The Great Oxidation Event Lives Again!
To be a fully vested card-carrying evolutionist and learn the secret handshake, one must believe some stories that are...truly bizarre. Fake science must be implemented very quickly — especially supporting deep time. Papa Darwin needs it, and yee yaw boy howdy, secularists are going to give it to him!
For evolution to work, Earth could not have the present oxygen-rich atmosphere. The story (which sounds a lot like magic) has low oxygen levels, microbe activity, then high oxygen levels. That malarkey was discredited several times over — and it has been brought back again.
Ashokan Reservoir, Unsplash / Cowboy Bob Sorensen |
Once upon a time, 2.4 billion Darwin Years ago (give or take 100 million), oxygen levels in the oceans were very low. Slowly, bacteria and algae found ways to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen escaped, but the oxygen accumulated in the oceans and the atmosphere. This dramatic turn of events is called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE, also called the Great Oxygenation Event). As oxygen became available, microbes found it useful for more efficient metabolism. Millions of years later, when oxygen reached near modern levels, an explosion of life resulted! Oxygen kickstarted the evolution of complex body plans. Then larger animals were able to live on land, and eventually the oxygen-enriched atmosphere led to the emergence of human brains that figured all this out.
To read the rest, take a deep breath and GOE on over to "Great Oxidation Myth Creates Absurdities."