Is this based on fossils mainly indicating life during the 'Cambrian Explosion"?. A huge number of disparate and complex life forms appear in the fossil record nearly simultaneously (at least in geologic terms) and not apparently as a result of other creatures evolving incrementally but rather at the expense of them. This is not proof of anything; mainly it indicates a lack of proof of other theories, which may or may not be provable due to the long passage of time and the available fossil record. (One assumes that the fossil record preserves a very small percentage of the total life supported on the planet, and that some forms of life existed without fossizable parts or in areas where the environment was not conducive to becomig fossilized)
There seems to be a common belief in the anti-evolution circles that evolution requires slow and incremental phenotypic (organism-level) changes, but this is not the case. There is a fair degree of slow and incremental change at the molecular (DNA) level (and some sorts which are not slow and incremental), but the correspondance between changes in DNA and changes in how an organism look and behave are definitely not 1:1. The position where the change occurs is very important. If it happens at a spot where the DNA is not even read off into a protein and does not have any regulatory role, then there will be no effect. If it's at a crucial spot in a protein, you may have a goose that can suddenly fly much higher than before.
It may be as easy to postulate that after creating the heavens and the Earth, God created all the critters and the Cambrian Period is some part of that particular Genesis 'day' given the available proof. Or, possibly, some people can easily believe both things are true. There's something to be said for maintaining a thread of faith in the world. There would be no wonder or beauty without it.
The molecular record much more robust than the fossil record, in that all that is required for its persistence is the presence of modern-day descendants, not the right sort of undisturbed muck and lucky digging. It also contains compelling evidence in favour of evolution. Many genes show a pretty much
linear accumulation of differences in sequence through time. Other genes show their history readily: the chloroplast in plant cells is now thought to have originally been a bacterial algae that took up residence or became enslaved by a larger cell, partly because it contains its own DNA which is much more like that of bacteria than like the eukaryotic cell that the chloroplast lives in.
As for beauty and wonder, that's a matter of personal opinion. I think it's much more awesome that we see the sorts of things that are alive today due to random processes. Learning in detail how some of these things work has repeatedly blown my mind, much more than a naively walking through a meadow, listing off names of the species I find there has.
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Topic: Daylight Saving Times (Read 31092 times)