Tag Archives: Darwinism

Polemics

How brief was the period in which the Cambrian phyla suddenly appeared?

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The Cambrian explosion refers to the sudden appearance of new body plans in the fossil record. ID proponents think that the period is between 5-10 million years at the most. Naturalists want to stretch out the period in which the body plans appear to tens of millions of years. The two sides can’t both be right. What’s the truth?

Evolution News has the answer.

Excerpt:

To establish the length of the most explosive period of innovation within the Cambrian explosion itself, Meyer cites the work of MIT geochronologist Samuel Bowring and his colleagues as well the work of another group led by Smithsonian paleontologist Douglas Erwin. The Bowring-led study showed that (in their words) “the main period of exponential diversification” within the Cambrian lasted “only 5-6 million years” (emphasis added). Meyer explains:

An analysis by MIT geochronologist Samuel Bowring has shown that the main pulse of Cambrian morphological innovation occurred in a sedimentary sequence spanning no more than 6 million years. Yet during this time representatives of at least sixteen completely novel phyla and about thirty classes first appeared in the rock record. In a more recent paper using a slightly different dating scheme, Douglas Erwin and colleagues similarly show that thirteen new phyla appear in a roughly 6-million-year window. (p. 73)

[…][T]ake a look first at the following figure that Bowring and his colleagues included in their definitive 1993 article, published in the journal Science. They use radiometric methods to date the different stages of the Cambrian period, including the crucial Tommotian and Atdabanian stages in which the greatest number of new animal phyla and classes arise. Note that the so-called Manykaian stage of the Cambrian period lasts about 10-14 million years. Note also that the main pulse of morphological innovation didn’t begin during this stage but rather during the Tommotian and Atdabanian — a period that they describe as taking between “5 to 10 million years,” and in a more detailed passage as taking about 5-6 million years.

[…]In the figure above, the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages of the Cambrian period together span only about 5 million years, starting at about 530 and ending about 525 million years ago. Bowring’s figure also depicts the total number of classes and orders present at any given time during the Cambrian period. The biggest increases in morphological innovation occur during the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages. Indeed, during this period the number of known orders nearly quadruples. Moreover, Bowring and his colleagues also make clear that this period corresponds to the main pulse of Cambrian morphological innovation as measured by the number of new phyla and classes that first appear. They note that, while a few groups of animals do arise in the earliest Manykaian stage of the Cambrian, the most rapid period of “exponential increase of diversification,” corresponding to the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages, “lasted only 5 to 6 m.y.”

You can see the figure they are reference in the Evolution News article.

Also, check out these clips that explain the Cambrian explosion:

Part 1:

Part 2:

The first clip features James Valentine, a professor of biology at the University of California who just co-authored a new book on the Cambrian explosion and is not a proponent of intelligent design.

The consensus among scientists regarding the period of time in which the new body plans appear is 5-6 million years. Biologically speaking, that’s a blink of an eye. You aren’t going that kind of complexity and innovation in such a short period of time any more than you can expect to win the lottery by buying 5-6 million tickets when the odds of winning are 1 in a googol (10 to the 100th power – 1, followed by 100 zeroes). You don’t have enough lottery tickets to make winning the lottery likely. Similarly, 5-6 million years is not enough time for naturalistic mechanisms to code brand new body plans from scratch. It would be like trying to research and write a Ph.D thesis during a single lunch hour. It’s just not enough time to produce the amount of information that’s required.

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Podcasts

Dennis Prager interviews Stephen C. Meyer about intelligent design

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This episode of the Dennis Prager show is actually from the day that “Darwin’s Doubt” came out. Darwin’s Doubt is the new book on the sudden origin of animal body plans in the fossil record. Dennis had previously interviewed Dr. Meyer about his first book “Signature in the Cell“, which was about the origin of life. I listen to the Dennis Prager show every day, if work permits. It’s the only radio show I listen to regularly.

The MP3 file is here. (32 minutes)

Summary:

  • What did Darwin have a doubt about? What is the Cambrian explosion?
  • The mystery of the missing precursor fossil record for the Cambrian animals
  • The mystery of the origin of all of the new body plans that appeared in the Cambrian explosion
  • The problem of building a new animal is basically the problem of adding new code
  • Mutations generally don’t improve the quality of code but intelligent agents do improve it
  • Do paleontologists acknowledge these problems? What is their solution to these problems?
  • A new book by non-ID paleontologists Douglas and Valentine admits the two problems
  • They argue that no known mechanism exists to explain the origin of these animal forms
  • What has the reaction to Darwin’s Doubt been from paleontologists?
  • Stephen J. Gould’s punctuated equilibrium theory: the fossil record shows stasis and jumps
  • But Gould’s theory did not propose a mechanism adequate to explain the stasis and jumps
  • Caller Bob: what good is partial function? Why would an organism keep half-an-eye around?
  • Meyer: exquisite organs in the Cambrian animals also come into being suddenly
  • Is the book understandable by lay people? Could Dennis Prager understand it?
  • Critiques of naturalistic attempts to explain the sudden origin of the Cambrian animal forms
  • The Cambrian explosion is an explosion of information: where did it come from?
  • Illustrating probabilities with combination locks: the product rule
  • The search for the combination to the lock is bounded by the time available
  • There is not unlimited time to generate this new biological information
  • Prager: how can science conclude that a non-material explanation is the best explanation?
  • Meyer: Darwin used the method of “inference to the best explanation” in his theory
  • the book uses the same method of investigation that Darwin used
  • the best explanation for the explosion of new information is an intelligent agent
  • we are already familiar with intelligent causes creating information – we do it all the time
  • information can be speech, writing, coding, etc., which human intelligence does all the time
  • Prager: is the method of inferring an intelligent cause for this Cambrian data “creationism”?
  • Meyer: ID is based on scientific evidence
  • Meyer: Creationism is an interpretation or deduction from religious authority
  • Meyer: ID is agnostic on the age of the Earth, Creationism requires a young Earth
  • Caller Marty: life could have been brought here on asteroids
  • Meyer: we don’t have evidence to assess whether an alien intelligence was responsible
  • Meyer: the theistic explanation is better because of the cosmology and fine-tuning arguments

It’s very important for Christians to broaden out philosophical and historical arguments with scientific evidence. Most of the people reading this post are familiar with the Big Bang cosmology and the fine-tuning arguments. But the origin of life and the Cambrian explosion are two more areas that we all need to be aware of as much as we can. It probably wouldn’t hurt to be familiar with the galactic and stellar habitability arguments made by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, too. That’s a good half-dozen scientific arguments, which is 6 more than any atheist you meet is likely to have. Why go about unarmed when the scientific data is right there waiting for you? Fill your hands.

Note: if you think that these books might be too difficult for you, then by all means pick up these three intelligent design DVDs for about $18. That will cover the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion and both habitability arguments. You can get a good look at the Big Bang and fine-tuning arguments in this lecture by Dr. William Lane Craig delivered at the University of Colorado (Boulder). If you want to see those two arguments presented in a debate, then get Dr. Craig’s debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens on DVD for $11. Everybody reading this post should own those DVDs so you can show them to other people and change minds.

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News

Scientists trying to mimic the design of hummingbirds with nanorobots

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From Evolution News.

Excerpt:

In the Illustra documentary Flight, Dr. Thomas Emell of the University of Florida asks us to consider the speed of the synapses firing during the birds’ wingbeats (more than 100 times a second) and heartbeats (1,250 times a minute). Now, we see that each wingbeat, taking place in less than 10 milliseconds, involves even more control: tuning the wing shape at each position to optimize lift.

Masateru Maeda, a PhD student at Chiba University in Japan, captured the footage.

The ultimate aim of his measurements of the movements of the wings is to copy their function in the design of flying robots.

If something works, it’s “not happening by accident,” Discovery Institute Fellow Paul Nelson reminds us in the Illustra film. He describes how the unique shape of the shoulder bone allows the wing to invert on the reverse stroke, creating lift on both strokes. Now, Maeda has found that hovering also requires the hummingbirds to be able to sense their wings’ shapes and respond accordingly.

Mr Maeda said that the birds must have a very acute sense of their wings’ shape in order to remain so still in the air.

“If the wing shape isn’t optimised,” he explained, “it will fail to produce lift and the bird will start to sink.

“So it must be able to sense this and correct the shape of its wings.”

What this implies is that the wing shape (involving control of the flight feathers’ ability to slide as they flap), is under instantaneous control of the hummingbirds’ central nervous system. The speed of signals from brain to flight muscles now becomes even more astonishing.

In the documentary, viewers see a robotic hummingbird called the Nano Air Vehicle able to hover in mid-air. Its wings, however, perform simple back-and-forth movements while its stiff body floats upright in a fixed position. It has no internal guidance system, no heart or brain, and no fine control of wing shape. Without the human operator and his joystick, it would crash into the nearest wall. No wonder Nelson says that, despite its being a “sensational piece of engineering,” it is still “light years behind the bird that inspired its creation.”

What the Evolution News article didn’t mention is that even if the scientists and engineers can mimic the flying capability of hummingbirds by intelligently designing robots, they are missing out on a valuable aspect of what makes a humminbird a hummingbird. Can you guess what it is?

Take a look at this video:

Isn’t that amazing? Now, everyone knows that I am huge admirer of birds, and I have had birds as pets for most of my life. I know what these amazing little creatures can do firsthand. Not only can they fly, but they can build relationships with human beings – trusting them not to hurt them. No robot hummingbird can do that. Hummingbirds are exquisitely designed, and their design cries out for an explanation.