In my previous post, I had indicated I would respond to otseng's Post #1074. Here is my response. otseng alluded to this post as one of several which indicated why a decrease in animal phyla was relevant to this thread.
otseng wrote:micatala wrote:otseng wrote:micatala wrote:If the model postulates an event which would wipe out all life on earth and then does not explain why life still survives on earth it is worthless.
I didn't say there was not an explanation.
Well, you alluded to the Biblical ark. If there is another explanation, I will patiently await it.
Yes, I alluded to the ark as the explanation for how land animals survived the flood. As for plants and marine animals, we can get to that later.
OK. This goes in the queue after the explanation of how the water from the hypothesized chambers of the deep could cause techtonic movement.
otseng wrote:
micatala wrote:
1) The number of animal phyla has decreased but the number of plant phyla has increased. You don't get to simply exclude the plants because they don't aid your argument.
I can agree that the plant phyla has increased. Yet, as I asked earlier, why should then animal phyla decrease yet plant phyla increase?
This has been answered. Extinctions happen. Why isolated or mass extinctions might cause animal phyla to go extinct and not plants is a good question. However, I will point out that even if the SG cannot answer this question, the lack of such an answer does not show the situation is inconsistent with the SG.
To comment further, consider that mass extinctions typically happen over relatively short periods of geologic time. Two big extinctions in our history are the event at the end of the Permian and the event at the end of the Cretaceous. No flowering plants were in existence at either of these points. We can double check, but I believe there were many fewer plant phyla at these times than animal phyla. If the animal phyla were more specialized and less diverse in psecies than the plant phyla, it would be reasonable to think more of them or a bigger percentage of animal phyla would go extinct than plant phyla.
Later, it could certainly happen that plant phyla increase at a faster rate than animal phyla. There is certainly nothing in the SG or the TOE that prescibes any particular rate of phyla change or relative rates of phyla change between kingdoms.
There is really no reason animal phyla could not decrease over a given long stretch of time while plant phyla increase over the same stretch.
The Phylum classification goes back to
Georges Cuvier, 1769-1832 and so predates Darwin and the Theory of evolution by some decades.
Also, as a point of interest, Georges Cuvier was a
catastrophist and was critical of evolutionary theories.
Yes, but you are missing the point. Let's recall the context that was left out.
In Post #1062, I wrote.
You still havent explained why phylum must necessarily increase, and it was also noted your initial discussion of phylums ignored there HAS been an increase in plant phyla.
In fact, your phylum argument presents more of a problem for the FM. How did a flood magically put a number of animal phyla (around 14 if I followed the counting) all in lower layers? Why would a flood not randomly mix up the phyla in all layers if they were all there at the time of the flood? How did the mammals all end up in the top layers? How did ALL the flowering plants end up above ALL the layers with the dinosaurs?
In your response to the first sentence above, you alluded to your Post #1025.
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 351#280351
This post has been thoroughly addressed. First, you make the claim that the number of phyla has decreased over time and that this is inconsistent with evolution. The second claim has been pointed out to be simply false. It is nothing more than a bare assumption on your point. The first claim has also been corrected in that new phyla have developed since the Cambrian.
In neither case did you explain why phyla must increase. You allude to mutations being a factor in evolution and that evolution explains not only complexity, biodiversity, and common descent, but also the formation of new morphological features or body plans (phyla). This is fine, but you did not give ANY reason why the number of phyla HAS TO increase. The fact that this number sometimes does or has over stretches of time does not mean it must. You refer to their being no "magical stopping point" to evolution which might be true, but still only would indicate that the number of phyla CAN increase, not that it MUST increase, especially in a uniform or monotonic fashion.
Next, to reiterate:
otseng wrote:
micatala wrote:In fact, your phylum argument presents more of a problem for the FM. How did a flood magically put a number of animal phyla (around 14 if I followed the counting) all in lower layers?
The fact that common descent is not a part of the FM. The FM does not posit that all life evolved from a common ancestor. But that all fossilized life existed prior to the flood. And all life was quickly buried.
To which I responded:
micatala wrote:
I will characterize this as a dodge. The Phylum classification goes back to Georges Cuvier, 1769-1832 and so predates Darwin and the Theory of evolution by some decades. The classification does not depend on whether or not life evolved from a common ancestor. Linnaeus created his first five heirarchy structure at a time when many scientists believed in the reality of the flood.
Sorry, you can't ignore the issue just because common descent is not part of the FM.
and your response again was.
otseng wrote:
Also, as a point of interest, Georges Cuvier was a
catastrophist and was critical of evolutionary theories.
THis does not address the problem that the FM is inconsistent with many phyla appearing only in the lower sedimentary layers.
Yes Cuvier was a catastrophist. That is an ad hominem point and neglects that point that the phyla classification does not depend on any theory of common descent. You continue to try to avoid the problem that the disappearance of phyla from the sedimentary layers presents to the FM by digressing to other issues.
Here is another exchange on the same issue of phylum classification not depending on common descent.
otseng wrote:
micatala wrote:The classification does not depend on whether or not life evolved from a common ancestor.
True. But, common descent posits that all life can be represented by a bifurcating tree. Each descendent is a little bit different than its direct ancestor. Over many generations, this will result in quite different morphological features.
One would think this would include body plans.
"One would think" is not the same as evidence that it must happen. It is also possible as the tree bifurcates into new species, which is the key level of change, the new species remain within the existing body plans.
Again, you have given absolutely no reason new animal phyla MUST develop over time.
You have not given any explanation how the flood buried some 15 or so phyla ALL in lower layers, many below the Cretaceous. You have given only a bare hand-waving explanation why all the flowering plants ended up well above the Cretaceous layers, even though these organisms would have gone into the flood attached to the ground.
I'll get back to the fact that many of these plants ended up on top of animal bearing layers. In fact, as I recall there exist trees buried in situ above layers with animals. This would be impossible under a flood, and would counter your vague explanation that the plants got moved around in currents and that is how the ended up on top of animal fossils. In situ burial would imply the trees grew on top of the other layers.
But, we do not see novel animal body plans gradually arising over time.
Again, no problem for the SG. You have not explained why the number of novel body plans must increase over time.
otseng wrote:But, they are all represented in the Cambrian suddenly, and without evidence of evolutionary pathways between the different body plans. The evolutionary process was also unable to create any new animal body plans after the Cambrian, yet it was able to create more diversity of animals post Cambrian than during the Cambrian.
We can certainly go back to discuss the pre-Cambrian further, although this has been done by others. Still, you continue to push the line that novel body plans must increase while not explaining why this must be the case.
Remember, the issue is which model is best. Best can be measured in a number of ways, but the pre-requisite for any model,
before you measure its explanatory power, is whether the model is at least consistent with all the available data.
Just talking fossils which is the current topic, we have several pieces of data which seem entirely at odds with the FM.
1) Many phyla only appearing in the lower layers.
2) Flowering plants only in post-Cretaceous layers.
3) Plants appearing above layers with animal and even marine animal fossils
4) No mammals in lower layers. No great apes except in the highest layers.
5) Lots and lots of fishes, but many species only in the lowest layers and many modern species not in the lowest layers.
6) No trilobites in layers dated later than around 250 million years.
Before we get to what a model can and cannot explain, we need to know it is consistent with the existing data. The FM is not. The SG is. Even if there are questions the SG cannot answer, it still wins on this basis alone.
" . . . the line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart . . . ." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
