Why call attention to the famous “Cambrian Explosion?” The John Ankerberg Show recently highlighted this remarkable event in the history of Earth’s life. We again invite our readers to review the full archive of Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s seven interviews on the the Ankerberg Theological Research Institute (ATRI) website at www.jashow.org The programs may be easily accessed under the Daystar symbol on the Ankerberg homepage.
We also call attention to one of our several past posts in which the Cambrian Explosion was cited:
Evolutionists who believe in a common ancestor and common descent for all living earth creatures are intensely challenged by the Cambrian Explosion. They recognize that new forms of life appeared suddenly. In the context of historical geology, suddenly is a relative term. It is difficult for non-scientists to imagine the 5-10 million year time frame of the explosion as a sudden event. But evolutionists would concur—it was sudden! That sweeping phylogenesis occurs in this limited frame of time, if indeed it could, is a hypothesist’s dream.
New phyla have appeared on earth in “fits and starts.” This term is defined as repeated bursts or sudden flurries of activity. Persuasive incidents of transitional forms of life appearing sequentially in the fossil record are not found. Stasis (a state of inactivity or equilibrium) is the rule. Gradual change in life forms is not.
The theory of evolution in our educational system and in our culture is firmly entrenched. The discussion concerning evolution has been pronounced “settled” by establishment scientists. Evolutionists connect their belief system with what they have affirmed to be the best science available and prevail upon non-scientists to accept the theory for that reason. Unique anomalies of the Cambrian Explosion must not disrupt the firmly held structure of the evolutionary paradigm. The sudden appearance of multiple new phyla of animals in a geological eye-blink is optimistically explained as having no conflict with the evolutionary model.
For creationists and believers in Intelligent Design, the Cambrian Explosion supports their model. We propose that the Cambrian Explosion may be the single best evidence from the natural world for intelligent design theory and a creation event. Evolutionary theorists, on the other hand, are severely challenged by the Cambrian event. To a lesser extent, they are challenged by other radiations cited in the link to our post of 10-29-13.
We acknowledge that details of Cambrian events as evidence of an intelligent designer are not outlined in our current post. Likewise, details of the apologetic for evolutionary events in the Cambrian, are not included in this post. We encourage readers to research the many resources available on these topics for themselves.
In the blizzard of support for the evolutionary paradigm in our modern culture, we stress the importance of the issue for discussion in our churches, our schools, and the general public. Theistic evolutionists claim God created all things, including the ability of life forms to speciate thousands of times from the Last Common Ancestor to modern humanity within the timeline of life’s history on Earth. Sometimes this is termed “molecules to man” evolution. In the face of increasing difficulty of evolutionists to account for speciation by weakening evidence for the traditional pillars of mutation and natural selection, we propose that naturalistic and theistic evolutionists reconsider their belief system concerning the history of life.
Dr. Stephen C. Meyer has repeated many comments and questions asked by theists as well as non-theists in our day. The question is not whether Intelligent Design theory is “scientific” according to science professionals. Those science professionals would say, “Intelligent Design is not scientific.” Many scientists, however, would agree with famous atheist chemist Linus Pauling, “Science is the search for the truth.” Therefore, a more appropriate question would be, “Is Intelligent Design true?”
