How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[Purple Knight]

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.





This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

[Purple Knight]

Are they required to teach "evolution is a fact"? because that right there is anti-science !

Let's be honest about this: Not 100% of people in general, much less children, have the capacity to understand the difference between a highly supported theory and a fact, and even if you explain to them, as best you can, as honestly as you can, a certain percent of them just will not get this and will either go, "Okay so this is true not sure why all that other stuff," or, "That must not be true they just said it wasn't absolutely a fact."

I honestly have no idea what to do about this except dumb it down and say some people believe this and some people don't and we don't know. But teaching that for all scientific theories would definitely be just as dishonest.

[Difflugia]

Sorry about all this questions. I know for you they may look super dumb.
English is not my native language and sometime its more hard to perfectly understand more complicated things or I don't make myself understood.

Your questions are fine. If I don't understand your questions, I'll ask you to clarify them.

Q: So when we talk of Cambrian explosion in respect to Radiodonta groupe and Artiopoda group we talk just of greatly diversification of species of a Precambrian pre-existing phylum?

Not necessarily. There is some question of exactly when arthropods first evolved, but it may have been during the early Cambrian and there might be no precambrian arthropods. There are definite examples of multicellular animals that are Precambrian, but it's not certain which phyla they belong to. Some of them may belong to extant phyla (Porifera, for example), but the relationships aren't clear.

The "Cambrian explosion" is real in the sense that most modern phyla began during a relatively short period of around ~20 million years. There are complex animal fossils older than that by around 40 million years and evidence of things like stromatolite predation hundreds of millions of years before that, so animals existed long before the Cambrian. The apparent diversification of animals during the Cambrian, though, is real.

Q: What is the Creationists problem with Cambrien explosion?

The "problem" for creationists is that if Jesus created all of the animals in an instant, there must be evidence of it somewhere. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the earliest known fossils were from the Cambrian. At that point, creationsists just said that Darwin was wrong and the Cambrian is when Jesus created all of the animals at once.

Since then, though, we've found lots of evidence for Precambrian life over a billion years old, so most creationists have just gone back to saying that science is wrong. "Intelligent Design," though, is similar to the old notion of "progressive creation," in which Jesus still created the different animals, but not all at once and over a long period of time. The argument is basically that anything in the fossil record that seems weird is where Jesus did something. The Cambrian explosion is one of those "weird" things. The diversification was more rapid than during other periods and fossil remains are relatively poor compared to those from much more recent periods. The combination of rapid diversification and lack of evidence made for a perfect gap for progressive creationists and "design proponents" to put Jesus, but still pay lip service to science.

[alexxcJRO]

Sorry about all this questions. I know for you they may look super dumb.
English is not my native language and sometime its more hard to perfectly understand more complicated things or I don't make myself understood.

Your questions are fine. If I don't understand your questions, I'll ask you to clarify them.

Q: So when we talk of Cambrian explosion in respect to Radiodonta groupe and Artiopoda group we talk just of greatly diversification of species of a Precambrian pre-existing phylum?

Not necessarily. There is some question of exactly when arthropods first evolved, but it may have been during the early Cambrian and there might be no precambrian arthropods. There are definite examples of multicellular animals that are Precambrian, but it's not certain which phyla they belong to. Some of them may belong to extant phyla (Porifera, for example), but the relationships aren't clear.

The "Cambrian explosion" is real in the sense that most modern phyla began during a relatively short period of around ~20 million years. There are complex animal fossils older than that by around 40 million years and evidence of things like stromatolite predation hundreds of millions of years before that, so animals existed long before the Cambrian. The apparent diversification of animals during the Cambrian, though, is real.

Q: What is the Creationists problem with Cambrien explosion?

The "problem" for creationists is that if Jesus created all of the animals in an instant, there must be evidence of it somewhere. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the earliest known fossils were from the Cambrian. At that point, creationsists just said that Darwin was wrong and the Cambrian is when Jesus created all of the animals at once.

Since then, though, we've found lots of evidence for Precambrian life over a billion years old, so most creationists have just gone back to saying that science is wrong. "Intelligent Design," though, is similar to the old notion of "progressive creation," in which Jesus still created the different animals, but not all at once and over a long period of time. The argument is basically that anything in the fossil record that seems weird is where Jesus did something. The Cambrian explosion is one of those "weird" things. The diversification was more rapid than during other periods and fossil remains are relatively poor compared to those from much more recent periods. The combination of rapid diversification and lack of evidence made for a perfect gap for progressive creationists and "design proponents" to put Jesus, but still pay lip service to science.

I knew multicellular animals existed in Ediacaran.
Its is unknown for example if Spriggina organism with a bilaterally symmetric body plan and the trace fossils (the traces in the sediments (worm-like sediment feeders or detritus feeders)which resemble arthropod trails or traces that show six pairs of symmetrically placed impressions, which resemble trilobite walking trails) are evidence of pre-cambrian arthropods.

So because body-fossil record is super biased towards organisms with hard parts(exoskeletons, skeletons) and because Precambrian animals may have been with soft tissue mostly, therefore Jesus.

Jesus might have said: “Meh we only have Spriggina, Yorgia, Dickinsonia, Charnia, Kimberella, sponges, algae, bacteria.
This is taking too long(been waiting few billions of years). Let’s speed up the process. I need my humans already so I can come back and die for them. Let’s poof into existence some phyla and make Proarticulata phyla gone is kind of boring and ugly.
Q: Why won’t I create them already if I am impatient?” cuz’ Christian logic. )

Its ridiculous how they keep putting their God in gaps of knowledge or where science says "We don't know or don't know for sure, there is problem that needs solving" and keep a straight face and say: "We are rational!."Its not God of the Gaps or Argument from Ignorance.""

[Sherlock Holmes]

Sorry about all this questions. I know for you they may look super dumb.
English is not my native language and sometime its more hard to perfectly understand more complicated things or I don't make myself understood.

Your questions are fine. If I don't understand your questions, I'll ask you to clarify them.

Q: So when we talk of Cambrian explosion in respect to Radiodonta groupe and Artiopoda group we talk just of greatly diversification of species of a Precambrian pre-existing phylum?

Not necessarily. There is some question of exactly when arthropods first evolved, but it may have been during the early Cambrian and there might be no precambrian arthropods. There are definite examples of multicellular animals that are Precambrian, but it's not certain which phyla they belong to. Some of them may belong to extant phyla (Porifera, for example), but the relationships aren't clear.

The "Cambrian explosion" is real in the sense that most modern phyla began during a relatively short period of around ~20 million years. There are complex animal fossils older than that by around 40 million years and evidence of things like stromatolite predation hundreds of millions of years before that, so animals existed long before the Cambrian. The apparent diversification of animals during the Cambrian, though, is real.

Q: What is the Creationists problem with Cambrien explosion?

The "problem" for creationists is that if Jesus created all of the animals in an instant, there must be evidence of it somewhere. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the earliest known fossils were from the Cambrian. At that point, creationsists just said that Darwin was wrong and the Cambrian is when Jesus created all of the animals at once.

Since then, though, we've found lots of evidence for Precambrian life over a billion years old, so most creationists have just gone back to saying that science is wrong. "Intelligent Design," though, is similar to the old notion of "progressive creation," in which Jesus still created the different animals, but not all at once and over a long period of time. The argument is basically that anything in the fossil record that seems weird is where Jesus did something. The Cambrian explosion is one of those "weird" things. The diversification was more rapid than during other periods and fossil remains are relatively poor compared to those from much more recent periods. The combination of rapid diversification and lack of evidence made for a perfect gap for progressive creationists and "design proponents" to put Jesus, but still pay lip service to science.

I knew multicellular animals existed in Ediacaran.
Its is unknown for example if Spriggina organism with a bilaterally symmetric body plan and the trace fossils (the traces in the sediments (worm-like sediment feeders or detritus feeders)which resemble arthropod trails or traces that show six pairs of symmetrically placed impressions, which resemble trilobite walking trails) are evidence of pre-cambrian arthropods.

So because body-fossil record is super biased towards organisms with hard parts(exoskeletons, skeletons) and because Precambrian animals may have been with soft tissue mostly, therefore Jesus.

Jesus might have said: “Meh we only have Spriggina, Yorgia, Dickinsonia, Charnia, Kimberella, sponges, algae, bacteria.
This is taking too long(been waiting few billions of years). Let’s speed up the process. I need my humans already so I can come back and die for them. Let’s poof into existence some phyla and make Proarticulata phyla gone is kind of boring and ugly.
Q: Why won’t I create them already if I am impatient?” cuz’ Christian logic. )

Its ridiculous how they keep putting their God in gaps of knowledge or where science says "We don't know or don't know for sure, there is problem that needs solving" and keep a straight face and say: "We are rational!."Its not God of the Gaps or Argument from Ignorance.""

The Cambrian fossils of animals with hard mineralized body parts cover a diverse group, many distinct phyla, diversification must have occurred many thousands of generations in the past. Therefore it is very obvious that there must have been common ancestors and many of these too will have had hard body parts, if you want to speculate that the hard body parts appeared simultaneously across all of the already differentiated animals then your argument is ridiculous and more fantastic than "God".

In addition those who dismiss the Cambrian are in fact guilty of "evolution of the gaps" where there's evidence they sing it from the rooftops, where there's no evidence they all say "well we know evolution is true so we simply haven't found the evidence yet, we know what happened and just because there's no evidence doesn't mean we need the evidence".

[Clownboat]

Sorry about all this questions. I know for you they may look super dumb.
English is not my native language and sometime its more hard to perfectly understand more complicated things or I don't make myself understood.

Your questions are fine. If I don't understand your questions, I'll ask you to clarify them.

Q: So when we talk of Cambrian explosion in respect to Radiodonta groupe and Artiopoda group we talk just of greatly diversification of species of a Precambrian pre-existing phylum?

Not necessarily. There is some question of exactly when arthropods first evolved, but it may have been during the early Cambrian and there might be no precambrian arthropods. There are definite examples of multicellular animals that are Precambrian, but it's not certain which phyla they belong to. Some of them may belong to extant phyla (Porifera, for example), but the relationships aren't clear.

The "Cambrian explosion" is real in the sense that most modern phyla began during a relatively short period of around ~20 million years. There are complex animal fossils older than that by around 40 million years and evidence of things like stromatolite predation hundreds of millions of years before that, so animals existed long before the Cambrian. The apparent diversification of animals during the Cambrian, though, is real.

Q: What is the Creationists problem with Cambrien explosion?

The "problem" for creationists is that if Jesus created all of the animals in an instant, there must be evidence of it somewhere. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the earliest known fossils were from the Cambrian. At that point, creationsists just said that Darwin was wrong and the Cambrian is when Jesus created all of the animals at once.

Since then, though, we've found lots of evidence for Precambrian life over a billion years old, so most creationists have just gone back to saying that science is wrong. "Intelligent Design," though, is similar to the old notion of "progressive creation," in which Jesus still created the different animals, but not all at once and over a long period of time. The argument is basically that anything in the fossil record that seems weird is where Jesus did something. The Cambrian explosion is one of those "weird" things. The diversification was more rapid than during other periods and fossil remains are relatively poor compared to those from much more recent periods. The combination of rapid diversification and lack of evidence made for a perfect gap for progressive creationists and "design proponents" to put Jesus, but still pay lip service to science.

I knew multicellular animals existed in Ediacaran.
Its is unknown for example if Spriggina organism with a bilaterally symmetric body plan and the trace fossils (the traces in the sediments (worm-like sediment feeders or detritus feeders)which resemble arthropod trails or traces that show six pairs of symmetrically placed impressions, which resemble trilobite walking trails) are evidence of pre-cambrian arthropods.

So because body-fossil record is super biased towards organisms with hard parts(exoskeletons, skeletons) and because Precambrian animals may have been with soft tissue mostly, therefore Jesus.

Jesus might have said: “Meh we only have Spriggina, Yorgia, Dickinsonia, Charnia, Kimberella, sponges, algae, bacteria.
This is taking too long(been waiting few billions of years). Let’s speed up the process. I need my humans already so I can come back and die for them. Let’s poof into existence some phyla and make Proarticulata phyla gone is kind of boring and ugly.
Q: Why won’t I create them already if I am impatient?” cuz’ Christian logic. )

Its ridiculous how they keep putting their God in gaps of knowledge or where science says "We don't know or don't know for sure, there is problem that needs solving" and keep a straight face and say: "We are rational!."Its not God of the Gaps or Argument from Ignorance.""

The Cambrian fossils of animals with hard mineralized body parts cover a diverse group, many distinct phyla, diversification must have occurred many thousands of generations in the past. Therefore it is very obvious that there must have been common ancestors and many of these too will have had hard body parts, if you want to speculate that the hard body parts appeared simultaneously across all of the already differentiated animals then your argument is ridiculous and more fantastic than "God".

In addition those who dismiss the Cambrian are in fact guilty of "evolution of the gaps" where there's evidence they sing it from the rooftops, where there's no evidence they all say "well we know evolution is true so we simply haven't found the evidence yet, we know what happened and just because there's no evidence doesn't mean we need the evidence".

Do we have a better explination for all the animals we see not only now, but also in the fossil record?

[Sherlock Holmes]

I think there's a thin line between teaching science and teaching truth, this is the crux of my point. We should encourage students to not regard scientific theories as absolute truths, we should remind them - and often - that these are all models, human crafted models that could be wrong despite any strong correlation with observation.

Do you have any specific information showing that are doing otherwise?

I'd introduce Philosophy as a core subject as is done in many parts of Europe.

That's it? All this talk and complaining about science teachers being "censored" and the like, but when asked what specifically you'd change you reply with "require philosophy class"? Okay then.

Well I don't know if that would happen, I mean were talking about a discipline where the literature is filled with "evolution is a fact" either explicitly or implicitly

Again, evolution is a fact. We've seen populations evolve new traits, abilities, genetic sequences, and species. We both exploit (domestication) and fight against (bacterial resistance) evolution all the time. If you're having trouble coming to terms with that, I have to ask.....why?

I have no trouble with facts, it is extrapolations claimed as facts that I have a serious problem with. Evolution as the mechanism for all life we see today is quite simply an inference, it is scientific induction, as I said before induction from facts does not a new fact make.

Tell me more about this claim for "new species" please.

this tells me that the subject itself takes a very defensive position, almost intolerant of hard criticism, that doesn't inspire me with confidence. Those challenging it or challenging aspects of it are routinely disparaged, one need only call them "creationists" and the ridicule begins, then its a simple matter to dismiss their arguments as the ranting of a "Bible thumpers" and so on.

Well given the history of this subject, isn't that at least a somewhat reasonable assumption? Pretty much every anti-evolution organization that's existed has had an overt religious motive.

No, such assumptions are not only unreasonable they are scientifically irrelevant and a discredit to science and scientific debate. They are simply fallacious arguments like the genetic fallacy or ad hominem attacks.

My presumed motive for critiquing evolution is not important, not if we're pursuing a scientific discussion, science as you well know deals with observations, inferences, models, data, tests not the personal beliefs, gender, race or sexual proclivity of the individuals.

As soon as you permit this kind of thing it becomes theater, like me saying "Pretty much every evolution organization that's existed has had an overt non-religious motive".

What specifically is your motivation on this? Are you a Christian? If so, how do you interpret the Genesis creation account? Are you a young-earth creationist? Old-earth creationist? Something else?

Fair question, my primary motive is to leave a public record of exchanges like the one we are having. Then open minded individuals, those who may not have a huge attachment to God or evolution, can see the discussion unfold and assess for themselves the merits of our respective cases.

Am I a Christian? I suppose I am, I am of the opinion that Christ did exist and the records we have are representative of true events, that he possessed and shared knowledge that to this day is profound, sometimes puzzling, in many ways fantastical.

I'm happy to discuss these question too but I don't want to derail this thread, my motives are irrelevant though an argument rests on its premises and reasoning nothing more.

Sure, the list Dissent from Darwin with over a thousand signatures of professors, teachers, researchers is one such I suppose.

Um....first of all, the list is not an organization (which is what I asked for). So I'll take that as a tacit admission that there are no scientific organizations that disagree with the others regarding evolution.

As you wish, it is though irrelevant, it seems little more than grasping for some kind of argument from authority.

Second, the "Dissent from Darwin" statement merely says, "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

That's not exactly a controversial statement. It presents only mutation and selection as mechanisms of evolution, which is rather weird. It also references "Darwinian theory", which depending on the audience can mean very different things, but there's no indication of which one the statement is referring to. Is it speciation via anagenesis? Gradualism? Pan-selectionism? Something else?

So, you'll be signing it then? if not why not?

So if you're trying to put this list on the same level the world's national academies of science, I'm not sure what to say other than that's rather absurd.

Strawman, I made no such comparison.

I think we need to clear this up. Do you believe that no population has ever evolved? Not one has ever evolved a new trait, ability, or genetic sequence? Not one new species has ever been observed to evolve?

I do not believe the Cambrian animals evolved, there was no common descent, the first emergence of the phyla (pretty much the same body plans that exist to this day) was sudden and is not the result of differentiation over hundreds of thousands of generations, the presumed "branches" never existed. There is no evidence for any of these claims yet each claim has to be true for the Cambrian animals to have evolved.

If I reason correctly then this amounts to a falsification of the theory, if the Cambrian fauna spontaneously appeared then we know that life can spontaneously appear (we already know that the universe spontaneously appeared) and we can by extension conclude that the mechanism of evolution (which may still play a role once an organism exists) is not how life developed.

This should clear it up.

I do not know

Um......since you claim to have done all sorts of research into evolutionary biology, how can you not have ever come across any papers that describe the evolution of new traits, abilities, genetic sequences, or species? I hope you realize how this calls your claim into question. It's like someone claiming to have read the Bible but they don't know if there was someone named Jesus Christ in it.

I do not know the scope of your question, perhaps you can give me examples and ask if I regard that as compelling evidence that the Cambrian fauna must have evolved.

that change takes place is inarguable given the mechanism of genetics; that we can infer that all life is the result of that starting with say bacteria, is a different claim altogether

Are you then okay with the concept of populations evolving over time, but you object to the concept of universal common ancestry?

I'm OK with facts, populations do seem to change over time but whether we can say they "evolve" is another matter.

That right there is evidence not of evolution though. Most of the phyla we see today appear more or less simultaneously, already differentiated from one another with still no trace of common ancestry, that right there is evidence that something other than evolution caused these things to exist.

What you're referring to is "universal common ancestry", i.e., the theory that all life on earth shares a common ancestry.

Why, tell me why, I should believe each of the phyla had an ancestry, that any pair of phyla had a common ancestor when there is no trace of them? Isn't it the atheist who refuses to believe without evidence? well they contentedly believe without evidence all the time it seems to me!

First, I have to ask again....are you equating evolution with atheism? Second, IMO it's important to first understand your beliefs about this issue, so if you could answer the questions I asked above that'd help a lot.

No I'm not equating them, and rather than ask me questions why not answer "Why, tell me why, I should believe each of the phyla had an ancestry, that any pair of phyla had a common ancestor when there is no trace of them?"

Let me also emphasize something it is paleontologists who label this an "explosion" not just skeptics, in their eyes this appears to have been a dramatic sudden event, that is what "the scientific community" says.

And "sudden" is used in relative (i.e., geologic) terms, correct?

Sudden is used to convey the absence of evidence for gradual, that is to convey the absence of what one would reasonably expect had they evolved. Sudden indicates an inconsistency with evolutionary expectations which rely on gradual, as in no evolutionist argues that jellyfish can become an animal with a thousand times the complexity in a few generations.

Also, what exactly are you referring to when you use the term "evolution"? For clarity's sake, I'm using the term as it is commonly used in biology, i.e., as a reference to changes in allele frequencies in populations over time.

I'm referring to the hypothesis that life can increase in sophistication and function due to random mutation and natural selection operating over great lengths of time. That in principle a bacteria colony could - in time - give rise to fish say.

Where did you get that definition?

Like "atheism" there are many to choose from but it wasn't claimed to be a definition, it was an answer to how I'm using the term here.

Yes I have read several of those reviews, many of them were rebutted by Meyer.

And none of it has had any impact on the actual science of evolutionary biology, has it?

How do we know? I mean we're having this conversation are we not?

If a culture has been subliminally taught that "evolution is a fact" that those who question it are "creationists" (with all the connotations that carries these days) then is it any surprise that you'll see only a small number of scientists considering the book with an open mind? basically the evolution lobby has succeeded in discrediting critics simply on the basis that they are critics, what they have to say or argue is routinely dismissed as this and similar forums prove.

Do you see that as a deliberate, coordinated conspiracy?

No, I would not call it a conspiracy. It is better described as a system that has become intolerant of dissent, a dogma.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Sorry about all this questions. I know for you they may look super dumb.
English is not my native language and sometime its more hard to perfectly understand more complicated things or I don't make myself understood.

Your questions are fine. If I don't understand your questions, I'll ask you to clarify them.

Q: So when we talk of Cambrian explosion in respect to Radiodonta groupe and Artiopoda group we talk just of greatly diversification of species of a Precambrian pre-existing phylum?

Not necessarily. There is some question of exactly when arthropods first evolved, but it may have been during the early Cambrian and there might be no precambrian arthropods. There are definite examples of multicellular animals that are Precambrian, but it's not certain which phyla they belong to. Some of them may belong to extant phyla (Porifera, for example), but the relationships aren't clear.

The "Cambrian explosion" is real in the sense that most modern phyla began during a relatively short period of around ~20 million years. There are complex animal fossils older than that by around 40 million years and evidence of things like stromatolite predation hundreds of millions of years before that, so animals existed long before the Cambrian. The apparent diversification of animals during the Cambrian, though, is real.

Q: What is the Creationists problem with Cambrien explosion?

The "problem" for creationists is that if Jesus created all of the animals in an instant, there must be evidence of it somewhere. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the earliest known fossils were from the Cambrian. At that point, creationsists just said that Darwin was wrong and the Cambrian is when Jesus created all of the animals at once.

Since then, though, we've found lots of evidence for Precambrian life over a billion years old, so most creationists have just gone back to saying that science is wrong. "Intelligent Design," though, is similar to the old notion of "progressive creation," in which Jesus still created the different animals, but not all at once and over a long period of time. The argument is basically that anything in the fossil record that seems weird is where Jesus did something. The Cambrian explosion is one of those "weird" things. The diversification was more rapid than during other periods and fossil remains are relatively poor compared to those from much more recent periods. The combination of rapid diversification and lack of evidence made for a perfect gap for progressive creationists and "design proponents" to put Jesus, but still pay lip service to science.

I knew multicellular animals existed in Ediacaran.
Its is unknown for example if Spriggina organism with a bilaterally symmetric body plan and the trace fossils (the traces in the sediments (worm-like sediment feeders or detritus feeders)which resemble arthropod trails or traces that show six pairs of symmetrically placed impressions, which resemble trilobite walking trails) are evidence of pre-cambrian arthropods.

So because body-fossil record is super biased towards organisms with hard parts(exoskeletons, skeletons) and because Precambrian animals may have been with soft tissue mostly, therefore Jesus.

Jesus might have said: “Meh we only have Spriggina, Yorgia, Dickinsonia, Charnia, Kimberella, sponges, algae, bacteria.
This is taking too long(been waiting few billions of years). Let’s speed up the process. I need my humans already so I can come back and die for them. Let’s poof into existence some phyla and make Proarticulata phyla gone is kind of boring and ugly.
Q: Why won’t I create them already if I am impatient?” cuz’ Christian logic. )

Its ridiculous how they keep putting their God in gaps of knowledge or where science says "We don't know or don't know for sure, there is problem that needs solving" and keep a straight face and say: "We are rational!."Its not God of the Gaps or Argument from Ignorance.""

The Cambrian fossils of animals with hard mineralized body parts cover a diverse group, many distinct phyla, diversification must have occurred many thousands of generations in the past. Therefore it is very obvious that there must have been common ancestors and many of these too will have had hard body parts, if you want to speculate that the hard body parts appeared simultaneously across all of the already differentiated animals then your argument is ridiculous and more fantastic than "God".

In addition those who dismiss the Cambrian are in fact guilty of "evolution of the gaps" where there's evidence they sing it from the rooftops, where there's no evidence they all say "well we know evolution is true so we simply haven't found the evidence yet, we know what happened and just because there's no evidence doesn't mean we need the evidence".

Do we have a better explanation for all the animals we see not only now, but also in the fossil record?

How does one define "better"? what exactly is an "explanation" anyway? do you know?

[Sherlock Holmes]

I think there's a thin line between teaching science and teaching truth, this is the crux of my point. We should encourage students to not regard scientific theories as absolute truths, we should remind them - and often - that these are all models, human crafted models that could be wrong despite any strong correlation with observation.

And the level of support that we have for scientific theories takes us far closer to the truth than ancient, human crafted tales of gods and miracles.

I think there's a really big gaping problem in science teaching, I don't just mean schools but all sources of information like TV, the internet and so on.

That problem is that science is more and more being put on a pedestal, more and more equated with atheism, more and more being regarded as the only way to knowledge, more and more used to discredit those why might disagree with some prevailing claim made "by science" or "by the scientists".

This is why the talk by Berlinski is sobering, it takes a look at how atheism has become scientifically pretentious and in danger of becoming the very same force for bad that the Catholic authoritarian church was in Galileo's day.

Will you listen? do you care?



He compares the "science class" as being an analog of the priestly class from Galileo's day, these authorities who interpret the "book of God's work" (science) rather than the "book of God's word" as the Church officialdom did in Galileo's day.

This is all so true, we "the general public" do defer to that authority, if they tell us that X is the case well, we all pretty much go along. If they tell us there's no evidence for a God (that is they interpret that for us) we by and large trust them, if they tell us that mind is just an emergent property of the brain, well we go along, we trust them, if they tell us evolution is a a fact (something that cannot be questioned) we soak that up to.

The "scientists" are therefore interpreting aspects of science for us, telling us what this or that really means and we trust them, we don't really doubt, we don't want get ridiculed for disagreeing, it's all pretty much the same as in Galileo's day.

[Jose Fly]

Seeing if we can get our discussion back to one post....

Lets abandon the flat-earth "analogy" shall we, it isn't helpful here.

Why? IMO it’s a pretty apt comparison. Both are denials of long-standing and widely-accepted scientific conclusions, primarily for religious reasons.

I understand your reaction to what I'm saying but I think there's more to this than you might think.

You are paraphrasing too "agree that any data or other information they come across that even appears to contradict the Bible will automatically be deemed 'invalid'". But that isn't what's written there, you already did quote it earlier, so here it is again with an additional sentence included:

No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information

That amounts to them saying that there is no observation that contradicts (what they refer to as) "the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation". They're also saying that if someone claims that there is, then that someone is in error, there's a misunderstanding, the issue is only an apparent issue not a real one.

They are focusing on claims that evidence is counter to scripture and regard these as only apparent not real, it's not data that they'd deem invalid but the interpretation of it, the inferences from it.

I don't regard that as anti-science at all, for centuries science progressed in leaps and bounds by people who like held the same or similar views of scripture. A good example would be Galileo who did not for one second think that the Bible was wrong, he argued that the Church had misconstrued, his position was very similar, if science appears to contradict scripture then it is us who are in error not scripture, are you going to label Galileo as anti-scientific?

Again, I honestly don’t know what else to say here. If you truly don’t see that statement as anti-scientific, IMO that seriously calls into question your ability to discuss this subject rationally. Again I have to wonder if it’s just that you agree with the statement. Do you?

I don't mean to, but most evolutionists here do very quickly resort to labelling me a "creationist" when I critique evolution or the Cambrian explosion. This happens often, and most of the time I've made no mention of God, creation, the Bible. I often begin and focus wholly on the data, evidence, record, etc. It is a means of attacking me, that to disagree with the prevailing view is justification for calling me a "creationist" this is all part of the problem, the very idea that a person could disagree with some claims of evolution means that must be a "creationist".

It’s interesting that you see “creationist” as a disparaging term. Most creationists I know are rather proud to describe themselves as such. So I have to ask….what is your view regarding the history of life on earth? Are you a young-earth creationist? Old-earth creationist? Something else?

I can't agree, you are implying that any organization that today has those rules is by definition not a scientific organization but why? this sounds like a No True Scotsman argument.

Um….yes, I am arguing that an organization that requires its employees to sign something like AiG’s statement of faith is not a scientific organization. Oh, and btw….AiG even describes themselves as a Christian apologetics ministry. https://answersingenesis.org/ So it looks to me like you’re kinda even disagreeing with AiG!

Right so popularity is a factor, peer pressure more so than informed understanding. People don't want to be called names like "creationist" or "Bible thumper" or any of the other often disparaging terms so anyone on the fence will likely just shrug their shoulders and think "OK, I might as well go with Darwin, sounds reasonable to me" and that is true of most of the general public who are passive with respect to science.

Most of the folks I’ve talked with about this issue made it clear that they really don’t care all that much about it; it’s just not really relevant to their daily lives. The main ones who do care are either folks who work in science (and thus are interested in defending science) or are Biblical creationists who see science education as a threat to their prospects of gaining converts.

I see well if its hard to say how can you hold the position that it was not instantaneous? that the umpteen already differentiated phyla suddenly appeared? are you admitting that it could have been?

Wait….is it your position that Cambrian-era organisms appeared in a flash….literally “instantaneously”? If that’s what you mean, then no I don’t see that as reasonably possible.

Why? did you not read about Chomsky and the Holocaust "denier"? It's a matter of labels and definitions, I mean what is "flat earthism" anyway? what is a "holocaust denier"?

It's fine absolutely fine to disagree with the majority, to beg to differ from the prevailing views, when that is not tolerated, when people are persecuted or ostracized for that then we are - as Chomsky alluded to - adopting the very methods embraced by Stalinism, Nazism or Spanish Inquisition.
Is a person who question some claims about the Nazi extermination program a "holocaust denier"? This is the point Chomsky emphasized and despite himself being a Jew defended the right of the Prof. to express his opinion, share his views, not be silenced by some official ministry of truth.

I've never been a fan of knowledge suppression, sure I'm not saying we actively teach and instruct and test students on the idea the earth is flat but we should not hide it from them, it should be mentioned, there may well be some valuable lessons to be learned from it.
If someone advocates the earth is flat then why not ask the kids how we can decide? what do they think we could do to see if it is or is not? You might be surprised at how many things need to be assumed to show that the earth is not flat, there's some valuable lessons to be learned by being objective and unbiased when studying such claims. Someone might think the earth is flat and actually have a reasonable basis for that, it might not be their fault, they might genuinely have good reason to think its flat, not saying they are right only that they might have reasoned well but missed some detail perhaps.

I once knew a guy who would drop into a local pub that we computer programmers often hung out in in the early 1980s. We were mostly in our 20s and most of us were pretty bright and well versed in technical subjects. This guy was kind of famous in the pub for arguing that the earth was flat and I remember many an evening when some of us, me included would merrily "debate" with him as we supped our ale. He held his own, he'd often stump one or more of us not because we were idiots but because we were not mentally or epistemologically equipped to scientifically defend our belief in a globe. That was a valuable experience, I'd almost forgotten about it too, but the whole exercise was instructive, he knew the earth was not flat of course but man he could defend that it was pretty well.

Avoiding censorship, avoiding declaring unquestionable truths is not the same as having no structure or scope to a subject. Making kids aware that there are minority views, that not everybody shares the majority view, that there are examples where a majority may have been wrong, that there are examples where a minority turned out be right, etc., that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

If a kid did wonder about those things, then what harm is that? they might learn unexpected things about geography, map making or the Nazi party, the nature of the history of WW2 and so on. You seem to be worried that only bad consequences can arise and discount any possibility of a good.

Honestly, after I asked you for specific recommendations on how you’d change how science is taught and you replied “add a philosophy requirement”, I’ve kinda lost interest in discussing this sub-topic with you.

Are they required to teach "evolution is a fact"? because that right there is anti-science !

Again, evolution is a fact.

I have no trouble with facts, it is extrapolations claimed as facts that I have a serious problem with. Evolution as the mechanism for all life we see today is quite simply an inference, it is scientific induction, as I said before induction from facts does not a new fact make.

Well....yeah. As I keep pointing out, every single new trait, ability, genetic sequence, and species we've ever seen arise has done so via evolution. Thus it's entirely reasonable to infer that the same is true of the past. It's really no different than geologists inferring that specific types of ash came from volcanoes, since we only see that same sort of ash coming from volcanoes today.

Tell me more about this claim for "new species" please.

We've seen multiple examples of the evolution of new species, both in the lab and in the wild, and in diverse taxa such as plants, insects, birds, reptiles, and fish. Even some young-earth creationist organizations acknowledge this reality (speciation is needed under their Biblical flood scenarios).

No, such assumptions are not only unreasonable they are scientifically irrelevant and a discredit to science and scientific debate. They are simply fallacious arguments like the genetic fallacy or ad hominem attacks.

Oh, well maybe that's something we need to clear up. There is no scientific debate between evolution and creationism. As I said before, creationism (in all its forms) is 100% scientifically irrelevant and has been for at least a century.

My presumed motive for critiquing evolution is not important, not if we're pursuing a scientific discussion, science as you well know deals with observations, inferences, models, data, tests not the personal beliefs, gender, race or sexual proclivity of the individuals.

Yeah, it kinda is important. If you're the type of creationist who agrees with AiG's statement of faith for example, that tells me a lot about how you approach the data and whether it's worth the effort to provide you any. So if you could answer, I'd appreciate it.

As soon as you permit this kind of thing it becomes theater, like me saying "Pretty much every evolution organization that's existed has had an overt non-religious motive".

If you had evidence of that, it would certainly be noteworthy.

Fair question, my primary motive is to leave a public record of exchanges like the one we are having. Then open minded individuals, those who may not have a huge attachment to God or evolution, can see the discussion unfold and assess for themselves the merits of our respective cases.

Am I a Christian? I suppose I am, I am of the opinion that Christ did exist and the records we have are representative of true events, that he possessed and shared knowledge that to this day is profound, sometimes puzzling, in many ways fantastical.

I'm happy to discuss these question too but I don't want to derail this thread, my motives are irrelevant though an argument rests on its premises and reasoning nothing more.

That didn't really answer the question I asked. Are you a creationist? If so, what type (young earth, old earth, ID creationist, something else)?

As you wish, it is though irrelevant, it seems little more than grasping for some kind of argument from authority.

LOL...this is a pretty standard creationist two-step. You present the "dissent from Darwin list" as if folks should find it compelling, but then when you're shown that it pales in comparison to the number of scientific organizations across the world, you wave that away as "arguing from authority". Well then.....what was your point in citing the dissenters list, if not to present it as some sort of authority? By what metric are the signatories to that list compelling, but the agreement from the worlds' academies of science not?

So, you'll be signing it then? if not why not?

Because as this thread shows, it's primary use is for evolution denying propaganda.

I do not believe the Cambrian animals evolved, there was no common descent, the first emergence of the phyla (pretty much the same body plans that exist to this day) was sudden and is not the result of differentiation over hundreds of thousands of generations, the presumed "branches" never existed. There is no evidence for any of these claims yet each claim has to be true for the Cambrian animals to have evolved.

If I reason correctly then this amounts to a falsification of the theory, if the Cambrian fauna spontaneously appeared then we know that life can spontaneously appear (we already know that the universe spontaneously appeared) and we can by extension conclude that the mechanism of evolution (which may still play a role once an organism exists) is not how life developed.

This should clear it up.

No, you didn't answer the question I asked. I asked if you believe that no population has ever evolved, ever. Do you believe that not one has ever evolved a new trait, ability, or genetic sequence? Not one new species has ever been observed to evolve? Forget the Cambrian for a second and focus your answer on what I actually asked.

I do not know the scope of your question, perhaps you can give me examples and ask if I regard that as compelling evidence that the Cambrian fauna must have evolved.

I'm not asking about the Cambrian. I'm asking about over the course of the history of life on earth, do you believe that no population ever evolved a new trait, ability, genetic sequence, or species?

I'm OK with facts, populations do seem to change over time but whether we can say they "evolve" is another matter.

Why?

No I'm not equating them, and rather than ask me questions why not answer "Why, tell me why, I should believe each of the phyla had an ancestry, that any pair of phyla had a common ancestor when there is no trace of them?"

What other mechanism do you know of that generates new species? You seem to be arguing that the past was completely different, and that new species came about via some non-evolutionary means. So what do you believe happened?

Sudden is used to convey the absence of evidence for gradual, that is to convey the absence of what one would reasonably expect had they evolved. Sudden indicates an inconsistency with evolutionary expectations which rely on gradual, as in no evolutionist argues that jellyfish can become an animal with a thousand times the complexity in a few generations.

You're kinda dodging the point. When paleontologists describe the Cambrian explosion as "sudden", they're talking in terms of tens of millions of years, are they not?

Like "atheism" there are many to choose from but it wasn't claimed to be a definition, it was an answer to how I'm using the term here.

So you just made it up?

No, I would not call it a conspiracy. It is better described as a system that has become intolerant of dissent, a dogma.

What do you think is driving that alleged intolerance of dissent? Why would scientists do that sort of thing?

[Clownboat]

Do we have a better explanation for all the animals we see not only now, but also in the fossil record?

How does one define "better"? what exactly is an "explanation" anyway? do you know?

My question was simple and to the point.

It seems that you find the ToE (theory of evolution) to be wanting. Do you not have another idea that you feel better explains how we arrived at all the animals, not only on earth now, but also in the fossil record?

I would love to compare it to my understanding of the ToE.