The Cambrian Period

Life on Earth exhibits the most amazing variety. From the Poles to the Amazon, from mountain peaks to the ocean deeps, our planet overflows with an endless variety of life forms. Its many organisms, from bacteria to worms, from ants to trees, from sea gulls to dolphins, have each been equipped with extraordinarily sensitive systems and gloriously complex structures, thanks to which they can survive in such close harmony with their environment. These systems, whose details are still being discovered by biologists, contain features that astonish human beings.

Scientists and thinkers have investigated nature in all periods of history, witnessed its flawless harmony and planning, and have sought to answer such questions as these:

* How did such a wide variety of living things first appear on Earth?
* How did they acquire the ideal systems in their bodies that permitted them to thrive?
* How is such harmony and equilibrium between these organisms possible?

In any search for the answers to these questions, the origin of multi-celled organisms assumes a particular importance, because they make the greatest contribution to the biological variety on Earth. It is indisputable that single-celled organisms are highly complex life forms that make an enormous contribution to the survival of life on Earth. Yet the structures possessed by single-celled organisms are far less complex than those in multi-celled organisms, which display an extraordinarily advanced variety and complexity.

The Cambrian Period is the name assigned to that geological age when all the present-day phyla of multi-cellular organisms suddenly appeared. So sudden and comprehensive was their appearance that many scientists refer to it as “the Cambrian Explosion.” The late evolutionist paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has described this phenomenon as “most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life,” while the evolutionist zoologist Thomas S. Ray writes that the origin of multi-cellular life is an event of comparable significance to the origin of life itself.

The last 25 years have seen a major increase in our knowledge of the Cambrian Period, and the extraordinary nature of its “explosion” has attracted enormous scientific interest. Scientists analyzing the discoveries made by various disciplines have realized that this phenomenon is one that took place even more suddenly, and in an even more unique manner, than they had previously imagined. Our better understanding of the concrete facts and characteristics unique to the Cambrian explosion has resulted in reliable explanations for the origins of multi-celled organisms and of life in general.

This information, obtained in the light of modern science, actually constitutes proofs of Allah’s flawless creation during the period in question. Modern scientific discoveries regarding this phenomenon—which Darwin himself described as a “serious difficulty”—have sounded the death knell for the theory of evolution.

The subject of the origin of life on Earth cannot be fully understood without a thorough knowledge of what actually took place in the Cambrian explosion. To that end, all the details and facts discovered to date about the Cambrian Period have been set out in this book.

The first section deals with the ingeniously complex structures of Cambrian life forms, the invalidity of Darwinist attempts to interpret the fossil record, and the current hopeless situation of evolutionists and their unscientific beliefs. The second section considers the living fossils that defy the theory of evolution.

The Cambrian explosion is just one of the glorious creations of Allah that modern science has managed to discover. Almighty Allah brought all living things into existence simply by commanding them to “Be!” His flawless creation is revealed as follows in one verse:

He is Allah—the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and Earth glorifies Him. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise. (Surat al-Hashr, 24)

The Cambrian, Evolution and Creation

Before moving on to consider the Cambrian explosion itself, we first need to briefly compare what features are to be expected from the fossil record according to the theory of evolution, versus creation.

Darwin’s theory of evolution claims that all forms of life are descended from one original single cell. According to that claim, all the millions of plant and animal species must have descended from this single cell. In the fossil record, therefore, there should exist various traces of the “family tree” deriving from this common ancestor. Evolutionists maintain that there is a direct line of descent between this imaginary first cell and all later living species, from fish to primates and from octopuses to frogs. If this hypothesis is true, then it should have left available traces. Namely:

1. An enormous number of intermediate forms, and

2. A slow, incremental, gradual change in the anatomy of specimens in the fossil record,

3. The earliest living things should display a simple structure and show evidence of their development from even simpler forms,

4. New life forms should emerge not as entirely different species, but as subspecies barely distinguishable from one another. And these subspecies should diverge from one another more and more over the course of time. Higher biological categories such as families, order and classes should gradually appear as the living world expanded—that is, slowly.

All these four requirements can be summed up as the condition of continuity. That is because evolutionists claim that all forms of life are descended from one another, straight back to that first imaginary cell. They believe that the process of change between species took place on a constant basis. Such continuity logically demands that countless intermediate forms must once have existed—and so, evidence of their assumed evolutionary development must be observable—in fact, plentiful!—in the fossil record.

On the other hand, the fact of creation requires none of these imaginary preconditions. It teaches that living things were flawlessly created by Allah, in their complete and present forms, and with all their characteristic features. For that reason alone, it does not presuppose that “later” form of life must be more complex than the one that preceded it. There is no need to observe similarities of structures and behaviors between different living groups. On the contrary, the fact of creation suggests that all living things were created with their own unique structures, and can be conveniently classified into distinct groups on the basis of anatomical characteristics.

When you examine the information regarding the Cambrian explosion provided by paleontologists, you can clearly see why this information verifies creation while demolishing the theory of evolution. That explosion saw the emergence of dozens of organisms distinguished from one another by enormous differences. This reveals that there are unbridgeable gaps—in terms of both descent and complexity—between the complex living things that appeared during the Cambrian and those that existed before.

So striking are these differences that evolutionists, who need to be able to prove continuity between living groups, have been unable to establish any familial links between them, even on the theoretical level.

The Cambrian Period shows that even the very earliest creatures appeared suddenly with all their exceedingly complex structures—which is exactly what creation teaches. The origin of the perfect structures possessed by living things is creation by Allah. These perfect structures exhibit no deficiencies, no missing or functionless stages of the kinds predicated by the theory of evolution. Instead, each one appears in flawless fashion in the fossil record.

In short, the Cambrian explosion makes the absence of continuity in the fossil record plain for all to see; and this constitutes one of the most concrete pieces of evidence for creation.