Because nothing is a problem for a theory like Darwin’s. (Or Freud’s, for that matter.)
Further to Berlinski’s Question Remains Unanswered, embryologist Jonathan Wells writes to say,
Regarding the first line in the comments (by eigenstate):
Haldane’s “rabbit in the Cambrian” suffices as a simple example of a devastating find for evolutionary theory’s basic model.
In 2009, Steve Meyer and I spoke at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma. The day before, the museum’s curator of invertebrate paleontology, Dr. Stephen Westrop, made a pre-emptive strike by giving his own talk about why the Cambrian explosion poses no challenge to Darwinian theory. He concluded by taking exception to J.B.S. Haldane’s claim that finding a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian would prove Darwin’s theory wrong. If such a fossil were found, Westrop said, paleontologists would simply revise their reconstruction of the history of life. During the Q&A, one student asked him whether any fossil
find could falsify Darwin’s theory, and Professor Westrop said “No,” since Darwin’s theory is really about natural selection, which operates on a much shorter time scale than the fossil record.
He suggests reading the following 2009 post recounting an effort to get a thoughtful discussion going at Oklahoma University. Do read the whole thing because it captures Darwin’s elite doing what they do best, for example:
Abbie Smith was there, but she spent the entire time blogging on her laptop. Her entries included the following:
7.10 — Meyer is clueless on origin of life and Darwin.
7.27 — ‘Origin of information in DNA’. HAHAHA I made all the mathematicians facepalm [place their hands over their eyes and shake their heads].
7.40 — Bored. Now watching porn.
Despite her earlier threats to expose publicly how “stupid” Steve is, Smith left abruptly after the lecture and did not stay for the Q&A.
and, he recounts,
After Westrop’s lecture I toured the museum exhibit on evolution and the Cambrian explosion. It seemed factually accurate for the most part, emphasizing (among other things) that many of the Cambrian explosion fossils were soft-bodied–which puts the lie to the common explanation that their precursors are absent from the fossil record because they lacked hard parts. The exhibit also made it clear that the Ediacaran fossils went extinct at the end of the pre-Cambrian, so (with a few possible exceptions) they could not have been ancestral to the Cambrian phyla.
One particular panel in the exhibit caught my attention. It showed over a dozen of the Cambrian phyla at the top of a branching tree with a single trunk, but none of the branch points corresponded to a real living thing. Instead, the branch points were artificial technical categories such as “Ecdysozoa,” “Lophotrochozoa,” “Deuterostomia,” and “Bilateria.” The artificiality of the branch-points emphasized that the branching-tree pattern imposed on the fossil evidence was itself an artificial construct.
By all means, American readers, go into debt for an education for yourself or someone you love at an institution of the type accurately portrayed here.
The rest of the world needs you guys to be more foul-mouthed and dimwitted, less imaginative and competitive. Watch more porn. Get yourselves bong pipes and high grade weed.
And be proud to pay taxes for Darwin’s followers to teach your kids and grandkids long into the future. After all, if you dispute the rubbish, they will just get packed court judgements against you anyway.
Note: In general, the Darwin comments at Berlinski’s Question Remains Unanswered must be seen to be believed; fix yourself a tea, pull up a chair, and search on “fossil rabbits” here.
The “fossil rabbits” thing was always a bit of a joke because the Cambrian was an underwater world. Some of us would sure rethink a lot of theories if we came across tiny scuba tanks, goggles, and skin diving suits with furry bunnytail- and long ear- protectors dating from the Cambrian … Or anything similar.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
Search Uncommon Descent for similar topics, under the Donate button.