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TIKTAALIK:
A 'FISHAPOD' TOO FAR FOR ID/GOD OF THE GAPS? John H Williams (Investigator
109, 2006
July)
"GOD SAID IT. THAT SETTLES IT!" "God said it. That settles it!" This quotation was made to an observer at a Creationist Mega-Conference in 2005. It underlines the futility
of presenting
evidence and rational argument when dealing with fundamentalists,
who've
long had to put a spin on key scientific revelations. Their most
favoured 'explanation' being a God of The Gaps, they've maintained a
quaint belief
that there were no transitional fossils, thereby leaving evolution
'unproven'.
SCALES, FANGS, GILLS,
A 'NECK',
FORELIMBS, 'WRIST' & 'FINGERS'
The recent find of a new
fossilised species,
a 'fishapod' named Tiktaalik roseae which lived in the
equatorial
floodplains of the Devonian c. 375 mya, and found 1000 km north of the
Arctic Circle, at Ellesmere Is, Canada, presents creationists with yet
another headache. (Time Magazine 17/4/06, based on an article in
Nature,
March, 2006 by Dr Neil Shubin and his Chicago University colleagues).
Again the apparent absence of transitional species is shown to be wrong. In the same Time
article, Prof Kenneth
Miller of Brown University is quoted: "The argument that there are no
transitional
forms has been untenable for at least two decades."
Time Magazine
(8/5/06) printed four
critical letters of its Tiktaalik coverage:
Dwayne
Spies
criticises the "straw man" argument
as an attempt to discredit ID/creationism, and accuses the authors of
"evolutionary
evangelism" (!)
Michael Camp argues that one transitional fossil doesn't mean a Darwinian "slam-dunk": "it could be a link - or a strange animal". KW Mackenzie of NSW quotes a 19th century evangelist, Charles Spurgeon, who said of Darwin's theory, "There is not a hair of truth on this dog from its head to its tail", and asserts that the T of E is in disarray due to the discredited irreducible complexity argument, and the lack of 'in-betweens'. Mr Azuonye promotes "a Creator there at the 'kick-off' who then lets natural selection do its thing: "We must not box ourselves into one viewpoint". Interesting arguments
with elements of
denial, ignorance, and Michael Behe's Black Box Ideas (given
short
shrift in Investigator 95/26 and 98/18 by Dr Bob
Potter).
Spurgeon's quote was standard issue for 19thC evangelists,
not
so relevant in 2006, but 'the more things change, the more they remain
the same'!
There can be only one
version of how
we came to be, and to bolster faith-based dogma, creationists will, in
my opinion, continue to clutch at straws. However, a degree of
scepticism,
in this as in other finds, is to be encouraged.
6,000 YEARS LEAVES NO TIME FOR EVOLUTION Naturally, the evolutionary process wasn't observed, and, given aeonic time, and the complexity of biological change, the implied linear transition from species A to species C, via transitional species B is a massively simplistic. The 'availability' of only
six thousand years
precludes significant evolutionary change, thus requiring a
creationist,
anti-evolution ethic, which, in its various forms, is hard at work
desperately
bailing out and reassuring its groupthink that the emperor is
wearing
clothes.
"IN THE CASE OF RAPTURE THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED" I have an old school friend whose adopted son is an Evangelical Pentecostal Minister in Indiana, and whose wife has the above quotation as a bumper sticker! Despite the ever-present reality, millions believe the world is in End Times, at the end of which there'll be a seductive-sounding Rapture, when some will be raised, and the rest razed (The Rupture). Mortality is too much of a
full stop for
many Earthlings, who are longing for a colon, while the Evangelicals –
no hint of a question mark – are ready any day for the !!
YOUNG EARTH 'STRATIGRAPHY' Young Earth 'scientists' have their own 'geological column', during which a lot happened in a rather short time, with names of periods such as Noachian and Pelagian, all based on the literal reading of Genesis. Where does this 'fishapod', part fish and part tetrapod, with the anatomical characteristics of both, fit within their scheme? It doesn't, unless it made
an appearance
before the Garden of Eden, then it may have gone extinct shortly after
all members of the species swam thousands of kilometres to the
sub-Arctic:
seemingly pointless and unIntelligent for a Designed creature.
JIGSAW PUZZLE KEEPS FILLING Tiktaalik is "one more piece in a rapidly-filling jigsaw puzzle", a "crucial link between fish and the appearance of amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs and birds", exactly the sort of transitional animal predicted by Darwin. He would have been pleased
with another recent
discovery of a well preserved 92 myo snake in Patagonia, by Cornell
University
paleontologists. This 1.5m long creature, named Najash rionegria, a
contemporary of the dinosaurs, is helping to resolve a long
herpetological
debate about whether snakes derived from land or sea animals. This
fossil's
skeleton has hips and back legs, suggesting that it evolved from
burrowing
land dwellers (Source: Nature 20/4/2006, reported on in the
UK's
Guardian
Unlimited 20/4/06).
This rare find of Tiktaalik, a 'fish with fingers', reminds us of the as yet unearthed significant fossil finds which will augment the current store of geodata, and which will continue to enhance our understanding of our geological 'ancestry'. I conclude with this fine quote from Bruce Alberts, President of the (US) National Academy of Science: "In evolution,
as in
all areas of science,
our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific
enterprise
has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural
explanations,
logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because ID theories are
based
on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science."
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