Rosenhouse on ID's "Predictions"
I find this particular "prediction" especially amusing:
Complete series of transitional fossils will not usually be found because most proposed series have never existed. Eventually, researchers will give up on ideologically driven nonsense and address the history that IS there. They will focus on discovering the mechanisms that drive sudden bursts of creativity. Notice how vague this prediction is. At least the old-fashioned creationists were bold enough to claim that there are no transitional fossils at all, indeed were bold enough to tell us exactly what a transition must have looked like and then laugh derisively at the notion that they would ever be found. Longtime creationist watchers will recall Duane Gish's famous whale with legs cartoon that he used for years - until fossils were found that show exactly that, and in precisely the right temporal and anatomical sequence that he claimed they would never be found. O'Leary knows better than to make such an easily falsifiable claim, so she says that complete series of transitional fossils will not "usually" be found. Voila - the prediction that is not a prediction at all; sometimes they'll be found and sometimes they won't. No sane person who knows anything about fossilization would claim that we will find every step in every evolutionary transition, even between the higher level taxa; that would take a miracle, something real scientists do not invoke. But we will of course be able to document some transitions very well. Her "prediction" is exactly what evolution predicts as well. This "prediction" is equally vapid:
4. The environment will prove far more resilient than eco-doomsayers believe. People forget that the Permian extinction wiped out 90% of the marine life forms on this planet. Life seems to want to exist on this planet, even at the South Pole (cf March of the Penguins). Note: I have no time for environment destruction, and personally gave up keeping a car, as the simplest and most economical way to reduce my environment footprint. But I am NOT waiting for enviro-apocalypse!! - I don't believe it will happen. There will be changes. That's all. Not the end of the world or anything like it. What does this have to do with ID? Your guess is as good as mine. It doesn't even have anything to do with evolution. This is more of the same handwaving from ID advocates.
Rosenhouse on ID's "Predictions" | 0 comments ( topical, 0 hidden)
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