Cambrian Explosion: even had parenting (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 03, 2018, 20:45 (2207 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: Darwin rejected saltation, and saltation requires design. The Cambrian is an enormous saltation and offers the strongest evidence against the gradualism the Darwin theory requires.

dhw: You and I and many other believers in the theory of common descent – including some of Darwin’s own contemporaries – have long, long, long since rejected Darwin’s rigid adherence to gradualism. You and I and many others have also rejected his reliance on random mutations. Time to move on?

DAVID: Even Darwin could not explain the Cambrian. Accepting God does.

dhw: Accepting cellular intelligence does too. Move on.

DAVID: You can't explain where the intelligence came from. Intelligent activity requires implanted information for that intelligence to use. What is your source? I have God.

dhw: I don’t know why the information used by intelligence has to be “implanted”. I thought most information used by intelligence came from observing the situations it was called on to deal with.

And just where is the intelligence hiding in the automatic cellular responses? I've shown you information codes are hidden in the 3-D shape of organic molecules.

dhw: Otherwise, I’m delighted by your response, which appears at last to accept cellular intelligence as a feasible explanation for the Cambrian. And you are absolutely right. I can’t explain where that intelligence came from. That is why I usually add “possibly God-given”. I am an agnostic. My hypothesis relates to all of evolution, including the Cambrian, and for you as a theist it would do away with the various anomalies associated with having your God preprogramming or personally dabbling every single successful and, for 99%, ultimately unsuccessful innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of life, and doing so in order to produce sapiens’ brain.

Nice try, but I have said nothing of the sort. The loss of 99% is simply the rate of success and failure in a complex evolutionary process starting with bacteria, who happen to still be here. The problem in evolution was getting to complex multicellularity which happens to be much more fragile and less capable of responsive modification when threatened.