But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
1 Corinthians 1:27
"The most dramatic conflict between evolutionary theory and reality is the sudden appearance of new animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion.
The only cogent attempt to explain this event was presented by paleontologist Charles Marshall and his colleagues.
They recognized that the transformation of body plans required the rewiring of the genetic networks which controlled the animals’ embryological development... They also understood that such changes were impossible in modern organisms.
In response to these facts, they proposed that animals ancestral to each phyla had genetic networks of a completely different nature from today in that they were far more malleable.
As a result, animals could transform dramatically though alterations in these networks without harm.
After sudden changes occurred in each branch of the tree, the genetic networks in every phylum uniformly transformed into the unchangeable forms we see today.
The charm of this model is that it is
---almost completely untestable
---since it revolves around groups of organisms which left no trace in the fossil record.
---It also has to make several rather dubious ad hoc conjectures which could never be verified.
*However, it does rely on one key assumption which can be studied. Namely, the model presupposes that the development of a new phylum of animal does not require large numbers of new genes, and that claim has been disproven."
EN&V
1 Corinthians 1:27
"The most dramatic conflict between evolutionary theory and reality is the sudden appearance of new animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion.
The only cogent attempt to explain this event was presented by paleontologist Charles Marshall and his colleagues.
They recognized that the transformation of body plans required the rewiring of the genetic networks which controlled the animals’ embryological development... They also understood that such changes were impossible in modern organisms.
In response to these facts, they proposed that animals ancestral to each phyla had genetic networks of a completely different nature from today in that they were far more malleable.
As a result, animals could transform dramatically though alterations in these networks without harm.
After sudden changes occurred in each branch of the tree, the genetic networks in every phylum uniformly transformed into the unchangeable forms we see today.
The charm of this model is that it is
---almost completely untestable
---since it revolves around groups of organisms which left no trace in the fossil record.
---It also has to make several rather dubious ad hoc conjectures which could never be verified.
*However, it does rely on one key assumption which can be studied. Namely, the model presupposes that the development of a new phylum of animal does not require large numbers of new genes, and that claim has been disproven."
EN&V