On Mar 4, 2005, at 8:29 PM, William Biesele wrote:
You have never seen an intermediate species, neither have I, and we never will find 'intermediate species.' The term is an oxymoron. There are no cars intermediate between Chevrolet and Toyota, but both have 'evolved' from the horseless carriages. The designs between the two are not 'intermediate' cars but were cars, complete and running. Mechanical objects are a bad analogy for biology but I hope you see my point: there is no species intermediate between dogs and horses so we will never find it. But dogs and horses do share a common ancestor somewhere between the Permian and the Paleocene. And from the Permian to the Paleocene it was not a linear progression but a many branched progression through time, all of the branches and leaves were species, not one was intermediate between dog and a horse.
This is a poor example. Cars are designed, and some of them, I contend, are even intelligently designed. Darwin certainly expected to find intermediate species, and said that incompleteness in the exploration of the fossil record accounted for the then current lack of evidence. In fact, Darwin said that if the evidence failed to come forth with subsequent exploration of that record, that was evidence that evolution was false. Gould came up with the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis as a way to say, "Evidence? EVIDENCE?!? We don't need to show you any stinkin' evidence!!"
There are differing viewpoints about many things. Einstein did not believe in quantum mechanics, but turn on your green laser and you can see quantum mechanics at work in spite of Einstein's disbelief. Science reaches conclusions by examining facts and reaching conclusions that can explain the facts, not by starting with a conclusion and looking for evidence that might support the supposition.
Ahem, Einstein *predicted* lasers. One of his seminal papers we're celebrating this year concerned the photoelectric effect. In fact, that was the work cited by the Nobel committee in 1921 because General Relativity was too recent to yet have the confidence of the scientific community. Jim Cobb james@cobb.name ---- I have never seen a watch designed by a blind watchmaker that kept decent time. ---- Fossil sells watches, but I don't think that can be taken as evidence for the evolutionary hypothesis.