Creationists and dogs in human clothing

Creationists are pretty funny. I found this on a big list of evidences against evolution:

"9. PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA
Seeing the problem of gradual evolution with the fossil record, and the obvious abrupt appearances of species, Drs. Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have formed the theory of punctuated equilibria. Punctuated equilibria, is, by example, a bird giving birth to a mammal, thus leaving no transitional fossils in the geological record.

Many top evolutionists disagree with this position. And punctuated equilibria has its problems, too. For instance, in the above case, of a bird bearing a mammal, another mammal of the same kind of the opposite sex must be born at the same approximate time in the same area in order for the new species to continue. The odds of just one organism appearing this way, let alone two fulfilling the circumstances above, are astronomical."

It's really just a terrible misunderstanding of punctuated equilibrium. While it's true that not every biologist agrees punctuated equilibrium is a good theory, it's not because punc eq claims that birds give birth to mammals. What punc eq posits is that significant morphological changes happens in fits and starts, punctuated by long periods of stasis..."stasis as data, stasis as data". However, life is happening quite normally during those periods of morphological change, i.e. birds are NOT giving birth to mammals. It's just that rapid morphological evolution is constrained during the times of stasis and/or accelerated during the time of change (during allopatric speciation events that have a lot to do, somehow, with isolate selection and species selection I think). The rapid bits of change are only rapid compared to the periods of stasis, for example thousands or tens of thousands of years as opposed to hundreds of thousands or millions of years, thus it is unlikely that we will find a good sequence of intermediate forms in the fossil record, eventhough they did in fact exist. And I imagine, there have been some good fossils found?


And now for something completely different: Sebastian in my rugby shirt.