Patterson's Statement on No Transtions

Evolution,

by Colin Patterson

To Lagomort,

Thanks for keeping this dialogue going. I like your spirit.

Yes, I am saying there are NO evolutionary links between animal kinds. As for Colin Patterson (Curator of the London Natural History Museum and Author of the book, Evolution), he emphatically stated that ALL the evolutionary links are missing. Below in bold print is a section from Luther Sunderland's book, Darwin's Enigma, where you can see Patterson's statement; there is plenty of context so you can judge for yourself.

Sincerely

Garth Guessman

Darwin's Enigma,
by Luther Sunderland

Before interviewing Dr. Patterson, the author read his book, Evolution, which he had written for the British Museum of Natural History.²² In it he had solicited comments from readers about the book's contents and a letter was written to Dr. Patterson asking why he did not put a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. On April 10, 1979, he replied to the author in a most candid letter as follows:

I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?

I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line--there is not one such fossil for which one could make 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 favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.

So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defense of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job.

In his interview several months later, Dr. Patterson was asked to elaborate, "You stated in your letter that there are no transitions. Do you know of any good ones?" He replied, "No, I don't, not that I would try to support. No." Throughout the interview he denied having transitional fossil candidates for each specific gap between the major different groups. He said that there are kinds of change in forms taken in isolation but there are none of these sequences that people like to build up. Putting it as a question, he said, "If you ask, 'What is the evidence for continuity?' you would have to say, 'There isn't any in the fossils of animals and man. The connection between them is in the mind.' "

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Not only Patterson knows this, Darwin, Dawkins, and many others say the same thing: there are no transitional creatures anywhere: living or fossilized.

Darwin himself said in his book The Origin of Species:-

"Why then is not every geological formation full of such intermediate links. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic change, and this is the most obvious and serious objection that can be urged against the theory".

The prominent British evolutionist Richard Dawkins speaking of the Cambrian fauna, has made the following comment: "And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists". Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1987).

Evolutionary Paleontologist, Gerald T. Todd states, " All three subdivisions of bony fishes first appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time. They are already widely divergent morphologically, and are heavily armored. How did they originate? What allowed them to diverge so widely? How did they all come to have heavy armor? And why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms? (Gerald T. Todd, "Evolution of the Lung and the Origin of Bony Fishes: A Casual Relationship," American Zoologist, vol. 26, no. 4, 1980, p. 757)

These and most evolutionists expect to find transitions because the Evolution Model of origins predicts they should be found. But the observable facts say otherwise.