For those wondering what "macroevolution" actually is...

Isaiah 41:10 said:

As noted earlier, your initial statement is not true. Most phyla originated before the Cambrian. Meaning that the premise that you're working on is incorrect.

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Warden_of_the_Storm said:

Your own argument is illogical. If those genetic similarities exist, there must be a reason. Humans and pigs being mammals isn't just enough of a reason for them to exist. There has to be something deeper.



I asked you to show me where in the Theory of Evolution where, to quote you, it says: "According to ToE and common ancestry, disparity (ie, differences in morphology and function) occurs only after much diversification of species."

Don't answer my question with another question. It shows that you have nothing to give as an answer. I hope that you do have an answer.

And no, six million years is not 'overnight'. Six million years is SIX MILLION YEARS. 6,000,000 YEARS. How is that a 'short' period of time to you? How can you call that short?

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And this is also a partial misunderstanding, given that the Cambrian explosion really spans multiple tens of millions of years. Not just six.

Isaiah 41:10 said:

And this is also a partial misunderstanding, given that the Cambrian explosion really spans multiple tens of millions of years. Not just six.

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I've seen it quoted as being 13-25 million years, then some sources say it's only ten, some say six.
It's annoying to pin down a proper number.

But still, anything with six zeroes after it is NOT a short space of time.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

I've seen it quoted as being 13-25 million years, then some sources say it's only ten, some say six.
It's annoying to pin down a proper number.

But still, anything with six zeroes after it is NOT a short space of time.

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The reason the number fluctuates is because the boundaries are sort of arbitrary. Like if you were on a rollercoaster, for example, would you call the beginning of your vertical ascent starting at a 10 degree angle? Or 20 degree? 80 degree? Etc.

Some ID advocates and critics, they want to use "instantaneous" as their select word, but if the Cambrian explosion were really instantaneous, or lets say less than 5 million years, then it would exclude 90% of phyla. If it were 10 million years, it might include 50%, if it were 20 million, it might include something like 80% etc. To really encompass organisms of the Cambrian explosion, 90+%, really it would have to be something like 30+ maybe even close to 40 million years long.

And part of it too is this lack of discussion around the fact that animals were soft bodied before the Cambrian in large part. So for example, arthropod diplichnites, foot tracks appear tens of millions of years before the first actual hard shelled body. And so it's not even that animals even "appeared", rather they lived beforehand and just evolved shells, giving this false appearance of an "explosions".

Which is why 50 years ago an explosion was a good way to describe it, but over time it's gradually being revealed to be more like something similar to other radiations observed throughout the fossil record.

And one book that describes this in a nice simple way is Donald Protheros story of life in 25 fossils. You can pick it up on Amazon for maybe just 20 bucks. He gives sourced research and is well credentialed in the field.

If people based the story of life only on what is observed in the fossil record, we would have phylum appearing all over the place, some in the Eocene some in the mid to late Paleozoic, some in the Mesozoic, some in the Precambrian, some in the Cambrian etc. Because fossils just aren't particularly precise in where they appear, some animals don't even have a fossil record and so based on the fossil record we might think that they don't even exist. So when we see all these fossils appearing in the Cambrian, we can't confuse the appearance of fossils with the question of if those animals actually did or did not exist. And we know this because we have soft bodied lagerstaaten that predate hard Cambrian shelled fossils. They're rare, But we know they're there. That and we have trace fossils like Rusofycus and diplichnites that also predate hard shelled fossils. But obviously the animals were alive, else their foot tracks wouldn't be there. But according to critics, they might argue that arthropods appeared in the Cambrian explosion, but that's actually wrong.

So the fossil records use doesn't work for critics of ID.

Alternatively, if we base our understanding on genetics, the problem is of course worse because all of these phylum (or more specifically superphylums or classes) actually appear well before the Cambrian in the precambrian. Which is also is equally a problem for critics. And this is problematic largely because most pre-cambrian rock is old and recycled and metamorphosed. And so digging up microscopic soft bodied animals and old recycled rock tends to be problematic. Which is why the whole topic is ridiculous when intelligent design advocates want to put so much focus on The Cambrian explosion.

I gave this analogy the other day but using the Cambrian explosion to judge the theory of evolution is like trying to use grade school video footage of Michael Jordan to judge how good of a basketball player he was in the course of his life and professional career.

If the best arguments against evolution are centered around soft-bodied microscopic organisms in billion-year-old tectonically recycled pre-cambrian rock, For practical purposes, they've already lost.

Give me a bit and I'll share a screen shot of Protheros analysis.

Isaiah 41:10 said:

View attachment 315181

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So, if someone were to say that the Cambrian explosion were 10 million years, they'd be excluding brachiopods, annelids, arthropods, anabarites etc. These are major groups.

If it were 20 million, you would still be excluding arthropods and annelids. Even if someone went with 30 million, they'd still be cutting out these same groups. And if we throw in the topic of genetics, you can just forget the whole thing because many phyla end up originating in the precambrian.

The only way to effectively argue against the theory of evolution with use of the Cambrian explosion, is if we approach the topic from a misconception that the fossil record is a perfect reflection of the history of life. But if this were the case, then we would be confused by the existence of chimpanzees because we, for the most part, lack fossils of them. According to intelligent design maybe chimpanzees appeared last Wednesday.

If you go swimming in a lake and you have rotifers in the water around you, you might believe that they just appeared before your eyes because there are no fossils of them in the Cambrian.

The Cambrian explosion would have been an evolutionary arms race. But the word "arms" also equates to hard teeth and shells which further equates to the "appearance" of higher rates of preservation of hard parts.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

Your own argument is illogical. If those genetic similarities exist, there must be a reason. Humans and pigs being mammals isn't just enough of a reason for them to exist. There has to be something deeper.

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It doesn't matter what the "reason" is - all that matters is that the genetic similarities exist which allow the transplants to succeed. Think about it. If no one had ever heard of Darwin and his theory, the similarities would still exist and would still have been exploited.

It would seem that you're so brainwashed by Darwinism that you can't separate a useful fact from a useless theory.

Buzzard3 said:

It doesn't matter what the "reason" is - all that matters is that the genetic similarities exist which allow the transplants to succeed. Think about it. If no one had ever heard of Darwin, the similarities would still exist and would still have been exploited.

It would seem that you're so brainwashed by Darwinism that you can't separate a useful fact from a useless theory.

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And once again you are ignoring genetic evidence.

The pattern of genetic similarities indicates a branching pattern of family relationships.

Shemjaza said:

The pattern of genetic similarities indicates a branching pattern of family relationships.

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Sure it does ... if you ignore the other possiblity.

Buzzard3 said:

Sure it does ... if you ignore the other possiblity.

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The other possibility being.....? I can think of several "other possibilities", so please be specific about which one you think is the only possible alternative.

Buzzard3 said:

Sure it does ... if you ignore the other possiblity.

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It's the same evidenced based technique that identifies family members from distant relations among humans.

Common ancestry is the explanation as to why a coyote has more genetically in common with a human than it does to its Australian counterpart, the thylacine.

Common designers don't create nested hierarchies, which is why when we invent a new way to make tires we don't have to do it independently for truck tires, motorcycles and airplane landing gear.

Buzzard3 said:

It doesn't matter what the "reason" is - all that matters is that the genetic similarities exist which allow the transplants to succeed. Think about it. If no one had ever heard of Darwin and his theory, the similarities would still exist and would still have been exploited.

It would seem that you're so brainwashed by Darwinism that you can't separate a useful fact from a useless theory.

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So why shouldn't they search for the reason why xenotransplantation between pigs and humans can work? It sounds to me, like you are far too scared of what the answer could be.

And you have never once shown how and why the theory of evolution is wrong.

Buzzard3 said:

Sure it does ... if you ignore the other possiblity.

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Ignoring the possibility is easy. Hard evidence for showing that evolution is an incorrect theory is a completely different matter.

Bungle_Bear said:

The other possibility being.....? I can think of several "other possibilities", so please be specific about which one you think is the only possible alternative.

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Creation.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

So why shouldn't they search for the reason why xenotransplantation between pigs and humans can work?

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It's quite possible that the genetics similarities were noticed regardless of any notion of common descent. From that came the idea of transplants.

You wouldn't need to think of common descent to come up with the idea of trying transplanting organs from the lower-primates, for example.

Buzzard3 said:

Creation.

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A proposition that doesn't appear to make testable predictions or have practical applications.

Case in point is your response to what you see as incomplete or unjustified explanations is to abandon the concept of explanation and declare things "unknowable".

Buzzard3 said:

It's quite possible that the genetics similarities were noticed regardless of any notion of common descent. From that came the idea of transplants.

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This ignores the pattern of genetic similarities demonstrating familial relationships between species.

Buzzard3 said:

Creation.

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Be precise - you mean biblical creation. It is not the only alternative, it is the one you have decided is correct. Now support that decision - how is it a better explanation than evolution?

Bungle_Bear said:

Now support that decision

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Yes sir!!

how is it a better explanation than evolution?

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I didn't claim it is a "better" explanation than evolution.

Buzzard3 said:

I didn't claim it is a "better" explanation than evolution.

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I'm glad you accept that biblical creation is no better than magic. That's a refreshing bit of honesty.