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Cambrian explosion

California Science Center answerable for canning non-Darwin film

Figures the official Darwinists would arise from their leather-bottomed chairs to try to suppress a film that shows the public the knowledge that the science czars were depriving us of. This time it did not work. Read More ›

Three puzzles that are real – A response to a skeptic

In his latest post on Uncommon Descent, “Evolution” is a Political Controversy? (Or, am I Living in an Alternate Multiverse?), Gil Dodgen shot down claims by author Alan Rogers that the controversy over the theory of evolution is a political controversy.

It’s not a political controversy. It is:

1) An evidential controversy (for example, the fossil record, especially the Cambrian explosion).

2) A logical and computational controversy (the insufficiency of random errors producing highly complex, functionally integrated, self-correcting computer code).

3) A mathematical controversy (clearly insufficient probabilistic resources for anything but the most trivial changes based on Darwinian mechanisms).

Politics have nothing to do with any of this. It’s just basic reason, logic, and evidence.

Yesterday, I came across the following response by a skeptic who wasn’t terribly impressed:

1. The Cambrian “explosion” took many millions of years. It was originally called an “explosion” because research and information about it were limited at that time and it appeared that many species arose very quickly (geologically speaking). It is now usually called the Cambrian radiation.

2. Biological entities are not computers and do not contain “computer code”.

3. The probabilistic resources crap (sic) is based on made up numbers that mean absolutely nothing.

My message to the Skeptic (that’s what I’ll call him for the rest of this post) can be summed up in one sentence: you’ve got a lot of reading to do. Where to begin? Let’s address one point at a time.

Read More ›

Vid: View Darwin’s Dilemma online free

The beautiful little film about why the Cambrian explosion is a problem for Darwinism, here. Also view The Privileged Planet free – another beautiful, controversial little pic, about why the late, revered Carl Sagan should have known he was “not being truthful” about Earth being just yer average planet.

“Evolutionary arms race” explains THIS Cambrian statistic?

  Lead author Dr Michael Lee, of the South Australian Museum and University of Adelaide, says the “exceptionally preserved fossil eyes” also underscore the speed and magnitude of the evolutionary innovation that occurred during this period. “If the development of complex life is viewed as 24 hours, everything of interest happened in the first hour,” he says. “Our fossils are from that first hour. Within the first blink of evolution, animals had evolved eyes that are very similar to what modern animals have today.” – in conversation with Dani Cooper, “Eyes give insight into evolutionary arms race” (ABC News, 30 June 2011) And this striking compression of time is due to: “The evolution of vision triggered the ability to find Read More ›

“Darwinists have constructed a virtual world that does not match the real world”

British physicist David Tyler comments at Access Research Network on the “Modern optics in the eyes of an Early Cambrian arthropod” (July 1, 2011):

We have known for many years that the eyes of trilobites, going back to the Early Cambrian, have highly sophisticated optics. Although vision has been invoked as a probable characteristic of many other types of animal, there have been few examples of preserved eyes in the fossil record, even in the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang lagerstatte. However, Read More ›

Don’t ask us how the most complex eyes appeared at the beginning. Instead, we offer to solve a tautology for you.

Thumbnail for version as of 16:27, 24 July 2008
This trilobite eye is probably diurnal, features eyeshade/ Psuedomorph

In John R. Paterson’s “Modern optics in exceptionally preserved eyes of Early Cambrian arthropods from Australia (Nature, 30 June 2011)

from Nature by, we learn of a particular, “exceptionally preserved” trilobite-like eye from South Australia that predates other known finds from 85 million years later:

The arrangement and size of the lenses indicate that these eyes belonged to an active predator that was capable of seeing in low light. The eyes are more complex than those known from contemporaneous trilobites and are as advanced as those of many living forms.

Well, that raises a question, doesn’t it? At the dawn of multicellular life, we find – not primitive fixes – but …

Then the authors deftly write, Read More ›

Paul Chien on the suppressed significance of the Chinese Cambrian fossils

File:Yunnanozoon.png
Likely vertebrate, yunnanzoon, courtesy Big Blue Anteater

“… the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate.”

The Darwin circus wagons should have halted there at Chengjiang and been repurposed as hot dog stands for public convenience. But too much had been invested. Paul Chien, chairman of the biology department at the University of San Franciscos explained some while back to Leadership University the significance of the Chinese Cambrian era fossils,

Chien: In some ways there are similarities between the China site and the other famous site, the Burgess Shale fauna in Canada. But it turns out that the China site is much older, and the preservation of the specimens is much, much finer. Even nerves, internal organs and other details can be seen that are not present in fossils in any other place.

RI: And I suppose many of these are probably soft-tissue marine-type animals?

Chien: Yes, including jellyfish-like organisms. They can even see water ducts in the jellyfish. They are all marine. That part of western China was under a shallow sea at the time. Read More ›

Earlier than thought files: Ancient and well-travelled worm

At ScienceDaily we learn that “New Evidence Shows Mobile Animals Could Have Evolved Much Earlier Than Previously Thought” (May 18, 2011): A University of Alberta-led research team has discovered that billions of years before life [animals?] evolved in the oceans, thin layers of microbial matter in shallow water produced enough oxygen to support tiny, mobile life forms. The researchers say worm-like creatures could have lived on the oxygen produced by photosynthetic microbial material, even though oxygen concentrations in the surrounding water were not high enough to support life. Worm tracks (trace fossils) have been found from 555 million years ago, and it’s suggested that the worms could have got their oxygen from photosynthetic biomats at a time when it was Read More ›