portance of speciation lie at the heart 
of the debate between the punctua- 
tionalists and their opponents. Unlike 
the phyletic gradualists, the punctu- 
ationalists conclude that in macroev- 
olution (evolution viewed in the long 
range and on a large scale), an episodic 
pattern of change is the expectation, 
rather than an exception to the rule. 
A second important issue in evo- 
lution that has attracted the attention 
of creationists is the question of the 
relative importance of chance as a fac- 
tor in evolutionary change. Using com- 
puter simulations, David Raup and 
his colleagues at Chicago’s Field Mu- 
seum of Natural History have argued 
that chance is very important in mac- 
roevolution as well as microevolution. 
Raup believes that many genetic 
changes that do not greatly affect “fit- 
ness” may survive or fail to survive 
owing to chance. Such evolution by 
chance is called neutral, or non-Dar- 
winian, evolution. The debate in evo- 
lutionary biology is over its relative 
importance, not its existence. 
It is hard to imagine creationists 
drawn to the arguments of Eldredge, 
Gould, and Raup, since they are anti- 
thetical to creationist tenets. First, the 
question of the genetics of speciation, 
which is central to the theory of the 
punctuationalist school, is foreign to 
creationism. “Speciation” is rarely 
part of creationist vocabulary; “spe- 
cial creation” is used instead. Cre- 
ationists claim that each life form was 
created as a separate “kind” (a com- 
mon-sensical, undefined concept) and 
that nature permits variation only 
within such created kinds. Thus they 
must ignore a large body of biological 
data on the mechanisms of speciation 
and examples of its occurrence ob- 
served both in the laboratory and the 
field. Scientific creationists deny the 
existence of the very process that 
punctuationalists argue is critical to 
evolutionary change. 
Nothing about punctuationalism 
supports the creationist viewpoint. 
Punctuationalists simply maintain 
that while much evolutionary change 
is very slow or static, very rapid 
“jumps” can occur naturally and these 
are the important stuff of macroev- 
olutionary change. Genetically, such 
jumps are as comprehensible as slow 
phyletic changes. Indeed, whether 
they are perceived as jumps at all 
depends upon one’s expectations con- 
cerning the scale and pace of evo- 
lutionary change. As Gould has writ- 
ten ( Natural History , August 1979): 
New species usually arise, not by the 
slow and steady transformation of entire 
ancestral populations, but by the splitting 
off of small populations from an unaltered 
ancestral stock. The frequency and speed 
of such speciation is among the hottest 
topics in evolutionary theory today, but 
I think that most of my colleagues would 
advocate ranges of hundreds or thousands 
of years for the origin of most species 
by splitting. This may seem like a long 
time in the framework of our lives, but 
it is a geologic instant, usually represented 
in the fossil record by a single bedding 
plane, not a long stratigraphic sequence. 
Second, “chance” is also foreign to 
creationism. One Florida-based orga- 
nization puts out a flier that reflects 
the widespread creationist notion that 
nothing (or nearly nothing) ever hap- 
pens by chance: “Evolution demands 
w hat has not, and cannot happen, even 
with careful planning — much less by 
total accident!” It is, of course, a mis- 
statement of evolution to claim that 
this body of theory argues that change 
comes about “by total accident,” for 
selection is not a random process. Yet, 
the non-Darwinian school ascribes to 
chance a much more central role than 
is admitted by other evolutionary bi- 
ologists. Ironically, in their effort to 
show' disagreement among evolution- 
ists, the creationists are citing the 
work of paleontologists whose argu- 
ments are, in many ways, the most 
antithetical to creationism. 
One reason creationists are able to 
exploit the current debates among evo- 
lutionists is that certain key phrases 
have entirely different meanings for 
paleontologists and for creationists (or 
their constituency). When such 
phrases are lifted from the w'ork of 
evolutionists and inserted into crea- 
tionist literature, they acquire new 
meaning simply because of differences 
in assumed knowledge. For example, 
the “neocatastrophism” of paleontol- 
ogy (widely quoted in support of cre- 
ationist catastrophism) has nothing to 
do with either creation or a great flood. 
But creationists automatically asso- 
ciate the term “catastrophism” with 
the concept of the Noachian deluge. 
Creationist Gary Parker wrote an 
essay on neocatastrophism that was 
circulated in the October 1980 issue 
of Acts and Facts , the free monthly 
newsletter of the ICR. Reading his 
article one cannot avoid the conclusion 
that Raup and Gould consider the cre- 
ation model tenable, if not actually 
preferable to evolutionism. Here is a 
passage from Parker’s essay: 
“Well, we are now about 1 20 years after 
Darw in." w rites David Raup of Chicago's 
famous Field Museum, "and the knowl- 
edge of the fossil record has been greatly 
expanded." [Parker cites a 1979 article 
by Raup.) Did this wealth of new data 
produce the “missing links" the Darwin- 
ists hoped to find? “. . . ironically,” says 
Raup, “we have even fewer examples of 
evolutionary transition than we had in 
Darwin's time. By this I mean that some 
of the classic cases of darwinian change 
in the fossil record, such as the evolution 
of the horse in North America, have had 
to be discarded or modified as a result 
of more detailed information." Rather 
than forging links in the hypothetical evo- 
lutionary chain, the wealth of fossil data 
has served to sharpen the boundaries be- 
tween the created kinds. As Gould says, 
our ability to classify both living and fossil 
species distinctly and using the same cri- 
teria “fit splendidly with creationist te- 
nets.” "But how.” he asks, "could a di- 
vision of the organic world into discrete 
entities be justified by an evolutionary 
theory that proclaimed ceaseless change 
as the fundamental fact of nature?" [Par- 
ker cites a 1979 Natural History article 
by Gould.] “. . . we still have a record 
which does show change." says Raup. 
"but one that can hardly be looked upon 
as the most reasonable consequence of 
natural selection.” The change we see 
is simply variation within the created 
kinds, plus extinction. 
The arguments Parker presents out- 
side, as well as inside, quotation marks 
seem to be those of Raup and Gould. 
Given these selected tidbits, there is 
no way to interpret the statements of 
Raup and Gould except within the 
framework of the creation model. The 
reader is not told what Raup and 
Gould are arguing but is left instead 
to surmise, incorrectly, that evolution 
itself is under attack. Furthermore, 
Parker has chosen to cite titles that 
seem to support such an interpreta- 
tion. Raup's article is called "Conflicts 
between Darwin and Paleontology.” 
Gould’s is entitled “A Quahog Is a 
Quahog.” 
Those familiar with Raup’s research 
will not be surprised to find that his 
article is actually a treatise concerning 
problems with Darwinian gradualism. 
Raup first deals with the complex, 
uneven record of evolutionary change. 
His point, quoted more fully, is that 
“some of the classic cases of darwinian 
change in the fossil record, such as 
the evolution of the horse in North 
America, have had to be discarded 
or modified as a result of more de- 
tailed information — what appeared to 
be a nice simple progression when rel- 
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