Fossils - Exposing the Evolutionist slight-of-hand

Hi Quetzal, Was there? As far as I was aware the SSF made an abrubt appearance, as-is. Does it appear in a basal form & then become more derived?Any links/refs to this would be greatly appreciated.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

I haven't asked his position specifically, but I gather from our earlier conversations that he is more or less just a skeptic of evolution in general. He has studied Behe and Dembski's IC systems to a pretty good extent, and feels very strongly with his assertions in this area. I gather that it is his strong support of IC is where his skepticism of ToE in general comes from. We haven't even begun our conversation in IC yet (I personally can't wait - I'm a little more comfortable debunking that one), and we're just starting from the beginning, so to speak. It doesn't appear that he believes in the literal sense of Biblical teleology (that's a step), rather he's just more or less skeptical of ToE in general.To everyone else, thank you very much for your replies and links. I'll continue my reading - I've got a lot of catching up to do here!

The best reference I have for the slowly increasing evolutionary momentum, including a discussion of the SSF, is Valentine JW, Jablonski D, and Erwin DH, 1999, "Fossils, molecules and embryos: new perspectives on the Cambrian explosion", Development 126:851-859. It's a review article, so it references quite a few primary sources that indicate a slow starting but increasingly rapid diversification beginning around 570 mya and moving at a faster and faster pace until peaking in the Late Cambrian. Mineralized skeletons start coming in greater numbers at around 550 mya. The shelly fauna do appear rather abruptly in great profusion just after the boundary. However, you have to remember there's about a 13 my gap between the "end" of the Ediacara and the beginning of the Cambrian. About the only decent (trace) fossils from that period is the famous Treptichnus pedum, which has the signal honor of being the only known organism/lineage to have "lived" in the Proterozoic and "died" in the Phanerozoic.Hope that helps.

MrOpus,Wierd, there was a guy here, Ahmad, who combined exactly the same arguments, IC & the Cambrian explosion, whom I tackled on these very subjects. You'll probably find the style & content similar.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

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....maybe I did talk a little too much out of my butt with this guy....

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I'd like others to take a crack at it.

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There goes my juvenile sense of humor.I'll leave the serious discussion to those already engaged.

Hehe, good one.Nothing wrong with a little toilet humor!

But Behe and Dembski largely support evolution, except that they believe that certain things can't be explained by it. But they're by no means creationists.

Thanks for the ref. Quetzal.Mark

I'm not sure I can agree with this. Behe *does* accept much of evolution, but rejects its ability to create what he believes are irreducibly complex structures. As a significant force in the Intelligent Design movement I don't see how he could be considered anthing but an OEC (Old Earth Creationist, since we have a bunch of newbies recently on board).And Dembski is the author of the Law of Conservation of Information. He believes he has proven it impossible to create new information through random processes like mutation, and that since evolution requires new information that it is therefore impossible. It seems to me that he, too, must be classified as a Creationist.--Percy

"2. Consider at a sub-organism level just what would have to occur for all of these phyla to emerge - in any fashion, not just suddenly. Think of the number of novel cell types that would be required to create these phyla. After all, more functionally complex require more cell types to perform those diverse functions. Cascading down, each new cell type on its own would require many new novel proteins, and when taken as a whole, the number of new, novel proteins required for this explosion is astounding. What's more is the specificity required for functional proteins. Cassette mutagenesis experiments
show that proteins can tolerate amino acid substitutions at one or two sites, but more than that usually results in loss of function. In other words, they indicate that the set of functional amino acid sequences is an exceedingly small portion of the total number of possible sequences. Then there's the matter, even if all of the proteins "evolved", of coordinating the functions and structures and new organs, etc. of these vastly different body plans and organisms."This question I'm having a little trouble with. On the surface it seems rather vague with no substance to support it, though I'm completely unsure. His statement on cassette mutagenesis, for example, doesn't seem to be entirely accurate, but I'm not versed enough to refute. Anyone care to further enlighten me here on his #2 problem? Thanks again.

Cytochrome c differs by 10 amino acids, IIRC, between humans and horses, and by 30+ between humans and yeast. It functions in all of those. Hemoglobin is pretty variable too, methinks.

Michael Behe's position on Darwinism:"Although Darwin’s mechanismnatural selection working on variationmight explain many things, however, I do not think it explains molecular life. I also do not think it surprising that the new science of the very small might change the way we view the less small."
Darwin's Black Box, p.6If I understand Behe here, he's saying that he accepts the answers Darwinism provides for many phenomena. However, since he doubts that Darwinism applies to molecular life, that may mean that Darwinism doesn't apply at all.Is this the same guy who's fond of criticizing Darwinists for their reductionism?------------------
En la tierra de ciegos, el tuerto es el Rey.

His argument is a tad misleading. The first thing that jumped out is the old "too many changes" argument. It is erroneous because it fails to take into consideration that changes in regulatory genes - not all genes - may be the only requirement. Most of what he appears to be discussing here are structural- or phenotype-type changes (i.e., "new cell types"), which are quite possible with changes in one or a very few hox genes, for instance. One of the microbiology folks here can probably provide a more detailed answer, but that would be the route I would take.

*bump*Any help from microbio. folks would be greatly appreciated.Thanks again.

If you are talking about hox genes what you need is a molecular or developmental biologist, not a microbiologist.I'm not quite sure what you mean about it being purely phenotype changes. Obviously in most cases every cell has the same genotype and the only difference is in the patterns of gene expression and the resulting protein complement (excluding environmental factors such as position and signals). The fact that the expression of the genes specific to a cell lineage can be drastically affected by changes in either regulatory proteins or regulatory DNA sequences does not mean that the specific protein does not have to evolve in the first place but there is no need for it to have evolved for that specific purpose.Looking at muscles for example, the actin myosin arrangement in muscles is very specific and highly organised. Yet both actin and myosin proteins are found in non-muscle cells doing very different things, ie being intermediate filaments or acting as transporter proteins.The main problem I saw in the quoted post was the idea of a loss of function. It may be true that the few aa substitutions described caused the loss of a specific function but that does not neccessarily mean that the protein is incapable of any function.