Darwin’s men still evading the Cambrian explosion after, what, 150 years?

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 16, 2013

Darwinism}

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How are people allowed to go on evading an obvious problem for 150 years?

Over at Creation-Evolution Headlines, we learn,

Stephen Meyer’s new book, Darwin’s Doubt, is officially released next week. Chapter 4 will tell about the uproar caused at the University of Oklahoma in 2009 when Meyer and Wells scheduled a panel discussion after a showing of Illustra’s film Darwin’s Dilemma about the Cambrian fossil record.

Darwinists at the university attempted a pre-emptive strike by issuing announcements that the event was religiously motivated. In the Q&A, though, the university’s professors and museum curators could not produce any unambiguous fossil as a credible ancestor to any of the Cambrian animals. Meyer’s book, updated with the latest findings since then, examines all the putative fossil ancestors and evolutionary exlanations for the Cambrian explosion, and assesses the issue’s relevance to the Darwin-ID debate.

Are any readers in debt for education at institutions of this type? Is there any chance of getting your money back?

Comments

jlafan2001 (re 5 above): Are you incapable of spelling "Meyer" correctly, even when it it appears three times in the column above?Timaeus_{November 19, 2013
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Today Dr. Meyer is on the Dennis Miller Show at 9:15 AM Pacific Time, Dennis Prager at 11 AM Pacific, Janet Parshall at 2 PM, among other things. - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/darwins_doubt_h073421.html http://www.dennismillerradio.com/ http://www.dennisprager.com/ http://www.moodyradio.org/inthemarketwithjanetparshall/bornagain77_{June 18, 2013
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JLA says:
What I can’t understand, and I’ve asked this a few times with no response, if one doesn’t accept common ancestry then where did the sudden life forms come from? How did the Jurassic explosion, Triassic explosion occur? How did all the reptiles, mammals and birds suddenly appear out of nowhere in the fossil record? If Myers has a probelm with the Cambrian, how he is going to explain everything else? Maybe a book should be written called Myers’ Mystery.
Just because ID has a difficult time explaining this does not mean that the evolutionary explanation is correct. This is actually a show stopper for evolution. Perhaps Myers will have some helpful things to say about this from an ID perspective in his book. YECs use the global flood to explain these events, but the flood is very difficult to study because we can't observe it, repeat it, or verify our ideas about it. Much interpretation is involved because this is historical science so it will never be as precise as observational/operational science that uses the scientific method. Evolution suffers from this same problem. There are various flood models put forth by YEC scientists, but I'm not sure we will ever really be able to solve the problem authoritatively. The global flood is a very active area of research among YEC scientists and progress will certainly be made. Just because we don't have the full answer yet does not mean the evolutionary explanation is right or that we need to hold that position. A more accurate and honest position would be to say that "We have some ideas, but we don't know for sure. We hope that we will be able to solve this in the future." A little honesty would be quite refreshing, but that seems to be quite rare these days. I think all sides in this debate have areas for which their theory doesn't quite answer all the questions. However, as it stands now, the evidence we have does not support common descent. It is pretty devastating for evolution. Will that change? We don't think so, but I'm sure you are hoping it will. It shows that evolution is no where near as factual as often claimed.tjguy_{June 18, 2013
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Can't wait to read Meyer's new book. I pre-ordered it last week from Chapters. (I live in Canada)Blue_Savannah_{June 17, 2013
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But JLAfan2001, instead of just pointing to the epistemological failure that results for the entire enterprise of science with the materialist's appeal to unbounded 'infinite chance' at the origin of the universe,,
The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory and The Multiverse - Dr. Bruce Gordon - video http://vimeo.com/34468027 Here is the last power-point slide of the preceding video: The End Of Materialism? * In the multiverse, anything can happen for no reason at all. * In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as a explanatory principle. * In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose. * Scientific materialism is (therefore) epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible.
Instead of just stopping there JLAfan2001, and just pointing out the unrestrained insanity that results when a purely materialistic worldview it is pushed to the extreme of accounting for the origin of the universe itself with 'infinite chance', let's go one step further JLAfan2001, and let's allow that, by some unknown mechanism, the only random chance allowed in the universe, since the creation of the universe, is the 'bounded entropic chance' associated with Boltzmann's equation: It is interesting to note that Ludwig Boltzmann, an atheist, when he linked entropy and probability, did not, as Max Planck a Christian Theist points out in the following link, think to look for a constant to entropy:
The Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann first linked entropy and probability in 1877. However, the equation as shown, involving a specific constant, was first written down by Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics in 1900. In his 1918 Nobel Prize lecture, Planck said: “This constant is often referred to as Boltzmann’s constant, although, to my knowledge, Boltzmann himself never introduced it – a peculiar state of affairs, which can be explained by the fact that Boltzmann, as appears from his occasional utterances, never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the constant.” http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/Boltzmann_equation.html
I hold that the primary reason why Boltzmann, an atheist, never thought to carry out, or even propose, a precise measurement for the constant on entropy is that he, as an atheist, had thought he had arrived at the ultimate explanation for how everything in the universe operates when he had link probability with entropy. i.e. In linking entropy with probability, Boltzmann, again an atheist, thought he had explained everything that happens in the universe to a ‘random chance' basis. To him, as an atheist, it would simply be unfathomable that the ‘random chance’ (probabilistic) events of entropy in the universe should ever be bounded by a constant that would limit them. Whereas on the contrary, to a Christian Theist, it is expected that even the seemingly random chance events of entropy in the universe should be bounded by a constant:
‘Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the claim that science is true.’ Lewis, C.S., Miracles: a preliminary study, Collins, London, p. 110, 1947. Romans 8:20-21 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Yet JLAfan2001, Entropy (random chance), though bounded by a constant, is pervasive in its explanatory power for events that happen within the universe,,
Shining Light on Dark Energy – October 21, 2012 Excerpt: It (Entropy) explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,, Even gravity, Vedral argued, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy. ,,, The principles of thermodynamics are at their roots all to do with information theory. Information theory is simply an embodiment of how we interact with the universe —,,, http://crev.info/2012/10/shining-light-on-dark-energy/
Yet JLAfan2001, this bounded entropy ('random chance' as is denoted in Boltzmann's equation) that happens within the universe, and that is so pervasive in its explanatory power within science, is always found to be destructive to information rather than constructive to information.,,, For a little background,,, Researchers have long suspected a connection between information and the entropic processes of the universe:
“Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information? …. The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental…” Tom Siegfried, Dallas Morning News, 5/14/90 – Quotes attributed to Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin in the article
And finally, a few years ago, a direct connection between entropy and information was finally made:
Maxwell's demon demonstration (knowledge of a particle's position) turns information into energy - November 2010 Excerpt: Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a "spiral-staircase-like" potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
Now JLAfan2001, finally having a empirically demonstrated direct connection between entropy and the information inherent within a cell is extremely problematic for Darwinists because entropic processes are found to always destroy information,,,
“Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.” Charles J. Smith – Biosystems, Vol.1, p259. “Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more.” Gilbert Newton Lewis – preeminent Chemist of the first half of last century “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/
Thus, Darwinists are found to be postulating that entropic events, which consistently destroy information, are what are creating information in the cell. ,,, It is the equivalent in science of someone claiming that Gravity makes things fall up instead of down, and that is not overstating the situation in the least. Verse and Music
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. Third Day - Creed - Live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riseOj_1Tn4
bornagain77_{June 17, 2013
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JLAfan2001, actually, as I was careful to point out in my post, it is the materialistic multiverse (many worlds) where things just can be "poofed" into existence for no reason at all. In Theism there is always a reason for why things happen, for why the universe was created and for why life on earth was created, although we may not always understand the reason why.,,, In fact so bad is the situation with materialism and 'infinite chance' that it results in the epistemological failure of science itself (Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and Boltzmann's Brain; Bruce Gordon),,,bornagain77_{June 17, 2013
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BA77 "JLAfan2001, seeing as the entire universe is now known to have instantaneously come into to being at the Big Bang, then ‘scientifically’ there is no hard and fast reason to presuppose that it is impossible for anything within the universe to come into being instantaneously." If this is the case, then you just solved the big bang, the origin of life, the cambrian explosion and consiousness. Ita ll "poofed" into existence.JLAfan2001_{June 17, 2013
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JLAfan2001, seeing as the entire universe is now known to have instantaneously come into to being at the Big Bang, then 'scientifically' there is no hard and fast reason to presuppose that it is impossible for anything within the universe to come into being instantaneously. In fact, Eugene Koonin's invoking of 'many worlds' to try the 'explain away' the OOL comes to mind:
The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life - Eugene V Koonin - 2007 Conclusion The plausibility of different models for the origin of life on earth directly depends on the adopted cosmological scenario. In an infinite universe (multiverse), emergence of highly complex systems by chance is inevitable. Therefore, under this cosmology, an entity as complex as a coupled translation-replication system should be considered a viable breakthrough stage for the onset of biological evolution. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892545/ Biological Big Bangs - Origin Of Life and Cambrian - Dr. Fazale Rana - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4284466
Though Eugene Koonin is correct to recognize that the infinite probabilistic resource postulated in ‘Many Worlds’ does not preclude the sudden appearance of massive amounts of functional information on the earth, at any time or at any place on Earth (or anywhere else in the universe for that matter), he is very incorrect to disregard the ‘Logos’ of John 1:1 needed to correctly specify the ‘precisely controlled mechanism of implementation’ for the massive amounts of complex functional information witnessed abruptly and mysteriously appearing in the first life on earth, nor for the mysterious appearing of any of the subsequent 'sudden' appearances of life on earth. i.e. Koonin must sufficiently account for the 'cause' for the 'effect' he wants to explain. Invoking 'infinite pure chance', as he does with 'many worlds' as the cause for life suddenly appearing on earth is, in reality, no explanation at all. And as has been noted previously, Stephen Meyer clearly points out that the only known cause now in operation, sufficient to explain the sudden origination of the massive amounts of functional information needed for life, or new life forms in the Cambrian explosions (or subsequently), is intelligence:
Stephen C. Meyer – What is the origin of the digital information found in DNA? – August 2010 - video http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/08/stephen_meyer_on_intelligent_d037271.html
bornagain77_{June 17, 2013
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What I can't understand, and I've asked this a few times with no response, if one doesn't accept common ancestry then where did the sudden life forms come from? How did the Jurassic explosion, Triassic explosion occur? How did all the reptiles, mammals and birds suddenly appear out of nowhere in the fossil record? If Myers has a probelm with the Cambrian, how he is going to explain everything else? Maybe a book should be written called Myers' Mystery.JLAfan2001_{June 17, 2013
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Paleontologist Mark McMenamin on Darwin's Doubt - David Klinghoffer June 17, 2013 Excerpt: "It is hard for us paleontologists, steeped as we are in a tradition of Darwinian analysis, to admit that neo-Darwinian explanations for the Cambrian Explosion have failed miserably. New data acquired in recent years, instead of solving Darwin's dilemma, have rather made it worse. Meyer describes the dimensions of the problem with clarity and precision. His book is a game changer for the study of evolution and evolutionary biology. Stephen Meyer points us in the right direction as we seek a new theory for the origin of Cambrian animal phyla." - Mark McMenamin - paleontologist at Mt. Holyoke College http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/paleontologist_073361.htmlbornagain77_{June 17, 2013
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How do advocates of evolution explain the actual origin of life? They say that some billions of years ago the ocean surrounding the earth may have become an “organic soup,” though still lifeless. Then, they explain, ‘a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by a most improbable accident.’ Miraculously, this reproduced itself to form other molecules that clustered together to form a living cell. Could anything sound more fantastic? The writer who gave this description stated in his foreword: “This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction.” Yes, fiction, but hardly science! Could it not be that, given the existence of life, different species of living things might progressively evolve into other species? Well, if that took place, the fossil record of past ages would show this. But does it? Consider the so-called Cambrian period. Here fossils of the major groups of invertebrates first appear together in a spectacular “explosion” of living things. If these vastly differing groups all exploded into life at the one time, how could they possibly have evolved from one another? Darwin himself frankly admitted: “If numerous species . . . have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution.” Fatal indeed!—1 Corinthians 3:19, 20. The fossil record reveals that different and very complex life forms appeared suddenly and fully developed. As one professor of natural science commented: “Whales, bats, horses, primates, elephants, hares, squirrels, etc., all are as distinct at their first appearance as they are now. There is not a trace of a common ancestor, much less a link with any reptile, the supposed progenitor.” Are there any fossils of giraffes with necks two thirds or three quarters the accepted length? No, there are not. The truth of the matter is as stated at Genesis 1:25: “God proceeded to make the wild beast of the earth according to its kind and the domestic animal according to its kind and every moving animal of the ground according to its kind. And God got to see that it was good.”Barb_{June 17, 2013
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OT: The following impressive videos highlight some of the innovative techniques that are being employed to visualize, in 3D, some of the very complex interactions happening in a cell: SPARKYT3DHD - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsoQNq1kadc (3D representation of) YEAST PROTEIN INTERACTION NETWORK HD - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iO0XqEslL7Q#t=206sbornagain77_{June 17, 2013
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For a small preview of Stephen Meyer's new book 'Darwin's Doubt', out this week, here is the movie Darwin's Dilemma which was released a few years ago:
Darwin's Dilemma - Excellent Cambrian Explosion Movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWEsW7bO8P4
It should be noted that one major clarification in the fossil record that has come about, since the release of the movie Darwin's Dilemma a few years ago, is the finding that the Ediacaran biota, which preceded the Cambrian animals, were not sea creatures as is portrayed in the movie, but are now thought to have lived on land:
Ediacarans Not Related to Cambrian Animals - December 16, 2012 Excerpt: “These fossils have been a first-class scientific mystery,” he said. “They are the oldest large multicellular fossils. They lived immediately before the Cambrian evolutionary explosion that gave rise to familiar modern groups of animals.”,, If not sea creatures, what are they? Retallack suggested they could be “lichens, other microbial consortia, fungal fruiting bodies, slime molds, flanged pedestals of biological soil crusts, and even casts of needle ice.” In the paper and the press release, he had very little to say about evolution, except that the Ediacarans represent “an independent evolutionary radiation of life on land that preceded by at least 20 million years the Cambrian evolutionary explosion of animals in the sea.” http://crev.info/2012/12/ediacarans-not-related-to-cambrian-animals/ Australian Multicellular Fossils Point to Life On Land, Not at Sea, Geologist Proposes - Dec. 12, 2012 Excerpt: Ediacaran fossils, he said, represent "an independent evolutionary radiation of life on land that preceded by at least 20 million years the Cambrian evolutionary explosion of animals in the sea." Increased chemical weathering by large organisms on land may have been needed to fuel the demand of nutrient elements by Cambrian animals. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121212134050.htm Ediacaran embryos in retrospect - David Tyler - January 28, 2013 Excerpt: "there is currently no convincing evidence for advanced animals with bilateral symmetry in the Doushantuo biota". This particular quest for animals preceding the Cambrian Explosion has drawn a blank. Needless to say, Darwin's dilemma remains in full force. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2013/01/28/ediacaran_embryos_in_retrospect When Nature Resists: Explaining the Origin of the Animal Phyla - Paul Nelson - April 5, 2013 Excerpt: ,,,lately, I've run across something related to ontogenetic depth that is, well, mind-blowing. Since 1859, the origin of not a single bilaterian phylum (animal body plan) has been explained in a step-by-step (neo-Darwinian) fashion, where random mutation and natural selection were, as textbooks assert, the primary causal mechanisms. Take your pick of the phyla: Mollusca, Brachiopoda, Chordata, Arthropoda, you name it -- and go looking in the scientific literature for the incremental pathway, via mutation and selection, showing how that body plan was assembled from its putative bilaterian Last Common Ancestor. You'll be looking a long time.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/paul_nelson_day070871.html
of note:
Darwin's Dilemma - The Cambrian Explosion - In Darwin's Own Words Excerpt: Consequently, if the theory be true, it is indisputable that, before the lowest Silurian or Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Cambrian age to the present day; and that during these vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures… To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods, I can give no satisfactory answer… The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained. [emphasis added] —Chapter IX, “On the Imperfection of the Geological Record,” On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin - fifth edition (1869), pp. 378-381. http://indigosociety.com/showthread.php?31808-Darwin-s-Dilemma-The-Cambrian-Explosion Fossil Gallery - Burgess Shale - images of species from Cambrian period - Main Gallery The Main Gallery is a comprehensive source of information based on the latest scientific research covering the majority of species so far described from the Burgess Shale. It contains a growing collection of over 500 high resolution images representing 184 species in 135 genera. In addition, dozens of scientifically accurate drawings and breathtaking digital animations will allow you to visualize these organisms in three dimensions and see how they lived. http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/fossil-gallery/list-species.php
Myself, seeing as the entire universe is now known to have instantaneously come into to being at the Big Bang, I don't know why anybody would dogmatically try to claim, against such persistent and resolute evidence, that such a amazing thing is not also possible in the Cambrian explosion. Verse and Music:
Psalm 148:7 Praise the LORD from the earth, you creatures of the ocean depths, Creation Calls -- are you listening? Music by Brian Doerksen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwGvfdtI2c0
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