Destroying Darwin

[Hollie]

The first review of Stephen Meyer’s new ID book

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/the-first-review-of-stephen-meyers-new-id-book/

As you’ll know if you’ve been reading here regularly, Stephen Meyer, a fellow of the intelligent-design-touting Discovery Institute, has published a new book called Darwin’s Doubt. Its thesis is that the Cambrian explosion of animal life, which I mentioned yesterday, could not reflect natural evolutionary processes, and so must be the work of God an Intelligent Designer.

It’s no use reading reviews by ID people, as they’re hardly objective, and don’t have the requisite knowledge about the Cambrian explosion anyway. I too lack that expertise, which is why I’m not reviewing the book. But, over at Panda’s Thumb, Nick Matzke, who’s finishing his Ph.D. in biology at Berkeley, has written a very long but excellent review, which he call’s “Meyer’s Hopeless Monster, Part II“. (“Part I” is a damning review Matzke wrote about a paper Meyer published in 2004.)


Matzke’s verdict: Darwin’s Doubt stinks. His overall opinion:

As I read through Meyer’s book, though, in case after case I see misunderstandings, superficial treatment of key issues which are devastating to his thesis once understood, and complete or near-complete omission of information that any non-expert reader would need to have to make an accurate assessment of Meyer’s arguments.

And he proffers this damning assessment of Meyer’s scientific explanations:

In the cases I have checked, Wikipedia does better at explaining the actual issues and methods than Meyer does.

 

[Agit8r]

It's only a debate because some people believe in mythology instead of science.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact which has been observed and proven. Natural selection and adaptation are primary concepts in basic biology. You may as well be trying to understand physics while denying the theory of gravity or understand medicine while believing in the four humors.

 

[sealybobo]

Since none of my opponents here are well versed enough in the subject to try to help Darwin....

....I guess I have to.


10. To give Darwinists some cause for hope, there was a recent discovery in cliffs in northwestern Russia of some species of a possible mollusk called Kimberella "that had a strong [though not hard] limpet like shell, crept along the sea floor, and resembled a mollusk... "This may be our first good look at what was going on before the Cambrian explosion, because the mollusks in the Cambrian didn't come out of nowhere. Kimberella may be a look at what those ancestors were like,"
Monastersky, "Ancient Animal Sheds False Identity.'
Ancient animal sheds false identity. - Free Online Library


But not too much hope, as even Kimberella doesn't have the characteristisics that would identify it as a member of the Cambrian Explosion:

"The mollusk shell is typically a calcareous exoskeleton..."Mollusc shell - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


"The fossil record from this period is sparse, as more easily fossilized hard-shelled animals had yet to evolve. The Ediacaran biota include the oldest definite multicellular organisms with tissues, and the most common types resemble segmented worms, fronds, disks, or immobile bags.

Ediacara biota bear little resemblance to modern lifeforms, and theirrelationshipeven with the later lifeforms of the Cambrian explosion is rather difficult to interpret."
Ediacaran - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


Too bad.




So....the best the searchers can do, is "... the mollusks in the Cambrian didn't come out of nowhere."

Or did they?

Your own report says "other hard shell ones had yet to evolve" ? So your own source believes in evolution!

What does this prove?

The subject is Darwin's theory....not evolution in general.

Is that too nuanced for you?

You're being not picky imo

 

[sealybobo]

11. The Ediacaran fauna is a search in deadly earnest....a search for support for the cause of Darwinian evolution. It represents a need, a desire, to explain the rapid emergence of novel body plans and forms which, as of this time, remain a mystery to evolutionary science.

If Ediacaran fossils are not early forms of the organisms found in the Cambrian Explosion....well, then the fossil record does not show an overall increase in complexity from Precambrian to Cambrian times...as Darwin expected.



a. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, as most mutations are lethal, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction."



b. "THE ABRUPT manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palæontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection."
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.302


Exactly as Darwin stated....the lack of evidence for gradual change...and, in fact, dynamic evidence of sudden change, destroy Darwin's proposal....

...yet it is pushed emphatically throughout the education system.


Only intelligent folks ask why.

The world at one point was covered in greens and browns then all of the sudden red roses and purples and bright colored flowers started popping up. Fascinating.

 

[cnm]

How come you don't address my point that Darwin's pillar has already been toppled and no one gives a damn. Finding little flaws in a Victorian's writings, research and predictions doesn't make the theory of evolution go away.

"How come you don't address my point that Darwin's pillar has already been toppled and no one gives a damn."

Because you're a fool.

Darwinism is taught throughout the nation at just about every level.

Well I may be a fool but I'm not the one who apparently can't pick the immediate, obvious, glaring fault in Darwin's 'pillar'. Before his thesis even gets going it is 'invalidated' according to the literal standards you apply to it.

Just how clever are you?

 

[Old Rocks]

Well, the PC's and the rest can flap yap all they wish. There is 100% consensus among scientists that evolution has occured, is occuring, and will continue to occur as long as there is life. We have a pretty good understanding of the basics of how DNA works, an understanding far enough along that we are engineering life forms with that understanding. In the meantime, the 'fundies' are not vaccinating their children because of their very flawed misunderstanding of basic biology.

 

[NYcarbineer]

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

The debate isnt over. Still open for discussion. What is your theory if you dont like evolution? How did we get here? God? FAIL! That's the only dead end. Stop it. We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis.

Try to focus like a laser.
The discussion is very specific: Darwin's theory.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestorway back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



And, once again, the admission of failure by dolts like you....bringing a straw man argument....as though my thesis had anything to do with religion.



"We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis."
Who's "we"?
You have a tapeworm?

And....what is my 'hypothesis'?
You seem not to know.

What's the better, scientifically supported, theory?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Science is not going to be your salvation, PC. Stick to faith, and quit tormenting yourself trying to reconcile it with science.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Science is not going to be your salvation, PC. Stick to faith, and quit tormenting yourself trying to reconcile it with science.

Anytime you dolts bring up religion, faith, God in a thread where I've discussed nothing outside of science....

...it's your version of the white flag.


I accept your surrender...but demand penitential prostration as well.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Science is not going to be your salvation, PC. Stick to faith, and quit tormenting yourself trying to reconcile it with science.

Anytime you dolts bring up religion, faith, God in a thread where I've discussed nothing outside of science....

...it's your version of the white flag.


I accept your surrender...but demand penitential prostration as well.

I asked you for the better scientific theory.

And quit pretending you're not talking about religion.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

This thread should be entitled "Some incredibly ignorant people wrote down some stuff in a book a few thousand years ago, and I prefer to believe them instead of any advancement in understanding that has come since".

If there is a God, and that God gave us a brain, why would this God want us to absolutely refuse to use it? If God works in mysterious ways, exploring the workings of such mysteries is by no means counter to the pursuit of God.

In fact, I might argue that for the intelligent, enlightened individual, it might bring them closer. We know more now about many things than we knew 3000 years ago, and as we expand our knowledge of the workings of the universe, we also expand our understanding of the vastness of it all.

What a pity that some would so limit their understanding of the universe that they would reduce their understanding of God's workings to that of superstitious nomads wandering the desert who had no knowledge of science.

 

[NYcarbineer]

in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”

What are the criminal penalties for criticizing Darwin in the US?

 

[NYcarbineer]

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

The debate isnt over. Still open for discussion. What is your theory if you dont like evolution? How did we get here? God? FAIL! That's the only dead end. Stop it. We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis.

Try to focus like a laser.
The discussion is very specific: Darwin's theory.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestorway back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



And, once again, the admission of failure by dolts like you....bringing a straw man argument....as though my thesis had anything to do with religion.



"We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis."
Who's "we"?
You have a tapeworm?

And....what is my 'hypothesis'?
You seem not to know.

What's the better, scientifically supported, theory?

I guess we can take your grinchy faced silence to mean 'there is none'.

Case closed.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Science is not going to be your salvation, PC. Stick to faith, and quit tormenting yourself trying to reconcile it with science.

Anytime you dolts bring up religion, faith, God in a thread where I've discussed nothing outside of science....

...it's your version of the white flag.


I accept your surrender...but demand penitential prostration as well.

I asked you for the better scientific theory.

And quit pretending you're not talking about religion.

It's so easy to catch you in a lie, that it's hardly fun anymore.

But...for the uninitiated who don't know your appellation, NYLiar....

....I challenge you to find any reference of mine in the thread that refers to religion, God, etc.

I destroyed Darwin on the basis of science.

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

The debate isnt over. Still open for discussion. What is your theory if you dont like evolution? How did we get here? God? FAIL! That's the only dead end. Stop it. We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis.

Try to focus like a laser.
The discussion is very specific: Darwin's theory.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestorway back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



And, once again, the admission of failure by dolts like you....bringing a straw man argument....as though my thesis had anything to do with religion.



"We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis."
Who's "we"?
You have a tapeworm?

And....what is my 'hypothesis'?
You seem not to know.

What's the better, scientifically supported, theory?

I guess we can take your grinchy faced silence to mean 'there is none'.

Case closed.

So you have no defense of Darwin?

My point exactly.

Case closed.

 

[PoliticalChic]

in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”

What are the criminal penalties for criticizing Darwin in the US?

Let's stick to 'penalties.'

1. The following details the fate of any scientist who dares to buck the orthodoxy.
   1. “Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue …included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.
   2. …the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms …are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection.
   3. Mr. Sternberg's … future as a researcher is in jeopardy …He has been penalized by the museum's Department of Zoology, his religious and political beliefs questioned…. "I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career."
   4. Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology. In the article, he cites biologists and paleontologists critical of certain aspects of Darwinism -- mainstream scientists at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford.
   5. He points, for example, to the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, when between 19 and 34 animal phyla (body plans) sprang into existence. He argues that, relying on only the Darwinian mechanism, there was not enough time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated. ID, he believes, offers a better explanation.
   6. …it was indeed subject to peer review, the gold standard of academic science. Not that such review saved Mr. Sternberg from infamy. Soon after the article appeared, Hans Sues -- the museum's No. 2 senior scientist -- denounced it to colleagues and then sent a widely forwarded e-mail calling it "unscientific garbage."the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Mr. Sternberg's supervisor. According to Mr. Sternberg's OSC complaint: "First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization....He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; ...he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?'" The supervisor (who did not return my phone messages) recounted the conversation to Mr. Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."
   7. Worries about being perceived as "religious" spread at the museum. One curator, who generally confirmed the conversation when I spoke to him, told Mr. Sternberg about a gathering where he offered a Jewish prayer for a colleague about to retire. The curator fretted: "So now they're going to think that I'm a religious person, and that's not a good thing at the museum."
   8. The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.
   9. Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Now that it has, they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific. They banish certain ideas from certain venues as if by holy writ, and brand heretics too. In any case, the heretic here is Mr. Meyer, a fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, not Mr. Sternberg, who isn't himself an advocate of Intelligent Design.
   10. Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity. The Sternberg case seems, in many ways, an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches -- like the National Museum of Natural History.” The Branding of a Heretic - WSJ

In sum, it is clear that I was targeted for retaliation and harassment explicitly because I allowed a scientific article to be published critical of neo-Darwinism, and that was considered an unpardonable heresy. I failed in an unstated requirement in my role as editor of a scientific journal: I was supposed to be a gatekeeper turning away unpopular, controversial, or conceptually challenging explanations of puzzling natural phenomena. RichardSternberg.org Summary of Retailiation and Discrimination

 

[NYcarbineer]

Science is not going to be your salvation, PC. Stick to faith, and quit tormenting yourself trying to reconcile it with science.

Anytime you dolts bring up religion, faith, God in a thread where I've discussed nothing outside of science....

...it's your version of the white flag.


I accept your surrender...but demand penitential prostration as well.

I asked you for the better scientific theory.

And quit pretending you're not talking about religion.

It's so easy to catch you in a lie, that it's hardly fun anymore.

But...for the uninitiated who don't know your appellation, NYLiar....

....I challenge you to find any reference of mine in the thread that refers to religion, God, etc.

I destroyed Darwin on the basis of science.

Since your link doesn't work, it's easy for you to make that claim.

Tell us all in your own words that your long running attacks on Darwin and Evolution have never had a religious motivation.

 

[NYcarbineer]

in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”

What are the criminal penalties for criticizing Darwin in the US?

Let's stick to 'penalties.'

1. The following details the fate of any scientist who dares to buck the orthodoxy.
   1. “Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue …included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.
   2. …the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms …are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection.
   3. Mr. Sternberg's … future as a researcher is in jeopardy …He has been penalized by the museum's Department of Zoology, his religious and political beliefs questioned…. "I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career."
   4. Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology. In the article, he cites biologists and paleontologists critical of certain aspects of Darwinism -- mainstream scientists at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford.
   5. He points, for example, to the Cambrian explosion 530 million years ago, when between 19 and 34 animal phyla (body plans) sprang into existence. He argues that, relying on only the Darwinian mechanism, there was not enough time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated. ID, he believes, offers a better explanation.
   6. …it was indeed subject to peer review, the gold standard of academic science. Not that such review saved Mr. Sternberg from infamy. Soon after the article appeared, Hans Sues -- the museum's No. 2 senior scientist -- denounced it to colleagues and then sent a widely forwarded e-mail calling it "unscientific garbage."the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Mr. Sternberg's supervisor. According to Mr. Sternberg's OSC complaint: "First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization....He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; ...he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?'" The supervisor (who did not return my phone messages) recounted the conversation to Mr. Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."
   7. Worries about being perceived as "religious" spread at the museum. One curator, who generally confirmed the conversation when I spoke to him, told Mr. Sternberg about a gathering where he offered a Jewish prayer for a colleague about to retire. The curator fretted: "So now they're going to think that I'm a religious person, and that's not a good thing at the museum."
   8. The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.
   9. Critics of ID have long argued that the theory was unscientific because it had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Now that it has, they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific. They banish certain ideas from certain venues as if by holy writ, and brand heretics too. In any case, the heretic here is Mr. Meyer, a fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, not Mr. Sternberg, who isn't himself an advocate of Intelligent Design.
   10. Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity. The Sternberg case seems, in many ways, an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches -- like the National Museum of Natural History.” The Branding of a Heretic - WSJ

In sum, it is clear that I was targeted for retaliation and harassment explicitly because I allowed a scientific article to be published critical of neo-Darwinism, and that was considered an unpardonable heresy. I failed in an unstated requirement in my role as editor of a scientific journal: I was supposed to be a gatekeeper turning away unpopular, controversial, or conceptually challenging explanations of puzzling natural phenomena. RichardSternberg.org Summary of Retailiation and Discrimination

ID is a religious based theory. There, your claim that the thread was not about religion is proven false.

Apology please.

 

[NYcarbineer]

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

1. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory is coin of the realm in academia today. Heaven help the academician/scientist who denies....even questions it!

When Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen’s criticism of Darwinian predictions about the fossil record was met with dead silence from a group of scientists in the U.S., he quipped that, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government;in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
Darwinocracy The evolution question in American politics Washington Times Communities



2. How to explain this anomaly of logic?
After all, if 'the debate is over,' why punish those whose outlier views orthodox science can most surely decimate???

Answer: the Darwinists can't decimate 'em.
Their response to doubters is
a. punish 'em, and/or
b.tell lies about the evidence.

And once you catch someone in one lie.....
"The 13th chime of a clock, not only does it make no sense, but it calls into question the validity of the 12 chimes that preceded it."



Today....an examination of one such lie, the Ediacaran Fauna.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestor way back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



If Darwin were correct, the geological stockpile should provide examples of organisms with a partial accumulation of said new traits and features, but not complete enough to have quite made it into the menagerie of life. Although they didn't produce new lines of living things, these 'attempts' would be, should be, preserved as fossils.
It is fossil evidence that is considered as prima facie proof.

4. Darwin posited evolution based on a gradual series of small changes, many of which would result in doom for the organism, but some which would make same better equipped to survive, and be passed on. But early on, contemporary paleontologists and geologists found contrary fossil evidence: the Cambrian explosion revealed "geologically abrupt appearance of a menagerie of animals as various as any found in the gaudiest science fiction.....During this explosion of fauna, representatives of about twenty of the roughly twenty-six total phyla present in the known fossil record made their first appearance on earth."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 31.

a. Here is the source of the problem:
'Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies.... The Cambrian explosion, or Cambrian radiation, was the relatively rapid appearance, around 542 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record."
Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia



And....even more difficulties for Darwinists:

b "The Chengjiang fauna makes the Cambrian explosion more difficult to reconcile with the Darwinian view for yet another reason. The Chengjiang discoveries intensify the top-down pattern of appearances in which individual representatives of the higher taxonomic categories (phyla, subphyla, and classes) appear and only later diversify into the lower taxonomic categories (families, genera, and species).
Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt," p.74


Now....what is the answer to this problem, as advanced by Darwin's supporters?
Well....some advance the idea that Ediacaran fossils obviate the appearance of inconsistency....


Coming right up.

The debate isnt over. Still open for discussion. What is your theory if you dont like evolution? How did we get here? God? FAIL! That's the only dead end. Stop it. We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis.

Try to focus like a laser.
The discussion is very specific: Darwin's theory.

3..For purposes of clarity,this is Darwin's perspective, the pillars on which his thesis rests:
The universal common ancestry of all living things: all had a single common ancestorway back in the distant past..."all the organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one [ONE SINGLE] primordial form"
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.484.
Then, via the accumulation of finite, beneficial changes....finally, the diversity of life present today.



And, once again, the admission of failure by dolts like you....bringing a straw man argument....as though my thesis had anything to do with religion.



"We've already explained you dont have enough evidence for your hypothesis."
Who's "we"?
You have a tapeworm?

And....what is my 'hypothesis'?
You seem not to know.

What's the better, scientifically supported, theory?

I guess we can take your grinchy faced silence to mean 'there is none'.

Case closed.

So you have no defense of Darwin?

My point exactly.

Case closed.

If the current theory of Evolution is by scientific consensus the best theory on the subject,

no one needs to defend Darwin.