One of Milton's longer articles, this page is a critique of Katherine Hunt's talk.origins transitional fossil FAQ, with a focus on the section concerning the evidence for a transition from early jawless fishes to cartilaginous marine vertebrates such as sharks, skates, and rays.
Milton is indeed correct that the definition of a species-to-species transition given by Hunt here is rather unambiguous. However, nowhere does she say that the transition discussed here is one such instance. Indeed, in the section where she differentiates between the two different kinds of transitional fossil sequences, she is careful to emphasize that "General lineages are known for almost all modern groups of vertebrates, and make up the bulk of this FAQ." Nowhere in the definition of a species-to-species transition series are marine vertebrates mentioned. However, she does specifically mention that "Many 'species-to-species transitions' are known, mostly for marine invertebrates and recent mammals (both those groups tend to have good fossil records)...."Hunt begins her "FAQ" by drawing a distinction between transitional fossils that show a 'general lineage' and those that demonstrate 'species-to-species transition'. The latter she defines as 'a very fine grained sequence documenting the actual speciation event.'
This is a courageously unambiguous definition and one that leads any rational person to expect that Hunt will then present evidence for such a 'fine grained sequence' that documents an 'actual speciation event'. Unfortunately, however, that is not what is presented in her "FAQ".
[Milton goes on to quote from the jawless fish to shark section of the FAQ]
Notice that, where we are promised a 'fine-grained sequence documenting an actual speciation event,' what we are actually given is conjecture and suppositions ...
If Milton wanted to present a truly withering critique of the FAQ he should have gone after what were explicitly described by Hunt as the strongest transitional sequences. Instead, he characterizes the jawless fish to shark sequence as though it's presented as a clear species-to-species transition, when Hunt said nothing of the sort.
Milton even quotes her as saying that "[We] don't know which jawless fish was the actual ancestor of early sharks." At the very beginning, in a section Milton himself quotes, Hunt makes it abundantly clear that the FAQ includes descriptions of both general trends and specific transitional sequences in evolution, so why on earth would Milton assume that this is one of the latter when Hunt herself expresses unsureness about the exact ancestry? Portraying the jawless fish -> shark fossil record as characteristic of the strongest transitional fossil sequences is ridiculous, and a clear case of misrepresentation. I'm starting to see a pattern here.
So why didn't Milton pick something more strongly supported to criticize? Well, it just so happens that the FAQ goes in chronological order - and as jawless fishes were some of the first vertebrates, this one happens to be the first one listed. From reading this article, I would guess that Milton didn't read the entire FAQ in order to find a strong sequence to critique, or even a representative sequence. I would even go further and say he didn't get past the first page - he saw that the first sequence presented was not very strong, wrote up a few words about it, and summarily dismissed the rest of the FAQ as being no better without having read it. There will be more evidence for this in a bit.
In the next section, Milton criticizes the idea of looking at not-entirely-complete transitional fossil sequences as a method of establishing descent. Indeed, the question of how one can determine where divisions between species occur is a rather hard one when only fossils are concerned, as there can be no test of what can reproduce with what.
Finding transitional fossils should be easy, then! So since we haven't found more, it's clear that evolution has not occurred, and modern species have not descended from primitive equivalents. What other possible explanation could there be for not finding a complete, undeniable transitional sequence for every single modern organism?What this means is that there remains only one valid scientific test that would enable an objective observer to claim that one fossil is related by descent to an earlier fossil and that is an unbroken (or practically intact) chain of evidence linking the earlier and later fossils.
It is sometimes said that this demand is for an impossibly high standard of evidence -- like expecting an archaeologist to find an intact tomb of Caesar or Cleopatra with their personal diary beside the body. The reality is somewhat different.
Three-quarters of the Earth's land surface is covered with sedimentary rocks. A great proportion of these rocks are continuously stratified where they outcrop and the strata contain distinctive fossils such as sea urchins in the chalk and ammonites in many Mesozoic rocks. The case for Darwinism would be made convincingly if someone were to produce a sequence of fossils from a sequence of adjacent strata (such as ammonite species or sea urchins) showing indisputable signs of gradual progressive change on the same basic stock, but above the species level (as distinct from subspecific variation).
[...]
Yet there are so many billions of fossils available from so many thousands of strata, that the failure to meet this modest demand is inexplicable if transitions have taken place in the way Hunt describes.
It ought to be relatively easy to assemble not merely a handful but hundreds of species arranged in lineal descent. Schoolchildren should be able to do this on an afternoon's nature study trip to the local quarry...
Oh wait, there's an explanation of exactly this on talk.origins that Milton conveniently ignores.
And it's in the exact same FAQ that he's supposed to be critiquing.
This is absolutely mind-boggling - he's written multiple paragraphs on how there should be loads of transitional fossils just waiting to be found, and failed to see an answer by Hunt to this exact position, just one paragraph after a section that he quoted earlier . One wonders if Milton willfully ignored that section while writing this or, as I suggested earlier, he simply didn't read the FAQ.
Incidentally, the talk.origins page on the creationist claim that there should be lots of transitional fossils makes for some good reading on this topic, as the equivalent section in Hunt's FAQ is rather long.
Milton has little or nothing to say about the rest of the FAQ, including the more well-supported transitions, such as those found in marine invertebrates - which he brushes away as not constituting speciation ("shells getting a little longer or a little shorter"). Good thing too, my head is starting to hurt.
In short, Milton's article is a mess. Not only is it abundantly clear that he has done little outside research on the subject (for instance, he claims that biologists see the peppered moth as evidence of speciation), he apparently neglected to read extremely important parts of the FAQ he purports to be presenting a critique of, and grievously misrepesents the author on more than one occasion. This cavalcade of ignorance and seemingly willful misrepresentation is hardly isolated, as seen in his complete catastrophe of an article on speciation. Anyone who sees an article like this as a serious threat to any part of the mdoern theory of evolution needs to do some homework, and find a source that has done the same.
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