Creation Moment 4/23/2021 - Darwinian Tweakers

 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,... Romans 1:22

"One of the Darwin Party’s standard sub-myths is the story of five mass extinctions in Earth history, the Permian extinction being the largest. This team notices problems with the story, so they decide to take a more “nuanced approach” to it.

Finally, the changing narrative of PTT extinctions in the Karoo emphasizes that a more nuanced approach to the end-Permian mass extinction is needed that accounts for the idiosyncrasies of the event in different geographical areas. Only by recognizing the specific details of the extinction in different places can the search for generalizations be successful.

They investigate two exposures of a slope in South Africa called the Karoo Basin – a much larger feature than the two sample outcrops they look at. 

Assuming the geological time scale, 

---they agree together that the exposures represent 4 million years of

evolution. 

---They divide up the slopes into 13 imaginary time intervals of 300,000 years each, 

---and count fossils within each time “bin” they have imagined. 

Then come to an unexpected conclusion that land creatures went extinct ten times slower than sea creatures in the great Permian Extinction Event. Work all done, they publish their findings in PNAS, a major US science journal.

 

Q: How much did they really come to “know” about this deposit? 

A: One way to measure their knowledge is to count the instances of the word “likely” in the paper. It appears 8 times among the technical Jargonwocky:

1/ Large outpourings from Siberian Trap volcanism are the likely trigger of calamitous climatic changes, including a runaway greenhouse effect and ocean acidification, which had profound consequences for life on land and in the oceans. [What? Before SUVs?]

2/ Extinction dynamics likely reflect the disappearance of theriodonts …, pareiasaurs …, cynodonts …, and dicynodont species.

3/ Our data show species-level evenness to be relatively stable throughout the Cistecephalus and Daptocephalus assemblage zones and across the main extinction acme close to the Daptocephalus–Lystrosaurus declivis Assemblage Zone boundary, likely because of the retention of some extinction acme-crossing species (Lystrosaurus curvatus, Lystrosaurus maccaigi, Moschorhinus, Promoschorhynchus) alongside the appearance of new species in the inferred recovery phase.

4/ The substantial evidence for significant climatic changes related to global warming beginning at the end of the Permian period globally likely had disastrous effects on local conditions in the Karoo. These effects were possibly related to aridity and also increased climatic variability.

5/ Nevertheless, it is very likely that fluctuating climates associated with the end-Permian mass extinction played a significant role in steadily altering the composition and structure of tetrapod communities in the uppermost DAZ, eventually causing an ecosystem collapse marked by the unstable, short-lived communities observed in the lower Lystrosaurus declivis Assemblage Zone of South Africa’s Karoo Basin.

6/ Therefore, the success of Lystrosaurus and the likely reason for its cosmopolitan distribution was not caused strictly by the ecological aftermath of the PTT or Early Triassic environments but instead had its roots in the Permian.

7/ The rise of the disaster taxon Lystrosaurus well before the Permian–Triassic boundary indicates that its success did not stem solely from an ability to survive postextinction conditions. Instead, it likely had preexisting adaptations or ecological and evolutionary versatility that allowed it to flourish under the conditions that caused widespread and sustained extinctions among other taxa.

8/ This period of instability was likely key to breaking the incumbency of previously dominant synapsid clades, paving the way for the rise of archosaurs and their relatives as a more complete recovery was achieved later in the Triassic.

Assuming Oneself into Cluelessness

Before starting their working vacation in South Africa, the team had already assumed evolution and vast ages. 

---They assumed the evolutionary extinction sub-myth about the Permian Extinction. 

---They divided up the deposit according to these time assumptions. ---They assumed the Karoo Basin collected bones for 4 million Darwin Years. 

 

---The entire analysis and conclusion is based on these assumptions. Q: But what if they were not true? 

Q: What if the Karoo Basin formed rapidly, like in a catastrophic flood that buried all these animals in a single event? 

Q: What if evolution had nothing to do with the fossils? 

A: Then what they “know” is all bluffing. 

 

They were dividing up fossils into imaginary time intervals and assuming evolutionary lines between animals. It could be totally fake, like a house of cards resting on the word “likely.” 

They knew the Permian myth has its “idiosyncrasies” (i.e., anomalies against expectations), so they tweaked the narrative to mold their web of belief around it. 

 

Q: And what if their two sampling sites are not characteristic of the rest of the vast Karoo Basin?" CEH