>
>I posted a couple of papers earlier tha I thought were worthy of comment.
>Kevin's recent discussion on the naturalistic imperative of science brings
>back to mind these statements on the origin of complex life forms. Since
>the sources were in the earlier communications, I simply include a couple
>fo crucial paragraphs for consideration
>
[snip to save space]
>
>Where will naturalistic science go with this?
>
I'll be quite frank, Art: I have no idea. However, I will not use my own
lack of imagination as evidence that a naturalistic explanation is
impossible. I seem to recall very similar kinds of arguments with regard to
bird and whale transitional forms, yet recent discoveries of both bird and
whale transitional forms have shown that arguments based on a lack of
evidence are quite fragile and prone to instant collapse once even just a
single piece of evidence is finally found.
The claim that the absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence is in
fact a logical fallacy called the appeal from ignorance (a particular
proposition is false because it has not been proved true). To claim, or
even suggest, that the Cambrian lifeforms could not have evolved because no
has yet found fossilized ancestors is to engage in this fallacy. What I
would like to know is, are there any theoretical reasons why there cannot be
any Cambrian ancestors and what evidence do have (other than a lack of
fossils) that supports these reasons?
An alternative question would be, are there any theoretical reasons why we
would not expect to find any fossils (other than that the animals to make
those fossils never existed)? Perhaps the local population was too low in
that earlier time for enough fossils to be preserved for us to find millions
of years later. Maybe the descendents migrated into that area from
somewhere else where they evolved, and maybe the sediments of that other
place no longer exist or are currently inaccessible to us. Perhaps the
earlier conditions were not conducive to preserving fossils, despite the
similarity of the two groups of sediments. Perhaps the organisms that were
ancestral were even more delicate and couldn't stand even these very gentle
fossilization conditions. One can ignore these alternatives, but that does
not mean they are not viable.
Kevin L. O'Brien