More Denton: Reply to Tony (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 28, 2015, 23:32 (3406 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Believe me, I understand how enormously complex the changes have to be, but unlike you I can't announce what cells can and can't do in conditions we don't know about. (See also my response to Tony.) Speciation happened, and ALL the hypotheses entail stretching credulity far beyond what we know (though one of them must be close to the truth).....But you prefer to dodge the colossal implications with your weasel word “guidance”. -What is wrong with the simple concept of God guiding everything? 
> 
> dhw: The Cambrian lasted 5-10 million years, which allows for quite a few generations (I calculated the number in an earlier post.) We must assume that the necessary changes did take place in the allotted time.... But mine [theory] does have a simple logic, if only I could get it across to you...-Not simple logic at all. Lets use an analogy: life is progressing along as very simple forms on a flat plain in the Precambrian times, and suddenly falls off a cliff into the Cambrian where it has amazingly changed into very complex multi-organ-system animals at the bottom. This is what the fossil record shows, no time for a change. Suddenly they are just there. This is what Darwin described as his greatest concern in 'Origin'. Your theory simply does not fit the Cambrian Explosion. The use of the word 'explosion' makes the point, very sudden. From Ediacarans, bilatarians, sponges an anemones to as complex as we are sans enormous brains with NOTHING in-between. You are using the whole Cambrian to gloss over the suddenness. Won't work.