Activity at EvC has been rather low recently. Perhaps it's because we're all talking about obscure and highly technical stuff that bores the average person. It might be nice to talk about one of the classics again.
I haven’t seen a thread devoted entirely to the Cambrian Explosion for awhile, even though the topic has come up often in passing in many different threads. I particularly like the Cambrian Explosion, because, as an entomologist and a long-time science-fiction fan, I have always been interested in bizarre creatures, and the Cambrian Explosion has its share of bizarre creatures, such as
Opabinia regalis (my personal favorite).
So, what does everyone think about the Cambrian Explosion?
As most of us know, creationists will often cite the apparently rapid radiation of animal groups around the beginning of the Cambrian period as evidence against the uniformitarian principles that scientists generally consider prevalent in the processes of evolution. Often, however, reference to the Cambrian Explosion is only made in passing, and no major attempt is made to explain its relevance in the thread. So, I propose this thread to discuss the role of the Cambrian Explosion in the evolutionary and ID models of natural history.
I argue that the Cambrian Explosion does not evidence a special creation. I would like to explore perhaps three main themes:
- The Phyla Argument: Creationist claims inflate the drama of the event by pointing out that all modern phyla appear within 50 million years, while failing to note that the difference between phyla at the time was far less than the difference between their descendants today. This was discussed rather thoroughly here, so it need not be emphasized in this thread: I included it so that it wouldn’t be simply overlooked.
- The Pace Argument: Creationists claim that the “rapid” appearance of a diverse fauna must be interpreted by evolutionists as an unrealistically fast rate of change, and that it is thus better explained as an untransitioned, spontaneous creation. However, I contend that mutations need not have happened at a higher rate than today, because the lower diversity in the fauna would have lowered competition and allowed a greater proportion of the mutations that occurred to survive and accumulate. Aside from this, there may not be any support for the claim evolution during the Cambrian Explosion happened at a faster pace, anyway.
- The Snapshot Effect: Creationist claims of suddenness for the Cambrian Explosion are also compounded by the “snapshot” effect. Claiming that the appearance of Cambrian shelly fauna in only a handful of locations is evidence of spontaneous creation is akin to claiming that the discovery of only a single praying mantis in a field indicates that said mantis must have been created by God, because there was nothing around it for it to have evolved from.
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I would be interested in hearing creationists' response to the last two points (let's save point #1 for emergencies, such as if the thread dies down too early, or something).
-Bluejay
Darwin loves you.
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