#1. The quotes were never taken out of context. You do not cease to "imagine" that the quotes were intended to show that evolutionists "gave up on evolution and became Christians" or "evolutionists ceased to story hop" that has NEVER been a claim in ANY post I have made - yet all your arguments "pretend" to fight that cause.
How sad that you "gloss over the details" in the discussion to that extent.
"Never?" Let's look at your favorite quote.
Now you keep harping on your quotes about such things as "NEVER HAPPENED IN NATURE." Let's once again take a look at your quote and show how you take it out of context in order to build your case.
Let's even take that very quote. Simpson is historically your most abused quote.
You quote him as follows.
"The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium (Eohippus) into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature."— *G.G. Simpson, Life of the Past (1953), p. 119.
Now I am going to take a closer look at this quote.
Above, I make the argument that it was merely the tempo and mode of horse evolution which was being cited as wrong. I assert that all of these authors accpet the general story of the evolution of the horse and were merely pointing out the imcomplete knowledge of the earlier hypothesis.
You, on the other hand, keep asserting that they say that this is a story that never even happened. That is the whole basis for your thread, right.
Now as you look at the quote in context, you will see something. Your quote is part of a paragraph. Immediately after the sentence you quote, Simpson tells us exactly what he means by that sentence. And as ayou by now know, what he tells us is not that horse evolution "never happened in nature." He tells us that an orthogenetic mode of horse evolution "never happened in nature."
The evolution of the horse family included, indeed, certain trends, but none of these was undeviating or orthogenetic. The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature. Increases in size, for instance, did not occur at all during the first third of the whole history of the family. Then it occurred quite irregularly, at different rates and to different degrees in a number of different lines of descent. Even after a trend toward larger size had started it was reversed in several groups of horses which became smaller instead of larger. As already briefly noted, the famous “gradual reduction of the side toes” also is something that never happened. There was no reduction for the 15 or 20 million years of the history. There was relatively rapid reduction from four front toes to three (the hind foot already had only three toes). Many horses simply retained the new sort of foot without further change. In one group there was later another relatively rapid change of foot mechanism involving some reduction in size of the side toes, which, however, remained functional. Thereafter most horses retained this type of foot without essential change. In just one group, again, another relatively rapid change eliminated functional side toes, after which their descendants simply retained the new sort of foot. (Fig. 39)
In the history of the horse family there is no known trend that affected the whole family. Moreover, in any one of the numerous different lines of descent there is no known trend that continued uniformly in the same direction and at the same rate throughout. Trends do not really have to act that way: there are not really orthogenetic.
(The evolution of the horse family, Equidae, is now no better known than that of numerous other groups of organisms, but it is still a classic example of evolution in action, and a very instructive example when correctly presented…)
I have bolded the rest of the paragraph for you, the part you so conveniently leave out.
In context, it is quite apparent that is is the "uniform, continuous transformation" of the lineage that "never happened in nature." It might help to point out the sentence that preceeds the one you quote. "The evolution of the horse family included, indeed, certain trends, but none of these was undeviating or orthogenetic."
Taken together, one cannot miss that Simpson is discussing the tempo at which horse evolution occurred and is never once casting doubt on any transistional horse series or whether horse evolution is something that happened.
Read the paragraph. He talks about changes in size. He talks about changes in the number of toes. He talks about the pace and direction of change but never once does he ever say we where ever wrong about whther the change happened or that we where ever wrong about what happened.
You have seen this quote put back into context numerous times now. Why do you continue to insist that Simpson meant something other than what he said?