Science, Creation & EvolutionSudden appearance of phyla in the Cambrian explosionOk, fair enough. I'll accept that your rejection of evolution had nothing to do with religion. This is basically an argument from incredulity and, as such, of little use in the debate. It's saying "I don't see how it can be true", but that is a far cry from demonstrating it to be false. There's nothing wrong with such a stance, but it puts you in an awkward position because it seems to indicate your mind is closed on the matter. All science is fair game. I rarely post in haste. We know that evolution is real because we experience it everyday. We also teach this about evolution (at least I do and most of my colleagues do this as well). We explain that we know evolution happens, continues to happen and has happened in the past, but that there are a number of (as yet) unexplained phenomena (such as the CE). If we take the dogmatic stance and say that 'no way could evolution explain the CE', then we stop doing science. At the moment, there are no alternative explanations for the Cambrian fossil record. I actually spoke with Paul Nelson of the Discovery Institute at a meeting of the Geological Society of America (see these people do have a forum to present their views). Paul (a philosopher by training) had a poster on the CE where he was trying to make the point that cells must have known beforehand what the end result was going to be and that they must have known in a hurry. He calls this 'the marching band problem'. Simply put it says that every member of the band must know where he/she must end up after a series of maneuvers in order to spell out a particular word. It's an interesting view of evolution that suggests that evolution has a goal. However, most evolutionary biologists don't think that evolution set out to 'make a trilobite' and rather than having an end goal in sight, evolution makes do with what it already has and thus we see evidence of sub-optimal 'design' in things like the eye and the knee. I know you reject the notion that these designs are sub-optimal and I don't want to further belabor the point, but it illustrates the nature of the issue. If you want to adopt some ID explanation for the CE (and I'll even help you out here since you never came out with this yourself) such as Goddidit, then I might ask you why? Why did God create the trilobites and then kill them off with a large volcanic eruption? Why did God make the dinosaurs and then kill them off with an asteroid? Was God tinkering with the design with the eventual goal of producing a human and then kill off everything that came before? These are just questions I have, so if you agree that ID is a useful (and perhaps eventually scientific) pursuit, then questions such as "Why" will logically follow. -E |
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