Friday, June 12, 2009

McLeroy still spouting creationist stupidity

Even though he's been booted off the chairman spot on the Texas State Board of Education, moronic creationist dentist Don McLeroy is still trying to find faults in evolution, and of course all he comes up with are blanks and debunked idiocy.

Students will study evidence for common ancestry in the fossil record.

Specifically, they will "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record."

The sequential pattern of fossils can be considered evidence for evolution, but the other patterns -- sudden appearance and stasis (staying the same) -- can be used to question evolution.

Bloody hell, I'm so tired of hearing that ignorant argument about stasis used against evolution. The fact that some creatures and organisms stop changing for a while and stay relatively unchanged for long stretches of time is proof of nothing, and most certainly is not evidence against evolution. If anything, it could even be used to provide more evidence for evolution. The reasons why organisms sometimes stop evolving at whatever rate, is simply because they have, at that time, reached an equilibrium with their environment. Evolution is a survival and adaptation mechanism used to make an organism better-suited for hunting/eating, defense, reproduction, all that stuff. When a creature has become advanced enough and is in a stable environment, there's simply no need for any more development, so evolution undergoes stasis for as long as the "status quo" between said organism and its environment remains.

Modern-day examples are plenty, and you even know many of them. Take the shark, for example. Unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. Why? Because they're simply "perfect" in their roles: they're sophisticated killing and eating machines and face very little competition, apart from each other. Another example would be, say, the crocodile. It also has been relatively unchanged for a very long stretch of time, because it's perfectly adapted and suited to its environment for its needs. And of course, those are only two; there are literally thousands and thousands of examples to be delivered (many of them aquatic organisms to begin with, such as jellyfish, which have been unchanged since the dawn of times).

Really, using stasis as an argument against evolution is plain and simply ignorant.


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