Dembski and Common Descent

Perhaps both you and those atheistic scientists were naive to assume the best intentions of popular media makers. I can understand why you may resent the BBC misrepresenting their project to you. But I can’t say I agree with your implication that the mistreatment you received is somehow balanced by another instance of mistreatment, regardless of who is on the receiving end. Schadenfreude is not a pretty thing to behold.

From the movie trailer: - “There are people out there who want to keep Science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God” - “Scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts of an intelligent Creator”. If ID doesn’t publically indorse GOD as the designer, then the Expelled marketing target team thought it was necessary to do so.

If ID doesn't publically indorse GOD as the designer, then the Expelled marketing target team thought it was necessary to do so.

"Pandas and People, found to be unconstitutional by the Dover court"

Now, that's some news! I wonder what it means for a book to be ... unconstitutional ;-)

Wells and Dembski together… Marvelous… I am sure the book will be a hit amongst creationists and will, once again, remain totally irrelevant to science and likely to be detrimental to religious faith.

As to “Design of Life”, isn’t this the follow-up to Pandas and People, found to be unconstitutional by the Dover court?

But at least now we know that Dembski does reject much of the evidence supporting common descent.

I wonder if he is familiar with St Augustine?

I'm impressed that Dembski "can’t say I feel sorry for these atheistic scientists" when the producers of EXPELLED lied to them about the name of the program, the purpose of the interview, and their credentials...because he didn't know the name of the Horizon program. Did the Horizon team *lie* to Dembski? Did they misrepresent his views? Did he complain to the BBC about it? And even if the Horizon team was wrong, why does that excuse an even greater abuse of trust by another group of journalists?

Yes, the only way to suppress contrary scientific views is not by showing that such a view has no evidence, but to use the Law to stifle it. Way to go, Darwinists!

Evolution must be the only “scientific” theory that needs the courts to be defended.

Has anyone else noticed that Mats never addresses any of the responses to his comments, and never actually makes any arguments of his own, but just comes in and makes the exact same unsupported assertions ("no evidence for _____") day after day after day?

Mats, what is the scientific theory of intelligent design? Why do ID proponents constantly refer to it, but can never refer us to it?

"Mats, what is the scientific theory of intelligent design? Why do ID proponents constantly refer to it, but can never refer us to it?"

Yes, what exactly is the scientific theory of Intelligent Design, Mats?

(sound of crickets chirping)

Mats?

Hello?

Para, It means that the ideas in such a book affect a given religious worldview, meaninly, naturalism and affiliates.

— Mats

It depends on which religious faith you have in mind. If you are talking about the religious faith called “Darwinism”, then, yes, any book that shows the scientific problems of the magical creative powers of natural selection is bound to be “detrimental to religious faith” (Darwinian religious faith).

— Mats

Yes, the only way to suppress contrary scientific views is not by showing that such a view has no evidence, but to use the Law to stifle it. Way to go, Darwinists!

Evolution must be the only “scientific” theory that needs the courts to be defended.

As any rational mind should do, since there is no evidence for such.

— Mats

I am sure he has. Remember that in your citation of his words I bolded the word “uninformed”. Remember that. St Augustine is not saying that we should not use good arguments against nonsensical theories or mindsets. He is saying that we should not use wrong evidence against anything, or that will affect the way the unbeliever sees the faith.

— Mats

If Augustine were alive today, he would endorse the ID view,and be contrary to the notion that living forms are the result of an impersonal natural force.

By the way, PvM, since you are a “Christian” (so you say),

do you think that living forms are the result of a Mind or the result of the impersonal forces of nature?

You can’t serve two masters at the same time.

PvM:

Don't forget that Dembski chooses his words very carefully. If he appears to contradict himself he is very aware of it and prepared to spin his way out of it if necessary. Recall that Dembski said that Carl Woese rejected common descent, despite being fully aware that Woese only rejects a single ancestor for all prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Recently Dembski added that he didn't think that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. That does not rule out the "biological continuity, but not evolutionary mechanism" that is Behe's apparent position. If Dembski truly thought that Behe was wrong, he'd have nothing to lose by challenging him directly. OTOH, if he thought Wells, Nelson, etc. (those who seem to think that humans and other ape lineages are indeed products of separate abiogenesis events) were wrong, he'd probably not challenge them, as that could risk the political support of rank and file Biblical literalists.

Can I be pedantic and point out that WD is wrong in characterising Horizon as the British version of Nova?

The truth is actually the reverse - Nova (launched 1974) is the US version of Horizon (launched 1964). Nova episodes are often Horizon episodes revoiced in US English.

Mats wrongly opined: Evolution must be the only "scientific" theory that needs the courts to be defended.

If life on earth has originated more than once, then common descent for all species would not be true.

So Dembski sees evidence against common descent, so what? That doesn't mean he believes a god person came here and sculpted each species out of mud.

Why isn't is possible that life on earth originated more than once? According to my own scientific philosophy (neo-vitalism), life would be expected to originate many times.

Have you really examined the evidence for and against common descent?

Yes, obviously there are great similarities between many species and many seem to have evolved from each other. But Dembski is not saying there are no common ancestors or denying that some species appear to have evolved from others.

Do you have conclusive evidence that life on earth originated only once? Or is it just that you are so sure the origin of life must be extremely improbable, and therefore could not happen more than once? It is only according to materialist philosophy that the origin of life is extremely improbable. A living universe would be expected to produce life.

(There is my theory and one of my main predictions, for anyone who says I have none. Although I have said it many times already.)

realpc:

The ID scammers like to bait-and-switch between a caricature of CD whereby every organism is descended from a single cell (presumably excluding horizontal transfer), and the scientific definition, which does not rule out several independent abiogenesis events in the Precambrian (e.g. Woese's position, and one that Darwin himself made sure not to rule out). No serious scientists, and judging by their routine use of weasel words like "common design," not even ID activists, specifically deny that humans and other apes at the very least share a line of common ancestors, whether or not they honestly think that evolution (usually caricaturized as "Darwinism" or "naturalistic evolution") is the proximate cause of species change. They can't, because they know that there is no evidence whatsoever to support independent abiogenesis for such similar lineages. But with a few exceptions like Behe, they refuse to commit to accepting CD per the scientific definition for fear of alienating their Biblical literalist audience.

Ironically, if they had such evidence, they would have a much less legally risky alternative to teach in public schools. They could teach what happened, when, and how, and show all the research they do to support it. There would be no need to mention design or misrepresent evolution with a phony "critical analysis." But they don't have the evidence and they know it.

realpc--
As you must know, abiogenesis is not well understood. There is nothing in our current knowledge which would indicate that life did not begin on earth many times.

HOWEVER, the genetic code appears to be universal. Since no one has found any particular reason why the genetic code should be the way it is-- why any particular triplet of DNA bases should code for the particular amino acid it does (why, for instance, three adenine bases in a row should code for lysine instead of any other amino acid)-- the conclusion scientists have drawn is that all known organisms inherited their genetic code from a common ancestor.

If you can come up with a plausible, TESTABLE hypothesis why the genetic code is the way it is, you will be showered with opportunities to explain it-- probably including a gala event in Stockholm. In the mean time, the best hypothesis science has is that the genetic code was put together through a random process by some long-ago ancestor and then passed down to the ancestor's heirs-- who now include all of us.

If you don't like that conclusion, that's your perogative. But until somebody comes up with a TESTABLE alternative, it's the best explanation we've got.

Mats: If Augustine were alive today, he would endorse the ID view,and be contrary to the notion that living forms are the result of an impersonal natural force. By the way, PvM, since you are a "Christian" (so you say), do you think that living forms are the result of a Mind or the result of the impersonal forces of nature? You can't serve two masters at the same time.

Personally I wonder if Mats is not a creationist at all, but just someone who knows what buttons to push to provoke the regulars.

But Dembski is not saying there are no common ancestors or denying that some species appear to have evolved from others.

For the record: I personally don’t believe in common descent though I think there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable evolutionary change.

According to my own scientific philosophy (neo-vitalism)

Do you have conclusive evidence that life on earth originated only once?

Or is it just that you are so sure the origin of life must be extremely improbable, and therefore could not happen more than once?

It is only according to materialist philosophy that the origin of life is extremely improbable.

A living universe would be expected to produce life.

"As you must know, abiogenesis is not well understood. There is nothing in our current knowledge which would indicate that life did not begin on earth many times. HOWEVER, the genetic code appears to be universal. Since no one has found any particular reason why the genetic code should be the way it is– why any particular triplet of DNA bases should code for the particular amino acid it does (why, for instance, three adenine bases in a row should code for lysine instead of any other amino acid)– the conclusion scientists have drawn is that all known organisms inherited their genetic code from a common ancestor."

Mats and realpc are perfect examples of how the IDers' level of "debate" has declined since the Dover ruling, all the way down to the grade-school level. All of their "scientific" arguments have been discredited, the mainstream media are onto them, they were never able to disguise the narrow, ignorant religion that underlay their motives, and now they're reduced to randomly sniping with stale old talking-points and running away. These losers are probably congratulating themselves just for getting our attention and allowing them to pretend they're arguing with real scientists.

The fact that only this sort of overgrown child shows up here to "defend" ID only proves how cowardly and self-isolated the IDers really are.

How is this any different from the ID claim of ‘we can’t explain this, therefore God did it’?

Lucky for me that I'm not a creationist, then. :) My question was genuine (although, apparently incredibly stupid). What I meant is that both positions look like arguments from ignorance. What makes concluding common ancestry based upon an inability to explain the universalness of DNA, different from concluding god did it based on an ability to explain, well, anything?

First, I have asked Mats many times to present some hypotheses, some predictions and some evidence and he has not done so. I suggest that we just keep asking him the same questions and not respond to anything else he cares to write until he does so.

Second, I asked realpc to make some predictions that were different from those made by MET. His response here is that "neo-vitalism" predicts that life is likely to arise, presumably this means that life was likely to arise more than once on earth. Sorry, that is in no way different from what is predicted by MET. MET would certainly allow for life to arise more than once on earth and in many other environments as well. As another poster pointed out, in order to make predictions you need to determine the probabilities associated with the two theories and then examine the evidence to see which is closer to reality. In the case of earth, all extant life forms are demonstrably derived from a single common ancestor. There is plenty of evidence for this in the details of cell structure, DNA replication machinery, transcription machinery, the genetic code, translation machinery, metabolic pathways and many other features that are known in great detail. It is not the mere superficial similarities between these features that allow us to reach this conclusion, but the vast number of minute details that can only be explained reasonably by historical contingency. However, this evidence cannot be interpreted as indicating a single origin of life, only a single common ancestor for all surviving life forms. So once again, MET can account for all of the observations adequately and realpc cannot distinguish between the two possibilities. As for life elsewhere in the universe, if realpc has some evidence that would be nice. However, once again, MET can easily account for the origin of life just about anywhere. At this time all of the avaliable evidence indicates that life is rare, in fact so rare that we have not detected any anywhere else. So get out there realpc, join SETI and find some evidence. It still won't prove MET wrong, but at least you'll finally have some evidence for the "living universe".

Third, Dembski is a weasel. When he tries to talk out of both sides of his mouth we need to pin him dowwn precisely. What common descent exactly does he believe in? How much change does he believe in? Are humans descended from other primates or not? Are cetaceans descended from artiodactyls or not? What is the evidence on which you base these conclusions? Remember, he has admitted that the plagarized error argument is persuasive. All we need to do is to get him in front of a heterogenoous audience where he can't just pick the one answer he knows everyone present wants to hear.

I meant 'inability', by the way. Curse those tiny prefixes.

Venus,

There is vast difference between the argument from ignorance and the conclusion that all extant life forms on earth are descended from a single common ancestor. The first argument is based on lack of knowldege, the second is based on the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of years of study in many different disciplines.

Basically the argument goes like this: are there arbitrary features shared in common between life forms? If so, then the organisms that possess them most likely shared a common ancestor. The conclusion is based on the fact that many other features are theoretically possible and the one that is observed is only arbitrary. But, once that feature has evolved, it might be extremely difficult to make changes that would be viable, hence all descendants would share the feature and it would be extremely unlikely to arise multiple times by chance.

For example, the genetice code, developmental pathways such as those regulated by hox genes, metabolic pathways such as glycolysis, details of DNA sequence, replication, transcription and translation, etc. Each of these process has been studied in exquisite detail. In each case, there are arbitrary features that are best explained as the result of historical contingency and common ancestry. These features have played a critical role in reconstructng the tree of life. Taken together, what they reveal is that all extant life forms were derived from a single common ancestor. There are no major discontinuities in the tree of life. It could have been otherwise, but it just wasn't.

I have taken your question seriously and have taken the time to respond to it in detail because I believe that you are sincere in your questioning. If that is the case, I hope that I have been of some help. Others are of course free to add to my comments. If that is not the case, then perhaps others may learn something anyway.

Mats and realpc are perfect examples of how the IDers’ level of "debate" has declined since the Dover ruling, all the way down to the grade-school level.

Mats really is a terrible troll. He comes in, makes a driveby posting containing the most obvious cliched creationist canards, his complaints get torn to shreds, but he never follows anything up. Personally I wonder if Mats is not a creationist at all, but just someone who knows what buttons to push to provoke the regulars.

What I meant is that both positions look like arguments from ignorance.

I have taken your question seriously and have taken the time to respond to it in detail because I believe that you are sincere in your questioning. If that is the case, I hope that I have been of some help. Others are of course free to add to my comments. If that is not the case, then perhaps others may learn something anyway.

By the way, PvM, since you are a “Christian” (so you say), do you think that living forms are the result of a Mind or the result of the impersonal forces of nature?

Yes, the only way to suppress contrary scientific views is not by showing that such a view has no evidence, but to use the Law to stifle it. Way to go, Darwinists!

If life on earth has originated more than once, then common descent for all species would not be true. So Dembski sees evidence against common descent, so what? That doesn’t mean he believes a god person came here and sculpted each species out of mud.

Have you really examined the evidence for and against common descent?

Yes, obviously there are great similarities between many species and many seem to have evolved from each other. But Dembski is not saying there are no common ancestors or denying that some species appear to have evolved from others.

Do you have conclusive evidence that life on earth originated only once? Or is it just that you are so sure the origin of life must be extremely improbable, and therefore could not happen more than once? It is only according to materialist philosophy that the origin of life is extremely improbable. A living universe would be expected to produce life.

I am sure he has. Remember that in your citation of his words I bolded the word “uninformed”. Remember that. St Augustine is not saying that we should not use good arguments against nonsensical theories or mindsets. He is saying that we should not use wrong evidence against anything, or that will affect the way the unbeliever sees the faith. If Augustine were alive today, he would endorse the ID view,and be contrary to the notion that living forms are the result of an impersonal natural force.

What makes concluding common ancestry based upon an inability to explain the universalness of DNA,

different from concluding god did it based on an ability to explain, well, anything?

Why is it so hard to accept that countless Christians have accepted the scientific fact of evolution, as well as the scientific evidence of an old earth while still maintaining their faith?

Venus Mousetrap -

I sincerely believe that there is no such thing as a stupid sincere question.

I can assure that I have mistakenly asked many questions far stupider than the one that you asked.

If you actually learned something, it was a good question.

It becomes stupid to repeat the same question or refuted point over and over again after it has been answered. I haven't seen you do that.

How is this any different from the ID claim of ‘we can’t explain this, therefore God did it’?

Mats, you claim that "As any rational mind should do, since there is no evidence for such." when talking about common descent. Assuming that you consider yourself to be a rational mind, would you be open for us to step through the evidence?

In other words, as a Christian and a scientist, I am offering you the opportunity to find out about the evidence that supports common descent.

Are you up for it? I understand that this may be an uncomfortable question as it affects the foundation of your faith and let me assure you that discovering the truth can never undermine one's faith, except of course when one has foolishly ignored St Augustine's words.

I am patiently awaiting your response.
In Christ. Pim

Yes, and in rejecting the evidence for common descent, Dembski is opening his faith to ridicule.

Oh and Mats, what do you think of Dembski's response to 'atheist scientists' who claim they were misled by the producers of Expelled?
Would you consider this an attitude worthy of a Christian? Or would it likely run afoul of logic and cause more harm than good?

On the question of "common ancestry" and "origin of life", may I suggest something (although I'm not a scientist).

These are two different questions. We can feel rather confident about common ancestry, even if we don't have much of an idea about the first life. Common ancestry is not about the first ancestor, the usual expression is "last universal common ancestor" (LUCA).

Perhaps this analogy would be helpful:

We know that languages have a history. We have no idea about how (or even when) humans first began to speak. But that doesn't stop us from having a pretty good idea that a lot of languages share a common ancestor. The Romance languages, the Germanic languages, the Slavic languages, all seem to be derived from a language (or maybe a group of languages) spoken maybe something like 5000 years ago. (Whether all languages share a common ancestor is something that nobody knows.)

But I would agree that, at the present state of knowledge, we don't have any answer to Who spoke the first language, or When, or Where, or Why, or How. (Well, maybe How - it probably had to be with the mouth - but it could have been a sign language.)

Woese is something of an icon within modern evolutionary biology, having spent his career probing the mysteries of the earliest phylogeny of life. His statements questioning "common descent" are not, as Meyer claims, aimed at questioning the Darwinian canon (1). Instead, Woese is saying something much more subtle: horizontal gene transfer in the early history of acellular and cellular life may account equally well for the ubiquity of a common biochemical basis for life and strong homology among coding and transcription mechanisms. Woese is making an empirical point: currently, we have no way to distinguish between one single origin for life, and multiple independent origins which promiscuously shared information via HGT. This empirical dilemma does not invalidate Darwinian evolution, as proponents of ID claim. It merely adds an intriguing question to the list of issues scientific analysis of evolution has yet to solve. Meyer's misuse of Woese isn't caused by misreading, or the subtle nature of the argument. Reading Woese's work, one is struck by the intense commitment to elucidating the deepest structures of our evolutionary history, and overcoming tired arguments which have structured the field for far too long. No, Meyer and proponents of Intelligent Design understand Woese just fine. They simply choose to misuse, misinterpret, and misrepresent his work in service to their argument. And this is the insidious nature of the Intelligent Design phenomenon. Working scientists see through Dembski, Meyer, and Behe with little trouble, given background in the field. The public, however, has more trouble doing so, given that Intelligent Design arguments are written in the style of scientific arguments, attempt to cite evidence, and are dressed in the trappings of modern scholarship. Unless you have the substantive background to examine their arguments, it can be difficult to recognize that their arguments are all style, no substance. I don't really know how to combat this phenomenon. It does seem bound up in better general education on the nature of scientific inquiry and how scientific arguments are constructed. But ultimately we cannot expect people untrained in biology or evolutionary theory to distinguish two arguments which are formally similiar but substantively different. Perhaps we can combat it most effectively by electing leaders who respect science, and are less prone to giving ideologically driven pseudo-science the legitimacy of a place at the table.

For the record: I personally don’t believe in common descent though I think there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable evolutionary change.

I am aware of few better examples of common descent than the enzyme dUTPase. Its active site comprises five strongly-conserved motifs. These motifs can be identified in the dUTPase of humans; horses; plants; fungi (Saccharomyces); protists; bacteria; and viruses (e.g. HSV-1 and MMTV). The fact that some viruses encode a dUTPase at all indicates its importance. Viruses are the ultimate light travellers. Chemically, there must be dozens of ways of cleaving the beta - gamma phosphate bond of dUTP, yet all of these organisms use exactly the same mechanism.

For more information, go to PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
and carry out a search for dUTPase + evolution. There's only 27 papers on the evolution of this one protein, so that's not too much work.

Venus Mousetrap:

You didn't ask a stupid question. Only questions that are repeated or on known refuted points are stupid, much as harold notes.

Posters and commenter aren't perfect and must in any case assume a certain contextual knowledge. This can in some cases lead to less well stated texts depending on the actual readership. For example, PvM posts assume that you know that the proposal to use the religious Of Pandas and People as a science textbook was unconstitutional. Otherwise the post looks like it claims books can be unconstitutional for some reason or other.

Here the comment was formulated assuming that we know there is a context of non-uniqueness of possible codes and common ancestry of several molecular pathways.

Of course you mousetrap mind caught on to the seemingly free running argument from ignorance. Squeak! Well done.

I just noticed that Panda's thumb contributor Mats shares his signature with the
first name of Swedish creationist Mats Molén who is well-known enough to have
an entry in the Swedish Wikipedia, see

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mats_Mol%C3%A9n

Molén has studied natural science in Sweden and Canada and has a Canadian
M. Sc. as well as several (2 or 3) degrees from Sweden. He runs a creationist
museum in his hometown Umeå and has also a teaching position in the local school system.

In 2001 Molén received the title "Deceiver of the year" given by the skeptical organization "Vetenskap och folkbildning" for his "denial of evolution on the basis of pseudoscientific reasoning".

Have I found a random coincidence or was the Panda's thumb signature intelligently designed?

"For the record: I personally don’t believe in common descent though I think there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable evolutionary change."

eh? is he saying he doesn't believe in the CONCEPT of common descent (that groups of organisms are related to each other via a common ancestor)? or that ALL LIFE descended from a single common ancestor?

Technically, these are not mutually exclusive - there could have been More than one group of organisms that were "original" to all extant life (although the evidence does not support this as noted above)

But then he says that "I think there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable evolutionary change"

It appears that Dembski does believe in the CONCEPT of common descent (heck doesn't he believe that all humans share common descent from Adam and Eve?) but not in all life sharing common descent? What about all animals? all plants? where does is draw the line? What does he base these demarcations on? Is this the old Micro evolution is true but not "macro"evolution or the even older "evolution within kinds"? why doesn't he make it clear what the heck he is talking about? (unless his GOAL is to obfuscate not illuminate?!)

not that I find his arguments persuasive, I just fail to understand how ANYONE DOES?

Dembski can't seem to even clearly state what he believes in/ doesn't think that science proves

how old is the earth?
how old is the universe?
are Humans part of the animal kingdom?
are all animals related via common ancestry? groups within animals etc?
are animals related to other groups of organisms via common ancestry?

I suspect he will not commit to any hard answers to his stand to any of these - he doesn't want anyone to have an excuse to "get out of the big tent"!
can speciation occur?

WOW I wish I had as much faith in the Lord God as you guys got in dirt turning into incredibly complex lifeforms...Shoot,,the fossil record itself has made me lose faith in the almighty god of natural selection and random mutation (SHHHH, please don't tell the high priest of materialism (Dawkins) of my doubts or he could have me excommunicated from the church)
Most people presume the evidence in the fossil record overwhelmingly confirms gradual evolution from a single common ancestor. Yet this is not the case at all. The fossil record itself is one of the most crushing things for naturalists. What is termed the “Cambrian explosion” is a total departure from the naturalistic theory of evolution. It is in the Cambrian explosion, some 540 million years ago, that we find the sudden appearance of the many diverse and complex forms of life. These complex life-forms appear with no evidence of transition from the bacteria and few other “simple” life-forms that immediately preceded them in the fossil record. This following quote clearly illustrates this point.

“Yet, here is the real puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion for the theory of evolution. All the known phyla (large categories of biological classification), except one, first appear in the Cambrian period. There are no ancestors. There are no intermediates. Fossil experts used to think that the Cambrian lasted 75 million years.... Eventually the Cambrian was shortened to only 30 million years. If that wasn't bad enough, the time frame of the real work of bringing all these different creatures into existence was shortened to the first five to ten million years of the Cambrian. This is extraordinarily fast! Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould stated, "Fast is now a lot faster than we thought, and that is extraordinarily interesting." What an understatement! "Extraordinarily impossible" might be a better phrase! .... The differences between the creatures that suddenly appear in the Cambrian are enormous. In fact these differences are so large many of these animals are one of a kind. Nothing like them existed before and nothing like them has ever appeared again.” Evolution's Big Bang; Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin, University of Illinois (B.S., zoology), North Texas State University (M.S., population genetics), University of Texas at Dallas (M.S., Ph.D., molecular biology).

The “real work” of the beginning of the Cambrian explosion may in actuality be as short as a two to three million year time frame (Ross: Creation as Science 2006). If this blatant, out of nowhere, appearance of all the different phyla was not bad enough for naturalists, the fossil record shows that there was actually more variety of phyla at the end of the Cambrian explosion than there is today due to extinction.

“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 the Cambrian explosion (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. (Actually the number 50 was first quoted as over 100 for a while, but then the consensus became 50-plus.) That means there are more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils, than exist now.” “Also, the animal explosion caught people's attention when the Chinese confirmed they found a genus now called Yunnanzoon that was present in the very beginning of the Cambrian explosion. This genus is considered a chordate, and the phylum Chordata includes fish, mammals and man. An evolutionist would say the ancestor of humans was present then. Looked at more objectively, you could say the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the very beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate.” Dr. Paul Chien PhD., chairman of the biology department at the University of San Francisco, Dr. Chien also possesses the largest collection of Chinese Cambrian fossils in North America.

The evolutionary theory would have us believe we should have more phyla today due to ongoing evolutionary processes. The hard facts of science betray the naturalists once again. The naturalist stamps his feet and says the evidence for the fossils transmutation into radically new forms is out there somewhere; we just have not found it yet. To justify this belief, naturalists will often say that soft bodied fossils were not preserved in the Cambrian fossil record, so transitional fossils were just not recorded in the fossil record in the first place. Yet, the Chinese Cambrian fossil record is excellent in its preservation of delicate - ied fossils that clearly show much of the detail of the body structures of these first creatures. So the problem for naturalists has not been alleviated. In fact the problem has become much worse. As Dr. Ray Bohlin stated, some of these recently discovered fossils are extremely unique and defy any sort of transitional scenario to any other fossils found during the Cambrian explosion. In spite of this crushing evidence found in the Cambrian explosion, our naturalistic friend continues to imagine that all life on earth descended from a common ancestor and continues to imagine missing links with every new fossil discovery that makes newspaper headlines. Yet, the true story of life since the Cambrian explosion, that is actually told by the fossil record itself, tells a very different story than the imaginative tales found in naturalistic newspaper accounts. Where the story of life, since the Cambrian explosion, is extremely clear to read is in the sea creatures who fossilize quickly in ocean sediments. We find fossils in the fossil record that appear suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, fully-formed. They have no apparent immediate evolutionary predecessor. They, just, appear suddenly in the fossil record unique and fully-formed. This is exactly what one would expect from an infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator continually introducing new life-forms on earth. Even more problematic for the naturalists is the fact once a fossil suddenly appears in the fossil record it remains surprisingly stable in its basic structure for as long as it is found in the fossil record. The fossil record can offer not even one clear example of transition from one fossil form to another fossil form out of millions of collected fossils. Some sea creatures, such as certain sharks which are still alive today, have unchanging fossil records going back hundreds of millions of years to when they first suddenly appeared in the fossil record without a predecessor.

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record." Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma (1988), Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9

"The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be .... We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin's time ... so Darwin's problem has not been alleviated". Evolutionist David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History

"... Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.” George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360.

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution." - Niles Eldredge , "Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate," 1996, p.95

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory in America prior to his recent .
As you can see, the fossil record is overwhelmingly characterized by suddenness and stability. For creatures who have lived in the ocean this fact is extremely clear, because their bones are fossilized in the ocean sediments very quickly. Unfortunately for land creatures, the fossil record is much harder to properly discern due to the rapid disintegration of animals who die on land. The large variety of hominid (man or ape-like) fossils that we do have piece-meal records of are characterized by overlapping histories of “distinctively different and stable” hominid species during the entire time, and the entire geography, each hominid species is found in the fossil record. There is never a transition between ANY of the different hominid species no matter where, or in what era, the hominid fossils are found.

"If pressed about man's ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional species to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving". Richard Leakey, world's foremost paleo-anthropologist, in a PBS documentary, 1990.

As Richard Leakey, the leading hominid fossil expert in the world admits, if he were pressed, he would have to admit the hard evidence suggests the abrupt arrival of man in the fossil record. Yet if you were to ask an average person if we have evolved from apes he will tell you of course we have and wonder why you would ask such a stupid question, since “everyone knows” this is proven in the fossil record. One hard fact in the fossil record that is not disputed by most naturalists is the fact that man is the youngest distinct species of all species to suddenly appear in the fossil record. I find the fact that man has the scientifically accepted youngest history of any fossil in the fossil record to be extremely interesting and compelling to the position held by the anthropic hypothesis. Though a naturalist may try to inconclusively argue fruit flies or some other small types of animals have evolved into distinct new species since that time, he cannot produce evidence for a genetically and morphologically unique animal with a fossil record younger than mans. This one point of evidence is crucial for both sides and is an extremely important point of contention, for this fact is the primary proposal of the whole anthropic hypothesis in the first place; God created the universe with man in mind as His final goal. Man being the last distinct and separate species to suddenly appear in the fossil record is totally expected by the anthropic hypothesis and is completely contrary to what the naturalistic evolutionary hypothesis would expect. Naturalists do not seem to notice that their theory of evolution expects and even demands there should be clear evidence for a genetically and morphologically unique species on earth somewhere since man first suddenly appeared on earth. Indeed there should be many such unambiguous examples that they could produce.

"Perhaps the most obvious challenge is to demonstrate evolution empirically. There are, arguably, some 2 to 10 million species on earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive somewhere between 3 and 5 million years. In that case, we ought to be seeing small but significant numbers of originations (new species) ... every decade." Keith Stewart Thomson, Professor of Biology and Dean of the Graduate School, Yale University (Nov. -Dec. American Scientist, 1997 pg. 516)

Naturalists try to assert that evolution of species is happening all the time, all over the place, with a lot of suggestive evidence that is far from being scientifically conclusive. Once again the hard “conclusive” evidence of extensive and exhaustive experimentation betrays the naturalists in his attempts to validate his evolutionary scenario.

“Whatever we may try to do within a given species, we soon reach limits which we cannot break through. A wall exists on every side of each species. That wall is the DNA coding, which permits wide variety within it (within the gene pool, or the genotype of a species)—but no exit through that wall. Darwin's gradualism is bounded by internal constraints, beyond which selection is useless." R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990)

"The closest science has come to observing and recording actual speciation in animals is the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky in Drosophilia paulistorium fruit flies. But even here, only reproductive isolation, not a new species, appeared." from page 32 "Acquiring Genomes" Lynn Margulis.

If life on earth has originated more than once, then common descent for all species would not be true.

The evolutionary theory would have us believe we should have more phyla today due to ongoing evolutionary processes.

WOW I wish I had as much faith in the Lord God as you guys got in dirt turning into incredibly complex lifeforms...

— B.J.

In Sweden: 72. In Sweden, the first creationist museum was opened in Umeå in 1996.

According to my own scientific philosophy (neo-vitalism), life would be expected ...

According to my own scientific philosophy (neo-vitalism), life would be expected ...

Born Again Bond quote mines thus:

"Yet, here is the real puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion for the theory of evolution...

Blah, blah, blah...................

.......challenge is to demonstrate evolution empirically. There are, arguably, some 2 to 10 million species on earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive somewhere between 3 and 5 million years. In that case, we ought to be seeing small but significant numbers of originations (new species) … every decade."

Taken word for word from comment 26 at:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/ruse-versus-nelson-what-would-make-us-change-our-minds-an-unconventional-debate-october-4/

So, Bond, are you bornagain77 on UD, and a liar for Jesus, or are you someone else and a plagiarist liar for Jesus?

Mats Wrote:
"As any rational mind should do, since there is no evidence for [common descent]."

And Bond, James Bond said:
"Most people presume the evidence in the fossil record overwhelmingly confirms gradual evolution from a single common ancestor. Yet this is not the case at all. The fossil record itself is one of the most crushing things for naturalists. What is termed the “Cambrian explosion” is a total departure from the naturalistic theory of evolution. It is in the Cambrian explosion, some 540 million years ago, that we find the sudden appearance of the many diverse and complex forms of life. These complex life-forms appear with no evidence of transition from the bacteria and few other “simple” life-forms that immediately preceded them in the fossil record."

Why are the Creationist bigots always resorting to straw men and even outright lies in order to harass bloggers like us on the evolution issue? Are we all supposed to be in grade school or what?!

Mr. Bond wrote:

“Yet, here is the real puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion for the theory of evolution. All the known phyla (large categories of biological classification), except one, first appear in the Cambrian period. There are no ancestors."

First of all there are plenty of precambrian fossils. See the Talk Origins archive for many examples.

Second, which phylum was it that was not present in the Cambrian? I would really like to know, since it wasn't Chordata.

Third, why on earth would anyone think the "Cambrian Explosion" was a puzzle or a problem for modern evolutionary theory? What it is a problem for is young earth creationism. What it is a problem for is the six day story in Genesis. Now that was an explosion!

Why do these guys bother to lie when they know we already know they are lying and will always expose the lie?

Second, which phylum was it that was not present in the Cambrian? I would really like to know, since it wasn’t Chordata.

The only modern phylum with an adequate fossil record to appear after the Cambrian was the phylum Bryozoa, which is not known before the early Ordovician.

Delurking--

Bond James Bond:

After disgorging an amazing volume of very shrill quotes makes a series of points that come down to this:

1) In Geologic history, there have been periods of very rapid expansion and contraction in the number of species inhabiting the planet.

And

2) The fossil record of the geologic continuum is incomplete.

Therefore... Goddidit?

Uhhhmmm... sorry, not convinced.

You assert, via quote mine, that God built all those Precambrian phyla as precursors to more complex creatures and eventually to humankind.

So everything that came before us, humanity, the ego-center of the universe, was just practice? I must say that is an incredibly arrogant viewpoint. The Universe exists just for us. Me me me. Mine mine mine. Sounds like the sort of argument an undisciplined five-year-old would make.

And why would God need to practice anyway? Why would God need to develop the world in stages? Why not just make the whole world, 'poof,' the way it is now? Are the fossils there just to test our faith? Please, don't be so absurd.

Any God worth believing in would surely be more sophisticated than that. Any God who created a universe of Muons and Gluons and subatomic interactions that happen so quickly they can barely be said to have occurred at all can certainly do better than 'poof' when it comes to creating species. Any God who created the Big Bang and a vast universe with billions upon billions of galaxies could certainly come up with something better than 'poof' when it comes to increasing the diversity of life.

On the other hand any God worthy of the name could certainly have come up with an elegant, self-regulating, adaptable, mechanism for the propagation of species. Such a God could certainly have come up with a fundamentally simple process with a nearly limitless number of possible permutations: natural selection.

This world, our Earth, let alone the rest of creation, is a fascinating place filled with wonders and complexities we have barely begun to understand. To look on the world and to observe all these complexities and to try to understand them for what they are, is to try to understand God.

To cower in fear from the wonders of creation, to deny their abundant and complex manifestation; to say, "The world is lying to me," in the face of all empirical evidence to the contrary, is to deny God's work, and essentially to put yourself above God. That's called pride, by the way. It was Lucifer's sin.

I prefer to think that God created a vast natural world full of wonders for me to explore and to take joy in and to understand, rather a narrow-minded world to be viewed only through the dusty lens of denial.

Two grammatical points for the board:

1) Earth, the planet, is a proper noun and is always capitalized.

2) The word 'unique' cannot be modified in English. Saying something is 'very unique' is like saying its the mostest bestest.

Artfulskeptic

"Bond" (a transparent phony pretending to be a transparently phony secret agent) blithered thusly:

WOW I wish I had as much faith in the Lord God as you guys got in dirt turning into incredibly complex lifeforms...

So now you're admitting your faith in your God is weaker than our faith in science? That's nothing new, of course, since creationists show the depth of their insecurity whenever they try to protect their "faith" with lies and manufactured hatred. But thanks for that bit of honesty anyway.

Gee, I wonder why your faith in your God is so weak? Maybe it's because it's got you nothing but ignorance, lies, infantilism and paralysis, while the rest of Humanity just pushed on ahead without your participation. It must really suck to be like Paris Hilton without the money.

BJB said: WOW I wish I had as much faith in the Lord God as you guys got in dirt turning into incredibly complex lifeforms

The evolutionary theory would have us believe we should have more phyla today due to ongoing evolutionary processes.

The Linnean classification system is also hierarchical, with species grouped into genera, genera into families, families into orders, etc. This system reflects the discontinuity and hierarchy that are commonly, but not always, observed among living organisms. However, "this system leads to the impression that species in different categories differ from one another in proportion to differences in taxonomic rank.6 This impression is false. Higher taxa are relatively distinct and easily recognizable groups only when we ignore the time dimension of the history of life. Taxonomic categories are blurred during times representing the branching points of the tree of life. Once a lineage is split, its branches continue to evolve and diverge such that their morphological (and genetic) distance increases and they become more readily distinguished taxonomic entities. Since taxonomy is superimposed on a branching tree of life, a higher level in the taxonomic hierarchy does not imply a greater degree of morphologic distance. For example, two species which belong to different classes are not necessarily more different from each other than two species belonging to different genera. When using the fossil record to look backward through time, it is found that representatives of different higher-level taxa become more "primitive," that is, have fewer derived characters, and appear more like the primitive members of other closely related taxa.7 The more complete the fossil record of the origin and early radiation of higher taxa the more similar the transitional species, and the more difficult it is to determine their taxonomic assignments. Species placed into two different higher taxa may thus have very similar morphologies. Were it not for the subsequent evolutionary history of the lineages, species spanning the transitions between families, orders, classes, or phyla would be placed in the same lower taxon.8 This is completely consistent with the paradigm of common descent, and with the origin of higher taxa through evolutionary processes at the population and species level

WOW I wish I had as much faith in the Lord God as you guys got in dirt turning into incredibly complex lifeforms

Is this some big surprise? To name their blog "uncommon descent" menas they have problems with common descent and are thinking about special creation.

Venus Mousetrap is apparently long gone, before I could respond to her (his?) response to my post. In any case, David Stanton and Harold answered, better than I could have done.

I'd just like to add, I thought the question was a good one. It made me think about what I wrote.

And, secondly, there's a huge historic difference between the creationists' argument from ignorance; "I can't, off the top of my head, think how it came about. So Goddidit," and the scientific conclusion that the genetic code is arbitrary. Molecular biologists struggled for YEARS (specifically, 1954 to 1966) to find some rhyme or reason to the genetic code, so that they could put it together without having to grind through a lot of complicated chemistry. They never found a rule for predicting which particular triplets of DNA bases would code for any particular amino acid.

So the conclusion that our particular genetic code is arbitrary, and is only (virtually) universal because it was inherited from a common ancestor, is based on a lot of hard, thankless work trying to prove the contrary, and failing.

Of course one should also note that even if every phylum was present in the Cambrian, that not every class was. For example, there were no vertebrates yet. That means no fish, no amphibians, no reptiles, no mammals, no primates, no humans. Not a very big explosion really, at least compared to the one in Genesis. If you have a problem with explosions, why not start with that one?

The first comment congratulates Dembski on his admission. It only took him over a decade to do it. Better late than never. The next thing Dembski will come clean on is his YEC beliefs. Anyone want to bet that he has been hedging on that one too?

Actually, this is about the most direct statement that the worm has ever put out on any issue pertinent to the "controversy" that he is participating in. Anyone just has to look up his various coming clean essays to see that he never comes clean about anything, when you have 20-20 hindsight, or you just observe all the wiggle room and obfuscation he usually employs.

Great blog, keep it going !

BO

Of course, he has never articulated what leads him to conclude that we don’t share common descent, beyond “I don’t know how this evolved”-type arguments from ignorance. . .

— Inoculated Mind

Dembski didn't respond to my questions, but his compatriots attempted to answer for him, and I think they had the impression that he didn't. I would have assumed so, given the name of his weblog!, but now there's no reason for him to mince words anymore.

— Inoculated Mind

Demski: For the record: I personally don’t believe in common descent though I think there are lines of evidence that suggest considerable evolutionary change.

So, Bond, are you bornagain77 on UD, and a liar for Jesus, or are you someone else and a plagiarist liar for Jesus?

— Joe McFaul

Raven,

Dembski has said more that once that he accepts the timeline of mainstream science, which means that he is at least a progressive OEC (as opposed to old-earth-young-life types). What confuses everyone is that Dembski admitted more political sympathy to YECs than to OECs.

Back to my caveat: Given tendencies of extreme anti-science types to compartmentalize, it's concevable that Dembski truly is a closet YEC, but if that's so, he could be a closet Last Thursdayist as well. But keep in mind the differences between the rank and file and the activists. Even before Edwards v. Aguillard, most activists seemed to know that the evidence just doesn't support YEC or OEC-without-common-descent. Classic creationist groups think it's worth the risks of exposing the fatal flaws and contradictions, but IDers shrewdly try to keep the focus on "Darwinism."

Bond, James Bond used the Richard Leakey quote at the scienceblog, Questionable Authority earlier this week. Nobody could find the PBS special he mentions.

In any case, whether Leakey said what BJB claims or not, the quote is no longer justified. In what was probably the single most embarrassing episode of Richard Leakey's entire life, the 1470 fossil was proved by Leakey's own team to be wrongly dated. It is, in fact, over a million years younger than Lucy.

So, BJB, if you really revere Leakey as "the leading hominid fossil expert in the world,"
why don't you cut him a break and stop bringing up that painful memory?

Just help mats and bjb focus on Bill's adventures in Oklahoma, and his spectacular failure to even hold his own against undergrads, much less another public destruction of irreducible complexity provided by the bio chem professor in attendance.

Nigel D: Thanks for pointing this out, Joe. I feared that BJB is trying to drown us in his verbal (typograhical?) diarrhoea, perhaps in the hope that, if his comment is long enough, no-one will bother reading it. Based on your research, it looks like a copy-and-paste job. Given that it is a word-for-word reproduction of bornagain77's (quite long and tedious) post at UD, if BJB isn't bornagain77, then (s)he is in violation of bornagain77's copyright on that drivel. Aha! That's it!! It's all a creo plot to get PT taken down under the DMCA!!!

In fact, it was shown that the view had no evidence, otherwise, it would not have been found unconstitutional.

By the way, PvM, since you are a “Christian” (so you say), do you think that living forms are the result of a Mind or the result of the impersonal forces of nature?

They are the result of forces of nature, representing the result of a Mind.

So can you help me understand why you rely on denial of science to create gaps in which your ‘Mind’ can be hidden?

Mats: Clearly, you are not being factual. The Design hypothesis, defended by IDers and YECers was rejected not because it had no evidence, but because it was deemed a priori as "religious" and "unscientific". Notice the difference in there.

Mats--

The sole issue at the Dover trial was whether intelligent design can be taught in a (U.S.) public school science classes.

Judge Jones never said that scientists in the lab cannot test hypotheses based on intelligent design. He never said they can't write ID-inspired papers and submit them to scholarly journals. He never said IDers are forbidden to do science. He only said they HAVEN'T done science.

If you want ID taken seriously as science-- go do science. Don't come here and whine that your theories aren't accepted, when you've never bothered to test them. Get into the lab, dirty some petri dishes, and get some results. Then you'll have a case.

I just noticed that Panda's thumb contributor Mats shares his signature with the first name of Swedish creationist Mats Molen who is well-known enough to have an entry in the Swedish Wikipedia, see http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mats_Mol%C3%A9n Molen has studied natural science in Sweden and Canada and has a Canadian M. Sc. as well as several (2 or 3) degrees from Sweden. He runs a creationist museum in his hometown UmeÃ¥ and has also a teaching position in the local school system. In 2001 Molen received the title "Deceiver of the year" given by the skeptical organization "Vetenskap och folkbildning" for his "denial of evolution on the basis of pseudoscientific reasoning"

Clearly, you are not being factual. The Design hypothesis, defended by IDers and YECers was rejected not because it had no evidence, but because it was deemed a priori as “religious” and “unscientific”.

Evolution is the “official” origins theory, not because it has the evidence on its side, but because the alternative was considered as religious. If both hypothesis were fairly considered, the Design hypothesis would win hands down. However naturalists, knowing that, exclude it from the table due to their philosophical beliefs.

I don’t deny science.

— Mats

OK Mats, what is the scientific evidence for YEC? Before you answer, perhaps you should read the Talk Origins archive. All of the commonly used creationist claims have already been debunked in great detail. By the way, you also need to explain away all of the scientific evidence for an ancient earth, since you claim you don't ignore science.

mats or bjb can't provide any scientific evidence. In all the posts they make, there has never been a shred of valid scientific evidence or even knowledge, so why would they start now.

mats or bjb can’t provide any scientific evidence. In all the posts they make, there has never been a shred of valid scientific evidence or even knowledge, so why would they start now.

Judging from his past behavior, I think there is a 3 to 1 chance Mats will not return to this thread. Then in a day or two, he will pop up on some new thread, making the same kind of "Darwinism is a religion, I'm not anti-science" statements, and the questions from this thread will never be answered. In other words, he will behave like a completely typical Creationist.

George Cauldron: Judging from his past behavior, I think there is a 3 to 1 chance Mats will not return to this thread. Then in a day or two, he will pop up on some new thread, making the same kind of "Darwinism is a religion, I'm not anti-science" statements, and the questions from this thread will never be answered. In other words, he will behave like a completely typical Creationist.

If you want ID taken seriously as science, go do science. Don't come here and whine that your theories aren't accepted...

Judge Jones never said that scientists in the lab cannot test hypotheses based on intelligent design. He never said they can't write ID-inspired papers and submit them to scholarly journals.

If the "Evolutionist Orthodoxy" prohibits the IDers "from doing any research upon which a peer-reviewed paper could be based," then surely the IDers have drawers full of grant proposals which they tried and tried and TRIED to get funded (ironically, while the YERers could raise $27 million for a Creation Museum.)

So all the IDers need to do to prove they're really interested in science is to publish those rejected grant proposals, right?

Funny how they haven't thought to do that, isn't it?

What theories? There are no theories.

— ben

If the “Evolutionist Orthodoxy” prohibits the IDers “from doing any research upon which a peer-reviewed paper could be based,” then surely the IDers have drawers full of grant proposals which they tried and tried and TRIED to get funded (ironically, while the YERers could raise $27 million for a Creation Museum.)

— hoary puccoon

Hoary,

Good point. If the money was there, why did they choose to build the museum first without doing any research? Why not do the research, publish it in their own journals, then build the museum? Maybe they really do think that "evolutionists" decided on the answer and built the museums first without any evidence. If so, then their ignorance of science is equaled only by thier ignorance of history and they should really visit those museums. The cry of discrimination wears pretty thin when tactics such as these are employed.

David,

I can understand, if not condone, YEC groups' not submitting proposals or doing R&D, because they occasionally admit that the Bible supersedes any evidence. It's the IDers who show their true colors by refusing to do research. And refuse to even state what the designer did, when, and how - or if they do state it, refuse to debate their internal differences. YEC leaders' commitment to the Bible might comparmentalize them into actually believing some alternate biological history, so they see no need for any more evidence. In the case of "don't ask, don't tell" IDers the simplest explanation is that they privately know that we're right.

Frank J,

Agreed. I don't blame them in the least for that. I have even been quite discouraged with granting agencies from time to time.

However, if that is indeed the case, then they all absolutely know, (or at least have no excuse for not knowing), that creationism and ID are religion and not science. They should be happy to have the freedom to present their views in their tax-free churches. They should not lie to everyone trying to get the government to endorse their religious views in public schools. They should realize that if they are successful, that muslims will soon be doing the exact same thing, and then buddists, hindus, etc.

The point is that, if the money is there already and controlled by those sympathetic to their cause, they are the ones who are choosing not to do science. If they can't even be bothered to come up with a testable hypothesis, why try to claim otherwise? This is not discrimination, this is their choice. Who can they blame for their own behavior? Maybe they can blame the same people who made them lie in Dover.

They already have religious freedom. They are already free to beleive anything they want. They are already free to try to convince others that they are right. They are already free to believe anything in the absence of evidence. I guess not enough people are going to church for some reason.

Clearly, you are not being factual. The Design hypothesis, defended by IDers and YECers was rejected not because it had no evidence, but because it was deemed a priori as “religious” and “unscientific”.

— Mats

Notice the difference in there.

Evolution is the “official” origins theory,

not because it has the evidence on its side, but because the alternative was considered as religious.

If both hypothesis were fairly considered, the Design hypothesis would win hands down.

However naturalists, knowing that, exclude it from the table due to their philosophical beliefs.

So the forces of nature couldn’t have done it by themselves?

— Mats

So can you help me understand why you rely on denial of science to create gaps in which your ‘Mind’ can be hidden?

— PvM

I don’t deny science.

Clearly, you are not being factual. The Design hypothesis, defended by IDers and YECers was rejected not because it had no evidence, but because it was deemed a priori as “religious” and “unscientific”.

Notice the difference in there.

Evolution is the “official” origins theory, not because it has the evidence on its side

but because the alternative was considered as religious.

If both hypothesis were fairly considered, the Design hypothesis would win hands down.

However naturalists, knowing that, exclude it from the table due to their philosophical beliefs.

WOW I wish I had as much faith in the Lord God as you guys got in dirt turning into incredibly complex lifeforms…

Shoot,,the fossil record itself has made me lose faith in the almighty god of natural selection and random mutation (SHHHH, please don't tell the high priest of materialism (Dawkins)

of my doubts or he could have me excommunicated from the church)

Most people presume the evidence in the fossil record overwhelmingly confirms gradual evolution from a single common ancestor.

Yet this is not the case at all. The fossil record itself is one of the most crushing things for naturalists.

What is termed the "Cambrian explosion" is a total departure from the naturalistic theory of evolution.

It is in the Cambrian explosion, some 540 million years ago, that we find the sudden appearance of the many diverse and complex forms of life.

These complex life-forms appear with no evidence of transition from the bacteria and few other "simple" life-forms that immediately preceded them in the fossil record.

This following quote clearly illustrates this point. "Yet, here is the real puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion for the theory of evolution. All the known phyla (large categories of biological classification), except one, first appear in the Cambrian period. There are no ancestors. There are no intermediates. Fossil experts used to think that the Cambrian lasted 75 million years¦. Eventually the Cambrian was shortened to only 30 million years. If that wasn't bad enough, the time frame of the real work of bringing all these different creatures into existence was shortened to the first five to ten million years of the Cambrian. This is extraordinarily fast! Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould stated, "Fast is now a lot faster than we thought, and that is extraordinarily interesting." What an understatement! "Extraordinarily impossible" might be a better phrase!. The differences between the creatures that suddenly appear in the Cambrian are enormous. In fact these differences are so large many of these animals are one of a kind. Nothing like them existed before and nothing like them has ever appeared again." Evolution's Big Bang; Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin, University of Illinois (B.S., zoology), North Texas State University (M.S., population genetics), University of Texas at Dallas (M.S., Ph.D., molecular biology).

This is extraordinarily fast!

The "real work" of the beginning of the Cambrian explosion may in actuality be as short as a two to three million year time frame (Ross: Creation as Science 2006).

If this blatant, out of nowhere, appearance of all the different phyla was not bad enough for naturalists, the fossil record shows that there was actually more variety of phyla at the end of the Cambrian explosion than there is today due to extinction.

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 the Cambrian explosion (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. (Actually the number 50 was first quoted as over 100 for a while, but then the consensus became 50-plus.) That means there are more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils, than exist now. Also, the animal explosion caught people's attention when the Chinese confirmed they found a genus now called Yunnanzoon that was present in the very beginning of the Cambrian explosion. This genus is considered a chordate, and the phylum Chordata includes fish, mammals and man. An evolutionist would say the ancestor of humans was present then.

"Looked at more objectively, you could say the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the very beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate." Dr. Paul Chien PhD., chairman of the biology department at the University of San Francisco, Dr. Chien also possesses the largest collection of Chinese Cambrian fossils in North America.

The evolutionary theory would have us believe we should have more phyla today due to ongoing evolutionary processes.

The hard facts of science betray the naturalists once again.

The naturalist stamps his feet and says the evidence for the fossils transmutation into radically new forms is out there somewhere; we just have not found it yet.

To justify this belief, naturalists will often say that soft bodied fossils were not preserved in the Cambrian fossil record,

so [Oreambrian to Cambrian] transitional fossils were just not recorded in the fossil record in the first place.

Yet, the Chinese Cambrian fossil record is excellent in its preservation of delicate - ied fossils that clearly show much of the detail of the body structures of these first creatures.

So the problem for naturalists has not been alleviated.

In fact the problem has become much worse. As Dr. Ray Bohlin stated, some of these recently discovered fossils are extremely unique and defy any sort of transitional scenario to any other fossils found during the Cambrian explosion.

In spite of this crushing evidence found in the Cambrian explosion, our naturalistic friend continues to imagine that all life on earth descended from a common ancestor

and continues to imagine missing links with every new fossil discovery that makes newspaper headlines.

Yet, the true story of life since the Cambrian explosion, that is actually told by the fossil record itself, tells a very different story than the imaginative tales found in naturalistic newspaper accounts. Where the story of life, since the Cambrian explosion, is extremely clear to read is in the sea creatures who fossilize quickly in ocean sediments. We find fossils in the fossil record that appear suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, fully-formed.

They have no apparent immediate evolutionary predecessor.

They, just, appear suddenly in the fossil record unique and fully-formed.

This is exactly what one would expect from an infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator continually introducing new life-forms on earth.

Even more problematic for the naturalists is the fact once a fossil suddenly appears in the fossil record it remains surprisingly stable in its basic structure for as long as it is found in the fossil record.

The fossil record can offer not even one clear example of transition from one fossil form to another fossil form out of millions of collected fossils.

Some sea creatures, such as certain sharks which are still alive today, have unchanging fossil records going back hundreds of millions of years to when they first suddenly appeared in the fossil record without a predecessor.

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record." Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma (1988), Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9

"The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin's time; so Darwin's problem has not been alleviated." Evolutionist David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History

"Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences." George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360.

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long."

"It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution." - Niles Eldredge , "Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate," 1996, p.95

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard University and the leading spokesman for evolutionary theory in America prior to his recent .

As you can see, the fossil record is overwhelmingly characterized by suddenness and stability. For creatures who have lived in the ocean this fact is extremely clear, because their bones are fossilized in the ocean sediments very quickly.

Unfortunately for land creatures, the fossil record is much harder to properly discern due to the rapid disintegration of animals who die on land. The large variety of hominid (man or ape-like) fossils that we do have piece-meal records of are characterized by overlapping histories of "distinctively different and stable" hominid species during the entire time, and the entire geography, each hominid species is found in the fossil record. There is never a transition between ANY of the different hominid species no matter where, or in what era, the hominid fossils are found.

"If pressed about man's ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional species to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving." Richard Leakey, world's foremost paleo-anthropologist, in a PBS documentary, 1990.

As Richard Leakey, the leading hominid fossil expert in the world admits, if he were pressed, he would have to admit the hard evidence suggests the abrupt arrival of man in the fossil record.

Yet if you were to ask an average person if we have evolved from apes he will tell you of course we have and wonder why you would ask such a stupid question, since "everyone knows" this is proven in the fossil record.

One hard fact in the fossil record that is not disputed by most naturalists is the fact that man is the youngest distinct species of all species to suddenly appear in the fossil record.

I find the fact that man has the scientifically accepted youngest history of any fossil in the fossil record to be extremely interesting and compelling to the position held by the anthropic hypothesis. Though a naturalist may try to inconclusively argue fruit flies or some other small types of animals have evolved into distinct new species since that time, he cannot produce evidence for a genetically and morphologically unique animal with a fossil record younger than mans.

This one point of evidence is crucial for both sides and is an extremely important point of contention, for this fact is the primary proposal of the whole anthropic hypothesis in the first place; God created the universe with man in mind as His final goal.

Man being the last distinct and separate species to suddenly appear in the fossil record is totally expected by the anthropic hypothesis and is completely contrary to what the naturalistic evolutionary hypothesis would expect.

Naturalists do not seem to notice that their theory of evolution expects and even demands there should be clear evidence for a genetically and morphologically unique species on earth somewhere since man first suddenly appeared on earth.

Indeed there should be many such unambiguous examples that they could produce.

"Perhaps the most obvious challenge is to demonstrate evolution empirically. There are, arguably, some 2 to 10 million species on earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive somewhere between 3 and 5 million years. In that case, we ought to be seeing small but significant numbers of originations (new species) every decade." Keith Stewart Thomson, Professor of Biology and Dean of the Graduate School, Yale University (Nov. -Dec. American Scientist, 1997 pg. 516)

Naturalists try to assert that evolution of species is happening all the time, all over the place, with a lot of suggestive evidence that is far from being scientifically conclusive. Once again the hard "conclusive" evidence of extensive and exhaustive experimentation betrays the naturalists in his attempts to validate his evolutionary scenario.

"Whatever we may try to do within a given species, we soon reach limits which we cannot break through. A wall exists on every side of each species. That wall is the DNA coding, which permits wide variety within it (within the gene pool, or the genotype of a species) but no exit through that wall. Darwin's gradualism is bounded by internal constraints, beyond which selection is useless." R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990)

Glen,

Thank you for you efforts. I learn from your complete and successful refutation of the nutty BJB postings.

rog

I am pleased to see the Vatican Observatory has organized an international conference on the formation and evolution of galaxy disks.

Location: the Vatican Observatory in Rome at the Centro Convegni Matteo Ricci on 1-5 October 2007.

http://kino.as.arizona.edu/~disks/index.html

I found an intriguing quote from the scientific rationale:

"Secular evolution is a subject that is making rapid progress in the observational and theoretical aspects."

This refers to the evolution of galaxies. Never-the-less, I find it refreshing and descriptive of the status of Modern Biological Evolutionary Theory (MBET).

Here the Vatican has arranged a relevant scientific conference.

I challenge Dembski to organize a scientific conference on Common Descent.

rog

Excellent posting Glen.

Bond, you have just been pwned!

Glen,

That's a lovely sequence of posts. I guess it must have taken a while. Your scorn for BJB's ignorance (and his lack of concern about his ignorance) really shines through. I admire that.

Thanks, guys. It did take a while, so it's good to hear that it wasn't wasted merely on the apparently ineducable "Bond".

As far as contempt goes, well, it does seem that those whose ideas about "science" are dominated by emotion have to be countered with emotion.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Thank you Glen for you efforts.