Creationism=religious philosophy, evolution=science

[Exiledoomsayer]

Thank you for finding it.

My pleasure.

 

[Oncedeceived]

a) Fine, I'll look it up. Here it is:
Origin of Species : Chapter X. On the Imperfection of the Geological Record : On the sudden appearance of groups of allied species in the lowest known fossiliferous strata by Charles Darwin @ Classic Reader



A few things are clear here: first, he had no clue whatsoever that there might have been single-celled life, and had precious little knowledge as to how old the Earth actually was. This shouldn't be surprising if you know your history. But he did turn out to be correct that sixty million years is too short a time since the Cambrian, which was in reality closer to 500 million years ago. But he also suspected that at certain times, evolution may proceed more quickly than at other times, due to strong selective pressures.

b) Ediacara biota - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mr. Croll estimates that about sixty million years have elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the commencement of the Glacial epoch, appears a very short time for the many and great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the previous one hundred and forty million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which already existed during the Cambrian period.
emphasis mine.

You see he didn't think that even that 140 million years would be sufficient and it was only around 5 million that was available. So how do you feel he was correct?

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

Mr. Croll estimates that about sixty million years have elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the commencement of the Glacial epoch, appears a very short time for the many and great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the previous one hundred and forty million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which already existed during the Cambrian period.
emphasis mine.

You see he didn't think that even that 140 million years would be sufficient and it was only around 5 million that was available. So how do you feel he was correct?

Well he continues with.

It is, however, probable, as Sir William Thompson insists, that the world at a very early period was subjected to more rapid and violent changes in its physical conditions than those now occurring; and such changes would have tended to induce changes at a corresponding rate in the organisms which then existed.

It would seem that darwin was aware that evolution could happen rapidly given the right conditions.

Just checking how did we go from 140 mil to 5 mil?

 

[Chalnoth]

Mr. Croll estimates that about sixty million years have elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the commencement of the Glacial epoch, appears a very short time for the many and great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the previous one hundred and forty million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which already existed during the Cambrian period.
emphasis mine.

You see he didn't think that even that 140 million years would be sufficient and it was only around 5 million that was available. So how do you feel he was correct?

Um, the 140 million years quoted was believed to be the entire previous history of the Earth. Which it clearly wasn't. So Darwin was absolutely, positively correct here: 140 million years wasn't enough to generate all of the variety of the Cambrian. The about 3 billion years or so that life actually had, however, was quite enough.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Well he continues with.

It would seem that darwin was aware that evolution could happen rapidly given the right conditions.

What I think he was referring to here, is that since it was a violent time the life forms would be less likely to be present or evolving very quickly due to the harshness of the environment. He was of course unaware of the earliest life forms we now know of almost at the very beginning of the earth's history.

He was under the impression that life could not really "take off" due to the harsh conditions.

Just checking how did we go from 140 mil to 5 mil?

In any case, they apparently died out well before the Cambrian biota evolved. The Cambrian then began with an assemblage of bits and pieces, frustratingly difficult to interpret, called the "small shelly fauna." The subsequent main pulse, starting about 530 million years ago, constitutes the famous Cambrian explosion, during which all but one modern phylum of animal ]ife made a first appearance in the fossil record. ( Geologists had previously allowed up to 40 million years for this event, but an elegant study, published in 1993, clearly restricts this period of phyletic flowering to a mere five million years.) The Bryozoa, a group of sessile and colonial marine organisms, do not arise until the beginning of the subsequent, Ordovician period, but this apparent delay may be an artifact of failure to discover Cambrian representatives.

Emphasis mine
Source

 

[Oncedeceived]

Um, the 140 million years quoted was believed to be the entire previous history of the Earth. Which it clearly wasn't. So Darwin was absolutely, positively correct here: 140 million years wasn't enough to generate all of the variety of the Cambrian. The about 3 billion years or so that life actually had, however, was quite enough.

Well there you go, if you don't think that 140 million years was enough, how does 5 million explain it?

Again:

Source

More curiously, all major stages in organizing animal life's multicellular architecture then occurred in a short period beginning less than 600 million years ago and ending by about 530 million years ago - and the steps within this sequence are also discontinuous and episodic, not gradually accumulative. The first fauna, called Ediacaran to honor the Australian locality of its initial discovery but now known from rocks on all continents, consists of highly flattened fronds, sheets and circlets composed of numerous slender segments quilted together. The nature of the Ediacaran fauna is now a subject of intense discussion. These creatures do not seem to be simple precursors of later forms. They may constitute a separate and failed experiment in animal life, or they may represent a full range of diploblastic (two-layered) organization, of which the modern phylum Cnidaria (corals, jellyfishes and their allies) remains as a small and much altered remnant.
In any case, they apparently died out well before the Cambrian biota evolved. The Cambrian then began with an assemblage of bits and pieces, frustratingly difficult to interpret, called the "small shelly fauna." The subsequent main pulse, starting about 530 million years ago, constitutes the famous Cambrian explosion, during which all but one modern phylum of animal ]ife made a first appearance in the fossil record. ( Geologists had previously allowed up to 40 million years for this event, but an elegant study, published in 1993, clearly restricts this period of phyletic flowering to a mere five million years.) The Bryozoa, a group of sessile and colonial marine organisms, do not arise until the beginning of the subsequent, Ordovician period, but this apparent delay may be an artifact of failure to discover Cambrian representatives.

 

[Chalnoth]

What I think he was referring to here, is that since it was a violent time the life forms would be less likely to be present or evolving very quickly due to the harshness of the environment. He was of course unaware of the earliest life forms we now know of almost at the very beginning of the earth's history.

He was under the impression that life could not really "take off" due to the harsh conditions.


In any case, they apparently died out well before the Cambrian biota evolved. The Cambrian then began with an assemblage of bits and pieces, frustratingly difficult to interpret, called the "small shelly fauna." The subsequent main pulse, starting about 530 million years ago, constitutes the famous Cambrian explosion, during which all but one modern phylum of animal ]ife made a first appearance in the fossil record. ( Geologists had previously allowed up to 40 million years for this event, but an elegant study, published in 1993, clearly restricts this period of phyletic flowering to a mere five million years.) The Bryozoa, a group of sessile and colonial marine organisms, do not arise until the beginning of the subsequent, Ordovician period, but this apparent delay may be an artifact of failure to discover Cambrian representatives.

Emphasis mine
Source

*sigh* Some of the Cambrian forms, such as trilobites, have clear ancestors in the Ediacaran, and it is generally expected that it was the evolution of shells which results in forms seeming to appear suddenly, even though the overall body plans had been laid down much sooner. Either way, 5 million years is an extreme exaggeration of the time it took for these phyla to appear.

 

[Oncedeceived]

My pleasure.

 

[Chalnoth]

Well there you go, if you don't think that 140 million years was enough, how does 5 million explain it?

Because the history of life prior to the Cambrian is far longer than either 5 million or 140 million years?

 

[Oncedeceived]

*sigh* Some of the Cambrian forms, such as trilobites, have clear ancestors in the Ediacaran, and it is generally expected that it was the evolution of shells which results in forms seeming to appear suddenly, even though the overall body plans had been laid down much sooner. Either way, 5 million years is an extreme exaggeration of the time it took for these phyla to appear.

*sigh* I don't know where you are getting your information, but clear
ancestors in the Ediacara fauna are not in the fossil record.

Vendian Period, 600-540 MYA

For most of the nearly 4 billion years that life has existed on Earth, evolution produced little beyond bacteria, plankton, and multi-celled algae. But beginning about 600 million years ago in the Precambrian, the fossil record speaks of more rapid change. First, there was the rise and fall of mysterious creatures of the "Vendian biota" or "Ediacara fauna" (see Figure 01a), named for the fossil site in Australia where they were first discovered. The question of what these fossils are is still not settled to everyone's satisfaction; at various times they have been considered algae, lichens, giant protozoans, or even a separate kingdom of life unrelated to anything living today. Some of these fossils are simple blobs that are hard to interpret and could represent almost anything. Some are most like cnidarians, worms, or soft-bodied relatives of the arthropods. Others are less easy to interpret and may belong to extinct phyla. But besides the fossils of soft bodies, Vendian rocks contain trace fossils, probably made by wormlike animals slithering over mud. The Vendian rocks thus give us a good look at the first animals to live on Earth. The Ediacaran hey-day predates by a distinct interval of perhaps 20 million years or more, the so-called "Cambrian Explosion". Although some scientists believe that many of these Ediacara fauna might have survived into the Cambrian period, they had vanished without a trace from later fossil records. Other scientists have suggested that the Ediacaran fauna were "failed experiments" in the evolution of multicellular animals. Unlike the Cambrian organisms, these odd designs left no descendants. A novel explanation suggests that the Ediacaran fossils weren't animals at all. Rather, they were probably lichens. Whatever the interpretation, it seems that the appearance of the Ediacaran fauna and the Cambrian biota are two separate events, and both flourished suddenly in a "complete state".
Emphasis mine.

As you can see the fossil evidence does not support your claim.

 

[Chalnoth]

*sigh* I don't know where you are getting your information, but clear
ancestors in the Ediacara fauna are not in the fossil record.

Clearly you decided to ignore this part:

Some are most like cnidarians, worms, or soft-bodied relatives of the arthropods.

Trilobites are early arthropods, and were particularly numerous during the Cambrian. The others are examples of other forms that were common in the Cambrian, and diversified quite significantly then.

 

[Chalnoth]

Anyway, for more on the Cambrian Explosion, see here:
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some juicy snippets:

The fossil record as Darwin knew it seemed to suggest that the major metazoan groups appeared in a few million years of the early to mid-Cambrian, and even in the 1980s this still appeared to be the case.[13][14]
However, evidence of Precambrian metazoa is gradually accumulating. If the Ediacaran Kimberella was a mollusc-like protostome (one of the two main groups of coelomates),[18][57] the protostome and deuterostome lineages must have split significantly before 550 million years ago (deuterostomes are the other main group of coelomates).[88] Even if it is not a protostome, it is widely accepted as a bilaterian.[61][88] Since fossils of rather modern-looking Cnidarians (jellyfish-like organisms) have been found in the Doushantuo lagerstätte, the Cnidarian and bilaterian lineages must have diverged well over 580 million years ago.[88]

Trace fossils[55] and predatory borings in Cloudina shells provide further evidence of Ediacaran animals.[89] Some fossils from the Doushantuo formation have been interpreted as embryos and one (Vernanimalcula) as a bilaterian coelomate, although these interpretations are not universally accepted.[46][47][90] Earlier still, predatory pressure has acted on stromatolites and acritarchs since around 1,250 million years ago.[42]

Further, the conventional view that all the phyla arose in the Cambrian is flawed; whilst the phyla may have diversified in this time period, representatives of the crown-groups of many phyla do not appear until much later in the Phanerozoic.[92] Further, the mineralized phyla that form the basis of the fossil record may not be representative of other phyla, since most mineralized phyla originated in a benthic setting. The fossil record is consistent with a Cambrian Explosion that was limited to the benthos, with pelagic phyla evolving much later.[92]

So while it is difficult to find fossils of soft-bodied organisms, there is actually evidence of animals being around and eating things as long as 1.25 billion years ago.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Just because he happens to be the person that wrote down the first iteration of the theory in no way, shape, or form means that everything he said regarding evolution was correct. It wasn't. He was completely wrong about the closest living relatives of whales, for example (though in his defense, I don't believe he ever expressed certainty about it).

So you would agree that the evolutionary model that Darwin originated was falsified?

Furthermore, the theory of evolution has changed significantly since Darwin first penned it. We've learned a lot more about how evolution works than Darwin could even dream of. The reason why it is sometimes given his name is because he was the first one to write down the central idea of evolution, the idea of natural selection.

Well actually I believe he was the second, but he fleshed it out more.

You clearly still have no clue what a theory is. Evolution is both a theory and a fact. The theory of evolution explains how life changes over time. The fact of evolution simply observes that life has changed over time. It's sort of like gravity: the fact of gravity is that objects fall. A theory of gravity explains how they fall.

Why do you think I have no clue what a theory is? The fact of evolution is that life changes over time, granted. However, the following attributes that evolution acquires over time is another matter. What mechanisms were used for change and so forth are not factual in many cases. So like I have said in the past, as defined, Evolution is true.

There is no hard distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Macro-evolution is just what micro-evolution over a longer period of time looks like.

I disagree. The most complex life forms and dramatic changes are shown to be the opposite. Leaving out mankind from the equation, what proof of macro-evolution do you provide?

You said this:


That. Is. A. Lie.

It absolutely, positively does not falsify evolution, because nothing at all about the theory of evolution requires that it always be the same speed at all times.

It requires a gradual progression and in Darwin's original model that progression was a very time involved process. Darwin's model required a great amount of time to allow for the evolution of the life forms.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

So you would agree that the evolutionary model that Darwin originated was falsified?

Darwin's original proposition has been superceded for a long time now. Who cares what Darwin thought? As Creationists are fond of telling us, we now know oh-so much more than him. And that knowledge bolsters the modern theory of evolution.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Clearly you decided to ignore this part:

Trilobites are early arthropods, and were particularly numerous during the Cambrian. The others are examples of other forms that were common in the Cambrian, and diversified quite significantly then.

I didn't ignore anything. Perhaps you didn't read this carefully because this life was 20 million years prior to the Cambrian and died out long before it. There is no fossil evidence of any of the life forms from that period in later rocks. Like Gould said, the Cambrian was a unique and complete event without precursors.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Anyway, for more on the Cambrian Explosion, see here:
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some juicy snippets:




So while it is difficult to find fossils of soft-bodied organisms, there is actually evidence of animals being around and eating things as long as 1.25 billion years ago.

I didn't claim there wasn't.

 

[Chalnoth]

So you would agree that the evolutionary model that Darwin originated was falsified?

No, absolutely not. The model was entirely accurate about nearly all multicellular forms of life, if a bit incomplete. Now, he was a bit mistaken on a few of the finer points, but that doesn't mean the model was wrong. That just means that he didn't have all the relevant facts.

That said, Darwinian evolution only described the evolution of larger organisms and needed to be modified to account for how single-celled forms evolve. It also didn't have any explanation whatsoever for what actually carried the inheritance, which we now know quite a lot about. So Darwin's model of evolution isn't entirely correct, though it is very accurate within a certain range of application. Our current theory, sometimes called the neo-Darwinian synthesis, incorporates these additional modifications, but still very closely resembles Darwin's original model.

Why do you think I have no clue what a theory is?

Because you used the phrase "only a theory" which is a phrase that makes no sense whatsoever with the scientific definition of the word theory. The scientific definition is merely that a theory is an explanation which connects different observations into a consistent framework. The theory of evolution explains the patterns we see in living organisms and in the fossil record.

I disagree. The most complex life forms and dramatic changes are shown to be the opposite. Leaving out mankind from the equation, what proof of macro-evolution do you provide?

For example:
Lizards Undergo Rapid Evolution after Introduction to a New Home

The evolution of additional valves in their digestive systems in a span of only 30 years is quite impressive, and is most definitely macro-evolution by any reasonable definition.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Darwin's original proposition has been superceded for a long time now. Who cares what Darwin thought? As Creationists are fond of telling us, we now know oh-so much more than him. And that knowledge bolsters the modern theory of evolution.

Regardless of whether or not you think there is a modern version that has replaced the original is not the point. Darwin's model has been falsified. I am not stating anything but the truth. You seem to agree, Chalnoth seems to agree. So why is it so hard for any of you to concede the point?

 

[Chalnoth]

I didn't ignore anything. Perhaps you didn't read this carefully because this life was 20 million years prior to the Cambrian and died out long before it. There is no fossil evidence of any of the life forms from that period in later rocks. Like Gould said, the Cambrian was a unique and complete event without precursors.

Um, if this life died out before the Cambrian, then you're claiming that the Cambrian forms magically appeared out of the dirt? That's positively absurd. And it's amazing how you simply ignore any evidence that doesn't suit your preconceived notions.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Regardless of whether or not you think there is a modern version that has replaced the original is not the point. Darwin's model has been falsified. I am not stating anything but the truth. You seem to agree, Chalnoth seems to agree. So why is it so hard for any of you to concede the point?

Err... I did concede the point, inasmuch as it's a no-brainer . That doesn't seem to be what you and him are talking about, though - rather, you're debating the importance of the Cambrian Explosion. I'm with Chalnoth when he says modern phyla existed prior to the Cambrian, and that it's importance is limited to the evolution of body parts that more readily fossilise - little more.

It's a semantic point as to whether Darwin's original proposition has been superseded or simply refined, but his core ideas are very much intact. The minor details have certainly been improved upon, but the main assertion (the universal ancestry of life, etc) are as solid as ever. In my opinion, we have a new, modern theory that is broadly identicle to Darwin's, but is ultimately different in its particulars. In another's opinion, this could simply be Darwin's original theory in a more refined form, similar to how quantum mechanics has been refined over the past 50 years - but is still quantum mechanics.

Not that this quibble has any relevance whatsoever.