The Cambrian Explosion Questions Evolutionary Theory !

Originally posted by MrXYZ
reply to post by Kayzar

 

Actually, there's an entire thread where people were asked to "debunk" evolution...we're several pages in, so far no one succeeded. Want to give it a shot and be the first one to achieve it?

It is impossible, just as it is impossible to proove it is 100% right. For every objection to evolution there is another theory as to why that objection is not valid, throw in some ad hominem attacks about religion and i bet that is the entire thread in a nutshell. People keep hi-jacking evolution to serve a platform for the ad hominem attacks against those who have belief in some god. The fact is if evolution were prooven to be 100% true it would still not disproove any religion.

reply to post by Kayzar


Look, you were the ones who mentioned flaws of the theory of evolution...why aren't you willing to list them? Worried people will prove you wrong?

Just so you know, if there were any evidence AGAINST evolution, it wouldn't be classified as a theory

People of the school of evolutionary thought seem to like to attack intelligence and social standings of the creationist as proof of their belief.

This is can be proved by the one of the next comments to a creationist on this tread.

There is no answer in the camp of the evolutionary person for the Cambrian Explosion, why they do not even bring up the fact of the many now extinct organism that were much more complex than many today.

From,
en.wikipedia.org...
Types of evidence

"""""""""""""""""Deducing the events of half a billion years ago is difficult, as evidence comes exclusively from biological and chemical signatures in rocks and very sparse fossils."""""""""""""""""""""

This is what they parrot their belief of evolution from..........." rocks". WOW
Rocks that can say nothing and the visible evidence has to be speculated with faith, as they will always say "WE BELIEVE" that it happened this way.

Man can not except that the Bible is the word of God, yet...........Rocks speak knowledge.

And they get very angry when you explain to them that the definition of the word believe is a synonym of faith, which is religious in nature as believing takes faith to accept it is true with out actual knowledge of the fact. Or Better yet believing that someone of Harvard education read it in a book some where so he writes a paper on it with out ever testing the hypothesis and poof you got millions of people parroting the same thing with out actually ever getting out and seeing for themselves.

reply to post by ACTS 2:38

Man can not except that the Bible is the word of God, yet...........Rocks speak knowledge.

And more blind belief and pure speculation...what's your proof that the bible is the word of god? Because it says so in the bible? And that obviously proves god exists?

Laughable

Originally posted by MrXYZ
reply to post by Kayzar

 

Look, you were the ones who mentioned flaws of the theory of evolution...why aren't you willing to list them? Worried people will prove you wrong?

Im not worried about anything much less about being wrong.

Just so you know, if there were any evidence AGAINST evolution, it wouldn't be classified as a theory

If there were any evidence against evolution it would change to fit the new evidence or some new method of evolution would be thought up. Microevolution,Macroevolution, Gradualisim or Punctuated equilibrium. And oh yeah i remember some old evidence that popped up like the piltdown man and the nebraska man.
Not to mention the reconstruction of ancient homo fossils are done so carelessly with little reguard for facts. Many of the fossil reconstructions and renditions of what a species might have looked like is done so to support the ape to man theory.

reply to post by Kayzar


I have an issue.

The stuff that you have a problem with seems to come down to various evolutionary hypotheses, NOT the theory of evolution. At least get it right.

I've done a break-down of what evolution, NOT the hypotheses based on it, is, on the link "evolution broken down" in my signature. That will explain what evolution is. Man from ape is a (quite well supported by molecular evidence, I might add) hypothesis, and it being wrong has no bearing on the theory.

reply to post by ACTS 2:38


More complex organisms become extinct is easy to explain using evolution and has been many times.

The bigger question is why did god the creator design a complex organism just to let it go extinct?

Please explain why the more complex organism was 'replaced' by a simple form?

reply to post by Blue_Jay33

The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively rapid appearance, over a period of many millions of years, of most major Phyla

Emphasis added. Source

The Cambrian explosion does not question Evolution and is actually good evidence for Evolution, either that or God got really creative for a while and then got lazy afterward. Perhaps he got creators block.

I started watching these videos but soon realized I'd seen them before, a complete load of tripe. The Cambrian explosion does nothing to hurt Evolution.

Originally posted by Kayzar
Not to mention the reconstruction of ancient homo fossils are done so carelessly with little reguard for facts. Many of the fossil reconstructions and renditions of what a species might have looked like is done so to support the ape to man theory.

Okay... (polite question here) : how do you know that the fossil reconstructions and renditions are wrong?

I work (and have been working) in a paleontology lab for around six years and I've got a pretty good idea of how they reconstruct a new species (we did that just this past year) and I have a lot (oh boy, do I!) of experience putting together broken bits of fossils. I've seen the reconstructions and looked at the pieces and have no fault with the work. The work I am doing will eventually be part of a reconstruction of an entire dinosaur (a species that we have no complete skeleton for) -- so I have some "hands on" experience with "take juvenile rib and resize and match to adult vertebra" and so forth.

I watched my boss spend 3 years putting together a skull that had been shattered into around 500 pieces (pachyrhinosaurus, so the thing is about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide... not a tiny thing but a lot of the fragments were the size of your thumb.)

So I'm interested in what you think the solution should be.

(just FYI, in the lab we have a lot of books about the anatomy of a lot of living and extinct things... very detailed stuff, such as the pattern of veins and arteries found on the bones (such patterns even show up on human bones) -- so we're really not just sticking on bits and pieces and guessing.)

reply to post by Byrd


Wasnt you tempted to pocket a piece of the skull the prof spent years working on?

Imagine his face when you plonked it in place after all his work like a missing jigsaw piece.

reply to post by Byrd


You must really like puzzles

reply to post by Byrd


I was saying this is inaccurate



Not this

Originally posted by TheWill
reply to post by Kayzar

 

I have an issue.

The stuff that you have a problem with seems to come down to various evolutionary hypotheses, NOT the theory of evolution. At least get it right.

I do have it right, those varrious evolutionary hypotheses are what people have come up with to explain how evolution works. Huge leaps forward,small changes over time or both.

Man from ape is a (quite well supported by molecular evidence, I might add) hypothesis, and it being wrong has no bearing on the theory.

Without ape to man or a clear sensical evolutanary line from something that was not man to man the theory of evolution loses much ground. Without a clear line of where something came from then it goes back to "randomly appearing" or magic.

reply to post by Kayzar


Good thing we have that "clear line" then

reply to post by Kayzar


No.

Evolution happens. Given three observable facts - individuals are variable, variation is heritable, and not all individuals reproduce to exactly the same amounts - evolution is inescapable.

Natural selection is also inescapable - if something gets eaten before it has finished breeding (i.e., within its reproductive lifespan), it will not pass on its variations, and so variations that get you eaten (or otherwise killed) will be selected against.

So unless you are saying that the above is not true, evolution and natural selection DO HAPPEN.

What we don't know for certain is which routes evolution has taken to produce what we see today, and so we have hypotheses that rely upon evolution - but evolution does not rely upon them - to explain where things came from, and hypothesis are supported or thrown out based on the evidence we find relating to them

For example, the old hypothesis concerning the evolution of whales was that they were an outgroup (split of a vey long time ago) to the hoofed mammals (or ungulates). Now, that hypothesis has been rejected in light of the molecular evidence that whales are actually nested within the artiodactyla (odd toed ungulates: Antelope, deer, cows, sheep, pigs, camels, and hippos). Hippos, in fact, have more in common with cetaceans than they do with any other living mammals, and ruminants (cows, sheep, goats, deer) are more closely related to whales than they are to pigs and camels.

So the hypothesis changed. Evolution was not weakened because the evidence threw out an old hypothesis. The theory of evolution by natural selection did not even get the slightest tremor. It is the foundation upon which this and other, more contentious, hypotheses are based, and they can rise and fall without it taking the slightest notice.


EDIT: Point is, humans don't need to have come from apes for evolution to have happened - although everything from skeletal remains through to vitamin C suggests that we did.

reply to post by TheWill

Evolution happens. Given three observable facts - individuals are variable, variation is heritable, and not all individuals reproduce to exactly the same amounts - evolution is inescapable.

Yes on a small scale but certian traits being passed on will only go so far. You can pass on some traits to an extent but they do not change to the degree that shows how to get from one animal to another. Which is why in the 100s years of dog breeding there are no dogs with scales,wings or gills or even developing something like that.

Natural selection is also inescapable - if something gets eaten before it has finished breeding (i.e., within its reproductive lifespan), it will not pass on its variations, and so variations that get you eaten (or otherwise killed) will be selected against.

With primitive society natural selection kind of goes away. With a functioning group the healthy take care of those who were not.

reply to post by Kayzar


a) saying what has not happened to disprove evolution is like saying "well, no mammalian species have six limbs, therefore evolution doesn't happen". What has happened to Canis lupus is greatly impressive, and if anything proves the vast, unseen potential variation in any wild population, such as the relatively unvariable wild form (grey wolf).

b) Culture does NOT override natural selection. Some people have more babies than others, and not merely because of fertility differences. Our culture leaves us under selection pressures - it just changes them from "survive to breed" to "breed". We also have to put up with the particular stresses of society, many of which affect fertility, and of course, contraceptives are now a selective force which favour carelessness and drunken promiscuity...

We're still under selection pressure. It just doesn't kill us so often.

EDIT:

Now, as to wings, scales and gills;

Scales are ancestral. The genes we had to produce them are damaged, and quite probably dominant (scale-less breeds of cornsnake breed true, therefore the scale-less genes are recessive, and the scaleless individuals have two copies of the non-functioning gene). Gaining scales would either require novel origins of everything involved, or a very specific reversal mutation of our scales gene, returning the sequence to its original state by reversing a particular mutation. If this mutation is in the promoter region (on/off switch for genes), then the scale gene will have been inactive for quite some time, and thus will have suffered a great many more mutations than active genes, whose functionality is maintained by natural selection.

On top of which, some of the genes involved in production of scales have under intense selection for hundreds of millions of years in the production of a quite different product - fur. Unlike scales, fur offers poor protection from radiation, but is good for insulation.


Wings have arisen 3 times, that we know of, within the vertebrates. This in itself is remarkable, and what is more so is that the selective forces leading to wings seem to still be going strong: flying squirrels, sugar gliders, even the domestic cat, have all developed elasticated flaps of skin which assist an arboreal lifestyle by slowing a fall. draco lizards, in south east asia and indonesia, have elongated ribs which they can stretch, allowing them to glide over 100 feet from tree to tree. There is a frog with elongated toes that escapes predators by parachuting to the ground, and a snake which flattens itself as it leaps from the tree-tops, although nobody's sure why it leaps in the first place, allowing it to land without bursting its guts.

Do you know what all these animals have in common?

They are all at least partially arboreal. Many bats and birds are also arboreal - others, along with many of the third vertebrate group to develop true flight (pterosaurs) live on rocky ledges - an environment which is only accessible to those who can hit the ground without bursting or, better yet, not hit the ground at all.

Dogs do not inhabit cliffs of trees. There is no selective force that would favour the ability to glide and, without that first step, they wouldn't be expected to take the following steps to developing wings.


Gills are ancestral, but air-breathers with gills often dehydrate quickly, and either stick near water, or keep out of the heat. An endotherm maintains a regular body temperature, and so a land-dwelling dog with gills would have to drink a great deal of water if it didn't want to die horribly.

Seeing as much of our ancestry can be observed within our developmental anatomy, it's not impossible that a couple of puppies have been or will be born with gills. But for a start, they'd lack any mechanism for drawing air through those gills, and would quickly suffocate, even if they didn't die of complications in vivo.

reply to post by Kayzar


You mean the healthy take care of those who aren't healthy...like in the US where they LOVE the healthcare system?

And the change from one species to the other is called speciation...and has been directly observed in nature and in the lab.
Source

reply to post by Kayzar


Ok, I guess we can say that anyone who doesn't except evolution doesn't have an explanation for biodiversity or is a creationist. Happy?

Oh, and why did you bother mentioning the Kepler and Galileo had some sort of religion? Nobody here is arguing religion (I do that over in other threads).

reply to post by Kayzar


Check my sig, nobody has bothered to disprove evolution.

reply to post by Kayzar

Originally posted by Kayzar
It is impossible, just as it is impossible to proove it is 100% right.

Actually, it's possible to disprove a theory. It's impossible to show that a theory is 100% right, I'll agree with that. But didn't we debunk geocentrism?

For every objection to evolution there is another theory as to why that objection is not valid,

Because it is an invalid objection. It's a universality of objections to evolution that I've encountered. If you do have a proper, valid objection to evolution, I invite you to visit the thread in my signature: "Evolution: FALSIFY IT!"

throw in some ad hominem attacks about religion and i bet that is the entire thread in a nutshell.

Nope, I actually try to divorce my discussion from the religion. Now, if someone brings up a religious text as a source, than the source itself is fair game (just ask the thread author).

People keep hi-jacking evolution to serve a platform for the ad hominem attacks against those who have belief in some god.

Some may do this, but that is not a way to demean evolution in any way. Evolution would be true even if people were using it as an excuse for smacking around old women. People's use of a theory does nothing to alter its validity.

The fact is if evolution were prooven to be 100% true it would still not disproove any religion.

Nobody said it would. And it is 100% true. In fact, one of the evolutionary biologists that I most like to cite in discussions is a religious individual, Dr Kenneth Miller (Catholic). I also love the work of Dr Robert T Bakker (Pentecostal preacher).

reply to post by ACTS 2:38


Well, ACTS, you finally got me to use religious language over here...unfortunately it's religiously centered profanity (don't worry, it's in a language you wouldn't understand and I'm not going out of my way to use it, it's just that common over here).

Originally posted by ACTS 2:38
People of the school of evolutionary thought seem to like to attack intelligence and social standings of the creationist as proof of their belief.

Do some of us attack creationist intelligence? Yes, sometimes we do. I try not to. Of course, does anyone act like this is a proof of evolution? No, not really. As for the social standing thing....what? When has someone attacked a creationist's social standings.

This is can be proved by the one of the next comments to a creationist on this tread.

Hmm...

Nope, that proof never arrived.

There is no answer in the camp of the evolutionary person for the Cambrian Explosion,

Yes, there is. It's actually been presented in this thread. Nobody has even demonstrated how this 'explosion' (Several million years? That's a slow explosion.) would actually violate anything in evolutionary theory.

why they do not even bring up the fact of the many now extinct organism that were much more complex than many today.

Well...because complexity isn't the direction in which evolution operates. And because there are equally complex, more complex, and less complex organisms living in every period following the Cambrian.

From,
en.wikipedia.org...
Types of evidence

I'm going to fix the citations

"""""""""""""""""Deducing the events of half a billion years ago is difficult, as evidence comes exclusively from biological and chemical signatures in rocks and very sparse fossils."""""""""""""""""""""

Yes, that's kind of obvious. But notice the word difficult rather than the word impossible. It's also difficult to climb mountains, rebuild an antique engine, prepare a meal for 24 people, swim great distances, etc etc.

This is what they parrot their belief of evolution from..........." rocks". WOW

Nobody claims that people evolved from rocks. This is a straw man argument. Or are you saying that we only have rocks as evidence? Well, those rocks have a lot of information in them.

I'm not sure which you're going for, mainly due to the Hovindesque "WOW".

Rocks that can say nothing and the visible evidence has to be speculated with faith, as they will always say "WE BELIEVE" that it happened this way.

This is due to the philosophy of science showing that definitive proof is nearly impossible. However, scientists make claims based upon evidence with full knowledge that future evidence can overturn their claims. This is a strength of science, not a weakness.

Man can not except that the Bible is the word of God, yet...........Rocks speak knowledge.

No definitive evidence that the Bible, which contains numerous scientific inaccuracies, is the word of any deity exists. As for the rocks, we use only the physical evidence we can derive from them. Nobody claims to have the means to eternal salvation using rocks.

And they get very angry when you explain to them that the definition of the word believe is a synonym of faith,

-10 points. I'm sorry, I teach English as a foreign language, it's an instinct.

Faith is a subset of belief, not a synonym. Belief is any form of espousing an idea. In science, this is based on trusting repeated observations and evidence. In religious faith this is belief in spite of or in opposition to evidence.

which is religious in nature as believing takes faith to accept it is true with out actual knowledge of the fact.

No, it is all very rational in nature, it is based upon the physical evidence.

Or Better yet believing that someone of Harvard education read it in a book some where so he writes a paper on it with out ever testing the hypothesis and poof you got millions of people parroting the same thing with out actually ever getting out and seeing for themselves.

This is a straw man big enough to make an army of smaller straw men.

Um...you don't write a paper based upon something you read in a book. You actually have to add to the knowledge if you're going to get a paper published in a scientific journal...unless it's a meta-analysis, which is a paper that is based upon a careful reading of many scientific studies done on the exact same subject to draw conclusions about methodologies and other such meta issues.

The crazy thing is that you don't actually have to read the full scientific investigation or carry out the experiments and observations for yourself to believe something. That's why we have a scientific method, peer review, etc. We can always dig deeper if we have a question, but there's no need to carry out the entirety of scientific inquiry yourself to benefit from the sum of all scientific knowledge.

reply to post by Kayzar


Your example of dogs would actually disprove most of what we know about evolution. There is no way for a mammal with four legs to grow a set of wings (unless a pair of legs is replaced with wings) and it would have to undergo more a lot longer to get those sorts of changes.

We breed dogs for certain dog traits, but most notably we breed them to still be dogs and to retain certain traits. We do not breed them for biodiversity or speciation.

And we've actually observed speciation before.

Originally posted by Kayzar
reply to post by Byrd

 

I was saying this is inaccurate

Not this

I'm curious, Kayzar.
What's wrong with the reconstruction from the A.afarensis skeleton, and how do you belive it should look?