why hide it?

Gerald Schroeder explains what happens when the Cambrian explosion was first discovered.

The reality of this explosion of life was discovered long before it was revealed. In 1909, Charles D. Walcott, while searching for fossils in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, came upon a strata of shale near the Burgess Pass, rich in that for which he had been seeking., fossils from the era known as the Cambrian. Over the following four years Walcott collected between 60,000 and 80,000 fossils from the Burgess Shale. These fossils contained representatives from every phylum except one of the phyla that exist today. Walcott recorded his findings meticulously in his notebooks. No new phyla ever evolved after the Cambrian explosion. These fossils could have changed the entire concept of evolution from a tree of life to a bush of life. And they did, but not in 1909.

Walcott knew he had discovered something very important. That is why he collected the vast number of samples. But he could not believe that evolution could have occurred in such a burst of life forms, "simultaneously" to use the words of Scientific American. This was totally against the theory of Darwin in which he and his colleagues were steeped. And so Walcott reburied the fossils, all 60,000 of them, this time in the drawers of his laboratory.

Walcott was the director of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. It was not until 1985 that they were rediscovered (in the draws of the Smithsonian). Had Walcott wanted, he could have hired a phalanx of graduate students to work on the fossils. But he chose not to rock the boat of evolution.

Today fossil representatives of the Cambrian era have been found in China, Africa, the British Isles, Sweden, Greenland. The explosion was worldwide. But before it became proper to discuss the extraordinary nature of the explosion, the data were simply not reported. It is a classic example of cognitive dissonance, but an example for which we have all paid a severe price.

It is these kind of stories that help fuel the skepticism towards Darwinian evolution. “Examine the evidence,” is replaced by “Examine the evidence if it fits in with a Darwinian approach.” This is why Schroeder advocates simply teaching the wonders of the complexity of it all and let the student make the physical coming from the non-physical connection.

Where did the non-physical causative agent come from? Acccording to Schroeder, it could be the laws of nature or it could be God. If it is the laws of nature the conversation can continue in a public education science class. If it is God, then the conversion can begin, but it will not be initiated by the teacher. The conversation won’t go that far with the students either. What kind of God? Which God? What do you mean by “God”? You can see why these conversations are best left outside of the classroom. Let’s examine the fascinating evidence and the human aspect of curiosity will kick in. This appears to be Dr. Schroeder’s approach.