Nature belongs to ID

I actually thought Vanessa's provided a great example of "a great leap forward in complexity and diversity" in the Cambrian Explosion because of all the new body plans that appeared, but it doesn't align with her argument because it isn't normally considered an example of punctuated equilibrium.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Correct the attribution.

Myself and many others here I'm sure have attended many debates. I personally try to go to as many as I can whenever I'm aware of one that's about to come up.It's always the same routine. The creationist/IDist would use the gish gallop routine of throwing out a whole bunch of stuff from a whole bunch of fields to the scientist he knows only specializes in one field. So, if the scientist is a biologist, the creationist would throw out a whole bunch of nonsensical phrases regarding the cosmos or geology. And it's always the case that the scientist would say that's not his specialty.What's sad is that 9 out of 10 times the crowd would be cheering for the creationist simply because the crowd is made up of know-it-all idiots who have no grasp on what it means to be a specialist. They think the creationist is smarter and more knowledgable because he could talk about many different fields while the, say, biologist could only talk about biology.I've worked in several different fields, and so I have a basic knowledge of several different fields. I don't claim to be a specialist of anything. But I do know when someone is BSing. And my BS-meter always goes off when I see a creationist/IDist talking out of their ass.And you're right. We don't need to go to debates to see this behavior in creationists and IDists. All we need to do is look at this forum. Somehow, creationists here know everything. And the rest of us lowly mortals only know certain fields.

Nitpick...Percy, why do you need to lie right through your teeth to make your point, whatever that may be? We all know that Vanessa did not say that. But you have to LIE and say that she did. Stop lying so much. Do you lie often? What a liar that you are. Liar liar.Sorry, couldn't help myself. If you don't get it, that was a joke. I got burned in court before for "lying" even though I made a typo in one of my reports. The goddamn son of a bitch defense lawyer labeled me as a liar for that typo. I think Vanessa would be amazed if we point out to her the actual time period, like how long, the cambrian explosion actually took place. Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

He was actually quoting Dr. A, the person to whom he was responding. I suspect putting Vanessa's name in there was a mistake.

You've stated probably the most misunderstood/misconception part of evolution among laymen. So, over time I've started to use example that is more to your everyday experience.When the internet was invented and businesses began to grow in the new niche, we saw an explosion of the .com businesses. The .com bubble then bursted and many many businesses went out of business. Those that survived (amazon, google, etc.) became very successful and stable.The cambrian explosion was no mystery. Over a span of tens of millions of years, life filled up all the new niches on Earth. What came after were a series of mass extinctions (bubble burst).See how easy to understand that is? No need for creationist mumble jumble.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Yes, I think you're right, but we should also tell her the history of our understanding of the Cambrian Explosion. That when first discovered it did literally look like a sudden explosion of life in Cambrian layers as compared to earlier layers, hence the name. It was only with improved dating and the discovery of softer-bodied predecessors that we came to understand how long and drawn out the Cambrian "explosion" was.--Percy

And that what we thought were body types that appeared in the Early Cambrian were really there long before the Cambrian.

The span of time refers to the length of the Cambrian explosion? Wasn't sure if you were referring to that or not, but if you were then I think it was only 30 or 40 million years.--Percy

You're right. It was more like 70-80 million year period. My point still stands, though. New niches opened up new possibilities. That's why these "explosions" were almost always followed by mass extinctions.Edit.So, I edited it.Anyway, if Vanessa is reading this, I hope that she realizes that these explosions weren't really explosions at all. Creationists always conveniently leave out the time span of these "explosions".I remember one of our discussions here was about how god must have started the earliest civilizations on Earth because they emerged "directly from the stone age" because the time span was only a few thousand years between the stone age and the first civilizations. Someone here then pointed out that according to that logic, Europe is just emerging from the bubonic plagues or the dark ages.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

Someone made a similar point a couple decades ago on CompuServe (from memory):

quote:

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What is "sudden"? What does it mean?

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In person's time, "sudden", happens within a few minutes or seconds, whereas in electronics it happens within microseconds or nanoseconds.

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In a society's time, sudden happens within a few years or decades.

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In a specie's time, sudden happens within a few generations, which can range from several decades to a couple centuries.

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In geologic time, sudden takes hundreds of thousands to a few millions of years.

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Punctuated equilibria (PE) was formulated based on the fossil record and hence speaks of "sudden" event in terms of geologic time; ie, hundreds of thousands to a few millions of years. PE's kind of "sudden" encompasses tens of thousands to millions of generations, depending on the length of each species' generation. Therefore, a species' "sudden" change in the fossil record could still have occurred very gradually generation after generation through those thousands and millions of generations.As the ill-fated wife of the inventor of the Infinite Perspective Vortex kept telling him, you need to keep a sense of perspective.

Taz says in discussing the video he posted: And yet you make statements as this: You seem to know more than paleontologists who are still figuring it out.No one knows how life formed on Earth. We are all in the same boat trying to figure it out. Perhaps it is premature to start chucking people overboard.As Ghandi said: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." If you value humility then adapt its principles and you will find that often people respond in kind.

While there is a great deal that we do not yet know, what we do already know fills, literally, books. See the Wikipedia article on the Cambrian explosion for an overview of what we know. Here's the opening paragraph: Taz was attempting to make a side point that Creationists and IDists make claims to knowledge that they do not have. You attempted an, "Oh yeah? Well, you're doing the same thing!" Except he's not. Our knowledge of the Cambrian explosion seems to include a great deal of which you're unaware.Nice job with the quotes, by the way.--Percy

I was under the impression that there is still a diversity of opinion on this point, and that there is as yet no consensus.--Percy

HI Vanessa and welcome to the forum. I often see this kind of attitude from creationists and ID advocates and I can't help but find it rather sad.As Percy says above, whilst there are things we do not know, there are many things that we have learned. Similarly, whilst there are many difficulties involved in studying the ancient past, it is still possible to learn something.I quite agree with you that no-one has ever seen the origin of life or a living Cambrian life-form. These are genuine difficulties in studying the ancient history of living things. Where we differ is in how we approach these difficulties. You seem to be suggesting, as so many creationists seem to, that we simply throw up our hands and despair of ever knowing anything about the ancient past. I think that is rather sad. I also think that it represents a rather naive view of how scientists operate.Palaeontologists are perfectly aware of the problems in studying something like the Cambrian explosion. They are aware that there are no eye-witnesses. They are aware that they must make their inferences from the rocks. They are aware that the fossils do not come with convenient labels. They can't know everything, but the difference is that they seek to work within these limits in order to learn as much as they possibly can. Does this mean that they must accept the limits of their method? Certainly. But does it mean that they should give up, that nothing can be learned at all? No, of course not.It seems to me that rather than humility, what you are advocating is a profound lack of intellectual curiosity. I can't see how that can possibly be a good thing.Mutate and Survive

And since we are dealing almost entirely with soft-bodied critters it's likely it will take a long time to build a broad consensus, but it's looking increasingly like things once considered Cambrian such as bilateral symmetry appears long before.