988 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
If observers ever hoped for more accuracy or fairness from "official"
publications of the two largest creationist organizations in America (in contrast with
the "independents" previously cited), they shall be disappointed. The Jehovah's
Witnesses journal Awake! reported on the Chicago macroevolution meeting in its
issue for September 22,1981, rooting the story in error number one, the Goldschmidt
equation: "This revised view of evolution is called 'punctuated equilibrium,' meaning
one species remains for millions of years in the fossil record, suddenly disappears and
a new species just as suddenly appears in the record. This, however, is not really a
new proposal. Richard Goldschmidt advanced it in the 1930's, called it the 'hopeful
monsters' hypothesis, and was much maligned for it. 'Punctuated equilibrium' is a
much more impressive designation."
Writing in the September 1982 issue of Signs, the leading journal of the Seventh
Day Adventists, H. W. Clark discussed the Arkansas creationism trial in terms of
error number two, false upward scaling to denial of transitional forms between
classes and phyla. Clark equated our punctuations with faunal breaks between
geological periods. A sidebar then misnames the author as well as distorting the
theory: "Thank you, Dr. Jay Gould: Dr. Jay Gould is the distinguished Harvard
Paleontologist who has raised a storm in evolutionary circles with his new theory of
'punctuated equilibrium.' Without intending to do so, he has told the scientific world
that Darwin was wrong and the creationists are right. Not that he planned to, of
course! Darwin recognized that the theory of evolution needs an unbroken line of
gradually changing fossils. Now along comes Dr. Jay Gould and agrees with the
creationists: the missing links aren't there and never were. Thank you, Dr. Gould!"
You're quite welcome.
On the same theme of shoddiness in supposed creationist "scholarship," I was
quite struck by a photograph, supposedly of me, that appeared in M. Bailey's
creationist book for children (Greenhaven Press, 1990), Evolution: Opposing
Viewpoints. The gentleman depicted sports a flowing beard and baldpate—while my
head hair has a precisely opposite distribution. He is also considerably older (and, I
fancy, a good deal uglier) than I. I finally realized that he is the 19th century robber
baron Jay Gould (no relation, by the way).
While America deals almost exclusively with creationists of the Protestant
fundamentalist line (at least among the movement's chief political activists), other
religions have their own similar crosses to bear. I was sent a 1983 Hindu version by
one Satyaraja dasa entitled "Puncturing the jerk theory." An article by Barbara Sofer
in a recent issue of Hadassah Magazine reports on the rare phenomenon of Israeli
creationism, and cites one adherent: "Schroeder points out that the newer theories of
punctuated evolution come closer to the biblical description."
Such inane and basically harmless perorations may boil the blood, but
creationist attempts to use punctuated equilibrium in their campaigns for suppressing
the teaching of evolution raise genuine worries. Nonetheless, here we can fight back
directly—and we have always won. Elijah, after all,