John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


"John Harshman"


Fletis Humplebacker


John Harshman


Fletis Humplebacker



STEPHEN J. GOULD, HARVARD, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred
in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major
anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at
that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major
divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate
uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would
reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major
discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness
and geological abruptness of this formative event..." Nature, Vol.377,
26 10/95, p.682


You have no clear idea what he found, because you have never read
anything he wrote except these little snippets. You have no basis to
accept or reject anything he said.

To the contrary, you are the one dismissing his words as a
misrepresentation. I'm calling your bluff.


One more time:

" [T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record.Preserved
transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our
understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely
wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples:
therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the
half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken
temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]
Faced with these facts of evolution
and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position,
creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to
buttress their rhetorical claim.

That's their claim of evolutionists, you know.


Good for them. But in this case all we're arguing about is whether
creationists have distorted one particular statement of Gould's. Gould
says they have. Who is better able to determine that than Gould?


No, that isn't what we are arguing. Can't we even agree on what we
are arguing about? No one disputed Gould's concern, I posted some
quotes from various websites that you dismissed by calling them
creationist's misrepresentations. I challenged you on that. You
are also painting all creationists with the same broad brushstroke.



if I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am
-- for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or
episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my
colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated
equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record
-- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change
thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory,
not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small
isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of
speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of
time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological
microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is
infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether
through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the
fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are
generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between
larger groups."

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens
Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

How did any of that show that his words were misrepresented on the
creationist site? I don't see where his argument with his contemporary
counterparts alters the excerpts that they posted from Nature.


Read for comprehension. Gould himself is saying that his words were
misreprented by creationists, and he's telling you what he really meant.
I don't know how he could have said it more plainly.


You could be much plainer, you know. How was his quote on the
website misrepresented?