The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

kiffer wrote: »

This sir, I would maintain, is poppycock.
I challenge you to provide me with a such fossil from the Cambrian... or retract the statement.
I think you are a little confused... there are samples of pretty much all modern phyla found in the Cambrian but not all classes/subclasses and so on...
For example in the Cambrian we find members of the phylum Chordata... but not any members of the class synapsids/theropsids, (a subset of Chordata, they don't show up till the carboniferous) mammals are a subclass of this and don't show up in the record until the Triassic... there are no mammal fossils in Cambrian deposits... there are no members of the Superorder Dinosauria found in the Cambrian deposits...
You don't even find land plants (embryophytes) in the Cambrian, what would your crypo-dinos eat? Manna from heaven?

Nearly all animal phyla made their first appearance in the fossil record at essentially the same time, at what is called the "Cambrian Explosion."

Scientists have found that these early fossils exhibit more anatomical body designs than exist today, and that early animals, the trilobites, had eyes as fully developed as their counterparts today.

Many of the Cambrian fauna, still survive today, all looking much like they did before the “explosion.” The prominent British evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, comments, "... [W]e find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history."

Two places in the world have an abundance of early (Cambrian) fossils; the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies and the Chengjiang site in China.

In Stephen J. Gould's popular book, Wonderful Life, he points out that the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossils include "a range of disparity in anatomical design never again equaled, and not matched today by all the creatures in the world's oceans."

Further, these fossils contain some twenty to thirty kinds of arthropods that cannot be placed in any modern group. The modern arthropods, consisting of almost a million species, can all fit into four major groups. But "one quarry in British Columbia, representing the first explosion of multicellular life, reveals more than twenty additional arthropod designs." Today there are about 38 phyla in existence, but the Canadian, Chinese and other Cambrian sites reveal over fifty phyla.

There has been a decrease in diversity (probably due to global catastrophes). This is the reverse of what evolutionary theory predicts.

Besides diversity, the Burgess Shale shows exquisite detail, right down to "the last filament of a trilobite's gill," or the last meal in a worm's gut.

The Chengjiang site has even greater detail, and is earlier. According to Paul Chien, the chairman of the biology department at the University of San Francisco, said the preservation is such that internal organs, nerves, and even the water ducts of jellyfish are observable.

Researchers found striking similarities between the compound eyes of the Cambrian trilobites and those of modern insects. According to Riccardo Levi-Setti, "Trilobites could see in their immediate environment with amazingly sophisticated optical devices in the form of large composite eyes. ... The number of individual optical elements in the compound eye could vary from approximately one hundred to more than fifteen thousand in a single eye, a range not very different from that found in modern insects."

The conclusion is that the eye, a complex visual system, was fully formed and functional extremely early in the fossil record. Obviously, this is not predicted by evolutionary theory.

Until recently, the phylum of vertebrates had been considered a later arrival in evolutionary history. But not now! Even the vertebrate phylum now extends into the Cambrian period, especially with the recent discovery of two fossil fish in China.
The two new fossils...from Chengjiang are the most convincing Early Cambrian vertebrates ever found. The insects and other land invertebrates are also a very important group, and these practically all seem to be living fossils.

These complex animals were present at the beginning of multicellular life and did not appear later as is predicted by evolutionary theory.

Evolution does not explain the abrupt appearance of complex forms of life early in the fossil record or these fossils' unequaled diversity. The implication of the Cambrian explosion of diverse, fully functional, and multicellular life is that evolutionary theory is falsified.

Life did not start out simple and evolve into more complex and diverse animals; it was complex and diverse right at the beginning. This contradiction between the fossil data and the predictions of evolutionary theory falsifies the theory.

"The facts of paleontology seem to support creation rather than evolution. All the major groups of invertebrates appear suddenly in the first fossiliferous strata. (Cambrian) of the earth with their distinct specializations, indicating that they were all created at almost the same time." - David Enock Associate Professor of Biology. BS Yeshiva College, MS Hunter College.

Even George Gaylord Simpson, Harvard high priest of evolution had to admit, “In spite of the examples, it remains true (as every paleontologist knows) that most new species, genera and families appear in the record suddenly, and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.”

Fossils all over the world show evidence of rapid burial. Many fossils, such as fossilized jellyfish (a), show by the details of their soft, fleshy portions (b) that they were buried rapidly, before they could decay. (Normally, dead animals and plants quickly decompose.) The presence of fossilized remains of many other animals, buried in mass graves and lying in twisted and contorted positions, suggests violent and rapid burials over large areas (c). These observations, together with the occurrence of compressed fossils and fossils that cut across two or more layers of sedimentary rock, are strong evidence that the sediments encasing these fossils were deposited rapidly—not over hundreds of millions of years. Furthermore, almost all sediments that formed today’s rocks were sorted by water. The worldwide fossil record is, therefore, evidence of rapid death and burial of animal and plant life by a worldwide, catastrophic flood. The fossil record is not evidence of slow change (d).

a. Thousands of jellyfish, many bigger than a dinner plate, are found in at least seven different horizons of coarse-grained, abrasive sandstone in Wisconsin. [See James W. Hagadorn et al., “Stranded on a Late Cambrian Shoreline: Medusae from Central Wisconsin,” Geology, Vol. 30, No. 2, February 2002, pp. 147–150.]

Coarse grains slowly covering a jellyfish would allow atmospheric oxygen to migrate in and produce rapid decay. Burial in clay or mud would better shield an organism from decay. If coarse-grain sand buried these jellyfish in a storm, turbulence and abrasion by the sand grains would tear and destroy the jellyfish.

Charles Darwin recognized the problem of finding fossilized soft-bodied organisms such as jellyfish. He wrote:

“No organism wholly soft can be preserved.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 330.

Once again, a prediction of evolution is seen to be wrong.

Preston Cloud and Martin F. Glaessner, “The Ediacarian Period and System: Metazoa Inherit the Earth,” Science, Vol. 217, 27 August 1982, pp. 783–792. [See also the cover of that issue.]

Martin F. Glaessner, “Pre-Cambrian Animals,” Scientific American, Vol. 204, March 1961, pp. 72–78.

b. Donald G. Mikulic et al., “A Silurian Soft-Bodied Biota,” Science, Vol. 228, 10 May 1985, pp. 715–717.

“... preconditions for the preservation of soft-bodied faunas: rapid burial of fossils in undisturbed sediment; deposition in an environment free from the usual agents of immediate destruction—primarily oxygen and other promoters of decay, and the full range of organisms, from bacteria to large scavengers, that quickly reduce most carcasses to oblivion in nearly all earthly environments; and minimal disruption by the later ravages of heat, pressure, fracturing, and erosion....But the very conditions that promote preservation also decree that few organisms, if any, make their natural homes in such places.” Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989), pp. 61–62.

c. Presse Grayloise, “Very Like a Whale,” The Illustrated London News, 1856, p. 116.

Sunderland, pp. 111–114.

David Starr Jordan, “A Miocene Catastrophe,” Natural History, Vol. 20, January–February 1920, pp. 18–22.

Hugh Miller, The Old Red Sandstone, or New Walks in an Old Field (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1858), pp. 221–225.

d. Harold G. Coffin, Origin By Design (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1983), pp. 30–40.

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ReferencesandNotes21.html#wp1012558

Pahu wrote: »

Fossils all over the world show evidence of rapid burial.

That is because a lot of fossilsed animals died and were rapidly buried

Geologists have never had any problem with the idea that some fossils would result from rapid burial of an animal, for example in a mud slide or a swamp. That has never been an issue of contention.

The problem for Creationist isn't the mud encasing the fossil. The problem is the 1 mile of solid rock above the mud encasing the fossil. :rolleyes:

Fossils can certainly end up being created due to shifting material. The idea though that the fossil and the meters upon meters of rock above the fossil were laid down by a single flood is, to put it mildly, one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard of, particularly when you can see in the rocks themselves that there is a uniformity of the deposits that would be impossible to explain in a single event

Pahu wrote: »

I am happy to debate if you give me something worth debating. Basically, I am sharing information from scientists who have found facts that disprove evolution. Your argument is with them, not me.

They aren't here, plus you are misrepresenting their positions and posting nonsense, so yes I'm afraid the argument is with you, not them.