A Dash of Science with a Hint of Romance (Part 2)

In a way fossils represent adventure and ancient buried treasure.  I remember as a kid thinking about hunting for fossils or wondering what I would find if I dug deeper and deeper in the back yard.   There is also a sense that fossils and specifically the fossil record are critical when making, or breaking, the case for evolution.  In The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (which I reviewed earlier on this blog) Richard Dawkins suggests that, while fossils are a nice bonus, they are wholly unnecessary for making the case for evolution. 

Dawkins asserts that fossil evidence for evolution is very strong but this doesn’t mean it is complete.  Because of the extreme unlikelihood of fossilization and the necessity of finding them under layers and layers of earth it would be unrealistic to expect we would find a completely unbroken chain of forms leading from ancient to modern organisms.  However, that gaps do exist becomes a source of significance for antievolutionists but as in other cases, arguments from gaps are increasingly fragile.

Say you were a big fan of the popular prankster card game 52 card pick up. In the game a deck of cards is presented to an unwitting player. The prankster asks the player if they want to play 52 card pick up. If the player agrees to engage in the game the prankster proceeds to quickly unfurl the card into the air causing them to fly around and come to rest on the floor. The prankster informs the player that they should pick up the cards and says something to the effect of, “OK pick up the cards.  Get it, 52 card pick up.”  Eventually someone picks up the cards but inevitably some get lost.

If the same deck was used for games of 52 card pick up multiple times it would be easy to see how gaps between runs of cards would become evident.

Where we would expect there to be:

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J Q K A

After several games of 52 card pick up we might find:

2 3 4    6 7 8 9 10       K A

If you came across the deck of cards and examined them it would be silly to conclude that this particular deck was made with the appearance of gaps or that the absence of the 5 J & Q somehow disproved the principles of poker, slap jack or rummy.  Yet this is the same type of argument that is made about gaps in the fossil record.   The deck is stacked against these types of arguments because when it comes to conclusions from natural evidence science plays by the rules and, like in cards, the dealer always wins.