Fossils and evolution?

Question

The following quotes are by Henry Gee. He holds a PhD in zoology and he is an editor of Nature, one of the premiere scientific journals.

"The intervals of time that separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent"

He describes fossils as "an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gaps"

Further all evidence for human evolution "between ten and five million years ago -- several thousand generations of living creatures -- can be fitted into a small box"

He concludes that conventional picture of human evolution is "a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped with accord to human prejudices"

He also said "to take a line of fossils and claim they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story, amusing, perhaps even instructive

but not scientific."

This guy is not a quack. He is highly educated as well as editor of one of the top scientific journals. So I ask can fossils prove evolution?

Looks like a question to me. As to the biology section. Debating there is boring. Much more fun here.

Ronnie Dobbs - Seeing as they were direct quotes I do not see how I twisted them. I did not say evolution is proved false by this. I merely stated that fossils do not prove evolution. Which seems to be exactly his point.

Dreamstuff Entity - on the off chance you look back at this question let me ask you something. How can you prove any one of those fossils is an ancestor of humans? The answer is you cannot. They could merely be extinct apes that left no descendants.

To the posters below me who accuse me of taking his quotes out of context. You accuse me unjustly. I do not say evolution is false or that he claims evolution is false based upon these quotes. I merely state what he says. You cannot prove evolution and relatedness by fossils. One simple premise that he agrees with. Maybe you could engage your brains before typing in the future.

Answer 1

The current knowledge on Evolution and the fossil record can be found at the site Center for Science And Culture (CSC) www.dissentfromdarwin.org Herein, Scientists -[dozens of them] disprove the theory of Evolution with Scientific proof. These Scientists are NOT Christian, either!
Most people Atheists/ Agnostics/ Christians are unaware that such current information exists. His or her ignorance is based solely, on the teachings from out-dated information contained in scholarly text books and from hear-say ... opinions of others. Get with the program everyone !!!

Answer 2

Quote-mining in order to give a false impression is bearing false witness (as, you could argue, is repeating them without making the effort to check). It takes 2 minutes on google to look up the full context of these quotes, eg:

"The conventional portrait of . . . the history of life . . . tends to be one of lines of ancestors and descendants. We concentrate on the events leading to modern humanity, ignoring or playing down the evolution of other animals; we prune away all branches in the tree of life except the one leading to ourselves. ...
Because we see evolution in terms of a linear chain of ancestry and descent, we tend to ignore the possibility that some of these ancestors might instead have been side-branches; collateral cousins rather than direct ancestors. The conventional linear view easily becomes a story in which features of humanity are acquired in a sequence that can be discerned retrospectively; first an upright stance, then a bigger brain, then the invention of toolmaking and so on, with ourselves as the inevitable consequence."

Then the bit which your source actually quoted:

"New fossil discoveries are fitted into this preexisting story. We call these new discoveries 'missing links', as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices. In reality, the physical record of human evolution is more modest. Each fossil represents an isolated point, with no knowable connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming sea of gap."
Henry Gee, 1999. In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life. (New York: The Free Press), page 32

And so forth for the other quote-mines.

Clearly, he is not talking about science, but about the popular representation of the fossil record (ie. fitting every fossil in to a direct linear sequence). This is not what science does. And is not any part of the overwhelming evidence for evolution.

Answer 3

Here is a quote from Henry Gee, regarding people like you twisting his words:

"The Discovery Institute has used unauthorized, selective quotations from my book IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME to support their outdated, mistaken views.


Darwinian evolution by natural selection is taken as a given in IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME, and this is made clear several times e.g. on p5 (paperback edition) I write that "if it is fair to assume that all life on Earth shares a common evolutionary origin..." and then go on to make clear that this is the assumption I am making throughout the book. For the Discovery Institute to quote from my book without reference to this is mischievous.


That it is impossible to trace direct lineages of ancestry and descent from the fossil record should be self-evident. Ancestors must exist, of course -- but we can never attribute ancestry to any particular fossil we might find. Just try this thought experiment -- let's say you find a fossil of a hominid, an ancient member of the human family. You can recognize various attributes that suggest kinship to humanity, but you would never know whether this particular fossil represented your lineal ancestor - even if that were actually the case. The reason is that fossils are never buried with their birth certificates. Again, this is a logical constraint that must apply even if evolution were true -- which is not in doubt, because if we didn't have ancestors, then we wouldn't be here. Neither does this mean that fossils exhibiting transitional structures do not exist, nor that it is impossible to reconstruct what happened in evolution. Unfortunately, many paleontologists believe that ancestor/descendent lineages can be traced from the fossil record, and my book is intended to debunk this view. However, this disagreement is hardly evidence of some great scientific coverup -- religious fundamentalists such as the DI -- who live by dictatorial fiat -- fail to understand that scientific disagreement is a mark of health rather than decay. However, the point of IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME, ironically, is that old-style, traditional evolutionary biology -- the type that feels it must tell a story, and is therefore more appealing to news reporters and makers of documentaries -- is unscientific.



nice work. your ONLY argument is taking a credible scientist and taking his words out of context? That is just sad. Why even bother?

Answer 4

Posting a science question in the religion and spirituality section often means the asker does not really want an answer. His goal is to ask a question that he believes proves some scientific knowledge to be wrong, or that science does not yet answer, and make the implicit claim that the only other explanation is a god, and specifically, the same god he happens to believe in.

It's the "god of the gaps" - intellectually bankrupt, since it favors ignorance instead of knowledge, and because of the contained logical fallacy.

However, on the off chance that you really want to know the answer:

--
these are more lies.

1. That may have been true at one time, but there are thousands of hominid fossils now. Lubenow (1992) found that there were fossils from almost 4,000 hominid individuals catalogued as of 1976. As of 1999, there were fossils of about 150 Homo erectus individuals, 90 Australopithecus robustus, 150 Australopithecus afarensis, 500 Neanderthals, and more (Handprint 1999). Foley (2004) lists some of the more prominent fossils.

2. It takes only a handful of fossils to show that hominid forms have changed over time.

Links:
Handprint Media. 1999. Human evolution, http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html#chart

Foley, Jim. 2004. Prominent hominid fossils. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html
References:

1. Foley, Jim, 2004. (see above)
2. Handprint Media, 1999. (see above)
3. Lubenow, Marvin, 1992. (see below)

Further Reading:
Lubenow, Marvin, 1992. Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of the Human Fossils. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, chap. 3.

Answer 5

Since fossils one make up about 1% of the evidence for evolution, I can see how he thinks this. They do however, completely fit with the model of evolution set forth by the other evidence. It is like you found a piece of a puzzle, and studied it until you knew what the rest of the puzzle looks like. Then you find all the other pieces and sure enough, they form the picture you though. But that one piece doesn't have the picture on it.

Oh, and if you want to see why people are accusing you of quote mining:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4.html

And the more I read, the more I see that you are trying to prove something that is honestly funny to people educated on evolution. The fossils can indeed support evolution and it is clear that fossils we have are indeed human ancestors. To not think this means you are ignorant to the science.

Answer 6

Good quote mining. Five quotes out of context, stitched together. Creationists certainly enjoy living a life of deception. It's a shame that Gee refutes the deliberate misrepresentation.

ADDENDUM:
"I merely state what he says. You cannot prove evolution and relatedness by fossils."

He does not say that. Although he points out that you cannot establish lineage (i.e. direct descent), nowhere does he ever deny the relatedness. This diagram is from Nature when he wrote about the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/images/440747a-f1.2.jpg
There is no claim of lineage, but clearly relatedness is shown.

You are so typical of a Creationist -- you defend one lie with a bigger lie. Now prove me right and come up with a bigger lie, as you try to cover the last lie. My brain is engaged, and I have the facts.

Answer 7

Fossils do not have to be centuries old to be called fossils. Fossils do NOT prove evolution or millions of years. Quite the opposite, in fact. They actually prove that a global flood occurred. According to the Bible, that would be about 6000 years ago.

Also, about 25 years after Mt. St. Helens erupted (in 1980), many, many "fossils" of the animals that were buried in that eruption were dug up. Do you honestly want to know what causes fossils? "Millions of dead things buried down in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth?.

Answer 8

Do you have a source for any of those quotes? If the source is Icons of Evolution, you should know that Gee has accused the author of quote mining.

Answer 9

I'd give you points for trying to disprove evolution but Ronnie Gibbs seems to have an excellent response. But, even if he didn't, trying to use ONE scientist's quote hardly makes the THEORY of 'Intelligent Design' plausible.
BTW, what's intelligent about blowing air into a mud sculpture?

Answer 10

hm...

*reads more*

" He concludes that conventional picture of human evolution is "a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped with accord to human prejudices" "

i think he was referring to the old drawing of monkey to man.

my personal opinion on this is that it's impossible to have enough samples because we dont have samples of every bit of "missing links". they could have been destroyed already.