Gunter Bechly on the discontinuous fossil record

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 3, 2021

Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design}

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Darwin believed strongly that evolutionary change happened gradually, a point he repeated six times in On the Origin of Species. The fact that the history of life doesn’t look that way was explained by “gaps” in the fossil record. But, says Gunter Bechly,

If the gaps and discontinuities in the fossil record were just artifacts, they should more and more dissolve with our greatly increasing knowledge of the fossil record. But the opposite is the case. The more we know, the more acute these problems have become. “Darwin’s doubt” did not get smaller over time but bigger, and if he were still alive, he would likely agree that the evidence simply does not add up, since he was much more prudent than many of his modern followers.
Günter Bechly, “The Discontinuous Fossil Record Refutes Darwinian Gradualism” at Evolution News and Science Today (November 2, 2021)

A good point. Many of the followers are just reiterating what they take to be a Truth. Patterns of evidence don’t really come into it.

Comments

JVL, Seversky, Darwinists ...where are you ? I am still waiting ... WHERE ARE ALL THE DESIGN-ERRORS ????martin_r_{November 6, 2021
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JVL - The error is the mutation ,the copying mistake , that Darwinist would have us believe infers a greater survival chance on the one creature that gets this favourable mutation(error) at a genetic level. So the trial and error is the enormous amount of mutational errors that occur in the natural world , and nature puts these errors on trail and the favourable survive the less favourable die out, and from that bacteria become whales, elephants, butterfly's, and humans. Thats if you believe in such fairy tales.Marfin_{November 5, 2021
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Seversky: If you want to insist on design, however, that would seem to indicate some REALLY shoddy work. Depends on the purpose. It's plausible given certain features, that earth's biosphere is a lab for super-human intelligence to perform experiments. If so, we should expect that many "wasteful" experiments may be have been performed. They might be being performed right now. "Wastefulness" is not any sort of knock down argument against intelligent intervention. --Ramram_{November 4, 2021
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Seversky - "It’s estimated that over 99% of all the species that have ever existed on Earth are now extinct." This is why it is always important to know which pieces of information come from data vs. theory. The **reason** for that estimate is Darwinism, which we are showing to be false. That is, these 99% of species are all IMAGINED species that were PRESUMED to exist because of Darwinism. You can't use imaginary extinct species as *evidence* against a designer! It's been a long time since I looked this up, but, if I recall correctly, we know of approximately 250,000 **total** distinct species in the fossil record (probably actually genera because you can't always tell species from fossils). We have an estimated 6,000,000 species alive TODAY. However, what is actually important is not species, but units of design (whatever they are). Species are often just reshuffling of existing genetic information. Caring about whether a particular species still exists is just mere sentimentality. The question is whether there is genuine permanent loss of information in the environment.johnnyb_{November 4, 2021
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JVL i apologize for the typo, moreover, it is obvious, that English is not my first language. so lets get back to evolution by trial-error process. Let me clarify: I assume, that there must have been some design errors in the history of evolution ... The evolution is a blind unguided process, natural selection selects what works best. That is what i heard from Darwinists. OK. The problems is, when you look at fossil records, you ALWAYS see fully working, fully developed species ... from the fossil records, it seems, that blind unguided natural process ALWAYS creates fully working legs, eyes, wings, teeth, and i don't know what else. Moreover, Darwinists claims, that legs, eyes, wings emerged multiple times independently in the history of evolution in various evolutionary unrelated lineages ... But what you see in fossil records, is pretty strange, because you always see all these parts fully developed ... e.g. you don't see right wing longer than left wing, or right wing shaped differently than left wing ... the same for legs ... Does the blind natural process always designed perfect legs / wings at the first attempt ? You never see any faulty parts in fossil records ... never ... A leg is a pretty complex thing - lots of joints, bones, mussels, which have to work together, otherwise you won't stand / walk/ run ... I as an engineer, was always wondering, how something like skeleton evolved ... in fossil records, you always find perfectly designed complete skeletons ... you don't see any faulty evolution attempts ... So is it more clear what i mean ? PS: Seversky claims, that 99% of all the species that have ever existed on Earth are now extinct. If this is true (because Darwinists are always wrong), then i have to correct myself. Not trillions but the number of evolution's error-attempts must be much higher.... but there are none, in fossil records ...martin_r_{November 4, 2021
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Fasteddious: Your “argument” is meaningless. Are you possibly suggesting we should evaluate the proposed design of life forms on Earth through the history of the Earth as being partly based on the advancing knowledge and skills and equipment available to the designers at the pertinent time?JVL_{November 4, 2021
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Sev @6: over 99% of automotive vehicle models are now "extinct", and that is just over the past 100 years or so. Does that mean they were shoddy designs? And of course, every one of them was designed. Your "argument" is meaningless.Fasteddious_{November 4, 2021
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Seversky: Would a human designer with a 99% failure rate be likely to keep his or her job? To be fair, you'd first have to specify to what design specification the designer was working to. An engineer designing a Ford Model T (which is now extinct) did not necessarily fail by today's standards. But, then, that does imply knowing what the design specification and purpose was based on the time the design was created and implemented. Good luck getting anyone to discuss that with regard to ID.JVL_{November 4, 2021
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It's estimated that over 99% of all the species that have ever existed on Earth are now extinct. It's what you'd expect from the messy and wasteful processes of evolution. If you want to insist on design, however, that would seem to indicate some REALLY shoddy work. Would a human designer with a 99% failure rate be likely to keep his or her job?Seversky_{November 4, 2021
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Martin_r: first, lets clarify the following: what you Darwinists/biologists mean by “evolution by trail-error” ? perhaps i misunderstood something … I am unfamiliar with the concept of 'trail-error'. If you meant trial-error or, more commonly, trial-by-error then I would still like to have some context, some passage where that is used so that I could have a better attempt at clarifying its usage.JVL_{November 4, 2021
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JVL @3 first, lets clarify the following: what you Darwinists/biologists mean by "evolution by trail-error" ? perhaps i misunderstood something ...martin_r_{November 4, 2021
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Martin_r: WHERE ARE ALL THE ERRORS (in fossil record) ? In fossil record you ALWAYS see fully developed, perfectly working species. So if evolution is a trial-error process, i am asking, WHERE ARE ALL THE ERRORS ????? in the history of Earth, there must be trillions of errors in fossil record if you consider how many species are out there. What do you mean by 'an error'? I don't want to assume and put words in your mouth.JVL_{November 4, 2021
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> WHERE ARE ALL THE ERRORS (in fossil record) Quite. And if the fossil record is a history of animals that got swamped in natural disasters you would all the more expect it to be the transitional creatures with crappy semi-complete features legs, wings, hair, eyes etc.Pete B_{November 4, 2021
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since he [Darwin] was much more prudent than many of his modern followers.
i am pretty sure, if Darwin would know, what his 21st century followers know - especially in regard to molecular biology - he would admit that he was wrong and to claim that all the species emerged by some blind unguided process is "... absurd in the highest possible degree." simply put - Darwin was wrong.... PS: i am not sure, if Darwin would understand the DNA molecule digital code concept. To understand that, you have to have the knowledge of 21st century, so you can compare it to 21st century e.g. storage/encoding/decoding technology etc... Maybe, Darwin would understand the DNA proofreading & repair concept, maybe ... Also, and i put this question before ... WHERE ARE ALL THE ERRORS (in fossil record) ? In fossil record you ALWAYS see fully developed, perfectly working species. So if evolution is a trial-error process, i am asking, WHERE ARE ALL THE ERRORS ????? in the history of Earth, there must be trillions of errors in fossil record if you consider how many species are out there.martin_r_{November 4, 2021
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