Darwin's Theory Of Gradual Evolution Not Supported By Geological History

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JuNie

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Darwin's Theory Of Gradual Evolution Not Supported By Geological History

Charles Darwin's theory of gradual evolution is not supported by geological history, New York University Geologist Michael Rampino concludes in an essay in the journal Historical Biology..... (NYU Press Release)

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I have removed the copied material in this post and inserted a link to what appears to be an original source.
 
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It interesting to bring Matthew's work to the attention of a wider audience and one can't help wondering if Captain Fitzroy had a copy of Naval Timber and Arboriculture on the Beagle. However, as structured the overall 'feel' of the piece is misleading, since it implies we currently follow Darwin's Theory of Evolution. We don't. So the objective of the piece becomes rather obscure. What do you think is its significance?
 
Darwin's key contribution - the basic mechanism by which living things evolve - remains.

The role of catastrophe belongs with the role of geographical isolation, tectonic motion, fragmentation of resources, and so forth. It sets the scene for evolutionary development.

There is nothing necessarily "gradual" about Darwinian Evolution. Darwin seems to have favored slow, continual, and uninterrupted manifestation of the principles of his theory in the real world, perhaps as a line in the sand opposing the major and powerful alternative facing him at the time - the invocations of catastrophe featured in the Christian Bible and other abodes of story and legend - but his preferences in the matter are in no way binding on better informed applications of his theory.
 
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iceaura said:
Darwin's key contribution - the basic mechanism by which living things evolve - remains.

The role of catastrophe belongs with the role of geographical isolation, tectonic motion, fragmentation of resources, and so forth. It sets the scene for evolutionary development.

There is nothing necessarily "gradual" about Darwinian Evolution. Darwin seems to have favored slow, continual, and uninterrupted manifestation of the principles of his theory in the real world, perhaps as a line in the sand opposing the major and powerful alternative facing him at the time - the invocations of catastrophe featured in the Christian Bible and other abodes of story and legend - but his preferences in the matter are in no way binding on better informed applications of his theory.
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we also need to consider what the REAL conclusions of Punctuated Equilibrium are - rather than the perceived conclusions that come from the crazy-camp

Put simply, evolutionary time moves at a much faster rate than geological time.

So apparent rapid change within the geological column quite often simply reflects that sediments are laid down too slowly for phyletic gradualism to be apparent.

By way of analogy its like using a stopwatch that only measures in whole seconds to show that Usain Bolt is no faster than Linford Christie, when in fact the real margin between them is huge
 
iceaura said:
Darwin seems to have favored slow, continual, and uninterrupted manifestation of the principles of his theory in the real world, perhaps as a line in the sand opposing the major and powerful alternative facing him at the time - the invocations of catastrophe featured in the Christian Bible and other abodes of story and legend -
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There is no seems to about it. That is exactly what occured. The battleground between evolution and creation that would take place on publication of Origin had been prepared by the annoucement of Hutton's Principle of Uniformity and the clear exposition of its consequences in Lyell's Principles of Geology.

Darwin took a copy of the first volume of that work with him on the Beagle and had subsequent volumes sent on to him during the voyage. He attended lectures at Oxford given by Sedgewick and spent a summer trip in Wales with him, getting an immersion course in field geology. He took from Sedgewick the sense established by Hutton and echoed by Lyell that the Earth was very old, but he emphatically rejected Sedgewick's views on change, which were of the school of Catastrophism. Yet this was largely a natural Catastrophism in which he believed, not a supernatural one, so that naturalism as a way of looking at the world was reinforced in the young Darwin at this time.
 
iceaura said:
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There is nothing necessarily "gradual" about Darwinian Evolution.
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Then why does world famous evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, call it "inch by million year inch"?

Darwin seems to have favored slow, continual, and uninterrupted manifestation of the principles of his theory in the real world, perhaps as a line in the sand opposing the major and powerful alternative facing him at the time - the invocations of catastrophe featured in the Christian Bible and other abodes of story and legend - but his preferences in the matter are in no way binding on better informed applications of his theory.
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Virtually any time anybody offers up a question, however reasonable, challenging Darwinism, he is instantly reviled with all kinds of name-calling and condescension.

The above dismissive rhetoric in categorizing the Holy Bible with "other abodes of story and legend" is offensive and inappropriate. But that never seems to stop the Anointed Set from being dismissive and condescending and hateful.
 
renaissance said:
Then why does world famous evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, call it "inch by million year inch"?
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Because that's how it works most of the time - for millions of years on end.
renaissance said:
Virtually any time anybody offers up a question, however reasonable, challenging Darwinism, he is instantly reviled with all kinds of name-calling and condescension.
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Virtually any time anybody reposts on the internet, for the fifitieth time,

on the very venue where the answers are most easily found for oneself with even minimal effort,

one of the handful of standard, long settled, well answered, and nine times out of ten fairly stupid questions allegedly about Darwinian Evolution, they are Christian or Muslim fundamentalist whackjobs trolling their evangelical agenda once again.

You expect civility? Courtesy? Then quit taking these dumps in people's faces.
 
RenaissanceMan said:
Then why does world famous evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, call it "inch by million year inch"?
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Evolutions rate is variable depending on the circumstances (like catastrophic events), it took 2 billion years to go from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, it took a few million years for mammals to take over after the dinosaurs. Homo sapains appeared at most just 200,000 years ago and ~60,000 years homo sapains nearly went extinct with only a few hundred of us left at most according to genetic evidence, that tiny population with its tiny and inbred gene pool changed at least at a mental level, it quickly took over the whole world and snuffed out all other hominads, adapted to local continents making all the different colors of man today, true tens of thousands of years in that latter case is not millions but its certianly not fast.

Virtually any time anybody offers up a question, however reasonable, challenging Darwinism, he is instantly reviled with all kinds of name-calling and condescension.

The above dismissive rhetoric in categorizing the Holy Bible with "other abodes of story and legend" is offensive and inappropriate. But that never seems to stop the Anointed Set from being dismissive and condescending and hateful.
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I guess I should call this an "appeal to assholary" a newly minted ad hominium. Let say you were arguing with mathematicians that 2+2 does not equal 4, and the mathematicians were getting flustered and calling you an idiot, ergo you conclude that because they are assholes they must be wrong? Just because they are assholes does not make them wrong!

Now if you have an argument against evolution lets hear it, please challenge evolution, but pointing at us is not challenging evolution.
 
RenaissanceMan said:
Then why does world famous evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, call it "inch by million year inch"?.
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Could it be because Dawkins is, as I have often said, over-rated, over-emotional, overly-simplistic and like the curate's egg, rotten in parts?

RenaissanceMan said:
Virtually any time anybody offers up a question, however reasonable, challenging Darwinism, he is instantly reviled with all kinds of name-calling and condescension.
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Generally because the questioning is typically stereotyped, old hat, poorly founded, largely ignorant, misguided, dogmatic nonsense. It is difficult to respond positively to that sort of tripe.

Good questions will be treated positively by many participants, though there are dogmatic turds on both sides of the fence.

RenaissanceMan said:
The above dismissive rhetoric in categorizing the Holy Bible with "other abodes of story and legend" is offensive and inappropriate.
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The Bible is replete with stories, many of them damn good, so you can't be objecting to that, can you? It seems it is the legend part you object to. Does this mean you truly believe Jonah was swallowed by a great fish? If not, what is your objection? If so, do you understand why - with our present knowledge of piscine anatomy and physiology, we find it a little difficult to, er, swallow?
 
I have spent many years studying evolutionary biology, and that it occurs is not in doubt. Indeed, if nothing had evolved since 33bc we would still be herding sheep and fighting wolves under the stars. Evolution can be applied to almost anything, technology, language, culture etc. The fact is that religeon has substantially failed to evolve and is now viewed by many as arcane. That these two fields seem mutually exclusive is not exactly correct. People like to cite them as diametric or polar opposites, but the wisdom of soloman suggests an attempt at pushing the evolution of good sense, law and order. It is only people with entrenched positions that make this hard.
 
ULTRA said:
I have spent many years studying evolutionary biology, and that it occurs is not in doubt. Indeed, if nothing had evolved since 33bc we would still be herding sheep and fighting wolves under the stars. Evolution can be applied to almost anything, technology, language, culture etc. The fact is that religeon has substantially failed to evolve and is now viewed by many as arcane. That these two fields seem mutually exclusive is not exactly correct. People like to cite them as diametric or polar opposites, but the wisdom of soloman suggests an attempt at pushing the evolution of good sense, law and order. It is only people with entrenched positions that make this hard.
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Actually I would disagree religion has evolve, its a mental virus by meme theory and the most virulent ones like Christianity and Islam and mechanism to induce propagation and maintain high population load such as believe or you will go to hell or believe or we chop your head off. Older religions were less effective at spreading.
 
ULTRA said:
The fact is that religion has substantially failed to evolve and is now viewed by many as arcane.
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I disagree - the majority of religions have evolved, taken on board rational premises, and liberalised their stances on many issues.

The fascistic fundie mindset is a reaction to this liberalisation, but it is very much a minority view these days.

I concede its easy for americans to conclude that the brand of insane fundamentalism that gives rise to looney tunes ideas about evolution is the norm, but that's merely a product of how noisy the fundies in are in the US - but even then most of the noise is really only coming from those few remaining states where it is still considered ok to fuck your sister and marry your cousin.
 
synthesizer-patel said:
I disagree - the majority of religions have evolved, taken on board rational premises, and liberalised their stances on many issues.
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Yeah, and hired PR companies, moved into TV and radio, and now preachers wear toupees and makeup, and are nearly as good at screwing money out of people as they are at screwing prostitutes.
 
iceaura said:
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on the very venue where the answers are most easily found for oneself with even minimal effort,
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I quoted Richard Dawkins, and cited the relentless hatefulness, condescension,and name-calling by people claiming to support science.
Like so many others here, you prove my point exquisitely.

Your anti-scientific, anti-intellectual diatribe continues:

one of the handful of standard, long settled, well answered, and nine times out of ten fairly stupid questions allegedly about Darwinian Evolution, they are Christian or Muslim fundamentalist whackjobs trolling their evangelical agenda once again.
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I quoted Richard Dawkins, not any "evangelical agenda." I object to atheist whackjobs, spewing hatred and ignorance.

You expect civility? Courtesy? Then quit taking these dumps in people's faces.
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Quoting Richard Dawkins, and you, is "taking a dump in people's faces"?

You're in to scatology, not science. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Please join the other leftist whackjobs on my Ignore List.

Ignore List

* AlexG
* iceaura
* joepistole
* phlogistician
* spidergoat
 
*psss* your Ignore List is not something of pride, its like saying "these are the people I can't argue against, so I ignore them" personally when someone ignores me I feel it is the point when I have officially achieved victory over them.
 
Since he only listens to himself, he might as well put everybody on his ignore list.
 
AlexG said:
Since he only listens to himself, he might as well put everybody on his ignore list.
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That's a bit harsh. I'm sure there's any number of televangelists, dictators, pseudoscientists, and general whackjobs that hold his rapt attention
 
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