Return to David's theory of evolution PART 2 (Cambrian) (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 08, 2022, 12:10 (897 days ago) @ dhw

I have shifted this from “More miscellany”, because the Cambrian is so fundamental to your theory.

dhw:: Does every palaeontologist in the world believe the Cambrian gaps are caused by God creating species without precursors?

DAVID: Of course not! Only believers as is obvious.

We are both totally reliant on the findings of the experts. It is of course perfectly understandable that you will choose to quote experts who believe what you believe, and I’m in no position to start studying palaeontology in order to refute them, but I’d be most reluctant to assume that every non-believing palaeontologist is a fool or a liar. (NB In all our discussions concerning your theories, I have allowed for God as the creator, though I generally add the rider: “if he exists”.)

DAVID: […] Egnor's view is when new stuff dosen't change anything over time, lack of fossils as an arguement disappears.

dhw: I don’t understand. There have always been periods of stasis. How does that mean that when changes do take place (punctuated equilibrium), fossils of all transitions and species must always be preserved, even if conditions are unsuitable for the preservation of bodies over millions of years?

DAVID: Soft tissues (brains) have been found if you look far and wide enough: Cambrian in Nmibia, Canada, China, USA as starters. If we hunt enough and find nada, it isn't there. (Egnor)

Why have you focused on soft tissues? They are less likely to be preserved than hard tissues. I never said that none had been found. As regards your Egnor quote, a) new fossils are being found all the time, but (b) if fossils are not there, we can list a number of perfectly reasonable explanations for WHY they are not there. I referred you earlier to 4 different websites, and also gave you a list of reasons on Monday.

Ediacaran-Cambrian transition: 410,000 years

dhw: Thank you for this. I don’t understand the figures given by the other researchers, which appear to allow for variations amounting to millions of years. In any case, the various new life forms did not occur all at once at the beginning of the Cambrian, which itself lasted for 13-25 million years (Wikipedia).

You have ignored this.

dhw: Meanwhile, in order to restore the balance, I have found a website that disputes your version of the Cambrian. Written in 2019:
Does the Cambrian Explosion pose a challenge to …
https://biologos.org/common-questions/does-the-cambrian-expl…

DAVID: Very poor analysis on your part. The article you quote is dated "January 29, 2019". Your rigid reliance on old news to refute my up-to-date article shows how rigid you are. My open integrity will stay in full view as I follow the GAP as always.

I told you it was written in 2019, and the arguments are not “old news”. Your new news is that one team reckons the boundary between Ediacaran and Cambrian was only 410,000 years. That alters nothing except the time available for all the transitions, and for all we know, that will also be “old news” in 2023. You are really struggling if your only criterion for judging the reasonableness of arguments is the date when they were written. Some relevant quotes:

QUOTES: It is also important to realize that many of the Cambrian organisms, although likely near the base of major branches of the tree of life, did not possess all of the defining characteristics of modern animal body plans. These defining characteristics appeared progressively over a much longer period of time.

Some of the new fossil discoveries, in fact, appear to be more primitive precursors of the later Cambrian body plans.

(This ties in with the remarkable discovery you alerted us to under “neuropeptides”)

The sudden change of the Cambrian Era was, in relative terms, not too sudden for the process of evolution. The changes during the Cambrian Era did not occur over decades, centuries, or even thousands of years; they occurred over millions of years—plenty of time for evolutionary change.

(A hugely important observation, especially if you bear in mind Mirouze’s point that “TEs are likely major drivers of rapid evolution – changes measured in terms of generations rather than millennia.” Add to this Shapiro’s theory that intelligent cells (not random mutations) produce the innovations that lead to speciation, and there is indeed “plenty of time for evolutionary change”. Which of these arguments have been invalidated by the up-to-date estimate of 410,000 years?)