Is Darwinism and Worship of the Goddess, Gaia, one and the same? Or is it the illogical last resort of the desperate Atheist? Featuring Trilobite eyes and Richard Dawkins quotes.
Fig. 3. Holochroal eyes. (A) Paladin eichwaldi shunnerensis
King, 1914 (Middle Carboniferous, England). Reconstruction of a single
lens, cut to show radial lamellae and vertical trabeculae. (B, C) Asaphus raniceps
Dalman, 1827 (Lower Ordovician, Sweden). (B) Vertical section through
adjacent lenses showing thin cornea (black), hemispherical lower
terminations and focal point (F). (C) Surface view, with cornea removed
at left hand side to show radial lamellae. (D, E) Sphaerophthalmus alatus
Boeck, 1838 (Upper Cambrian, Sweden). (D) Section through adjacent
lenses and focal point (F) (E). Surface view of lenses, cornea removed
on left hand side to show radial lamellae.Descriptions from ScienceDirect.com
From Creation-Evolution Headlines:
Freckled Trilobites Had Great Eyes
Darlings of the Cambrian Explosion, trilobites had spotted markings and sophisticated eyes. Some have been exceptionally well preserved as fossils, down to the level of individual cells.
The compound eyes of trilobites had dozens of individual lenses, each with complex photoreceptor organs at the base. They were described by Science Now, “Looking a Trilobite in the Eye,” as like those of today’s insects and crustaceans.
The sensory cells underneath the lenses, however, were ephemeral, and scientists had always assumed that they had decayed without a trace.
So imagine Brigitte Schoenemann’s surprise when she spotted fossilized versions of these delicate sensory cells while x-raying a long dead trilobite with a computed tomography (CT) scanner. “I expected that we would see [something] in the lens of trilobites, but then suddenly we saw structures of cells below the lens,” recalls Schoenemann, a physiologist at the University of Bonn and the University of Cologne, both in Germany. Inspired,
she applied to take more fossils to the European Synchrotron Radiation
Facility in Grenoble, France, where she could use a particle
accelerator’s high energy x-rays to peer deeper into the trilobites’
eyes. Now, she says, she’s created images of the extinct animal’s entire visual system, down to the level of fossilized individual cells.
So what does the inside of a trilobite eye look like? A bit like a flower, Schoenemann and a co-author report online today in Scientific Reports. Beneath each lens, round sensory cells are arranged like petals around a diamond-shaped photoreceptor able to pick up the dim light that filtered down through the Earth’s ancient oceans. Pigment cells filled in the space between the blooms and likely made trilobite eyes appear brownish-black.
Trilobites could see well in their environment, but might not have wanted to be seen. A paper in Geology reported spotted patterns on the shells of some exquisitely-preserved trilobite fossils found in New York. The authors speculated they might have been for camouflage. National Geographic described the techniques the team used to conclude the spots were original, not artifacts of the fossilization process (see also Live Science and Nature). The specimens had some 500 calcite-filled spots arranged in patterns that might have scattered light and blurred the image of the animal to passing predators.
National Geographic suggested many other trilobites may have had these markings. As for their function, the article “cautioned against ascribing a function for the spots on an extinct organism, noting that it’s very difficult to know for sure how the animal used them.”
Speaking of the Cambrian Explosion, another phylum joins the forty or so phyla that “emerged” without ancestors at the base of the Cambrian. Nature reported that acorn worms (tubiculous enteropneusts) alleged to be 500 million years old have been found in the Burgess Shale in Canada, suggesting to the authors that “hemichordates originated at the onset of the Cambrian explosion.” Exactly how they “originated” fully formed was not explained. Flexing his thesaurus, though, Henry Gee tried to spin an evolutionary tale out of the finding in a companion piece in Nature:
However, the question remained: how did a large, free-living worm evolve
into the minuscule tube-dwelling pterobranch that filters detritus from
sea water using an elaborate crown of tentacles. The fossil record
preserves all kinds of possibly intermediate morphologies between one creature and another. But the record is notoriously delphic, if not laconic, and on this subject it has even less to say than usual. Enteropneusts, being soft-bodied, do not preserve well as fossils: their record in stone is exiguous in the extreme.
Is it credible to believe that trilobite
fossils are hundreds of millions of years old? There are numerous
problems with the idea. One is the fact that they appear abruptly in
the record, fully formed, with no ancestors displaying a record of “the
early evolution of eyes.” Another is the fact that horseshoe crabs are
similar to trilobites in many ways. Horseshoe crabs are living fossils
by themselves, having appeared abruptly, supposedly existing over 450
million years with no changes to the present. Lastly, the trilobite
fossils show exquisite preservation, down to the level of spots and
individual photoreceptor cells below the clearly-defined lenses. Why do
we continue to buy into the evolutionary story and timeline? It makes
no sense in light of the evidence.
If former Nature editor Henry Gee admits
that the evidence for evolution of complex Cambrian animals is delphic,
he has confessed that evolutionary science is not much better off than
the ambiguous divinations of well-paid Greek priestesses babbling under
the influence of gas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Cambrian Explosion was the Noahic Flood's lowest sedimentary layers. It really is time for Darwinists to put away their toys and grow up. Fully-formed and remarkably sophisticated Trilobite eyes were not evolving, they were advanced eye technology in biological form. That they "arose" is like calling on magic. Darwinist literature is full of such action verbs that are usually associated with an intelligent choice, like climbing a ladder or building a cabinet. They arose, developed,became, adapted, changed, evolved, attained...
Trilobite eyes do not take science "one step closer" to understanding the evolution of eyes, they reveal, if anything, devolution of eyes.
Trilobite eyes do not take science "one step closer" to understanding the evolution of eyes, they reveal, if anything, devolution of eyes.
There is actually a Gaia organization founded by James Lovelock that tries to spin this as SCIENCE, the idea that the pagan Goddess, Gaia, is somehow related to an explanation for all of existence and all organisms. This is how desperate Darwinism has become. With exquisite eyes preserved in great detail in Cambrian animals, eyes far superior to most eye systems of organisms today, the idea of their being hundreds of millions of years old is ridiculous and simply not credible.
Darwinism has NO CREDIBILITY! It is all stories and myth and lacking in evidence. My commenters reveal their lack of evidence by majoring in minors, trying to deny that the Deccan and Siberian Traps were NOT formed quickly despite the modern evidence for this and they cling to older studies that purport to support long ages and paleosols that simply are not there. Meanwhile they ignore the overwhelming evidence that demands a verdict of world-wide flood from the rocks themselves. It is like the Darwinists dug in their heels around 1948 and decided that they, like the Amish equivalents of science, would ignore any evidence discovered since.
Gaia? Delphic? We see the headlines about swarming helicopters or robots and find that researchers studied ants to develop the algorithms. New climbing shoes come from Gekko feet, more efficient motors are built by studying e.coli flagellum...I could go on and on. Some of the best "new" science is actually man copying the designs and complex programming of organisms!
Richard Dawkins is the gift who keeps on giving, trying to explain away logical arguments for God and design with arguments which do not hold water. Why does he persist in his beliefs?
Evolution
is very possibly not,
in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being
used to
explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed
objects,
like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have
any
explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are
back to
miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of
explanation.
River out
of Eden (1995) p.83
Since eyes are found fully developed in the Cambrian, Dawkins gets an "F" on this. But it is true that Darwinism is really far more dependent upon miracles than is Creationism.
The
illusion of purpose is so
powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design
as a
working tool. River out
of Eden (1995) p.98
What illusion? It IS design! Mankind now studies organisms to learn from them. All sorts of practical,operable science, including IT technology, is learning from organisms! Evolution is the illusion, actually the myth. Design is DETECTED and the information that drives it is being found in DNA and the cell.
All appearances to the
contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics,
albeit
deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he
designs his
cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future
purpose in his
mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process
which
Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the
existence
and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It
has no
mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no
vision, no
foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of
watchmaker in
nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
The
Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.5
Natural Selection was discovered by a Creationist and it is a designed process using preexisting genetic material overseen by the combination of information contained in DNA and the cell. Evolution has no part in this.
Darwin
made it possible to be
an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The
Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.6
Now we see your motivation...and that of so many of your cohorts, too.
I
don’t want to discuss
evidence. Discussion
with Rupert
Sheldrake 2007
Understood. If I believed in evolution, I would not want to discuss evidence either.
Understood. If I believed in evolution, I would not want to discuss evidence either.
Ben
Stein: How did it
start?
Richard Dawkins: Nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.
Ben Stein: And what was that?
Richard Dawkins: It was the origin of the first self replicating molecule.
Ben Stein: Right, and how did that happen?
Richard Dawkins: I've told you, we don't know.
Ben Stein: So you have no idea how it started.
Richard Dawkins: No, no. Nor has anyone. Expelled April 18 2008 1.30.05
Yes, life must have happened. You can check out Genesis chapter one for more information.
Richard Dawkins: Nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.
Ben Stein: And what was that?
Richard Dawkins: It was the origin of the first self replicating molecule.
Ben Stein: Right, and how did that happen?
Richard Dawkins: I've told you, we don't know.
Ben Stein: So you have no idea how it started.
Richard Dawkins: No, no. Nor has anyone. Expelled April 18 2008 1.30.05
Yes, life must have happened. You can check out Genesis chapter one for more information.
I
suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that
if you look at the details of
biochemistry or molecular biology, you might find a signature of some
sort of designer.
Expelled April 18 2008 1.31.11
Say, like DNA for instance?
Say, like DNA for instance?
We
don’t need fossils in order
to demonstrate that
evolution is a fact. We, I mean, it would be an obviously true fact
even if not
a single fossil had ever been formed. Hugh
Hewitt Interview
October 21 2009
Now you have shown yourself to be completely sold out to a belief system not depending on evidence at all! How is evolution obviously true to anyone who is not a true believer in the worldview on metaphysical/religious grounds?
What’s
to prevent us from
saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult
question.
byFaith
December 2007
Not for me. But then, I will give you credit, Richard Dawkins. You are at least a very rare bird - an honest Darwinist. You just cannot see how remarkably illogical and perplexed you are about it.
Really? Could it be that the human mind likes logic and evidence better than ludicrous and twisted fairy tales? We do not misunderstand Darwinism, we wonder at the lack of disbelief in those who believe in it and recognize that the Creator would certainly have designed us to be able to comprehend and acknowledge that only a Transcendent Supernatural Being could create the natural and natural Universe. Not some zillion-bazillion cosmic dice rolls! Keep in mind that chance cannot by laws of statistics explain the accident of one organism, let alone billions. Keep in mind that the Laws of Thermodynamics support devolution rather than evolution and devolution is what we observe. But God already knew the real problem. The brain does not misunderstand Darwinism because it was designed that way (Richard sure uses that word a LOT for a Darwinist) but rather because it is illogical.
Actually Dawkins so often makes assertions that support Creationism or ID and fails to recognize it that he reminds me of a fellow observing an elephant's trunk and rhasodizes on about the amazing "Air Snake" he has observed, a wondrous creature with the big end somehow able to hover in mid-air and navigate with no eyes at all nor ears but simply two enormous nostril/mouths and an ability to feel objects. We all want to ask him to "look farther to the side! You'll see the rest of the elephant!"
Let me give you an example:
It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. ... [spreading] DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. … It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs.
The Blind Watchmaker (1986), 111.
But Dawkins cannot see, just as a student new to Algebra would struggle at the concept of solving for "X" without explanations and examples. Yet he has seen examples all his life and yet he does not see? Amazing?
That Richard Dawkins would refuse to believe in God and prefer Darwinism is no surprise, though, because there have been men who despised creation by God for many centuries. From the Book of Romans as written by Paul in chapter one, verses eighteen to twenty-three.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.