Susan,
Where the heck did you get those articles and why in the world do you think they present a fossil in the wrong layer? Nothing in the articles said anything of the sort. At least one article did say that scientists were surprised by the finding, but nothing was said about the dating of the fossils throwing off a century of work.
Second, I didn't bring it up before because god forbid I make an ad hominem attack on a crank, but the author of the genetic entropy book is not a well-respected anything. He never even got tenure at his university. I checked it out. That's the academic equivalent of failure at life.
Third, your explanation of how the strata got the way they are is very simply reasoned away as false. Yes, smaller objects might find their way with a higher probability to the bottom of a bunch of mud, and objects that float would have the property of showing up more often in the upper layers of mud. This does not explain why only less and less complex structures are found in lower and lower strata. Giant trees are found in very low layers, suggesting giant trees have been around for about 400 million years, but the giant trees with complex structures are only found in the upper strata representing more recent evolutionary adaptations. On the other side of the scale, small plants are found throughout the strata, but as you travel further and further down you come across simpler leaves, simpler vascularization, simpler mechanisms of fertilization. That is profound evidence that evolution is real. By the way, you don't ever have to prove evidence as you suggested in your last email. Evidence is evidence. You only have to "prove" theories based on evidence. That is, you have to make sound deductions from the evidence at hand. Your "the bigger things end up at the top" idea doesn't even fit the evidence. It is not a strong enough assumption to explain the evidence in the strata, I'm sure you see this. Evolution and evolutionary time, though, does give a very clean reason as to why the fossils in the strata are arranged the way they are.
I've got to say that I was very excited by your last email. You attempted to tackle my argument about the evolution of plants in a very direct way. You gave me articles (that you first interpreted for me) and you gave me a third explanation. I was extraordinarily disappointed, though, when I actually read the articles and realized what your third option was going to be. Surely you see how weak they are?
Listen, I have a great idea. Why don't we go to an archeological dig? We can look at the darned strata, and look at the fossils coming out of them. You will see that there are objects of the same size in many of the strata, but the more complex structures (irrespective of size!) only exist in the upper levels. Of course, it would probably be easier to go to a museum, but you've probably been to museum with fossil layers and it hasn't convinced you of much.
Finally, you keep on saying that we are looking at the same evidence and coming up with different conclusions. I actually disagree with this. I believe you are NOT looking at the evidence for evolution. I believe that you are glancing at it, and then staring profoundly at the "evidence" that is given to you by creationists.
OK, one last thing, you were wrong about what entropy is. You admitted it. Yet you still want to halt science in its tracks by hailing entropy again. I will give you another example where something has gotten progressively more complicated over time: human civilization. If you bring it up again, I will give you another example. You are simply misusing the idea of entropy to try to make a point. You've got to bring yourself to stop it. Things can and do become more complicated. Period. (I know saying "period" is redundant when writing, but you get the rhetorical gist.)
As for Jon, of course you could say the same thing about him, but he doesn't care. I do. He's wiling to write you off as a crank; I think you're better than that. That was my point. My point was certainly not to start a dialog between you two. He doesn't want one. But we can have one:)
Also, Jon says that orbits don't degrade unless there's some drag, and he claims there is none with the earth.
Oh! And I forgot to mention, having simple plants and animals in upper strata should in no way be shocking. There are, for example, creatures called "living fossils" that have not changed much in millions and millions of years and therefore their living bodies match their ancestors' fossils very closely. But regardless of the example, common sense would say that if something with a simple structure exists, then it will likely exist for a good while to come. Evolution only makes the prediction that more complex structure will appear at later dates, not that simple structures will disappear at a set time.
Also, Dawkins wrote an entire book explaining how evolution works and presenting evidence for why it is true! He is not engaging in circular thinking in"The Greatest Show on Earth". How can you claim that? He does belittle those he disagrees with, but not as any sort of argument, but for entertainment value! He does present cogent arguments for all of the belittling, though!
Dawkins for instance comes up with a direct attack on the evolutionary entropy guy's argument that evolution can't create new information. Dawkins gives an example of a laboratory study where a bacterium evolved so that it could eat citric acid! By the way, something I listened to recently on NPR suggested that cancer cells end up evolving (very quickly!) into more and more deadly cells, even to the point of developing acid to release the cancer cells from the original cyst and spread further around the body.
I personally love when Dawkins takes on the scientific consequences of events in the Bible. The section on what the dispersal patterns of the animals coming off the Ark would be? Awesome. Totally unlike what we see in the world. Did you read that? Read it again!
-Brandon
"Weak coffee is fit only for lemmas." -Paul Turan
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