>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?
How much evidence do we have for extraterrestrials? for purple people
eaters?
for men on mars? Do you think they are there? At some point the lack of
evidence does influence you in your thinking (unless I miss my guess). At
what point is that? Would it be when a hundred years of intensive
searching in the fossil record has yielded nothing? When the rocks in the
Precambrian are in every point just like those in the Cambrian, but without
fossils? When soft-bodied forms are found in abundance in the Earliest
Cambrian? There is no reason given the naturalistic presuppositions that
there should not be fossils in the Precambrian.
>
>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.
What is true for the Late Precambrian must be true for the Early Cambrian
as well. (It is profoundly not).
Maybe the descendents migrated into that area from
>somewhere else where they evolved,
Where might that have been? and with such a variety of forms, why were
they unable to migrate erlier, an why were they all contained in that place
or places?
and maybe the sediments of that other
>place no longer exist or are currently inaccessible to us.
That is a great explanation. But in order to be a scientific explanation,
it must have a way of being tested (and the fact that they were preserved
nowhere at all cannot count!) The question then becomes how did they get
from where they were to everywhere in the world at once without leaving a
fossil trail?
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.
How then did they survive the rigors of the Precambrian world? We are
talking here about the relatives of every modern Phylum. How could they
all be that delicate until the beginnings of the Cambrian, then all
suddenly become preservable?
One can ignore these alternatives, but that does
>not mean they are not viable.
You are a very creative individual, Kevin. That is a trait I admire. I
think, though, in this particular case your creative energy is not well
spent. Have a good day.
Art
http://geology.swau.edu