I suppose that I should respond to Bob's last post out of a sense of completeness. But first a joke that seems germane.
A man is on a business trip to a small town out west. One day he decides to stop into one of the local watering holes before heading back to his hotel. He sits down at the bar and orders a drink. Startling him, the guy next to him jumps up and yells "Four!" Everybody dies laughing. A few minutes later another guy stands up and yells "Sixteen!" There are a few snickers. Later, another person stands up and yells "Seven!" Again, a complete uproar. So the man asks the bartender what is going on. The bartender answers that they have all been hanging out together for so long that everyone already knows everyone's jokes so they have just numbered them. When you want to tell a joke, you just stand up and yell the number of the one you want to tell and people will laugh if they thought that one was funny. After a few more drinks, the visitor decides to join in. He gets up and yells "Eight!" Dead silence. The bartender leans in and says "Some people just don't know how to tell a joke."
That is kind of where we are with Bob, here. Arguing the facts is hard so he argues with quotes. But we have all seen them before. We know that when he quotes Asimov that he is going to leave out the part of the quote where Asimov disagrees with Bob's conclusion. When he makes his bird claims, he is not going to bother to support them. When he quotes Simpson, he is going to butcher the quote and claim that Simpson was saying something other than what he intended. By the same toke, when Bob starts quoting, I am going to dig out the full quotes and show where Bob did not treat the quote truthfully. Bob will then claim that the quotes where nothing more the atheists admitting defeat and then turning right around and defending what they just admitted was wrong because they have no other choice. We all know that the context denies this claim. But Bob's misquotes must be dealt with each time in case we have a lurker who is seeing them for the first time. Why he continues to post the misquotes we will never know I suppose. People usually give up once they are exposed. It is tiresome but necessary to have to do this everytime. So, on to the last post.
First, he gives three quote that he claims are from me. I think they are actually quotes of others I have used in some of my posts. But he does not give us links so we don't know for sure. These quotes speak truthfully about the nature of Archeopteryx.
Bob then goes back to one of his old statements. He says.
You cited Dodson and Howgate. I asked you for evidence that these guys thought that archy was only a bird and not a transitional to support your assertion. I say that to not do so shows that you know what they were really saying and chose to assert that they were saying something else regardless. You did not support your assertion and instead choose to merely repeat yourself. So I'll do your work for you. But you will not like the results.
Why do we not first make a direct quote from Howgate?
Howgate, M. E. 1984. "The teeth of Archaeopteryx and a reinterpretation of the Eichstätt specimen." Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 82: 159-175.
"However, these authors present a decidedly ambiguous reconstruction of the Archaeopteryx ankle; it shows the ascending process associated equally with the astragalus and calcaneum. The Archaeopteryx ankle depicted by Martin et al. (1990, fig. 1G) seems, in fact, to be structurally intermediate between the theropod ankle and the neornithiform bird ankle."
Well, it seems that he may have thought it was a transitional after all.
Then I came across your very reference.
Dodson, P., 1985, International Archaeopteryx Conference: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol. 5, p. 177-9.
In here, Dodson lists over 20 specific shared characteristics between Archeopteryx and specifically coelurosaur theropods. I think he was making a case for archy being a transitional, don't you?
Let me give you another reference from Dodson.
Barsbold, R.; Maryanska, T. & Osmolska, H. 1990. Oviraptorosauria. In: Weishampel, D. B.; Dodson, P. & Osmolska, H. (eds.), The Dinosauria. 249-258. University of California Press, Berkeley.
In this reference, the gentleman you cite discusses how some dinosaurs, such as Oviraptor and Ingenia, have furculas like birds as further evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
You might want to see this reference of his.
CHINSAMY A., CHIAPPE L. & DODSON P. (1994): "Growth rings in mesozoic avian bones: physiological implications for basal birds." J.Vert.Paleont. 14(3, Suppl.): 21A
You will notice the word "basal" in the title. This means that he is studying the first birds and recognizes and accepts that they evolved.
One more reference for you.
Smith, J.B., You H., and P. Dodson. 1998. "The age of the Sihetun quarry in Liaoning Province, China and its implications for early bird evolution." Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program, 30(7):38A.
See the phrase "bird evolution" in the title? You still assert that he thinks archy is just a bird and not a transitional? This paper ties the specimens found in Liaoning with other bird transitionals.
Then we move on to the infamous Patterson quote about no transitionals. Again, this is something that has been pointed out to Bob in the past. Dr. Patterson also said:
"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."
Dr. Patterson "Evolution" 1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
But even better is his response to the quote in a personal letter.
"Dear Mr Theunissen,
Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."
I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.
That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.
I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.
Yours Sincerely,
[signed]
Colin Patterson"
It should be obvious by now that he was not saying that there are not transitional forms but that you cannot tell for sure whether a given specimen is on the direct line to another or if it is a side branch. That is a far cry from saying that there are no transitionals or that archy is not a wonderful find intermediate between birds and reptiles.
Bob then quotes Gould in a seemingly damaging statement. I think it is best answered by another Gould statement that addresses both the issue and quote mining.
Then a Stahl quote about the lack of feather intermediates. Alas it is an old quote and we have since discovered feathers in many forms of intermediate development and some of the genetic basis for how feathers developed.
But I think Bob has used all these quotes before and should have read the responses given in the past that show that the quotes are not being used correctly. Yet we see them over and over.
"Twelve!"
A man is on a business trip to a small town out west. One day he decides to stop into one of the local watering holes before heading back to his hotel. He sits down at the bar and orders a drink. Startling him, the guy next to him jumps up and yells "Four!" Everybody dies laughing. A few minutes later another guy stands up and yells "Sixteen!" There are a few snickers. Later, another person stands up and yells "Seven!" Again, a complete uproar. So the man asks the bartender what is going on. The bartender answers that they have all been hanging out together for so long that everyone already knows everyone's jokes so they have just numbered them. When you want to tell a joke, you just stand up and yell the number of the one you want to tell and people will laugh if they thought that one was funny. After a few more drinks, the visitor decides to join in. He gets up and yells "Eight!" Dead silence. The bartender leans in and says "Some people just don't know how to tell a joke."
That is kind of where we are with Bob, here. Arguing the facts is hard so he argues with quotes. But we have all seen them before. We know that when he quotes Asimov that he is going to leave out the part of the quote where Asimov disagrees with Bob's conclusion. When he makes his bird claims, he is not going to bother to support them. When he quotes Simpson, he is going to butcher the quote and claim that Simpson was saying something other than what he intended. By the same toke, when Bob starts quoting, I am going to dig out the full quotes and show where Bob did not treat the quote truthfully. Bob will then claim that the quotes where nothing more the atheists admitting defeat and then turning right around and defending what they just admitted was wrong because they have no other choice. We all know that the context denies this claim. But Bob's misquotes must be dealt with each time in case we have a lurker who is seeing them for the first time. Why he continues to post the misquotes we will never know I suppose. People usually give up once they are exposed. It is tiresome but necessary to have to do this everytime. So, on to the last post.
First, he gives three quote that he claims are from me. I think they are actually quotes of others I have used in some of my posts. But he does not give us links so we don't know for sure. These quotes speak truthfully about the nature of Archeopteryx.
Bob then goes back to one of his old statements. He says.
This is the claim that I have been asking Bob to support for months and which he refuses to support. He has been shown repeatedly that it is false. But know factual support of the claim has ever been forthcoming nor has he admitted an error, nor has he (as seen by the last post) stopped using the claim.
You cited Dodson and Howgate. I asked you for evidence that these guys thought that archy was only a bird and not a transitional to support your assertion. I say that to not do so shows that you know what they were really saying and chose to assert that they were saying something else regardless. You did not support your assertion and instead choose to merely repeat yourself. So I'll do your work for you. But you will not like the results.
Why do we not first make a direct quote from Howgate?
Howgate, M. E. 1984. "The teeth of Archaeopteryx and a reinterpretation of the Eichstätt specimen." Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 82: 159-175.
"However, these authors present a decidedly ambiguous reconstruction of the Archaeopteryx ankle; it shows the ascending process associated equally with the astragalus and calcaneum. The Archaeopteryx ankle depicted by Martin et al. (1990, fig. 1G) seems, in fact, to be structurally intermediate between the theropod ankle and the neornithiform bird ankle."
Well, it seems that he may have thought it was a transitional after all.
Then I came across your very reference.
Dodson, P., 1985, International Archaeopteryx Conference: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol. 5, p. 177-9.
In here, Dodson lists over 20 specific shared characteristics between Archeopteryx and specifically coelurosaur theropods. I think he was making a case for archy being a transitional, don't you?
Let me give you another reference from Dodson.
Barsbold, R.; Maryanska, T. & Osmolska, H. 1990. Oviraptorosauria. In: Weishampel, D. B.; Dodson, P. & Osmolska, H. (eds.), The Dinosauria. 249-258. University of California Press, Berkeley.
In this reference, the gentleman you cite discusses how some dinosaurs, such as Oviraptor and Ingenia, have furculas like birds as further evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
You might want to see this reference of his.
CHINSAMY A., CHIAPPE L. & DODSON P. (1994): "Growth rings in mesozoic avian bones: physiological implications for basal birds." J.Vert.Paleont. 14(3, Suppl.): 21A
You will notice the word "basal" in the title. This means that he is studying the first birds and recognizes and accepts that they evolved.
One more reference for you.
Smith, J.B., You H., and P. Dodson. 1998. "The age of the Sihetun quarry in Liaoning Province, China and its implications for early bird evolution." Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program, 30(7):38A.
See the phrase "bird evolution" in the title? You still assert that he thinks archy is just a bird and not a transitional? This paper ties the specimens found in Liaoning with other bird transitionals.
Then we move on to the infamous Patterson quote about no transitionals. Again, this is something that has been pointed out to Bob in the past. Dr. Patterson also said:
"In several animal and plant groups, enough fossils are known to bridge the wide gaps between existing types. In mammals, for example, the gap between horses, asses and zebras (genus Equus) and their closest living relatives, the rhinoceroses and tapirs, is filled by an extensive series of fossils extending back sixty-million years to a small animal, Hyracotherium, which can only be distinguished from the rhinoceros-tapir group by one or two horse-like details of the skull. There are many other examples of fossil 'missing links', such as Archaeopteryx, the Jurassic bird which links birds with dinosaurs (Fig. 45), and Ichthyostega, the late Devonian amphibian which links land vertebrates and the extinct choanate (having internal nostrils) fishes. . ."
Dr. Patterson "Evolution" 1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
But even better is his response to the quote in a personal letter.
"Dear Mr Theunissen,
Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."
I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.
That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.
I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.
Yours Sincerely,
[signed]
Colin Patterson"
It should be obvious by now that he was not saying that there are not transitional forms but that you cannot tell for sure whether a given specimen is on the direct line to another or if it is a side branch. That is a far cry from saying that there are no transitionals or that archy is not a wonderful find intermediate between birds and reptiles.
Bob then quotes Gould in a seemingly damaging statement. I think it is best answered by another Gould statement that addresses both the issue and quote mining.
Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, 1983, Norton, New York.
Then a Stahl quote about the lack of feather intermediates. Alas it is an old quote and we have since discovered feathers in many forms of intermediate development and some of the genetic basis for how feathers developed.
But I think Bob has used all these quotes before and should have read the responses given in the past that show that the quotes are not being used correctly. Yet we see them over and over.
"Twelve!"
