Flann 5 wrote:geo wrote:The idea that the eye and the relatively sudden diversification of life during the Cambrian era pose problems for evolutionary theory is simply not true. They are perceived as such—actively promoted as such—only in Creationist literature.
I think there is a tendency to just brush aside problems with the theory, on the grounds that the considerable majority of experts agree or the courts have ruled. Well they also agree that spontaneous abiogenesis occurred,whatever Pasteur might have discovered as scientific fact on this subject.
In fact Darwin himself thought the Cambrian fossils, or lack of intermediates, posed a serious problem for his theory,not to mention the eye, and I have discovered that recent scientific research has shown that there was plenty of oxygen in the pre-Cambrian era. So that can be ruled out as the catalyst for the sudden development and appearance of more complex forms of creatures in the Cambrian.
Just because we don't know exactly how life first arose or how exactly the Cambrian explosion came about doesn't automatically mean that Goddidit. Sorry, God isn't the default answer. That may be what you believe, but that's not how science works. Science doesn't address the existence of God because there's no empirical evidence to test.
This is the fundamental flaw with Intelligent Design. It presents no scientifically testable hypothesis. It merely looks for gaps in our knowledge and assumes God is the answer.
It's also a Creationist canard that "Neo-Darwinism" is about to topple over under the weight of so many unanswered questions, In fact, we know a lot more about evolution than we ever have. As Interbane has said, evolution is well established by the evidence. Only in Creationist circles do you see this wishful thinking that it's going to go away.
We will probably never know with absolute certainty the answers to many of our questions. This is good news for god-of-the-gappers because they can always say Goddidit. But this is not a scientific response and never will be. This is a faith-based belief. It's intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.
There are quite a number of robust theories about the Cambrian explosion. Stephen Jay Gould first proposed the model of punctuated equilibrium suggesting that a lot of evolutionary change take place in relatively short periods of time tied to "speciation events."
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/e ... ated.shtml
We know that many species respond to stress by driving up their mutation rate. This is the fear with Ebola, that mutations will eventually turn the virus into an airborne vector. There is however no evidence that a human virus has ever changed its delivery method to airborne. (I read this in the Wall Street Journal).
Mutations are a complicated subject and science is always a work in progress. There's never a point where we just throw up our hands and say, well God must have did it! Scientists don't see a dead end as a failure. They see it as time to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
http://www.wired.com/2014/01/evolution- ... ssure/all/
