Re: What Sean Pitman still says about the fossil record
- From: "Frank J" <fnci@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 10 Aug 2006 17:26:26 -0700
Inez wrote:
<snip>
This rather
sudden appearance, relatively speaking, of nearly all animal phyla
during the Cambrian period is referred to as the 'Cambrian
Explosion'. After this period essentially no new phyla are thought to
have evolved over the course of hundreds of millions of years.
Except plants, that is.
Compared with the 35 or so animal phyla that still exist today, some
people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as
many as 100 different phyla.
I don't know anyone who still believes this, except a few creationists.
Most of Gould's "weird wonders", for example, have been shown to belong
to the stem groups of modern phyla.
This prompted those such as Roger Lewin
to ask, "Why, in subsequent periods of great evolutionary activity
when countless species, genera, and families arose, have there been
no new animal body plans produced, no new phyla?" 78
Does anyone have easy access to the source here?: Lewin, R. Science,
vol. 241, 15 July, p. 291 (1988). I think the answer is that it's a
taxonomic artifact. Of course phyla come first. But of course very few
of the modern classes and almost none of the orders are known from the
Cambrian. How the Cambrian explosion fits into Sean's theories is
something he never explains. In general, he's quite vague about what he
really thinks happened, and refuses to test it against the evidence.
Nor, here, does he even test the standard theory against the evidence.
All he does is mention that phyla are old. Is this a problem for
evolution, and if so, why? He never really says.
I would think that he's implying that all the animals were created at
once by God, and this explains why the roots of the taxonomic tree (I
hope that's something like correct jargon) happened long ago.
Since he pretends to be scientific, lets use the proper scientific
terminology. He's probably implying that "all the animals"
(individuals?, species? other "don't ask, don't tell" "kinds?)
originated by independent abiogenesis. But he has not an iota of
positive evidence for that, and knows it.
Except
that would be silly, since saying would be acknowledging a taxonomic
tree (if that is what I mean) AND that the geological column is sorted
by age and not by magical sorting water.
Not sure what you mean by the last sentence, but anti-evolutionists of
different stripes contradict each other in many ways (when this or that
happened, whether the sorting was "naturalistic" or defies explanation,
etc.). That's the whole reason for the "don't ask, don't tell" ID
strategy.
.
- References:
- What Sean Pitman still says about the fossil record
- From: John Harshman
- Re: What Sean Pitman still says about the fossil record
- From: Inez
- What Sean Pitman still says about the fossil record
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