“Darwinism, Design and Public Education”

developmental biologists Gilbert, Opitz, and Raff have noted:

“The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.”

Roger Lewin stated in his summary of the historic Chicago “Macroevolution” conference in 1980: “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the position of some people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.”

article:

http://www.truths.ca/evolutionary-facts.htm


This article appears in the peer-reviewed* volume Darwinism, Design, and Public Education published with Michigan State University Press. In “The Cambrian Explosion,” Stephen C. Meyer, Marcus Ross, Paul Nelson, and Paul Chien show that the pattern of fossil appearance in the Cambrian period contradicts the predictions or empirical expectations of neo-Darwinism and other materialistic theories of evolution. They argue that the fossil record displays several features—a hierarchical top-down pattern of appearance, the morphological isolation of disparate body plans, and a discontinuous increase in information content—that are strongly reminiscent of the pattern of evidence found in the history of human technology.
Thus, they conclude that intelligent design provides a better , more causally adequate, explanation of the origin of the novel animal forms present in the Cambrian explosion. Cambrian Explosion Biology's Big Bang

“Darwinism, Design and Public Education”

The Cambrian Explosion:
Biology's Big Bang With co-authors Marcus Ross, Paul Nelson & Paul Chien
Darwinism, Design and Public Education Here lead author Meyer shows that the pattern of fossil appearance in the Cambrian period contradicts the predictions or empirical expectations of neo-Darwinism and other materialistic theories of evolution. Read entire chapter pdf

NOTE: Excerpts from Stephen C. Meyer's book below (Darwinism, Design & Public Education) covers a substantial amount of scientific evidence. If required download the pdf file above to read the entire chapter.

We shall show that the Cambrian fossil record contradicts the empirical expectations of both neo-Darwinism and punctuated equilibrium in several significant respects. We further show that neither neo-Darwinism’s selection/mutation mechanism nor more recent self-organizational models can account for the origin of the biological information necessary to produce the Cambrian animals and their distinctive body plans. Instead, we will argue that intelligent design explains both the pattern of the fossil record and the origin of new biological form and information better than the competing models of purposeless and undirected evolutionary change.II The Cambrian Explosion
The term Cambrian explosion describes the geologically sudden appearance of animals in the fossil record during the Cambrian period of geologic time. During this event, at least nineteen, and as many as thirty-five (of forty total), phyla made their first appearance on earth. Phyla constitute the highest biological categories in the animal kingdom, with each phylum exhibiting a unique architecture, blueprint, or structural body plan. Familiar examples of basic animal body plans are cnidarians (corals and jellyfish), mollusks (squids and shellfish), arthropods (crustaceans, insects, and trilobites), echinoderms (sea star and sea urchins), and the chordates, the phylum to which all vertebrates including humans belong. The fossils of the Cambrian explosion exhibit several distinctive features.

A. Geologically Sudden Appearance and the
Absence of Ancestral Precursors or
Transitional Intermediates
First, as the name implies, the fossils of the Cambrian explosion appear suddenly or abruptly within a very brief period of geologic time. Studies also showed that the Cambrian explosion occurred within an exceedingly narrow window of geologic time, lasting no more than 5 million years. Geologically speaking, 5 million years represents a mere 0.11 percent of Earth’s
history. As Chinese paleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen has explained, “compared with the 3-plus-billion-year history of life on earth, the period [of the explosion] can be likened to one minute in 24 hours of one day.” Yet most of the innovations in the basic architecture of animal forms occurred abruptly within just such a small fraction of the earth’s history during the Cambrian.
To say that the fauna (all animal life) of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediates connecting the complex Cambrian animals with those simpler living forms found in lower strata. Indeed, in almost all cases, the body plans and structures present in Cambrian period animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier strata.
B. Extensive Morphological Breadth and
Representation of Phyla
Second, the Cambrian explosion exhibits an extraordinary morphological breadth and representation of the disparate animal phyla. Cambrian rocks display about half (or more) of the basic body plans or architectural designs of the animal kingdom. Representatives of nineteen of the forty known animal phyla definitely make their first appearance in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion. Three phyla appear in the Precambrian. Six animal phyla first appear in the fossil record after the Cambrian period, and twelve more are not
represented in the fossil record. Nevertheless, for reasons described below, many paleontologists think that almost all of these additional eighteen phyla may well have originated during the Cambrian explosion. Some authorities even estimate that all animal phyla might have come into existence during the Cambrian explosion. As Valentine, Jablonski, and Erwin argue, “All living phyla may have originated by the end of the [Cambrian] explosion.”
C. Persistent Morphological Disparity or Isolation
A third feature of the Cambrian explosion (as well as the subsequent fossil record) bears mentioning. The major body plans that arise in the Cambrian period exhibit considerable morphological isolation from one another (or “disparity”) and then subsequent “stasis.” Though all Cambrian and subsequent animals fall clearly within one of a limited number of basic body plans, each of these body plans exhibits clear morphological differences (and thus disparity) from the others. The animal body plans (as represented in the fossil record) do not grade imperceptibly one into another, either at a specific time in geological history or over the course of geological history. Instead, the body plans of the animals characterizing the separate phyla maintain their distinctive morphological and organizational features and thus their isolation from one another, over time. The body plans of animals
exhibit what we are calling persistent morphological isolation or what others have called stasis (lack of directional change) during their time on earth.
D. A “Quantum” or Discontinuous Increase in
Specified Biological Information
Fourth, the sudden emergence of the various animals of the Cambrian explosion
represents a dramatic discontinuous or “quantum” increase in the
information content (or specified complexity) of the biological world.

III. Testing Neo-Darwinism and Punctuated Equilibrium against the Cambrian Fossil Record

A.Prediction 1: The Gradual Emergence
of Biological Complexity and the Existence
of Numerous Transitional Forms Leading
to Phyla-Level Body Plans
The fossil record does not show that novel organisms arose gradually, nor does it document the existence of the many intermediate forms that Darwinian gradualism entails. Indeed, since the mutation/ selection mechanism involves a trial and error process, both Darwinism and neo-Darwinism imply that the fossil record should show many transitional organisms and failed experiments.
Contrary to Darwin’s
hope, however, in the 150 years since the publication of the Origin, discoveries in paleontology have only made the puzzle of the Cambrian explosion more acute. Not only have expected transitional forms not turned up, but the pattern of the sudden appearance of novel structure has become more pronounced. Massive new fossil discoveries in the rocks of the Burgess Shale in Canada and in the Yuanshan Formation near Chengjiang, China,
have documented many previously unknown Cambrian phyla, thus only increasing the number of expected and missing transitional intermediates required on a Darwinian account of the emergence of new living forms.
B.Prediction 2: Diversity Precedes Morphological
Disparity (contra Completeness and
Morphological Breadth)
The distinction between small-scale morphological diversity and large-scale
morphological novelty (or what taxonomists call disparity) raises another
key issue. Most biologists today believe that Darwinian mechanisms account
for the great diversity of life, by which they often mean the vast
numbers of different species in existence. Many fail to ask the question,
“What produces novel morphology, and thus the disparity between forms,
that we observe in the history of life?” By disparity, we mean the major differences
in morphology, in contrast to minor variations.
C.Prediction 3: The Morphological Distance
between Organic Forms and thus the Number of
Phyla Will Increase Gradually over Time
According to neo-Darwinism and punctuated equilibrium, the fossil record should exhibit another feature. As we have seen, the neo-Darwinian mechanism and the punctuationalist mechanism (of species selection) imply that the morphological distance between organisms will increase gradually over time. Thus, both these mechanisms should produce a steadily increasing number of new body plans, or phyla, over time. Borrowing from Darwin’s predictions on the emergence of species, we can express graphically the idealized expectation of the neo-Darwinian (and the punctuationalist) model concerning the appearance of phyla over time. For both these evolutionary models, the number of new phyla should increase in a steady logarithmic fashion as members of one phylum diversify and give rise to new phyla.
Empirical expectations of neo- Darwinism and punctuated equilibrium do not conform to paleontological evidence concerning body plan first appearance. Indeed, rather than conforming to neo-Darwinian and punctuationalist expectations of a steadily increasing number of phyla over geologic time, the fossil record shows a very different pattern; namely, a sudden burst of phyla first appearing in the Cambrian followed either by a few small subsequent bursts or a nearly complete absence of new phyla first appearing after the Cambrian. Indeed, for 525 million years after the Cambrian explosion and for 3 billion years before it, the fossil record does not show anything like a steadily increasing number of new phyla. Nor does the sudden explosive appearance of between nineteen and thirty-five new phyla within a 5-million-year window fit the pattern of steady increase that one would expect given either of the two main evolutionary pictures of the history of life.
This value may represent a very realistic, and perhaps even a lower bound, estimate of the percentage of phyla that first appear in the Cambrian. In any case, we see that however we analyze the data, the pattern of first appearance of the phyla (and subphyla) contradicts that predicted by both the neo-Darwinian and punctuationalist models.

When we compare the pattern of fossilization in the actual fossil record to the expected pattern given the neo-Darwinian mechanism, we encounter significant dissonance. Neither the pace nor the mode of evolutionary change match neo-Darwinian expectations. Indeed, the neo-Darwinism mechanism cannot explain the geologically sudden origin of the major body plans to which the term “the Cambrian explosion” principally refers. Further, the absence of plausible transitional organisms, the pattern of disparity preceding diversity, and the pattern of phyla first appearance all run counter to the neo-Darwinian predictions or expectations.
Only the overall increase in complexity from the Precambrian to the Cambrian conforms to neo-Darwinian expectations. Although, as we have seen, the newer punctuationalist model of evolutionary change appears more consonant with some aspects of the Cambrian/Precambrian fossil record, it, too, fails to account for the extreme absence of transitional intermediates, the top-down pattern of disparity preceding diversity, and the pattern of phylum first appearance. Furthermore, punctuated equilibrium lacks a sufficient mechanism to explain the origin of the major body plans that appear in the Cambrian strata. These problems underscore a more significant theoretical difficulty for evolutionary theory generally, namely, the insufficiency of attempts to extrapolate microevolutionary mechanisms to explain macroevolutionary development.
As developmental biologists Gilbert, Opitz, and Raff have noted: “The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.” Or as Roger Lewin stated in his summary of the historic Chicago “Macroevolution” conference in 1980: “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the position of some people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.”