Sorry Creationists ... Evolutionary gap in early land animal fossil record filled

[frankfrank]

And not just the earth, but if God created the whole universe in six days, that means that the distant stars must have been created at the same time. Which means He must have created the light from those stars already en route to earth, otherwise it wouldn't have got here by now. So He was one busy dude, no wonder he needed a day off...

EASY.

In our three-dimensional world, *ALL* of God's "Seven Days" appear to be eternal...AND CONCURRENT.

Creation is happening RIGHT NOW, from our point of view.

And...God created evolution.

 

[bankside]

Evolution is still just a theory.

That is to say, it is a fact that we find fossils in many different layers of rock in many corners of the world.

It is a theory that these represent the remains of related organisms whose imperceptible variations over thousands of generations are responsible for the diversity of species we observe around us every day.

It is another theory that god hid them there to see if we'd buy into the notion that he is dishonest, or whether we'd be good christians and realise that just as death on the cross leads to everlasting life, so too does lying lead to eternal truth, and cruelty leads to boundless mercy.

Any other theories out there? I know which one sounds plausible to me.

 

[looseliam]

I love the religious nut-bag's reaction to this stuff. It makes me giggle.

I like to break it down with Occam's Razor:

1) small genetic mutations over the course of billions of years brought us where we are today
2) some mystical all-knowing being willed into existence all we have and see yet conveniently leaves out any mention of early stuff in "his word".

Most of the time, here's their reaction:

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh great... now he's "correcting me". No. I stand by my statement there. The whole god myth is what really irritates me.

Except your statement is wrong: there are many Creationists who will be delighted at this, not try to explain it away.

 

[Kulindahr]

EASY.

In our three-dimensional world, *ALL* of God's "Seven Days" appear to be eternal...AND CONCURRENT.

Creation is happening RIGHT NOW, from our point of view.

That is in fact a possible reading of the royal chronicle in Genesis 1. I don't consider it likely to have been understood that way by the original audience, but it's possible.

 

[Kulindahr]

I like to break it down with Occam's Razor:

1) small genetic mutations over the course of billions of years brought us where we are today
2) some mystical all-knowing being willed into existence all we have and see yet conveniently leaves out any mention of early stuff in "his word".

Why should He mention it?

And you left out 3) both of the above.

 

[Kulindahr]

That's debatable. Evolution as been observed in both the lab and in nature.

http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/21/macro-evolution-observed-in-the-laboratory/

Good post -- I was going to look for a link like that.

There's one flaw, though -- the thing with the moths has been shown to not be evolution, because when the soot from factories goes away, the whole population shifts back. They've just got two sets of genes there. Now, if it went on long enough it might lead to evolution, but as it is, it's just varied expression of existing characteristics.

 

[Kulindahr]

Your statement is mostly right: there are very few Creationists who will be delighted at this, not try to explain it away.

Fixed for accuracy.

Nope. There are at least 65 million Creationists in the U.S. who will have no trouble with this news, and a fair portion of them will be delighted.

The reason is that they believe God created it all by setting off the Big Bang, with maybe some nudges along the way. To them, this is just more information on how God's work got done.

 

[Kulindahr]

65 million creationists are fooling themselves for believing the god myth. So I'm still right.

Except you said this:

Creationists will come up with whatever claptrap that they can to explain this one away.

And that's false -- millions of Creationists won't try to explain anything away.

 

[Kulindahr]

No. It's not false. Creationists are still speaking claptrap when they say god is behind evolution.

You made the assertion.

Prove it.

 

[Corny]

http://gawker.com/5611867/futurama-debates-evolution-for-you

if you don't want to watch the whole clip, jump to 1:17

 

[bankside]

That's debatable. Evolution as been observed in both the lab and in nature.

http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/21/macro-evolution-observed-in-the-laboratory/

No; facts have been established in the lab and in nature. These facts count as evidence in support the idea that evolutionary theory is correct. A theory is any intellectual framework that explains how facts relate to each other.

My point was only to remind us of that. Creationists think that "a theory" means "a guess" but that's not what it means at all. When helping people avoid their ignorance we have to be careful about the terms used.

 

[Telstra]

Evolution is still just a theory.

That is to say, it is a fact that we find fossils in many different layers of rock in many corners of the world.

It is a theory that these represent the remains of related organisms whose imperceptible variations over thousands of generations are responsible for the diversity of species we observe around us every day.

It is another theory that god hid them there to see if we'd buy into the notion that he is dishonest, or whether we'd be good christians and realise that just as death on the cross leads to everlasting life, so too does lying lead to eternal truth, and cruelty leads to boundless mercy.

Any other theories out there? I know which one sounds plausible to me.

In scientific terms. A theory = fact
like gravity is a theory.

 

[palbert]

I am still trying to find out after all these years successfully avoiding their shovels and fostering that Creation myth.

 

[bendted]

One of the best thing about being a Catholic...I am not required to believe in an actual 7 days creation, or the Evolution Theory. In God's eyes, 1 day is a thousand years, and vise versa. My guess is that ya'll can do the math.

So the Earth is how old? 7,000 years? Just doin' the math, of course.

 

[bankside]

In scientific terms. A theory = fact
like gravity is a theory.

No. In scientific terms, a theory explains how different factual phenomena interrelate. Gravity is a theory that explains the fact of objects appearing to attract based on the property of having mass. Newton had one theory of gravity, which proved to be inexact. Einstein had a better one, yet that also does not explain all the facts that we observe about attraction between bodies having mass.

There is no evidence that the facts have changed since Newton's time; the theories have gotten better however.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm fully aware people like this exist. You're one of them.

But I think you're over-estimating what percentage of "Creationists" they actually represent.

I also think it's debatable whether such people can actually be considered Creationists, at least in the Biblical sense. A true Judeo-Christian Creationist believes in the Genesis account of Creation, one which leaves practically no room for the concept of macro-evolution. Whether Earth is interpreted as being either old or young, Adam was said to be created fully-formed from dust. Eve was made from his rib. Muslims believe something very similar. Hindus have their own creation fable which also precludes evolution.

I believe the Genesis account of Creation -- as it was written. It's in a kind of literature known as a "royal chronicle", which after several years of study I'm still not sure I grasp (it doesn't help that almost all of the literature on it is in scholarly German and my German has gotten something just below pathetic). But it is not meant to be literal, at least in the way today's English-speakers understand that term.

Considering Adam being made from dust, that's the second account -- which itself is proof that neither was meant to be literal, because they aren't reconcilable. It's another kind of literature; I can't recall the name, but I'll call it an agrarian chronicle. Those are somewhere between literal and the "Just So' stories.

The interesting aspect of a royal chronicle is that while it isn't concerned with chronological exactness or order, or other literal aspects, it's intended to convey accurate lessons about its theme if read as literal. And the theme of a royal chronicle is the glory of the king demonstrated in a great achievement. The end result is that you can't take Genesis 1 literally as though it were a news account, but you can read it literally in terms of understanding the attributes of the great king, i.e. God.

At any rate, the result is that there's no problem between evolution and Genesis.



BTW, I ran across an interesting take on Adam a while back: this alien race found intelligence rare in the galaxy, and decided to change that. So they monitored planets as life was developing, and when a promising species emerged they chose the right moment -- and assembled one of the creatures from scratch, but with intelligence and a few advantageous trait added. This individual is inserted into a carefully chosen community of that species -- and an intelligent race is born.

 

[Kulindahr]

No; facts have been established in the lab and in nature. These facts count as evidence in support the idea that evolutionary theory is correct. A theory is any intellectual framework that explains how facts relate to each other.

My point was only to remind us of that. Creationists think that "a theory" means "a guess" but that's not what it means at all. When helping people avoid their ignorance we have to be careful about the terms used.

Young Earth Creationists, that is.

Most of them aren't educated enough to know the difference between a conjecture, a hypothesis, a strong hypothesis, a model, and a theory.

 

[Kulindahr]

Mankind could very well have been around 7,000 years? There is distinct and solid evidence to prove otherwise. Science cannot even comprehend god's own handiwork? That's a copout if I ever seen one.

All you have to do is define "mankind" as "the humans who've been around for 7,000 years" and it works.

Let's see -- to test Mikey's hypothesis, all we have to do is keep doing science. If humans someday run out of things to learn, it fails. If we don't run out of things to learn, that proves nothing, so we keep going.

 

[bankside]

I believe the Genesis account of Creation -- as it was written. It's in a kind of literature known as a "royal chronicle", which after several years of study I'm still not sure I grasp (it doesn't help that almost all of the literature on it is in scholarly German and my German has gotten something just below pathetic). But it is not meant to be literal, at least in the way today's English-speakers understand that term.

Considering Adam being made from dust, that's the second account -- which itself is proof that neither was meant to be literal, because they aren't reconcilable. It's another kind of literature; I can't recall the name, but I'll call it an agrarian chronicle. Those are somewhere between literal and the "Just So' stories.

The interesting aspect of a royal chronicle is that while it isn't concerned with chronological exactness or order, or other literal aspects, it's intended to convey accurate lessons about its theme if read as literal. And the theme of a royal chronicle is the glory of the king demonstrated in a great achievement. The end result is that you can't take Genesis 1 literally as though it were a news account, but you can read it literally in terms of understanding the attributes of the great king, i.e. God.

At any rate, the result is that there's no problem between evolution and Genesis.



BTW, I ran across an interesting take on Adam a while back: this alien race found intelligence rare in the galaxy, and decided to change that. So they monitored planets as life was developing, and when a promising species emerged they chose the right moment -- and assembled one of the creatures from scratch, but with intelligence and a few advantageous trait added. This individual is inserted into a carefully chosen community of that species -- and an intelligent race is born.

The trouble with symbolism is that as we analyse it, eventually it has to stand for something which is literal.

The essential biblical contention, even accepting the broadest of broad metaphors as legitimate, is that this knowledge came to us as the product of an intentional decision from the great beyond, to equip humanity with an understanding of its origins beyond our abilities to observe and theorise about those origins in a factual way.

I'm just not convinced that proposition is remotely true. I think what's far more likely is that a charitable reading has been given to everyday fables and conscious fabrications to allow the old fictions to "make sense." Even if the fiction sprung from noble intent, it has more in common with tea-leaf reading or those things we have little difficulty accepting as charlatanry.