> You seem to be arguing for a divine creative event at the base of the
>Cambrian for metazoans. Now you know that metazoans appear in the late
>Proterozoic as well (i.e. they don't all occur instantly in the geologic
>record just, geologically-speaking, very quickly). How is this explained?
Maybe Art wouldn't mind if I say something here.
Time of origin and time of burial are two distinct things. Evolutionary
paleontologists may equate first fossil appearance with origin, but
creation - flood paleontologists are more aware of the difference between
these two events.
There is no need for multiple steps of creation.
The base of the Cambrian records the first massive burial of abundant
seafloor life (that is the death of these organisms) but their origin (and
their life) necessarily precedes their time of burial. In a creation-flood
model, Proterozoic bacteria and upper Proterozoic metazoans, as well as
Cambrian forms, lived contemporaneously after the origin of multicellular
(and unicellular) life, before the initiation of the large scale burial
events that resulted in the Phanerozoic blanket of sediment layers
worldwide.
The Precambrian forms, perhaps having burrowed into the seafloor sediments
(before any Phanerozoic layers were deposited), were trapped in placed and
fossilized when the Cambrian sediments flowed in above them. The
fossilization of both Cambrian and Precambrian forms thus occurred more or
less simultaneously.
There is a time-gap between creation and fossilization, but not between
Precambrian and Cambrian (and most Phanerozoic) fossilization.
The "Cambrian Explosion", instead of being explosive diversification, is
explosive sedimentation.
>When do you date this creative event?
Clearly before the Cambrian Explosion event, but not at any specific
Precambrian horizon. And not with implicit faith in the methods of dating
Precambrian layers.
Secondly, unicellular organisms are
>themselves pretty complex on the cellular level and their record extends back
>into the Archean.
Yes! This is a major point! They have complex biochemistry, the origin of
which points to... well, that gets into an ID discussion....
Again, their lower stratigraphic position of entombment does not
necessarily prove an earlier date of origin, life, or death.
How many creative events are you postulating? One? Two?
>A dozen?
One.
After a while, progressive creationism tends to start looking like
>evolutionary speciation.
>
Progressive Creationism has problems both biblically and scientifically.
> Let's assume that metazoans were miraculously created at the PC/C boundary.
>How on Earth does one test that hypothesis? I would assume by trying to
>falsify
>it by searching for earlier metazoan fossils. Isn't that what paleontologists
>are doing (although, admittedly, not with those motives) since the
>development of
>metazoan life is a hot research topic right now.
A few may have been found. That is OK with the concept of contemporaneity
of life, and essential simultaneity of burial/fossilization.
And how do we know when we've
>searched long and hard enough to conclude that maybe your idea is correct?
We don't know for sure. Just look at the abundance of data, and where it
points.
The
>problem with your hypothesis (and generally all "theistic science" type
>hypotheses)
>is that they seem, at least to me, to be untestable.
>
Well, we have a lot of data out there, and it accords with the hypothesis.
The major issue in testing it is determining how fast and deep the Cambrian
and other Phanerozoic sediments came in. Clearly it was fast and deep
enough in many areas to exclude much bioturbation. Also in some areas
excluding diffusion of oxygen (stopping decay and enabling considerable
detailed preservation). And geologically, there is abundant evidence of
rapid sedimentation.
Let's see what Art says.
Karen