Darwin and the Cambrian

[Duke]

This is either a brilliant insight into that other thread, or I'm repeating an idea that others have said but I'm unaware of their thoughts on the matter.

Darwin was looking at the whole process of evolution as he saw it, from the perspective of a naturalist. He was presented with a diverse and complex set of life forms, and tried to draw conclusions based on that as to how they came about in the first place. That obviously led to the "small changes over time" concept, which isn't even necessarily crucial to the theory as a whole. It's only necessary if you're trying to come up with a way for extremely complex organisms to split into distinct species that cannot interbreed.

But look at something as simple as grass. Though it's ridiculously complex compared to the first single-celled organisms, and the first organisms that couldn't even be called cells, it's still possible to interbreed them at will. Golf courses breed grass as they see fit to create better fairways. More complicated things like cows ended up being created through more years of selective breeding, but they're a hell of a lot more complex than the grass that they ingest.

So why on earth is the "cambrian explosion" a problem at all? Life was obviously in its early stages. It was obviously simple. We had a bunch of stuff that was mixing around, and pretty much everything was "binary compatible." "Mistakes" in replication weren't as big of a problem back then, as they wouldn't necessarily create something that couldn't live. These days, an error like putting the bones on the outside of the body would kill a human. Back then, it would take more than that. We see the result of that in organisms today with exoskeletons that ended up taking "the other road" with regard to creating some structure for themselves. To think that the first ant existed precisely as it does today doesn't make any sense.

Anyhow, you have a bunch of stuff that can basically interbreed across the board (starting from one thing) and you're getting all sorts of results. Between random errors in replication, and interbreeding of things after those errors happened, you'll end up with all sorts of crazy [censored]. You don't have to address the question of how a bird would be able to breed with a fish, as in those days the bird and the fish (or whatever) were practically the same thing one generation or two back. They're still compatible. Once things got big enough to be saved in the fossil records, we'd see it as an explosion of life, but the explosion was definitely happening on a smaller level before things got big enough to be noticeable to us, now.

While the "cambrian explosion" is unexplained by the "small changes over time" idea, that idea is irrelevant to the origins of life. It only matters after the organisms became sufficiently complicated. It's not a fundamental rule, but an idea applied to the same mechanics at a different stage in speciation.

In conclusion, if Darwin didn't realize this, then I can't blame him because he was a naturalist, and probably didn't think of it in the terms that I am. If he would have disagreed with this, then he'd have been wrong.

[Hopey]

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So why on earth is the "cambrian explosion" a problem at all?

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It really isn't. It's just presented as a "problem" by Creationists in order to promote their agenda.

[Duke]

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So why on earth is the "cambrian explosion" a problem at all?

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It really isn't. It's just presented as a "problem" by Creationists in order to promote their agenda.

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Yeah, I figured that I was just coming up with things that had been said time and time again already. And though I obviously pulled this all out of my ass, my ass has a decent track record.

[carlo]

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1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7: And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8: And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10: And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
11: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12: And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
13: And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17: And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18: And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19: And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21: And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
22: And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23: And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25: And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28: And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29: And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30: And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31: And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning we

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GENESIS and DARWIN

The above is, of course, the first chapter of genesis. You will note that the progression of creation is from EARTH to PLANT to ANIMAL and then to MAN. Darwin and other scientists of his period were certainly aware of this progression and one might conclude that they were influenced by the Biblical Progression(My judgment/speculation based upon my perceptions and thought--not a priest or rabbi who told me but my individual evaluation-this we can discuss).

In any case, in the consideration of Darwin, the perception is that the mineral produced the plant produced the animal and produced man.This concatenation of events is in keeping with Genesis but takes liberties with its realities. There is always a Creative Issue in Genesis which is missing in modern Darwinian thought. Also ,in Genesis, the proceeding of one from the other is not evident. They are separated in TIME but certainly not in a Father-Son effect.

So, the two difficulties of CREATION and CAUSALITY IN TIME delineates the differences in perception. If one chooses to remain agnostic about Creation it is still possible to have difficulties with Causality. One does not have to be a religious to have questions about these matters.

In my world the subsequent production of the highest from the lowest(judgment here) is dead , an extraction of the mineral kingdom to which we will return.