otseng wrote:Grumpy wrote:You are being too cute by half to ignore the facts unless you think they support your argument. So kindly explain how this ordered stratification of lifeforms is explained by the FM, stop beating around the bush.
Let's cover this then. I assume what one means by perfect order of stratification is the claim that life starts simple at the bottom and gradually increases in complexity.
If one looks at the fossil record by phylum, it is not a gradual increase as one goes from lower to upper stratas. But, it
decreases from lower to upper. In the Cambrian, practically all the modern phyla are represented and also contains phyla that do not currently exist.
Although life developed to a huge diversity as seen today, probably no new phyla developed in post-Cambrian times and the number of phyla has actually decreased since.
http://wwwalt.uni-wuerzburg.de/palaeont ... /casu8.htm
Some scientists recognize over 50 major phyla that appeared, though a number, including some bizarre body plans, subsequently became extinct.
In the 500 million years since the Cambrian, no fundamentally new body plan has emerged (Mayr 2001).
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Cambrian
A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla discovered during that period of time (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means [there are] more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils [of animal life], than exist now.
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9701/chien.html
This is a specious argument.
How we label the phyla is a human artifact. The fact that there are fewer existing phyla now does not describe the variability of life as we know it now. It does not reflect that huge changes at the species level that has occurred in the fossil record.
grumpy can further elaborate on what he means by "complexity" but I am quite certain he does not measure complexity by the number of phyla. In fact, he did not mention complexity, but just change in what we see in the fossil record.
Once again, you avoid the central issues by bringing up an essentially irrelevant point.
How would an increase or decrease in the number of words humans use to describe the phyla support or falsify the SG? How would it help distinguish between the FM and the SG? About the only possible point I could see is that under the FM and assuming all life or most life that ever existed up to the time of the flood existed
at the time of the flood, one should see all that life mixed up in the layers.
In fact, it seems to me one would expect all phyla existing throughout the layers, rather than fewer phyla as you have asserted is what we do find.
Perhaps otseng can explain how a change in the number of phyla has any bearing on which model is more consistent with the data.
However, I would suggest trying to explain the massive salt deposits and other features of the Williston Basin would be more relevant and the phyla issue could be left to the side for at least the time being.
" . . . the line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart . . . ." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
