Chapter 31

Exploding the Cambrian Explosion

Dr. Dembski argues that the very existence of the Cambrian explosion is a sign that the intelligent designer is real. The Cambrian explosion is a very interesting thing. Basically, during the Cambrian geological period, lots of multicellular organisms came into being. Dr. Dembski claims that so many came into view so fast that they couldn’t possibly have had time to evolve, so they must have been put together by a Designer.

However, Dr. Dembski has some problems. Let’s start with the obvious. Mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles are all post-Cambrian. Meanwhile, most Cambrian organisms are extinct. So what was the Designer doing with all those Cambrian animals—rehearsing?

More obvious stuff: the Cambrian period spanned from 543 to 490 million years ago. So the Cambrian period lasted 53 million years. A lot of evolution can take place in 53 million years.

What’s more, multicellular organisms existed before the Cambrian period. We have fossils of multicellular animals that are 560 million years old, that is, they showed up 17 million years before the Cambrian period. These organisms are known as the Vendian fauna (named after the geological period in which they formed), or the Ediacaran fauna (named after the hills in Australia where many of these fossils were found).

Here is a fossil from the Vendian/Ediacaran Period. This creature is named Dickinsonia costata. There are many Ediacaran fossils that show many-celled organisms that were architecturally complex. They all appeared prior to the Cambrian period.

Figure 31.1 An Ediacaran fossil called Dickinsonia costata.

Darwin hadn’t heard of pre-Cambrian fossils, because they hadn’t been discovered yet. The field of fossil exploration was only just beginning back in the 1800s, and even dinosaurs themselves were not described until the 1820s.

We’ve learned a few things since Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859.

Dr. Dembski, on the other hand, has no excuse for not having heard of pre-Cambrian organisms.

Other interesting things also happened during the pre-Cambrian times. For instance, continents became stable, and oxygen became plentiful in our atmosphere. The oxygen was the result of photosynthetic bacteria and simple plants being able to make oxygen through photosynthesis. Before oxygen was plentiful, it was impossible for multicellular animals to exist.

So multicellular animals got going during pre-Cambrian times, and then took off as the environment became more stable and more oxygen rich.

It is also interesting that Dr. Dembski bases his arguments on the fossil record. Yet ID proponents often claim that the fossil record is inaccurate, or even downright false. Again, it appears that these guys couldn’t agree among themselves that gravity makes things fall down. I wish these guys would agree upon what their theory that they are so intent on pushing on the rest of us is.

Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals Are All Post-Cambrian.

We would not recognize most of the Cambrian organisms. They are not the modern creatures that we see today. If they were intelligently designed, why are they no longer with us?

From an evolutionary standpoint, the Cambrian creatures make sense. In them we see the first appearances of some of the features, and some of the groups, that later evolved into current-day organisms—but not all of the features and not all of the groups that are with us in the present day. Some of those Cambrian creatures are roots in our biological family tree. Researchers are now connecting these Cambrian groups using both fossils and data from developmental biology.