Fossils - Exposing the Evolutionist slight-of-hand

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Originally posted by Fred Williams:
I have recently completed an article exposing the sham behind the evolutionist's claims about the fossil record. This article is a little more abrasive than my others normally tend to be.

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No!!! Fred? Abrasive? Impossible!

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But I feel strongly that evolutionists are employing a sleight-of-hand, and in many cases it is *willful* because they continue to hide this sleight-of-hand (see article) when presenting their "evidence" for evolution in the fossil record, even after being told about this undeniable truth of the characteristics of the fossil record.

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And this has gone undetected until you came along, eh? Do you really thing that they have not thought about these things? And, Fred, do you have any idea how difficult it would be to perpetrate a conspiracy among geologists?Well, the essay is a bit of a laundry list of complaints, but perhaps we can look at a few. Even though I am not a biologist or paleontologist, I can come up with a few suggestions to improve on your essay.You make a statement:

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This problem has been exasperated by recent finds in China of highly advanced and extremely well preserved vertebrate life forms in the lower Cambrian strata. These fossils have collapsed the available time for the invertebrate to vertebrate transformation by at least 50 million years, to between 2 to 3 million years!. This is a blink of the eye in geological time (a period called the Cambrian Explosion), prompting the two primary Chinese scientists involved to bluntly admit that these fossils roundly contradict the theory of evolution.

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Perhaps you could explain how the 3 million year figure is calculated. And you don't tell us where the 50 million year change came from either. These make fine assertions, but you don't exactly inspire much confidence just throwing these figures around. Perhaps you are not familiar with the following: Cambrian ExplosionYou are basically saying that the end of the "Cambrian Explosion" has been moved back 50 million years (it seems like it was less to me, but I don't have the references), but you fail to determine when it started. Since the Cambrian Period was only about 50 million years, itself, I'm beginning to think you are still confusing the Cambrian Period with the Cambrian Explosion. This is critical. It could very well be that the beginning must be pushed back further, as well; even (gasp) into the Proterozoic. The point is that the Cambrian Explosion is at least partly an artifact of an incomplete record, and some evolutionist are beginning to believe that it was not so much of an explosion at all. In fact, I remember my professors suggesting such a thing almost 30 years ago.Furthermore, I think you confuse the first appearance in the fossil record with the actual original appearance of a phylum. They are not the same. Certainly vertebrates are being pushed back in time with new finds, but after all they are different vertebrates.The fact that hard body parts are not found prior to the Cambrian Explosion and the fact that some of these organisms were not found until relatively recently after hundreds of years of fossil collecting, certainly point to the possibility that hard body parts played a role in the Cambrian Explosion. Or maybe it was just a coincidence that the CE and hard body parts came along at the same time, eh? If your suggestion that this is not a factor were true, then why don't we see some hard body parts earlier in the record?Back to Fred:

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What about this miniscule and fragmentary portion of the fossil record where evolutionists have been forced to spend so much of their time & energy?

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Sorry, Fred, but paleontologists are not out to "prove" evolution as you seem to suggest. And there are a large number of them who deal with invertebrates. I've known experts on bryozoans and ostracods to name a few. Guess what ... they are virtually all evolutionists and no one is forcing them to study anything in particular.Maybe more later. It might be good to discuss each point separately, however, as laundry lists are a bit tedious.

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Originally posted by The Barbarian:
The major misdirection I see in Fred's rant is the sleight-of-hand (not "slight-of-hand") wherein he makes much of the relative frequency of invertebrate vs. vertebrate fossils. Most marine sediments are made of invertebrate fossils, which make up a significant portion of the Earth's crust. One might conclude, if one didn't know better, that there aren't many vertebrate fossils. In fact, there are millions. There are so many that there aren't enough paleontologists to survey all the ones existing in museum collections.

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I've often wondered where Fred got the numbers that these percentages are based on. So, Fred, did you count the fossils or something? And just what is the significance of the numbers? Isn't one of a species enough? I mean, why count all of the diatoms (or whatever the heck they are)in the cliffs of Dover?

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Originally posted by Fred Williams:
I don’t have much time today, but I’ll tackle a few and hope to get to more later. Comments to Moose, Larry, Edge, & Gene.

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Moose: There has been a progression as time has passed.

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Fred: Moose, this is a myth that informed evolutionists no longer accept. Note my comment to RetroCrono in another forum here, and Percipient’s follow-up.

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"The old Darwinian view of evolution as a ladder of more and more efficient forms leading up to the present is not borne out by the evidence. - N.D. Newell, Why Scientists believe in Evolution, 1984, p 10, American Geological Institute pamphlet

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Sorry, Fred, that's not what Moose meant. There is a progression of fossil assemblages present in the record. You have never explained this.

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Edge: And, Fred, do you have any idea how difficult it would be to perpetrate a conspiracy among geologists?

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I do not think it’s a conspiracy. I don’t think evolutionists got together and said, hey, let’s not tell them about that 99.99% of the fossil record where we find little or no evidence. I think they do it on an individual basis, and I happen to believe many are willful about suppressing this information.

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And noone exposes this willful suppression of facts until Fred comes along? Nonsense. Geologists are an independent lot and generally like to create arguments. This would be a good one. If I could disprove evolution, I'd jump so fast that your head would spin.

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The public is led to believe the fossil record supports evolution, and are invariably given examples out of that tiny sliver of the record my article talks about. The public is not told about the portion that yields a big blank.

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That's because the fossil record does support evolution. Do you have a better way of explaining the record?

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Edge: Perhaps you could explain how the 3 million year figure is calculated. And you don't tell us where the 50 million year change came from either.

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In addition to the National Geographic cited, also see this from the Boston Globe article I reference: And, because his [Chen] years of examining rocks from before the Cambrian period has not turned up viable ancestors for the Cambrian animal groups, he concludes that their evolution must have happened quickly, within a mere 2 or 3 million years.

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Indeed that is a possibility. But there is no evidence for when the changes started. Chen's lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. Just because the Cambrian Period started 3 million years before Chen's fossils doesn't mean that is when the organisms began to change. Didn't you read the article that I referred you to? It is very possible and even likely that the Cambrian Explosion is strictly an artifact of fossil preservation.

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BTW, the gap used to be believed to be 100 million years (Romer ’66). 100 mil is still the gap between jawless and jawed:...

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There are lot's of used-to-be's. Such as creationists used to believe that plate tectonics didn't happen. Now they think it happened at an astonishing rate and that microevolution indeed occurs, also. So what?

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hey evolutionists I can get you a good deal on the brookyln bridge. lol I hear the circus is hiring.

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Hmm, is this considered a meaningful post? Do you have anything of substance to add to the discussion?