US scientists may have resolved 'Darwin's dilemma'

Fox News ^ | 11/15/2014 | By Matt Cantor

[SeekAndFind]

Charles Darwin worried about a possible hole in his theory of evolution, but some American scientists may just have plugged it. For about a billion years after the dawn of life on Earth, organisms didn't evolve all that much.

Then about 600 million years ago came the "Cambrian explosion." Everything changed relatively quickly, with all kinds of plants and animals emerging—which doesn't quite seem to fit with Darwin's theory of slow change, hence "Darwin's dilemma." Now, within a few days of each other, two new studies have appeared that could explain the shift, ABC News reports.

One, by scientists at Yale and the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggests that oxygen levels may have been far less plentiful in the atmosphere prior to the Cambrian explosion than experts had thought.

The air may only have been .1% oxygen, which couldn't sustain today's complex organisms, indicating a shift had to happen before the "explosion" could take place.

In a separate study, a University of Texas professor explains where that oxygen burst may have come from: a major tectonic shift. Based on geological evidence, Ian Dalziel believes what is now North America remained attached to the supercontinent Gondwanaland until the early Cambrian period, in contrast with current belief, which has the separation occurring earlier.

[arthurus]

you know, its just like moving out of the ghetto into a better neighborhood

[BroJoeK]

BipolarBob: "I’d say the biggest hole(s) to resolve are

• (1) How did life first originate? (and don’t give me that primordial soup without some hard facts)"

Seriously, science doesn't know how life originated on earth, and so there are now about a dozen different hypotheses proposing one possibility or another.
None have been confirmed, and if any ever are, my guess is they will find some combination or sequence which turned complex but lifeless organic chemicals into very simple but recognizably living cells.
That is, assuming we never find evidence of life arriving on Earth from outer space.

• "(2) How does evolution work to give us eyes and hands that work just where we need them?"

That question is simpler to answer, because natural selection weeds out any critters born with eyes and hands in the wrong place.
But on the larger question of how did we get eyes in the first place -- many examples of critters with very simple light detectors, others with crude "eyes" and still others with eyes only slightly less complex than our own.
Here is one graphical explanation:

• "(3) How does the genetic material from a one-celled organism enlarge itself to EVER become an elephant/human?"

In fact, the DNA of every recognizably living thing on earth is amazingly similar, and that's one suggestion of common ancestry (or if you prefer: a single Creator).
And, just as we don't know how life first arose here, we also don't know how single celled organisms became not just multi-celled, but also developed organs to eat, breath and reproduce.
However, there are many clues in the fact that Earth still has many very simple multi-celled critters which could well be survivors from that most ancient of times.

[BroJoeK]

The Ghost of FReepers Past: "Evolutionists only admit dilemmas once they claim to have solved them."

Anybody who takes the time and effort to seriously study scientific subjects will learn where the limits of our knowledge are, which questions we can answer, which we can't, and which have at times past been answered incorrectly.
None of those are secrets, but do require some effort to study & learn.

[Hugin]

I could use an eyeball on my palm.

On the downside, masturbation really could make you go blind.

[Texas Eagle]

Charles Darwin worried about a possible hole in his theory of evolution

Lousy creationist troll.

[Hugin]

That is, assuming we never find evidence of life arriving on Earth from outer space.

Which of course doesn't answer the question, it merely changes the location.

[BroJoeK]

PapaNew: "Resolving “Darwin’s Dilemma” is easy. Darwinism, with no material evidence, much less preponderance of evidence, is a fraud and a fake."

Rubbish!
There are literal mountains of fossil evidence and millions of species whose DNA points back to their common ancestors.
Of course, you can hand-wave and deny all you wish, but there's nothing fraudulent or fake about it.

[BroJoeK]

wheat_grinder: "A long, long time ago nothing exploded and created everything."

I think anybody who wishes to see God in the Big Bang should find no contradiction from Genesis with God's command, "Let there be light".

[daniel1212]

One, by scientists at Yale and the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggests that oxygen levels may have been . . The air may only have been . . . . oxygen burst may have come from . . . Yea, that's science . . .

It called the art of extrapolation, from dust to an incredbily complex universe, and all by chance and circumstances, while intelligent design is rejected as science.

[BroJoeK]

Cowboy Bob: "And why did some apes evolve into man, while other apes remained apes."

Are you serious?
Two populations of ancient Great Apes live on each side of a great river in Africa.
The apes on the west side are all fat, dumb and happy swinging from the branches of their trees, eating their fruits & nuts, and having a good old time with the Mrs.

But those poor suckers on the east side of the river -- well the climate changed, the land dried up, the trees died off, and now those sorry apes had to climb down out of their trees, and either learn to make it on the ground or die.
And, most of them died.
But a few found a way, and the more they worked at living on the ground, the better things got for them.
However, slowly, slowly they changed -- stood more upright, walked on two feet, used their hands for clubbing and carrying stuff back, so they could have a good time with the Mrs.

Now, after many, many generations those poor suckers on the dry side of the river no longer looked like, or smelled like their fat-dumb-and-happy "relatives" still up in their wet-side trees.
So if, by chance, it ever did happen that the male of one side, ahem, "bumped into" a female from the other, well, you know... she just didn't look right, didn't smell right, didn't eat the same food, and being around her actually made him sick.
So, horny as young males are known to be, in that case he just didn't feel like it, and couldn't do it.

And that precise moment in time is what scientists call "speciation".

Does that answer your question?

[GeronL]

but no proof of that happening has ever been found?

[Texas Songwriter]

....my guess is they will find some combination or sequence which turned complex but lifeless organic chemicals into very simple but recognizably living cells. That is assuming we never find evidence of life arriving on Earth from outer space.

Your statement seems to be a series of faith statements. How does a chemical, or multiple organic chemicals organize into a cell. The proteins (hundreds of proteins in perfect amino acid sequence folded in conformational space) lipids ( in arrangement with both carbohydrates and/or protein) to perform not only a structural purpose or a functional (enzymes, hydrolytic enzymes, proteolytic enzymes, etc). How do you deduce those 'arrangements' without specific instructions. How do all of the enzymes show up concurrently with the structural proteins, the liposomes, the organelle semipermeable membranes? Your reference to extraterrestrial life infers ID, but seems to leave that notion hanging out there like a matzo ball. The complexity of the simplest cell is so complex that man has never yet been able to develop such a primordial cell.....and that is with intelligence applied, yet you seem to want to rely on blind luck, happenstance, and hope. But those first 'cells' were in a reduced atmosphere so that there was no oxygen available to drive those enzyme systems, muscle cells, cytocrome P450 system, and a myriad of others dependent upon O2. Yet O2 was not available to act to serve those systems.

Your schematic of the invagination of a select portion of ectoderm which invaginated, becomes sequesters and then takes on a completely different functional form ( light sensitivity, sight) with just the good luck to develop a lens. It then assumes the neurological changes in that 'to become a retina' just appears. Then the sentience of the brain (occipital lobe in mammals) to perceive the light and interpret the light seems to just appear. All of this is the old adage that "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny".....the old lie of Ernst Haeckel and fraudulent drawings of embryos. We know these are fraudulent, yet public school books still lie to young students to inculcate this nonsense. It is interesting to not that the mammalian eye allegedly developed and 'lo and behold' so did the nautilus and octopus. So they came up with a fancy phrase called 'convergent evolution' and stuff that down the throat of the uninformed..

[tet68]

And why did some apes evolve into man, while other apes remained apes.

The apes that remained apes continued to vote democrat?

[Paradox]

To be sure. However, I'm curious as to how He did it. I'm sure He understands.

Indeed!

[GeronL]

Some became leftists and they stayed apes, while the conservatives ones evolved.

[PapaNew]

mountains of fossil evidence

Nobody with half a brain denies the fossil evidence of past ages of life. But Darwinism (the "Origin of the Species") requires TRANSFERENCE between major animal groups. There is NO evidence of that, and whatever paltry evidence is conjured up is vastly outweighed by the tonnage of evidence of Intelligent Design which Darwinists "hand-wave and deny" although "there's nothing fraudulent or fake about it."

[BroJoeK]

nightlight7: "Adding oxygen doesn't imply or demonstrate that neo-Darwinian mechanism (random mutation + natural selection) produced the new functioning body plans."

Sure, the words they use are "suggest" and "may", so what we are looking at here are: at least four new factors introduced onto the Earth just before the "Cambrian Explosion".
Those were:

1. The melting of "snowball earth" said to be caused by increased volcanic activity.
   
2. The breakup of the Gonwandaland super-continent, which changed ocean currents, transporting deep-ocean nutrients to shallower waters.
   
3. Increasing oxygen levels caused by algal blooms resulting from those increased nutrients.
   
4. Increasingly complex life forms toward the end of the pre-Cambrian:

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Evolutionists think ridicule wins all arguments. It doesn’t. It just makes them look guilty and childish.

[CodeToad]

I’d like to see how they can explain the first DNA. DNA is so complex the number of permutations in it represents and incredibly large number.

[BroJoeK]

FlingWingFlyer: "“May have?”
Since when did “may have” become science?
Why didn’t all monkeys and apes evolve?
This is just another theory.
They haven’t “plugged” anything."

On your question of monkey's & apes, please note my response #110 to Cowboy Bob's similar question.

As for what role "may have" plays in science, well, science is all about two categories of knowledge -- facts and theories.
The word "fact" means we can observe and measure it, so we know it for sure.
The word "theory" refers to any confirmed explanation of why the facts are what they are.
And science has many theories -- theory of gravity, theory of relativity, quantum theory, theory of evolution, etc., etc.
All are confirmed to work in explaining & predicting future events.

But before scientists ever get to "theory" they must first go through earlier stages like "brainstorming" and "hypothesis".
These words tell us that we are still dealing with speculation and guess-work.
Conversely, when you see a lot of "may have" and "suggests", you know they mean we are dealing with brainstorming & hypotheses.
Nothing wrong with that -- you never get to confirmed theories without first working on hypotheses -- but we need to be clear on what we're dealing with, and words like "may have" tell us.

Does that answer your questions?