Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Evolution and The Problem of Sin and Death: A Look at Evolutionary Theodicy

  

How Could God Create Through Evolution?
Part 1
 
 by Bethany Sollereder
editing by R.E.Slater
July 22, 2010

Bethany Sollereder has a Master's Degree in Christian Studies from Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. Her focus was on science and religion, and her thesis was entitled "Evolutionary Theodicy: Toward an Evangelical Perspective." She has been accepted into PhD studies at the University of Exeter and hopes to start in 2011. Bethany's first degree was in intercultural studies. Bethany's other great love is 19th century British history, so when she is not reading about science and religion, she can usually be found reading Victorian literature.
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
“How could a good God create through a process that involves so much pain and death?” For many people, accepting evolution is less a scientific question than a theological one. After all, seeing evolution as God’s method of creation requires affirming that death, pain, and natural disasters are part of God’s creative toolbox instead of a result of the Fall. In this three-part blog series, I will first look at how theologians and scientists have seen the world in contrary ways, and then reflect theologically on how a world created through evolutionary means can be good.
 
Is Death Necessary?
 
First, let’s see how theologians have thought about our world. Theologians––academic and popular, contemporary and ancient––have almost universally affirmed the connection between sin and physical death. Drawing from passages such as Genesis 3 and Romans 5 & 8, they have argued that death came through sin. In regard to the natural world, this means invoking a Cosmic Fall scenario in which not only human death came through the Fall, but earthquakes, tornadoes, pain, predation, and disease as well.
 
Consider this quotation from John Calvin: “For it appears that all the evils of the present life, which experience proves to be innumerable, have proceeded from the same fountain. The inclemency of the air, frost, thunders, unseasonable rains, drought, hail, and whatever is disorderly in the world, are the fruits of sin. Nor is there any other primary cause of diseases.”1 Pretty clear, right? God did not want these “evils” to be part of the world, and the only reason they exist is because of human sin.
 
What’s more, theologians see the redemption by Christ on the cross as the denunciation of these natural evils. For example, T. F. Torrance writes “The Cross of Christ tells us unmistakably that all physical evil, not only pain, suffering, disease, corruption, death, and of course cruelty and venom in animals as well as human behaviour, but also ‘natural’ calamities, devastations and monstrosities are an outrage against the love of God and a contradiction of good order in his creation.”2
 
Scientists, on the other hand, have looked at these same natural phenomena, and have come to the conclusion that realities like pain, earthquakes, and death are in fact necessary to good and flourishing lives. How do they do this? Let’s look at two examples: earthquakes and pain.
 
Is Death Good?
 
When discussing plate tectonics3, the media tends to focus on the negative effects of our planet’s mobile plates. We hear about volcanic activity that shuts down European flight zones, tsunamis that devastate whole populations, and of course earthquakes, which have caused major devastations and cost many people their lives in Haiti, China, and Chile. How can earthquakes be good? What else does the plate cycle do?
 
First, plate tectonics, through the rotation of the mantle below, contributes to the magnetic field which surrounds our planet, keeping the atmosphere in and warding off deadly cosmic rays from the sun, which would destroy life if they reached the planet. Second, plate tectonic movement involves the solid plates being forced down into the liquid mantle and melting in some places, while in other places the plates separate and allow hot magma to rise and solidify. This recycling uses up heat produced by the interior radiation of the earth. This process is so effective that it uses up almost 90% of the heat produced by the Earth. In comparison, on Venus, the lack of plate tectonics means that the same heat produced by the core does not get recycled, and the pressure and heat build up so high that the distinction between mantle and crust gets lost––the whole planet goes molten. The rest of the time, surface temperatures average around 500 degrees Celsius. There are many other advantages to plate tectonics, including stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide, maintaining temperatures for liquid surface water, renewing nutrients in the soil, and keeping a distinction between ocean and continent. Life, and certainly human life in this world, simply does not have a chance without plate tectonics. I do not want to understate the great human and animal cost associated with earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, but without plate tectonics, there would be no life at all. I would affirm that this world’s plate tectonics are part of God’s very good creation.
 
What about pain? If any of us were given the choice to live without pain, most of us would say an enthusiastic “yes please!” Until, that is, we saw what a life without pain really looks like. In our mind’s eye we would imagine striding untouched though hardship and peril, like a real-life Superman, able to conquer all the aches and pains that keep us from reaching our full potential. In reality, a painless life is a horror show. In reality, painlessness looks like leprosy.
 
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s Disease, is a bacterial infection that invades the body’s pain nerves and ultimately destroys them, leaving the person with an inability to feel pain. That is, in fact, almost all that leprosy does. The subsequent damage that we associate with leprosy––fingers falling off, open wounds, and missing limbs––does not actually come from the bacteria themselves, but from the resulting painlessness. Patients burn themselves and do not pull back; they walk on broken limbs and do not notice. In the book The Gift of Pain, Paul Brand describes how in one African clinic, rats were coming in the night and feeding on patients fingers, and because they felt no pain, they slept on.4 Pain is a good thing, our ever-present protector, developed through an evolutionary process to help us live good lives. Now, this is not to say that pain never goes wild. It does, and with realities like chronic pain or torture, pain can become an enemy. But that does not undermine the fact that our ability to feel pain is a great gift; it just means that sometimes that gift becomes twisted in its expression. The solution is not to wish for a world with no pain, but for a world where pain is appropriately experienced.
 
Now let me insert one caveat here: in no way do I want to say that just because pain is “natural” that we have no responsibility to help relieve it. That is not what I am arguing. I would say that pain serves important purposes, which are needed for a good life. At the same time, we should look to the example of Jesus, who walked into pain-filled situations and brought healing, regardless of the cause of the suffering. It is our recognition of suffering in the other5 and our responsibility of stewardship to one another that must motivate our medical ethics.
 
Why Didn't God Create Heaven in the First Place?
 
There is a lot more that we could talk about here. We could speak of predation, which encourages biodiversity and drives evolutionary innovation. We could explore how physical death is a good and necessary part of a world that has limited resources, keeping organisms from becoming cancerous (cancer cells never die on their own and are thus “immortal”). These are important, but they roughly follow the same type of argumentation as above. In my next post, I will look at the values of a world developed through an evolutionary process, or, as it is sometimes asked, “Why didn’t God simply create heaven in the first place?”


NOTES

1. John Calvin, Commentaries upon the First Book of Moses called Genesis (1554) in Calvin’s Bible Commentaries: Genesis, Part I, trans. J. King (Forgotten Books, 1847, 2007), 113.

2. T. F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), 117.

3. For more about plate tectonics, check out Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, (New York: Copernicus, 2004).

4. Paul Brand & Philip Yancey, The Gift of Pain: Why we hurt & what we can do about it (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1993), 127.

5. Suffering, and not necessarily pain. Pain is the brain’s reception of the stimulation of pain nerves. Suffering is a psychological state, and can be caused by many things. Pain can be absent in those who suffer, as is the case with
leprosy. We should be careful not to collapse these two distinct concepts into one and the same thing.


 
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This image shows "slices" of the Universe at different times throughout its history (present day, and at 4 and 11 billion years ago). Each slice goes further back in time, showing how galaxies of each type appear. The shape is that of the Hubble tuning fork diagram, which describes and separates galaxies according to their morphology into spiral (S), elliptical (E), and lenticular (S0) galaxies. On the left of this diagram are the ellipticals, with lenticulars in the middle, and the spirals branching out on the right side. The spirals on the bottom branch have bars cutting through their centres. The present-day Universe shows big, fully formed and intricate galaxy shapes. As we go further back in time, they become smaller and less mature, as these galaxies are still in the process of forming. This image is illustrative: The Hubble images of nearby and distant galaxies used were selected based on their appearance; their individual distances are only approximate. 

 
 
How Could God Create Through Evolution?
Part 2
 
by Bethany Sollereder
editing by R.E.Slater
July 26, 2010

Last week we looked at how our very good evolutionary world necessarily includes unpleasant realities like earthquakes and pain. This week, we are going to look at why God might have created a world through evolutionary processes. What is the advantage of a world where pain and death are necessities? What is gained by an evolutionary process that would not be present in an unchanging, static, ‘perfect’ world? Why did God not simply create heaven in the first place? These are questions of huge theological significance and are not going to be satisfactorily answered here. I do, however, hope to offer some starting points for discussion.
 
I began to look at these questions by researching Irenaeus’s theology of creation. Irenaeus of Lyons was a second-century Church Father, and one of the Church’s greatest theologians. One of the most intriguing parts about his theology is that he understood the creation as being made in immaturity. Most of us imagine the world of Genesis 1-2, or the original creation, as a perfect world, where everything is already completed, and where Adam and Eve were meant to live out their lives in a perfect existence. Apart from multiplying and filling the earth, there is not a lot of room for growth, either physically or spiritually, for humans or for creation because everything has already “arrived.”
 
Room for Growth and Development
 
In a radical re-imagining of this story, Irenaeus pictures Adam and Eve in the garden as children––not perfect, but on a journey toward maturity and perfection. This is because perfection is not something you can give to an infant; it must be grown into. Irenaeus argues, “For as it certainly is in the power of a mother to give strong food to her infant, [but she does not do so], as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment; so also it was possible for God Himself to have made man perfect from the first, but man could not receive this [perfection] being as yet an infant.”1 So, God does not force something on to humanity that it is not ready for. Perfection was not something that could be implanted; it had to be journeyed toward. And so Irenaeus gives us our first value of an evolving world: room for the growth and development of [creation and] humans.
 
Creation Has To Go Somewhere
 
Now, let’s extend this argument to the wider cosmos. Just as humanity is not created in static perfection, the world around is not fully completed either. Colin Gunton, reflecting on Irenaeus, writes, “Creation is a project... It has somewhere to go.”2 There is value in saying that creation has the freedom to grow, that it is an ongoing project. A world with freedom must have choice, and this is present in a world with a long evolutionary history. The cosmos, like humanity, is created very good, but it is not created in its final state. This giving of freedom (and perhaps even limited autonomy) to the creation is, I would argue, more consistent with the nature of divine love than a creation where everything is determined. God gives true freedom to humanity, leading to moral choice, and true freedom to creation, leading to evolutionary development. This is God’s act of love, and this is why God did not just make heaven in the first place.3 Freedom and growth are valuable, and God delights in them.
 
Creation Was Meant for the Renewal of Life
 
A third value given through evolution is the ability to move toward a goal. And that begs the question: “Where is evolution going?” I would argue that evolution was moving toward developing a community of beings which carries God’s image and amongst which God would be made incarnate. The Incarnation was not a contingency plan brought in when humanity sinned, but rather was one of the original purposes of creation. This concept is one of the great contributions of Irenaeus––creation was always headed for the Incarnation! Also, this creation was always part of the journey toward new life. God’s promise of a new creation is not a contingency plan either!4 The new (or, rather, renewed) creation, as described at the end of Revelation, was always part of the plan. I don’t think that any theodicy can say “this world is good” without also pointing forward to the time when there will be no pain, no death, and no tears, under some new and unimaginable reconstruction of the universe. Keep in mind that we do tend to imagine the new future as static in some ways. Many of the values that are achieved here (such as having children or freedom of moral choice) are not imagined to exist there in the same way. In no way does saying “this is a good world” undermine the Christian hope in the world to come. Actually, recognition that this life was always meant to be renewed can help our Christian walk. The spiritual growth coming from this world is seen most easily, perhaps, with the example of death.
 
Why Death?
 
In the present world, physical death is the most poignant reminder of our mortality. While we grasp at immortality through various means, we find it is always beyond our reach. The suffocating horror and fear that accompanies many of our encounters with death reminds us finally that we are not God [but we bear the image of this Creator God]. Yet it is in those moments of deepest agony that our need for the hope of resurrection is the strongest.
 
What do we do with death? In light of the new creation, death is a transition from this life to the new life. It is a leap of faith that God always intended, and one which God himself did not avoid. In the lives of saints and martyrs, we see a taste of what physical death was intended to be (I am speaking here of physical death without sin; our present experience of death is horridly marred by sin and the reality of spiritual death). We see how many of the martyrs approached death with peace, acceptance, and even joy––to lay down their lives and be called into the presence of God. I believe that this was the original intention of death. Death was to be a transition, a final giving up of oneself into the enfolding arms of God. Our bodies go to decompose and support new life, while our trust is placed in the promise of the resurrected life.
 
I want to be careful here. This does not mean that we should not grieve death. Even Jesus, when he was at the tomb of Lazarus, wept openly, even though he knew that he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. There can be a strange disconnect, where if we Christians say something is good or natural, we sometimes feel we should then be able to avoid a real emotional response to the situation, or that faith means not being broken by certain situations. This is not what I am advocating. Encountering death should make us weep, because the loss we experience is real. Christian hope makes us more human, not less––we should feel more deeply, not less.
 
But we should also feel differently. We grieve, knowing that there is hope and life and renewal ahead. We know that physical death does not have the last word, because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We hear Paul’s triumphal cry “Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?…The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”5 Our path is not to avoid pain and death, but to walk through them, following our Lord and Savior in life, in death, and in resurrection life.
 
Is Death the Enemy of God?
 
Speaking of Paul, I feel that I should acknowledge the big white elephant in the room. Someone will ask, “Doesn’t Paul say that death came through the Fall? How do you deal with the biblical texts where death is called the enemy of God?” This will be the topic of next week’s entry.


NOTES

1. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: 1975), IV. xxxviii. 1.
 
2. Colin Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 56.
 
3. Here, I mean “heaven” in the sense of the new heavens and the new earth of the eschatological future, not the current dwelling place of God.
 
4. Read, for example, N. T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008).
 
5. 1 Corinthians 15:55-56.
 
 
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Death's Renewal
 

How Could God Create Through Evolution?

Part 3
 
by Bethany Sollereder
editing by R.E.Slater
July 31, 2010
 
Over the past week, I have been trying to show that the world we inhabit is in fact a very good world. It is marred by human sin, but the operations of the natural world express the values of freedom and growth, just as God intended them. Today, we come to what is likely to be the most contentious of my entries. How do we deal with the biblical language about death? We started this series with quotations from John Calvin and T. F. Torrance in which they asserted that the unpleasant realities of this world (predation, natural disasters, and so on) were not part of God’s original creation but were the results of human sin. This theology is usually taken from the curse language of Genesis, and Paul’s explanation of death in Romans 5, 8, and 1 Corinthians 15. There are, however, several more things going on here than meets the eye. The two major issues that need to be dealt with are the varying biblical perspectives on death and the influence of cultural accommodation in the text.
 
Correcting Our Presuppositions
 
Starting with the first of these, we must acknowledge that the Bible treats the issue of death in several different ways, and that it recognizes several different types of death. First we must draw a distinction between physical death and spiritual death. This is particularly evident in Paul’s writing to the Romans. In Chapter 7, speaking of the effects of sin, Paul writes, “For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death” (Romans 7:11). Now obviously, a man put to death physically could not have later written those words! An even more telling passage is 1 Corinthians 15:31 where the apostle writes, “I die every day—I mean that, brothers.”
 
It is interesting to note that in both places where Paul explicitly states that death came through Adam, he speaks of his own death as a past reality. This is not conclusive of Paul’s use of the word “death” but it is suggestive that we should be careful of assuming a simple one-level meaning. Certainly we see other places where Paul is clearly indicating physical death, such as 1 Corinthians 15:35-42, as he speaks of the physical resurrection of the body after (what is clearly) physical death.
 
This leaves us with the question: Which kind of death is Paul referring to when he states that death came through Adam? Unfortunately, this is not always clear. In Romans 5, Paul seems to be speaking of spiritual death, as he speaks of effects of death in contrast to eternal life and later (in v.18) uses “condemnation” as a substitute for death.1 However, considering Paul’s reliance on Genesis 3 where the curse language clearly indicates physical death through the phrase “dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19) it is likely better to adopt what Douglas Moo [(the Editor of the NIV Bible)] calls a “physico-spiritual” death which keeps both the physical and spiritual aspects in mind.2 These two are closely entwined in Paul’s mind, and the enmeshing of the two will become important later. The same multi-layered concept of death is true of 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, where Paul speaks of death and then future physical resurrection.
 
Science's View of Death
 
How does this view of death interact with modern science? It is clear that death was present in the world long before human sin, indeed, death has been present as long as life [itself]. It is also clear that death is necessary in order to renew resources and allow for evolutionary development. Paul, however, would not have known this. He would not have recognized the importance of death in ecosystems, nor would he have understood the horror of the limited types of “immortality” that we see in the natural world, such as cancer. Paul was an ancient thinker. Just as Pete Enns wrote about Paul’s views on Adam not necessarily determining our scientific and historical understanding, I would propose that Paul’s views on death need not keep us from accepting the insights of modern science.
 
This is where the issues of biblical interpretation get interesting. Most of us take for granted that if we read the Bible, we need someone who can translate from the original languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic before we have a hope of understanding what is being said. What is less acknowledged is that worldviews and cultural assumptions must also be translated. Ancient perspectives, whether in science or history, must be moved into forms that make sense to a contemporary audience and to the questions a modern mind is asking.
 
Remember I said earlier that Paul entwines together spiritual and physical death? Both in the ancient world are seen as evil, as opposed to the will of God and against the flourishing of His creatures. Part of translating Paul into our culture means distinguishing between these two types of death, and acknowledging the necessity of physical death, while maintaining the sin-death connection in relation to spiritual death. Death did come through sin, but spiritual death, not physical death.
 
Creation's Need for Christ
 
This in no way undermines Paul’s main argument in Romans. Paul is explaining our need for Christ to redeem us from our sin, and our need for life that swallows up death.
 
This remains true in two ways. First, Christ redeems us from our spiritual death, from the separation from God which sin instills. Second, Christ assures us of the future life of physical resurrection.
 
While Christ deals with our sin problem completely, believers still die. If sin were the cause of physical death, we would expect Christians to live forever. But this is not the case. Our hope, as it ever was, lies in the resurrection, which is a direct consequence of Jesus’ work. Physical death will one day be defeated, but this comes from walking through the valley of the shadow of death, not around it. Where Paul attributes a conditional immortality to the figure of Adam, and sees eternal life as a past historical reality, we must instead root the cessation of death in the eschatological future.
 
While this brief 3-part treatment is in no way complete, I hope it will open up discussion and allow for new ways of seeing the truth, goodness, and beauty in the creation we inhabit.


NOTES

1. Or, as “The style is thoroughly mythological. Hence Paul is definitely not speaking of personal guilt or naturally necessary death but of the forces of sin and death which have invaded the world.” Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 147
 
2. Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MIL Eerdmans), 320.
 
 


 
 
 
 
 

Teleology Then and Now: The Place of Open Theism within Evolutionary Teleology

 
 
The purpose of dinosaurs - Extinction and the goodness of God
 
Sep 23, 2013

What Evolutionary Teleology Is Not
 
I recently took a friend’s three-year-old son to the Natural History Museum in London. We stood together in awe in the hall of dinosaurs, wondering at the beauty, strength and majesty of the long-departed creatures. I questioned how a good God could let such magnificent creatures as the iguanodon or the allosaurus simply fade from the earth.
 
My question could extend well beyond dinosaurs: about 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Though increasingly extinction is now the result of humans’ impact on the environment, extinction has always been an intrinsic part of the evolutionary process.
 
If God is both the author and lover of creation, why would God use a process to develop complex beings that necessitates species extinction?
 
This question has been addressed theologically in two main ways. One route is taken by teleological anthropocentrists, for whom all species, including those which have become extinct, find their fulfillment only in relation to the development of humankind.
 
Michael Corey, for example, concludes Evolution and the Problem of Natural Evil:
 
Now we are in a position to understand why an omnipotent Deity would have opted to create the universe in a gradual, evolutionary manner, instead of instantaneously by divine fiat. He presumably did so in order to facilitate the human growth process as much as possible; but in order to do this He seems to have been compelled to implement the same evolutionary processes in the natural world that appear to be an essential part of the Human Definition. 
 
By this logic, every death and every extinction is significant only insofar as it is the means to an anthropic or human end. Only humans really matter to God.
 
At the opposite pole from Corey are thinkers for whom evolution is entirely a chance process, with no teleological end involved. God, in this view, is essentially tied to chance. For example, Wesley J. Wildman, whom we might call a “ground of being” theologian, says that a plan for creation’s fulfillment or care for the creatures is simply not a characteristic of the divine being. Nothing really matters to God.
 
Both of these approaches present difficulties for Christians as they think about extinction. The first approach devalues all nonhuman creatures by insisting that they are simply means to an end. The second ascribes little or no value to any particular state of creation.
 
What Evolutionary Teleology Is
 
Is it possible, however, to see creatures [gone long ago] as valuable in their own right, as ends in themselves, while not giving up the sense that they are part of a larger providential reality? In her thought-provoking book God and the Web of Creation, theologian Ruth Page refuses to see the deaths of various species as merely a means in the process of creating human beings. Page argues that the life of each creature, and the existence of each species, is an end in itself.
 
Teleology is always now! It is with creatures as they live, rather than persuading them further up the evolutionary ladder. Indeed there is no ladder, a metaphor which gives comfort to human beings at the top. Instead, there is only diversity with different skills and lives. . . . [Therefore] creatures who die in the recurrent ice ages, or who are caught in the lava from volcanoes, have their importance to God, and their relation with God during their lives.
 
Page discards the idea of an evolutionary ladder and contends that the relationship that God has with each individual creature gives the creature’s life meaning regardless of whether it serves the process of evolutionary development.
 
In fact, the very notion of “greater evolutionary development” would be suspect to her. The value of any given life is found in God’s companioning of a creature, God’s co­-experience of life and God’s remembering of that life.
 
This is a foreign concept in a society that idolizes accomplishment. What worth, what meaning, we ask, does a life have that does not survive? What is the meaning of a species that turns out to be an evolutionary dead-end, whose descendants do not have a place among contemporary flora or fauna?
 
For Page, value is found simply in the act of participation in life. “Fellowship, concurrence or relationship among creatures and between creatures and God is the greatest good of creation. The possibility of such relationships is what creation is about.”
 
In the creative space of possibility instituted by God in creation, each creature and each species brings glory to God in whatever form it takes. In light of this claim, Page concludes that “neither continuing background extinction, nor the devastation of species in cataclysms, tells against God’s companionship and possibilities of influence in the world.” God’s goodness and love are not called into question by extinction since the worth of the creatures that die is not reliant upon some future good; God was not using their deaths for some larger picture. From Page’s perspective, a world of dinosaurs, or of bacteria, is just as worthwhile to God as the world we currently see, because value is found in being.
 
Does Teleology Carry Any Additional Meanings?
 
As useful as this account is, I don’t think Page tells the whole story. To value creatures for themselves is a good and necessary correction of the anthropocentric approach that has long dominated reflections on the natural world. But it does not necessarily diminish the value of the individual to say that the individual has an impact that is bigger than itself. After all, the world has had a particular history. The chronological march of time gives the world direction, and past events are causally linked to the flourishing and diversification of biological novelty today.
 
Page is right to avoid instrumentalist language in discussing the value of a creature or of an extinct species. We can build on Page’s position by saying that in retrospect, the impact of past lives on today’s world changes our interpretation of their lives. The subsequent history can add a dimension of either glory or tragedy to the meaning of past lives without limiting their value to a merely instrumental role.
 
The most well-known major extinction of creatures is that of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. At the end of the Cretaceous period, a meteorite hit the Yucatán Peninsula, causing widespread climate change and environmental disruption. Dinosaurs could not survive the changes and were wiped out. Without competition from dinosaurs, mammals (until that time minor players in earth’s history) suddenly flourished in the new environment. The diversification of mammals eventually ended up in the emergence of Homo sapiens—and that development, we might add, led to the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
 
So how do we interpret the mass extinction of dinosaurs? Certainly we want to acknowledge that their extinction was a tragedy. The loss of a unique way of being in the world is a true loss, just as the loss of an individual is a true loss. We can acknowledge with Page that God companioned and valued dinosaurs’ lives for what they were and was fully satisfied with their lives as they were. Teleology now! But I think we must also have a sense of “Teleology then.”
 
Open Theism and Teleology
 
The position I will outline involves the belief that God does not control all of creation in every respect. Furthermore, God does not know the whole of the future. God rarely has fixed specific outcomes in mind. God changes desired outcomes based on creaturely interaction and the “givenness” of the past. God always acts in perfect love and wisdom and will continually and creatively work to bring about good, even if the path to the good is circuitous due to the freedom exercised by creatures.
 
This account of God is generally termed “open theism.” From the open theist perspective, one can say that God is constantly companioning each being in the here and now. God cannot be simply using the present as a means to a foreordained end because God does not know which ends will actually occur. God knows only the possibilities of the future.
 
At the same time, [past and present] creatures have important and lasting effects on future creatures. The world looks as it does today precisely because creatures in the past lived and died, fought and reproduced, flourished and were made extinct. Their lives and their narratives are linked to ours today.
 
The full meaning and impact of species long since extinct are, in fact, still in development. Our stories continue their stories. This adds a providential twist: in the choices that are made today, the possibilities which God foresaw in the life of a now extinct Tyrannosaurus rex are either realized or closed. The possibilities that help make the extinction of a species more-or-less meaningful in retrospect are realized only in the future.
 
God is constantly working toward giving the greatest amount of meaning to the events that have occurred. God is constantly redeeming the lives of the past by luring creation toward ends that will lead to the greater glory of the individuals of the species now extinct.
 
How The Past Is Realized in the Present?
And How Does The Present Complete The Past?
 
An analogy is found at the end of Hebrews 11. After describing the long line of heroes of the faith, the writer says, “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, without us, be made perfect.” The passage continues directly into the paraenesis, the instructions about how to live, starting with “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us . . .”
 
The saints of the Hebrew Bible recounted in chapter 11 lived and died long before, but the author of Hebrews feels that the current righteous action of believers enriches their legacy. Although they are long since dead, part of the promise of their lives is realized in the present. Conversely, there is a possibility of fulfillment that will not be realized if their descendants choose not to “lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles.”
 
In a similar way, consider the role of Abraham. Abraham’s life is enriched by the later reality of Christ—but that doesn’t mean Abraham was the only means to a Christocentric end. He was a man who had an important part to play in the ongoing story of God’s relationship with the world. Abraham’s obedience as well as his numerous disobediences are wrapped into the narrative of salvation, and his life is given a greater glory, a greater meaning, because of the events that followed.
 
This view can be extended to all living creatures. All living creatures are companioned by God and loved and valued on their own terms. Yet each life also lives within a divine promise that the legacy of their life will be for the good. It is possible to see the ongoing history of evolution, comprising as it does ever increased complexity and interrelations, as the way that the promise of the past is being fulfilled.
 
The extinction of the dinosaurs is a tragedy, and yet the flourishing of mammals contributes to the meaning of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Thomas Merton, in another context, summarizes what I’m trying to say: “But the grace of Christ is constantly working miracles to turn useless suffering into something fruitful after all.”
 
Perhaps one of the ways we might see redemption of this kind is to consider that the wonder of human architecture, or the transcendence of music, or the capacity of human love is actually bound up with the meaning of the extinction of past creatures we never knew. Our stories serve their stories, and vice versa. By merit of the dinosaurs’ extinction, we are here, and our retrospective vision allows us to interpret their deaths as having been meaningful in a way that an imagined human observer at that time could not have foreseen. Other equally meaningful and fruitful possibilities of redemption along the road of time no doubt were not explored in order that our road might be. God is always working toward redemption, though the specific realization of redemption is flexible.
 
The Fractals of Open Teleology
 
Is this at all plausible? Is it really possible to have a God who is at every moment working toward the good of each existing individual while also working toward the good of the legacy left by every creature of the past? In her book Wandering in Darkness, Eleonore Stump explores stories of suffering and redemption. Drawing on the book of Job, she suggests that stories of similar redemptive shape are nested within each other in such a way as to become what she calls fractal.
 
A fractal is a type of self-similar, and infinitely complex, pattern in which the smallest unit resembles the shape of the whole. So, for example, the raven’s story in the divine speeches is part of Job’s story, which in turn is part of Satan’s story. And in each story exists God’s personal relationship with that particular creature as God works in their life toward their own specific good.
 
“Within each of the nested stories the creature whose story it is is an end in himself,” explains Stump, “even if in some other story he is also a means to an end for some other creature.” God allows these individual narratives to “work upward” in complexity and scope until the greater story, like the smaller story, is a picture of God working toward the good in a systemic sense.
 
Seen from this perspective, the individual and the system are not set against each other competitively, as is so often the case in reasoning about animal suffering or extinction. Page’s “Teleology now!” stance ensures that we never see extinction as only a means to an end. At the same time, a view of ongoing, ever-building fractal narratives means that we never relinquish an extinction event to the rubbish heap of history either.
 
Another way to envision fractal narratives is to think of a photograph that is a complex mosaic of smaller photographs. The shade, light and texture of each individual photograph are arranged to create a larger image.
 
This kind of photo mosaic is different from a tapestry, because in a tapestry each thread is not a valuable and unique whole in itself. A thread becomes something worthwhile only when it is a part of the finished tapestry. A thread may easily be replaced by any other thread.
 
In a photo mosaic, however, each photograph that acts as a pixel is in fact a complete image in itself––apart from its involvement in the larger image. But the individual photograph is also a necessary component of the larger picture. The uniqueness of each photograph is, in fact, precisely what makes it a component of the larger image, and its unrepeatable blend of color and shade means that it uniquely fits in that space, better than any other available picture.
 
The levels of the photo mosaic are not limited to just two, either. As we look at a smaller picture, it could itself be made up of a mosaic of still smaller pictures, each a whole in itself. There is no limit to how small or large the scale may go, and no limit to the complexity of the arrangement.
 
Even this analogy is too static. Each picture remains what it is without change. Reality and relationships, however, are dynamic. So instead of imagining photographs that merge together to form a great photograph, we should imagine little (fractal) videos so artfully arranged that together they create a larger, more dynamic video.
 
This is the type of picture we must have in mind as we imagine God’s weaving of the world’s narrative. To the complexity of this picture we must add that each video, both the small and large, are not carefully acted and scripted pieces, but dynamic real-time scenes, full of improvisations. The end of each individual video, as well as the end of the large-scale video, is not yet determined in detail, and all of the actors have the freedom to determine their own response to divine direction in their own capacity.
 
God winds the texture and reality of each of these into the larger-scale video, which is influenced (but not determined) by each pixel of its makeup. God interacts at each level of the mosaic, luring, directing and arranging to bring about God’s purposes at every level.
 
Thus God’s providential action is twofold: each individual creature and species is an end in itself, existing for the glory and delight of God in that moment; and the disparate story lines of all beings that exist or have existed are wound into the epic tale of earth’s [larger] history.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Monday, September 23, 2013

Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 2: Recap - "Physics and Cosmology"

Religion and Science: Wk. 2 Recap and React- Physics and Cosmology
 
by Jonnie Russell

 
 
 
 

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Why All the Fuss over Earth's Remarkable Cambrian Explosion?




A friend today mentioned that I should explore the Biologos Series on Earth's Cambrian Explosion period. Since I always like to start with Wikipedia I first went there to the article, the Cambrian Explosion, to skim through it. Apparently it was in this primordial period some 500 million years ago that life quickly transitioned from life in the sea to life on land after preceding a lengthy period of "unconformity" where both land-and-sea became prepared for sustainable life by geologic upheaval. Add to this early period the necessary ingredients for life like the formation of oxygen produced from massive microbial sea matsan oxygenating process necessary for early photosynthesis, the creation of land-bound nutrients by massive ice seas originating from an earlier Snowballed Earth with its resulting glaciation periods, and an increase in the concentration of calcium in the Cambrian seawater, and you get life!


---  From Wikipedia Article  ---



The "Cambrian explosion" can be viewed as two waves of metazoan expansion into empty niches: first, a coevolutionary rise in diversity as animals explored niches on the Ediacaran sea floor, followed by a second expansion in the early Cambrian as they became established in the water column.[4]

The rate of diversification seen in the Cambrian phase of the explosion is unparalleled among marine animals: it affected all metazoan clades of which Cambrian fossils have been found. Later radiations, such as those of fish in the Silurian and Devonian periods, involved fewer taxa, mainly with very similar body plans....[12]

Although the recovery from the Permian-Triassic extinction started with about as few animal species as the Cambrian explosion, the recovery produced far fewer significantly new types of animals.[120]

Ecosystem engineering

Evolving organisms inevitably change the environment they evolve in. The Devonian colonization of land had planet-wide consequences for sediment cycling and ocean nutrients, and was likely linked to the Devonian mass extinction. A similar process may have occurred on smaller scales in the oceans, with, for example, the sponges filtering particles from the water and depositing them in the mud in a more digestible form; or burrowing organisms making previously unavailable resources available for other organisms.[118]

Discredited hypotheses

As our understanding of the events of the Cambrian becomes clearer, data has accumulated to make some hypotheses look improbable. Causes that have been proposed, but are now discounted[citation needed] include the evolution of herbivory, vast changes in the speed of tectonic plate movement or of the cyclic changes in the Earth's orbital motion, or the operation of different evolutionary mechanisms from those that are seen in the rest of the Phanerozoic eon.

Complexity threshold

The explosion may not have been a significant evolutionary event. It may represent a threshold being crossed: for example a threshold in genetic complexity that allowed a vast range of morphological forms to be employed.[119]

... Hence, an evolutionary complexity threshold was reached which triggered a massive and rapid diversification of life which opened up an exceptionally wide range of previously unavailable ecological niches. When these were all occupied, limited space existed for such wide-ranging diversifications to occur again, because strong competition existed in all niches and incumbents usually had the advantage....

... There were two similar explosions in the evolution of land plants: after a cryptic history beginning about 450 million years ago, land plants underwent a uniquely rapid adaptive radiation during the Devonian period, about 400 million years ago.[12] Furthermore, Angiosperms (flowering plants) originated and rapidly diversified during the Cretaceous period.



Other Helpful Wikipedia Links:

Cambrian Explosion



---  End of Wikipedia Article  ---


Now all this is very interesting to me as a non-specialist but it also makes me wish that I had taken classes on evolution when I was at university. I did take the obligatory biology class and attempted a short run at a geology class, but at the last, my interest was more in mathematics, chemistry, and physics. And just for fun, my electives found me 3 years deep in Attic Greek and its literature, with a short course on Roman History, and another on Sumerian/Ugaritic History (pre-Mosaic, Pentateuchal eras). But like most students I was always short on time-and-money and had to keep moving towards my major.

And so, like many of you, I have a basic, rudimentary knowledge of the Earth's development, and will, from time-to-time, watch the NOVA, History, and Discovery TV Channels showing the early drift of the continents; the evolutionary development of biotic environments becoming separated from itself within the drift of those land masses; the formation of mountains from uplifted sea coasts; and even the odd microcellular genome stuff. Still, it is nothing rigorous like you would get by studying it in class with other interested students marked by a capable professor who has taught it for years and years.

Nonetheless, my friend went on to tell me excitedly of the Cambrian Explosion, which having been out to the Canadian Rockies, and having purposely visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, I could recall the Burgess Shale area high atop the distant mountains overlooking the Red River Valley stretching some thousand miles over the vast Canadian Prairies of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota and Minnesota. It was there, on those riparian heights - which were originally a part of an ancient sea bed - that one could look at a dazzling 20-million year span where primordial life sprang into being. From it came a violent explosion of multi-cellular life-forms which have been especially preserved in this area as "soft fossils" uniquely so because of the geologic conditions that allowed their preservation.

Moreover, apparently there is not a little controversy over the discovery of the Cambrian period's rapid development of life which reached a tipping point, or threshold, for complex life to not only form, but explode! Begging the question, "How could such a pronounced and rapid change take place when evolution supposedly takes hundreds of millions of years and not tens of millions of years to occur?" However, the fact remains is that it did as evidenced by the fossil record. And perhaps even on a shorter timescale than that (some have theorized anywhere between 3 to 10 million years) making it all the more remarkable. But then I remembered Conway's "Game of Life" laid out with very simple initial conditions which moved rapidly from single, multi-blocked sets, to large, diverse, complex sets over a very short span of time, showing that this remarkable evolutionary period is quite possible after all.

So to help explore this evolutionary riddle, Biologos has created some space for an introduction to the Cambrian period, along with a lengthy series on evolution itself by Dennis Veneman (I last counted somewhere around 28 articles to date). Here are the links:



Moreover, they have also provided a six-part series on the problem this Cambrian period apparently poses by its rapid diversification which I have provided in whole below. Even so, here are the links:


Final Thoughts on the Text of Genesis

For myself, I find the history of evolution as remarkable as its own legacy apparently forebodes on the subject. I love controversies like this and would rather seek for better questions than for better answers. I should also remark that my view of the Genesis creation record is one that is non-literal and grounded in seeing it as an ancient narrative (I personally don't like the word "myth") written in rebuke to the more ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Babylonian creation accounts. But this has been discussed elsewhere.

More simply said, I don't attempt to force an ancient view of cosmogony and the genesis of life into the passages of Genesis like many theistic evolutionists will do. I am content in my own type of "evolutionary creation" that, though similar in thought to its older form, does not need to force it into the biblical record itself to find its relevancy. I wouldn't have expected that of the biblical writers in their oral legends, and nor would God. Even so, today's sciences would befuddle and baffle the ancients back then, and if hearing of it would probably burn all heretics at the stake immediately and without hesitation. And I can likewise imagine 4000 years from now the same being said of us by those futurists who may look upon our 21st century postmodern generations in bafflement and bewilderment as well. Thinking our societies' arcane, primitive, and quite backwards. And so it goes... we do the best we can with what we have and understand as the Lord gives us knowledge through creation's ancient accounts.

Lastly, I did find an helpful article written by an theistic evolutionist that likes to look at Genesis as a pattern describing modern evolutionary science. Though I don't find the same sympathies with the biblical text as he does, even so I found his reasoning helpful enough for readers to peruse and come away with perhaps a better understanding of the Cambrian Explosion and the difficulties it presents to the modern mind. Here's the link:



R.E. Slater
September 19, 2013

Related Topics - The Amazing Story of Oxygen



* * * * * * * *

Does the Cambrian Explosion pose
a challenge to evolution?
http://biologos.org/questions/cambrian-explosion

In a Nutshell

The “Cambrian Explosion” refers to the appearance in the fossil record of most major animal body plans about 543 million years ago.  The new fossils appear in an interval of 20 million years or less.  On evolutionary time scales, 20 million years is a rapid burst that appears to be inconsistent with the gradual pace of evolutionary change.  However, rapid changes like this appear at other times in the fossil record, often following times of major extinction.  The Cambrian Explosion does present a number of interesting and important research questions.  It does not, however, challenge the fundamental correctness of the central thesis of evolution.

In Detail

The term “Cambrian Explosion” refers to the appearance and rapid diversification of most major living animal body plans (phyla) in the fossil record within an interval of perhaps 20 million years or less, a relatively short period in evolutionary history. This time is known as the Early Cambrian, and began around 543 million years ago. This time interval is recorded by some spectacular fossil deposits that include superbly preserved fossils of these early animals. Two famous examples are the Burgess Shale in Canada, and the Chengjiang in China.1 Despite the claims of some, the Cambrian was not the beginning of multicellular animal life; the latter has a fossil record that extends back at least 30 million years earlier.2

The Cambrian Explosion is often posed as a challenge for evolution because the sudden burst of change in the fossil record appears to be inconsistent with the more typical gradual pace of evolutionary change. However, although different in certain ways, there are other times of very rapid evolutionary change recorded in the fossil record -- often following times of major extinction. The Cambrian Explosion does present a number of challenging and important questions because it represents the time during which the main branches of the animal tree of life became established. It does not create a challenge to the fundamental correctness of the central thesis of evolution, the descent of all living species from a common ancestor. This important period in the history of life extended over millions of years, plenty of time for the evolution of these new body plans (phyla) to occur. Furthermore, the fossil record provides numerous examples of organisms that appear transitional between living phyla and their common ancestors. The ongoing research about the Cambrian period is an exciting opportunity to advance our understanding of how evolutionary processes work, and the environmental factors shaping them.

The major animal body plans that appeared in the Cambrian Explosion did not include the appearance of modern animal groups such as: starfish, crabs, insects, fish, lizards, birds and mammals. These animal groups all appeared at various times much later in the fossil record.3 The forms that appeared in the Cambrian Explosion were more primitive than these later groups, and many of them were soft-bodied organisms. However, they did include the basic features that define the major branches of the tree of life to which later life forms belong. For example, vertebrates are part of the Chordata group. The chordates are characterized by a nerve cord, gill pouches and a support rod called the notochord. In the Cambrian fauna, we first see fossils of soft-bodied creatures with these characteristics. However, the living groups of vertebrates appeared much later. It is also important to realize that many of the Cambrian organisms, although likely near the base of major branches of the tree of life, did not possess all of the defining characteristics of modern animal body plans. These defining characteristics appeared progressively over a much longer period of time.4

Interpretations of the “Cambrian Explosion”

Not all scientists accept the idea that the Cambrian Explosion represents an unusually rapid evolutionary transition. The fossil record is notoriously incomplete, particularly for small and soft-bodied forms. Some researchers argue that the apparent rapid diversification of body plans is an artifact of an increase in the rate of fossilization, due in part to the evolution of skeletons, which fossilize more effectively.5 Many of the early Cambrian animals possessed some type of hard mineralized structures (spines, spicules, plates, etc.). In many cases these, often very tiny, mineralized structures are all that are found as fossils. There were major changes in marine environments and chemistry from the late Precambrian into the Cambrian, and these also may have impacted the rise of mineralized skeletons among previously soft-bodied organisms. 6

Most scientists are persuaded that something significant happened at the dawn of the Cambrian era and view the Cambrian Explosion as an area of exciting and productive research. For example, scientists are now gaining a better understanding of what existed before the Cambrian Explosion as a result of new fossil discoveries. Recent discoveries are filling in the fossil record for the Precambrian fauna with soft-bodied organisms like those in the Ediacaran Assemblages found around the world.7 Late Precambrian fossil discoveries also now include representatives of sponges, cnidarians (the group that includes modern jellyfish, corals and anemones), mollusks and various wormlike groups. Some of the new fossil discoveries, in fact, appear to be more primitive precursors of the later Cambrian body plans. The discovery of such precursors shows that the Cambrian organisms did not appear from thin air.8 Further discoveries will no doubt reveal more clearly the relationship of Precambrian organisms with the creatures found in the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang deposits.9

Genomic studies provide further insights into the origins of the Cambrian Explosion. Although the genetic divergence of organisms would have preceded the recognition of new body plans in the fossil record, accumulating genomic data is broadly consistent with the fossil record.10 Both point to the rise of the bilateria (bilaterally symmetric invertebrate animals) in the latest Precambrian Ediacaran, and their ecological explosion in diversity in the Cambrian.

Unanswered Questions

The sudden change of the Cambrian Era was, in relative terms, not too sudden for the process of evolution. The changes during the Cambrian Era did not occur over decades, centuries, or even thousands of years; they occurred over millions of years—plenty of time for evolutionary change. However, for millions of years beforehand, body plans of animals had remained relatively constant. Not until this time period did a significant change occur. The remaining questions are: What triggered the Cambrian Explosion? And why did so much change occur at this time? Several different theories address the origin of the Cambrian Explosion, proposing that dramatic environmental changes must have opened up new niches for natural selection to operate upon. These proposals include the runaway glaciation theory,11 which proposes that glaciers briefly covered much of the earth, and the resultant loss of habitat created bottlenecks where evolution could act more rapidly. Another theory suggests that a change in atmospheric oxygen led to this sudden burst in evolutionary changes.12 Yet another proposal is that major changes in the seafloor, from algae mat-covered surfaces in the late Precambrian to soft muddy bottoms later in the Cambrian, had dramatic evolutionary and ecological impacts.13

The Cambrian Era Fossils, Providing Answers

While the causes of the Cambrian Explosion remain a topic of open and exciting debate, the continued fossil discoveries from the Cambrian and Precambrian Eras are bringing more clarity to the evolutionary puzzle. These fossils provide valuable insight, particularly for envisioning the common ancestors of diverse groups. For instance, both vertebrates (fish) and echinoderms (sea urchins, starfish) are part of the group called deuterostomes. Without fossil evidence, it is hard to envision what a common ancestor would look like for these very different creatures. The Cambrian fossils are filling in the picture.14

Further Reading


DVDs

  • See part 2 of the PBS series on Evolution, which can be rented, for example, through Netflix or can be purchased through PBS.

Books

  • Conway Morris, Simon. The Crucible of Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Falk, Darrel R. “The Fossil Record.” In Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
  • David Campbell and Keith Miller, “The ‘Cambrian Explosion’: A Challenge to Evolutionary theory?” In Keith Miller (ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. b. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2003), 182-204.

Online

Notes

  1. Derek Briggs, Douglas Erwin, and Frederick Collier, The Fossils of the Burgess Shale (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). Junyuan Chen and Guiqing Zhou, “Biology of the Chengjiang Fauna,” in Junyuan Chen, Yen-nien Cheng, and H.V. Iten (eds.), The Cambrian Explosion and the Fossil Record, Bulletin of the National Museum of Natural Science no. 10 (Taichung, Taiwan, China, 1997), 11-105.
  2. David Campbell and Keith Miller, “The ‘Cambrian Explosion’: A Challenge to Evolutionary theory?” in Keith Miller (ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. b. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2003), 182-204.
  3. Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 95.
  4. Graham Budd and Soren Jensen, “A Critical Reappraisal of the Fossil Record of the Bilaterian Phyla,” Biological Reviews 75 (2000): 253-295.
  5. Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 94
  6. Simon Conway Morris, The Cambrian Explosion, course, September 16, 2007, from The Faraday Institute of Science and Religion, MP3, Download Video, (accessed December 18, 2008); and S.T. Brennan, T.K. Lowenstein, and J. Horita, 2004, “Seawater chemistry and the advent of biocalcification,” Geology 32 (2004): 473-476.
  7. M.A. Fedonkin, “Vendian faunas and the early evolution of metazoa,” In, J.H. Lipps and P.W. Signor (eds.), Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa (New York: Plenum Press, 1992), p.87-129. G.M. Narbbonne, M. Laflamme, C. Greentree, and P. Trusler, “Reconstructing a lost world: Ediacaran rangeomorphs from Spaniard’s Bay, Newfoundland,” Journal of Paleontology 83, no. 4 (2009): 503-523.
  8. David Campbell and Keith Miller, “The ‘Cambrian Explosion’: A Challenge to Evolutionary theory?”
  9. For a technical discussion, see for example, Douglas H. Erwin and Eric H. Davidson, “The Last Common Bilaterian Ancestor,” Development 129 (2002): 3021-32
  10. Kevin J. Peterson et al., “The Ediacaran Emergence of bilaterians: Congruence between the genetic and the geological fossil records,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363 (2008), 1435–43.
  11. P.F. Hoffman and D.P. Schrag, “The snowball Earth hypothesis: testing the limits of global change,” Terra Nova 14 (2002): 129-155.
  12. Simon Conway Morris, The Cambrian Explosion; and D.A. Fike, J.P. Grotzinger, L.M. Pratt, and R.E. Summons, “Oxidation of the Ediacaran ocean,” Nature 444 (2006): 744-747.
  13. David Bottjer, James Hagadorn, and Stephen Dornbos, “The Cambrian Substrate Revolution,” GSA Today 10, no. 9 (2000): 1-7.
  14. Shu, D-G., et al., “Primitive deuterstomes from the Chengjiang Lagerstatte ( Lower Cambrian, China),” Nature 414 (2001): 419-424.

* * * * * * * *


The Cambrian "Explosion," Transitional Forms, and the Tree of Life
www.BioLogos.org

BY KEITH B. MILLER, DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY,
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/miller_white_paper.pdf

The BioLogos Foundation • www.BioLogos.org/projects/scholar-essays


This essay is an update and extension of Campbell, D., and K.B. Miller, 2003, "The Cambrian Explosion: A challenge to evolutionary theory?" in Miller, K.B. (ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Creation: Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., p.182-204

Introduction: What’s all the fuss?

The most fundamental claim of biological evolution is that all living organisms represent the outer tips of a diversifying, upward-branching tree of life. The "tree of life" is an extremely powerful metaphor that captures the essence of evolution. Like the branches of a tree, as we trace individual lines of descent (lineages) back into the past (down the tree) they converge with other lineages toward their common ancestors. Similarly, these ancient lineages themselves converge with others back in time. Thus, all organisms, both living and extinct, are ultimately connected by an unbroken chain of descent with modification to a common ancestral trunk among single-celled organisms in the distant past.

This tree metaphor applies as much to the emergence of the first representatives of the major groups of living invertebrates (such as annelids, snails, or arthropods) as it does to the first appearance and diversification of dinosaurs, birds, or mammals. This early diversification of invertebrates apparently occurred around the time of the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary over a time interval of a few tens of millions of years. This period of rapid evolutionary diversification has been called the "Cambrian Explosion."

The Cambrian explosion has been the focus of extensive scientific study, discussion, and debate for decades, and is increasingly receiving attention in the popular media. It has also received considerable recent attention by evolution critics as posing challenges to evolution. These critics argue that the expected transitions between major invertebrate groups (phyla) are absent, and that the suddenness of their appearance in the fossil record demonstrates that evolutionary explanations are not viable.

What are some of the arguments of the evolution critics? John Morris of the ICR writes:

"If evolution is correct, the first life was quite simple, evolving more complexity over time. Yet the Cambrian Explosion of Life has revealed life's complexity from the start, giving evolution a black eye. The vast array of complex life that appears in the lowest (or oldest) stratigraphic layer of rock, with no apparent ancestors, goes hard against evolutionary dogma. Evolution's desperate attempt to fill this gap with more simple ancestral fossils has added more injury. .... Think of the magnitude of this problem from an evolutionary perspective. Many and varied forms of complex multi-celled life suddenly sprang into existence without any trace of less complex predecessors. There are numerous single-celled forms at lower stratigraphic levels, but these offer scant help in solving the mystery. Not one basic type or phyla of marine invertebrate is supported by an ancestral line between single-celled life and the participants in the Cambrian Explosion, nor are the basic phyla related to one another. How did evolution ever get started?"1

 Intelligent Design advocate Stephen Meyer and others have written:

"To say that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediates connecting the complex Cambrian animals with those simpler living forms found in lower strata. Indeed, in almost all cases, the body plans and structures present in Cambrian period animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier strata.2

And:

"A third feature of the Cambrian explosion (as well as the subsequent fossil record) bears mentioning. The major body plans that arise in the Cambrian period exhibit considerable morphological isolation from one another (or "disparity") and then subsequent "stasis." Though all Cambrian and subsequent animals fall clearly within one of a limited number of basic body plans, each of these body plans exhibits clear morphological differences (and thus disparity) from the others. The animal body plans (as represented in the fossil record) do not grade imperceptibly one into another, either at a specific time in geological history or over the course of geological history. Instead, the body plans of the animals characterizing the separate phyla maintain their distinctive morphological and organizational features and thus their isolation from one another, over time."3

Are these critiques warranted? To what extent is the Cambrian explosion really problematic for the evolutionary picture of an unbroken tree of life extending back to the earliest life on Earth?

Geologic Time Scales: How big was the bang?

The relative rapidity of the diversification of invertebrates during the Cambrian explosion is set against the backdrop of the Earth’s geologic and biologic history. Geologic time is unfamiliar to most people, and its shear vastness is difficult to grasp.

Two lines of evidence impact our understanding of the duration of the animal diversification that led to the appearance of the major groups of living invertebrates. The first is the dating of critical strata within the geological timeline such as the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary and various important fossil-bearing horizons. The second is the time of appearance of the first widely recognized fossil representatives of the major living groups (phyla) of invertebrate animals. The latter is in considerable flux as new fossil discoveries are made.

Originally, the base of the Cambrian had been set at the earliest appearance of organisms with mineralized skeletons - particularly trilobites. However, a diverse collection of tiny mineralized plates, tubes and scales was discovered to lie below the earliest trilobites.4 This interval of "small shelly fossils" was designated the Tommotian. Because of the presence of even earlier tiny mineralized tubes and simple burrows, there was no internationally accepted definition for the boundary until 1994. At that time, the base of the Cambrian was placed at the first appearance of a particular collection of small fossil burrows characterized by Treptichnus pedum.

Until the early 1990s the age of the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary was not tightly constrained, and was estimated to be about 575 million years ago. However, in 1993 new radiometric dates from close to the accepted Precambrian-Cambrian boundary revealed that it was significantly younger -- about 544 million years.5 A more precise date of 542 ± 0.3 million years has recently been formally accepted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The basis for this date was the discovery that a sharp worldwide fall (or negative spike) in the abundance of the isotope carbon-13 was coincident with the Cambrian boundary as previously defined. In Oman, this isotopic marker also coincides with a volcanic ash layer that yielded the 542 million year date using uranium/lead radiometric methods.6 This horizon also marks the last occurrence of several fossils characteristic of the underling late Precambrian Ediacaran Period.7 Such extinction events are commonly used to subdivide the geologic time scale.

The earliest diverse fossil invertebrate communities of the Cambrian are represented by the Chengjiang, in China. These deposits are dated at 525-520 million years. The famous Burgess Shale is considerably younger, dating at about 505 million years, and the end of the Cambrian Period is set at 490 million years. The Cambrian Period thus lasted for 52 million years. To put this in perspective, the time elapsed since the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous has been 65 million years. The Cambrian was a very long period of time.

If the Cambrian explosion is understood to comprise the time from the base of the Cambrian to the Chengjiang fossil beds, then this period of diversification in animal body plans appears to have lasted about 20 million years. However, not all living animal phyla with a fossil record first appear within this time window. The colonial skeleton-bearing bryozoans, for example, are not known from the fossil record until the end of the Cambrian around 491 million years ago.8 More significantly, several living invertebrate phyla have a fossil record that extends into the late Neoproterozoic before the Cambrian. Sponges have been recognized as early as 580 million years, cnidarians (the group including jellyfish and anemones) are present among the Ediacaran animals at around 555 million years, and the stem groups (see discussion below) for some other phyla were also likely part of the Ediacaran communities.9

Defining the Cambrian explosion is not as straightforward as it might seem. Although there was clearly a major burst of evolutionary innovation and diversification in the first 20 million years or so of the Cambrian, this was preceded by an extended period of about 40 million years during which metazoans (multicellular animals) arose and attained critical levels of anatomical complexity. The Ediacaran saw the appearance of organisms with the fundamental features that would characterize the later Cambrian organisms (such as three tissue layers, and bilaterally symmetric bodies with a mouth and anus), as well as the first representatives of modern phyla. The base of the Cambrian is not marked by a sharp dramatic appearance of living phyla without Precambrian roots. It is a subjectively defined point in a continuum. The Cambrian "explosion" appears to have had a "long fuse."

Classifying Animals: What’s in a name?

The procedure of classifying organisms is called taxonomy, and the general name for individual groups is "taxa." Significantly, the first question that needs to be addressed is -- What is a phylum? A phylum is often identified as a group of organisms sharing a basic "body plan," a group united by a common organization of the body. However, phyla can be understood fundamentally, like all other taxonomic categories, as groupings of taxa that are more closely related to each other than to any other group.

The most widely accepted method for grouping organisms today is called cladistics. In cladistics all taxonomic groups are monophyletic, that is all of the members of the group are descended from a common ancestor that is the founding member of that taxon. A branch of the tree of life whose members all share the same ancestor is called a "clade" - thus the term cladistics. Closely-related taxa that do not share the same common ancestor are called "sister" taxa. These sister taxa commonly resemble each other more than the descendant relatives resemble the ancestors of their clade. As a result, placing these organisms into their correct monophyletic groups can be very difficult. Thus, organisms within a given phylum may bear close similarities to those from another closely-related sister phylum. In fact, the assignment of a given organism or fossil specimen to a phylum can be just as problematic as assignments to lower-ranked taxa such as classes, orders, families, etc.10

Further complicating the assignment of fossil organisms to phyla is that the anatomical characteristics that are used to define living phyla did not appear simultaneously, but were added over time. This has resulted in the distinction between "crown groups" and "stem groups" (see below) in the scientific literature. A crown group is composed of all the living organisms assigned to that phylum, plus all the extinct organisms that were descended from the common ancestor of those living organisms. The stem group is composed of organisms more closely related to one living phylum than to another, but that do not possess all of the distinguishing characters of the crown group. It turns out that the organisms appearing in the early Cambrian are, with few exceptions, not crown groups but stem groups. That is, the complete suite of characters defining the living phyla had not yet appeared. Many crown groups actually do not appear in the fossil record until well after the Cambrian.11

The existence of stem groups provides a way to understand how the basic body plan of a living invertebrate could have been built up in steps. The major invertebrate groups are often portrayed by evolution critics as possessing anatomies that are both irreducible in organization and separated from other groups by unbridgeable gaps. No transitions could exist even in principle. This view is illustrated by the following comment by John Morris.

"Let's suppose you want to find the forefathers of the clams, a prominent resident of the Cambrian Explosion, for instance. As you follow the fossil clues into ever "older" strata, what do you find? You find clams. The first or lowest occurrence of clams is abrupt or sudden. There are no ancestors that are not clams. An evolutionary lineage is impossible to discern, for clams have always been clams. Fossil clams are quite abundant, found all over the world in rocks of every age, and clams live today. Great variety among them abounds, but they are still clams. Variety does not speak to ancestry. The same is true of all animals found in the Cambrian Explosion. How can evolutionary scientists use the fossils as evidence of a common descent of all life?"12

The phylum Mollusca, to which clams belong, actually illustrates well how modern body plans could evolve from earlier stem groups. There is a well-documented series of transitional forms that extends from pre-mollusks (stem mollusks) through primitive early mollusks to the first unambiguous clams. The animals in this group gradually acquired the whole set of characteristics we now use to define "clam". The earliest known mollusk-like organism is Kimberella from the late Neoproterozoic Ediacaran. It is a primitive organism that appears to lack several features characteristic of modern mollusks and is thus a considered a stem mollusk. The first likely "crown group" mollusks appear in the earliest Cambrian as part of the "small shelly fauna." While recognizable as mollusks, many of these fossils belong either to sister groups or to stem groups of living classes. The earliest fossil bivalves ("clams") are linked through a series of transitional forms to two of these extinct groups - the rostroconchs and the cap-shaped helcionelloids. The hinged valves of clams appear to have evolved by the lateral compression of cap-shaped shells and then the thinning and loss of shell material along the hinge line.13 The characters that we use to identify "clams" did not appear as a complete package, but were acquired over time.

Some critics of evolution make much of the "top-down" versus the "bottom-up" pattern of appearance of higher taxa. That is, phylum-level diversity reaches its peak in the fossil record before class-level diversity, and the class-level diversity before that of orders, etc. These critics interpret this apparent "top-down" pattern as contrary to expectations from evolutionary theory. For example, Stephen Meyer and others have argued:

"Instead of showing a gradual bottom-up origin of the basic body plans, where smaller-scale diversification or speciation precedes the advent of large-scale morphological disparity, disparity precedes diversity. Indeed, the fossil record shows a "top-down" pattern in which morphological disparity between many separate body plans emerges suddenly and prior to the occurrence of species-level (or higher) diversification on those basic themes."14

However, this pattern is an artifact, being generated by the way in which species are assigned to higher taxa. The classification system is hierarchical with species being grouped into ever larger and more inclusive categories. When this classification hierarchy is applied to a diversifying evolutionary tree, a "top-down" pattern will automatically result. Consider species belonging to a single evolving line of descent given genus -level status. This genus is then grouped with other closely related lines of descent into a family. The common ancestors of these genera are by definition included within that family. Those ancestors must logically be older than any of the other species within the family. Thus the family level taxon would appear in the fossil record before most of the genera included within it. Another way of looking at this is the fact that the first appearance of any higher taxon will be the same as the first appearance of the oldest lower taxon within the group. For example, a phylum must be as old as the oldest class it contains. Most phyla contain multiple classes, which in turn include multiple orders, and so forth. Thus, each higher taxon will appear as early as the first of the included lower taxa.

Additionally, higher taxonomic levels typically reflect more general aspects of the body plan. Thus, a poorly preserved specimen may be confidently assigned to a particular phylum, but not to any one class. Similarly, a primitive fossil might have the distinctive features of a particular phylum, but not be clearly assignable to any particular class because it is a transitional form -- that is, a stem group or a sister group to a living class of organisms. Both of these factors would promote the earlier recognition of higher taxonomic categories than lower ones. The "top- down" pattern of taxa appearance is therefore entirely consistent with a branching tree of life.

There is one last bias in our reconstruction of the past that is generated by the process of assigning organisms to particular phyla. Because phyla are defined by particular anatomical character traits, they cannot be recognized in the fossil record until after those specific characters evolve. However, the splitting of the branch of the tree of life to which a phylum belongs may have occurred many millions of years previous to the evolution of those characters. The actual first appearance of a phylum thus occurs after significant anatomical evolution has occurred along that particular branch of the tree. Branching points in the tree of life will always be older than the named taxa.15

The Fossil Record: Is there enough evidence?

There are two opposite errors which need to be countered about the fossil record: 1) that it is so incomplete as to be of no value in interpreting patterns and trends in the history of life, and 2) that it is so good that we should expect a relatively complete record of the details of evolutionary transitions within all or most lineages.

What then is the quality of the fossil record? It can be confidently stated that only a very small fraction of the species that once lived on Earth have been preserved in the rock record and subsequently discovered and described by science.16

There is an entire field of scientific research referred to as "taphonomy" -- literally, "the study of death." Taphonomic research includes investigating those processes active from the time of death of an organism until its final burial by sediment. These processes include decomposition, scavenging, mechanical destruction, transportation, and chemical dissolution and alteration. The ways in which the remains of organisms are subsequently mechanically and chemically altered after burial are also examined -- including the various processes of fossilization. Burial and "fossilization" of an organism's remains in no way guarantees its ultimate preservation as a fossil. Processes such as dissolution and recrystallization can remove all record of fossils from the rock. What we collect as fossils are thus the "lucky" organisms that have avoided the wide spectrum of destructive pre- and post-depositional processes arrayed against them.

Soft-bodied organisms, and organisms with non-mineralized skeletons have very little chance of preservation under most environmental conditions. Until the Cambrian nearly all organisms were soft-bodied, and even today the majority of species in marine communities are soft-bodied. The discovery of new soft-bodied fossil localities is always met with great enthusiasm. These localities typically turn up new species with unusual morphologies, and new higher taxa can be erected on the basis of a few specimens! Such localities are also erratically and widely spaced geographically and in geologic time.

Even those organisms with preservable hard parts are unlikely to be preserved under "normal" conditions. Studies of the fate of clam shells in shallow coastal waters reveal that shells are rapidly destroyed by scavenging, boring, chemical dissolution and breakage. Occasional burial during major storm events is one process that favors the incorporation of shells into the sedimentary record, and their ultimate preservation as fossils. Getting terrestrial vertebrate material into the fossil record is even more difficult. The terrestrial environment is a very destructive one: with decomposition and scavenging together with physical and chemical destruction by weathering.

The potential for fossil preservation varies dramatically from environment to environment. Preservation is enhanced under conditions that limit destructive physical and biological processes. Thus marine and fresh water environments with low oxygen levels, high salinities, or relatively high rates of sediment deposition favor preservation. Similarly, in some environments biochemical conditions can favor the early mineralization of skeletons and even soft tissues by a variety of compounds (eg. carbonate, silica, pyrite, and phosphate). The likelihood of preservation is thus highly variable. As a result, the fossil record is biased toward sampling the biota of certain types of environments, and against sampling the biota of others.

In addition to these preservational biases, the erosion, deformation and metamorphism of originally fossiliferous sedimentary rock have eliminated significant portions of the fossil record over geologic time. Furthermore, much of the fossil-bearing sedimentary record is hidden in the subsurface, or located in poorly accessible or little studied geographic areas. For these reasons, of those once-living species actually preserved in the fossil record, only a small portion have been discovered and described by science. However, there is also the promise of continued new and important discovery.

The forces arrayed against fossil preservation also guarantee that the earliest fossils known for a given animal group will always date to some time after that group first evolved. The fossil record always provides only minimum ages for the first appearance of organisms.

Because of the biases of the fossil record, the most abundant and geographically widespread species of hardpart-bearing organisms would tend to be best represented. Also, short-lived species that belonged to rapidly evolving lines of descent are less likely to be preserved than long-lived stable species. Because evolutionary change is probably most rapid within small isolated populations, a detailed species-by -species record of such evolutionary transitions is unlikely to be preserved. Furthermore, capturing such evolutionary events in the fossil record requires the fortuitous sampling of the particular geographic locality where the changes occurred.

Using the model of a branching tree of life, the expectation is for the preservation of isolated branches on an originally very bushy evolutionary tree. A few of these branches (lines of descent) would be fairly complete, while most are reconstructed with only very fragmentary evidence. As a result, the large-scale patterns of evolutionary history can generally be better discerned than the population-by-population or species-by-species transitions. Evolutionary trends over longer periods of time and across greater anatomical transitions can be followed by reconstructing the sequences in which anatomical features were acquired within an evolving branch of the tree of life.

Before the "Explosion": What went bang?

A very important question is what organisms existed before the Cambrian "explosion." Were there Precambrian precursors, or did the Cambrian explosion really happen in a biological vacuum? Many critics of evolution claim that the Precambrian is devoid of fossils that could represent body plans ancestral to those of the Cambrian invertebrates.

The words of Darwin are often cited as evidence of the seriousness of the problem for evolution.

"There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious, I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. Most of the arguments which have convinced me that all the existing species of the same group are descended from a single progenitor, apply with equal force to the earliest known species."17

When Darwin published his model of descent with modification by means of natural selection, knowledge of the fossil record was in its infancy. In particular, the Precambrian and Early Cambrian fossil record was virtually unknown. Even the fossils of the now famous Burgess Shale and similar units were as yet undiscovered. After more than a century of paleontological work, the situation has changed dramatically. In keeping with evolutionary expectations, fossils are now known from the late Precambrian and early Cambrian that record several dramatic transitions in the history of life.

The presence of Late Precambrian animals was recognized in the 1950s and became widely publicized by the early 1970s. These are the famous Ediacaran fossils named for fossil-rich beds in the Ediacaran Hills of South Australia and now recognized at sites throughout the world. These organisms are typically preserved as impressions in sandstones and siltstones. Associated with these fossils are trails and simple burrows of organisms that show a limited increase in complexity and diversity toward the Cambrian.

The record of life actually extends far beyond the Ediacaran fossils (~565-545 My) into the deep geologic past. Fossils of algae, protists, and bacteria are present throughout much of the Precambrian. The earliest convincing fossils of bacteria are recognized in rocks 3.5 billion years old, and chemical signatures point to the presence of life even earlier. Finely layered mounds (called stromatolites) produced by the activity of mat-building bacteria and algae appear at about this time and become relatively abundant by around 2.7 billion years ago. Evidence of eukaryotic algae, possessing membrane-bounded nuclei and internal organelles, dates to about 1500 million years ago, or earlier if chemical evidence is accepted. Multicellularity had appeared by 1000 million years ago in the form of diverse and relatively advanced seaweeds. The earliest fossils of metazoans (multi-celled animals) may be represented by simple disk-shaped fossils found in rocks 610-600 million years old.18

The earliest unambiguous indication of the rise of metazoan life is preserved in the spectacular phosphorite deposits of the Doushantuo Formation of China dating to at least 580 million years ago. Phosphate can preserve organisms and tissues in such great detail that individual cells can often be recognized. Where environmental conditions are ideal for this type of preservation, extraordinary fossil deposits may result. In the case of the Doushantuo, phosphatization has preserved not only a variety of algal remains, but also the cellular tissues of sponges and millimeter-sized tubes that might represent stem cnidarians.19 However, even more spectacular is the preservation of metazoan eggs and early embryos. These embryos are of uncertain affinities but may represent cnidarians or even bilaterians (animals with bilateral symmetry).20

The Ediacaran fossils provide the next window into the rise of metazoans. These fossil-bearing units span from about 575 million years to the base of the Cambrian, and are found in south Australia, Namibia, the White Sea coast of Russia, and Newfoundland. The enigmatic soft-bodied organisms were preserved as impressions, or molds, on the surfaces of sandstone and siltstone layers. These sediment layers accumulated in shallow-marine environments where the seafloor was covered by firm microbial algal mats. The microbial mats covering the seafloor appear to have been important in determining the lifestyles of the Ediacaran organisms, as well as their unique mode of preservation.21

Most soft-bodied impressions of the Ediacaran (or Vendian) can roughly be placed into three general groups -- disks, fronds, and flat-bodied, bilaterally-symmetric forms. The biological affinity of these fossils is very difficult to determine and highly debated.22 Disks are the earliest appearing, and most common, Ediacaran fossils. They have often been identified as medusoids ("jellyfish") but many appear to have been attached to the bottom, and none bear clear structures that would place them in a living group. Some do clearly possess tentacles around their margins suggesting a stem or sister group relationship to the cnidarians. Some sack-shaped fossils might even be stem anthozoans (the cnidarian group that includes anemones and corals).23

A few disk-shaped fossils may be related to other living phyla. One such form appears to be a sponge that might be assignable to the modern class of hexactinellids.24 Another is a small disk that has a raised center with five radial grooves that has been interpreted as a stem echinoderm (the phylum that includes modern starfish and sea urchins) that lacked the characteristic porous calcareous plates and other diagnostic features of true echinoderms.25

The frond-shaped forms include organisms that were attached to the bottom by a stalk, and others that appear to have been free lying. These fossils have also been assigned by some workers to a group of modern cnidarians (the "sea pens") or to ctenophores. However, like the disks, the fronds are fairly diverse and some may be unrelated to living phyla.26 Others, although likely not able to be placed into a living cnidarian group, may be stem cnidarians, or even stem anthozoans. The discovery of better preserved fronds in the Cambrian that closely resemble some of the Ediacaran fossils would seem to support this interpretation.27

The bilaterally-symmetric forms of the Ediacaran are the most diverse and most enigmatic fossils of the late Precambrian. Some of these fossils may represent early experiments on the pathway to the living phyla.28 For example, Dickinsonia and the similar Yorgia are fairly large flat highly-segmented forms that some workers have interpreted as annelids or stem annelids, while others have seen resemblances to other worm phyla or even chordates. These organisms do appear to have been able to move about the bottom as seen by associated crawling and resting traces. Even if not members of a living phylum, these organisms appear to at least be mobile bilateral metazoans (or bilaterians). Another bilateral form that has been the subject of much recent attention is Kimberella. This 555 million year old fossil has been interpreted as a stem mollusk.29 Scratch marks found associated with Kimberella indicate that it had some form of feeding structure (though probably not a true mollusk radula) that enabled it to graze the abundant algal mats. Other bilateral fossils have been interpreted to bear similarities to arthropods, although these interpretations are disputed.

An important, but less attention-getting, component of the Ediacaran fossil record is the presence of trace fossils such as trails, burrows and feeding traces. Except in the few cases mentioned above, there are no body fossils preserved of the organisms that made these traces. These traces tend to be small unbranched sediment-filled burrows that run horizontally along the sediment surface or under the microbial algal mats. Somewhat more complex burrows appear toward the base of the Cambrian including irregularly branching burrows and shallow vertical burrows.30 These traces are important because they point to the existence of small worm-like organisms that were probably feeding on and in the algal mats that covered extensive areas of the seafloor. The biological identity of these organisms is unknown, although they were clearly bilateria.

There is one more set of fossils that are known from the late Ediacaran (550-543 million years) that reveal yet another aspect of the metazoan diversity before the Cambrian. These fossils include tiny calcified or phosphatized tubes, cones and goblet-shaped structures that record the presence of animals capable of producing mineralized skeletons. They are commonly embedded within algal buildups that formed reef-like structures, and may be quite abundant.31 These algal-metazoan reefs foreshadow the later algal reefs of the Cambrian. The very peculiar cm-sized goblet-shaped Namacalathus (found as calcified fossils) lived attached to the algal mounds by stalks. Although the preserved shape of these fossils is consistent with that of cnidarians, their biology is uncertain. The cone-in-cone structures of Cloudina, and the more tubular Sinotubulites could have been produced by various types of worms such as serpulids. However, as with the trace fossils, the identity of the actual tube formers remains unknown. A significant observation of the Cloudina fossils is that many of them are perforated by borings. These borings provide the first clear evidence of predation before the Cambrian.

It is clear from the above discussion of the latest Precambrian, that the Cambrian explosion did not occur in a biological vacuum. Although many of the fossil specimens are enigmatic and difficult to classify, they nonetheless show significant biological diversity. Furthermore, at least a few living phyla had already appeared by the beginning of the Cambrian, and other forms likely represented stem groups related to later-evolving phyla.

Ground Zero: What were the Cambrian animals like?

One of the most important features of the Cambrian "explosion" was the very rapid diversification of organisms with shells, plates, and various other types of hard parts. A wide variety of soft-bodied organisms are also known from the Cambrian. Although some fossils can be assigned to living phyla, there are also specimens that appear to represent stem groups or intermediates between modern phyla, as well as specimens of unknown relationship. Representatives of several living classes and other lower taxonomic categories also appear in the Cambrian. A few deposits with exceptionally good preservation of fossils, such as the Burgess Shale in Canada, contribute to the wide range of taxa known from the Cambrian. Such deposits with exceptional preservation are known as Konservat-Lagerstätten (from the German "conservation deposits"). Similar deposits have since been found around the world in the Early to Middle Cambrian, notably the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna of China. Additionally, trace fossils become much more varied, complex, and abundant in the Cambrian, suggesting a newly widened range of animal activity.

Some of the very first fossils to appear near the base of the Cambrian are tiny skeletal plates, spines, tubes, and cap-shaped shells that have been called the "small shelly fossils."32 Among these are the spicules of different groups of sponges, and the shells of the earliest known "crown group" mollusks and brachiopods. However, the biological identities of many of these tiny skeletal elements were completely unknown until fairly recently. Well-preserved complete fossils in the Chengjiang, and other fossil lagerstätten around the world, have revealed that some of these small shelly fossils were actually the spines and "armoring" of larger metazoans. More detailed analysis of other fossils has revealed that they may represent the stem groups of living phyla, rather than evolutionary dead ends.

The discovery of complete specimens from later in the early Cambrian has revealed that a variety of scales, plates and spines found among the small shelly fossils actually fit together and overlapped to cover the bodies of slug-like organisms.33 These organisms are the halkieriids and wiwaxiids. The halkieriids bore conical mollusk-like shells as well as calcareous structures similar to the chitinous bristles typical of polychaete annelid worms. The slightly younger Wiwaxia was covered in scale-like and spine-like structures even closer to those of the polychaetes, and also possessed a radula diagnostic of mollusks. These various unusual organisms bear resemblances to both mollusks and polychaete annelid worms, which are closely related phyla. Thus these organisms would appear to be positioned somewhere on the evolutionary tree near the branching point of the mollusks with the annelids.

Other cap-shaped fossils from the earliest Cambrian are the helcionelloids. These are interpreted as monoplacophoran-like crown group mollusks. As discussed earlier in the section on "Classifying Animals", there is good fossil evidence of the transition from these primitive cap-shaped helcionelloids to the first bivalves. There are also likely fossil transitions from helcionelloids to the first gastropods.

Another important group of organisms represented by small plates in the early Cambrian are the lobopods. Lobopodians, until very recently an enigmatic group of strange fossils, were "caterpillar-like" organisms with fleshy lobed limbs and mineralized plates or spines running along their backs. They are similar to the living Onychophora, or velvet worms, but are considered a distinct group.34 The oldest known lobopodian bears certain similarities to a distinctive group of worms called the palaeoscolecid priapulids that also bore small plates or tubercles along their bodies.35 Lobopods may have been derived from these worms that also have an early Cambrian fossil record. Furthermore, the lobopods have become recognized as the critical link in reconstructing the assembly of the arthropod body plan. They have anatomical features in common with the arthropods, particularly with peculiar Cambrian stem arthropods such as Opabinia and Anomalocaris that are preserved in the younger Chengjiang and Burgess fossil beds. These later organisms possessed lobopod limbs but also had gill flaps along their bodies and jointed feeding appendages. Intermediates between lobopodians and the early stem group arthropods have also been discovered that possessed gills.36 Of even greater interest is the evidence available from the extraordinary preservation of muscle tissue in a few of these transitional organisms. These specimens suggest a progression of steps in the transformation of internal anatomy from lobopodians to true arthropods.37

The tommotiids, a group of roughly conical-shaped shells composed of calcium phosphate, have until recently been one of the most enigmatic of the small shelly fossils. However, new discoveries of articulated specimens have shown that pairs of symmetrical skeletal elements fit together to form an open cone that was attached to the seafloor at the base. An opening at the base indicates the presence of a muscular attachment structure likely similar to the pedicle of brachiopods. The paired shells also have features similar to the tiny paterinids, crown group brachipods with calcium phosphate shells that also appear in the early Cambrian.38 These fossils therefore appear to represent stem brachiopods that were themselves derived from armored tubular filter feeders attached to the seafloor.

Following the appearance of the small shelly fossils, the diverse metazoan fossil communities of the Chengjiang in China are dated at around 525-520 million years, 20 million years after the beginning of the Cambrian. The exceptional preservation in these fossil beds is similar to that of the Burgess Shale deposits that are dated around 515-505 million years. These extraordinary fossil sites give us our best views into the composition of marine biological communities from this time, preserving both soft-bodied organisms and those with mineralized skeletons.39 These beds contain abundant and diverse sponges and cnidarians, as well as priapulid worms, annelid worms, lobopods, stem mollusks such as Wiwaxia, and brachiopods. However, probably the most dramatic characteristic of the Chengjiang and Burgess type deposits is the abundance and diversity of arthropods.

Arthropods comprise 50% or more of all of the fossil specimens collected from these beds. These fossils include stem arthropods such as the anomalocarids, trilobites which came to dominate the Paleozoic, and some species that appear to be crustaceans and chelicerates. However, most of the fossils belong to primitive stem groups that likely represent evolutionary experimentations after the appearance of true arthropods but before the rise of most living arthropod groups. In the Burgess Shale one such primitive species (Marrella) alone comprises a third of all fossil specimens. These fossils show unusual arrangements, and types, of appendages.

The chordates (that include vertebrates), hemichordates (that include the living "acorn worms"), and echinoderms (that include the living starfish and echinoids) are all deuterostomes and have the same pattern of early embryo development. Although the modern representatives of these phyla appear extremely different, they are actually closely-related branches on the tree of life, and are understood to have evolved from a common ancestor. Some rare, but very significant, specimens in the Chengjiang seem to be stem chordates and stem echinoderms, as well as specimens that have been interpreted as organisms close to the common ancestors of chordates and echinoderms. These rather simple Cambrian organisms possess the anatomical characteristics that would be expected in organisms that had acquired some but not all of the distinctive features of chordates or echinoderms.

A very primitive stem group of deuterostomes, called ventulicolians, has recently been described that might represent the anatomy of organisms near the base of the deuterostome evolutionary branch that were ancestral to both the chordates and echinoderms. These soft-bodied organisms possessed segmentation and oval structures interpreted as gill slits, and a terminal mouth. Significantly, another group of primitive deuterostomes, called vetulocystids, bears similarities to the ventulicolians as well as to some of the bizarre early echinoderms.40 These organisms were likely anchored to the sediment and possessed an echinoderm-like mouth and respiratory openings.41 They may in fact represent organisms ancestral to the first echinoderms that were characterized by peculiar globular and asymmetrical shapes.

The most primitive group of chordates are the urochordates, or tunicates, that have a sack-like adult body that filters seawater through pharyngeal slits. In their tadpole-like larval form, they possess stiff notochords (a structure diagnostic of chordates) that is lost in the adult form. A likely tunicate has been described from the Chengjiang.42 Another group of primitive chordates are the cephalochordates (represented today by the lancelets) that possess a notochord as adults, pharyngeal slits, and muscles arranged in parallel bundles. Some fossils have been interpreted as stem cephalochordates.43 Lastly, and of particular interest, is a fossil that may be a stem vertebrate.44 Haikouichthys, in addition to a notochord, gill pouches and muscle bundles, also appears to have had some structures characteristic of vertebrates. These vertebrate features include a cavity surrounding the heart, a dorsal fin, and cartilage around the head and as a series of elements along the notochord. The Chengjiang thus includes fossil specimens that occupy several significant transitional positions from primitive deuterostomes, to stem echinoderms and stem chordates.

The fossils of the Cambrian explosion were indeed diverse and included organisms that can be assigned to a number of living phyla. As we have seen, these fossil organisms were also largely representative of stem groups that possessed some, but not all, of the diagnostic features that define the major groups of living organisms. The body plans of phyla were assembled piecemeal. Furthermore, important transitional steps between living phyla and their common ancestors are also preserved. These include: the rise mollusks from their common ancestor with the annelids, the evolution of arthropods from lobopods, the likely evolution of brachiopods from tommotids, and the rise of chordates and echinoderms from early deuterostomes. While the picture is far from complete, the spectacular fossil discoveries from the early and middle Cambrian strongly support the conclusion that the major branches of the animal tree of life are joined to a common metazoan trunk.

Possible Causes of the Cambrian Radiation: What lit the fuse?

Numerous hypotheses exist for the geologically rapid diversification of invertebrates in the Cambrian, proposing various key evolutionary innovations or environmental triggers. Critical levels of ecological or behavioral complexity may also have stimulated diversification. At the molecular level, organisms may have reached a key threshold of genetic organization or evolved a key gene.

A number of important environmental changes occurred in the late Precambrian and in the early Cambrian that likely had important consequences for the early evolution of metazoans. Near the end of the Precambrian there were several episodes of nearly global glaciation in which sea ice and continental glaciation extended to the equatorial regions. The last of these "snowball Earth" episodes was about 635 million years ago.45 This time just precedes the earliest fossil evidence of metazoans. The major changes in ocean temperature and chemistry associated with the transition from a snowball Earth to a greenhouse world would likely have had profound effects on life. In particular, isotopic data indicates that the oceans became increasingly oxygenated after the end of the last of the global glaciations.46 Higher oxygen levels would have been critical for aerobic respiration and the evolution of larger body sizes.

The advent of mineralized hard parts was an important part of the Cambrian "explosion." The ability of organisms to secrete hard parts had important consequences for both metazoan evolution, and for the preservability of these organisms in the fossil record. Much of the rapid increase in fossil diversity during the early Cambrian is among organisms with resistant hard parts. Changes in seawater chemistry may have played an important role in permitting or stimulating mineral precipitation by marine organisms. With the right concentrations of certain ions, normal physiological processes, such as respiration or photosynthesis, may cause precipitation. Such biomineralization could then be modified through natural selection. In addition, hard parts represent a handy way to store useful ions, or remove toxic ones. Carbonate and phosphate ions, present in most skeletons, are also good buffers against pH changes. Recent work on seawater chemistry during the latest Proterozoic and early Cambrian has indicated a major change in calcium ion concentrations between 544 and 515 million years.47 This time interval coincides with the onset of widespread biomineralization in the fossil record.

The rise of hard parts would likely have had important behavioral consequences. Hard skeletons provide firm attachments for muscles, enabling various activities and motions not otherwise possible, and skeletons would have helped to support larger and more complex bodies. Hard parts also would provide a protective armor against predators, and evidence for predation is found almost as early as the first skeletal elements appear in the fossil record. Predator-prey interactions seem particularly effective at producing an evolutionary escalation, with the prey evolving defenses and the predator evolving ways to overcome them. Animals with mineralized armor would promote selection for harder jaws and claws in the predators. The more effective predators would in turn increase selective pressure for more resistant skeletons in the prey.

Changes in animal behavior can also change the physical environment. A major environmental change in the early Cambrian came as a result of increased complexity and intensity of bioturbation (burrowing, digging, or other moving and mixing of the sediment by organisms). Burrowing can be a response to escaping predation or seeking out food resources. These evolving behaviors also disrupted the existing seafloor habitat. For much of the Precambrian and into the early Cambrian, microbial and algal mats largely covered the seafloor. These mats provided a stable base for sessile animals and kept mud out of the water, making it easy for filter feeders to obtain relatively high amounts of food and low amounts of sediment. The advent of algal grazers, extensive burrowing and other bioturbation disrupted these mats. This created problems for animals adapted to the old seafloor pattern, but provided a new habitat of muddy seafloors.48 Additionally, the constant burrowing unearthed buried nutrients, making them accessible to animals at the surface of the sediment.

Available food resources and ecological roles were also altered with the appearance of planktonic or swimming metazoans in the early Cambrian. Prior to the Early Cambrian, there is no evidence for macroscopic zooplankton or swimming animals. However, in the Cambrian several actively swimming, plankton-feeding animals appeared. At the same time, many kinds of planktonic algae became extinct and the surviving forms were much smaller. Evolution of swimming and plankton-feeding ability leads to the diversification of plankton feeders, but it also affects the bottom-dwelling organisms.49 Both the fecal material and the carcasses of these animals would have fallen to the bottom, moving large quantities of nutrients from the water column, where they were previously inaccessible to animals, to the sea floor. Even today, most of the nutrients in the deep sea come from these sources.

This brief survey of possible factors in the Cambrian explosion illustrates how ocean chemistry, environment, ecology and animal behavior are complexly intertwined. Complex positive and negative feedbacks make it very difficult to tease out which factor was most critical to the rapid diversification of metazoan life at the end of the Precambrian and early Cambrian. However, evidence from multiple sources strongly suggests that several significant changes in the world’s ocean environment conspired to light the fuse of evolutionary innovation.

Conclusions

Given our current and continually growing knowledge of the deep past, it is increasingly clear that the rise of multicellular animals is not an impenetrable mystery. While there is much that is not known, and will never be known, there is also much that has been discovered, and much excitement for what will yet be learned. The animals of the Cambrian did not appear in all their modern complexity out of a void, but rather provide pointers to their common ancestry. Despite the claims of evolution skeptics, the fossil record provides multiple examples of organisms displaying transitional anatomies. The anatomical characters that define the body plans of the major living animal phyla, can be seen to have been acquired piecemeal during the early evolution of the metazoa. Just as with all other taxonomic groups (e.g. classes, orders, families, genera, species), the divisions between phyla break down as we move closer to their times of origin from common ancestors. The tree of life continues to stand tall.

Notes

1. Morris, J.D., 2008, The Burgess shale and complex life, Acts & Facts 37 (10): 13

2. Meyer, S.C., M. Ross, P. Nelson, & P. Chien. 2003. The Cambrian explosion: biology's big bang. Pp. 323-402 in J. A. Campbell & S. C. Meyer, eds., Darwinism, Design and Public Education: Michigan State University Press, Lansing, p. 326.

3. Meyer, S.C., M. Ross, P. Nelson, & P. Chien. 2003. The Cambrian explosion: biology's big bang. Pp. 323-402 in J. A. Campbell & S. C. Meyer, eds., Darwinism, Design and Public Education: Michigan State University Press, Lansing, p. 333.

4. Rozanov, A.Y., 1984, "The Precambrian-Cambrian boundary in Siberia," Episodes 7: 20-24. Rozanov, A.Y., and A.Y. Zhuravlev, 1992, "The Lower Cambrian fossil record of the Soviet Union," IN J.H. Lipps and P.W. Signor (eds.), Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa: Plenum, New York, p.205-282,

5. Bowring, S.A,, J.P. Grotzinger, C.E. Isachsen, A.H. Knoll, S.M. Pelechaty, and P. Kolosov, 1993, "Calibrating rates of Early Cambrian evolution," Science 261: 1293-1298.

6. Gradstein, F.M., J.G.Ogg, A.G. Smith, et. al., 2004. A Geologic Time Scale 2004. Cambridge University Press.

7. Amthor, J. E.; J.P. Grotzinger,; S. Schröder, S.A. Bowring, J. Ramezani, M.W. Martin, and A. Matter, 2003, "Extinction of Cloudina and Namacalathus at the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary in Oman". Geology 31: 431–434.

8. Landing, E., A. English,and J.D. Keppie, 2010, "Cambrian origin of all skeletonized metazoan phyla - Discovery of Earth’s oldest bryozoans (Upper Cambrian, southern Mexico)," Geology 38: 547-550.

9. See the section "Before the explosion: What went bang?" below for details.

10. See the discussion in the chapter "The Nature of Phyla" in Valentine J.W., 2004, On the Origin of Phyla, Univ. of Chicago Press. Also see Miller, K.B., 2003, "Common descent, transitional forms, and the fossil record," IN, K.B. Miller (ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Crreation, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids.

11. Budd, G.E. and S. Jensen, 2000, "A critical reappraisal of the fossil record of the bilaterian phyla," Biological Reviews 75: 253- 295. Conway Morris, S., 2000, "The Cambrian ‘explosion’: Slow-fuse or megatonnage?", Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 97(9): 4426-4429.

12. Morris, J. 2008. The Burgess Shale and Complex Life. Acts & Facts. 37 (10): 13.

13. Gubanov, A.P., , A. V. Kouchinsky, and J. S. Peel,1999, "The first evolutionary-adaptive lineage within fossil molluscs," Lethaia 32: 155-157. Kouchinsky, A.V., 1999, "Shell microstructures of the Early Cambrian Anabarella and Watsonella as new evidence on the origin of the Rostroconchia," Lethaia 32: 173-180.

 14. Meyer, S.C., M. Ross, P. Nelson, & P. Chien. 2003. The Cambrian explosion: biology's big bang. Pp. 323-402 in J. A. Campbell & S. C. Meyer, eds., Darwinism, Design and Public Education: Michigan State University Press, Lansing, p. 346.

15. See the discussion in the chapter "The Nature of Phyla" in Valentine J.W., 2004, On the Origin of Phyla, Univ. of Chicago Press.

16. A more expanded discussion of this topic can be found in Miller, K.B., 2003, "Common descent, transitional forms, and the fossil record," IN, K.B. Miller (ed.), Perspectives on an Evolving Crreation, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids.

17. C. Darwin, 1872, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 6th ed., p 234-255.

18. Summaries of the early fossil record of life can be found in Schopf, J.W. (ed,), 1983, Earth’s Early Biosphere: Its Origin and Evolution, Princeton University Press; and Knoll, A.H., 2003, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth, Princeton University Press. During the writing of this essay, a new fossil discovery from Australia has indicated the presence of possible sponge-grade metazoans in rocks 640-650 million years ago. See Maloof, A.C., et al., 2010, "Possible animal-body fossils in pre-Marinoan limestones from South Australia," Nature Geoscience doi:10.1038/ngeo934.

19. Li, C-W., J-Y Chen, and T-E Hua, 1998, "Precambrian sponges with cellular structures," Science 279: 879-882. Xiao, S, X. Yuan, and A.H. Knoll, 2000, "Eumetazoan fossils in terminal Proterozoic phosphorites?," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 97(25): 13684-13689.

20. J-Y Chen, et al., 2000, "Precambrian animal diversity: Putative phosphatized embryos from the Doushanto Formation of China," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 97 (9): 4457-4462. Xiao, S., and A.H, Knoll, 2000, "Phosphatized animal embryos from the Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation at Weng’an, Guizhou, south China," Journal of Paleontology 74 (5): 767-788. J-Y Chen et al., 2006, "Phosphatized polar lobe-forming embryos from the Precambrian of southwest China," Science 312: 163-165. Xiao, S., J.W. Hagadorn, C. Zhou, and X. Yuan, 2007, "Rare helical spheroidal fossils from the Doushantuo lagerstatte: Ediacaran animal embryos come of age?," Geology 35 (2): 115-118.

21. Seilacher, A., 1999, "Biomat-related lifestyles in the Precambrian," Palaios 14: 86-93.

22. Fedonkin, M.A., 1992, "Vendian faunas and the early evolution of metazoa," IN, J.H. Lipps and P.W. Signor (eds.), Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa, Plenum Press, New York, p.87-129. Jenkins, R.J.F., 1992, "Functional and ecological aspects of Ediacaran assemblages," IN, J.H. Lipps and P.W. Signor (eds.), Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa, Plenum Press, New York, p.131-176..

23. Gehling, J.G., 1988, "A cnidarian of actinian-grade from the Ediacaran Pound Subgroup, South Australia," Alcheringa 12:299- 314.

24. Gehling, J. G., and Rigby, K., 1996, "Long expected sponges from the Neoproterozoic Ediacara fauna of South Australia," Journal of Paleontology 70(2): 185-195.

25. Gehling, J.G., 1987, "Earliest known echinoderm -- a new Ediacaran fossil from the Pound Subgroup of South Australia," Alcheringa 11:337-345.

26. Narbbonne, G.M., M. Laflamme, C. Greentree, and P. Trusler, 2009, "Reconstructing a lost world: Ediacaran rangeomorphs from Spaniard’s Bay, Newfoundland," Journal of Paleontology 83(4): 503-523.

27. Conway Morris, S., 1993, "Ediacaran-like fossils in Cambrian Burgess Shale-type faunas of North America," Palaeontology 36 (3): 593-635.

28. Dzik, J., 2003, "Anatomical information content in the Ediacaran fossils and their possible zoological affinities," Integrative and Comparative Biology 43: 114-126. Fedonkin, M.A., 2003, "The origin of the Metazoa in light of the Proterozoic fossil record," Paleontological Research 7(1): 9-41.

29. Fedonkin, M.A., and Waggoner, B.M., 1997, "The later Precambrian fossil Kimberella is a mollusc-like bilaterian organism," Nature 388:868-871.

 30. Crimes, T.P., 1992, "The record of trace fossils across the Proterozoic-Cambrian boundary," IN, J.H. Lipps and P.W. Signor (eds.), Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa, Plenum Press, New York, p.177-202. Zhu, M., 1997, "Precambrian- Cambrian trace fossils from eastern Yunnan, China: Implications for Cambrian explosion," IN Junyuan Chen, Yen-nien Cheng, and H.V. Iten (eds.), The Cambrian Explosion and the Fossil Record, Bulletin of the National Museum of Natural Science No. 10 (Taichung, Taiwan, China), p. 275-312.

31. Chen, Z., S. Bengtson, C-M. Zhou, H. Hua, and Z. Yue., 2008, Tube structure and original composition of Sinotubulities: Shelly fossils from the late Neoproterozoic in southern Shaanxi, China, Lethaia 41: 37-45. Hofmann, H.J., and E.W. Mountjoy, 2001, Namacalathus-Cloudina assemblage in Neoproterozoic Miette Group (Byng Formation), British Columbia: Canada’s oldest shelly fossils, Geology 29: 1091-1094. Grotzinger, J.P., W.A. Watters, and A.H. Knoll, 2000, Calcified metazoans in thrombolite-stromatolite reefs of the terminal Proterozoic Nama Group, Namibia, Paleobiology 26(3): 334-359.

 32. For detailed descriptions of the variety of small shelly fossils see: Rozanov, A.Y., and A.Y. Zhuravlev, 1992, "The Lower Cambrian fossil record of the Soviet Union" (p.205-282), and Jiang, Z-W., "The Lower Cambrian fossil record of China" (p.311 -333), IN J.H. Lipps and P.W. Signor (eds.), 1992, Origin and Early Evolution of the Metazoa: Plenum, New York,

33. Dzik, J., 1993, "Early metazoan evolution and the meaning of its fossil record," Evolutionary Biology 27:339-386. Conway- Morris, S., and J.S. Peel, 1995, "Articulated halkieriids from the Lower Cambrian of north Greeland and their role in early protostome evolution," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B 347:305-358. See also Caron, J-B., A. Scheltema, C. Schander, and D. Rudkin, 2006, "A soft-bodied mollusc with radula from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale," Nature 442: 159-163.

34. Ramsköld, L., 1992, "Homologies in Cambrian Onychophora," Lethaia 25: 443-460. L. Ramsköld, L., and H. Xianguang, 1991, "New early Cambrian animal and onychophoran affinities of enigmatic metazoans," Nature 351: 225-228.

35. Liu, J., D.Shu, J. Han, Z. Zhang, and X. Zhang, 2008, "Origin, diversification, and relationships of Cambrian lobopods," Gondwana Research 14:277-283.

36. Chen, J-Y., L. Ramsköld, and G-G. Zhou, 1994, "Evidence for monophyly and arthropod affinity of Cambrian giant predators," Nature 264: 1304-1308. G. E. Budd, G.E., 1996, "The morphology of Opabinia regalis and the reconstruction of the arthropod stem group," Lethaia 29: 1-14.

37. G. E. Budd, 1998, "Arthropod body-plan evolution in the Cambrian with an example from anomalocaridid muscle," Lethaia 31: 197-210.

38. Skovsted, C. B., G.A. Brock, J.R. Paterson, L.E. Holmer, and G.E. Budd, 2008, "The scleritome of Eccentrotheca from the Lower Cambrian of South Australia: lophophorate affinities and implications for tommotiid phylogeny," Geology 36:171–174. Skovsted, C.B., et al., 2009, "The scleritome of Paterimitra: an Early Cambrian stem group brachipod from South Australia," Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276: 1651-1656.

39. Excellent descriptions of these fossil communities can be found in the following books: Briggs D., D. Erwin, and F. Collier, 1994, The Fossils of the Burgess Shale (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press). Conway Morris, S., 1998, The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (New York: Oxford Univ. Press). Chen J., and G. Zhou, 1997, "Biology of the Chengjiang Fauna," IN Junyuan Chen, Yen-nien Cheng, and H.V. Iten (eds.), The Cambrian Explosion and the Fossil Record, Bulletin of the National Museum of Natural Science No. 10 (Taichung, Taiwan, China), p.11-105.

40. Shu, D-G., et al., 2001, "Primitive deuterstomes from the Chengjiang Lagerstatte ( Lower Cambrian, China)," Nature 414: 419 -424.

41. Shu, D-G., S. Conway Morris, J. Han, Z-F. Zhang, and J-N. Liu, 2002, "Ancestral echinoderms from the Chengjiang deposits of China," Nature 430: 422-428.

42. Shu, D-G., L. Chen, J. Han, and X-L. Zhang, 2001, "An early Cambrian tunicate from China," Nature 411: 472-473.

43. Chen, J-Y., J. Dzik, G.D. Edgecombe, L. Ramskold, and G-Q. Zhou, 1995, "A possible early Cambrian chordate," Nature 377: 720-722. Chen, J-Y., D-Y Huang, and C-W. Li, 1999, "An early Cambrian craniate-like chordate," Nature 402: 518-522.

44. Shu, D-G, et al., 1999, "Lower Cambrian vertebrates from south China," Nature 402: 42-46. Shu, D-G., et al., 2003, ""Head and backbone of the early Cambrian vertebrate Haikouichthys," Nature 421: 526-529

45. Hoffman, P.F. and D.P. Schrag, 2002, "The snowball Earth hypothesis: testing the limits of global change," Terra Nova 14: 129 -155.

46. Fike, D.A., J.P. Grotzinger, L.M. Pratt, and R.E. Summons, 2006, "Oxidation of the Ediacaran ocean," Nature 444: 744-747.

47. Brennan, S.T., T.K. Lowenstein, and J. Horita, 2004, "Seawater chemistry and the advent of biocalcification," Geology 32: 473 -476.

48. Bottjer, D., J. Hagadorn, and S. Dornbos, 2000, "The Cambrian Substrate Revolution," GSA Today 10 (9): 1-7. Dornbos, S.Q. and D.J. Bottjer, 2000, "Evolutionary paleoecology of the earliest echinoderms: Helicoplacoids and the Cambrian substrate revolution," Geology 28: 839-842.

49. Butterfield, N.J., 2001, "Ecology and evolution of Cambrian plankton," IN, A.Y. Zhuralev and R. Riding (eds.), The Ecology of the Cambrian Radiation (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 200-216.
The BioLogos Foundation • www.BioLogos.org/projects/scholar-essays 



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ADDENDUM

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To the Reader,

It should be noted that the three views presented above spoke pointedly of Earth's early biologic history from a (i) scientific viewpoint (Wikipedia), a (ii) theistic evolutionary viewpoint, and an (iii) evolutionary creationist viewpoint. I did not purposely intend this arrangement but when I look back upon each section it becomes readily apparent.

As such, each discussion approached the material according to its own philosophical perspective, each making a variety of suggestions as to what some of the irregularities may be within their own given contexts. No less would one expect to find similar anomalies in earlier, and later, evolutionary periods from a past so distant that it is remarkable we even know as much as we do eons-and-eons removed from the primordial events.

And what did each viewpoint demonstrate?

View (i) showed scientific anomalies within the Cambrian period; view (ii) attempted to reconcile known evolutionary knowledge with biblical passages; and view (iii) attempted an interaction with "Young Earth Creationists" (YEC) and "Intelligent Design" (ID) groups. 

Moreover, each view's evolutionary description was arranged according to the audience it was written to - whether to scholarly groups, or to Christians trying to figure out evolution's relationship to the Genesis account, or to non-evolutionary Christians who think the whole thing is bunk and work feverishly to disprove it by jot-and-by-tittle, because if they were to accept it, it would change their belief structure (an example of this is Stephen C. Meyer's book, Darwin's Doubt).

Which then answers the question posed in the title of this posting, "Why all the fuss over Earth's remarkable Cambrian Explosion?" For the scholars in group (i) it is a delightful problem to work out by conjecture and by future discoveries. They are not unsettled by the anomalies but work all the harder to discern Earth's ancient past by trying to ask the right questions. For the theistic evolutionists in group (ii) they too are attempting to work within the limitations of their Bible-centered professions, most of whom believing God to have spoken to the ancient writers of Genesis in a prophetic fashion ahead of today's more modern scientific era. While the evolutionary creationists of group (iii) jettison any hope of finding today's science in the Genesis records by flatly accepting evolution as the most proper description of our origins. And then moving their attention to the actual problem at hand which is how to read yesterday's Bible in today's more distant cultures using a variety of hermeneutical approaches.

What are these? To read some biblical passages in a non-literal fashion following the literary cues that lay within the text itself: is the passage a narrative account (some call these historical "myths,' which I purposely shun because of the misleading connotations that this description brings with it however apt that it seems). Is the text a psalm, a poem, a parable? Are the Bible's historical passages a composite mix of narrative accounts each compounded by that era's earlier assemblage of salvific understanding within their given context? Naturally one would then ask how that understanding changed as it progressed from individual perceptions, to family contexts, to tribal and national legacies. There then is the additional problem of how the text was read existentially and phenomenologically by each receiving era as each generation progressed further and further away from the actuating moment. What did a pile of rocks, a lamp, a priest, a house, a road, or an event, mean to the original recipients about God (Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, the prophets, Jesus, the disciples) as versus what that same pile of rocks et. al. might later mean to a more nuanced society thinking through the larger glens of its salvific heritage. There is also the idea of enculturation to take into account... how did people in their societal contexts change towards their understanding of a biblical event, or a narrative story, from one generation to the next, as their regional contexts changed by world event, time, and distance?

So interpreting the Bible by flatly stating a literal, inerrant reading seems boxed-in and quite naïve as a position that an earnest Christian might make. It flies-in-the-face-of-facts as it were. But the good news is that we get a more interesting Bible that can have a much larger, more timeless meaning to global cultures quite distant from the biblical event. One that forces each succeeding generation towards its own due diligence if God's Word is to be relevant to humanity's needs. As a Brazilian met by slavery and poverty a Liberation Gospel might proceed. As an African immersed in animism and oppression a totalitarian gospel might arise. From America's wealth and secularism an anti-secular, postmodern gospel might proceed. From Europe's blended mix of dissimilar cultures and steady beat towards socialism perhaps a Radical Theology rises forth. But to expect to read the Bible from an ancient Greek mindset as the early Church Fathers once did; or from a Medieval Scholastic viewpoint as the Catholic church did in Aquinas' day; or even as an Enlightened Reformational record as today's Evangelicalism attempts to create, makes the Bible socially irrelevant and quite foreign.

But by using the relevant examples that science and evolution afford shows quite clearly how the Christian faith must adapt its ancient faith and doctrines towards today's newer skepticisms and disbelief. We misunderstand God if we think that His missional role doesn't change from one generation to the next. We make of Him a lesser god than the great God that He is by showing our disbelief by not expanding His Word to meet society's many needs and searching questions. It becomes one of religious pride and hubris instead of humble submission. The Pharisees in Jesus' day didn't like Jesus challenging their doctrines no less than we do today.... However, we must show faith that God knows what He is doing and need not be troubled when all that we thought we knew about God may change. Like the Bereans of the NT, we set about our tasks to discern, and to judge, the voices of today's newest Apostles of Jesus. But when all has been discussed and proved we move forthwith heralding an ancient faith tradition that is willing to change when deemed necessary. Thank you for your consideration.

R.E. Slater
September 20, 2013




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