Darwinian Debating Device #18: The “You’re Too Stupid to Understand Why I’m Smarter than You” Dismissal

_{Barry Arrington

May 10, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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DDD # 18 is a particularly contemptible form of ad hominem, which Mark Frank and Elizabeth Liddle do us the service of demonstrating in the combox to this post. In the post Dr. Torley refers to Darwin’s Doubt by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, which explains many of the shortcomings of various Darwinian narratives. Frank and Liddle tag team for a DDD #18:

Mark Frank:

[Meyer] explains perceived weaknesses in his understanding of evolutionary theory but gives no reason why design is a better alternative.

Liddle:

Exactly. His understanding of evolutionary theory is weak, and actual evolutionary theory is a better alternative.

Follow this link and take a look at what scientists who actually know what they are talking about have said about Darwin’s Doubt. A sample:

Darwin’s Doubt is by far the most up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive review of the evidence from all relevant scientific fields that I have encountered in more than forty years of studying the Cambrian explosion. An engaging investigation of the origin of animal life and a compelling case for intelligent design.

Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, Senior Scientist Emeritus (Biologist) at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research

Darwin’s Doubt is an intriguing exploration of one of the most remarkable periods in the evolutionary history of life—the rapid efflorescence of complex body plans written in the fossils of the Burgess Shale . . . No matter what convictions one holds about evolution, Darwinism, or intelligent design, Darwin’s Doubt is a book that should be read, engaged, and discussed.

Dr. Scott Turner, Professor of Biology, State University of New York

Does anyone believe that numerous highly-credentialed scientists, many of whom specialize in biology, would recommend Meyer’s book if his “understanding of evolutionary theory is weak”? Of course not. What does this mean? It means that Elizabeth Liddle’s statement is false. I will leave it to others to debate whether she is merely too muddle-headed to understand that she has made an egregiously false ad hominem attack as a substitute for argument, or she knows the truth and has deliberately misled. The point is that either way, Liddle has avoided having to actually defend against Meyer’s claims by simply dismissing him as too stupid to understand why Darwinists like her are smarter than he. And that is contemptible.

Comments

Mung: Your alleged proof of divergence reduces to a single fossil. Not very convincing. The discussion of the rabbit in the Cambrian was revealing. While most everyone on the thread knows that rabbits never existed in the Cambrian, they seem to have a mental block as to why — there are no plausible ancestors to a Cambrian rabbit. Similarly with Kimberella. Kimberella didn't just suddenly appear, but had ancestors. Metazoan evolution was well underway in the Precambrian. Zachriel

Zachriel: Kimberella is eumetazoa, bilaterian, and probably a protostome. And that's my point Zachriel. Your alleged proof of divergence reduces to a single fossil. Not very convincing. Mung

Querius: 1. There’s no single theory. It constant morphs to accommodate new discoveries (and then claims to have predicted them). A scientific theory is a number of interrelated claims. The fundamentals of the Theory of Evolution have been consistent since Darwin, but some tangential claims have been subject to change. Querius: 2. It’s a mosaic of facts and speculation. That life has descended from common ancestors over millions of years is not in serious scientific dispute. Querius: 3. Macro-evolution lacks any factual evidence or plausible re-enactment. The overall history of life shows how organisms have changed and adapted incrementally over time. Querius: Fossil evidence from the Cambrian explosion, which occurred in 5-10 million years, possibly even in 2-3 million years is exactly opposite of the concept of tiny incremental changes over millions of years. Kimberella shows that metazoan evolution was well underway in the Precambrian. Querius: 4. Apparently the iron in hemoglobin doesn’t work very well for human blood cells in human remains. You're conflating heme with erythrocytes. Querius: A new study of the Neandertal genome shows that humans and Neandertals interbred. It can be hard to keep up with latest in scientific research, but there's an interesting chapter on hybridization you might want to check out. See Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859. Zachriel

ppolish: the fossils just aren’t there. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/kimberella2.html Mung: No fossil of eumetazoa? No problem! No fossil of Bilateria? No problem! No fossil of protostome? No problem! Kimberella is eumetazoa, bilaterian, and probably a protostome. Zachriel

The salient issues with the Theory of Evolution as as follows: 1. There's no single theory. It constant morphs to accommodate new discoveries (and then claims to have predicted them). 2. It's a mosaic of facts and speculation. The facts are the pretty bits picked out by the Darwinists. They then mortar them together into the mosaic with great gobs of speculation and fairy tales into whatever image that they want to portray. When challenged, they point to the pretty bits. 3. Macro-evolution lacks any factual evidence or plausible re-enactment. Fossil evidence from the Cambrian explosion, which occurred in 5-10 million years, possibly even in 2-3 million years is exactly opposite of the concept of tiny incremental changes over millions of years. Haldane, Ohno, Behe and others have pointed out the impossibility of evolution in such a tiny amount of time. 4. Darwinist reasoning is frequently circular and thrives on paradox. When pliable tissue and red blood cells are accidentally discovered in a Tyrannosaurus rex, it's asserted to be able to survive the presumed 68 million years due to the iron in hemoglobin, but when researchers discover red blood cells in Ötzi, it's hailed as follows: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-iceman-reveals-oldest-red-blood.html Apparently the iron in hemoglobin doesn't work very well for human blood cells in human remains. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21330194 "Though once thought to have been our ancestors, the Neanderthals are now considered an evolutionary dead end." https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neandertal-genome-yields-evidence-interbreeding-humans "A new study of the Neandertal genome shows that humans and Neandertals interbred. The discovery comes as a big surprise to researchers who have been searching for genetic evidence of human-Neandertal interbreeding for years and finding none. About 1 percent to 4 percent of DNA in modern people from Europe and Asia was inherited from Neandertals, researchers report in the May 7 Science. 'It’s a small, but very real proportion of our ancestry,' says study coauthor David Reich of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass." Very real indeed! And on and on it goes. -Q Querius

Mung, what is the difference between a trilobyte and a Zach? A trilobite used its brain. Moran. ppolish

This "amazing evolutionary transition" sure ain't NS & RM. It's guided and purposeful. It's heads popping out in a geological eyeblink. http://www.hngn.com/articles/90863/20150508/cambrian-explosion-era-brain-fossils-reveal-origins-modern-head.htm ppolish

ppolish, Zachriel doesn't need fossils. He has cladograms! No fossil of eumetazoa? No problem! No fossil of Urbilateria? No problem! No fossil of Bilateria? No problem! No fossil of protostome? No problem! No fossil of Arthropoda? No problem! Zachriel thinks the map is the territory. Mung

Sorry Zach, the fossils just aren't there. And it's become even worse since Darwin's time - not better. Much worse. Additional Cambrian Critter discoveries since Darwin have been outstandingly numerous. Discoveries of pre Cambrian scant. Darwin would be even more doubtful today. Smart dude. ppolish

I think you meant to say Zachriel is doobieous. Mung

I also call you dubious Zach. I am correct on both counts. bornagain77

bornagain77: I don’t know what the fossils are. But you will claim they are dubious, nonetheless. Zachriel

Zach, I don't know what the fossils are. From the 'illustrations' on wiki, illustrations which are 'vague' to put it mildly, and which obviously came from someone's imagination, I call the interpretations of the fossils 'dubious'. That is reasonable. You believe otherwise. So what? It does not matter one way or the other as far as the science is concerned. It is obvious that you are purposely avoiding the scientific fact that neo-Darwinian mechanisms are shown, by laboratory work, to be grossly inadequate for what you claim for them in the Cambrian explosion as well as subsequently to the Cambrian. And I hold the term 'grossly inadequate' to be an understatement as to how far off the mark Darwinian explanations are! Perhaps 'Not Even Wrong!' more adequately describes the situation. Why do you not honestly address that titanic wide hole in your empirical argument and honestly admit that you have no viable mechanism so as to explain how the Cambrian explosion, as well as the subsequent diversification of life within the disparity of the Cambrian body plans, could have happened in the first place? Is honesty towards the empirical evidence a bridge too far for you? bornagain77

bornagain77: pointing to fossils of dubious interpretation Are you saying Kimberella are not metazoan? Not bilaterian? Not triploblastic? Zachriel

Zach, to be Captain Obvious for a moment, pointing to fossils of dubious interpretation does not go one inch towards establishing that neo-Darwinian mechanisms were responsible for the fossils nor does it establish that the fossils are in any way related to the Cambrian fossils. To quote Henry Gee:
“No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.” - Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life
To be 'scientific' you would actually have to prove that unguided material processes can generate non-trivial functional information to account for the Cambrian Explosion. Good luck with all that. You will need it:
The Vindication of Michael Behe – podcast/video – 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itkxFbyzyro
Moreover, the lack of transitional fossils is made all the more problematic for Darwinists because of the following fact:
Challenging Fossil of a Little Fish What they had actually proved was that Chinese phosphate is fully capable of preserving whatever animals may have lived there in Precambrian times. Because they found sponges and sponge embryos in abundance, researchers are no longer so confident that Precambrian animals were too soft or too small to be preserved. “I think this is a major mystery in paleontology,” said Chen. “Before the Cambrian, we should see a number of steps: differentiation of cells, differentiation of tissue, of dorsal and ventral, right and left. But we don’t have strong evidence for any of these.” Taiwanese biologist Li was also direct: “No evolution theory can explain these kinds of phenomena.” http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htm Dr. Stephen Meyer: Darwin’s Dilemma – The Significance of Sponge Embryos – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPs8E7y0ySs Deepening Darwin’s Dilemma – Jonathan Wells – Sept. 2009 Excerpt: “The truth is that (finding) “exceptionally preserved microbes” from the late Precambrian actually deepen Darwin’s dilemma, because they suggest that if there had been ancestors to the Cambrian phyla they would have been preserved.” http://www.discovery.org/a/12471 Response to John Wise - October 2010 "So, where then are those ancestors? Fossil preservation conditions were adequate to preserve animals such as jellyfish, corals, and sponges, as well as the Ediacaran fauna. It does not appear that scarcity is a fault of the fossil record." Sean Carroll developmental biologist http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html At North Dakota State University, Presenting the Positive Case for Design – Casey Luskin – February 14, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, Simon Conway Morris notes in his book Crucible of Creation that in the Burgess Shale fossil collections which document the Cambrian explosion, “about 95 per cent are either soft-bodied or have thin skeletons.” [p. 140]. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/at_north_dakota056351.html New Precambrian Fossils Are Not Cambrian Ancestors - October 2, 2014 Excerpt: Similar embryos were found in the 1990s by J. Y. Chen and Paul Chien in the same Doushantuo formation, and reported in the peer-reviewed literature (Xiao et al. paper cited in their references). The story is recounted in both Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt and in the Illustra film Darwin's Dilemma. The presence of embryos in the Precambrian didn't solve the Cambrian explosion problem then, and it doesn't now. In fact, they make the problem worse, because they show that the Precambrian strata were perfectly capable of preserving transitional forms, had they existed. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/10/new_precambrian090171.html Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories By: Stephen C. Meyer; Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington "To say that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediate forms connecting Cambrian animals with simpler pre-Cambrian forms. And, indeed, in almost all cases, the Cambrian animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier Vendian or Precambrian fauna (Miklos 1993, Erwin et al. 1997:132, Steiner & Reitner 2001, Conway Morris 2003b:510, Valentine et al. 2003:519-520). Further, several recent discoveries and analyses suggest that these morphological gaps may not be merely an artifact of incomplete sampling of the fossil record (Foote 1997, Foote et al. 1999, Benton & Ayala 2003, Meyer et al. 2003), suggesting that the fossil record is at least approximately reliable (Conway Morris 2003b:505)." http://www.discovery.org/a/2177 Does Lots of Sediment in the Ocean Solve the "Mystery" of the Cambrian Explosion? - Casey Luskin April, 2012 Excerpt: I think the Cambrian fossil record is surprisingly complete. I think it may be more complete than we realize. The reason for that is, for instance, if you look at the stratigraphy of the world, if I go and collect Cambrian rocks in Wales and find certain fossils, if I then go to China, I don't find the same species but I find the same sorts of fossils. If I go into Carboniferous rocks, I go to Canada, they are the same as what I find in this country. So there is a clear set of faunas and floras that take us through geological time. The overall framework is falling into position. - Simon Conway Morris http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/04/lots_of_sedimen059021.html
bornagain77

bornagain77: you are assuming your conclusion. One would think that citing a paper title "New Data ..." would be a clue that there is evidence involved. Hundreds of new fossil specimens of Kimberella have been found. They exhibit fine details of morphological complexity including triploblasty. bornagain77: If you think a fossil of dubious interpretation proves that neo-Darwinian mechanisms can account for the Cambrian explosion you are delusional. What Kimberella shows is that metazoan diversification was already well underway in the Precambrian. Zachriel

Zachriel, you are assuming your conclusion. Moreover, as was shown to you, your postulated mechanism, neo-Darwinism, is grossly inadequate for the work you ascribe to it. If you think a fossil of dubious interpretation proves that neo-Darwinian mechanisms can account for the Cambrian explosion you are delusional. You actually have to demonstrate that it is possible. In that regards, as was already pointed out, you fail big time! bornagain77

Mung: Fail again. We did mistype that above. Kimberella was mollusk-like organism, of course. bornagain77: So that would still leave you with 24 or so other phyla unaccounted for. What it means is that bilaterians had already diverged from eumetazoa, that protostomes had probably already diverged from bilateria, and that possibly mollusks had diverged from protostomes. In other words, animal evolution was well underway during the Precambrian. bornagain77: a fossil of dubious interpretation It's hardly dubious. We now have a large number of fossil Kimberella at various stages of development, and they show that Kimberella was a bilaterian, probably a protostome, possibly a primitive mollusk. Zachriel

Zachriel, as I stated on the other thread: as Luskin pointed out, if Kimberella helped any phylum at all it would be the mollusk phylum
“It’s an enigmatic creature which if anything was more like a mollusk.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/current_biology078581.html
So that would still leave you with 24 or so other phyla unaccounted for. Are you so desperate for any support whatsoever for your atheistic worldview that you are willing to ignore the enormity of the problem that the Cambrian presents for neo-Darwinian processes? Which brings us back to the most important question of all. Where did all the information come from for all these different phyla? The math simply does not work out for neo-Darwinian processes for even ‘simple’ novel proteins, changing one protein into another protein, and for protein-protein binding sites, (Axe, Gauger, Behe), much less entirely new creatures, no matter how long you make the waiting time!
Darwin’s Doubt – Chapter 12 – Complex Adaptations and the Neo-Darwinian Math – Dr. Paul Giem – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFY7oKc34qs&list=SPHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&index=7 “Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design?” – Ann Gauger – January 1, 2015 Excerpt: The waiting time required to achieve four mutations is 10^15 years. That’s longer than the age of the universe. The real waiting time is likely to be much greater, since the two most likely candidate enzymes failed to be coopted by double mutations. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/happy_new_year092291.html When Theory and Experiment Collide — April 16th, 2011 by Douglas Axe Excerpt: Based on our experimental observations and on calculations we made using a published population model [3], we estimated that Darwin’s mechanism would need a truly staggering amount of time—a trillion trillion years or more—to accomplish the seemingly subtle change in enzyme function that we studied. http://biologicinstitute.org/2011/04/16/when-theory-and-experiment-collide/ Waiting Longer for Two Mutations – Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless “using their model” gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. http://www.discovery.org/a/9461
Of note: although Dr. Behe had been mercilessly vilified by neo-Darwinists for daring to suggest that there could possibly be an ‘Edge’ to evolution (i.e. possibly be a limit to what Darwinian processes could be expected to accomplish), Dr. Behe’s was vindicated and his 10^20 number was recently verified in the lab.
The Vindication of Michael Behe – podcast/video – 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itkxFbyzyro
Moreover, body plans are not even reducible to mutations in DNA as is presupposed in neo-Darwinism:
Stephen Meyer – Functional Proteins and Information for Body Plans – video https://vimeo.com/91322260 Dr. Stephen Meyer comments at the end of the preceding video,,, ‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ Stephen Meyer – (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate – 2009) “This book has presented four separate scientific critiques demonstrating the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the mechanism that Dawkins assumes can produce the appearance of design without intelligent guidance. It has shown that the neo-Darwinian mechanism fails to account for the origin of genetic information because: (1) it has no means of efficiently searching combinatorial sequence space for functional genes and proteins and, consequently, (2) it requires unrealistically long waiting times to generate even a single new gene or protein. It has also shown that the mechanism cannot produce new body plans because: (3) early acting mutations, the only kind capable of generating large-scale changes, are also invariably deleterious, and (4) genetic mutations cannot, in any case, generate the epigenetic information necessary to build a body plan.” Stephen Meyer – Darwin’s Doubt – (pp. 410-411) Darwin’s Doubt narrated by Paul Giem – The Origin of Body Plans – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&v=rLl6wrqd1e0&feature=player_detailpage#t=290 Body Plans Are Not Mapped-Out by the DNA – Jonathan Wells – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meR8Hk5q_EM
Zach, for you to point to a fossil of dubious interpretation and pretend that you have gone one inch towards ‘explaining away’ the insurmountable information problem for neo-Darwinism is, IMHO, as unscientific as a person can get. It is similar to pointing to a slingshot and declaring that you have now solved the problem of how to land men on the moon. That is how detached from reality your thinking is in this matter!" bornagain77

111 bornagain77

bornagain77 (quoting): “Kimberella does not possess any unequivocal derived molluscan features, and its assignment to the Mollusca or even the Bilateria must be considered to be unproven.” You're dated. Hundreds of additional fossil Kimberella have been found in different stages of development. There's little doubt Kimberella was bilaterian, most probably a protostome, and quite possibly a primitive mollusk. Mung: Where do you come up with this stuff? From scientific evidence as published in journals. Fedonkin et al., New data on Kimberella, the Vendian mollusc-like organism (White Sea region, Russia): palaeoecological and evolutionary implications, Geological Society, London, Special Publications 2007. Zachriel

Great video, bornagain77! I didn't know that the latest research has reduced the time of the appearance of life in the Cambrian to 5-10 million years, and possibly as short as 2-3 million years. The quote by Dr. Ohno of "junk DNA" fame was amazing:
". . . it still takes 10 million years to undergo 1% change in DNA base sequences . . . (The) emergence of nearly all the extant phyla of the Kingdom Animalia within the timespan of 6-10 million years can't possibly be explained by mutational divergence of individual gene functions." - Susumu Ohno, "The notion of the Cambrian pananimalia genome." PNAS USA 93 (1996): 8475-78
It was also impressive that including recent discoveries in south western China, the fossil record clearly indicates that up to 85% of the phyla originated during this short time rather than by slowly drifting apart for 100s of millions of years. -Q Querius

Thanks Q, I got the info from someone else so I am just passing it along. Of related interest is this talk from a few years ago that Stephen Meyer and Marcus Ross gave on the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion - Stephen Meyer and Marcus Ross - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLpSb-iDNyw bornagain77

bornagain77, Thanks for posting the links and the commentary. I especially appreciated the Chinese researchers who are rethinking the obsolescent 19th century Darwinist paradigm in light of emerging evidence to the contrary, namely that the cones of diversity in the fossil record are pointing the wrong direction, toward narrowing rather than radiating. Genetic data also seems to be indicating slow degeneration rather than evolution. Fascinating! -Q Querius

“Kimberella does not possess any unequivocal derived molluscan features, and its assignment to the Mollusca or even the Bilateria must be considered to be unproven.” (Budd, Graham E., and Sören Jensen, “A Critical Reappraisal of the Fossil Record of the Bilaterian Phyla,” Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 75 (2000): 253-95.) https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/what-elizabeth-liddle-doesnt-understand-about-the-cambrian-explosion/#comment-564219 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 bornagain77

Zachriel: Kimberella was a bilaterian, meaning bilaterians had already branched off of eumetazoa. It means no such thing. Where do you come up with this stuff? Zachriel: Kimberella was a protostome, meaning protostomes had already branched off from bilaterians. Again, it means no such thing. Don't make me go Joe on you. Zachriel: It was probably an arthropod, meaning arthropods may have already branched off of protostomes. Fail again. Zachriel: In any case, it answers the objection about the lack of animal fossils in the precambrian. And Meyer claims there is no evidence of animals prior to the Cambrian? Or is that just another red herring. Mung

Mung: Hundreds of the same fossil are evidence of diversity? Kimberella was a bilaterian, meaning bilaterians had already branched off of eumetazoa. Kimberella was a protostome, meaning protostomes had already branched off from bilaterians. It was probably an arthropod, meaning arthropods may have already branched off of protostomes. It may have even been a primitive crustacean. It shows that metazoan evolution reaches back into the precambrian. In any case, it answers the objection about the lack of animal fossils in the precambrian. Zachriel

Zachriel: There are now hundreds of Kimberella fossils showing that animal life was already diversifying before the Cambrian. Hundreds of the same fossil are evidence of diversity? How so? Mung

Zachriel: Kimberella shows that bilaterians were diversifying well before the Cambrian. Does not. Mung

I defaced it? That sounds bad. Mung

FTR Just to be clear, Mung: you defaced a comment of RB's, which you acknowledge was a clear violation of TSZ's rules. Elizabeth restored RB's comment to its original form. Her principles are doing just fine, thank you. DNA_Jock

Elizabeth Liddle:
Oh, and Mung: Far from editing your post on TSZ, I restored someone else’s post that that you had edited.
And this is oh so typical of Elizabeth. I did not say my post was edited. So that's a complete non-sequitur. It's your site Elizabeth. If you want to violate your own principles to enforce your principles that's certainly your prerogative. Just don't be surprised if someone points it out. Mung

a bit more on small shelly fauna: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/what-elizabeth-liddle-doesnt-understand-about-the-cambrian-explosion/#comment-564219 bornagain77

corrected link: Metamorphosis Is Widespread – Ann Gauger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1jJIpib8Ao bornagain77

Moreover, the complexity of the life cycles, of many of the different phyla found in the Cambrian Explosion, was anything but simple: The Enigma of Metamorphosis Is Hardly Limited to Butterflies - October 2011 Excerpt: Even more mysteriously, it appears that the most ancient phyla were metamorphic from the beginning, based on the few larval forms that have been preserved. This suggests that these Cambrian animals had not one but two or more developmental stages at the outset,,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/the_enigma_of_metamorphosis_is051541.html Metamorphosis Is Widespread - Ann Gauger - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkD-jd1imaI From Discovering Intelligent Design: My How You've Changed - May 26, 2013 Excerpt: Holometabolism (complete metamorphosis) is the most common and complicated form of insect maturation. The diverse group that undergoes this type of process includes butterflies, moths, beetles, fleas, bees, ants, and many kinds of flies.,,, It is exceedingly difficult to understand the origin of holometabolism in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Neither the larval nor the pupal stage is capable of reproduction -- only the adult is. In particular, the pupal stage is an all-or nothing proposition. It must complete the process and become an adult, or it will die without ever reproducing. The liquefied organism must be completely rebuilt. For this to occur, large amounts of information -- encoding the larval body plan, the mechanisms of transformation during metamorphosis, and the adult body plan -- must exist before the larva enters this stage. An organism could not survive complete metamorphosis unless the entire process was fully programmed from the beginning. Such a large jump in complexity requires forethought and planning -- things that don't exist in Darwinian evolution. As one evolutionary entomologist acknowledges: "... the biggest head-scratcher in evolutionary biology would have to be the origin of the holometabolous insect larva." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/05/from_discoverin_3072521.html bornagain77

Darwin’s Tree of Life was uprooted in the Cambrian explosion - March 17, 2014 Excerpt: ,,,The study had sought to determine the evolutionary history of the animal phyla by analyzing fifty genes along seventeen taxa. He hoped that a single, dominant phylogenetic tree would emerge. Rokas and his team reported that “a 5-gene data matrix does not resolve relationships among most metazoan phyla” because it generated numerous conflicting phylogenies and historical signals. Their conclusion was candid: “Despite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most metazoan phyla remained unresolved.”,,, Sean B. Carroll went so far as to assert that “certain critical parts of the TOL [Tree of Life] may be difficult to resolve, regardless of the quantity of conventional data available.” This problem applies specifically to the relationships of many of the animal phyla, where “[m]any recent studies have reported support for many alternative conflicting phylogenies.” Investigators studying the animal tree found that “ a large fraction of single genes produce phylogenies of poor quality” such that in one case, a study “omitted 35% of single genes from their data matrix, because those genes produced phylogenies at odds with conventional wisdom”,,, Their article brings the discussion of the Cambrian explosion full circle from an attempt to use genes to compensate for the absence of fossil evidence to the acknowledgment that genes do not convey any clear signal about the evolutionary relationships of the phyla first preserved by fossils in the Cambrian. Steve Meyer - Darwin’s Doubt (pp. 120–21) https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/tree-of-life/darwins-tree-of-life-was-uprooted-in-the-cambrian-explosion/ Small shelly fauna Dickinsonia[19] Halkieria sclerites[20] Kimberella[21] Helcionellids[22] Undead: The Myth of the 80-Million-Year Cambrian Explosion - November 13, 2013 Excerpt: the trick is premised on "including as part of the Cambrian explosion (a) the origin of the Ediacaran organisms in the late Precambrian (which no serious scientist considers to be ancestral to the Cambrian animals), and (b) the small shelly fossils at the base of the Cambrian and (c) the main pulse of morphological innovation in the early Cambrian, and (d) subsequent diversification events right up until the end of the Cambrian period.",,, - Meyer notes that Marshall himself elsewhere excludes the precious small shellies.,,,- http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/11/undead_the_myth079081.html Macroscopic life in the Palaeoproterozoic - July 2010 Excerpt: The Ediacaran fauna shows that soft-bodied animals were preserved in the Precambrian, even in coarse sandstone beds, suggesting that (the hypothetical transitional) fossils are not found because they were not there. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/07/02/macroscopic_life_in_the_palaeoproterozoi Response to John Wise - October 2010 "So, where then are those ancestors? Fossil preservation conditions were adequate to preserve animals such as jellyfish, corals, and sponges, as well as the Ediacaran fauna. It does not appear that scarcity is a fault of the fossil record." Sean Carroll developmental biologist http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html At North Dakota State University, Presenting the Positive Case for Design – Casey Luskin – February 14, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, Simon Conway Morris notes in his book Crucible of Creation that in the Burgess Shale fossil collections which document the Cambrian explosion, “about 95 per cent are either soft-bodied or have thin skeletons.” [p. 140]. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/at_north_dakota056351.html "Are Pre-Cambrian Fossils the Solution to Darwin's Dilemma?" - podcast - January 2012 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2012-01-20T15_45_26-08_00 "---a number of the body plans that today characterize major taxa first appear during or 'shortly' before the interval from about 530 to 520 Ma,---." - Valentine, James W., David Jablonski and Douglas H. Erwin. Fossils, molecules and embryos: new perspectives on the Cambrian explosion. Development 126. 1999. The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity - Casey Luskin - February 4, 2014 Excerpt: "The record of the first appearance of living phyla, classes, and orders can best be described in Wright's (1) term as 'from the top down'." (James W. Valentine, "Late Precambrian bilaterians: Grades and clades," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 91: 6751-6757 (July 1994).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/02/the_ham-nye_deb081911.html All skeletalised metazoan phyla appeared in the Cambrian - David Tyler - 2010 Excerpt: This means that Cambrian strata can be said to record examples of all the skeletalized metazoan phyla.,,, Subsequent periods of Earth history may have had more dramatic radiations at the Order, Class or Family level, but there were no further bauplan innovations affecting skeletalized metazoan organisms. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/12/09/all_skeletalised_metazoan_phyla_appeared Chinese microscopic fossil find challenges Darwin's theory - 11 November, 2014 Excerpt: One of the world's leading researchers on the Cambria explosion is Chen Junyuan from the Nanjing Institute of Palaeontology and he said that his fossil discoveries in China show that "Darwin's tree is a reverse cone shape". A senior research fellow at Chengjiang Fauna [fossil site], said, "I do not believe the animals developed gradually from the bottom up, I think they suddenly appeared". As a medical professional and former atheist, I ignorantly believed that Darwin's evolutionary theory was a scientific fact. The fact is, Darwinism has never been more than an unproven theory,,, http://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/1636922/chinese-microscopic-fossil-find-challenges-darwins-theory bornagain77

ppolish: Oh please, it does not. It extends it at least 10-20 million years, and as Kimberella is likely a triploblastic protostome, it means the divergence of animals happened even sooner in the Precambrian. See Fedonkin & Waggoner, The Late Precambrian fossil Kimberella is a mollusc-like bilaterian organism, Nature 1997. Zachriel

Wow thank you very much bornagain77!!! God bless you. JimFit

"Kimberella extends the period considerably". Oh please, it does not. Do you even understand NS & RM. Seems not. ppolish

ppolish: Darwin was already aware of a few pre Cambrians fossils, but was still doubtful they could explain a NS & RM Cambrian. Kimberella would change his mind? The problem Darwin had was the apparent rapidity of the diversification during the Cambrian. Kimberella extends the period considerably, and provides intermediates between simpler colonial organisms and the more integrated organisms characteristic of later animal life. Zachriel

Zach, Darwin was already aware of a few pre Cambrians fossils, but was still doubtful they could explain a NS & RM Cambrian. Kimberella would change his mind? I argue no. I argue Darwin would have abandoned his theory if he had today's evidence. Natural Design would be Darwin's modern theory. ppolish

ppolish: Kimberella & Finch Beaks. Hang on to those You said you "doubting the theory due to the lack of fossils". There are now hundreds of Kimberella fossils showing that animal life was already diversifying before the Cambrian. Zachriel

Kimberella & Finch Beaks. Hang on to those, Zach, hold on tightly to those. Common Molecular Toolkit of Intelligent Design explains them both also. Without the added inconvenience of NS & RM. Which would Brother Occam prefer? ppolish

Dr Liddle Like Darwin you are assuming it. Prove otherwise.... Andre

ppolish: Darwin predicted fossils to support his theory would show up someday. Kimberella shows that bilaterians were diversifying well before the Cambrian. Zachriel

I'm like Darwin himself, Zach, doubting the theory due to the lack of fossils. Fossils indicating NS & RM gave rise to the Cambrian Explosion. Darwin's Doubt = ppolish's Doubt. Darwin predicted fossils to support his theory would show up someday. Or maybe they were destroyed he mused. Both predictions = fail. Sorry Charlie. ppolish

Zachriel: What missing phyla? Do you mean missing intermediates? If so, the molecular evidence has helped unravel the order of divergence. ppolish: Molecular evidence lol. No wonder the fossils have never been found. You didn't seem to answer the question. Are you saying there are no fossils before the origin of the major phyla? Zachriel

Like the missing fossils, The molecular evidence does not satisfy:
Problem 6: Molecular Biology has Failed to Yield a Grand "Tree of Life" - Casey Luskin - February 2, 2015 Excerpt: When fossils failed to demonstrate that animals evolved from a common ancestor, evolutionary scientists turned to another type of evidence -- DNA sequence data -- to demonstrate a tree of life. ,,, At the end of the day, the dream that DNA sequence data would fit into a nice-neat tree of life has failed, and with it a key prediction of neo-Darwinian theory. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/problem_6_molec091151.html A Big Problem for Common Descent: Hundreds of "Active 'Foreign' Genes" Don't Fit the Standard Evolutionary Phylogeny - Casey Luskin - March 25, 2015 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/a_big_problem_f094701.html Logged Out - Scientists Can't Find Darwin's "Tree of Life" Anywhere in Nature by Casey Luskin - Winter 2013 Excerpt: the (fossil) record shows that major groups of animals appeared abruptly, without direct evolutionary precursors. Because biogeography and fossils have failed to bolster common descent, many evolutionary scientists have turned to molecules—the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of genes and proteins—to establish a phylogenetic tree of life showing the evolutionary relationships between all living organisms.,,, Many papers have noted the prevalence of contradictory molecule-based phylogenetic trees. For instance: • A 1998 paper in Genome Research observed that "different proteins generate different phylogenetic tree[s]."6 • A 2009 paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution acknowledged that "evolutionary trees from different genes often have conflicting branching patterns."7 • A 2013 paper in Trends in Genetics reported that "the more we learn about genomes the less tree-like we find their evolutionary history to be."8 Perhaps the most candid discussion of the problem came in a 2009 review article in New Scientist titled "Why Darwin Was Wrong about the Tree of Life."9 The author quoted researcher Eric Bapteste explaining that "the holy grail was to build a tree of life," but "today that project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence." According to the article, "many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.",,, Syvanen succinctly summarized the problem: "We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely. What would Darwin have made of that?" ,,, "battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life," leaving readers with a stark assessment: "Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don't resemble those drawn up from morphology."10,,, A 2012 paper noted that "phylogenetic conflict is common, and [is] frequently the norm rather than the exception," since "incongruence between phylogenies derived from morphological versus molecular analyses, and between trees based on different subsets of molecular sequences has become pervasive as datasets have expanded rapidly in both characters and species."12,,, http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo27/logged-out.php podcast - Molecular Data Wreak Havoc on (Darwin's) Tree of Life - Casey Luskin - March 2014 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-03-14T16_17_31-07_00
Since the molecular evidence and the fossil evidence are not allowed to falsify Darwinian claims (at least in the minds of Darwinists), we can only hope that the elusive pre-cambrian rabbit turns up some day so as to finally 'scientifically' falsify Darwinian claims! :) The Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland should move over and let neo-Darwinists take his place! They put him to shame as to inanity. Mad Hatter http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20141031044003/disney/images/a/a3/Alice-in-wonderland-wallpaper-mad-hatter-4.jpg bornagain77

Molecular evidence lol. No wonder the fossils have never been found. Will never be found. ppolish

ppolish: But having 25 phyla showing up suddenly in Cambrian throws a spanner in the works. Darwin was keenly aware and expected the missing phyla to show up someday in the fossil record. What missing phyla? Do you mean missing intermediates? If so, the molecular evidence has helped unravel the order of divergence. Zachriel

"Darwin produced his theory to account for the observed pattern, and it does)." No it doesn't Ms Liddle. Common Descent has phyla1 eventually giving rise to phyla2 and phyla3 for example. Phyla5, 6, and 7 arise from 2 and 3 for example. Wondrously so on and so forth. But having 25 phyla showing up suddenly in Cambrian throws a spanner in the works. Darwin was keenly aware and expected the missing phyla to show up someday in the fossil record. If Darwin were around today he would have a tough time making it through freshman biology - and he would also concede the fossils are not going to show up. They're not. At least he got the "Creator Breath" correct. Got the Forest correct, screwed up on the tree. ppolish

OT: Theory of Convergent Evolution Analyzed - May 11, 2015 Excerpt: Casey Luskin has argued that Darwinians appeal to convergence in order to have it both ways: basically, "biological similarity implies common ancestry, except when it doesn't." The authors of this new paper do not respond to that charge specifically, but they go further than most Darwinians by not just asserting convergence occurred, but by offering evolutionary mechanisms that might produce it. (thus disobeying the first cardinal rule of evolutionary biology: 1. Thou shalt not analyze neo-Darwinism too closely!) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/05/theory_of_conve095951.html bornagain77

Here are more thorough looks at the major flaws in all the critical reviews of 'Darwin's Doubt': Darwin's Doubt - Reviews - Part 1 - by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW8SLKoSZqM Darwin's Doubt - Reviews - Part 2 - by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPqN0-YiJgg Darwin's Doubt - Reviews - Part 3 - by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mj1thPrSgc Darwin's Doubt - Reviews - Part 4 - by Paul Giem - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfEfa6KaEXU bornagain77

Nick Matzke was addressed here: A Graduate Student (Nick Matzke) Writes – David Berlinski July 9, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_graduate_stud074221.html A One-Man Clade – David Berlinski – July 18, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade074601.html Hopeless Matzke -David Berlinski & Tyler Hampton August 18, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/hopeless_matzke075631.html Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics: Matzke Part 1 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2B76JbMQ4 Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics: Matzke Part 2 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZWw18b3nHo Responding to Critics: Matzke Part 3 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77XappzJh1k bornagain77

Did anyone here do a refutation of these articles? http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/08/meyers-hopeless-1.html http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/06/meyers-hopeless-2.html http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2014/06/meyers-hopeless-3.html JimFit

BA77: Some excellent clips & links. The ENV on Valentine is especially well worth pondering: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/erwin_valentine_cambrian_explosion073671.html KF kairosfocus

Andre:
This is of course not true, and you know it! Here is why; because you’re assuming it!
um, no. Elizabeth Liddle

Allow me to paraphrase Lizzie's "critique":
Meyer: "What Darwin expected to find at the 'top', we actually find at the 'bottom'".
[entering Lizzie]
Lizzie: "You don't understand the theory of evolution. What is termed the 'top' should be at the top by definition. That's why it's termed the top".
Box

Dr Liddle
this turned out also to apply to fossils, and, moreoever, the strata in which the fossils were found also mapped neatly on to the branching hierarchy if you regarded the hierarchy as a family tree
This is of course not true, and you know it! Here is why; because you're assuming it! Andre

Moreover, there are ‘yawning chasms’ in the ‘morphological space’ between the phyla which suddenly appeared in the Cambrian Explosion,,,
“Over the past 150 years or so, paleontologists have found many representatives of the phyla that were well-known in Darwin’s time (by analogy, the equivalent of the three primary colors) and a few completely new forms altogether (by analogy, some other distinct colors such as green and orange, perhaps). And, of course, within these phyla, there is a great deal of variety. Nevertheless, the analogy holds at least insofar as the differences in form between any member of one phylum and any member of another phylum are vast, and paleontologists have utterly failed to find forms that would fill these yawning chasms in what biotechnologists call “morphological space.” In other words, they have failed to find the paleolontogical equivalent of the numerous finely graded intermediate colors (Oedleton blue, dusty rose, gun barrel gray, magenta, etc.) that interior designers covet. Instead, extensive sampling of the fossil record has confirmed a strikingly discontinuous pattern in which representatives of the major phyla stand in stark isolation from members of other phyla, without intermediate forms filling the intervening morphological space.” Stephen Meyer – Darwin’s Doubt (p. 70)
Here is a site where people can view the 'yawning chasms' between the phyla for themselves:
Fossil Gallery - 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
Even vertebrate are present in the Cambrian Explosion:
picture - 550 million year old fossil fish - "Most major animal groups appear suddenly in the fossil record 550 million years ago, but vertebrates have been absent from this 'Big Bang' of life. Two fish-like animals from Early Cambrian rocks now fill this gap." "Lower Cambrian Vertebrates from South China" - Nov. 1999 http://www.evolutionnews.org/cambrianfish.jpg Metaspriggina: Vertebrates Found in Cambrian Explosion - August 29, 2014 Excerpt: Now that some months have passed since the discovery of another rich trove of Cambrian fossils 26 miles from the Burgess Shale, scientists are starting to publish findings from the new Marble Canyon site. One amazing find just published by Simon Conway Morris and Jean-Bernard Caron is putting more bang in the Cambrian explosion.,,, ,,,confirms that this animal was far more than a chordate: it was a vertebrate fish, right there in the Lower Cambrian! Imagine a vertebrate fish, with a skeleton, binocular vision, muscles, nerves, gut and blood vessels: it is so complex compared to what came before, it makes the suddenness and explosive increase in complexity undeniable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/metaspriggina_v089471.html
Moreover, this top down pattern in the fossil record, which is the complete opposite pattern as Darwin predicted in his book for the fossil record, is not only found in the Cambrian Explosion, but this ‘top down’, disparity preceding diversity, pattern is found in the fossil record subsequent to the Cambrian explosion as well.
Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head – July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: “This pattern, known as ‘early high disparity’, turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn’t a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.”,,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: “Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: “A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html
Quotes about the 'un-Darwinian' fossil record from leading paleontologists are abundant in the literature. Here are a couple:
“In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms.” TS Kemp – Fossils and Evolution,– Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999 “What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.” Robert L Carroll (born 1938) – vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians
Thus, as far as the fossil record itself is concerned, Darwinian evolution is, as with all other lines of evidence that are examined, falsified. Verse:
Genesis 1:20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures,,,
bornagain77

As Dr. Wells pointed out in the preceding video, Darwin predicted that minor differences (diversity) between species would gradually appear first and then the differences would grow larger (disparity) between species as time went on. i.e. universal common descent as depicted in Darwin’s tree of life. What Darwin predicted should be familiar to everyone and is easily represented in the only illustation in his book and in the following modern graph.,,,
Darwin’s illustration of an evolutionary tree, from The Origin of Species (1859). http://diogenesii.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/charles-darwins-diagram.jpg The Theory – Diversity precedes Disparity – graph http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/JOURNEY/IMAGES/F.gif
But that ‘tree pattern’ that Darwin predicted is not what is found in the fossil record. The fossil record reveals that disparity (the greatest differences) precedes diversity (the smaller differences), which is the exact opposite pattern for what Darwin’s theory predicted.
The Actual Fossil Evidence- Disparity precedes Diversity – graph http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/JOURNEY/IMAGES/G.gif Investigating Evolution: The Cambrian Explosion Part 1 – (4:45 minute mark – upside-down fossil record) video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DkbmuRhXRY Part 2 – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZFM48XIXnk Challenging Fossil of a Little Fish Excerpt: "In Chen’s view, his evidence supports a history of life that runs opposite to the standard evolutionary tree diagrams, a progression he calls top-down evolution." Jun-Yuan Chen is professor at the Nanjing Institute of Paleontology and Geology http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htm Timeline graphic on Cambrian Explosion (Disparity preceding Diversity) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/its_darwins_dou074341.html
James Valentine, whom some Darwinists tried to call on for support when Darwin’s Doubt came out, contrary to what the Darwinists had hoped for, agreed with Dr. Meyer’s assessment of the fossil record.
Erwin and Valentine's The Cambrian Explosion Affirms Major Points in Darwin's Doubt: The Cambrian Enigma Is "Unresolved" - June 26, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/erwin_valentine_cambrian_explosion073671.html
Here is particularly damning quote from Valentine:
“Darwin had a lot of trouble with the fossil record because if you look at the record of phyla in the rocks as fossils why when they first appear we already see them all. The phyla are fully formed. It’s as if the phyla were created first and they were modified into classes and we see that the number of classes peak later than the number of phyla and the number of orders peak later than that. So it’s kind of a top down succession, you start with this basic body plans, the phyla, and you diversify them into classes, the major sub-divisions of the phyla, and these into orders and so on. So the fossil record is kind of backwards from what you would expect from in that sense from what you would expect from Darwin’s ideas.” James W. Valentine – as quoted from “On the Origin of Phyla: Interviews with James W. Valentine” – (as stated at 1:16:36 mark of video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtdFJXfvlm8&feature=player_detailpage#t=4595
bornagain77

Andre:
Well there you have it, Nick Matzke and Dr Liddle have solved the issue and Dr Stephen Meyer is charged with the usual nonsense of “he just does not understand evolution” If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard a materialist say that to me I’d be richer than Bill Gates.
Well the fact that it is true would certainly ensure a steady income for you :) He doesn't. He's got the prediction wrong (not that it was actually a "prediction" - Darwin produced his theory to account for the observed pattern, and it does). Elizabeth Liddle

It would be hard to imagine a more un-Darwinian feature of the fossil record than the Cambrian Explosion. In regards to the Cambrian Explosion Darwin himself stated the Cambrian Explosion could be “truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained”:
“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. —Chapter IX, “On the Imperfection of the Geological Record,” On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin – fifth edition (1869), pp. 378-381.
The evidence for the Cambrian Explosion has only gotten worse, not better, for Darwinists since Darwin wrote those words.
Materialistic Basis of the Cambrian Explosion is Elusive: BioEssays Vol. 31 (7):736 – 747 – July 2009 Excerpt: “going from an essentially static system billions of years in existence to the one we find today, a dynamic and awesomely complex system whose origin seems to defy explanation. Part of the intrigue with the Cambrian explosion is that numerous animal phyla with very distinct body plans arrive on the scene in a geological blink of the eye, with little or no warning of what is to come in rocks that predate this interval of time.” —”Thus, elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself, and cannot be explained away by coupling extinction of intermediates with long stretches of geologic time, despite the contrary claims of some modern neo-Darwinists.”,,, serving as perennial fodder for creationists. The reasoning is simple — as explained on an intelligent-design t-shirt. “Fact: Forty phyla of complex animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, no forerunners, no transitional forms leading to them; ”a major mystery,” a ”challenge.” The Theory of Evolution — exploded again (idofcourse.com).” Although we would dispute the numbers, and aside from the last line, there is not much here that we would disagree with. Indeed, many of Darwin’s contemporaries shared these sentiments, and we assume — if Victorian fashion dictated — that they would have worn this same t-shirt with pride. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/06/bioessays_article_admits_mater.html
Of Note:
"Phyla are broad categories of classification. All fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are in the same phylum. Squid, octopi, oysters, clams and snails are in another phylum. Lobsters, crayfish, insects, and millipedes are in still another." Ray Bohlin PhD A Graduate Student (Nick Matzke) Writes – David Berlinski July 9, 2013 Excerpt: Representatives of twenty-three of the roughly twenty-seven fossilized animal phyla, and the roughly thirty-six animal phyla overall, are present in the Cambrian fossil record. Twenty of these twenty-three major groups make their appearance with no discernible ancestral forms in either earlier Cambrian or Precambrian strata. Representatives of the remaining three or so animal phyla originate in the late Precambrian, but they do so as abruptly as the animals that appeared first in Cambrian. Moreover, these late Precambrian animals lack clear affinities with the representatives of the twenty or so phyla that first appear in the Cambrian. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_graduate_stud074221.html 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 Dr. Stephen Meyer: Darwin’s Dilemma – The Significance of Sponge Embryos – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPs8E7y0ySs Deepening Darwin’s Dilemma – Jonathan Wells – Sept. 2009 Excerpt: “The truth is that (finding) “exceptionally preserved microbes” from the late Precambrian actually deepen Darwin’s dilemma, because they suggest that if there had been ancestors to the Cambrian phyla they would have been preserved.” http://www.discovery.org/a/12471
A book, Darwin’s Doubt, and a movie, Darwin’s Dilemma, both highlight the impossibility of Darwinian explanations to account for the Cambrian Explosion. If anyone has not read Stephen Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt yet, Dr. Paul Giem has done a chapter by chapter ‘cliff notes’ video series on the book here:
Darwin’s Doubt – Paul Giem – video playlist http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t
For an even shorter ‘cliff notes’ version, here is the movie on the Cambrian Explosion:
Darwin’s Dilemma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxh9o32m5c0
Here is a short excerpt from the movie that highlights just how explosive the Cambrian Explosion was:
Cambrian Explosion Ruins Darwin’s Tree of Life (2 minutes in 24 hour day) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQKxkUb_AAg
bornagain77

Box:
Meyer’s argument is perfectly clear: things are upside-down. Which terms, if not “phyla” and “species”, should Meyer have adopted in order to point that out?
His terms are fine. It he's just wrong about the "upside-down" part. He implies that exemplars of different "phyla" that we see early in the fossile record should, under "Darwinism" be as morphologically distant as their descendents are in the present day. Which they aren't. And under Darwinism they shouldn't be. They should be close (because the tree has only relatively recently branched). So he's got the data the right way up, but Darwinism upside down. Elizabeth Liddle

Andre:
The whole Darwin’s doubt, with all its arguments are in doubt because Dr Meyer “misunderstands” something that almost everybody is grappling over as a problem? Come now Dr Liddle you’re just clutching at straws here, you’re not critical you’re just raising your own opinion on the matter. The Species problem is not some religious thing it is a clear problem in biology and if you have the answer lets hear it then!
You seem to have missed my point, Andre, as, of course, has Meyer, so you are in good company :) So let me go back a little further. Linnaeus observed that if he classified organisms by their morphological features they fell naturally into a branching hierarchy. This turned out also to apply to fossils, and, moreoever, the strata in which the fossils were found also mapped neatly on to the branching hierarchy if you regarded the hierarchy as a family tree. The highest level hierarchical groupings were given names like or "phyla" or "kingdom", while the lower groupings were given names like "genus" or "species". So the first thing Darwin proposed (not very originally) was that this tree was indeed a family tree. That is the theory of "Common Descent": that there was originally just one "grouping" which then branched into "kingdoms" then "phyla", then "orders" then "species" etc (I've left some of them out, and now of course there are now far more than the canonical seven "King Philip Came Over For Great Soup" tiers, because there are far more sub-branches. So then the question became: if Common Descent is the reason for this branching pattern of characteristics, how did each lineage "evolve" (in the sense of "change") over time? And that is where Descent with Modication and Natural Selection came in. Many IDists accept Common Descent. I gather Meyer doesn't. And the first part of his book is a critique of Common Descent (actually, most of it is - Signature in the cell was more about DM+NS). But he bases his criticism of Common Descent on a misunderstanding of the very pattern for which Common Descent is an explanation. He thinks that if common descent were true (and in fact the theory of Common Descent was proposed to explain the tree-like pattern of the data) we would see "phyla" come first (as they do) followed by the rest of King Philip's mob in turn, ending up with Good Soup). But because the higher levels of the hierarchy are NOW (i.e. late in evolutionary time) separated by "large morphological distances (which is true, and is how the tree is derived), common descent would predict that they must ALSO have been separated by "large morphological distances" when they first appeared. And of course they aren't. So, having made the diametrically wrong prediction from Common Descent (which would predict that close in time to a branching point the morphological distance will be very short, increasing over time), he then concludes from the fact that this is NOT what we observe, that Common Descent must be wrong! Here he is again:
Instead of more species eventually leading to more genera, leading to more families, orders, classes and phyla, the fossil record shows representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.
Yes, exactly. It does. Phyla separating off early, followed by Classes, followed by Orders etc. But at the TIME of separation, the branches are morphologically close. They diversify over time AFTER the branching. It was to account for that diversification over time, down a lineage, that Darwin proposed his famous mechanism. Which obviously many here don't buy. But that is not the issue here - the issue Meyer is taking is with Common Descent, which he thinks it predicts the opposite of what we see. It doesn't. It predicts what we see, which was why it was advanced to explain it! Elizabeth Liddle

EL, following up: 1: can you demonstrate observationally that projected step by step branching process from diverse sub populations leading to ever wider morphological distance? 2: Alternatively, can you observationally show the operating power of chance variation and differential reproductive success to give rise to major organisational transformations involving the FSCO/I required to de novo create body plans? I suggest you cannot soundly answer yes to either, much less both. What we see is sudden appearances, gaps and stasis of core characteristic forms. We also see that embryological development etc to create a body plan is massively informational and integrated. Further, what we see is that FSCO/I has but one known adequate cause. Namely, intelligently directed configuration, AKA design. (And those who tried to object to the reality, relevance and use of the concept this descriptive abbreviation tags, kindly cf the response here: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/fyi-ftr-sparc-et-al-vs-the-patent-reality-and-relevance-of-wickens-organized-systems-which-must-be-assembled-element-by-element-according-to-an-external-wiring-diagram-with-a/ ) In this light, you seem to have restated the problem as though that were the solution. KF PS: A strawman caricature of an argument, dismissed then turned into attacking the credibility of the person who made the argument is an ad hominem attack. That is, an attack to the man based on misrepresentations, not addressing the actual case.. kairosfocus

Well there you have it, Nick Matzke and Dr Liddle have solved the issue and Dr Stephen Meyer is charged with the usual nonsense of "he just does not understand evolution" If I had a penny for every time I've heard a materialist say that to me I'd be richer than Bill Gates. Andre

Dr Liddle Here is a whopping 290 pages of the problem from Intech http://library.umac.mo/ebooks/b28045919.pdf Enjoy..... Andre

Lizzie, Meyer's argument is perfectly clear: things are upside-down. Which terms, if not "phyla" and "species", should Meyer have adopted in order to point that out? Box

Dr Liddle The whole Darwin's doubt, with all its arguments are in doubt because Dr Meyer "misunderstands" something that almost everybody is grappling over as a problem? Come now Dr Liddle you're just clutching at straws here, you're not critical you're just raising your own opinion on the matter. The Species problem is not some religious thing it is a clear problem in biology and if you have the answer lets hear it then! Andre

Andre wrote:
Thank you for this, so your whole beef with Stephen Meyer is because he does not understand phylogeny and taxonomy. this makes his knowledge weak on evolutionary theory how exactly?
Because is argument is based on that misunderstanding. Elizabeth Liddle

Dr Liddle Thank you for this, so your whole beef with Stephen Meyer is because he does not understand phylogeny and taxonomy. this makes his knowledge weak on evolutionary theory how exactly? It's not like he is the only one who's had this issue, ever heard of the Species problem Dr Liddle? Do you think its all figured out? Did you figure it all out? The Species problem is real and you just need to look around to know that. http://www.intechopen.com/books/the-species-problem-ongoing-issues Andre

Meyer's error is right here:
Instead of more species eventually leading to more genera, leading to more families, orders, classes and phyla, the fossil record shows representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.
"Phylum" is a retrospective label. It refers to the entire branch, right back to the original branching point. At the time of that original branching point, the two branches would have looked like two "species" - very similar. But at the ends of the two branches, the organisms look very different. This is not because we have "phyla" at the ends (later) and "species" at the beginning (earlier) but because we call an entire branch a "phylum" if it stems from a very early branch. ALL of it is the phylum, not just the end. Elizabeth Liddle

PS: I have clipped the critique linked by EL, in what seems to be her summary of her main objection to DD: >>You have just, in Chapter 2 of your fat book made an absolutely fundamental error of understanding of the entire principle of phylogenetics and taxonomy. No, of course you wouldn’t expect phyla to follow “lower-level diversification on those basic themes”. How could it possibly? And how could you possibly so fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of Darwin’s tree and its relationship to the nested hierarchies observe by Linnaeus? All branching events, in Darwin’s proposal, whether the resulting lineages end up as different phyla or merely different species, start in the same way, with two populations where there once was one, and a short morphological distance between them. It is perfectly true that the longer both lineages persist for, the greater the morphological distance will become. But that isn’t because they started different, or because the phyla come later. It’s because what we call phyla are groups of organisms with an early common ancestor, whose later descendents have evolved to form a group that has a large morphological distance from contemporary populations who descended from a different early common ancestor. So when a phylum, or a class, or even a kingdom first diverges from a single population into two lineages, the “morphological distance” from the other lineage will be very short. We only call it a “phylum” because eventually, owning to separate evolution, that distance becomes very large . . . >> My first problem is there is an underlying sneeringly dismissive tone manifest in loaded language that needs to be addressed, as this is part of the enabling problem that I have had to again highlight now that stalking seems to also be on the ground. Second, much of the above pivots on reiterating the assertion of common ancestry in a way that seems to assume away the OOBP problem Meyer points to -- required reasonable adequate cause of the origin of required info by cumulative blind chance and mechanical necessity. Backed up by observational evidence. Where, a simple calc or examination of typical genomes will show that we are requiring perhaps 10 - 100+ mn bases of info, dozens of times over, and per the "explosion" in a fairly short window. Sure, if there was a viable, observed incremental blind chance and mechanical necessity mechanism for branching from unicellular organism to major body plans you could probably get away with a fossil gaps argument. But, as fair comment no such mechanism has been demonstrated on observation as leading to OOBP or even just to novel FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits. What we do see instead is an ideological imposition of de facto a priori materialism, and the logical deduction that such a process must have happened. As, notoriously Lewontin admitted. Moreover, there is a basic logical problem with the objection -- repeating what Meyer pointed to in different words as though it refutes him. Meyer says, changes have to be bottom up to achieve cumulative body plan level transformation. In dismissing him as making a fundamental error, you start with "All branching events . . . start in the same way, with two populations where there once was one, and a short morphological distance between them." In short, bottom up, minor changes accumulated to major ones. But that would statistically be expected to present a pattern dominated by transitionals showing accumulation of morphological distance. But from Darwin's day to this, the actual fossils show already established main, top level, diversity. It looks to me rather like saying much the same thing from a diverse perspective which controls the narrative. So, per fair comment, the matter looks a lot more like: you do not agree with our core ideology and we lock you out and dismiss you. Philip Johnson's reply to Lewontin seems relevant:
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
And, a question like this is exactly one for which one with a phil and history of science background is specifically qualified to address. kairosfocus

For those with penguin allergies, I have reproduced my post below. I have linked to the graphics. They are hosted on the TSZ server but do not link to the actual blog. For those with principles about clicking on TSZ, you will have to decide whether that is acceptable to you. I'm not going to rehost the pictures somewhere else.
Quite apart from any factual errors, about which I’m not at all qualified to judge, here is what seems to me to be Meyer’s fundamental logical error IMO:
According to Darwin’s theory, the differences in form, or “morphological distance,” between evolving organisms should increase gradually over time as small-scale variations accumulate by natural selection to produce increasingly complex forms and structures (including, eventually, new body plans). In other words, one would expect small-scale differences or diversity among species to precede large-scale morphological disparity among phyla.
(Darwin’s Doubt, Chapter 2) He illustrates this by asking us to comparing this figure, which he says is what we do see: Figure_2.12 With this (appallingly badly drawn) one: Figure_2.11_Meyer Which he claims Darwin’s theory says we ought to see. And he says:
The actual pattern in the fossil record, however, contradicts this expectation (compare Fig. 2.12 to Fig 2.11b). Instead of more species eventually leading to more genera, leading to more families, orders, classes and phyla, the fossil record shows representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.
Well, of course it does, Dr Meyer! You have just, in Chapter 2 of your fat book made an absolutely fundamental error of understanding of the entire principle of phylogenetics and taxonomy. No, of course you wouldn’t expect phyla to follow “lower-level diversification on those basic themes”. How could it possibly? And how could you possibly so fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of Darwin’s tree and its relationship to the nested hierarchies observe by Linnaeus? All branching events, in Darwin’s proposal, whether the resulting lineages end up as different phyla or merely different species, start in the same way, with two populations where there once was one, and a short morphological distance between them. It is perfectly true that the longer both lineages persist for, the greater the morphological distance will become. But that isn’t because they started different, or because the phyla come later. It’s because what we call phyla are groups of organisms with an early common ancestor, whose later descendents have evolved to form a group that has a large morphological distance from contemporary populations who descended from a different early common ancestor. So when a phylum, or a class, or even a kingdom first diverges from a single population into two lineages, the “morphological distance” from the other lineage will be very short. We only call it a “phylum” because eventually, owing to separate evolution, that distance becomes very large. I’ve amended the drawings in the book as below, and, instead of labeling the trees by what a contemporary phylogeneticist might have called them, I’ve called each tree a phylum, and I’ve drawn round the organisms that constitute various subdivisions of phyla in colours from orange to green to represent successive branchings. Rather than the little bunch of twigs marked “families” by Meyer, I’ve indicated the entire clade for each subdivision, or tried to. Figure_2.11_Meyer_EL In Meyer’s version, he called the early sprout “ONE SPECIES”, which a contemporary phylogeneticist (Dr Stephen Chordata perhaps) would have called a “species”. But by the time of the next tree (which I think is supposed to incorporate the first), and Dr Chordata’s distant descendent comes along, she may call it an entire “genus”, and become rather more interested in the “species” that she observes it contains. Move along one to the next tree on Meyer’s time-line and an even more distantly descendent will call the whole tree a “family” containing “genera” and “species”. What was a “genus” to her great^10 grandmother will be several genera to her, and so on. And with each multi-generation of palaeontologist, the descendents of what were close relations in her ancestral palaentologist’s day are now separated by a wide “morphological distance. So of course, if we look at the fossil record as these speciation-events were happening and try to categorise the organisms in terms of their modern descendents, we will find a great number of different phyla, and far fewer species. Of course they have different body plans, because they lived at a time when many different lineages from the first populations of rather amorphous multi-cell colonies were still around, some with not much symmetry, some with bilateral symmetry, some with five-fold symmetry, and many that didn’t go very far and left no extant lineages. Because of course Meyer also forgets the big extinction events, which are the other part of the answer to why one particular branch “exploded” while the others were never seen again. It’s even in his terrible Figure 1.11. Which he may not have been responsible for drawing, but he should at least have looked at. ETA: the other drawing, fixed: Figure_2.12_EL ETA2: Another extraordinary example of Meyer’s complete failure to understand what a clade is, or that the words “phyla” and “class” refer to clades. Coloured emendations are mine (orange/red for Meyer’s “phyla”, blue for Meyer’s “class”): Meyer_7.3_EL I’d have expected an urbane, Cambridge-educated guy like Meyer to ~~know the~~ [ETA: spot the erroneous] singular of “phyla” but that’s minor compared to his crashing howler of an attempt to demonstrate what the term means. ETA:3 Note: As Mung has pointed out, Meyer shows that he does know the singular of “phyla”, he just doesn’t get it correct it in this particular diagram. However, as I have said elsewhere (and above), this error is minor compared with the howler of including only a group of of descendents in his circled “phyla”, not the whole branch, which as I’ve said, undermines his entire argument.
Elizabeth Liddle

F/N: Clip on Stephen Meyer's biography: >> Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. A former geophysicist and college professor, he now directs Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. He has authored the New York Times best seller Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013) as well as Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009), which was named a Book of the Year by the Times (of London) Literary Supplement in 2009. In his first book on intelligent design, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009) Meyer examined the mystery of the origin of the first life. With Darwin’s Doubt, he has expanded the scope of the case for intelligent design to the whole sweep of life’s history. Meyer’s research addresses the deepest mystery surrounding the origin of life and the origin of animal life: the origin of biological information necessary to produce it. Meyer graduated from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, in 1981 with a degree in physics and earth science. He later became a geophysicist with Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) in Dallas, Texas. From 1981 to 1985, he worked for ARCO in digital signal processing and seismic survey interpretation. In 1986 as a Rotary International Scholar, he began his training in the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University, earning an M.Phil. in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1991. His doctoral thesis was titled “Of Clues and Causes: A Methodological Interpretation of Origin-of-Life Research.” >> It would be reasonable to conclude that someone with that background will understand the relevant history and phil of sci connected to biological origins sufficiently that "you don't understand jack" is not an appropriate dismissal. Particularly, given that the pivotal issue, the origin of bio-functional, complex specific organisation and/or information is indeed a significant issue. And, this holds for both OOL and OOBP. Perhaps, the root issue is that he proposes a controversial alternative, as say his reply to Falk outlines:
The central argument of my book [Signature in the Cell] is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question . . . . In order to [[scientifically refute this inductive conclusion] Falk would need to show that some undirected material cause has [[empirically] demonstrated the power to produce functional biological information apart from the guidance or activity a designing mind. Neither Falk, nor anyone working in origin-of-life biology, has succeeded in doing this . . .
Can objectors show a credible counter-example to this point? Nope. Can we show that FSCO/I has intelligently directed configuration as adequate, observed cause? Trillions of cases in point backed up by the blind needle in haystack search challenge. So, he has a perfect right to put his main claim. And those who dispute it on the claim or implication that he utterly misunderstands evolution should be able to make their basic claim in a paragraph or so that gives main thesis and core warrant for it in outline. KF kairosfocus

If it is a matter of principle to you not to go to TSZ, then, as I said, you will have to wait, because I don't have time to precis that article right now. In any case, as I said, it includes graphics (because it addresses a point that Meyer makes with graphics) so it would take me a while to recast that in a form that did not require illustration. But if it reassures, you, I do not get any financial or any other kick-back from hits to my site, so you would not be supporting any materialist project by clicking on the link. There are no paid ads or sponsored links on the site. Elizabeth Liddle

Dr Liddle Are you a person of principle? I am and if I go back on my principles of never ever going to TSZ, what kind of person am I then? Andre

Thanks. I'll need to digest it for a day or two before I can form an informed opinion. Mapou

Andre, if you don't want to sully your eyes with TSZ, then you will have to wait. I don't have time right now to try to write a 200 word precis when I already wrote a fairly concise and carefully written piece, with supporting graphics, that you can read at the click of a mouse, without registering, or even encountering anything more odoriferous than a couple of penguins. Elizabeth Liddle

OK, Mapou, but as I said, I laid them out in piece I wrote at TSZ. Here is the link: Meyer's Mistake. You will simply have to avert your eyes from the blog title, I'm afraid, because I'm not going to change it now. I've bought the domain name. And I can't put the illustrations in a comment box here. Elizabeth Liddle

Liddle:
Looks like no-one wants to actually engage with my reasons for concluding that Meyer doesn’t understand evolutionary theory.
I am actually interested and I said so at #49 above. Mapou

Dr Liddle I'll bite, give us your critique that Meyer's understanding is weak, I'll define my terms clearly and concisely. 1.) Do not link me to anything at TSZ, I refuse to visit that site because all it is, is a cesspool of angry materialists that don't give a crap about anything truthful, it is a very unpleasant place. 2.) You have 200 words to make your case. 3.) Please no personal attacks, just point out his weaknesses. Regards Andre Andre

Looks like no-one wants to actually engage with my reasons for concluding that Meyer doesn't understand evolutionary theory. Fine. But I cannot help point out the irony of the accusation that I have "no right" to criticise Meyer because I do not have qualifications in palaeontology. Elizabeth Liddle

Mung
Are you another ‘critic’ who hasn’t read the book?
I wasn't criticising the book. VJ asked for rebuttals of the 200 word quote in his OP. My comment was about that and nothing else and all I said was the quote did not include any argument for why ID was the best explanation. Mark Frank

"convoluted garbage"
Great description! Maybe getting close to a concise and apt label for what spews from Miss EL. butifnot

Elizabeth Liddle, "I am certainly not a palaeontologist. And nor is Meyer." I see, the bio presented in 38 is of the correct Elizabeth Liddle. With no biological qualification that I can see you dare to declare: "But he is no palaeontologist, and apparently doesn’t see that as a problem." "Well, I certainly know more about evolutionary theory than Meyer, that’s for sure." Ma'am, you have no right to speak as you do. bFast

So why does Liddle believe that Meyer's book should be dismissed as the work of someone who does know what he's talking about? PS. I don't read TSZ. Anything with the word "skeptical" in it is a turn-off for me. It smacks of self-righteousness. Mapou

phoodoo:
Based on your saying so?
No. Based on the grounds I gave. Elizabeth Liddle

Elizabeth, I have pointed out all kinds of errors in your writing. Anyone can simply say, Oh, you are wrong, and then force others to spend the next three days responding to mountains of convoluted garbage. You struggle with the meaning of the simplest words, and you want people to point out all of your errors in your critique of Meyer? You made a totally baseless accusation. You said Stephen Meyer does not have a strong understanding of evolutionary theory, and that yours is stronger. Based on your saying so? Well, guess what, I have a stronger understanding than you, and you are wrong. And look I didn't even need to point out that you have no science background for me to say that right? Does Behe have a stronger understanding of biology than you? How about Jonathon Wells? Simon Conway Morris? Ann Gauger? Philip Skell? Richard von Sternberg? Lev Beloussov? Giuseppe Sermonti? Or the 500 other scientists who signed the Dissent From Darwin document? Do they have a better understand of evolutionary theory than you, Lizzie. phoodoo

Barry:
Exhibit A for the truth of Lewis’ observation: Pretty much everything Elizabeth Liddle writes in these pages.
I'll leave judgement to the eye of the beholder. Elizabeth Liddle

Barry: your accusation was:
Liddle has avoided having to actually defend against Meyer’s claims by simply dismissing him as too stupid to understand why Darwinists like her are smarter than he. And that is contemptible.
This is demonstrably untrue. I have not "avoided having to actually defend against Meyer's claims". My "defence against Meyer's claims" has been on the internet since September 1st 2013. How can I possibly be "avoiding" doing something that I have already done? The fact that I did not reproduce my defense in that specific post does not, contrary to your assertion, indicate that I am "avoiding having to defend against Meyer's claims". Clearly I am not. You can't "avoid defending" something you have already defended, even if you wanted to, and I do not. I stand by my critique. If you want to mount a counter-rebuttal, feel free. Elizabeth Liddle

Oh, and Mung: Far from editing your post on TSZ, I restored someone else's post that that you had edited. Your posts will not be edited at TSZ, as I said, other than redactions of the narrow range of material I specified (porn, malware, personal identification). Clearly that means that if you yourself edit someone's post, those edits will be reverted by moderators. No post of yours was edited. The post you edited was restored to its unedited state. Elizabeth Liddle

I am certainly not a palaeontologist. And nor is Meyer. I do not criticise Meyer because he is not a qualified palaeontologist. I don't even criticise him because he, not being a qualified palaeontologist, writes a book on the palaeontology. I do criticise him for the errors in that book. If you think that Meyer is qualified to write the book, then I am just as qualified to point out the errors. In other words, qualifications are irrelevant. What matters is the content of the book. If anyone here disagrees with my critique of his book, then please defend Meyer against my critique. Elizabeth Liddle

What inclines me now to think that you may be right in regarding it [i.e. evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives, is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders.
C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters, to Bernard Acworth, 13 September 1951 Exhibit A for the truth of Lewis' observation: Pretty much everything Elizabeth Liddle writes in these pages. Barry Arrington

I wonder why phoodoo stated that she had studied music, while leaving out the fact that she is a trained scientist with a PhD in Psychology? Curious. daveS

DaveS, Perhaps Lizzie should look into Stephen Meyer's background? phoodoo

AMEN. Please lets raise the stakes on intelligence and its relation to ones acceptance of evolutionism after thoughtful reflection. AMEN. Finally the right to bring whether smart people agrere or disagree with evolution after studing it. I say the smarter folks will disagree with it more then agree with it. Yet they must weigh/study the facts and criticisms etc etc. Its very hard to do that for evolution believers who are smart. Themn don't get YEC/ID material and not well put. The more attention these origin subjects get the more evolutionism losess if serious reflection is going on by smarter people. Its an equation and a curve in the favor of truth. These ID authors are shaking the building but we need more. This evo building easily is on its last legs. Robert Byers

OK DaveS @ 37: Here is the bio from her school's website:
Dr Elizabeth Liddle achieved her degree in music education from the University of York, then studied Architecture and Urban Design at Oxford Brooks University before coming to the University of Nottingham to undertake a PhD in Psychology. Her PhD dissertation was on temporal and spatial attentional deficits in dyslexia. She has also in the past taught secondary school music.
No academic qualifications in paleontology. That is what phoodoo said. Barry Arrington

phoodoo, Maybe you should look further into Lizzie's background and occupation before crowing too loudly. lol daveS

Lizzie, I understand your complaint that Meyer is not a palaeontologist. Its an interesting point. Can you remind us all again, what is your background in palaeontology? I mean Meyer has only written, what, 4 books on the subject? So I can certainly understand why you feel you are much more qualified in this topic than him. Can you enlighten us a little more about your field of academic study? I believe you studied music, isn't that right? Have you no shame Lizzie? phoodoo

Mung:
So you put my name in there, not me? I don’t believe you.
Irrelevant. But, again to be clear, you inserted the following into my post, just as I stated at the time:
"Mung: I'm a slow learner. Enjoy it while you can. Guano calling."
C'mon, Mung. Sack up, own your mistake (hardly the crime of the century) and don't do it any more. Reciprocating Bill

Mung: Did you, or did you not edit a comment into RB's post ? Could you give a clear answer: YES or NO. Graham2

Reciprocating Bill:
Added to my post: Mung: I’m a slow learner. Enjoy it while you can. Guano calling.
So you put my name in there, not me? I don't believe you. RB: We'll violate our principles in order to uphold our principles and then hide behind claims of "no standing" when confronted with our violation of our own principles. I never doubted that. Mung

Liddle: "Exactly. His understanding of evolutionary theory is weak, and actual evolutionary theory is a better alternative." Dr. Liddle, Can you please point out how Meyer's understanding of evolutionary theory is weak? Just trying to understand where his understanding is weak and how that might impact on my perceptions regarding some conclusions that he makes in his book. Thanks! bpragmatic

Mung: Just so we are clear: are you referring to the comment you edited into anothers post ? Could you give a clear answer: YES or NO. Graham2

Mung:
Meanwhile, over at TSZ, a comment of mine was deleted. The justification, if you can call it that...
Just so we are clear: You inserted a comment into one of MY posts. I assumed it was you. I asked whoever it was to please refrain from doing so again. I did so because I don't want my posts misunderstood. Lizzie reinforced and generalized my request and your tampering was removed. Her aim was to restore my post to it's original state in response to my objection. She has my (retroactive) permission to do so, and certainly would have known that at the time. You have no standing in the matter. Just as one has no ownership of graffiti one sprays on others' property, and no basis from which to complain when it is removed, you have no ownership of content you insert into others' posts - and no basis from which to complain when a post is restored to it's original form and your tampering removed. Reciprocating Bill

Liddle:
Sure I did not make my defense in that comment . . .
And the tactic employed in that comment is the subject of the OP. What point is served by pretending that it is not? Your latest comment is like saying, "I don't always employee DDD#18, so it follows that I never do even when I do." I hope you can see that statement is a non sequitur. Barry Arrington

Meanwhile, the usual suspects rush in to defend the violation of the principles of TSZ while remonstrating against me for violating said principles. Predictable. Hypocrites. Mung

Elizabeth Liddle:
If you want to know what I think about Meyer’s book, come to TSZ, where nothing will be deleted except for porn, malware and personal details, and no-one is banned for anything except posting those things.
Meanwhile, over at TSZ, a comment of mine was deleted. The justification, if you can call it that:
Can I remind thread-starters not to moderate their own threads, even though you technically have that capacity. - Elizabeth Liddle
Elizabeth Liddle:
In any case, we do not edit posts, except to delete malware and porn links, or identifying info. No Loudspeaker in the Ceiling.
Just when I thought we had reached detente. I edited a post at TSZ. I did not remove any content from the post. In turn, my edit was edited and removed. But that does not happen at TSZ. Oh no. Never. We're not like that nasty UD. LoL. Mung

"He gets the actual definition – and entire concept – of a phylum wrong. And it is the basis of his entire argument." You need to be open to new ideas, Elizabeth Liddle. Dr Meyer is just a tad ahead of you in understanding phylum. Just a tad. Being kind. ppolish

Just trying to suck up to the enemy in case people here start thinking I am anti-ID and I have to go looking for a new home. Pure self-interest. Edit: But I was being serious. It happens. Mung

Thanks Mung. Appreciated. Elizabeth Liddle

I have to defend Elizabeth here. Even though I think she does a very poor job of addressing Meyer's arguments, she at least discussed the contents of the book over at TSZ. While her comment Barry cites may be dismissive, it would not be fair to say she has dismissed Meyer out of hand. And while in the cited post there was not a single word devoted to defending against Meyer's claims, Elizabeth has put some effort into doing that over at TSZ. Edit: I should have said "weak" rather than "very poor." ;) Mung

I made no false claim, Barry. Sure I did not make my defense in that comment but I have made it at length elsewhere. In other words far from "avoiding" having to actually defend against Meyer’s claims, I have already done so, in public, as many here know. Elizabeth Liddle

Mung:
1. Why do you then accuse him of making the most stupid of mistakes?
Because he made them.
2. Just not smart enough to know what he’s talking about.
Smart enough to know that he doesn't, which makes him culpable in my view. Look, it is not an "ad hominem" to say that someone has not understood something. It is an "ad hominem" to say they must be wrong because they were yellow cross-gartered stockings. I do not say Meyer is wrong because he is stupid. I say he is wrong because he is. And I have said, copiously, elsewhere, why. His argument about phylogenies shows he doesn't understand the basic principles of phylogenetics. His diagrams reveal this, as my marked up ones show. And it's not just an error on the part of the illustrator, because Meyer actually draws attention to them, and their features, indicating that they were commissioned to illustrate his point. He gets the actual definition - and entire concept - of a phylum wrong. And it is the basis of his entire argument. Elizabeth Liddle

Mark Frank:
He [Meyer] explains weaknesses in evolutionary theory as he perceives them but gives no reason why design is a better alternative.
Assuming you're talking about Meyer. If not ignore what follows. Are you another 'critic' who hasn't read the book? Mung

Liddle:
Because, Barry, as my link shows . . .
Link? Here is a link. It is a link to your comment, and everyone can see there is no link to any defense against Meyer's claims. Again, will someone tell me what purpose is served by making a false claim that anyone can demonstrate is false with five seconds of investigation? Madness. The rant that follows the latest falsehood speaks volumes. Barry Arrington

Elizabeth Liddle:
FWIW, I don’t think Stephen Meyer is stupid at all. I think he’s very smart.
1. Why do you then accuse him of making the most stupid of mistakes? 2. Just not smart enough to know what he's talking about. Mung

Because, Barry, as my link shows, I have posted a great deal about why I think that Meyer's claims are criticisms against a straw man. I did not "dismiss" Meyer, and I have not avoided explaining why I think the claims in he makes in his book are erroneous. If you want to read my explanation, start with my link. I address his arguments, I do not dismiss his person. And frankly, Barry, I see no reason why anyone should spend any length on composing responses to anything on this site, given the apparent risk that they will be deleted in their entirety without explanation. If anything is "ad hominem" it is your use of the "delete user" button on WordPress. If you want to know what I think about Meyer's book, come to TSZ, where nothing will be deleted except for porn, malware and personal details, and no-one is banned for anything except posting those things. Elizabeth Liddle

"Well, I certainly know more about evolutionary theory than Meyer, that’s for sure." Progressive Name Your Price Commercial - video https://youtu.be/dz84cn0D9zA?t=15 bornagain77

Barry:
Liddle has avoided having to actually defend against Meyer’s claims by simply dismissing him
Liddle:
untrue
Oh, my bad. I somehow missed in your 16 word comment the defense against Meyer's claims. You know what is utterly mystifying to me and I wish someone could explain it -- what does Liddle hope to accomplish by denying something so obviously true? Anyone can see that she simply dismissed Meyer out of hand, and there was not a single word devoted to defending against his claims. Yet when it is pointed out, she says "untrue." Barry Arrington

Well, I certainly know more about evolutionary theory than Meyer, that’s for sure.
Well of course you do Dr Liddle, of course you do. He doesn't even know how to create the rise of information from virtual critters in Brownian motion. Upright BiPed

Liddle has avoided having to actually defend against Meyer’s claims by simply dismissing him as too stupid to understand why Darwinists like her are smarter than he. And that is contemptible.
It is also untrue. Elizabeth Liddle

Upright Biped:
She knows the truth.
Well, I certainly know more about evolutionary theory than Meyer, that's for sure. I'm sure there's lots of stuff Meyer knows more about than I do. Elizabeth Liddle

For the record RB is absolutely right in #7. In fact I meant to write exactly what RB wrote: He explains weaknesses in evolutionary theory as he perceives them but gives no reason why design is a better alternative. I mistyped it that was all. Mark Frank

FWIW, I don't think Stephen Meyer is stupid at all. I think he's very smart. But he is no palaeontologist, and apparently doesn't see that as a problem. It is though, because he gets the actual predictions wrong. Elizabeth Liddle

@O'Leary
Still a leading work in the field since 2013. How likely is that because he does not understand the subject? A while back, one of Darwin’s followers said it was really just because the publishers were monkeying with the numbers by getting a lot of creationists to buy the book. In that case, I would suggest that the other publishers FIRE their marketing departments and hire people who know how to keep a book in the top ten for – what is it now, the better part of two years? I don’t buy that Darwin follower’s theory at all, but even if it were true, it would mostly go to show that catering to Darwinistas is a chump’s game compared to reaching out to thoughtful people.
Christian apologetics is big, profitable business. Gallop polls report every year or so that something like half of the American public believes that "God created man in his current form". That is, it's not half of Americans who think God was involved, perhaps guiding evolution, but, rather, that God created them de novo, no evolution. If that's the case, then combined with the various edifices of scientific knowledge on biology, cosmology, neurology, etc., there is and will be a very large market demand for such apologetics. I know in my extended family, which has many creationists, there's a lot of spending on books like this, and they get regularly recommended in churches, Christian radio and other media, as part of how a modern Christian keeps up with defending their faith. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, grossed something like $8MM in just the US. Think about that. If that's the case, then it's a wonder stuff like Meyer puts out don't do better than they do, given the pervasive persecution complex the majority Christian community in America has developed because of the trajectory of scientific knowledge in the past century and more. Also, will someone comment on the disappearance of all of Aurelio Smith's posts? I guess I can conceive of some highly unusual accident resulting in the deletion of his user account and therefore all of his posts. But given the empirical evidence gathered over several years on this blog, it's impossible to avoid the suspicion that this is yet another case of administrative abuse on this forum. If it was an accident, I guess I'd expect there to be some acknowledgment of that. eigenstate

Of related interest:
Steve Meyer vs. hostile reviewer Charles Marshall (audio of debate) - Dec. 1, 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKqzQwT3JXk Conversations with Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS3oq-5NkSrGIIfCcpaKkOhT
Here is Dr. Giem's 'cliff notes' lecture series on Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt (including a review of the critical reviews of Darwin's Doubt)
Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design - video playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t
Of related interest: Here is Dr. Giem's latest lecture which was just uploaded yesterday:
Beta-Pseudoglobin and Common Descent 5-9-2015 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syXTgAOZt3E A recent article argues that the beta-globin pseudogene is in fact used in regulating hemoglobin productions. This would destroy the argument that it is a shared mistake proving the common ancestry of apes and humans. The history of the controversy is reviewed.
bornagain77

Whatever the merits their quoted remarks, they aren't ad hominem at all: "Argumentum ad hominem means responding to arguments by attacking a person's character, rather than to the content of their arguments." I don't see any attack on Meyer's character at all in Mark's response:
He explains perceived weaknesses in his understanding of evolutionary theory but gives no reason why design is a better alternative.
I read that as "he explains weaknesses in evolutionary theory as he perceives them but gives no reason why design is a better alternative." Which has nothing to do with Meyer's character. Lizzie, somewhat differently, characterizes Meyer's understanding of evolution as weak - which is an characterization of his understanding of evolution, not his character or intelligence. Reciprocating Bill

REC:
2) Both have extensively blogged on this point elsewhere.
Indeed. There is plenty of evidence to substantiate my assertion at 5. Mung

Here's something to consider: Meyer's Darwin's Doubt, 2:00 pm EST Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Paleontology #2 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution > Organic #3 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071483 Still a leading work in the field since 2013. How likely is that because he does not understand the subject? A while back, one of Darwin's followers said it was really just because the publishers were monkeying with the numbers by getting a lot of creationists to buy the book. In that case, I would suggest that the other publishers FIRE their marketing departments and hire people who know how to keep a book in the top ten for - what is it now, the better part of two years? I don't buy that Darwin follower's theory at all, but even if it were true, it would mostly go to show that catering to Darwinistas is a chump's game compared to reaching out to thoughtful people. News

Elizabeth's understanding of Darwin's Doubt is weak. Mung

Barry should note: 1) VJ (ironically) posted this requirement: "And for skeptics of Intelligent Design: how would you attempt to rebut Dr. Meyer’s case, in 200 words or less?" 2) Both have extensively blogged on this point elsewhere. REC

This is why she positions herself as the first person to acknowledge any errors in her views. First, hell will freeze over. Upright BiPed

She knows the truth. Upright BiPed

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