| MISSING LINKS?Starting with Darwin, evolutionists have been apologizing for the fossil record’s lack of evidence for gradual evolution. Over the last two decades, some have given up on finding the "missing links" and others have made some remarkable statements that concur with what creationists have been saying all along. Terms like transitional form have been obscured while the theory of punctuated equilibria has been advanced to explain four troublesome features of the fossil record: large morphological gaps, abrupt appearance of species, stasis after the appearance, and lack of identifiable phylogeny. While not every author cited would agree with Eldredge and Gould’s work in every detail, most would identify themselves with the PE position. The point one should come away with is not that the scientists cited no longer believe in evolution. Rather, they no longer rely on the fossil record as evidence. As Mark Ridley of Oxford has said, "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of evolution as opposed to special creation. The does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven. So what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the ‘fossil evidence,’ that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy." ("Who Doubts Evolution?" New Scientist, vol. 90, 1981, p. 831). |
