At 09:29 AM 11/17/97 -0800, Arthur V. Chadwick wrote:
>You wrote:
>
>>I object to the use of higher classificatory levels to claim that evolution
>>hasn't occurred. To place them in the same genus is not the same as saying
>>that the life-form has remained totally unchanged.
>
>I don't suggest no change, as you know.
I know you accept a certain amount of morphological change. My point was
that one cannot use an altered morphology as evidence of no morphological
change. It makes no logical sense to me. Yet this is what almost all of the
living fossil examples are.
>>
>>Consider this use of the genus Acer: Acer can be found in the Jurassic,
>>therefore it is a living fossil and evolution is disproven.
>>
>>Compare this to a family: Bovidae are found in the Miocene and therefore a
>>cow is a living fossil and evolution is disproven.
>
>No comparison. The changes between Acer from Mesozoic to present are well
>within the range of variation of extant forms. Not so for Bovids.
>
>I think you have missed the point in trying to discredit "living fossils"
>They do exist and the terminology was invented by evolutionists, not by
>creationists.
I agree that the evolutionists invented the term. But they use it in an
entirely different way than the creationists. Creationists try to use it to
say that there has been no change, but that is not what the evolutionists
mean. They mean that the group (genus, family etc) has existed from a long
time ago.
>The fact that they may have been a little different than their modern
>counterparts does not detract from the significance of their remarkable
>stasis. I don't know any creationists that think organisms haven't changed.
> Even Linnaeus himself recognized that.
Maybe the issue should be re-directed. How do you quantify how much
morphological change has occurred. To use the crabs on my web page as
evidence of a living fossil is clearly wrong.
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/crab.gif
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm
