Copyright 1995 Glenn R. Morton
This may be freely distributed to anyone as long as not
alterations are made in the text and it is distributed in its
entirety.
***Intro****
Jim Bell has challenged me to critique the treatment of
fossils by Phillip Johnson and Kurt Wise. He wrote:
>>For starters, if you'd like to make the case that Kurt Wise and
Phil Johnson (to name two) are both wrong on this issue, I would
like to hear it. <<
This note is the result of that challenge. There is one person
on the reflector who could do a much better job of the fossil
data than I and I ask him to correct (and forgive) any of my
technical errors. Since he has chosen never to post anything
here, he can do it privately or publicly. If done privately, I
will relay the corrections to the reflector. I want one thing
clear from the start. My criticisms are not meant to be taken
personally; they are criticisms of issues and positions. Nor are
my criticisms designed to "destroy Christianity" or any such
thing. My deepest hope is that by bringing to light these
deficiencies in our apologetic, we can together work to make it
stronger.
I will begin with a definition of a transitional form. This
term is thrown around with much glee on the part of anti-
evolutionists. It would be useful to know what it means. Then
we will look at two transitions in the fossil record, the fish to
amphibian transition and the mesonychid-whale transition. Then
at the end I will address the issue of strategy that Christians
ought to pursue in the area of science. References are at the
tail end. (sorry Jim I prefer to use the term 'transition'. You
can substitute do-hickey, thingamabob, whatsamacallit or whatever
you wish. I wouldn't want you to become distracted by worrying
about what word I use. And if any other word distracts you, use
the same technique of word substitution.)
****Transitional Forms******
What is a transitional form? Creationist have long demanded
transitional forms between various groups. The lack of these
transitional forms are said to be evidence that evolution is
false. Before we can know if this is true, we must define what
we mean by a transitional form. To define such a thing, Gish
(1979, p. 50) says
"We would predict that new basic types would not appear suddenly
in the fossil record possessing all of the characteristics that
are used to define its kind."
This is as close as he gets to defining his term. I glanced
through Anderson and Coffin and without an index, I could not
find a definition of the term. Scott Huse (1983) also fails to
define his term. Parker (1980, p. 89) merely states that "...the
boundaries between kinds should blur as we look back at their
fossil history." Wise gives the best definition I have been able
to find. Wise said (Wise, 1994, p. 226-227)
"They have a structure that stands between the structure of
their ancestors and that of their descendants. However,
they are also found in the fossil record as younger than the
oldest fossils of the ancestral group and older than the
oldest fossils of the descendent group."
What he fails to define is what is the nature of the gradation
expected. But later he seems to suggest that there ought to be a
smoother transitional series if evolution is to be true. He says
(Wise, 1994, p. 227)
"It is merely the combination of structures that is
intermediate, not the structures themselves. Stephen Jay
Gold calls the resultant organisms 'mosaic forms' or
'chimeras.' As such they are really no more intermediate
than any other member of their group."
If by transitional series one means that there should be an
infinite gradation of morphology from one form to another, like
the morphing done to pictures of politicians in political TV ads,
then he is using a bad concept of the nature of genealogical
traits. This is the view that Wise and most non-evolutionary
creationists suggest. That view of heredity is almost that of
Pythagoras who believed that life began with a blending of male
and female fluids. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1982, 7, 994.) In
this note, when I use the term morphing, I am meaning a smooth
gradation between one form and another like the face of Clinton
turning into the face of Jimmy Carter or Hillary in a political
ad. Those types of sequences consist of hundreds of
intermediates. But this is NOT how transitions occur in the
fossil record.
Traits are not analog in nature; they are quantized. I have
blue eyes; my three sons have brown eyes. They do not have
bluish-brown or brownish blue eyes. In the fossil record, horses
have one toe or three toes. Even today, about 1 in 10,000 horses
are born with three toes; Julius Caesar was said to have ridden
on such a horse. (Gold, 1983, p. 177) They don't have 2.75 toes,
or 1.82345 toes. Thus for creationists to insist upon an
infinitude of forms is using the hereditary knowledge of 500 B.
C. Surely we can do better than that.
So what is a transitional form? I would define it as an
animal which has some features of each group; not an infinite
morphing sequence. Remember the Goldschmidt toad from Nature, Feb
2, 1995, p. 398? This toad had eyes on the inside of his mouth
on the roof of the mouth. He was found living in the wilds of a
Canadian garden. Regardless of the cause of his deformity, it
was not a gradual thing which produced this feature. His parents
did not have the eyes on the lips, and his grandparents did not
have the eyes where the nostrils are and this great grandparents
did not have eyes just below where normal toads have their eyes.
There was no GRADUAL transition to the eyes-in-the-mouth state.
I believe that this is how most mutational change occurs. Mutate
the control genes and you get a major change in the morphology of
one or a set of traits. (see the fish to amphibian transition
below).
Phillip Johnson advocates this morphing view of genetics as
evidenced by his statement in the fall/winder 1994 Origins
Research, p. 6. He says,
"There is no evidence from the fossils of a pattern of
common ancestors and intermediates connecting them. If neo-
Darwinism were true, somewhere there should be a universe of
transitional intermediates, as Darwin said there had to be.
Where is it?"
Darwin, it is true believed that gradualism in the morphing
sense was the way evolution worked. But Darwin did not have
modern genetic and developmental knowledge. To always quote
Darwin as the authority on how change must occur is to hold
evolution to its most primitive form. It does not even attack
the view held by most scientists today. Secondly, just because
Darwin believed it does not make it standard dogma today. So the
constant demand for a series of morphing forms is trying to
attack a view held more than 100 years ago and is not what our
children are taught in college. Our use of these views makes us
look outdated and risks our children's trust.
One final thing before looking at the lineages, Christians
often criticize the idea that small changes could lead to large
morphological change. Phillip Johnson stated, (Origins Research,
Fall/Winter 1994, p. 7)
"These scientists understand that a theory which is valid only at
the small scale has been recklessly extrapolated into a general
theory of creation, in order to fill the explanatory gap that
would otherwise exist. The theory has to be extrapolated.
Otherwise we wouldn't have a theory at all."
This criticism if applied to other sciences would be equally
valid. Johnson should criticize astronomy, which is extrapolated
from small observed changes. No one has ever seen a star form,
the sun orbit the galaxy or even Pluto make a complete orbit.
Continental drift falls under the same gun as does much of
geology. No one saw the continents connected. Observed trends
and fossil evidence are extrapolated. No one was around to see
that it takes a long time to deposit the world's sedimentary
beds. That idea is just an extrapolation of presently observed
trends. If extrapolation was not allowable in science then much
would have to be erased from our text books. Is this what
Christians want to accomplish - the destruction of all science?
*****Fish to Amphibian*****
On page 76-77 Johnson talks about the Fish to Amphibian
transition. I am not going to quote any of this but Johnson
gives one quote from Stahl that says that none of the known fish
is believed to be on the direct line of amphibians. That can
probably be said of any transition since these animal bones are
not found with signs that say "Here lies your Great-Grandfish".
Johnson then proceeds to talk about the Coelacanth, a living
representative of the Crossopterygians. He then points out that
a study of the internal organs of this creature do not show pre-
adaptation for land. Why should it? It lives in the deepest part
of the ocean and is in a distinct order of the subclass
Crossopterygia. (Beerbower, 1968, p.447) This doesn't sound like
a big deal to most laymen. Look up what an order is. Bats are
in a different order from primates. Thus the fact that the
coelacanth is a different order than the crossopterygian should
have been brought out for the layperson to read and understand
its significance. If I say, I found a bat and a study of his
internal organs show no pre-adaptation to doing mathematics, or
walking upright or having an opposable thumb, it is meaningless.
The bat has nothing to do with our proposed ancestry! Likewise
to suggest that the coelacanth shows no pre-adaptation for life
on land is equally meaningless. (And before someone says "That is
what the evolutionist is doing," it is equally wrong for them.)
Thus Johnson is not giving the reader, who is very likely to be a
layperson untrained in the field, enough data to be able to
decide for himself.
On a positive note concerning the evidence of a transition
between fish and amphibian, I go to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1982, vol 1. Amphibia, p. 794. They note that the
crossopterygians had nasal passages which enabled it to breathe
air with its mouth closed. This is a fish with a feature which is
"characteristic of all terrestrial vertebrates." Sounds pretty
transitional to me. It also had a working lung. (Is this a
transitional feature?) The teeth of the fish had infolding of
the enamel surface. Guess what, the earliest amphibians had this
trait also. One of the transitional facts is that the earliest
amphibians also had gills as well as lungs. A trait in common
with the precursor fish. Coates and Clack state,
"Acanthostega seems to have retained fish-like internal
gills and an open opercular chamber for use in aquatic
respiration, implying that the earliest tetrapods were not
fully terrestrial. The discovery provides information on
the sequence of acquisition of tetrapod characters, and
supports previous suggestions that such characters as legs
with digits evolved first for use in water."~M. I. Coates
and J. A. Clack, "Fish-like Gills and Breathing in the
Earliest Known Tetrapod,"Nature, 352, July 18, 1991, p. 234.
What is interesting is that the second oldest known
amphibian, found in Pennsylvania, had lost the gills and only had
lungs. This was 5-10 million years after the earliest known
amphibian.(Rensberger, 1994). His legs were also more muscular.
The best recent overview of the fish-amphibian transition is
found in Ahlberg and Milner, 1994. The skulls of the
Panderichthyidae are so much like those of the earliest
amphibians they were first included in that group until more
complete skeletal material was found which showed that these were
still lobe-finned fish. Ahlberg and Milner state (p. 508)
"Indeed one panderichthyid fragment, the holotype skull
roof of Elpistostege, was initially described as a tetrapod,
while two other supposed panderichthyids have recently
proved to be Devonian tetrapods."
These kinds of mis-identifications should be expected in a truly
gradualistic transition. Gradualism makes it difficult to draw a
line. Remember Parker's definition above? However, I am sure
that someone will view this as a case of those stupid
paleontologists, can't tell a fish from a frog. But the
transitional features are so mixed up together in these animals
that "Both Ichthyostega and Acanthostega retain true tail fins
with fin rays." (Ahlberg and Milner, p. 510) This sounds like a
tetrapod with a fish tail and sounds very transitional.
Now, none of the apologetical books I consulted mentioned
these transitional traits. Anderson and Coffin (1977, p. 51)
state,
"The first amphibian to appear in the fossil record is
Ichthyostega. Its appearance in the Devonian period in Greenland
is abrupt and without transitional forms."
Gish, (1979, p. 78-79) states,
"There is a tremendous gap, however, between the crossopterygians
and the ichtyostegids , a gap that would have spanned many
millions of years during which innumerable transitional forms
should reveal a slow gradual change of the pectoral and pelvic
fins of the crossopterygian fish into the feet and legs of the
amphibian, along with the loss of other fins, and the
accomplishment of other transformations required for adaptation
to a terrestrial habitat."
Compare Gish's desire for transitional loss of fins with the
following from Ahlberg and Milner (1994, p. 508),
"The fundamental importance of panderichthyids lies in the
combination of characters they possess. Unlike osteolepiforms,
panderichthyids actually look like early tetrapods with paired
fins: They have the same superficially crocodile-like skulls
with dorsally placed orbits, straight tails and slightly
flattened bodies WITHOUT DORSAL OR ANAL FINS. Like tetrapods,
but unlike all other fishes, they also have frontal bones in the
skull roof."[emphasis mine-grm]
Here we have a fish which HAS lost two of its fins! and looks
much like a tetrapod.
This transition has fish with tetrapod skulls, lungs and
gills, fin loss, and nasal passages and teeth similar to the
earliest tetrapods. The earliest tetrapods had lungs and gills,
teeth and skulls like the fish, and they had a retained tail fin.
The body morphology was similar.
I would respectfully contend that our apologetical books are
not preparing our college bound youth for what they will face.
All it takes for them to find these things out is a little work
and curiosity. When they learn of all this (and I am just an
amateur) they will begin to question what we taught them. It is
only a short step to questioning the Gospel itself.
Part II: the whale transition.