Thursday 17 April 2014

The Fossil Order


Over-emphasis on the Fossil order of organisms, can sometimes be conflated with the evolution theory.

Evolutionists will commonly ask, "Why isn't there a human in the Cambrian rocks?"

It can be hard to spot the fallacy, but it's a conflation of a theory with actual evidence. It can SEEM to favour evolutionists, but then that is the real trick isn't it.

Logically I can prove it doesn't favour evolution. on the below diagram I show a table with some balls I have scattered on to the table randomly. I have then split the table-top into three sections, and now, at a later stage somebody has come along and theorized that there is an order to the balls. That they tend to go, left to right, from red colour to blue, and then to green. If the person that believed that theory then said, "now you must show a green ball to be  found in the Pre-Cambrian section of the table!", would they be right to make that demand?

They would be wrong because I actually wouldn't find a green ball in the Pre-Cambrian section of the table, because none were scattered there, and where they were scattered has nothing to do with their theory, which came after the scattering, and is a separate matter, logically.



As you can see, the order of the balls has nothing to do with the theory of an order of balls. And in the very same way, evolution has nothing to do with what types of organism you will find in Cambrian rock. You can CLAIM there is an evolutionary reason for it, but as you see with my example, even if you can't find things you want to find, "out of place" this in itself proves precisely nothing.

You will never find a human in the Cambrian era because they did not happen to be preserved there. Largely marine life is preserved in that era. ( just like you wouldn't expect me to prove to you that you would find meat in a vegetarian restaurant but if you didn't know it was vegeterian when we entered the restaurant, that would be far more impressive. (predictive as opposed to none-predictive.)

Like with the restaurant, we already know the order of fossils. 

The Fossil Order and the Ideal Archetypes both preceded Darwin's theory, and are both posteriori (after the knowledge) facts. These two posteriori set of facts are now conflated, and the fossil order is synonymous with an evolutionary order, and ideal archetypes are now referred to as homologies. But as you can see, both set of facts were known before evolution and shouldn't be regarded as examples of evolution.

3 comments:

  1. I believe this point must be expanded on. For example what conditions, if not evolution may cause an "apparent" order in the scattering. This is particularly true when we are taking into account many more preserved fossils (they literally number in the millions).

    You must also take into account additional factors.

    There are many other phyla that you wont find in the Cambrian. You wont find any bony fish or shark teeth in Cambrian strata for example, despite the existence of said fossils in upper strata. (There are plenty of bottom-dwelling bony fish, like flatfish that didnt get preserved in Cambrian fossil beds)

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  2. I think I should expand it Daren, thanks, I hope you can at least see the logic is clear like so many can't. You mention what won't be found in the Cambrian, marine-forms, it should be noted that the argument from silence is relevant. (denying the antecedant)

    Example:

    "If there are coelacanths found buried with whales then we can say they lived together.
    We do not find them buried together so they didn't"

    Yet in today's oceans there are whales and coelacanths. (I borrowed the example from J. Sarfati PHD)

    The point is, an absence of forms doesn't mean those forms did not live at the same time. By and large we find modern marine-creatures in the Cambrian, such as snails, yet they are not considered, "out of place" because they were known of APRIORI to the evolution-theory, whereas there has now been found fossilized Jellyfish, POSTERIORI to the knowledge. I will make a new blog entry to give a full explanation of the logic. I really need diagrams to make it easier to understand.

    But I hope you can see that the, "rabbit in the Cambrian" is silly, unless it was a marine-rabbit with flippers.

    It's like me saying, "please now prove a design of animal that God has put His autographed signature on, LITERALLY", but as we know, He there haven't been found any signatures, we all know this, and it says nothing about "design" or "not-design".

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  3. At least you have the level of intelligence and objectivity to discuss it in a rational manner, the anti-theists at EvC however, went bananas when I shown them this blog-entry. Lol, and started asking for bunnies in the Cambrian. (predictably)

    I think they think I am calling it a rigged-game but I don't think it's as bad as a tautologically rigged-game. It's still tautological but the difference is that it has to be tautological.

    For example, in a vegetarian restaurant, I have to order none-meat meals, so this is an "understandable" tautology.

    It is "understandable" that Darwin had to argue that the organisms at the bottom were the old ones that generally led to the ones at the top, even if it is always going to be true no matter what the fossil order, even if it had been the opposite (tautologous).

    I will make a new blog explaining why it can't be falsified but it's a difficult level of logic to fully understand, because it can get tricky to get it all pictured in your head, if you don't study such concepts compulsively as I do. (and regrettably, as I don't always "want" to study these things, but the compulsion is high. :-(

    (Tautology is defined as something "always true" as opposed to a contradiction, which is "always false", if you were rusty on that term.

    So it's tautologous that when I eat, I will eat something that nourishes me. It's tautologous when I order none-meat in a none-meat restaurant, because by definition these things are true, and always have to be within that context.

    In the same way, no matter what was found in the fossil record, Darwin would have said the order in the fossils is how we evolved. The false-claim is that there shouldn't be any order with a flood, but that would mean the flood was one super-wave Tsunami that happened over two hours or something. Lol. It would have actually been a very complicated event, the whole planet was destroyed, effectively, to predict what would have exactly been preserved other than dead-things, is almost impossible, nobody has ever experienced a world-wide flood.

    We can however, look at some clues given on Mars, of what water can do, and from mini-canyons such as the one created at Mount St Helens, where a mini grand canyon was created within months, with many "strata" laid down.

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