The Cambrian Explosion - Evolution? The Religion of the Atheists

Evolution?

The Cambrian Explosion

Explosion of specified complexity

The Cambrian explosion was the relatively rapid appearance (over a period of many millions of years), around 530 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record...

The Cambrian explosion is the relatively short period in which many complex life forms appeared on the planet. It shows the sudden coming into existence of practically all known animal phyla. The Cambrian stratum also shows that there was a sudden and massive destruction of life because of the preservation of large quantities of fossils.

Science Daily - Marine worms reveal the deepest evolutionary patterns

The fossils from the Cambrian period can cause a real headache for evolutionary biologists. Instinct tells us to expect simple organisms evolving over time to become increasingly more complex. However during the Cambrian period there was an apparent explosion of different major groups of animals, all appearing simultaneously in the fossil record.

Simon Conway Morris - The Cambrian explosion: Slow-fuse or megatonnage?

Equally challenging is answering why the Cambrian period provided such a rich interval for the redeployment of genes that led to more complex bodyplans.

The Cambrian explosion shows the appearance of all known phyla in a relatively short timespan. With the Cambrian explosion for example brains appear which are considered the most complex organs of life. The Cambrain explosion was an explosion of specified complexity which is another blow to evolution.

Wikipedia - The Cambrian explosion

The Cambrian explosion has generated extensive scientific debate. The seemingly rapid appearance of fossils in the "Primordial Strata" was noted as early as the 1840s, and in 1859 Charles Darwin discussed it as one of the main objections that could be made against his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species

The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several paleontologists, for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and by none more forcibly than by Professor Sedgwick, as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification though natural selection. For the development of a group of forms, all of which have descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long ages before their modified descendants.

Darwin himself warns that an event like the Cambrian explosion invalidates his theory. In Darwin's time there was little knowledge from the period before the Cambrian explosion. Darwin expected older strata to show fossils that would explain the sudden appearance of life in the Cambrian. This is not the case, the Pre-Cambrian strata contain only few life forms. Thus the gap is real. Still, the evolutionists assume that there was a period of evolution happening before it, from simple to complex life forms. There is no true science to support that claim and it is primarily based on the evolutionary worldview that presumes evolution beforehand. Another example of worldview over science.

Robert Jastrow - Red Giants and White Dwarfs; Man's Descent from the Stars

The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms. The first clues to the existence of relatively advanced forms of life consist of a few barely discernible tracks, presumably made in the primeval slime by soft, wriggling wormlike animals. These are found in rocks about one billion years old. These meager remains are the earliest traces of many-celled animal life on the planet.

Richard H.T. Callow, Martin D. Brasier - John Salter and the Ediacaran biota of the Longmyndian Group

Biological structures were first recognized in the Longmyndian Supergroup more than 150 years ago where they were interpreted as body and trace fossils. Despite a variety of interpretations through the years, many of these bedding plane markings are now recognized as biological and include the sedimentary record of ancient microbial mats at the sediment-water interface. John Salter had therefore made the key discovery of life prior to the Cambrian radiation.

The Precambrian strata have been thoroughly examined by scientists since Darwin, but they contain very few fossils with explanatory power. The sudden appearance of phyla in the Cambrian poses a serious threat to his theory of slow and gradual evolution.

Stephen Jay Gould - Speech at Southern Methodist University, Oct 2, 1990

One outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of; that since the so called Cambrian explosion... during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record.

Niles Eldredge - Time Frames: The Evolution of Punctuated Equilibria

And it has been the paleontologist—my own breed—who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: ... We paleontologist have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.

Roger Lewin - A Lopsided Look at Evolution

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? (Lewin, 1988)

After the Cambrian explosion no new phyla emerged. There are no intermediates and no macroevolution because from those Cambrian phyla all subspecies and variety came by means of microevolution. Therefore evolutionists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould invented punctuated equilibrium, which contradicts Darwin's gradual evolution, in an attempt to safe there incredible faith.

Burgess Shale trilobite fossil

Sean D. Pitman - The Fossil Record

This rather sudden appearance, relatively speaking, of essentially 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. 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.

The facts are that many phyla appeared in a relatively short period of time and that with time many phyla died out. This is of course not in line with what evolutionists have always claimed. There are many more burning scientific questions for evolution than there are satisfying scientific answers from evolution. That's due to the fact that science simply contradicts evolution.

Talk Origins Non Sense

TalkOrigins - Claim: Complex life forms appear suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, with no ancestral fossils.

1. The Cambrian explosion was the seemingly sudden appearance of a variety of complex animals about 540 million years ago, but it was not the origin of complex life...
2. There are transitional fossils within the Cambrian explosion fossils...
3. Only some phyla appear in the Cambrian explosion. In particular, all plants postdate the Cambrian...
4. The length of the Cambrian explosion is ambiguous and uncertain...
5. There are some plausible explanations for why diversification may have been relatively sudden...
6. Cambrian life was still unlike almost everything alive today...

TalkOrigins is a fanatic evolution club sponsored by mainstream science which of course tries to explain (away) the Cambrian explosion. However...
1. There is nothing seemingly about this sudden appearance. It was definitely sudden in the supposed evolution of billions of years. Nobody says it was the origin of complex life. But it was an explosion of specified complexity. This is certainly not in accordance with slow and gradual evolution as proposed by neo-Darwinism.
2. Transitional fossils are based on metaphysics, not science.
3. Plants existed before the Cambrian explosion. Algea for sure. But all known animal phyla appeared with the Cambrian explosion.
4. It is not. Scientists agree upon the timespan depending on what they want to include.
5. Anybody can make up just-so stories based on wishful thinking.
6. Of course, extinction events caused certain types to disappear. Living fossils prove that there was no evolution. Lazarus taxa show that so-called extinct life forms are still alive today. And of course microevolution caused variety.

Evolution News - In Explaining the Cambrian Explosion, Has the TalkOrigins Archive Resolved Darwin's Dilemma?

None of the organisms mentioned by TalkOrigins represent transitional precursors to the forms that appear so abruptly during the Cambrian explosion. Five to ten million years (which is the most likely time span) is extremely abrupt relative to the time that would be needed to accomplish those radical innovations in animal form resulting in the origin of many different animal body types. ... In summary, TalkOrigins has failed to provide us with a feasible naturalistic explanation for the Cambrian explosion. The facts that the article draws upon are either irrelevant to the subject at hand or accentuate the problem. The Cambrian explosion continues to represent a formidable challenge to the neo-Darwinian theory of evolutionary gradualism.

Uncommon Descent - Wrapping up the Cambrian explosion...

The difficulty with "explaining the Cambrian explosion" efforts is that the explainers are not trying to explain it. They are trying to explain it away. That is a very different procedure. ... what we really hear from explainers away is a non-credible account that satisfies the emotional needs of the people with a vested interest in avoiding the difficulty that the attested event presents to Darwinism.

TalkOrigins doesn't explain, it tries to explain away. This merely understates the problem for evolution theory.

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