Defence of Intelligent Design

Whatever, Oh no, dear boy! NO! If you accept there was such an artifact as the Cambrian explosion, it also means you must accept the stratigraphic significance. Which means you accept that it happened relatively quickly rather than it being an artifact of the flood. etc...Touche. etc...Unfortunately there isn't a single species found at the Cambrian base found today. More importantly, there are large taxonomic groups completely absent. Where are the marine vertebrates? etc... That is, teleosts, placoderms, sarcopterygians, cetaceans, etc... Where are the bryozoans? Where are the nematodes? Where are the cephalopod molluscs. etc... More importantly, why is NOTHING, & I mean NOTHING that is found in the Cambrian base found today? etc...Why are their animals AND plants predating the Cambrian explosion? etc...If birds & water creatures of all kinds were created on the same day, why aren't there any birds in the Cambrian explosion? etc...Of all the creatures mentioned in the bible why isn't a single one of the Cambrian fauna mentioned? etc...The question simply is this, why did so many taxa appear relatively so quickly at the Cambrian base. I often wonder why creationists bring up the Cambrian explosion when it only poses one important question to evolution, but at the same time in no way constitutes a falsification, but blows biblical creation completely & utterly out of the water. If the Cambrian explosion really were a creation event, then there is a mighty amount of macroevolution to be done before we get anywhere near the present flora & fauna.You simply have no idea. LAUGH OUT LOUD!!!!!!!!!Show me where a single terrestrial plant predates the Cambrian? Show me the bird that IS the earliest known tetrapod. etc...Thus proving, once & for all that creationists engage their mouths before their brains, if they bother to engage them at all. etc...Let me make it absolutely 100% crystal clear, Whatever. The fact that you happily accept the Cambrian explosion as being a creation event means it wasn't affected by the flood. It therefore stands to reason that all fruit & seed bearing plants appeared during the Cambrian explosion, & also aren't affected by the flood. The utter & total absence of angiosperms & gymnosperms (thats flowering & cone bearing plants, including all grasses) in Cambrian/Precambrian rocks completely falsify the creation account. etc... (just leaving my paragraphs open, etc...)Mark

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

Whatever, Yes, yes, yada, yada, yada. So why does the Cambrian explosian that you ACCEPT to have existed NOT be affected by this ridiculous "liquifaction" scenario when everything above it & below it has? etc...Perhaps you don't realise the depths of hypocrisy that you sink to? You accept the evolutionist stratigraphic assumptions when it suits you. The fact that they are utterly & completely contradicted by your liquefaction scenario & your creation axccount doesn't bother you one bit. Apparently you are more concerned with attacking evolution than being consistent within your own scenario. etc...Allow me to hit you with it again. Creation says that terrestrial plants appear before marine animals. You accept that the Cambrian explosion is a non-flood artifact because it is stratigraphically significant. Let's face it, you can't have it both ways, right?! Therefore everything below it that the bible says should be there should be there. But it isn't. A direct contradiction to the biblical account. You yourself have eliminated the flood as a cause. If the Cambrian explosion is due to the flood then you are watching your argument go up in smoke, or down the plug-hole perhaps? etc...But the bible says a lot of other things should be there too, but they aren't either. The bible says that lots of Precambrian flora & fauna shouldn't be there if your assumption that the Cambrian explosion is actually a creation event, but it is. Again, another crashingly obvious contradiction to the biblical flood account. etc...Once again for the cranially limited, YOU accept the Cambrian explosion as being a stratigraphically time limited event.... meaning it wasn't a fucked-up-jumble-flood-orgasm. Everything before is therefore also stratigraphically significant, & it also screws the Christian account. Something has to give non-consistency-boy! etc...Engage brain before tapping keyboard, perhaps? etc...THINK!!!! etc...Are you typing? Don't... etc...THINK!!!! etc...[edited to add lots of uneccesary "etc..." at the end of each paragraph in order to keep them open ended, i think][This message has been edited by mark24, 01-23-2004]

Whatever,You appear to be having trouble reading &/or comprehending.If the Cambrian explosion is pre-flood & an actual artifact, then it wasn't affected by liquefaction. This means that nothing below it was affected by liquefaction. Savvy? etc...So please explain etc..."Creation says that terrestrial plants appear before marine animals. You accept that the Cambrian explosion is a non-flood artifact because it is stratigraphically significant. Let's face it, you can't have it both ways, right?! Therefore everything below it that the bible says should be there should be there. But it isn't. A direct contradiction to the biblical account. You yourself have eliminated the flood as a cause. If the Cambrian explosion is due to the flood then you are watching your argument go up in smoke, or down the plug-hole perhaps? etc..."You are simply trotting out the same old crap, but evidently without realising you have made assertions that contradict your liquefaction nonsense. Tricky being consistent, isn't it? etc... It is contradicted by your own words, so no, it doesn't make any sense, let alone more sense.Mark

Whatever, Good grief, what was that supposed to be an explanation of?Fossils do not decompose.I really don't know how I can make it any clearer. I'll try a bullet point approach so that you have to address each issue.Your assertion: That the Cambrian explosion shows creation, & biblical creation at that.It appears in pre-flood sediments that are unaffected by the flood, & the alleged liquefaction. This means that any sediments in & below the Cambrian explosion are also unaffected by liquefaction/flooding.1/ Why doesn't a single species in the modern day exist in the Cambrian?2/ Why doesn't a single species in the Cambrian exist today?3/ Given that terrestrial plants were created on an earlier day than marine organisms, we should expect them to appear in the flood unaffected Cambrian sediments. They aren't. Not one. Not even pollen. Why?4/ All fish are created on the same day as trilobites, yet where are the teleosts, placoderms, sarcopterygians etc? Completely & utterly absent. Why?5/ Bryozoans are an entire phyla, & are completely absent from the Cambrian record. They should be there, where are they?6/ Why is 5/6ths of the fossil record in pre-flood sediments? How did those sediments get there?7/ There are unicellular & multicellular fossils predating the Cambrian explosion. They exist in sediments that are unaffected by the flood. How did they get there?You have completely absolved yourself from being able to use a flood as an explanation for any of the above.I would like all seven points addressed, one by one please.Please be good enough to click the reply button at the bottom of this post to respond, it makes it easier to track rather than tagging several posts together that actually shows as a reply to one person.Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 01-24-2004]

Whatever, Bwahahahaha!!!!!!ID is NOT a FACT, it isn't even a viable scientific theory. It isn't testable, nor falsifiable etc... What a clown.But since you're still posting , I would very, very much like a point by point explanation of issues 1-7, here. Please understand I expect your explanations to be consistent with all your other explanations, which thus far has been severely lacking.Mark

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

Whatever, There are no coral reefs in the Precambrian, blowing that entire paragraph out of the water. That's interesting. You reject the notion that not many things fossilise & thus it is difficult to find transitionals (despite them being found all over the place), yet you invoke exactly the same argument here! Absolute & utter hypocrisy.The problem for you is much, much worse, however. You have to explain why there is absolutely no evidence of any modern species, & not just species, but genus', families, etc.. in the Cambrian explosion. It takes MACROEVOLUTION to go from anything in the Cambrian to the modern day, not microevolution.So if you aren't going to be a hypocrite you have to drop the non-fossilisation argument, or withdraw the objection of "fully formed fossils" appearing in the GC. Which is it? Again, it would take MACROEVOLUTION to get from Pikaia to the most basal fish, let alone everything else. Extinction is no answer since they existed in the Cambrian (allegedly) & so should be represented in the Cambrian fossil record.And I redraw your attention to your missing fossil inconsistency. No, no, NO!!!! Liquefaction is an artifact of the flood, it never affected the Cambrian strata, it therefore couldn't affect anything below the Cambrian. Why is this so hard for you to understand? According to the creation account the trees & plants were created before the marine fauna, so where are they? They should be in what conventional geology calls the Precambrian. Not so much as a pollen grain! No, no, NO!!! Fish were created AT THE SAME TIME AS THE TRILOBITES et al, & their fossils should be contemporary with them. The Cambrian is pre-flood & is unaffected by it & the alleged liquefaction. So where are the major fish clades in the Cambrian explosion? No. The earliest Bryozoans appear in the Ordovician. Where are the Bryozoans in the Cambrian explosion? You really do have a comprehension problem, don't you?The basal Cambrian has 5/6th of the fossiliferous strata BELOW IT. This means that liquefaction & the flood couldn't have affected it. You accept the Cambrian explosion as a stratigraphically significant event, remember? That is, it records an event, & not flood jumbling up. That means it isn't affected by the flood, & nor is anything below it.So, why is 5/6ths of the fossil record in pre-flood sediments? How did those sediments get there? Well the trees aren't there, either. And algae & bacteria aren't herbs, they belong to completely different Kingdoms to Plantae. A complete non-answer.There are unicellular & multicellular fossils predating the Cambrian explosion. They exist in sediments that are unaffected by the flood. How did they get there?Mark

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

bran_sept88,In a study of 300 cladograms 75 % of which were found to be stratigraphically congruent. Ergo 75% of the fossils were intermediate. The study has since been extended to over 1000 cladograms. Put simply, the evolutionary assumption behind cladistics is tested to an unbelievably high degree. This also destroys any notion of the flood, & Whatevers beloved liquefaction, but since he doesn't understand the logical corollaries of his own arguments I seriously doubt if he'll be able to assimilate this.http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/1999SystBiol.pdf"Stratigraphic Consistency IndexThe SCI metric may also be summarized either as a mean value for each taxonomic group or as a proportion of cladograms that score SCI values of 0.500 or more, an indication that half, or more, of the branches are consistent with stratigraphic evidence. By both measures, fishes and echinoderms score better than tetrapods. Mean SCI values are: echinoderms (0.773), fishes (0.757), and tetrapods (0.701). Proportions of cladograms with SCI values $0.500 are tetrapods (100%), echinoderms (94%), and fishes (93%). For both measures, values for all three groups are indistinguishable according to binomial error bars (Fig. 3).Within the sample of echinoderm cladograms, nonechinoids show somewhat better results than echinoids but not significantly so (Fig. 3). The mean SCI value for echinoids is 0.724, and for nonechinoids 0.849; moreover, 90%of echinoid cladograms have SCI values $ 0.500,compared with 100% for nonechinoids.SCI values for fish groups are variable but not significantly different (Fig. 3). For mean SCI values, the order is as follows: sarcopterygians (0.904), teleosts (0.744), placoderms(0.741), agnathans (0.733), and actinopterygians (0.722). In all cases, all sampled cladograms show SCI values > 0.500. The rankings of tetrapod groups by both aspects of the SCI metric are comparable. Mean SCI values give this sequence: mammals (0.837), mammallike reptiles (0.729), lepidosauromorphs (0.714), dinosaurs (0.698), archosauromorphs (0.660), and turtles (0.586). The low value for turtles is significantly lower than the high values for synapsids, mammals, and mammallike reptiles. Proportions of cladograms with SCI values $ 0.500 give this sequence: mammals (100%), mammallike reptiles (100%), lepidosauromorphs (100%), turtles (100%), dinosaurs (86%), and archosauromorphs (78%)."Mark

Whatever, Good grief!!!Look, it is all VERY simple. You are claiming that the Cambrian explosion is an event. That means it can't have been fucked about by liquefaction or hydrodyamic sorting, right? That means it was, whether you like it or not, laid down as conventional geology says it was. That means liquefaction & the flood DID NOT AFFECT THE BASE OF THE CAMBRIAN & LOWER.DO YOU UNDERSTAND?Mark

Whatever, But they don't. They are a part of the rock. But hypocritically say: Clearly you meant that the Cambrian explosion was an event recorded in the fossil record. You now appear to be backtracking as hard as you can claiming that liquefaction actually eliminated any such artifact! When you meant that ID was responsible for the Ce you must've meant the Cambrian explosion didn't exist at all!Please can you reconcile your two contradictory statements, above. Was the Ce a genesis event recorded, or not. You can't have it both ways, mate.Good luck.Mark

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall[This message has been edited by mark24, 01-26-2004]

Whatever, You mean your argument got whipped, six of the best trousers down, don't you?You can't help yourselves, can you? You are such a compartmentalised thinkers that you never cross-check one of your held beliefs against another for consistency. This is ALL creationism is, tiny factoids ripped from their context at the expense of all directly contradictory data.It was crashingly obvious to anyone who actually was a critical thinker that you were being a hypocritical creationist grasping at straws for something that would support your view. Typical.Mark

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall