US scientists may have resolved 'Darwin's dilemma'

Fox News ^ | 11/15/2014 | By Matt Cantor

[SeekAndFind]

Charles Darwin worried about a possible hole in his theory of evolution, but some American scientists may just have plugged it. For about a billion years after the dawn of life on Earth, organisms didn't evolve all that much.

Then about 600 million years ago came the "Cambrian explosion." Everything changed relatively quickly, with all kinds of plants and animals emerging—which doesn't quite seem to fit with Darwin's theory of slow change, hence "Darwin's dilemma." Now, within a few days of each other, two new studies have appeared that could explain the shift, ABC News reports.

One, by scientists at Yale and the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggests that oxygen levels may have been far less plentiful in the atmosphere prior to the Cambrian explosion than experts had thought.

The air may only have been .1% oxygen, which couldn't sustain today's complex organisms, indicating a shift had to happen before the "explosion" could take place.

In a separate study, a University of Texas professor explains where that oxygen burst may have come from: a major tectonic shift. Based on geological evidence, Ian Dalziel believes what is now North America remained attached to the supercontinent Gondwanaland until the early Cambrian period, in contrast with current belief, which has the separation occurring earlier.

[BroJoeK]

redleghunter: "The diagram is missing quite a few transitional forms."

I am certain that diagram was representational, not the complete catalog of whale "transitional forms".
But I am also certain that people like yourself wouldn't be satisfied with any number of "transitional forms", since you've found an argument which you fantasize is unbreakable, right?

To prove my point here let me present you, yet again, with this photo of pre-human to human "transitional forms":

•A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern
•(B) Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 My
•(C) Australopithecus africanus, STS 71, 2.5 My
•(D) Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, 1.9 My
•(E) Homo habilis, OH24, 1.8 My
•(F) Homo rudolfensis, KNM-ER 1470, 1.8 My
•(G) Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium D2700, 1.75 My
•(H) Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 My
•(I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y
•(J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 y
•(K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 y
•(L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 y
•(M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 y
•(N) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern

[BroJoeK]

Salvavida: "Listen friend. I've actually studied in this field, and have talked to a renown scientist that looks at this every day.
I'm not using word-definition games, I'm using the verbiage those who study this field, use."

Sorry pal, but you certainly are using word definition games, deceptively and dishonestly.
Perhaps your mentors also played such games?

The fact is that the American Academy of Science has never put out a challenge to "prove" evolution -- that's ridiculous.
Scientific theories are confirmed, not "proved" and they are confirmed by tests intended to falsify them.
If significant tests fail to falsify a hypothesis, then it's considered "confirmed" and is classified a "theory".

The basic theory of evolution (descent with modifications, natural selection) has been confirmed innumerable times, indeed is reconfirmed every day by scientists working in the field, has never been seriously falsified, and so is considered "settled science".

The American Academy of Science has not challenged anyone to submit papers reconfirming evolution, certainly not that I've ever heard.

Those are simple facts, pal, regardless of how grandiose you imagine your own education & learning to be.

[BroJoeK]

alexander_busek: "Nothing to be ashamed about... A lot of people suffer from imagination-deficiency...
Just don't then assume that your regrettable lack of imagination tells us anything objectively useful about the Universe."

First of all, please don't ever fantasize that you speak for God -- only for yourself, and your own beliefs.
So it's entirely appropriate for me to say that I believe God created the Universe with a plan and purpose in mind.
That also happens to be what the Bible says.

Now if you wish to argue some other idea -- i.e., random creation, a careless or hostile "god", etc., then feel free to make your case, I will certainly listen to your argument, then methodically destroy it.

Are you really up for this?

;-)

[BroJoeK]

redleghunter: "Yes this is one of the premises of Intelligent design. Thanks for keeping an open mind."

Is it possible you still don't understand?
I believe what the facts suggest -- that God created the Universe with his plan and purposes in mind, and used evolution as one of His tools to make mankind, "from the dust of the ground".

[WKUHilltopper]

Our teachers specifically told us these gill slits were used for breathing fluid...along with Haeckel’s Embryo Chart in our text books, which was declared a fraud nearly 100 years earlier.

[Little Bill]

Did humans hunt down Neanderthals and exterminate them?

Probably, if history teaches us anything, people hate those different from themselves. Shared DNA is a trophy of war.

[Salvavida]

Contact any scientist, or any of his research assistants (of your choice), who is known in the community. Hint: they will be published. Offer to him that you say Darwin's theory of evolution is proven by the fossil record, and give him your proof.

Then sit back, and watch him laugh his ass off. You can always save face by saying April Fool's Day.

[PapaNew]

Well, we’re not that far apart, but I am certainly not playing “word-definition games” and not all evolution is “Darwinism” (The Origin of the Species).

Major animal groups: amphibians, birds, fish, invertebrates, mammals, and reptiles
http://animals.about.com/od/animal-facts/tp/animal-groups.htm

Transference between major animal groups is just what it says - something like a fish or its ancestor becoming a horse or its ancestor.

Transference between animal groups is the kind of evolution required by Darwinism becasue it theorizes that all living things evolved from a single organism source. But there is no evidence of this kind of transference. That is why I say Darwinism is a fake and a fraud. It is not true science because the theory fails the rigorous test of the scientific method.

But evolution within a major animal group is another story, like the different breeds of particular types of mammals like wolves and dogs. There is plenty of evidence of evolution WITHIN a particular type of animal or group but that type of evolution, but of course, that is not the kind required by Darwinism.

[alexander_busek]

First of all, please don't ever fantasize that you speak for God -- only for yourself, and your own beliefs. So it's entirely appropriate for me to say that I believe God created the Universe with a plan and purpose in mind. That also happens to be what the Bible says.

I never claimed to "speak for God." Where did you get that?

I was merely pointing out that your original statement:

It is impossible for me to imagine God creating the Universe without having us in mind as His end-product [...]

is merely a statement about your lack of imagination. It provides us with absolutely no objective information.

So it's entirely appropriate for me to say that I believe God created the Universe with a plan and purpose in mind.

It is about as appropriate as my saying that I believe that, a million years ago, a little teapot was in orbit between Earth and Mars.

Unless you can provide objective evidence, it is inappropriate.

Regards,

[CynicalBear]

I typically stay out of evolution threads. There is no such thing as evolution as it is put forth by those who believe it. God didn’t need evolution nor did He use it. And yes I believe the earth we live on is billions of years old.

[redleghunter]

Wow. I was pointing out there were missing transitional forms.

But thanks for all the human skulls.

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

Macro evolution is a scientific impossibility. While microevolution (variations within a kind, as seen in dogs) is acknowledged fact, macroevolution has no basis in reality and has never been observed. Scientists have attempted experiments on rapidly reproducing species to induce mutational changes hoping they would lead to new and better species, but these have all failed to accomplish their goal. No truly new species has ever been produced. In fact, all mutation ever witnessed has been either neutral or negative. This is in line with the second law of thermodynamics, which states that things tend to disorder and decreased complexity. There are no examples of a mutation that created increased complexity. No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found -- not even a tiny one.

Also, life could never have originated by chemical means. Scientists still don't know how life originated, because it's origin still cannot be explained. Matter of fact, in the 1970s, Sir Frederick Hoyle calculated that the probability of spontaneous generation of a single cell organism was one chance in 10 to the 40,000 power. To put this in perspective, if an event has the probability of one chance in 10 to the 50th power, it is considered a mathematical impossibility. This fact, Hoyle stated, is "enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

George Wald, a prominent atheist said:
"When it comes to the origin of life there are only two possibilities: Creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore we chose to believe the impossible: That life arose spontaneously by chance!"
"I do not want believe in God. Therefore I chose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution."

[redleghunter]

>>Is it possible you still don’t understand?
I believe what the facts suggest — that God created the Universe with his plan and purposes in mind, and used evolution as one of His tools to make mankind, “from the dust of the ground”.<<

I was not being sarcastic. I commended you on keeping an open mind to other views of creation.

I also commend you and others who see God’s Divine Hand in His Creation. We may not agree on the methods of such but ultimately God communicated to us by His Word He did it all.

I am sure you do as I do and am continuously amazed by God’s Creation. The beautiful sun rises and sunsets. It’s God’s canvass and He shows us his workmanship each day.

Yes I agree God created all. And that is history and past.

What is coming next will make this creation pale in comparison.

I think Christians should defend YHWH as creator of all. However we were instructed by Jesus Christ to spread the Gospel of His death and resurrection. Which of course this message came in both word and Power and miracles showing God is master of creation.

God Bless

[wideminded]

And why did some apes evolve into man, while other apes remained apes.

For the same reason that there are many varieties of dogs but there are still wolves.

[Texas Songwriter]

Hello Pal. The 'Pal' is in a nice sense, not in a 'snippy' sense. I don't have any other 'Pals". I could say "Bud", but 'Pal" it is.

Let us visit 'panspermia'.

The latest generation of 'scientists' are, as you say, visiting the panspermia hypothesis calling upon what might be called science fiction disciplines as interstellar microbiology, impact physics, galactic dynamics and planetary dynamics.

The fiction of panspermia gained interest when meteorites from Mars and the Moon were identified a few years ago. Mars, a 'relatively' large planetary body with an atmosphere took a powerful impact from an steroid which threw fragments up and out of the orbit of Mars and a few made their way to Earth. This spawned the term lithopanspermia. It is estimated that not all fragments will carry organisms due to cosmic radiation, thermal degradation, ultraviolet radiation. Only about 0.02% would carry organism if they existed. But as you know, all of this is speculation. You may call it hypothesis if it makes you feel better. But, there is not one shread of evidence this is actually what happened. It is like a comic book. A figment of imagination.

Most asteroids could never reach the Earth because of gravity. Only grains of dust could actually escape, and that would also be dependent on Solar radiation (solar winds). If bacteria were to be carried on dust survival ability is impossible because there would not be enough of a shield from radiation. Any meteorite with the mass of a tennis ball would never escape the Solar gravity effect. It is said that only in about 5 billion years would our star degrade to a Red Giant with a substantially smaller mass that escape of our star could be attained.

If a 10 pound rock did escape our solar system it is estimated that at a speed of 100,000 miles per hour it would travel about 16 light years in a million solar years, a length of time which not allow bacteriological survivability, given the very dangerous cosmic radiation, thermal fluctuations, and ultraviolet radiation. Radiopanspermia is unlikely to allow viable organisms be transported in such a manner.

The other question of Earth to Mars panspermia has resulted in non seeding of the suface of the planet Mars, or Venus ( very hot) for that matter. Should we consider this and wonder why? Mars is sterile. Venus is sterile. RNA and DNA transport is equally unlikely to result in seeding--->life.

So based on this 'hypothesis' let us take bacteria, morsillate or emulsify those cells, and plate them on agar. Let's do this thousands of times....no millions of times and you get the same thing-->no life.

Even the experts ( if such a person exists) on the subject of panspermia--->let us call them astrobiologists--->proved exchange of copious quantities of organic material the shortest time estimated to transfer this material is on the order of millions of years. If that happened, why did it not take?

This leads scientist to conclude that this idea is nonsense.

Miller-Urey---->contrary to what you say, and I paraphrase, little or no progress has moved us any closer to the goalposts of creating life in the lab. If you can refer me to coming close to life, (not organic molecules, not nucleic acids, not lipophosphates, but LIFE) I will change my mind. But I did get a library book and have spent many years studying this very subject and it just is not there. Speculation runs rampant, but science is in short supply on this subject.

I will not waste your time on the philosophical considerations that leads to warranted, true belief. I will only say that presuppositionalism is an affliction we all have to fight against in our mind if we are to attain to honest science. When we want something to be a certain way, we tend to evade a warranted truth if it does not comport with what we wish to be the case, we evade, we avoid and eschew certain obvious findings. If you wish to engage in this subject it is a long, arduous series of discussions on epistemology, ontology, and presuppositionalism.

The permutations of embryological development, I assure you, are not an article of faith of mine. The embryology of most classes of vertebrates have been worked out to a reasonable understanding. My only reason for my previous comment is to affirm, and now I reaffirm that Haeckel used deceit to inculcate millions of students into the nonsense that ontology recapitulates phylogeny. As I think you tangentially referenced we have now learned that what were once referred to as branchial slits are simply clefts and do not represent antecedent gill slits as once was thought. We can discuss embryology if you wish, but it has little to do with anything more than alleged homologies, not unlike hard parts (bones, shells, etc) which more easily fossilize. But that is not where changes occur, is it? All of the action is inside the nucleus of the cell. Those other fossils are simply expressions of nucleotide/nuclieoside changes. I will stop there.

i will return to "theistic evolution".

I believe theistic evolution is seized upon as a sort of "get out of jail free" card. It seems to want to create an atmosphere of conviviality between two views which cannot be reconciled. It is sort of what Philip Johnson called 'soft creationism', and not real Darwinianism as 'science' uses the term. As well read as you are, you certainly know George Gaylord Simpson. He was the head of the Paleobiology department at Harvard and world renown in his acclaim. He is known famously for saying, "If you put a chimpanzee in front of an IBM typewriter and he struck 60 elements per minute at random, he will eventually create the entire works of Shakespeare, given enough time." Few questioned him on this. After he died Stephen Gould took over his position and was equally at tension with the Biblical creationist. Simpson also said, "Although many details remain to be worked out, it is already evident that all the objective phenomena of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or in a proper sense of the word, materialistic factors......Man is the result of purposeless and a natural process that did not have him in mind. This comment was ripped of the Dawkins and others. But this is their belief. I could give you 25 similar quotes. Because Darwinism has its roots in metaphysical naturalism it is not consistent to accept Darwinism and then to give it a theistic interpretation. Theistic evolutionists are continually confused on this point because they think that Darwinism is an empirical doctrine.....that it rests on observation.....but it does no such thing.

In short the reason that Darwinism and theism are incompatible is not that God could not have used evolution by natural selection to create. Darwinian evolution might seem unbiblicalto some, or and unlikely method for God to use, but it is always possible that god might dod something that confounds our expectations. The contradiction between Darwinism and theism is at a deeper level. To know that Darwinism is true (as a general explanation for the history of life), one must know that no alternative to naturalistic evolution is possible. This is to therefore know that God does not exist, or at least that God cannot, or did not create. To infer that Darwinsm is true because there is no creator God, and then to interpret Darwinism as God's method of creation is to engage in self-contradiction. I will not waist your time by going into Dobzhansky's Rules and their implications on this discussion.

Today the keepers of the culture eschew theistic evolution as a simple point of hostility. They imply everything contrary to Darwinism, specifically the existence of God, is simply false.

So the question becomes the following....."Do you know (warranted true belief) it is true that Darwinian evolution is true?" The honest answer requires one to set aside his presuppositions and allegiances to the metaphysical nature of science. Without that honesty, the scientist stumbles around like a blind man in the dark.

So, Buddy, ole, Pal (a nice reference, not a snippy one) I did find a library a long time ago. I learned to read,,,,at first, "See Spot run.", then right to Darwinism. It is late now, and I have work tomorrow. So I will let it rest and simmer tonight. Good luck to you and yours.

[SouthParkRepublican]

In a decade of being on FR, I can’t recall ever reading a more insightful post.

[BroJoeK]

"Offer to him that you say Darwin's theory of evolution is proven by the fossil record, and give him your proof. Then sit back, and watch him laugh his ass off."

  Your word "proof" is the reason why.
In science terms, a theory is never "proved", only confirmed by tests intended to falsify it.
Evolution theory has been confirmed innumerable times.

[BroJoeK]

Ology-hair: "Conjecture part of the scientific process? It can be, but only when on solid scientific ground first."

This thread's article is very brief, with few details, one of which was a finding that Earth's oxygen levels were only .1% prior to the Cambrian Explosion.
The article suggests that the "explosion" was delayed until oxygen levels rose significantly.
Why would oxygen levels suddenly rise?
The article suggests that the splitting apart of Gondwanaland changed ocean currents and brought more nutrients to the surface, feeding algae, re-oxygenating the atmosphere.
The article doesn't mention, but one can easily suppose that the recent melting of "snowball Earth" also contributed to increased plant growth and more oxygen.

Bottom line: one or two reports of new scientific facts which suggest important implications regarding the Cambrian Explosion of new life forms.

Yes, it's speculation, or hypothesis at best, but I'd say entirely appropriate, especially for a mass media news report.

[BroJoeK]

redleghunter: "No matter how many holes are plugged with suppositions, the original or genesis of something from nothing remains unanswered from the lofty towers of Dawkins’s flat."

In reality, science has no real clue how that happened, and any suggestions otherwise are pure speculation.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with speculations, they are interesting and someday may lead to something important.
But there's no need for us to put more weight on them than they merit.

[BroJoeK]

SkyDancer commenting on the link in post #138: "I did - that’s why I said it formed into ears."

My link says "absorbed into the pharynx", so perhaps you have another report which says those alleged "gill slits" are actually budding ears?