h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<>

Why would I bother? I am not an apologist for the German church 60+ years ago, and you're so slippery you'd just ignore, selectively interpret and refuse to listen anyway.

Find your own damn links, I am going to bed, it's far too late.

Sweet dreams.

Enough evidence to satisfy even an American court?

Heavens, that must be proof indeed. Foolish us, that we are prepared to admit Mao and Stalin were atheists, but when it comes to Hitler our emotions suddenly flare up and we are blinded.

'Someone else can deal with it'

Except that there is no-one else here who thinks Hitler was an atheist.

Gif

"How on earth does the Cambrian explosion contradict Darwin? Multicellular animals happened, and then very suddenly colonised the globe? Is that not exactly what Darwin would've predicted? Would you also attribute the massive explosion in human numbers over the last few years to an intelligent designer?"

The sudden emergence of a huge variety of fully-formed large animals where only very small ones existed before contradicts the idea that life evolved through slow, gradual changes.

<>

Gradual in this case is a few million years. And the animals evolved from fully-formed small animals, not out of nothing.

>contradicts the idea that life evolved through slow, gradual changes.<

Neo Darwinism which has developed the original theory, posits the concept of 'punctuated' evolution, ie periods when evolution suddenly operates apace for all sorts complex environmental factors. Evolution suddenly happening at a higher rate is fully in accordance with the theory of natural selection. It just happens a bit quicker sometimes, but the mechanism is still the same.

Hi NPF,

Good job for biologists that's not what we see in the Cambrian then, eh?

F'rinstance, we only know of around a dozen or so basic critters from the Cambrian boundary (depending on how different they have to be before they count as a different 'variety'). Most of those could be described as 'shrimp-like' or 'worm-like'. (There is at least one notable exception that is unlike anything alive today.)

Although they do fit into different phyla, you'd have to be a real expert to see that; phyla in the precambrian were much more like each-other than phyla are now, and each contained far, far fewer species - exactly as we'd expect if Darwin was right. There is no precambrian equivalent of classes or families - there simply wasn't enough variation, as far as we could tell.

What Darwin didn't realise is that several whole phyla have gone extinct. Gould in particular is of the opinion that this may have had a lot to do with sudden environmental change, and very little to do with the evolutionary 'fitness' of the organisms.

The Cambrian boundary is also surprisingly *late* in the history of life. Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and life probably 3 billion years at least. The precambrian ended just 550 million years ago. The fossil record of the first 2.5 billion years of life is woefully incomplete because it was soft-bodied. There was plenty of time for complex life to have evolved and diversified in that time, and we do have a small amount of fossil evidence of it.

Gif

Double simulpost

Gif

"I accept that, as I phrased it, my argument against God relies on the concept of time, and of God being within it. But your response, that if God is outside time then all is resolved, simply raises all the same questions. Where did God come from? If She didn't appear over time, how did such complexity arise?"
Something that exists outside of time would probably originate at all points in time. (Anything a being that exists outside of time does, it would do at all points in time)

In the article you linked to, Dr. Garin Young said, “The vertebrate eye is the best example of structural perfection – as used by proponents of intelligent design to claim that something so complex couldn’t possibly have evolved,”

That isn't even true that the vertebrate eye is the best example. The current best example used by intelligent design proponents is in the field of molecular biology. They argue that even the simplest cell has irreducible complexity. (i.e. there is no explanation for life itself even before macro evolution, if it is real, could apply)

The article calls the findings about the positions of muscles that support the eye, "evidence" ... but I'd really like to see a picture that illustrates this, since if you don't automatically assume Darwin was correct, there is often a wide range of possible interpretations for new data. The other article you linked to makes an argument I have heard before, and everybody knows the human eye isn't the best eye in existence, (Eagles obviously see better than humans do) so I don't even understand why they bring that fact up.

Hi NPF,

The human cell is ceomplex, but it isn't irreducibly complex, because parts of it can be removed and still leave a functioning cell (that's the definition of IC). In fact, we have some clear evidence on how cells must have evolved, despite this being way, way back before the earliest fossil evidence.

Did you know that the human cell contains within it structures called mitochondria, which look remarkably like the remains of bacteria that were subsumed by early animal cells? They have their own DNA and are more closely related to bacteria than to humans.

Gif

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the fossil record would probably not be able to distinguish between something that happened instantly and something that happened over say, a few million years such as the start of the Cambrian. As far as I've heard, fossil dating methods (many of which I find highly suspect) only even claim to be able to date fossils within a few million years or so. If, hypothetically, a huge number of radically different types had appeared not merely suddenly, but actually instantaneously, what would the fossil record show that is different from what people claim it actually shows? It seems to me that many scientists and academics assume by default that Darwin's theories are correct before they even go looking.

I think the other article talks about the eye because that is a favourite Creationist example of something that is 'too well designed to have evolved'.

Gif

I'm finding the eye argument fascinating! In all my time I've never realised there is so much debate about it

Hi NPF,

You're absolutely right, precise dating during the Cambrian boundary is difficult. This makes it very difficult to use this as evidence either for or against evolution.

The fossil evidence for evolution is therefore mostly taken from later, easier-to-date fossils. The evidence from these (and other sources) is so convincing that palaeontologists are, as you say, already fairly confident about evolution by the time they come to study the Cambrian boundary.

Gif

It seems to have escaped our notice that, according to Godwin's Law, this pretense at discussion officially ended on Post #54

All ensuing posts, including this one, are purely illusory

Gotta cross-post this here, obviously:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Understanding-Intelligent-Design/dp/1592575552

Would that be a contestant for the Redundant Book Title Award?

You can use the preview feature on Amazon to see inside the book. I like this from page 8:

'[The Flood] is considered dubious by many contemporary geologists.'

And the Oscar for biggest understatement goes to...

Gif

Giford, in relationship to the mitochondrian evolutionary ideas as regards its origionally being a microorganism, there is a simular set of ideas regarding possible bassis of the nuclear membrane and some other subcellular structures... Quite interesting stuff I seem to recall from wehn I looked at it all, but been a long time since I did so

Hi 2legs,

Didn't know that about the cellular membrane - I'd heard something similar about chloroplasts.

Gif