Update:  Cambrian Explosion Damage Control

Here’s an update to the “State of the Cambrian Explosion.”  Two years ago, our 04/23/2006 entry analyzed a lengthy paper in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences by Dr. Charles R. Marshall, a Harvard professor of biology and geology.  Dr. Marshall had taken on the arduous task of explaining, in evolutionary terms, the sudden emergence of all the animal phyla in a geologically short period of time.  It seemed that all Marshall had done by the end of the paper was to say that animals evolved because they evolved.  Needs, he argued, produce the pressure to evolve.  The survival need, for instance, will force an animal to explore the fitness landscape and come up with an optimal solution, especially if the fitness landscape has been “roughened” by some environmental or ecological change.  But can necessity really be the mother of invention without a guiding intelligence?  Why would a population of non-sentient, blind colonies of cells even care about surviving?  And what is the source of information to build an eye, a leg or a gut?
Marshall’s latest views were shared in a piece on Science Daily.  Has he fleshed out his explanation with more rigor?  The headline teased readers, “‘Missing’ Ancestors Of Today’s Animals May Not Be Missing After All.”
Marshall’s latest idea is that “it was an increase in interactions between species, such as predation, that drove an escalating evolutionary process that led to the development of teeth and claws and the wide variety of characteristics that we see among Earth’s animals today.”  For the first creature able to invent teeth, it must have been free shopping at the meat market.

“I believe … the explosion was driven by the onset of adult-adult interactions,” Marshall said.  “Maybe the evolution of jaws or a large enough gut, or the evolution of something like chitin so they could bite rather than just giving a nasty suck.”

Marshall admitted, however, that the Cambrian Explosion was unique in the history of life on earth, and that none of the transitional forms leading up to explosion have been found.  He supported his model with a computer program that started with primitive plant-like forms and offered them 4 genetic rules and 6 selection pressures.  He let the initial forms evolve in the computer and ended up with 20 different body types, all of which had counterparts in the Cambrian fossil record.  The article did not elaborate on how much the model might have been rigged to get the desired result, however, nor what criteria were used to compare the computer forms with real animals.  Also, Marshall had considered the interaction class of explanation interesting but inadequate in 2006.  He left it as an unanswered question how a need could generate innovation.  It looks like it still is an unanswered question.
As is common in science reporting, Science Daily merely reprinted the press release from the home institution (Harvard) and tacked on its own title and opening summary.  An institution has a vested interest in making its researchers look good.  This arrangement rarely allows a reporter to ask the scientist any hard questions, and most science reporters end up reproducing the claims verbatim – if not embellishing them.

Since no one else exposes the charlatans pretending to be scientists, do your part to get the word out about Creation-Evolution Headlines.  Marshall and the Darwinists have given the same song and dance we refuted two years ago.  Nothing has changed.  They are appealing to miracles, saying that the mere presence of opportunities prompts Evolution (capitalized, because it’s is essentially their deity, a tinkering goddess) to invent eyes, jointed appendages, digestive tracts, lungs, blood and all kinds of sensory organs.  Look at this nonsense: “it may have been something as simple as the evolution of jaws with toothlike projections that allowed the world’s first painful bite.”  Good grief; instant jaws and teeth.  Simple, isn’t it.  Two miracles, special order, coming right up.  Don’t bite; it’s painful all right.
    Another trick they try is to stretch out the timeline to make it sound less explosive.  But in fact, as we pointed out, no matter how long they try to make the Cambrian explosion period, every new animal appears abruptly in the record.  There are no pre-trilobites.  Trilobites appear fully formed with all their complex equipment already functioning.  They were actually more diverse at their first appearance than higher up in the rock layers (see 07/28/2007).  Same for echinoderms, worms, brachiopods, jellyfish, crustaceans, and all the rest.  Paleontologists do not see a progression at all no matter how many millions of years they want to add.  Everything just shows up fully formed from the get go.  Shouldn’t this be told to students?
    The upshot is that evolutionists are deceiving the public.  This one problem falsifies Darwin’s theory, but they tiptoe around and it make up fables to distract readers.  Meanwhile, when not ignoring the creationists entirely (whose view is supported by the fossil record), they harangue them as fundamentalist idiots who are “anti-science.”  No one in the news media takes them to task for this huge deceptive campaign.  Science Daily’s headline that the “Missing ancestors… may not be ‘missing’ after all” is one of the worst big lies ever seen on this subject in recent memory.  Who is being anti-science here?
    Creationists have been hounding the Darwinists about the Cambrian Explosion since the days of Darwin himself, who was well aware of it and called it the biggest objection that could be lodged against his theory.  Well, his disciples have had all this time and the problem has only gotten worse.  Any apologies?  Any show of sorrow?  Any humility?  Any consideration of alternatives?  Never.  When they aren’t dodging the issue, they make up preposterous fables about it.  And they pretend the critics don’t even exist.  Look at the article; there is not one mention of the criticisms of Darwinism.  Talk about a nasty suck.
    Where are you going to get straight talk on the breaking science news except here?  We are glad our readership has been climbing steadily, but there are still millions who need to know what’s going on in the Science Academy since the Darwin Party dictatorship took over.  If you respect real science and the search for truth based on the evidence, please help spread the word.  Our shortcut URL is simply crev.info: CR for creation, EV for evolution, INFO for information from an intelligent source.  That’s redundant on purpose: information always requires an intelligent source.  Deception does not.