The Cambrian explosion is the name given to the sudden origin of basically all of the major body plans in nature. It happened in a 3-5 million year period about 540 million years ago. It’s a problem for naturalists, because of the enormous amount of information needed to make these new (and different) body plans. The best explanation they had was that rising oxygen levels did it. Is that right?

Here’s an excellent post by Günter Bechly, writing for Evolution News.

Here’s the naturalistic scenario:

For more than seventy years it was the scientific consensus and undisputed textbook wisdom that the origin of multicellular life in the late Precambrian was triggered by increased oxygen levels (Fike et al. 2006, Sahoo et al. 2012, Lyons et al. 2014, Reinhard et al. 2016, Anonymous 2023, Harrison 2023, Ralls 2023, UCPH 2023). For example, McFadden et al. (2008) identified two pulses of oxidation in the Precambrian and found that “following this second oxidation event, between 550 and 542 million years ago, there was a worldwide increase of Ediacaran organisms, complex macroscopic life forms, an event recently dubbed the Avalon Explosion” (Virginia Tech 2008). Similarily, the study by Pogge von Strandmann et al. (2015) was promoted in a press release as demonstrating that “oxygen provided breath of life that allowed animals to evolve” (Hickey et al. 2015).

This was all a lot of theorizing in order to save naturalism from scientific evidence. But science makes progress, and the smoke gets cleared:

Now a new study (Ostrander et al. 2023) by group of researchers from Denmark has overturned decades of evolutionary dogma and claims the exact opposite: “oxygen didn’t trigger multicellular organisms” (Anonymous 2023, UCPH 2023). What this study found was instead clear evidence of a lower oxygen content correlated with the Avalon Explosion of the Ediacaran biota. The authors summarize their surprising findings as: “Contrary to a classical hypothesis, our interpretations place the Shuram excursion, and any coeval animal evolutionary events, in a predominantly anoxic global ocean.” Co-author Christian Bjerrum commented “Specifically, it means that we need to rethink a lot of the things that we believed to be true from our childhood learning. And textbooks need to be revised and rewritten. So, if not extra oxygen, what triggered the era’s explosion of life? Perhaps the exact opposite” (Anonymous 2023, UCPH 2023). Some even went further and suggested to “forget everything you thought you knew about how life evolved on Earth” (Ralls 2023) because it “turns out we might be very wrong about how life arose on Earth” (Harrison 2023).

Prior to the “increase in oxygen” hypothesis, naturalists used to explain away the Cambrian explosion by saying that we had not studied the fossil record for long enough. “Eventually, we will have a better picture of the fossil record, and that will show that we started with a few simple life forms, and then branched out into more and more complex life forms, over an hundreds of millions of years”.

But that’s not what they are saying now, because the evidence is in:

Here is what Professor Derek Briggs, a world-renowned expert on Cambrian fossils, has to say on this issue: “We now know that the sudden appearance of fossils in the Cambrian (541–485 million years ago) is real and not an artefact of an imperfect fossil record” (Briggs 2015). Likewise, Zhang & Shu (2021) admitted that “multiple sources of evidence are strongly suggestive of a real evolutionary event being recorded rather than an artifact of an imperfect fossil record.” Cabej (2020) put it even more clearly: “Nevertheless, now, 150 years after The Origin, when an incomparably larger stock of animal fossils has been collected, Darwin’s gap remains, the abrupt appearance of Cambrian fossils is a reality, and we are still wondering about the forces and mechanisms that drove it.

How many times does this have to happen, before naturalists admit that they are committing the “atheism-of-the-gaps” fallacy?

Before science, atheists told us that the universe was eternal. Then science progressed, and we now know that the universe – space, time, matter and energy – all came into being out of nothing about 14 billion years ago. What could cause that? Well, the cause of all of nature must be supernatural. 

Before science, atheists told us that any old universe would support life. If gravity was a little different, then people would just have pointy ears, like you see on Star Trek. But then science progressed, and we now have a long list of dozens of constants and quantities in nature that must be finely-tuned to an incredibly high degree in order for complex life of any kind to exist. Fine-tuning requires an intelligent agent – that’s the only explanation that we have experience with.

Before science, atheists told us that the origin of life was easy. Life is just a clump of jello, very boring and simple. No need for a cosmic engineer. But then science progressed, and we discovered biological information, such as DNA, inside the cell. Naturalists tried to say that most (or all) of that information was “junk DNA”, but more science happened proving them wrong again.

I could go on and on with example after example. Naturalism is about faith. They start with the desire for personal autonomy. Autonomy from the moral law. They speculate about how nature can be explained without a Creator and Designer. They take refuge in gaps in our scientific understanding. But then science progresses, the gaps close, and everyone knows for certain.

When I was deciding what state to live in, I made a big spreadsheet with columns for all the things that would affect my life plan. I had tax rates, abortion bans, fiscal stability, right to work, pension debt for public employees, infrastructure, energy sources, concealed carry laws, voting trends, etc. The state that came out dead last was California. I’m sure glad that I didn’t move there.

Here’s the latest from the Daily Signal:

The California State Assembly passed a bill Friday that would require judges in child custody cases to consider whether a parent has affirmed a child’s “gender transition” by making “gender affirmation” an equal part of a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” under state law.

Democratic lawmakers’ bill, AB 957, passed the Assembly by a vote of 57-16 along party lines.

The California Senate passed the bill Wednesday, 30-9, also along party lines.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill into law. Under it, parents who refuse to participate in transgenderism by pretending that their child is a different gender could be guilty of failing to provide for the “health, safety, and welfare” of their child—therefore losing custody to another parent or the state.

It’s a very broad measure:

Susannah Luthi, who covers California for The Washington Free Beacon, pointed out: “The bill makes no distinctions regarding the age of a child, how long a child has identified as transgender, or affirmation of social transition versus medical sex-change treatments.”

Republicans are telling parents that they need to leave the state immediately if this bill is signed into law:

In a California Senate Judiciary Committee hearing June 13, state Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, warned parents to leave California if such legislation were to pass.

“In recent years, we have put government bureaucrats between parents, children, and doctors when it comes to medical care—and now we have this where if a parent does not support the ideology of the government, [children] are going to be taken away from the home,” Wilk said, adding: “If you love your children, you need to flee California.”

Another article from Monday in the Daily Signal says that this is just one of the laws being passed by California Democrats:

One of them would train teachers to profile these hated “anti-LGBTQ” parents, another would train psychotherapists to prepare to hide gender “treatments” from parents at a minor’s request, a third would prevent school districts from removing sexually explicit books if they contain transgender themes, a fourth would prevent Californians from becoming foster parents if they dissent from gender ideology, and the fifth would expand the definition of child abuse to include “non-affirmation” of a child’s claimed transgender identity.

And he talks about the bills – train teachers to profile parents who don’t support LGBT:

AB-5, called the Safe and Supportive Schools Act, passed the California State Assembly in May by a vote of 64-4 and on Thursday passed the California State Senate, 32-3. The bill would mandate an “online delivery platform and an online training curriculum to support LGBTQ cultural competency training for teachers and other certified employees.”

Not only does this training enforce transgender ideology among educators, but it also trains educators to profile those despicable “anti-LGBTQ” parents.

Hide LGBT transitioning from parents:

[AB-655] focused on minors’ consent to mental health services, first passed the state Assembly in April. An amended version on Wednesday passed the state Senate, 31-8, and the Assembly again, 60-16, on Thursday.

[…]AB-655 states that “mental health treatment” shall involve a minor’s parent or guardian “unless the professional person who is treating or counseling the minor, after consultation with the minor, determines that the involvement would be inappropriate.” In doing so, the legislation intentionally carves out an exception to hide “gender-affirming counseling” from parents on the suspicion that parents who want to save their kids from later experimental interventions actually pose a threat to their own children.

LGBT books in the libraries:

AB-1078 bills itself as protecting “instructional materials and curriculum” that address “diversity.” On Thursday, it passed both the California Senate, 31-9, and the Assembly, 61-17.

The bill aims to prohibit a public school board or a charter school governing body from “refusing to approve or prohibiting the use of any textbook, instructional material, or other curriculum or any book or other resource in a school library on the basis that it includes a study of the role and contributions of any individual or group” as laid out in requirements to “accurately portray the cultural and racial diversity of our society.”

Foster families:

SB-407, which cleared the California Senate in May by a vote of 31-5, advanced Sept. 1 through an Assembly committee. Although the bill has yet to pass the state’s lower house, it represents an extension of the transgender measures that the Assembly has passed repeatedly in recent days.

The bill would require a “resource family” in the foster care system to “demonstrate … an ability and willingness to meet the needs of a child regardless of the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, and that, should difficulties around these issues arise, a willingness to obtain resources offered by the county or foster family agency or other available resources to meet those needs.”

Meanwhile, in Virginia, the Republican governor who is being targeted by secular left domestic terrorists just pardoned the parent who was being persecuted by the Biden administration:

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Sunday granted an “absolute pardon” to the father who was arrested at a school board meeting after the superintendent lied about his daughter’s rape by a skirt-wearing boy.

[…]Democrat prosecutor Buta Biberaj bucked her typical soft-on-crime stances and personally argued to put Smith in jail for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Smith was denied a jury because it was a misdemeanor in General District Court, and a judge quickly convicted him.

[…]As Smith’s legal saga dragged on, the same system that prosecuted Smith acquitted Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard for perjury charges. The day Smith’s daughter was raped, Byard wrote an email to parents that falsely blamed Smith for police presence and falsely said that no students were in danger, even as the rapist remained on the loose.

The rapist was eventually convicted in juvenile court, but due to a mistake by Biberaj, will not be placed on the sex offenders registry.

[…]The media plastered around the world a picture of Smith being dragged away by police, and used him as a symbol of how angry conservative parents were supposedly disrupting school board meetings out of bigotry and ignorance. The National School Boards Association likened him to a domestic terrorist in a letter that the Biden administration used to mobilize anti-terrorism forces against parents.

Only The Daily Wire bothered to ask Smith whether he had a good reason to be mad at the school board. It turned out that not only had his daughter been raped, and the superintendent lied about it, but that the school system kept the rapist in school, where he sexually assaulted a second girl.

“They villainized me and my family from the minute my daughter reported that she was sexually assaulted, pretty much until present time,” he said.

Biberaj wanted “to make an example out of me to scare people from speaking out. And quite frankly, it worked,” Smith said, noting that far fewer parents have turned out to school board meetings and spoken out since his arrest.

He said his next legal step will be to sue the prosecutor for misconduct, and possibly the National School Boards Association.

This part is interesting:

The pardon from Youngkin, who enjoys high favorability ratings in what was previously considered a blue state, continues a fulfillment of his campaign promise to focus on parental rights in education. On Tuesday, he will hold a “Parents Matter” conversation in Loudoun–at Cornerstone Chapel, a church that was placed on an enemies list by a group of liberal activists called the Loudoun Love Warriors.

It’s very interesting to see how Muslims in Canada and other countries are suddenly starting to realize that the progressive parties they had ben supporting are coming for their children. Maybe parents from groups that traditionally vote Democrat will come to their senses. It would help if Republicans, like Glenn Youngkin, can carve out a “pro-parent” brand. We need more bold actions from Republican governors, so voters in the middle get the picture.