LA> "Evidence from the fossil record now points overwhelmingly LA> away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans LA> learned in High School; that new species evolve out of LA> existing ones by the gradual accumulation of small changes, LA> each of which helps the organism survive and compete in the LA> environment." (Newsweek, 3/11/80, p. 54)
What does the article say after that, Crabby? Something like this, perhaps?
"Increasingly, scientists now believe that species change little for millions of years and then evolve quickly in a kind of quantum leap...it is uncertain whether the leap takes place in a few generations or over tens of thousands of years. But at a conference in mid-October at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, the majority of 160 of the world's top paleontologists, anatomists, evolutionary geneticists and developmental biologists supported some form of this theory of 'punctuated equillibria'.
"...the new theories are intended to explain how evolution came about -- not to supplant it as a principle. Says Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould...'Evolution is a fact, like Apples falling out of trees.'
"...a new species may require no more than a mutation in a single gene...if the gene controls a crucial developmental pathway.
"...When they say a new species evolved rapidly, they are speaking in geologic terms. A single generation or 50,000 years is all the same to them. Either would be too short an interval for the intermediate organisms to appear in the fossil record."
FK> Nice try, Crabby. The cited article in no meaningful FK> way either supports creationism or disputes evolution -- it FK> says that most of the 160 experts at a Fall 1980 conference FK> in Chicago preferred punctuated equillibrium to gradualism.LA>That is NOT what that article said at all, of course.
Oh? Then how do you explain this --
"...the majority of 160 of the world's top paleontologists, anatomists, evolutionary geneticists and developmental biologists supported some form of this theory of 'punctuated equillibria'."The article also says --
"But the new theories are intended to explain how evolution came about -- not to supplant it as a principle. Says Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould...'Evolution is a fact, like apples falling out of trees'."Your OOC quote is the concluding paragraph of an article written by a pair of J-school majors whose scientific expertise is at best dubious and who have quite obviously failed to distinguish between Darwinism and gradualism [which, as SJ Gould has pointed out, are not the same thing.]
And you scratch your ass and deny using OOC quotes that distort the overall meaning of the material you cite.