DARWIN WAS WRONG! is factually and conceptually incorrect on so many points that the refutation of all its errors would take serious time and ink, so I will focus on a couple of particularly insidious quotations of two evolution experts. From DARWIN WAS WRONG!:
It is a well guarded fact that many evolutionists rejected Darwin's theory of evolution over 20 years ago. Stephen Jay Gould, a professor at Harvard University and one of the foremost authorities on evolution in the world said, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms (missing links) in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,...we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study". Natural History, Vol. 86. Gould is still an evolutionist, he just rejects much of Darwin's theory.
Gould's statements were taken out of context, and falsely bridged ("..."). Gould was a lifelong proponent of evolution, and along with Niles Eldridge put forth the idea of punctuated equilibria [1] that further supports evolution. Quoting him as "rejecting" Darwinism is beyond a joke. Gould actually responds to false statements attributed to him in several of his works, including this from [2]:"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups." DARWIN WAS WRONG! continues:Mark Ridley, another evolutionist from Oxford University said in The New Scientist magazine in June 1981 p 831, "a lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record. ...In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationalist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation."
Actually, the author of DARWIN WAS WRONG! cut this dated quote short (a cynic would say on purpose!). In full [3], it reads: "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.This does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven."An important omission, one would think!
Ridley continues:
"So just what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the "fossil evidence", that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy."
In other words, Ridley (a zoologist we should note) believed that the fossil record was weaker evidence that evolution occurs than all the other evidence that has accumulated in other areas. This is akin to a defense attorney claiming that a grainy video of his client committing a murder invalidates his client being arrested at the scene holding a knife plunged chest deep in his victim. Most juries would consider that a pathetic tactic, as do I.
[1] Eldredge, Niles and S. J. Gould "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism (1972).
[2] S.J. Gould, "Evolution as fact and theory", in Science And Creationism, Ed.: A. Montagu, (1984).
[3] "Who doubts evolution?" New Scientist, Vol. 90, pp.830-832, 25 June (1981).
