Hi Liam,
Sorry if I missed your points, at another time, I would have enjoyed a back and forth, and to get really in touch with your perspective. But in this thread, due there being many of you, and only one of me, I’ve been on the look out for short evidence based responses. Fossils and genetics. Hopefully you have sympathy for my predicament 
I’m very interested in the genetic evidence. When I look at actual observed current adaptation, in the lab and outside, we see that rapid changes can occur under extreme environmental pressures, but these physical changes are often based on rapid changes to the allele frequencies within a population, combined with an occasional point mutation. Even after some quite dramatic physical changes to a species, genetically the organism will remain essentially the same. This is observed evolution, it occurs within a clade, and it can result in obvious physical changes through natural selection, but the genetic changes are not dramatic at all.
So theoretically we can surmise that the evolving of additional new unique functional genes was part of the process behind the appearance of new species , but there are better explanations, even though both theories have missing fossils.
Even if you believe they share a common ancestor, under evolutionary assumptions there were massive changes to the genomes of all other species since divergence. Why the extreme conservation of the genes of the sea urchin? It speaks of matching design, because conserved genes over such alleged huge timeframes are unrealistic.
So there were humans and dinosaurs around in the Cambrian?
We will never know while we are looking under the sea for them , it speaks to me as the wrong place to look for humans, under the sea with the trilobites and fish. For over 150 years we have tried to find missing links between microbes and the sudden appearance of more complex organisms. That has failed. So now let’s try and test for creation instead of evolution, and spend the next 150 years searching for humans in Cambrian terrestrial environments of high elevation. Makes sense? To look in the right places instead of the wrong places?
What genetic evidence? Genetic evidence shows that evolution can work, although for some reason evolutionists seem to underplay adaptation via allele frequencies, and emphasize new de novo and novel genes. But sure it’s theoretically possible. But this should reflect in the fossil record, and there is nothing in the fossil record which favors the less observed process (macro-evolution involving new de novo or novel genes) over some small radiations within clades, and the more observed process of new species appearing fully formed , coming out of niche environments. That process we do actually see , we observe it daily in our times, and therefore should be the more expected and researched process in the fossil record. .
So when you see new species appearing in the fossil record, which theory should you immediately test for? Do you spend 150 years looking for the missing link between the bird and the dinosaur, the missing link between the reptile and the mammals etc etc. Or do you spend 150 years looking for the niche environments from which these new species suddenly appeared? I think we should be looking for the niche environments, because that is what we observe today when eco-systems change. It’s more logical to assume an observed process, than a theoretical process. How much time would have been saved, if we based our research locations on trying to prove observed processes in history, rather than trying to prove theorised processes in history.
Time constraints mean I’m not getting to all parts of everyone’s posts, but I can deal with this now. Within a marine environment, bottom feeders would fossilize first. There is no reason to assume they are a common ancestor, when even under creationist assumptions in a marine planet, the bottom feeders with the shorter lifespans are more likely to fossilize first.
You refer to terrestrial fossils, but I don’t see many studies ever done on those regions which were actually terrestrial during the early Cambrian. If you don’t study terrestrial locations, then you will only find marine fossils. So then… we should actually study terrestrial locations before we conclude that there were no terrestrial animals during the early Cambrian. Makes sense?
Not only that , I’m not sure if Carboniferous environments extended back to the Cambrian, but in the Carboniferous there were high oxygen levels and high co2 levels, both being toxic to humans at high levels. So if you want to find mammals, birds, and angiosperms in the Carboniferous, one should look in a terrestrial environment of high elevation, where the toxicity is lower.
Yes I believe life in a biological sense did exist before , created in an earlier time. I believe the simpler life-forms are biological robots, without thought nor spirit-being, nor emotion.
Genesis and Leviticus seem to associate living with the “breath of life”, and the “life is in the blood”, what occurred before creation week is another debate. I see the Cambrian Explosion fitting in with the description of Genesis 1, the creation of beings with the “breath of life”. Some may think this refers to breathing ability, I see it as meaning some sort of spirit being, which I cannot associate with microbes. Small shellies? I don’t know.
No problem at all, @Mindspawn! I hope you find what you are looking for. Every blessing, Brother. 
The genetic evidence is not what we can see in the extremely short time scale of a human.
The best evidence is not the working bits that are shared with other species it is the broken bits. As an example, why do chimps and humans share over 100,000 Endogenous Retroviruses? Why do humans have the same broken gene for making vitamin C as the other great apes.
It is easy to say we share the same working bits simply because that is what works. It is harder to explain why an intelligent creator would remove what works by causing a mutation that is then carried to all the descendants. And this pattern is exactly what common ancestry would predict.
You may be right for oysters and clams, but swimming things keep,swimming and when rivers flood swim away from the incoming fresh water with all the debris and sediment. Terrestrials caught in the flash floods are often trapped in debris and washed away into the flood, perhaps buried in sediment and mudslides. Unlike the cheery picture painted by worldwide flood advocates, you would expect terrestrial animals covered first after shellfish, with fish and swimming animals at the top of the fossil,column. Anyway, it is interesting to think about what the results of a worldwide flood would actually look like.
If we looked at the geologic column, I would think we would see something much different than what we have also, but that is a different issue.
I do not explain the fossil record using the flood. There were nearly 2000 years before the flood, the flood was 1 year.
I am saying if a Yunnanozoon lividium was fossilized, evolutionists assume it was some great grandaddy of many other species just because it was first of the chordata. I’m just seeing it as a dead bottom feeder. I don’t see why we need to assume evolution, considering this was a bottom feeder, good chance when it dies, it gets covered in sand. Even under creationist assumptions, the world was largely marine and therefore the first fossil would likely have been a marine bottom feeder. If another dead chordate was first, evolutionists would assume that was the father of all chordata. The mention of this by someone earlier as some sort of evidence for evolution is neither here nor there in this discussion.
Oh and you refer to “worldwide flood advocates”. Everyone should be a worldwide flood advocate, these geologic events are known as “major marine transgressions”, or alternatively a significant “high stand”. These events exist, they are worldwide, and they cause flooding worldwide. No- one can prove if they are of biblical proportions, but worldwide flooding has always existed.
For this criticism to make sense you would have to cite actual evidence that supports it. You need to show that the sea urchin sticks out in some way. I have yet to see any evidence that this is the case.
People have looked at non-marine and non-aquatic sediments from that time period and there are no fossils. You would also need to explain why we don’t find any modern fish species in the Cambrian, or even any fish with bony jaws. Before the Devonian there is a rich fossil record for species on land, but no vertebrates. If your claims are true, it seems rather strange that there was all this life on land, but not a single vertebrate fossil to be found.
That’s rather ironic since you seem to be rejecting the many links between complex organisms. You seem to be asking for evidence that you would never accept.
Will we start seeing creationist researchers doing that?
Then what exactly are you asking for with respect to fossil specimens that are ancestors of species found in the Cambrian? It sounds as if you will reject the very fossils you are asking for.
No, they wouldn’t. Fish swimming about at the top of the water column would die, sink to the bottom, and be fossilized. Also, species on land would die, get buried, and fossilize. They would all be in the sediments from the same time period because they died at the same time.
So you are saying that no one has found these fossils?
I won’t pretend to know exactly what an endogenous retrovirus is, I looked at the research briefly a few years back and now just had a look again. I do understand why you see that as favoring evolution, but it is far from conclusive.
Virusses extend across species, just as we have the coronavirus infecting animals and humans. The same could be said with retrovirusses in species that have the same genes, the same virus could infect the genes of various species.
But I’m wondering even about the basic concept of retrovirusses, it seems to contradict evolutionary principles, so even under evolutionary assumptions one has to doubt the common interpretation of what they are. The concept of a common ancestor containing many shared retrovirusses seems opposed to the concept of natural selection for fitness. We witness firsthand, how a population selects and deselects alleles according to fitness. There is no way an infected ancestor of a human will select for virusses when there are fitter breeding specimens. The infected alleles naturally deselect out of populations, and the alleles promoting improved fitness are naturally more strongly selected. So the entire concept of alleles collecting retrovirusses and the population selecting for those retrovirusses and that species completely infested with retrovirusses then becoming the common ancestor for highly successful species, does not correctly reflect evolutionary principles. So I doubt the theory behind retrovirusses. But I don’t know enough about the process to be certain.
Of course in the rare cases when the virus actually improves fitness, it would make sense the allele of that infected organism spreads into a population and becomes the common ancestor within a clade, but this just isn’t the case with most of the shared endogenous retrovirusses of the human/chimp. these virusses are damaging, and do not improve fitness, so far from being conserved, they would be deselected in populations. Why are they then so strongly conserved?
As for the broken vitamin C gene, these events occur all the time. For example the HbS mutation has a slight fitness advantage in malaria regions, due to conferring resistance against malaria even though increasing the chances of anemia. This mutated allele has become independently prevalent in separate populations, without any need for common ancestry or cross-breeding. No matter which animal contains a gene, if a damaging mutation confers an advantage, that mutation will start appearing in independent populations.
Sure, that is why I mentioned the sea urchin, it is the exception.
Meet your new evolutionary cousin, the sea urchin. By analyzing the newly sequenced genome of the spineless creature, an international team of scientists found just how much we have in common with them. The research could lead to new drugs for human ills.
“The sea urchin is surprisingly similar to humans," said co-director of the sea urchin sequencing project George Weinstock, of Baylor College of Medicine. “Sea urchins don’t look any more like humans than fruit flies, but about 70 percent of sea urchin genes have a human counterpart whereas only about 40 percent of fruit fly genes do.”
Does this prove anything? No , it’s really a creationist source of amazement at how evolutionists will confidently convince themselves that evolution is true, even when faced with intelligent design.
It is impossible to look everywhere, under creationist expectations we are looking for an island that had just arisen out of the sea. So we are referring to a small landmass with a light terrestrial population, and inability to expand the population due to being restricted to that island. It takes time for this population to grow to levels detectable in the fossil record.
So both creationists and evolutionists would have their own reasons not to find their key fossils in the early Cambrian. But unlike evolutionists, we have no excuse in later periods for the lack of fossils. The lack thereof would be understandably damning to the theory of creation, if scientists had spent as much time looking for them in the right place, as they have had to look for transitions from microbes to the Cambrian Explosion.
As we head into the Carboniferous, this is when the terrestrial populations should be vast and detectable in the fossil record. However most of the continent of Gondwana and Euramerica was low lying, and probably only existed due to glaciation and ice caps. CO2 levels and oxygen levels were too toxic for birds, mammals and angiosperms, but well suitable for amphibians, giant insects and ferns etc, what we find in carboniferous coals.
So we need to look for a region which has higher altitudes, of less toxic oxygen and less toxic co2 levels. We also need to look for an area less susceptible to continental flooding during high stands, and major marine transgressions, the low lying swampy river valleys were vulnerable to marine flooding, and more suitable to amphibians which could handle these marine surges into the early continental interiors. One of the more vast regions of high altitude during the Carboniferous is the island of Siberia. This raised plateau would be the correct place to start looking for mammal, bird and human fossils in the carboniferous, it makes no sense to look at swamps or oceans or places of toxic air for mammals.
I’ve answered this a few times. Only a convincing range of fossils showing gradual changes from microbes to more complex early Cambrian species would be convincing, where the species is clearly recognizable upon careful phenotypic analysis.
You may think I’m asking for the impossible, but obviously without that we can never be sure of an evolutionary relationship, it’s just guesswork. And these evolutionary relationships are clearly recognized in trilobite radiation and speciation, so to see these relationships are not impossible.
As a non-scientist just having caught up in this thread I have two questions.
The simpler question involves the “geologic column” which is referred to frequently. Doesn’t subduction routinely drag land mass down into the mantle, basically erasing whatever fossil record they may have held? I assume there are other geological processes which further scramble what is found in the geologic column and in what order. So isn’t there good reason to expect some gaps in the fossil record to never be filled in based simply on geological activity over deep time?
My other question involves why diverse creatures would fairly suddenly develop bodies better capable of forming a more lasting fossil. Could it be that early on there were no creatures with substances in their bodies needed for good fossilization. Then at some point some creature started incorporating calcium or some other sturdy element which improved its prospects for lasting fossilization. If this creature were to proliferate and become a staple in the diet of a variety of creatures, wouldn’t that explain why there would seem to be an explosions of different creatures in the fossil record?
I’m not sure if these questions are directed at me, but yes one would expecting decreasing fossils with time for those reasons, as the layers get older under evolutionary assumptions the organisms get softer and fossilize less. The subduction is not as extensive as you surmise, due to the existence of widespread Proterozoic layers above the Archean bedrock of earth’s crust. We wouldn’t even expect this reduced fossilization in a linear fashion, but even I will admit that we would have expected that reduction to be in an exponential fashion as fossils increasingly disappear from the record prior to the Cambrian.
Instead our actual observation in layers below the Cambrian Explosion is that the reduction in fossil evidence is way too sudden , not even showing an exponential curve of reduced fossils. This is the very reason it is called the Cambrian Explosion, under evolutionary expectations it is surprisingly sudden and dramatic. The Cambrian Explosion is therefore more logically indicative of some sort of sudden insertion of lifeforms than any evolution due to the extremity of the suddenness of missing intermediate forms.
Of course with vit C, the interesting thing is not that we both have a broken vit c gene, but that is is broken in the same way.
It was interesting to reflect on the fruit fly/ sea urchin genetic correlation. On the surface we think we share more with fruit fly, what with some analogous body parts, but insects are far different in that they evolved down a much different pathway, and have traveled that path a long time. It is sort of like being more closely related to your grandfather than you are to your 2nd cousin, even though your second cousin is your age and externally looks more like you than the old geezer using the walker.
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