Ray Comfort edited!

Journal of Imaginary Sciences, Volume 27, 2009

Ray Comfort edited!

Last week I mentioned that the evangelist, Ray Comfort was producing a censored copy of Origin of the Species. Due to this, I have decided to produce an edited version of Ray's post on his blog "Atheist Central". Red is my own words on what Ray might actually mean....... Blue are the words deleted.

"If Darwin’s theory was true (which it is but since I'm making money from all this, better we ignored this), there (are) should be buried within the soil, the skeletons of millions of animals changing from one species ("kind" (my own arbitrary definition which has no relation to biology)) into another. But Darwin admitted that they didn’t exist (he didn't know of any because they weren't aware of them). There were none at all in the geological formation (that they knew of). He asks, "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record."

Unbelievably, instead of questioning his theory, he blames deduces geological record (is at fault)! Yet he is forced to admit, "So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great." If Charles Darwin was right, the amount of skeletal remains must have been inconceivably great, and yet in the same passage he again admits to "not finding fossil remains of such infinitely numerous connecting links." They were infinitely numerous (millions upon millions) and they have all (most have) disappeared (due to diagenesis, which I know absolutely nothing about). All of them.

And after 150 years of desperate searching, they still can’t find any (that I won't ignore, despite of the numerous occasions I have been presented with the evidence)."

I feel a lot better now. Apparently this editing lark is quite fun!

I also sent this (as a friendly gesture towards Ray) post which I will copy here for reference:

Dear Ray,

As you disallow urls I would recommend visiting my site, The Journal of Imaginary Sciences on the same blogger network as yours. Please find enclosed under today's date, a post of yours which has been edited for scientific accuracy. This comment is also repeated on my own site as well.

Now as a trained archaeologist, let me take you to task for your discrepancies. Firstly, let us tackle the issue of fossilisation. Look at wiki Ray it is your friend. You might want to note that not all things fossilise. The conditions that the remains are buried in need to be perfect in order to ensure that they survive. It is quite clear to both of us that just leaving out a dead body causes a massive stink and the soft parts decay. After a while, we are left with the bones. But these don't always remain do they Ray? I recommend visiting a nice little place in England called Sutton Hoo, a famous Anglo-Saxon ship burial of a possible early Christian. The body was buried in acidic sandy soil. Bones decay in these conditions Ray and produce what are called "sand mummies" the outline of the remains only.

This outlines that due to natural conditions, remains decay, even the bones, especially if we go outside the Biblical time frame (which scientists do because of the evidence). Even then, a lot of remains would have disappeared because of physical and chemical processes as well as biological ones. A field you may want to look at is diagenesis (using it in an archaeological context) as well, which gives all this information.

Now secondly, let us move onto the hominin remains found in Africa suggesting clear links between us and apes. A paper I would like to direct you to is one by David Strait on knuckle walking, the referencing is given below:

Richmond, Begun & Strait, 2001, The Origin of Human Bipedality, The Knuckle Walking Hypothesis Revisited, Physical Anthropology 44:70–105.

This categorically states that human ancestors such as Lucy had morphological features in their hand which are closely associated with knuckle walking. These hominins however, are defined as bipedal due to the morphology of the foremen magnum being far more similar to modern humans than a chimp!

This of course is to not forget other articles such as:

Cobb, S., 2008, The facial skeleton of the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor, Journal of Anatomy, 212: 469–485

Which examines the facial anatomy of our ancestors including other hominins.

Dean, C., 2006, Tooth microstructure tracks the pace of human life history evolution, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 22;273(1603):2799-808.

Again this analyses hominin teeth and shows clear evidence of evolution!

Harcourt-Smith, W.E.H. & Aiello, L.C., 2004, Fossils, feet and the evolution of human bipedal locomotion, Journal of Anatomy: 204, 403-416

And finally evidence for the evolution of our feet.

It is clear, from the fossils we do have, that there are transitional fossils. Ray, I highly recommend you correct your mistakes in your post.

Thank you

Largenton

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