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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Predation, Sort Of
Message-ID: <981@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Apr-85 16:32:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.981
Posted: Thu Apr 25 16:32:09 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Apr-85 05:52:32 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 46


>> [Leif Sorenson]
>> No present process is
>> observed that could support the idea of spontaneous generation.

> [Mike Huybensz]
> I explained this in a note I posted just yesterday.  Briefly, modern life
> such as toads, flies, and bacteria does not arise spontaneously because of
> their complexity.  This complexity is required to survive in a competitive
> world.  The hypothetical first life forms that arose spontaneously could
> be extremely simple because they could survive in an environment without
> oxygen, without predation.

What makes you think there was no predation then?  (I'm not saying
that I don't believe it, I'm just wondering why you say this.)

>>      Let's look at another evidence of creation.  Obviously, if all life was
>> created on earth simultaneously, then one would expect to find such evidence
>> in the fossils.  Descending into the Grand Canyon for example, one moves
>> downward past the Mississippian, Devonian, Cambrian, etc. geological stratas
>> as they have been tagged.  The Cambrian layer is the lowest or last stratum
>> of the decending levels that has any fossils in it (although every now and
>> then someone will find a random fossil in Pre-Cambrian strata).  Interestingly
>> enough, all lower strata below the Cambrian have no record of life.  And yet
>> the Cambrian layer is full of all the major kinds of animals and plants found
>> today.  The life forms in the Cambrian layer compare with the complexity of
>> current life forms.

> If all life was created on earth simultaneously, we would expect to find
> representatives of all types in all the layers.  Why don't we find whale and
> other extant species bones in Cambrian layers?

> Note also, that if you suggest hydraulic sorting, that the above argument
> no longer supports simultaneous creation.

This appears to be true at first glance.  But if the proposition that
organisms were created in discrete groups were true, sorting still
wouldn't create a connected phylogeny, unless the groups were *very*
small.

It's still a good point, though.  I like it.
-- 
                                                                    |
Paul DuBois	{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
                                                                    |
"Danger signs, a creeping independence"                             |