Danielle, Anti-evolutionists have long attempted to use the Burgess shale as disproof of evolution. To read an evolutionary biologist's account of the Burgess shale and what it says about evolution, read Stephen Jay Gould's excellent "Wonderful LIfe". http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/039330700X?v=glance
Meanwhile, I haven't read the"The Science of God" but from your description it seems that Schroeder is using a single instance of unusually high diversity to support his claims about divine intervention, while ignoring the other 99.9 percent of evolutionary history that refute it. Does Schroeder explain why God feels that certain aquatic invertebrates during the Cambrian should get a helping hand in design while everything else before and since (including mankind) tools along via natural selection? I would add that the theory of evolution says nothing about the rate of mutation nor whether it is constant or variable. For example, recent work (e.g. Allen, Brown, and Gillooly 2002, SCIENCE 297:1545-1548) links mutation rates to temperature, which may explain why species richness is higher in warm (tropical) regions. Mike On Sep 4, 2006, at 12:00 AM, ECOLOG-L automatic digest system wrote: > Schroeder
