Re: The Reasonable Minority

Evopeach wrote:

[snips]

Let me take a couple that I'm familiar with.

Paul K. Chien is Professor of Biology. He received his B.S. in both
Biology and Chemistry from Chung Chi College, N.T., Hong Kong, and his
Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Prof. Chien is
interested in the physiology and ecology of inter-tidal organisms. His
research has involved the transport of amino acids and metal ions
across cell membranes and the detoxification mechanisms of metal ions.

RI: As you became more interested in this and discovered more about
it, did you find it really was an "explosion of life"?

Chien: Yes. A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about
38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla
discovered during that period of time (including those in China,
Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means [there
are] more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first
fossils [of animal life], than exist now.

Stephen J. Gould, [a Harvard University evolutionary biologist], has
referred to this as the reverse cone of diversity. The theory of
evolution implies that things get more and more complex and get more
and more diverse from one single origin. But the whole thing turns out
to be reversedwe have more diverse groups in the very beginning, and
in fact more and more of them die off over time, and we have less and
less now.

This is not true on several fronts. For one thing, Gould was guilty of
"reverse shoehorning". Most of his "weird wonders" have since been shown
to belong either to modern phyla or to their stem groups. Chien is way
behind the times. Second, quantitative studies have shown that the
disparity (amount of variation) in arthropods was no greater in the
Cambrian than it is now. And third, the first animal fossils are
Precambrian, and there is an extended buildup of diversity in the 50
million years or so leading to the Cambrian explosion itself.

RI: What information is the public hearing or not hearing about the
Cambrian explosion?

Chien: The general impression people get is that we began with micro-
organisms, then came lowly animals that don't amount to much, and then
came the birds, mammals and man. Scientists were looking at a very
small branch of the whole animal kingdom, and they saw more complexity
and advanced features in that group. But it turns out that this
concept does not apply to the entire spectrum of animals or to the
appearance or creation of different groups. Take all the different
body plans of roundworms, flatworms, coral, jellyfish and whateverall
those appeared at the very first instant.

This is just not true, at least based on fossil data. Roundworms, for
example, are unknown in the fossil record before the Jurassic. About
half of living animal phyla have no fossil record at all.

Most textbooks will show a live tree of evolution with the groups
evolving through a long period of time. If you take that tree and chop
off 99 percent of it, [what is left] is closer to reality; it's the
true beginning of every group of animals, all represented at the very
beginning.

Chien is seriously misinformed. To sum up: the first animal fossils are
Precambrian, the Doushantuo and Ediacaran faunas, all of which are
simple in appearance and some of which may be early members of modern
groups. Both trace fossils and body fossils (the "small shelly fauna"
gradually increase in number and complexity during the last bit of the
Precambrian and the first 15-20 million years of the Cambrian, before
the Cambrian explosion happens near the end of the Early Cambrian. Many
animal phyla are first known in the fossil record around that time,
though more than half are not. In addition, most of these records are of
stem groups, more primitive than any living members. There are also a
number of fossils that may bridge two or more phyla.

You may also ask yourself how Chien's claims, even if true, would help
the anti-evolution idea. Even if all the phyla were magically poofed
into existence in the Cambrian, we would be left with evolution to
explain the diversification of those phyla, since almost none of the
modern classes are known from then. In particular, the chordates we know
and love were represented by a few wormy-looking things. Nothing you
would call a fish, much less a reptile or mammal.

Siegfried Scherer is the Director of the Institute of Microbiology. He
is a noted critic of Darwinism and has done research on genetic "basic
types" from a design perspective.

[edit]Career
Scherer studied biology and received his Ph.D 1983 from the University
of Konstanz. In his doctoral thesis he studied photosynthesis and
respiration of cyanobacteria. He begun to work as researcher in the
University Konstanz in 1983. He received BYK company's research award
in 1984. Between 1987-1988 DAAD reseach scolarship at the Virginia
Tech Department of Biochemistry. 1991 habilitation at University of
Konstanz in plant physiology and microbial ecology. Professor of
microbial ecology at the Technical University of Munich and director
of the FML Weihenstephan Institute of Microbiology since 1991

Scherer is the only creationist I know of who has managed to get real
creationist papers published in real scientific journals. I would be
glad to discuss his work on ducks (the part I'm familiar with), which
does not hold up to serious examination. I'm thinking of these, which
constitute his only published research that I know of on "basic types":

Scherer, S., and T. Hilsberg. 1982. Hybridisierung und
Verwandtschaftsgrade innerhalb der Anatidae — eine systematische und
evolutionstheoretische Betrachtung. Journal für Ornithologie 123:357-380.

Scherer, S., and C. Sontag. 1986. Zur molekularen Taxonomie und
Evolution der Anatidae. Z. zool. Syst. Evolut.-forsch. 24:1-19.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Reasonable Minority
    ... 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla ... fossils, than exist now. ... Cambrian than it is now. ... BS again Multi-cellular animals did not evolve ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The Reasonable Minority
    ... 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla ... fossils, than exist now. ... Cambrian than it is now. ... BS again Multi-cellular animals did not evolve ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The Reasonable Minority
    ... 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla ... Cambrian than it is now. ... BS again Multi-cellular animals did not evolve ... The fossil collection in our museum begins about 750 million years ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The Reasonable Minority
    ... 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla ... Cambrian than it is now. ... Both trace fossils and body fossils (the "small shelly fauna" ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The Reasonable Minority
    ... 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla ... Cambrian than it is now. ... Both trace fossils and body fossils (the "small shelly fauna" ...
    (talk.origins)