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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: On the Rio Grande
Message-ID: <998@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Apr-85 03:01:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.998
Posted: Sun Apr 28 03:01:42 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Apr-85 07:23:09 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 49


>> { from: Lief Sorensen, Hewlett Packard Co. }
>> ...
>>      This evidence is a puzzle to evolutionists.  Darwin, in  his
>> Origin  of  the  Species,  states, "To the question why we do not
>> find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed  ear-
>> liest period prior to the Cambrian system I can give no satisfac-
>> tory answer."  Drs. Marshall Kay and Edwin  Colbert  of  Columbia
>> University  also  agree  with  this evidence when they state "Why
>> should such complex organic forms be in rocks about  600  million
>> years  old  and  be  absent or unrecognized in the records of the
>> preceding two billion years?...If there  has  been  evolution  of
>> life,  the  absence  of  the requisite fossils in the rocks older
>> than Cambrian is puzzling."  This quote  taken  from  Stratigrapy
>> and Life History, Page 102.h

> [Keebler]
> Another creationist flaw:  You cannot easily justify using the AB-
> SENCE of evidence as evidence itself.  Absence of evidence simply
> makes the theory which depends upon the evidence questionable.  It
> does not, by any means, support other theories.

You'd better go tell Gould, Stanley, Eldredge, Ager, etc., that they
can't use stasis (lack of evidence of change) as support for their
propositions regarding the nature of the stratigraphic record...

>>      When it comes right down to it, species are  the  only  real
>> entities  in nature.  All higher categories are based on the sub-
>> jective judgment of specialists.  Linnaeus placed all the  varied
>> marsupials  (i.e.  pouched mammals, such as oppossums, kangaroos,
>> etc.) in a single genus, Didelphis.  Today workers usually  place
>> them  in  an  order  (or still higher catagory) divided into many
>> families and genera.  One man's "genus" is another  man's  "fami-
>> ly".

> There is nothing to justifiy your claim that species are the only
> "real entities".  In addition, you would not classify a bacteria
> with an elephant.  The classification hierarchy is not whimsical,
> as you so suggest.

First sentence is true.  The meaning of species has never been agreed
on.  But whimsey is not suggested.  Lief simply points out a fact of
taxonomic controversy.  Are you suggesting that there *is* a
classification scheme that everyone can agree on?
-- 
                                                                    |
Paul DuBois	{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
                                                                    |
"There are two sides to every argument, until you take one."        |