So why do you not embrace these new data? I was addressing the question to
people whose beliefs I know, and the question is a good one that deserves
consideration in the larger forum of the scientific community. The
rhetoric you introduce is sidestepping the real issue: the data with
respect to the origin of complex forms. The data are real, pervasive and
conclusive, with respect to our present level of knowledge. Molecular
biology confirms that the earliest metazoans were fully as complex as any
modern forms. Where did the complexity come from? If one turns to the
fossil record for the answer, the response is a hollow emptiness. No
amount of sidestepping, rhetoric or shadowboxing is going to change that.
Given that the issue is well known and there are a number of competent
teams in the field trying to find data in the Precambrian for complex life
forms, now pushed a billion years before the first metazoan fossil forms,
it is time to introduce a positive alternative that makes sense: They were
created. Not a popular theory to be sure, but to say that it came from
nothing is tantamount to blind faith, something that nobody on this
listserve would like to acknowledge as a necessity in science.