Cambrian Explosion: best illustrated guide (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 18, 2016, 14:12 (2923 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A wonderful article with great illustrations of some of the wacky forms, and a clear representation of the time lines:
http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/the-greatest-animal-war-QUOTE: "However, had the conditions been right but life passive, we might not be alive today. As soon as moving animals with mouths, nerves, and guts formed, they began to eat other animals—and their prey reacted. So ensued a biological arms race like the offensive and defensive escalation that occurs between warring nations (see Radiation). As predators gobbled up smaller prey, vulnerable animals landed on various means of protection: thick shells, spikes, and sophisticated methods of hiding. Their aggressors followed suit with specialized ways to track specific prey. Claws to smash shells, for example, or keen eyes to spot camouflaged prey."-David's comment: Certainly enough time had passed for preparation of an Earth with the proper concentration of elements and soil, 3.5 million years, but the drive to complexity is not explained by the article, only a Darwinian appeal to survival. 
-He does link the two: the need to survive resulted in more and more complex forms of attack and defence. But that doesn't explain the formation of “mouths, nerves and guts” which I think you and I would regard as the real mystery of complexification. However, I would link them together, because in my hypothesis precisely the same mechanisms are at work, glossed over by the wonderfully nebulous expression “landed on”. How the heck did vulnerable animals “land on” these innovations? My suggestion is that the cellular intelligence (perhaps God-given) which first invented the mouths, nerves and guts also invented the shells, spikes, camouflage, claws etc. No doubt your suggestion is that every one of these inventions was preprogrammed by your God 3.8 billion years ago, or was the result of his personal intervention, because every single one was necessary to provide the energy needed for the eventual production and feeding of humans.