Encouragement for Biblical Creationists Regarding Evolution

KomatiiteBIF said:

My response is simply stating that the Cambrian explosion was anything but abrupt.

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Explosions are abrupt. Don't blame him for the reality of biology.

SkyWriting said:

Explosions are abrupt. Don't blame him for the reality of biology.

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I'm just saying, the Cambrian explosion spans tens of millions of years. Which is to say that it, biologically, isn't abrupt at all.

Geologically, maybe. But geology isn't really relevant in this case.

Also, I mentioned that other "explosions" of variation follow mass extinctions. Which actually makes sense in light of evolution, as organisms expand in variety while filling niches.

Would you call an explosion "abrupt" if it spanned 40 million years?

KomatiiteBIF said:

I'm just saying, the Cambrian explosion spans tens of millions of years. Which is to say that it, biologically, isn't abrupt at all.

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The evidence is in your favor.

SkyWriting said:

The evidence is in your favor.

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We have known for some time that complex animals existed in the Precambrian. So not much evidence for a sudden emergence of living things.

The Barbarian said:

We have known for some time that complex animals existed in the Precambrian. So not much evidence for a sudden emergence of living things.

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Wow.
I'm afraid you lost me. My watch just stopped I think.

SkyWriting said:

Wow.
I'm afraid you lost me. My watch just stopped I think.

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Cholesterol Proves Dickinsonia was an Animal

A team of international scientists including researchers from the Australian National University (Canberra) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), have finally solved one of the great puzzles in palaeontology. They have detected molecules of cholesterol in an ancient fossil to confirm that the bizarre Dickinsonia, part of the enigmatic Ediacaran biota, was an animal and therefore distantly related to all other animals including humans.

Before the Cambrian explosion and the evolution of hard-bodied organisms, there existed a strange biota formed of bizarre, soft-bodied organisms that did not show much affinity to Late Cambrian fossil groups and to any form of living organisms today. Fossils appear in sedimentary rock dated between 570 to 541 million years ago and have been found in Australia, (the Ediacara Hills of South Australia, from which this period in Earth’s history is named) and notably in Namibia, England, China, Canada and Russia. They were the first complex multi-cellular organisms to appear on Earth. Although the Ediacaran biota immediately preceded the rapid appearance and diversification of animals in the Cambrian, where these strange organisms fit within the tree of life remained a mystery. Some of these fossils appear segmented and show some bilateral symmetry, Dickinsonia for example, but most lack any obvious signs of a gut, a mouth, an anus or any appendages that might link them to the Animalia.


This new study, published in the journal “Science”, identified biomarkers, specifically the fat, cholesterol in the fossilised remains of Dickinsonia. This discovery confirms that at least one bizarre Ediacaran group, Dickinsonia and related taxa are members of the animal kingdom (Metazoa).
Chemical Clues to the Earliest Animal Fossils

NobleMouse said:

In other words, evolution asserts you and I have a common ancestor with chimps, cats, frogs, birds, bananas, cactuses, shrimp, etc... essentially everything. Among the first video links I posted here, Stephen Meyers with the ID movement has already addressed the fact that evolution does a really good job of explaining the variations that occur in life that has already been created (think of variations of rabbits... desert, arctic, dutch, american, etc...), but lacks the explanatory power to create the new information needed for major new, novel, functional features and integrated systems unique to distinct life forms.

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They do a lot more than that. IDer Michael Behe acknowledges the common descent of all living things on Earth, as does IDer Michael Denton, who wrote this.

it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies. In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny (my emphasis)

Young Earth creationism is completely incompatible with "intelligent design." They are two competing religious doctrines.

"the 2nd point is that if humans have been around for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years, it is very odd that there is no recorded history beyond 5,000 years"

Simply denying that history exists, is not justification for the idea that history doesn't exist.

Banpo - Wikipedia
Yangshao culture - Wikipedia
Cishan culture - Wikipedia
Earliest domestication of common millet (Panicum miliaceum) in East Asia extended to 10,000 years ago
Jiahu symbols - Wikipedia
Peiligang culture - Wikipedia
Pengtoushan - Wikipedia
Xianren Cave - Wikipedia

"As probably most here know, one of the anchoring principles used in assigning dates within uniformitarian geology (and acting as an enabler for the hypothesis of evolution) is called radiometric dating."

You've already demonstrated that you aren't familiar with the science of geology, and are in no credible position to challange geologists. Your words are nothing more than baseless claims.

@NobleMouse
If you disagree, perhaps we can pull quotes from prior discussions demonstrating your lack of familiarity with the science.


The truth is that, the earth was established as being far older than 6,000 years, hundreds of years before radiometric dating was even discovered. Radiometric dating is more of a form of confirmation, than it is an "anchor" in recognizing an old earth.

For example:

The problem of the Green River Formation

Here is one of many topics discussing uniformitarian geology.

Young earth beliefs are incapable of explaining even single individual formations, let alone entire sequences of rock.

The problem of the Green River Formation

Early scientists recognized the expanse of individual rock types and formations, that individually would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to form, individually. Given that individual formations such as the green river formation, really only make up a small percentage of the geologic succession (maybe 1%), young earth beliefs cant even account for the smallest of fractions of earths geology.

The founding fathers realized this hundreds of years ago (1700s) and established uniformitarianism.

It wasn't until the 1900s that radioactive dating entered the picture, in which radioactive dating was discovered and was realized to coincide with uniformitarianism.

For example:

If we look at continents today, they migrate at what is perhaps 5cm or so, per year. In some cases a little more, in some cases a little less.

If we measure the distance between the mid oceanic ridge and the east coast of north america, we get a number of cm around ~350,000,000 cm (depending on what part of the ridge you measure from).

If uniformitarianism is true, that would mean that at a rate of 5cm per year, the oldest rocks of the ocean should be somewhere in the ballpark of 70 million years old.

Here comes radioactive dating.



Hey, how about that. Radioactive dating actually provides results that match what we already knew based on uniformitarian geology. Most rocks along the edges of continents on either side of the mid oceanic ridge, date somewhere in that ballpark of 80 to 100 million years, depending on where you measure.

The oceanic ridge is closer to south america than north america, and so it should also follow that you have older rocks along the north american coast than south american. And so it is.

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So back to the original point. Radioactive dating, really is just complimentary to what was already established as an earth that is millions of years old. The established old age being a product of simple geologic principals such as...the law of inclusions, superposition, lateral continuity, original horizontality, cross cutting relations and more. These laws being really basic and fundamental concepts grounded in logic.

For example, original horizontality suggests that layers originally should deposit horizontally. Because of gravity. And any tilted layers beyond such, are a product of actions acting upon bedrock, after it has already been deposited and lithified.

Or the law of cross cutting relations. A fault or dyke which cross cuts a layer of rock, must post-date the rock at which it cross cuts. Else the features would be cross cutting empty space and wouldnt be cross cutting anything at all.

Or the law of inclusions. Clasts which are included in the matrix of another body, must post date its matrix, else it would be included in empty space and wouldnt be called an inclusion at all.

Simple, logically justified, supported by the evidence.

Indeed, young earth creationism isnt actually arguing against scientists and geology at all. What they are actually arguing against, when you really get down into the physics and chemistry of science, is logic. They are literally arguing against principals of logic and physical reality.

Which is why they fold, everytime scientists bring up things like the green river formation and overturned angular unconformities.

The Barbarian said:

They do a lot more than that. IDer Michael Behe acknowledges the common descent of all living things on Earth, as does IDer Michael Denton, who wrote this.

it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies. In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny (my emphasis)

Young Earth creationism is completely incompatible with "intelligent design." They are two competing religious doctrines.

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This is actually pretty interesting because, one thing i noticed years ago, is that Michael Behe supported common descent and the idea that say...mammals descended from reptiles and reptiles from amphibians and amphibians from fish etc.

I think it is a wise choice of intelligent design advocates, that they've parted ways with the likes of more fringe and wild creationists like ken ham or the criminal kent hovind.

KomatiiteBIF said:

This is actually pretty interesting because, one thing i noticed years ago, is that Michael Behe supported common descent and the idea that say...mammals descended from reptiles and reptiles from amphibians and amphibians from fish etc.

I think it is a wise choice of intelligent design advocates, that they've parted ways with the likes of more fringe and wild creationists like ken ham or the criminal kent hovind.

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The guy who invented ID, Phillip Johnson, is apparently a YE creationist. But he has no background in science at all. The IDers with some science knowledge are much more likely to be evolutionists like Behe and Denton.

NobleMouse said:

In other words, evolution asserts you and I have a common ancestor with chimps, cats, frogs, birds, bananas, cactuses, shrimp, etc... essentially everything.

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I don't really get the point of that. Are these the same people
who home bake casseroles and travel to other states to celebrate
their family reunion every summer? Do they get excited to see
the same stubby toe on distant relatives from two states away?
Are they charter members of ancestry.com? What is the purpose?

The Barbarian said:

We have known for some time that complex animals existed in the Precambrian. So not much evidence for a sudden emergence of living things.

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Thanks for the supporting data.
"Although the Ediacaran biota immediately preceded the rapid appearance and diversification of animals in the Cambrian, where these strange organisms fit within the tree of life remained a mystery. "

SkyWriting said:

Thanks for the supporting data.
"Although the Ediacaran biota immediately preceded the rapid appearance and diversification of animals in the Cambrian, where these strange organisms fit within the tree of life remained a mystery. "

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I figure ill just add on to this with a compilation of past discussions:

Aside from the ediacaran biota which predate the cambrian explosion, we also have:

Jellyfish fossil imprints, turtles, giraffes,...

"Arthropod trace fossils, sinotubulites, cloudina, sponges, brachiopods, burrows, mollusks and more. And these fossils have appears some 20 million to 60 million years prior to the cambrian explosion.

What is good to note though, is that many fossils that predate the explosion are actually soft bodied. And, soft bodied preservation is rare versus shelled body fossilization, because animals are easily destroyed by the environment if they dont have a shell. However, we still have soft bodied fossils anyway, and what these fossils basically tell us is that, it was the evolution of things like shells that made the cambrian explosion happen. Because, soft bodied life lived prior to the explosion, but it is the shelled life after the explosion that is recorded more readily by fossils.

So, its not that life simply appeared out of thin air, rather it was shelled life being more readily fossilized, versus non shelled life beforehand.

Someone might further ask, well, why did life evolve shells then? Why did the cambrian explosion happen at that time? Well, this was also the time of the rifting of the supercontinent rodinia, along with the end of what some geologists propose was the largest ice age the planet had ever experienced. The thawing of ice at the end of the ice age, mixed with the rifting of rodinia and formation of temperate environments that are ideal for larger complex life, could have been what set the stage for the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, which resulted in the evolution of shells, which increased rates of fossilization which further resulted in what appears to be an explosion of fossilized life."

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Heres a good one:

Was Adam 200,000 years ago?

"@NobleMouse

Did you know that the cambrian explosion occurred over at least 15-20 million years, and there are a good number of fossils that predate it, at least 20 million years prior, and even beyond that if you include fossils like cloudina, sinotubulites and the ediacaran, these go back some 80 million years prior to the explosion?

Even if you didnt recognize the ages of these rocks, it could still be said that there are a good number of fossils that are in rocks, superpositionally below rocks of the cambrian explosion.

So this idea of them just "poof"ing into existence in the cambrian explosion is just a misconception.

Also, there are both biological and geologic explanations for its occurrence."
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May as well just ride this one home:

Groundbreaking Paper Shows Thousands of New Genes Needed for the Origin of Animals

"What wasn't mentioned in the original post is that the Cambrian explosion actually occurred over tens of millions of years, as per the fossil succession. Add indeed, trace fossils such as arthropod tracks actually predate the cambrian explosion by some 10 million years, as the explosion is more well defined by hard shelled organisms than soft bodied.

Aside biological explanations related to evolutionary arms races, there are geologic considerations as well. Such as the ending of snowball earth, the rifting of rodinia and changes in oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere.
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-scientists-earth-youngest-banded-iron.html

So what you have is a changing of the global environment from an ice age, to a warm, rifted, well temperate environment with shallow seas, simultaneously aligning with the evolution of hard shells during an evolutionary arms race which promoted fossilization (shells fossilize more readily than soft bodied arthropods). But this in total still took millions of years to unfold.

Really, diversification prior to the cambrian explosion was occuring arguably some 30 million years prior to the cambrian explosion itself (maybe by 560 mya) with cloudina and sinotubulites. Then by 535 you get your increased number in trace fossils of arthropods anabarites, and other things too like sponges, molluscs and shelled animals and it wasnt until maybe 10 million years after that by 525 mya that you actually had an extensive appearance of fossils. But really the spike in idversity appeared closer to 515 mya, some 45 million years after early stage shelled fossils mentioned above.

So dont be fooled when people describe the cambrian explosion as something that happened instantaneously, or any short period of time.

To geologists, like myself, 10 million years is a relatively brief time, and i might consider it fast paced. But this is in the grand scheme of an earth that is over 4 and a half billion years old. But with respect to biological change and speciation that occurs naturally within tens or hundreds of thousands of years in todays age, or even 10s of hundreds of years under greater environmental stress....giving life 45 million years to diversify is no real complication.

Life has had an incredible amount of time for life to diversify. Far more time than really is necessary by any biological understanding of rates of evolution."

SkyWriting said:

Thanks for the supporting data.
"Although the Ediacaran biota immediately preceded the rapid appearance and diversification of animals in the Cambrian, where these strange organisms fit within the tree of life remained a mystery. "

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Cholesterol’s molecular fossil identifies Earth’s oldest large animals
Cholesterol’s molecular fossil identifies Earth’s oldest large animals

Turns out, at least some of the "biota" are animals. So the "mystery" has been solved at least as far as Dickinsonia is concerned.

KomatiiteBIF said:

Hey, how about that. Radioactive dating actually provides results that match what we already knew based on uniformitarian geology. Most rocks along the edges of continents on either side of the mid oceanic ridge, date somewhere in that ballpark of 80 to 100 million years, depending on where you measure.

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This is backed up by data on the magnetic orientation of iron within the rocks, showing the changes in the Earth's magnetic field over the ages:

The Barbarian said:

This is backed up by data on the magnetic orientation of iron within the rocks, showing the changes in the Earth's magnetic field over the ages:
View attachment 249786

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Yea, another concept that wouldnt make any sense for young earthers. You have issues with rates of seafloor spreading, but beyond that, issues with rates of cooling in relation to dipole shifts.



How would the rock record capture such flips, so rapidly in such fine detail? Many flood believers suggest that the global flood ended by the cenozoic, which makes even less sense because they have no explanation for their existence.

If the flood produced such rapid flips, these are flips recorded in literally centimeters or inches of rock. If the flood spanned 1 year and the continents spread 330,000,000cm, thats 900,000cm per day, 37,000cm per hour, 630 cm per minute which is 10 cm per second.

If you have flips recorded, spanning 1 or 2 centimeters, then literally you would have multiple dipole flips per second and somehow the rock would instantaneously cool while simultaneously spreading as magma, producing things like pillow lava and such, while spreading slow enough to differentiate between bands.

And this would have to happen up into the pleistocene, so somehow there would have seafloor spreading at pretty wild rates with dipole swaps multiple times per second which unexplainable differentiation and precision rock cooling between north and south shifts, while simultaneously you have things like smooth pleistocene faunal successions going on and ice ages.

It really doesn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense at all.

Flood believers who believe that the flood ended by the cenozoic, make more sense in this regard because they can bypass faunal successions and issues with ice ages, but they can't explain something like the above magnetic shifts.