Vertebrates do have longer life spans but some invertebrates are big, much larger than we are. But that is not my main objection to what I consider wild speculation and a “just so” story. Here is what I am expected to believe: the Edicarian forms failed because they lacked this simple protein and invertebrates flourished because of one form of it but vertebrates got an even better form of it and this allowed them to do much better.
Meanwhile each of these categories went through massive alterations in form and in genes through vast generations of time. Think of all the Edicarian forms. Think of all the much more varied invertebrate forms since the Cambrian from Giant Squid to earthworm to starfish. Now think of the vast array of vertebrates from shark to eagle.
I am expected to believe that evolution could make all of these changes in all of these creatures but not one of the Edicarians could find a way to make this simple protein nor develop any other suitable way around the problem of increased oxygenation. Nor could any invertebrate in all the time since then find any way to go from the less efficient form of the protein to the more efficient one all vertebrates have. It is not reasonable to suppose that while their forms and genes were undergoing all of these enormous changes evolution could not pull off making this one simple protein better in any of them.
This is not the only example of this kind of problem either. For example, all reptiles have only one kind of teeth in their mouths. Despite all the other changes they went through since the dawn of time for some reason no reptile was ever able to pull off the trick of getting a second kind of teeth in their mouths despite the advantages it provided to the forms of animals who managed to pull it off.
It has been argued that the absence of euarthropods from the Precambrian Period, earlier than around 540 million years ago, is the result of a lack of fossil preservation. But the new comprehensive fossil study suggests that this isn’t the case.
“The idea that arthropods are missing from the Precambrian fossil record because of biases in how fossils are preserved can now be rejected,” says Dr Greg Edgecombe FRS from the Natural History Museum, London, who was not involved in the study. “The authors make a very compelling case that the late Precambrian and Cambrian are in fact very similar in terms of how fossils preserve. There is really just one plausible explanation – arthropods hadn’t yet evolved.”
The article tries to put a brave macro-evolutionary face on it- claiming that they have shown that these arthropods arose 550 million years ago, between the time the clocks show and the time of the Explosion. But their evidence for this is entirely circular reasoning. They found a well-developed arthropod (though without shell) at the start of the Cambrian Explosion ergo it must have evolved from something else earlier than that. What reasonable person could be convinced by such logic that their premises were true?
The amount of precision anti-evolutionists are asking for during the freaking CAMBRIAN is unreasonable. I find everything in their paper reasonable. Though I disagree with their interpretation of the fossil record. Have you read the actual paper?
How reasonable did you find George’s evolutionary claim just above it claiming to narrow the cause of the Cambrian Explosion down to the precision of a single protein?
I don’t think the cause of the explosion was any one thing but a number of factors. Which is what you will read in most papers. I’m still not sure there even was an explosion. The Cambrian is messy and always will be. It was 542mya for goodness sake. But all the work that has been done contradicts the ID interpretation of the event. And I know you were quoting the evolutionary biologist from the ScienceDaily paper. I’m allowed to criticize fellow scientists when they say silly things.
I want to point out that equally “explosive,” and perhaps more surprising than the 40 million year Cambrian Explosion is the radiation of mammals over the last 60 million years. Because this was more recent, we have much more information about it. If we think there is strong evidence for mammalian evolution, there is no reason to doubt evolution in the Cambrian Explosion.
The gaps in our knowledge from 450 mya is not surprising, nor is it evidence for ID. Rather than an event 450 mya, let’s focus on the Mammalian Explosion instead, where there are far fewer large gaps in our understanding.
I find an exquisite irony in your views about the Cambrian “Explosion” and the “entirely circular reasoning”.
Your most detailed rejection of the Hypoxia-Induced-Factors and a protein that responds to Oxygen in a way that keeps DNA from firing off more or less randomly. You say:
This line of thinking seems circular in itself. Does it make sense to wonder why a fishy population with an “early design” for its pods (feet) is not still serenely ambling the shore, calmly munching on swamp life, watching the “new models” of water/land predators (like alligators, crocodiles). The answer seems pretty obvious and non-circular: the newer models, though descending from the first tetrapods, are far more efficient at what they do than this first population. Sometimes a crashing wave of change leaves traces of life that is the perfect fit for the niche it occupies. It’s such a perfect fit, that the new models that eventually descend from this “freakly matching” population are changing in ways that make them perfect for the wider world… and a less perfect match for the eco-niche successfully occupied by a remnant population of the original common ancestors.
Let’s look at the every-day little creature, so beloved by everyone, the Stink Bug !
Family Pentatomidae, which includes Stink Bugs (like
Cute, right? Well, maybe not. But the stink bug has a chemical weapon that has helped it fit into its ecological niche quite well. Bugs that want to eat them actually do find them repellant!: Interview with a recent victim of the bug: “Ick. I gotta find a grasshopper to get all this Stink Bug taste out of my mouth!”
So one would think that this humble family of bugs would never have a worry. It’s got it all figured out (so to speak, to the extent any bug can “figure”). But then one eon arrives, where the environment has become too hot or too cold, and Natural Selection is really starting to place pressures on one section of the population that these “stinkers” may never have ever experienced before. With any group of numbers, there is a peak that is higher than all future peaks ever will be.
And when we encounter an unprecedented peak of survival pressure, there are 3 scenarios:
1] the stink bugs get through it, but much reduced. But give them another million years or so, and they are thriving and stinking. Or,
2] the 2nd scenario is that every one of them dies out. The pressure is too much. If there had been 5 fewer years, there would have been enough survivors to carry on… but the last 5 was the last straw. Good bye Mr. Good Stink … your playing pieces are off the board… and suddenly other kinds of bugs start looking at the empty stink chairs, and wondering what it be like to sit there…
3] What is scenario #3? Emergence of a new type initially genetically quite similar to the pressured population!
It all depends on what kind of genes and phenotypes and situations are being tumbled around during this period of crushing natural selection. One day I wondered, are there any creatures who actually like to dine on hot and cold stink bugs? And with a little research, I discovered, yes there were! And maybe once you take a look, you won’t be surprised at all by this: below are cousins of the Stink Bugs, belonging to the sub-family Asopinae, with a “Genus species” name of: Picromerus bidens! It’s a Stink Bug … sort of. A stink bug on steroids. Stink Bugs are able to do tremendous damage to crops with piercing and sucking mouth parts.
And some time, long ago, one of these Stink Bugs was getting pretty desperate. And the nasty stinker became intoxicated with the plant juice dripping off of another nearby Stink Bug. It was bad manners … but he (or she?) took the plunge - - with his proboscis that is: and before anyone can say, “Hey, you can’t do that here…” the neighbor bug was drained dry, along with any other bodily juices in the way … and now motionless… the now “late” feller drops off the leaf without even a wave goodbye! Apparently, he’s just dead tired! < Terrible attempt at humor!
Pretty soon there were hundreds and then thousands of descendants from this adventurous bug… and the descendants of that group would eventually be called: Picromerus bidens! Who better to mingle amongst the stink of stink bugs than cousin stink bugs! To them, it’s cologne… a cologne drenched package filled with delicious exotic stink bug liquors!
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As you can see, those descendants became members of a Subfamily dedicated to all the inevitable versions of Predatory Stink Bugs… The classification at the Genus level in this particular image below is Euthyrhynchus, or more easily identified as as Euschistus Dallas in other sources. [ I had no idea how many classification systems there were for the same critter … or for a close relative! I suspect that it takes wayyyyyy more training to know what is truly the same species or sub-species! ]
But another source prefers the older classification system with the Genus = Picromerus: or specificaly, P. Bidens, or any other variant, depending on who is doing the categorizing and when.
But why am I spending so much time on these stinking Stink Bugs? It is an example of speciation where there is no dramatic difference in appearance… certainly not initially. All that had to happen was for one specimen to try eating something else with existing body parts, and experiencing a surge in survival rates in its offpsring. Long present Genetic variation that never entered the equation suddenly became important. And owing to the tiny population of the Stink Bug hunters, these irrelevant genetic differences suddenly dominated the increasingly distinctive sub-group of Predatory Stink Bugs! Over time, predatory populations start developing better and better enzymes for dissolving their prey. Eventually, they couldn’t live on plant juices if it was sitting right in front of them!
After millions of years of re-specializing, the bugs that are most comfortable with stink bug “stink”… are the carnivorous cousins of the very same stink bugs.
Now, what about the Cambrian?
Let’s step to a clean part of the white board and note how a similar set of circumstances could have set things in motion in the Cambrian. One group of Cambrian invertebrate (through God’s guidance) comes up with the Hypoxia Inducible Factors, namely “proto-HIF - 1a”. This very first version of the protein makes it possible to push the less capable invertebrates into fewer and fewer eco-niches… where they not only become dead ends of the chain of life, but they eventually become dead! They perish during this-or-that cycle of very difficult times. The remaining “winning invertebrates” eventually evolve the more mature HIF-1a protein. Tah-dah !
Somewhere along the line, as Vertebrate animal groups emerge, with the good luck (aka, the extra survival skills) that the 1a protein allows. Eventually God picks a Vertebrate “winner” to receive the newest mutation - - HIF-2a. And these winners out-produce and dominate the eco-niches formerly held by their old-fashioned “1a” cousins… until virtually all the Vertebrates with HIF-1a suffer their own inevitable moments of extinction!
Only one thing has to change to create the “de facto” separation between two populations… and if that one thing is important enough, populations continue onward, never looking back at where they came from.
The Important Consideration for these Scenarios
If there had been several kinds of HIF proteins, all relatively similar in overall benefit to the owners, you can imagine that we would find multiple versions of these similar proteins in the modern survivors of multiple diverse populations. But if one change turns out to be better than any other changes (either previously or later on - - with further mutations of the winner), the populations that go extinct are the ones without the “best” version… and we have virtually all vertebrates using a single form.
And so, @anon46279830, I have to wonder at why you have developed your attitude about your Old Earth scenario. Why does it make more sense to you that God would keep making new templates (allowing for only minor evolutionary development of an old Template before making a brand new Template by Spcial Creation)?
Using your approach, God is literally creating thousands (millions!) of population types of animals that would really only be necessary in an Evolutionary scenario… and that’s why the Evolutionary path is hundreds of millions of years old. If no human, or modern animal population is ever going to see these intermediate Template populations, except in a small percentage of misfortunes that lead to fossils, why would God wait millions of years between each new Template, only to have them go extinct due to the unavoidable success of yet another specially created Template?
With Evolution, Natural Selection and Common Descent as the tools of Evolution, the very Old Age of the Old Earth is a necessary part of the equation. In contrast, you have God practicing his miraculous Template Creation routine over and over … when their existence will inevitably become completely irrelevant - - and common descent is not a contributing element. God just keeps making these newer versions!
Mr. Revealed, are you sure you prefer that approach? It really doesn’t seem to make any sense for God to be creating all these fossils that will just convince millions of humans down the road, that God must have been using Evolution!
Joe Gallien: "OK now it is official- I was banned from Joshua Swamidass’s forum Shit Science. Why was I banned? For telling it like it is on my on blog. You see it’s OK for those alleged Christians to attack people but when those people push back, well, that’s a no-no. Hypocrites run Shit Science.
Of course I won’t be returning to your bullshit forum, Josh. I just wanted to see if theistic evos are still as dull as they were when I visited biologos- and you are. So there isn’t anything else for me there anyway. I can get attacked on evoTARD forums- people I expect that from.
Fuck you, asshole. Nobody gives a shit about your forum. All you want is a place where everyone agrees. You aren’t going to learn anything that way. You might as well just start a circle-jerk forum like after the bar closes where everyone just gossips like little old ignorant ladies"
Why are you back now with a sockpuppet “Frankie” when you said you wouldn’t be returning?
False. There is tons of evidence that separate prokaryotic cells joined together in a symbiotic union. And surely you learned somewhere in your science education that mitochondria are most likely “descendants” of bacteria which were engulfed by a larger cell.
Perhaps a good start would be for you to read:
Of course, for detailed evidence, you would want to read the supporting scientific journal articles, not just a simplified explanation for the layperson.
Actually there is. Have you ever sought out the supporting literature which explains how this idea is tested?
Because your underlying premise is invalid, your opinion doesn’t follow.
Please post your calculations. How much time would be necessary? (How did you determine that the time required was greater than the age of the universe? Did you make careful calculations or simply apply gut-level intuition? Indeed, is your opinion based on calculations or upon feelings based on non-scientific considerations? I’m not denigrating using other considerations, such as religious or philosophical ones. I’d just like to know what they are.)
The fact that you claim that more time is required appears to imply a concession that those “blind and mindless processes” are indeed possible. Also, is oxidation a “blind and mindless” process? Is photosynthesis a “blind and mindless” process? Aren’t most of the processes described in chemistry, physics, and biology textbooks nothing but “blind and mindless” processes?
(Postscript: As a Christ-follower, I have no problem believing that God in his wisdom and omnipotence was entirely capable of creating a universe of “blind and mindless processes” which served his purposes and work together to bring about the “very good” creation God intended. That “very good” creation includes billions of years of evolutionary processes operating in all of the amazing ways we observe around us.)
