The theory has always relied heavily on creativity, filling in the gaps with our imagination. At first these were supposed to be filled in later with the real fossils, but they never were.
Now we have 150 years worth of drawings which appear to reflect some compelling consensus. But as David Raup (Curator of Chicago Field Museum) said, we have even less examples of 'transitional' fossils than we did in Darwin's time, because many we thought we had then, have since been debunked as separate species.
Even the dinosaur to bird theory is looking ever more shaky now.
The lesson here has been, that two species that appear similar superficially, in no way suggests that one accidentally morphed from the other, no more than 2 similar looking cars from different makers.
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Actually, the fossil record is amazingly well defined. Yes, there are gaps. But so what? This is exactly what you'd expect to find when not all animals or insects are capable of being turned in fossils due to their morphology. This having been said, even if we had ZERO fossils, this would still not be a barrier to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution being correct, provable, testable and falsifiable. Fossils are just the icing on a rather large evolutionary cake. Also worthy of note is that the 'Darwinian' Theory of Evolution hasn't truly been 'Darwinian' for some time now, as different scientific fields contribute to our understanding of ours and other species' progress on this earth.
Now onto your quote from David Raup. There is no doubt that he was one of many scientist that had something to say about evolution. In regards to his book 'The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science' (1986), He himself admitted that the Nemesis theory, was “
a matter of fairly abstruse statistical inference with rather messy data” which could turn out to be “a major step forward in our understanding of the natural world or an embarrassing period of near-insanity in scholarship”.
But back to your quote. You are guilty of quote mining to suit your purpose and I'll show you why.
Yes, Raup did say this (in "Conflicts between Darwin and Palaeontology",
Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin Jan. 1979, Vol. 50 No. 1 p. 22-29). Here is the quote in the immediate context (the quoted portions in boldface):
'
Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection;. (p. 25,
emphasis mine)
Note that while Raup says that some of the examples have been "discarded"
he also says that others have only been "modified". For example the classic horse series Raup mentions is one of those that has been modified, but it is far from discarded. Also note that Raup clearly states that the pattern of the fossil record is one of change in living things over geologic time,
something that young earth creationists deny.
And yes it has been taken out of context. The paper is about Darwin's mechanism of natural selection and whether this mechanism is reflected in pattern of the fossil record,
not whether there is a lack of evidence for common descent. From the beginning of the article:
'Part of our conventional wisdom about evolution is that the fossil record of past life is an important cornerstone of evolutionary theory. In some ways, this is true -- but the situation is much more complicated. I will explore here a few of the complex interrelationships between fossils and darwinian theory. . . Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence form fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life.
Unfortunately, this is not strictly true. We must distinguish between the
fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the
explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest
how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be.' (p. 22)
The transitions Raup seems to be talking about, in the quote creationists use, are mostly at the level of species or genera (like between a horse and a zebra or between a fox and a wolf). Not intermediates between higher classifications like between classes, orders, or families (between reptiles and mammals etc.), which are the ones creationists most object to. However it is these "missing" species level transitions that creationists (in ignorance?) often quote palaeontologists talking about.
Not particularly damning. Perhaps the more interesting question is where do creationists get the idea that lists of such (out of context) quotations are a valid form of scientific argument?
The dinosaur/bird theory is well justified with evidence that holds consistent scientific consensus, across multiple disciplines, no matter how hard you may wish it not to.
You say: 'The lesson here has been, that two species that appear similar superficially, in no way suggests that one accidentally morphed from the other, no more than 2 similar looking cars from different makers.'
This is a great example of a false analogy. I'm sorry, but you do NOT get to place a naturally occurring phenomena such as evolution, side by side with a man-made, artificial process such as automobile production. You may as well just say that
- Bananas and telephones are both shaped to fit our face, so bananas must, like telephones, be designed. Or that:
- Bananas and telephones are both shaped to fit our face, so bananas must, like telephones, be inedible.
You obviously have no idea about the science or the character of those people you invoke in your irrational 'arguments'. The only argument that you have, in fact, persisted in, is a massive argument from ignorance. Backed up with spurious quote mining to suit your pre-existing belief.
You really are functioning on a very basic logical level.
I guess I am just one of the great unwashed!
