Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
If the ID and traditional creationist responses to Tiktaalik roseae aren't quite ignorant and badly reasoned enough for you, might I suggest you look at the response from Joseph Farah, founder of the Worldnutdaily? It's delightfully wacky and full of nonsense. The ignorance begins to accumulate in massive amounts in the third sentence:
Tiktaalik, they say, lived in shallow swampy waters and had the body of a fish but the jaws, ribs and limb-like fins of so-called "early mammals."
Apparently, Farah doesn't know the difference between an amphibian and a mammal. There are just a few minor problems here, not the least of which is that mammals were still about 150 million years in the future when Tiktaalik was roaming the riverbeds. But hey, why let a little thing like, oh, the entire second half of the paleozoic era stand in the way of a good line? I also like how he claims that scientists say it has the "body of a fish" but the ribs and limbs of something else - as though the ribs and limbs aren't part of the body?
I'm glad these evolutionists are so giddy about finding one of their ancestors, but before we all go off the deep end about this latest discovery, understand what all the excitement is about.For years, those who disbelieve in macro-evolution - people like me - have been saying to the evolutionists, "Show us evidence of one kind of creature becoming another kind." They haven't been able to do it - not with all the fossils they've studied and certainly not in their scientific observations of the world in which we live.
Tiktaalik is their best shot.
This, of course, is utter nonsense. The evidence for the evolutionary transitions between major animal groups has existed for decades; the only thing preventing creationists like Farah from recognizing it is their ignorance, their dishonesty or their fanaticism. Tiktaalik is but a single specimen in a long series of intermediate forms between fish and amphibians that appear in the fossil record in just the right temporal and anatomical sequence to show the gradual evolution of the key traits that allowed lobe-finned fishes to function at least part of the time out of the water. It fills in a single gap in that series of intermediates. But since the creationists have been pretending those other forms don't exist, no one should b surprised when they claim now that this latest find doesn't mean anything. They've buried their head in the sands to ignore all of the other intermediates and they'll do the same here.
There is another fish called the "coelacanth." Ever hear of it? I've included a photo of one with this column - which, when you think about it, is really quite amazing. Because, just a few years ago, the same scientists who were calling the Tiktaalik fossil the missing link between sea life and land life were claiming the coelacanth fossils of the same era represented just that link.
*yawn*. This is the same lie that Answers in Genesis told and I debunked it the other day. No one has ever claimed that coelacanths gave rise to amphibians, only that they belonged to the same (very large) group of lobe-finned fish that did. Since coelacanths generally live in deeper water, it was highly unlikely that they evolved into amphibians instead of their more shallow water cousins.
Notice not one of the stories you have read about the Tiktaalik has confronted the sensationally uncomfortable issues raised by the coelacanth.
Notice that the only ones who raise the issue are creationists and they're 100% wrong about it when they do? That should tell you something.
Comments
Farah: Today they live in aquariums - not terrariums - by the way.
This is another teensy weensy LIE since no one has managed to keep coelacanths alive in captivity.
Posted by: windy
| April 15, 2006 9:11 PM
I have a question. How does the hunt and discovery of important/new fossil finds today compare with, say, 25 or 50 years ago? Are we able to bring to bear better techologY and/or techniques these days?
I'm curious because I'm wondering if we can look forward to an acceleration in the discovery of the fossil record (with the understanding that it will always be far from complete!). I know a lot about advances in things like computer technology and medicine, but haven't the foggiest about the state of the art in fossil hunting!
Posted by: tacitus
| April 15, 2006 9:30 PM
In part, improved technology allows easier work in harsher environments, and can help make fossil features visible and "transparent." Another factor is the opening of formerly politically "forbidden" areas available for fossil hunting (like China). Plus, I think there are now many more paleontologists and interdisciplinarians working in the fields than was the case years ago.
Was this bimbo Farah Fawcett? How can anybody be so ignorant, and proud of it?
Posted by: mark
| April 15, 2006 9:59 PM
Ed, you ever try writing these people emails asking for clarifications on some of the totally bizarre things they say? I would think that, at the very least, instructive hilarity could ensue.
My question: did the "coelacanth" apply the Photoshop 3.0 "sunburst" effect to itself, or was that Farah's own personal touch?
Posted by: plunge
| April 16, 2006 1:04 AM
This was good, but better still is this one, the latest from Ted Byfield (linked to from the Farah post). I know we have an O'Brien Trophy winner for April already, but check this out [picture Gumby background a la Pharyngula]:
Where, one reader demanded, did I get the information that 10 percent of scientists accept intelligent design? I got it from a National Post (newspaper) article published two years ago, which said that 90 percent of the members of the National Academy of Science "consider themselves atheists." Since if you're not an atheist, you allow for the possibility of a Mind or Intelligence behind nature, this puts 10 percent in the I.D. camp.
That means you, Ed! Isn't that priceless?
Just one more, re Tiktaalik:
Two readers called my attention to a discovery last week on an Arctic island of something which may be the fossil remains of the mysteriously missing "transitional species." Or then maybe it isn't transitional. Maybe it's a hitherto undetected species on its own.
I swear, you can't make this stuff up. And there's more, too. Check it out!
Posted by: Dave M.
| April 16, 2006 1:13 AM
The fact that these people are making these arguments to thousands of readers, and those readers actually think that they are making clever knock down arguments of biology makes me want to cry... or it would, if I weren't so MANLY.
Posted by: plunge
| April 16, 2006 3:47 AM
Newish here, been lurking, great blog, etc etc. I hate these blog introductions. But seriously, reading this site has been the bright spot in my internet-day (otherwise filled with irrational nonsense).
Anyway, I just had to comment to tell Dave M. thanks for posting the above link. I'm debating becoming the next one to write Blyfield a scornful letter. I'm even more irritated than normal, being a graduate of and graduate student at McGill.
And I second Plunge. It's painful.
Posted by: nicole
| April 16, 2006 12:53 PM
Dave-
Ah, I'd already seen it and written a good shredding of it. I just posted it above.
Posted by: Ed Brayton
| April 16, 2006 1:13 PM