Ah, Bushbasher, welcome back.
I like playing squash. Usually there are no gaps in the wall.

Regarding your ‘god of the gaps’ comment, in this case, we are not making statements with reference to our lack of knowledge. We know a lot about fossils. So the ‘missing link’ type of argument is not based on what we don’t know but what we do.

Ernst Mayr said in 2001, “Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” If it’s okay for evolutionists to talk about the gaps, then why not creationists?

Bushbasher, if a forensic scientist found something like a bullet hole in clothing, this might be evidence for something significant. You wouldn’t want to dismiss this evidence by saying that it’s just a gap in the clothing, and gaps are not evidence, would you?

David,
By what criteria do we choose between the Rainbow serpent myth, the Japanese myth, or the other myth which I spoke about on 20/2/08? This is a good question.

Dear Dan,

You wrote: "By what criteria do we choose between the Rainbow serpent myth, the Japanese myth, or the other myth which I spoke about on 20/2/08? This is a good question."

Thank you for writing that it's a good question. We can enjoy all the myths and recognise them as products of different cultures. We don't have to make a choice.

Ernst Mayr said in 2001, “Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” If it’s okay for evolutionists to talk about the gaps, then why not creationists?

Ernst Mayr has made a problematic statement. There is no reason to expect a gradual steady change. Unless the environment changes there is no pressure on a population that has adapted to its environment to change. Apparently evolution is not a gradual steady change at all. Events such as changes in climate, meteor impacts which apparently caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and other environmental changes cause species which have adapted to their environment to either become extinct or to develop new forms. From the record there are periods of little change with periods of rapid change interspersed. When there is a mass extinction such as with the dinosaurs other life forms evolve to fill the vacant niches as we mammals have done.

In 1972 Eldredge and Gould wrote "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism explaining the process. Ernst Mayr made an out-of-date assumption.

oh dan, dan, dan, you're such a cutey.

yes, of course you can talk about gaps in the fossil record. however

*) if you really understood that "we know a lot about fossils", you would also understand that evolution is a fact.

*) you should not pervert the discussion of the gaps with totally inappropriate analogies such as gaps as bullet holes.

*) you should not quote an evolutionary biologist discussing the puzzle of the gaps as if he is suggesting or implying that that is a threat to the theory of evolution. to quote mayr:

"evolution is so clearly a fact that you need to be committed to something like a belief in the supernatural if you are at all in disagreement with evolution. It is a fact and we don't need to prove it anymore. "

*) despite your denials, you are making a god-of-the-gaps argument, and it is as manipulative and as special-pleading and as weak and as boring as such arguments always are.

other than that, i loved your post. please, continue your game.

Bushbasher,
You make four points. Two of them simply insist that evolution is a fact.

I’ve heard the ‘evolution is a fact’ song many times now, but it isn’t getting under my skin. Facts are not established through repetition of chorus. Evolution has not earned the right to be accepted into the pantheon of things we call ‘facts’. My contention is that it is not even a good candidate.

I’d already included the ‘evolution is fact’ statement in my quote from Mayr, so I already knew Mayr believes it. Therefore I don’t see how your secondary quote added anything to what was said.

Your other two points relate to the god-of-the-gaps argument that you accuse me of using. The phrase ‘god-of-the-gaps’, as I understand it, is as a shorthand way of saying, ‘when our knowledge is inadequate, we can blame it on god’. For example, once when a lightening bolt struck, people might have asked why here and not there, or why anywhere at all? With inadequate knowledge, they may be tempted to shrug their shoulders and say it was an act of god. Now, with greater understanding of lightening, we aren’t so quick to say that, and we don’t shelter under trees in thunderstorms.

So a god-of-the-gaps argument is one that is counter-inquisitive, or one relying on inadequate information. But where exactly am I using a god-of-the-gaps type argument?

Thanks for your encouragement to continue.

David,
By what criteria do we choose between all the myths? I thought your question contained a touch of rhetoric, so I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to answer it.

You said, “We can enjoy all the myths and recognise them as products of different cultures.”

I don’t particularly enjoy evolutionary thinking, the idea that we’re accidents descended from bacteria, fish, and ape like creatures. This is the myth that derives from atheist culture. No, thanks.

Gould and Eldridge said that punctuated equilibrium is the way to explain the absence of transitional fossils between the phyla. Another way is to propose that there was never transition between the phyla. I think the second option is plausible. We might have to ask Bushbasher which case he thinks is doing the special-pleading.