Last week, I wrote about the spectacular Cretaceous octopus fossils, and I made a blatant prediction.
Accustomed as I am to the workings of the minds of creationists, though, I’m sad to say that I also immediately saw how this find will be abused. I guarantee you that Harun Yahya is grabbing these images and planning to stuff them into his next bloated and repetitive tome, with a caption that announces that there has been no change in octopuses over 95 million years, therefore evolution is false.
After explaining the differences between these fossils and modern forms, and showing a chart that illustrated the transitional nature of their morphology, I further stated:
Don’t be fooled by the superficial resemblance — there are more subtleties to being an octopus than simply having eight arms. What these fossils reveal is more detail about the evolution of the octopods.
Well, my only error was on pinning this kind of stupidity explicitly on Harun Yahya. I should have known there were plenty of local idiots who would, in their sublime ignorance about cephalopods, leap to the false conclusion that this is an example of stasis (it isn’t: these are different than modern forms), and claim that the octopus “did not evolve at all”. Please note: having eight arms is a very general property of the octopods. You can’t just throw away all the evolutionary change that is described because you are so unaware that you see everything with eight arms as being the same creature. There are over 200 species named in the family Octopodidae, with over 100 waiting further description and classification, and no doubt many more awaiting discovery. They are incredibly diverse.
What these blind kooks are doing is the equivalent of pointing out that paleontologists have discovered 365 million year old tetrapods, that all mammals today still have four limbs, and claiming, therefore, that evolution did not occur.
(Hat tip to Canadian Cynic; personally, I can’t stomach reading the odious Denyse O’Leary, and rely on others to point out her more flamboyant inanities.)
Yes, but it’s still an octopod kind.
*You can’t just throw away all the evolutionary change that is described because you are so unaware that you see everything with eight arms as being the same creature.*
Of course they can. They can do anything. They’re religious.
Don’t think of Creationists in the face of discovery.
Seriously, we shouldn’t think about what morons are going to say before they say it. Creationists are easy to counter, and we’re not interested in convincing them anyway. The audience is who we’re reaching for, right? Let them make their stupid “arguments” first and then, when you have spare time for mentally vacuous exercises, counter them.
Just enjoy the new discovery, don’t poison your happiness by thinking about jackassery waiting in the wings. The more we learn the more Creationists look like people standing on the street declaring, “THE SKY IS GREEN.”
When you look at the sky do you let your enjoyment of the outdoors become tainted by thinking about how to counter the arguments of lunatics?
I don’t know, Jam, I thought it was pretty funny that PZ predicted the creationist response so accurately. Sure, we shouldn’t get caught up in it to the detriment of actual wonder at the discovery, but it points out to the rest of the audience that creationists are not only ridiculous, they’re ridiculously predictable.
I’m sure that the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in one of his earlier incarnations, had eight arms. There’s the proof if you needed it that Pastafarianism is the one true religion. Tell THAT to the God Squad.
Indeed — just how we are still a tetrapod kind.
Thank ya, thank ya very much. I’m here until Thursday, try the veal.
I know many adults who can barely distinguish between a spider, an insect and a woodlouse (rather, a crustacean) conveniently lumping them together as critters to be crushed (maybe i need to change my associations).
Recently i was told of a colossal maple tree being ‘attacked by mites’, inspection revealed them to be swarming happy springtails, and yes, the person who told me about it is a creationist!
This article shows once again that those least accomplished in understanding nature are the ones who feel they have the right to the greatest claims about it.
Can’t say it was deep insight on PZ’s part. Just years of dealing with the arguments of creationists. So, Jam, I doubt that PZ spent much time thinking about how they would react. Hell, I doubt that most of us spent much time thinking about it. We know from our experience that they will and how they will go about it.
It does not take away from the pleasure of new knowledge.
Ugh. Jam’s right, I don’t even know what else to say about this. At least Denyse O’Leary’s readership (despite her pathetic link-farm and her blatant self-promotion of same on other ID-related blogs) is far below, say, yours, PZ (in Seed an on here). I suppose we can’t get into a snit over every stupid demonstration by an ignoramus who shouts that they are not related to an ape while hurling verbal faeces at scientists who beg to differ. Isn’t it just adorably idiotic when she says ‘I should point out that I consider plain creationism to be a cop out’, as though ‘The Spiritual Brain‘ wasn’t such a cop out as to make one’s eyes water and nose bleed at the terrible pungency of its intellectual aroma? Let the lunatics wallow in their own filth a bit, PZ, and then get upset when you see this in New Scientist!
I wonder what a lineage would do if you could carefully control the environment and attempt to ‘counter’ the drift due to random genetic variation in the population. I guess if you wanted to take enough control, you could get genetic material from every individual and if one was “too far” outside what you considered the archetype of the species, you don’t let it breed. We’ve done pretty much the opposite of that for domestic animals (bend them to our choices), so it _seems_ like you could go the other way and attempt to keep the species unchanged for long periods of time.
Jam you’ve got a good point but I think you can kill two birds with one stone. PZ does a great job of portraying the wonder and importance of this discovery whilst at the same time making the creationist hacks look stupid and predictable. I think there’s more impact when he predicts the stupidity, calling it out in advance, then it comes true. IMHO it just makes him look that bit smarter and them that bit stupider (is stupider even a word??!).
JM Inc:
“Let the lunatics wallow in their own filth a bit, PZ, and then get upset when you see this in New Scientist!”
What, and let them have the whole playground? I’m happy to mock them wherever I run into them, I’m not about to wait for them to come to me!
Robert: Isn’t that kind of what we do with show breeds, once we have them bred how we like? Of course, then people are only selecting for phenotype, but who knows where it might go?
Yeah, you could see it coming. I’ve got an Inner Creationist who twigs to this sort of thing — I acquired him from years of reading talk.origins.
I understand it doesn’t REALLY detract from the joy of discovery, thinking about what morons are going to do, but it does detract to a small degree.
ANY degree of reduction in fascination and joy gained from discovery due to validating stupid people is a tragedy in my mind.
That’s what it is too; validation. You don’t think about what a Neo-Nazi would say when you walk past a Jewish temple, you don’t think about what a flat-earther would say when you ride an airplane and marvel at the curvature of the earth… etc.
You don’t think about what those stupid people would say because they’re meaningless. I want us not to think about what Creationists would say because they are just as invalid as neo-nazis and flat-earthers. They’re beneath contemplation until they unveil themselves, only in that instant should we consider taking the time and thought required to confront them.
That’s all my hang-up is with invalidating Creationist stupidity before it’s voiced; it’s giving them attention they don’t deserve and a degree of validation.
From Denyse O’leary: “Simply saying God dunit isn’t telling most people in the Western world anything we don’t already think true or any new information either. A science theory would help us understand in science terms the process by which creatures appear suddenly, remain in place, and exit suddenly. Which seems to be mostly what happens.”
In other words: “What we need now are facts to support our conclusions.”
I noticed that neither creationist blogger PZ links to provides a comment forum to allow fisking of their rank dishonesty.
Creationist dingbat wrote:
Some of this misunderstanding exemplified above should be blamed on the lack of responsible science reporting in the mainstream media. Notice how he treats “bush-like diversification” as if it were an alternative to “evolutionary trajectory”. He’s just aping common mistakes committed by the media in reporting on evolution.
Just as irksome is the mindless parroting of concepts from philosophy of science (“paradigm”, “explanatory framework”) without any attempt to understand what they mean. Of course, the creationists did not invent this abuse of philosophy. They adopted it from social constructivist/postmodernists, who committed the same misunderstandings.
I can kind of see your point, Jam. It does show that the topic is at the front of our minds and we recognize their existence. Sadly, I am in a position where I suspect that I’m going to continue to run into creationists fairly regularly. I do tend to think of them simply because they talk to me. If I were in a position where I ran into neo-nazis regularly I would probably think about them as well, but I don’t consider recognition of their existence any kind of validation. After all, we’re mocking the creationists, not giving them equal time in class.
But I’m happy to point and laugh while you dismissively turn up your nose at them, I think there’s synergy there.
So are spiders a kind of octopus?
I know impossible to ask for creo consistency but the differences between the cretaceous specimen and modern octopods are at least as divergent as those between chimps and humans. So if they think this shows zero octopod evolution then…..
Denise O’leary on UD:
“Today, I posted on the Travis chimpanzee story – the gruesome results of imagining that chimpanzees are just people like us, only furry – a common theme in pop science mags.
Just like us, only furry? – It is an odd belief, when you think of it.”
Ok… Pan and Homo….same Tribe….
Denise O’leary on Post-Darwinist
“the 95 million-year-old octopus that did not evolve at all”
This octopus is basal to the order Octopoda… so… like…Lemur-Human distance.
Someone needs to take a systematics class.
It’s the same baramin …
… any differences between this and modern forms are due to microevolution since The Flood.
Owwwww!!! My arse has burst into flames!!
Even if the fossil octopus was a identical in appearance to a contemporary one, it would say nothing about genetic drift, which doesn’t have to manifest in physical appearance, and why do people think ecological niches would be abandoned by evolving life?
Am I the only one that, when I hear the name ‘Denyse O’Leary’, thinks of the comedian Denis Leary in drag?
LtStorm: Agreed.
My evolutionary education is at the intelligent layman level. Will someone confirm that it would not be remarkable that some forms evolve relatively little over the eons? That it shows that the life form (I think I’m thinking crocodilians here) are ideally suited for their niche and there are no pressures on them to change?
From LtStorm (@25)
Well, not anymore.
Thanks a heap; I need to go and bleach my brain, now.
Michael Heath @ #17:
ah, but Denyse has a post up explaining why whe doesn’t allow comments at her blog:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2009/03/once-again-this-time-with-feeling-why.html
It’s because somebody who posted cartoons of Mohammed (you know the ones) on the Internet in Canada was investigated for it. Therefore, if Denyse allows commenters on her blog, she’d be open to legal jeopardy. In fact, just jer blogging at all is an “act of courage”.*
Makes perfect sense, really…
* no, really. That’s her argument.
@ Lee Picton> relatively little with relatively little selection pressure, yes. Remember that most of the planet’s surface has changed significantly in the last 300 million years (sheesh, last 65 myy, honestly), and therefore everything has had to adapt at least somewhat. Sharks and crocodilians, for example, while still superficially similar to their Cretaceous forms, have changed since those times. Crocodilians were at one point mostly land dwelling as opposed to semi-aquatic, and have undergone changes in forelimbs and tails that better suit the semi-aquatic lifestyle. Sharks have shifted populations from more abundant freshwater forms to the population trends we currently see, accompanied by the physiological changes needed for saline environments…(google xenacanths).
Lee #27,
that is correct.
Isn’t it obvious where the stasis actually is?
…thus demonstrating that, contrary to creationist claims, evolutionary theory does indeed make predictions!
Birds, too. They’re just tetrapods.
Any similarities, and that’s just evidence that evolution didn’t occur.
The differences? Far to great to happen “by chance.”
And that’s creationism/ID in a nutshell.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Lee @ #27,
You are correct.
There’s a process called stabilizing selection, where natural selection works against extremes of variation, and basically preserves the mean. A character trait can be preserved for a very long time so long as it’s more advantageous than any variants.
It doesn’t cause any problems for evolution, because the theory does not predict that all forms will change at the same rate. Some lineages might change a lot in a short period, while others go through hardly change over millions of years. That’s perfectly compatible with the theory.
There are some bivalves, I believe, that have changed very little since the Ordovician. But this does not contradict the theory of evolution. So long as those forms are able to survive and reproduce successfully, natural selection will not eliminate them. Of course, that doesn’t stop creationists from pointing to fossilized shells which look similar to modern day shells and claiming they’ve somehow refuted evolution.
Picton [11], that experiment has been done, especially in a lot of marine life. Where conditions remain constant, evolutionary pressure selects for keeping the traits that do well in the existing conditions. I liken it to a cat walking along a fence: if it veers to the left or right, it’s going to fall.
That’s one reason why we see so few transitional forms: when conditions finally do change, some organisms at least can adapt rapidly (within centuries if not decades). That’s a very thin layer in a geologic stratum! If change is slow, they’ll change slowly.
A couple of years ago, there was a survey of birds in North and South America. They got most of them, I think about 800 species, and did DNA analysis. Unsurprisingly, they found that most accepted species really were species; that some that looked the same were in fact diverging into separate species; and some that looked different were “sisters under the skin,” like polar bears and brown bears. It’s exactly what you’d expect if you took a snapshot of evolution as a continuing process.
I like how, in a situation like this, the creationists assume that the fossils have been correctly analyzed, understood, interpreted and classified. Whereas, in many another situation, creationists assume that fossils are hoaxes, wrongly evaluated, improperly dated or whatever best matches their current delusional need.
I don’t link to Dense and Leery: I don’t want my electrons contaminated. It probably doesn’t allow blogs because it’s tired of quote-mining comments into something which it can dismiss with a sneer.
Even if a Mesozoic or Paleozoic fossil was found that was identical to some existing species, it still wouldn’t disprove evolution. It would only mean that that one species had stayed virtually the same for millions of years. There would still be enough evidence from other species that the vast majority life forms have changed over time to persuade anyone with a rational mind that evolution is a real phenomenon.
It wouldn’t even show that — all it would demonstrate is that the parts of the basic body plan that fossilize hadn’t changed. Fossils generally can’t show changes to internal organs, biochemistry, or even behaviour, any or all of which could cause speciation while preserving the general same fossilizable parts.
If PZ develops any more prophetic abilities he has to start to rant on himself for extrasensory perception. Finally an opponent with enough brains to give us an entertaining thread.
to Monado at 36:
I thought, and I am a trained stagehand, that polar bears were fairly unique animals with very organized social contracts. I also thought they are the only animals on the planet, other then humans of course, who hunt for sport. Or am I just full of “common knowledge?”
One wonders what kinds of distinction creationists continue to make between “micro-evolution” and “macro-evolution.” If creationists are willing to call this “micro-evolution,” then they shall soon pretty much call everything “micro-evolution” – including human evolution.
PZ: “You can’t just throw away all the evolutionary change that is described because you are so unaware that you see everything with eight arms as being the same creature.”
It’s true. These imbeciles insist having 8 legs is some kind of special attribute of a particular organism. Therefore, obviously. they must think that a spider is some kind of land octopus.
Robert Thille @ 11:
Maybe not quite what you had in mind, but similar, is what Charles Ofria, director of the Digital Evolution Laboratory in Michigan, did with digital organisms in a software program called Avida.
From:
http://carlzimmer.com/articles/2005.php?subaction=showfull&id=1177184710&archive=&start_from=&ucat=8&
FishNChimps, #5 wrote:
Fixed!
WingNutDaily editor Joseph Farah weighs in:
“These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species,” Fuchs said. (Dirk Fuchs of Freie University Berlin, the lead author of the study)
So how much of the problem is distorted nonsense by Joseph Farah, and how much is due to Dirk Fuchs making a statement that may be true, but which becomes misleading when quoted by creationists? Is this another New Scientist style of “Darwin was Wrong” moment? How careful must scientist be to avoid being misinterpreted like this? Maybe it is impossible to say anything that creationists can’t selectively quote to promote their idiocy. Un-natural selection at work.
OOPS — sent this to the wrong thread — See the “Even Dumber” thread, where Janine, Insulting Sinner at #40 makes the point even better by giving the complete quote from Fuchs, which puts his comment in the context that Farah wants to ignore.
My friend, PZ… Mephistopheles with a Man Purse…
Four months later and you’re STILL at it? The scale and breadth of your Blogorrhea is nothing short of astonishing. The atheist lifestyle takes an incredible amount of work. Just the anxiety and alienation alone will tap out your ATP reserves. All those hours writing, arguing, cutting, pasting-just to maintain an illusory independence from the God who created you.
From my parish, I know Denyse and from this blog I know you. She’s so full of joy and life. You’re full of cleverness and bile, and no matter how high you score, in the end, it’s just the internet. That’s why I find your wares so unimpressive.
Monado: her name is Denyse. The “y” is silent, but appears in print.
Jolene Cassa @50
“From my parish, I know Denyse and from this blog I know you. She’s so full of joy and life.”
She is also so full of Sanctimony-Hate-Incoherence-Tetanus!
[b]T[/b]