Talk:Fossil record

I think "... these artifacts and their placement in rock formations ...", artifacts in the orginal article sounds a bit man made, could anybody with an English mother tongue evaluate the original sentence, thanks.

I agree with the previous comment that creationist views, should go into the Creationism article

I think NPOV doesn't require 50% of the article to be about Creationism. Perhaps the creationist objections to the fossil record should go into the Creationism article. (They merit at least a link here, though.) --Ed Poor

Yes, there is currently far too much about creationism here - it's supposed to be an article about the fossil record, not about creationism. It also uses the term "Sudden Creationism", which you admitted that you made up. --Zundark, 2002 Jan 8

the following was removed from the page:

However, a few scientists and many non-scientists reject the authenticity of the fossil record, primarily on religious grounds. Those who accept ..., for example, completely reject the fossil record as evidence of evolution.

Not all Creationists reject the fossil record. The Intelligent Design theory, for example, embraces both the fossil record and natural selection, but says that speciation happens through God's intervention.

Therefore, the matter of the fossil record provides a clear but often overlooked distinction between the principal schools of thought within Creationism.

One does not have to be a creationist to wonder at the gaps in the fossil record. Where, for example, are the intermediate stages between horses and rhinos? We see a long distinguished fossil record for horses, and a long distinguished fossil record for rhinos, with probably dozens or hundreds of examples of either. But where are the missing links? It is just not mathematically probable that if we started with a 1,000,000 horses, 1,000,000 rhinos and 1,000,000 intermediates, we would have 100 horse fossils, 100 rhino fossils and 0 intermediate fossils. Nor does it seem tenable to me to argue that the transition took place so rapidly that the probability of a fossil's being left was 0. Nor is a macromutation credible. I am 100% atheist and can see no other possibility than that the theory of evolution is true, but I cannot accept it without reservation unless I hear a more reasonable explanation of the sketchy fossil record.

What on Earth are you talking about? Who ever said that there should be transitional fossils linking "horses" to "rhinos"? --JPotter 20:04, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can a reasonably complete set of fossils of both horses and rhinos be provided that would take them both back to a common ancestor? Of course there should be a link, if they are both classed as perissodactyls?

Hopefully you can understand you've just answered your own question. --JPotter 23:59, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit conflict + can we talk about this?[edit]

I didn't intend to violate 3RR, but I made substantial edits I didn't want to lose after making my first revert. I guess they count as a second revert?

Anyway, I'm still hoping for discussion rather than large reversions. I think I saw something on a policy page or guideline which discourages undiscussed rv's. In any case, I won't revert again anytime soon. I'm waiting for the discussion! :-) --Wing Nut 17:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we can talk about this. The C-E debate is not really of great import to the study of the fossil record. The converse, however, is somewhat true because the fossil record is quoted by creationists all the time as the extensive analysis in the scientific community that has occured regarding the fossil record is one of the bigger stumbling blocks for advocates of creation science and other anti-evolutionary ideas. However, this doesn't belong in this article which should be about the fossil record itself. --ScienceApologist 18:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. Your edit summary began with rv POV pushing.

I thought POV pushing was defined as the act (or attempt or intent) to evade, circumvent and undermine Wikipedia's neutrality policy (Wikipedia:NPOV) by creating and editing articles so that they show only one point of view.

Did you mean to accuse me of attempting to evade NPOV? Or do you feel that in some accidental way perhaps my edits made the Fossil record article show only one POV? It's obviously just the opposite. I took a one-POV article and added another POV to it. Isn't this in accordance with NPOV? --Wing Nut

As it currently stands, there is a definitely POV slant held by creationist objections to science which states that there exists a controversy. Of course, what a "controversy" is cannot be easily determined, but the fact of the matter is that the point of view that a controversy exists is one that is entirely the purview of creationist who promote this as a backdoor attempt to get their ideas and evangelism heard (i.e. Teach the Controversy). This article as it currently stands is about the fossil record -- it isn't about the point of view that there is controversy about the fossil record with regards to a few vocal creationists. --ScienceApologist 18:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

These recent edits seem to be in violation of the undue weight provision of Wikipedia. JPotter 18:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Undue weight? More than 90% of the article is mainstream, and 10% is creationist and ID reaction to mainstream? How much weight is undue? 5%? 1%? (And where's the policy page, I guess I better study it.) --Wing Nut 18:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, I think 0% would be about right. In a scientific artcle, there is precisely no place for pseudoscience. Sorry. --Guinnog 18:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Here you go. I don't think any mention of creationism is allowed here. Maybe 1 sentence at the end that says YECs object to it. Also, the claim that IDists accept the fossil record is inaccurate. ID is a big tent, meaning there are a wide range of ideas under the ID camp. One very prominent IDsts, Steven C. Meyer, has said that the evolutionist doctrine of common descent is questionable. So the sentence about IDists accepting the fossil record has to go. Cheers. JPotter 18:48, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each.

That would seem to justify the inclusion of the edits I made, rather than forbidding them. At the very least, the policy page Jason cited clears me of any wrong-doing. The question remaining is, "How much coverage should be given to Creationist and ID viewpoints on the fossil record?"

If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;

I named Jonathan Wells as accepting the fossil record. Should we name yet another design theorist who opposes the fossil record?

These matters are important, because many people are unaware of which viewpoint adherents accept or reject the fossil record's authenticity. --Wing Nut 19:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The inclusion of pseudoscience in this article will be resisted by me. Take The Holocaust and see how much space "Holocaust denial" gets as a guide to how much space this should get in the article. --Guinnog 19:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting:

Lee says: "General articles on biology, on the other hand, should simply treat evolution as uncontroversial, because no serious biologist disagrees, and failure to do so compromises understanding of the subject." I think this is wrong on two counts. First, while evolution is uncontroversial among serious biologists, it is controversial among an alarmingly large portion of the general public; you do them and yourselves no favors by ignoring this controversy.

The above quote is on a page linked from NPOV, which I thank ScienceApologist for showing me.

Likewise, it's wrong to hide the controversy over the authenticity or meaning of the fossil record. Not that it should by 50-50 (I have read 'undue weight'), but that Wikipedia ought not to conceal the fact that a substantial majority of people are rejecting science. --Wing Nut 19:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And holocaust denial gets a subsection [[2]] plus a link to an article of its own. --Wing Nut 19:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly does. And if you want to write a decent and verifiable article on those who support a pseudoscientific POV, be my guest. We can even link to it from this article if you like. I pointed you to the Holocaust article to show you due weight in action. It is, what, 1% of the article? That's how it should be. --Guinnog 19:34, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The holocaust has a much bigger article. I'm against promoting minority religious views in this article, which is about the science. We could include something along the following lines: The fossil record helped the development of the theory of evolution, though some Christians claim this is not the only way to explain the fossil record. Stephen B Streater 19:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The fossil record helped the development of the theory of evolution, though some Christian fundamentalists claim this is not the only way to explain the fossil record? --Guinnog 19:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Some suggests fewer than half. Do you have a cite for this? I thought all Christian Fundamentalists who have a view thought this. Stephen B Streater 20:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but creationists are not a significant minority among scientists. That's the point, that in science articles, we use the scientific community for sourcing. Consider this. I subscribe to several peer reviewed journal in an effort to aid the citing of sources in my editing here. Neither in the journal Science, nor in Nature are there any peer reviewed papers doubting the varacity of the fossil record or calling it into question. Zero. That says to me that in the scientific community the creationist ideas about the fossil record are not even a significant minority. Check out dinosaur to see how we resolved a similar conflict there. JPotter 22:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! So we get:

Religious views[edit]

Various religious groups have views about fossils that differ from those held by scientists. While many mainstream scientists respect these views as faith positions, they argue that religiously-inspired interpretations of fossils do not withstand serious scientific scrutiny.

--Guinnog 22:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do we know many mainstream scientists respect? It sounds like weasel words to me. Stephen B Streater 06:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True. How about:

Various religious groups have views about fossils that differ from those held by scientists. Mainstream scientists argue that as faith positions, these religiously-inspired interpretations of fossils do not withstand serious scientific scrutiny.

Better, but still slightly POV to me. How about: Various religious groups have alternative explanations of the fossil record that stem from attempts to fit the experimental evidence to their religious texts. Stephen B Streater 06:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nearly. We need to be clear that this position has no credibility with scientists. --Guinnog 06:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. How about: These explanations are not consistent with the wide body of scientific theories such as biology and geology, which explains why scientists don't believe them. Stephen B Streater 07:02, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or: These explanations are not consistent with the wide body of scientific theories from fields such as biology and geology. Some creationists believe the Earth was created with the illusion of age - ie is consistent with any scientific theory. We should allow for these somehow eg creationism is not believed because it is unnecessary perhaps. Stephen B Streater 07:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, could your explanation clarify that creationism is a doctrine associate with Abrahamic religions and the texts in question are the Hebrew Bible and Quran. 80.189.176.148 19:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly: "Various religious groups within the Abrahamic tradition have developed creationist theories, which attempt to reconcile their interpretation of the Hebrew Bible or Quran to scientific evidence."

""Various religious groups within the Abrahamic tradition have developed creationist theories, whose attempts to reconcile their interpretation of the Hebrew Bible or Quran run counter to scientific evidence."? --Guinnog 12:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"

Edit wars[edit]

Could persons who consider that creationism is not sufficiently notable to be mentioned, indicate their reasoning, instead of starting an edit war. 80.189.215.95 13:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... I see only one edit warrior. Creationism has its own raft of articles, why does it need linking from here? Seems a ploy by POV pushers to maximize exposure. Still hold the added bit is irrelevant to the subject. And the absurd holocast denial bit in your edit summary was ridiculous. Also, why not get a user name, I dislike talking to an ip address. --Vsmith 17:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly, this page shows the proposed wording was developed by more than one person. Also, I was using a metaphor already in use. If you look at my edits to Pacificism, I am not a Jew, Christian or Muslim, let alone a creationist. My initial comment was to avoid phrases such as "sacred texts", which are inappropriate. Creationism is based on Genesis in the Hebrew Bible and the Quoran, not the sacred text of any other religion. Your editted version is too vague and the second sentence is emotive and unencyclopedic. 80.189.8.190 18:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC) That said, I followed your advice and got a user name. Addhoc 21:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

carbon 14[edit]

The section listing the radiometric methods ends with carbon 14 and a caveat about the length of time carbon 14 is useful. While this is true, a quick reading may give the false impression that all the dating methods are thus limited. Either we should remove that bit or add the dates that each of the methods cover. Nowimnthing 15:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Removed same. --Vsmith 17:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

merge[edit]

has anyone brought up merging this with Fossil? I think it would probably benefit both pages. Nowimnthing 15:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would support a merge. --Vsmith 17:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree as well, a merge would help both articles. JPotter 17:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support Would greatly enhance the fossil article. Aeon ^{Insane Ward} 12:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Three days, 6 people in support (here and at fossil), no oppostion, I think I will go ahead and do the merge. It may need quite a bit of cleanup after so feel free to give me a hand. Nowimnthing 22:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mainstream science vs scientific[edit]

Some things which are not mainstream science are nevertheless not inconsistent with science itself. Any claim that creationism is inconsistent with the evidence in the fossil record is hard to justify as some creationist theories are consistent with the fossil record eg God made it look like it was old. The reason these theories are rejected by scientists is that they are untestable, invoke an unnecessary unexplained phenomenon (God), and make no useful predictions which can be tested ie not because they are inconsistent with experiments. Stephen B Streater 16:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]