puppydog85 wrote:"Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record"
Ok, this is really a side topic and I don't view it as a main argument against evolution. You are the one who brought up the fossil record and I pointed out that according to highly respected evolutionists the supporting fossil record is, and I quote, "virtually nonexistent". Which means we need to discuss other things as "proof" for evolution.
And .
No, that's not actually what is being stated there, but to understand that, I have to debunk a couple of assumptions you seem to be making.
First, Darwin is credited with being the first to publish a concept we now call "evolution" and to talk about things like natural selection and humanity's relation to other animals in a historic biological way. He began a whole line of thinking and study, but that does not mean he is the master of all evolution. Science just does not work that way. That would be like saying that becuase the first car invented could only go a few miles per hour, there is just no possibility of cars exceeding 200 mph. A LOT of what Darwin thought to be true was just wrong, because he did not know most of what we know today. He did not know what we do about genetics and mutations, did not know about techtonic plates or the various die-offs we have had on Earth, etc, etc, etc. He estimated the age of the Earth to be much, much younger than we know it to be.
He did think that natural selection, alone, could be the reason for species change. We now know that is just not the case. That is what is meant above. If natural selection were the only factor in evolution, then the Earth would have to be much, much older than we see it to be, even now. BUT... we also know that straight natural selection as Darwin envisioned is not all that is in effect. I talked about this quite a bit in a few of the threads I mentioned above. Right now, I am rather tired (yeah, its early but I did not get much sleep last night...). I can't get into the whole speil, but let me give you a couple of examples.
Among deer, its usually the "biggest/baddest" buck that has the most progeny... natural selection would tend to favor that size, then. However, its complicated by a few factors. First, sometimes while the big buck is fending off his rivals, a scrawny little "hanger on" might just sneak in and "do his thing". Also, while being bigger and heftier might lead to more mating potential, it won't help much if he encounters a big rig on a road crossing.. or gets trapped behind a landslide, isolated by a flood or even just gets cut off from the females by a really big tree. A LOT of events might keep that big buck from really passing on his genes per the "natural selection" model. BUT.. that's not even the whole story. Let's say that there is a drought (cannot imagine why that might come to mind, here
). Anyway, in this drought there is little grass available. It could be that the large buck is able to find and defend the better resources and still has the advantage, but it could also be that he needs more food to maintain his bulk, uses more energy to move to find food and, ultimately does not survive as well as the "scrawny buck" that is somehow able to thrive on less food.
More complicated.. all of that can happen at the same time, in different areas or (sometimes) even in essentially the same area.
Add in a lot of the genetic stuff mentioned above (there is a question about whether gene mutation is actually increased or whether its just that the variations have more of a chance of being noticed/surviving, etc. in times of extreme change) and you get a series of relative static periods, where natural selection can be said to essentially dominate, interrupted by periods of very rapid change.. where natural selection, but also other factors are put into play. ALL of that is very much within the fossil record. To dismiss it, means you just have not studied the subject at all, not really. You may have studied what young earth people try to claim is said by evolutionists, but you have not actually studied evolution or what science and geology really prove.
