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

by dhw, Friday, June 10, 2022, 10:42 (685 days ago) @ David Turell

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).

dhw: You have ignored this.

DAVID: Why do you throw old material in the face of new findings? Because it upsets your rigid theories you cling to. I'm trying to educate you.

And later:

Ancient articles do not answer current accepted peer-reviwed findings!!! Sorry if your rigid concepts are being damaged.

And under “genetic mutations are harmful”:
I accept new peer-reviewed articles as accepted new knowledge as ID does. In the Ediacaran new time gap finding with Cambrain, dhw fights it with old quotes. Peer reeview means science has accepted the new finding. We have to use it!! dhw is hoping future research will overturn it to salvage his rigid theories about evolution.

I asked: "Who has accepted it as valid? I thought this theory was hot off the press. Do you really believe that all research into the subject is now over? In any case, this one discovery does not invalidate any of the points made in the articles I posted." You have not answered. The shortened gap between Ediacaran and Cambrian does not make the slightest difference to the discussion on why we don’t have fossils of every single transition from species to species. Its only possible relevance is to the time available for speciation, and your next answer appears to confirm that it is NOT relevant. (Let me add that I couldn’t care less whether the gap was 410,000 years or 4 million years – and I have offered multiple theories about evolution. It is you who cling rigidly to one, which apparently only God can understand).

dhw: […] you have not answered the point that all the new species did not suddenly appear after 410,000 years!

DAVID: the issue is the small transition period in time, not species.

If it has nothing to do with speciation, why is it so important?

dhw: I doubt if every palaeontologist agrees that the Grand Canyon provides definitive proof that your God designed new species without any precursors.

DAVID: OFF POINT. More of your rigid thinking in bold.

What “rigid thinking”? I am not a palaeontologist, and so for any information I rely just as you do on the specialists. I do not assume, as you seem to do, that every palaeontologist agrees that the Grand Canyon proves that God must have created new species that had no precursors. And I do not assume that any palaeontologst who disagrees is a liar or a fool.

dhw: 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."

DAVID: Not valid as to layer separation in time.

dhw: Sorry, but how does that come to mean that all the defining characteristics of modern animals suddenly appeared fully developed 410,000 years after the Ediacaran period?

DAVID: Of course not. Form changes take time to develop new DNA instructional information. That is the required time lapse for speciation.

Since it took millions of years for Cambrian speciation to take place, please explain why the shortened boundary between Ediacaran and Cambrian of 410,000 years is so important.

DAVID: You are straw clutching. Shapiro's theory is fine with this.

dhw: Why is it straw clutching to point out that changes take place through generations rather than through the passing of time, and why do you regard the theory of cellular intelligence as straw clutching – especially if we propose that your God may have designed it?

DAVID: Genertions pass though time. Both are involved.

But changes to the genome take place by generations, not by the passage of time. Please tell us why this counts as “straw clutching”.

Punctuated trilobites

DAVID: our favorite Cambrians are yielding more secrets. It has alwasy bee presumed sex appeared in the Cambrian, but Edicraran 'frond-like animals could have had sex earlier.

Many thanks for this. As with the article on “neuropeptides”, we are slowly learning that fundamental features of “modern” species (brains, nervous systems, and now sex) did not suddenly appear in the Cambrian after all. New fossils keep emerging and confirming the theory that the evolution of species is a continuous process of common descent as life forms vary, adapt and innovate.