population geneticists had determined most speciation events occur (parapatric speciation). So they raised the question....why are we paleontologists viewing the fossil record through the lens of anagenic speciation, when most speciation that occurs is parapatric?
Whether the alleged evolution model assumes continual interbreeding of a species or branching species “cladogenesis”, it doesn’t change the fundamental assumption that the transformation of one species into different one is a gradual process that necessitates numerous numbers of transitional forms. Real world observations of the fossil record do not support the assumed gradualism.
Richard Dawkins as one of the critics of “punctuated equilibrium” regards the apparent gaps represented in the fossil record as documenting migratory events rather than evolutionary events. According to Dawkins, evolution certainly occurred but "probably gradually"
elsewhere. He shifts the problem to “elsewhere” ignoring the fact the search for the alleged transitional forms is not limited to a locality.
But I have to wonder why this matters to you. Whether the dominant mode of speciation is one or the other, that doesn't change the overall conclusion of universal common ancestry via evolution. Whether it happened mostly by A or B, it still happened, so again....what is your point?
Punctuated equilibrium is in contrast with phyletic gradualism but both predict numerous transitional forms to the contrary of real world observations of the fossil record.
Selection is supposed be a slow and gradual process, per the ToE, endless purposeless random mutations would continuously emerge and for every successful transitional form that was filtered/kept by selection, we should find endless other unsuccessful forms that were eliminated by selection. In fact,
real world observations of the fossil record neither show numerous successful transitional forms nor the endless unsuccessful forms that were eliminated.
Considering the number of genes in a genome and possible combinations that can be randomly produced in nature for each single species, there wouldn't be enough material or time in the whole universe for nature to try out all the possible interactions (both the successful and unsuccessful ones) even for a single species. (Especially the number of alleged random unsuccessful mutations that got eliminated by selection would be unimaginable)
The human genome alone includes 30,000 genes; number of possible interactions gets to be so unimaginable (ten to the seventy thousand). Imagine the number of possible interactions for every single species on the planet. This is totally ridiculous;
we don’t see that in nature neither the enormous number of transitional forms nor the unimaginable number of unsuccessful life forms that supposedly got eliminated by selection.
"When drawing the borderline between the exact sciences and the Geisteswissenschaften, this line would go right through the middle of biology and attach functional biology to the exact sciences while classifying evolutionary biology with the Geisteswissenschaften. This, incidentally, shows the weakness of the old classification of the sciences, which was made by philosophers familiar with the physical sciences and the humanities but ignorant of the existence of biology"
Then in the following paragraph he talks about how philosophers who came up with this division ignored the methodologies used in the historical sciences.
So it seems you've been trying to quote Mayr as advocating putting evolutionary biology in the Geisteswissenschaften, when in reality he was criticizing doing so, just as earlier you were trying to quote Gould as saying transitional fossils don't exist, when in reality he was quite adamant that they do.
Are you familiar with the concept of "quote mining"?
In his book “What Makes Biology
Unique?” Ernst Mayr proposed that evolutionary biology is different than the so-called "exact" sciences and that the basic principles of the scientific method are
simply not applicable to evolutionary biology.
He stated that evolutionary biology developed its own methodology of
historical narratives, where experiments are inappropriate and definitely acknowledged the similarity with the Geisteswissenschaften when he said “
Indeed evolutionary biology, as a science, in many respects is more similar to the Geisteswissenschaften than to the exact sciences.". He proposed that evolutionary biology is “
Autonomous” and as such is allowed to break free beyond the restrictions of the scientific method. He said:
“The earliest fossils of Homo, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus, are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap. How can we explain this seeming saltation? Not having any fossils that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the time-honored method of
historical science, the construction of a historical narrative.”
“Evolutionary biology has developed its own methodology, that of
historical narratives, to obtain its answers, particularly in cases where experiments are inappropriate.”
“
However biology is in many respects a very different science from the so-called exact sciences. Perhaps the most pronounced difference is that biology, in part, is a
historical science. In this part of biology, evolutionary biology, the method of
historical narratives is the most heuristic approach.”
“For instance, how do species multiply? However, as we will see, to obtain its answers,
particularly in cases in which experiments are inappropriate, evolutionary biology has developed its own methodology, that of
historical narratives"
“This revealed that some of the basic principles of the physical sciences are simply not applicable to biology. They had to be eliminated and replaced by principles pertinent to biology”
Um.....yes it is. Our understanding of how populations evolve has direct, functional applications in medicine (e.g., antibiotic resistance, new viral strains) and genomics (it helps determine genetic function) for example.
No, you are refereeing to the adaptation ability of organisms as driven by directed mutation see #1245. If the process is random as the ToE assumed, we wouldn’t expect same results to repeat but we do know for a fact that microorganisms do develop antimicrobial resistance (AMR). In fact, latest finds of molecular biology is what disproved all central assumptions of the modern synthesis. See #753 & #781
So? We have evolutionary biologists debating about the primary mode of speciation and how that should be applied to the fossil record. So what?
It's not about primary or secondary mode, these are contradicting modes in contrast with each other as evident in the statements of the critics on each end, and neither of them explain the unbridged gap of the fossil record.
“Critics such as Scott, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett have concerns that the theory (
punctuated equilibrium) has gained undeserved credence among non-scientists because of Gould's rhetorical skills.” This is definitely not an argument about a primary mode.
Punctuated equilibrium - Wikipedia
In fact, the rejection of steady gradualism is necessarily a rejection of theory of evolution itself even if not declared as such, that is why the proponents of gradualism were aware of this issue and were very critical of punctuated equilibrium.
Are you not aware of the history of how German Christianity, and its persecution of Jews, was a major influence on Nazi ideology? Are you not familiar with the writings of Martin Luther, such as "The Jews and Their Lies"? Are you not aware of how Hitler appealed to and built on that?
Christianity neither supports that the Aryan race is the master race, nor that the Jews should be exterminated.
Nazi Germany racial ideology was driven by evolutionary biology at its core. See the links below.
Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics refers to the social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of "Nordic" or "Aryan" traits at its center.
Nazi eugenics - Wikipedia
Racial hygiene
The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal breeder seeking purebred animals.
Racial hygiene - Wikipedia
Again, even if true.....so what? Nazism was also influenced by Christianity. ISIS and Al Qaeda were influenced by Islam.
I fail to see your point.
So, that influence proves the point of the specific damaging impact of the the ToE on humanity which totally has nothing to do with the influence of religions or any other ideology.
So by the same token, Islam, Christianity, and pretty much all religious beliefs have been a damaging influence on humanity.
Again, this is a separate irrelevant argument that has nothing to do with the influence of the ToE.
Our understanding of evolution has also provided many benefits, such as better medicine, vaccines, agriculture, and understanding of genetic function.
Not true, the benefits were driven by scientific advancement of epigenetics, physiology, genomics, population genetics, microbiology and systems biology.
In fact, the ToE assumption of random mutation is misleading, contradicts observations and was disproved by latest finds of molecular biology. “Molecular biology can now be seen to have systematically deconstructed its own dogmas” See#781
So is that it? Your only point in all this was "Evolutionary theory has resulted in some bad outcomes"?
With respect to its influence, indeed it’s damaging to humanity. With respect to its refutation, it’s driven by latest 21st century scientific finds of molecular biology, which disproved all the fundamental assumptions of the Modern Synthesis.
