Why can't evolutionists adequately explain the Cambrian Explosion?

because they refuse to consider certain ideas

the cambrian explosion fits in perfectly with the idea of creationism

First, why do creationists think that copying and pasting from apologetics' websites is convincing to anyone?

Second, if they were convincing, why has the scientific community as a whole not rejected evolution instead of accepting it by vast majority?

It is not the Yahoo Answers group that you need to convince. It is the scientific community. Taking this route shows you aren't interested in actually knowing the answers, but instead just spreading propaganda.

Now to address, is dismantle, your copy/past job.

"Why can't evolutionists adequately explain the Cambrian Explosion?" They can and have.

"The rapid diversification of multicellular animal life that took place around the beginning of the Cambrian Period." You realize that the Cambrian explosion period lasted for close to 5 million years right? How is that "rapid?"

"It resulted in the appearance of almost all modern animal phyla." Only 11 of the 32 animal phyla show up during the Cambrian era. How is that "almost all?" It's not even half. 6 of the phyla are found in the pre-Cambrian era and the other 15 are post-Cambrian.

""It's as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history" Richard Dawkins" How is this not a quote mine?

"Stephen Jay Gould-Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."" It is a shame Dr. Gould isn't alive today to ***** slap you for quote-mining him. If you bothered to read the rest of the paper, you would see, only nine sentences later, this:

"The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record." The fact that transitional fossils are rare is a prediction of evolution.Your own quote, when the author used it, was to defend evolution, not reject it. It is amazing how many lies Answers in Genesis puts into their propaganda.

"Hmmm, he says 'not the evidence of fossils'. Interesting." If you knew anything about evolution, you would know that evolution is backed by genetic information so strongly that the fossil record is just icing on the cake. Evolution is even defined and traced by genetic variance. Evolution hasn't been reliant upon the fossil record for over 70 years (half the life-span of the theory of evolution). So much fail.

"Any reasonable person should be able to understand why there are so many of us who actually do not believe in all the tenets of evolution, and see many holes/gaps in the theory which we feel have not been adequately explained." When one believes lies and propaganda instead of actually studying the science itself, I agree; I am not surprised.

I'm not a biologist. I'm even less of an expert on the Cambrian Explosion. For a truly thorough response, if this is what you're truly looking for, try the biology section. This being said: 1) Creationists who try to use the Cambrian Explosion in their argument usually grossly exaggerate what "suddenly" means in this context. The sudden appearance of diversified forms, in this context, still means over several million years. 2) As far as my understanding goes - and as mentioned above, I'm not an expert nor do I claim to be - the Cambrian Explosion is the result of the appearance of complex, multi-cell organisms. This is the equivalent of a technological breakthrough that suddenly allows a whole bunch of new technologies to come along. It doesn't pose a serious problem to evolution.

The Cambrian explosion took 70 million years, hardly sudden in real terms.

We don't have a full fossil record of the Cambrian age, just snap shots, but with DNA evidence we can trace the most probable events that lead to multicellular life.

PS John Sanford was another religious nut, hardly unbiased and Gould firmly believed in evolution just in quick steps rather than gradual.

If you are going to find gaps in evolution then stop dragging up old hoary arguments that have been discredited years ago and find something new.

1) Ever heard of the Precambrian era? There was about a billion years BEFORE the Cambrian when life was diversifying.

2) Most organisms in this time period had soft bodies, and soft bodies don't fossilize has well as hard bodies, if at all.

3) We may never fill in all of the gaps. There is valuable, irreplaceable evidence being destroyed every second. Just because we don't have all the answers doesn't mean you can "God in the gaps"

4) Wait! The Earth's only 6,000 years old right? I'm confused ;)

AH to be so closed minded, it must be nice. Your quotes don't disprove anything "not the evidence of fossils" isn't even a complete thought. So we don't have fossils of every step of evolution, of course we have to have theories, and there will never be 100% proof the doubters will always doubt. As you do for example and find "proof" in silly things they read and interpret.

All Stephen Jay is saying is you don't find the transitional phases between species, but this means little or nothing since the process of fossilization is very rare and takes extreme circumstances. It's not like every species leaves fossils, but i don't expect you to understand these concepts.

There are many things we can't explain, so your point exactly is?

You are so missing the point. That's the elegance of science; a hypothesis is stated - then scientists try to make that hypothesis work. Sometimes new information comes in and the hypothesis is altered to fit the new information. Just because we do not know now how the Cambrian explosion happened, does not mean we will never know.

OP, the best asnwer you picked didn't answer anything, but lots of other did. You just picked it because he agree with your ignorant view. Ignorance really is bliss, isn't it?

i love it when creationists take Dawkin's "It's as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history" quote out of context, he goes on to say that its likely that those creatures probably only had soft parts that composed their entire bodies so that they cannot be fossilized.

There's nothing to explain because it's a creationist red herring.

"The length of the Cambrian explosion is ambiguous and uncertain, but five to ten million years is a reasonable estimate; some say the explosion spans forty million years or more, starting about 553 million years ago. Even the shortest estimate of five million years is hardly sudden."

Talkorigins.

You are asking your question in the wrong section, which shows that you are either trolling or that you do not have a clue what you are on about. I hope for you that you are trolling. In case you are not, ask a relevant scientist in the appropriate section. And please educate yourself so that you do not ask such questions in the wrong section again, as doing this on purpose is a violation of the terms of use of Yahoo! Answers.