Finding Fossils

Peter Lange mentions in his review a common creationist claim — the lack of intermediate fossil forms. Someone whose name I’ve lost, recently wrote the following on sci.skeptic about the subject:

We have fossil records of transitional forms out the wazoo [i.e., there are lots of them – translator]. The reason that this fact hardly causes a creationist neuron to fire is that they play a little game with an unfalsifiability engine, sometimes called Gish’s Law.

It goes a little bit like this:

E: A evolved into B.
C: Hah! There is no transitional form between A and B.
E: Sure there is. It’s called A1.
C: Hah! There is no transitional form between A and A1.
E: Sure there is. It’s called A1a.
C: Hah! There is no transitional form between A and A1a.

and so on.

There are three termination conditions to this game:

  1. The subdivision goes on to the point where, by random chance, there is no corresponding form in the fossil record. The creationist wins.
  2. The subdivision goes on to the point where the two forms being compared are close enough for the creationist to decide that they are the same “kind”. The creationist wins.
  3. The evolutionist decides that the creationist is an insufferable blithering idiot and gives up. The creationist wins.