From Sea to Land: Not How, but Why?

This post is to address that portion of Frankly's post highlighted in Green, above.  I am also copying and pasting from Logical below:  

Sigh. There are numerous examples today of life in various stages of transition from sea to land and vice versa. What exactly do think should exist but does not?

No, God still uses it t this day.  It's just that the time spans involved here blow minds that are limited by delusion. I takes rought 2 million years on acverage for one species to evolve into a seperate species.  Some species adapted much faster. Some much, much longer.  Some, like the aligator, hardly evolve at all for 100 million years because they are so well adapted to their environment and that environment never changed.  It was swampy in Florida 100 million years ago. It's still swampy now. Gators had no reason to adapt.

Going on the following definition of arrogant:  

arrogant |ˈarəgənt|

adjective

having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities:

I cannot say that any one position or group has a patient on the term but it can apply to anyone who believes themselves above reproach or beyond questioning.   The  use of the term was to relate to anyone that considers themselves beyond reproach or beyond error.

On here I'm often pre-judged and people believe they already know what I'm thinking in fact some are so convinced that they pronounce what I'm thinking regardless of what I say. 

As for teaching Creation in school.  Some think know my opinion on it and I have stated that I believe that the fact that creation is one of the most accepted and prevalent theories of how life became or how everything got here.  One reason I had that thought was that failure to acknowledge it as one theory that many people have or regard as true tends to validate any theory that IS taught as the source of how we/things became.  Here, though, are a few problems with teaching creation that cause me to be against it.  First I would not want any specific religion taught.  The education process is not to indoctrinate students toward any specific deity/God so Christians would not want Allah cited as Creator just as the Jews wouldn't want Christ (The Trinity) to be mentioned.  That is the problem with any attempts at the inclusion of Creation.  Another reason I feel it might be a problem (teaching creation) was revealed to me fairly recently.  If taught, creation would be taught, most likely, in the public sector, by a person that did not believe it themselves as a possibility.  They would most likely, in the process of teaching it not teach it without bias or prejudice and thus most likely grossly misrepresent it.  The only place that Christians can expect it to be taught in a fashion and way that they would consider acceptable is their Church, Church School, or Home and of those parents should be responsible for teaching their children and raising them to be well rounded and prepared to enter the world as an knowledgable adult.   

So teaching Creation or requiring that to be taught certainly injects many concerns for everyone, Christian and not.  Some would be glad to have some form of indoctrination but those should also realize that indoctrination can cut two ways.  Still though with as many people in the world believing that we all got here by some other method or process than evolution there should be some way to make it generic enough that at least students could be aware that there are those, many in fact, that believe that all that is, life and non-life became from some directed process from an intelligent source.  And so it continues.

You can see virus and bacteria evolve everyday.  For higher order species, it will take a while longer to see the changes. 

Let's just touch on some of your key points.  You say, "It takes roughly 2 million years on average for one species to evolve into a seperate (sic) species."  

Given that, we should expect that over that roughly 2 million years, when one species was evolving into a different species -- we should see fossil evidence of those transitional species, i.e., the "missing links."   Yet, in museums around the world there are millions of fossil records -- but, not even one "missing link" transitional fossil record.  How can that be?

I believe you give us an answer in your next comment, "Some, like the aligator (sic), hardly evolve at all for 100 million years because they are so well adapted to their environment and that environment never changed."

You have, possibly by chance, hit on the answer.  Yes, evolution is true -- micro evolution, i.e., adaptation to differing environmental changes.  The alligator, staying in his swamp environment for those many thousands of years -- had no reason to change.  Other animals, and people, who have migrated to totally different environments, often bringing about different dietary habits -- have adapted more drastically.  However, all who were human stayed human.  And, all who were of an animal species -- stayed within their species.  And, that, my Friend, is why there are no transitional fossil records.

Then, you tell me, "I'm a physician, NONE of what I know (and I know a lot) . . ." 

Well, I guess I cannot lay claim to "knowing a lot" -- although I don't suppose I am totally illiterate.   In my 50+ years in the electronics and computer field -- I guess I did learn a few things.  And, being a person who loves to read, I suppose you can say that I am still learning.   But, one thing I DO KNOW -- my God is real and He did not need old Charley Darwin to help Him create the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

Next, you tell me, "I believe (with admittedly scant evidence but it is what I choose to believe) that God started the process and possibly guides it here and there to His way."

I suppose that makes you a deist, i.e., you believe that God did the Creation -- maybe using Charley Darwin's evolution -- and, then went back into heaven and left the creation to run itself.  Of course, you do acknowledge that He pops in once in a while -- just to see how things are going.  And, then goes back to heaven.

Then, Frankly, obviously you and I worship different Gods.  My God created the heavens and the earth.  And, after creating Adam and Eve, He used to walk in the Garden in the cool of the evening (Genesis 3:8), in communion with Adam and Eve.  That sound pretty personal to me.

Then, after Adam blew it and man had Adam's inherited sin nature -- "God so loved the world (you, me, and all our Forum Friends, plus all other people) that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOEVER believes in Him should not perish, but HAVE eternal life"  (John 3:16).  Wow!  That really sounds very personal to me -- that God would send His only Son to die in our place.

And, we are told in Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the GIFT OF GOD."  That sound very personal to me.  This God who gives gifts does not sound like an impersonal God who just hangs out in heaven and ignores us.

Finally, you tell me, "Nothing that "proves" a divine hand in biology but certainly suggestive.  . ."

Then, obviously you do not believe the Bible or God, when He tells us, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"  (Genesis 1:1).   Do you believe any of the Bible?  Is so, which parts do you believe -- and which parts are lying to us?

Frankly, the Creation was ex nihilo  -- created out of nothing.  God began with empty space -- and, He created the heavens and the earth.  Part of that Creation was all the sciences which govern the functionality of the universe -- and all the laws which govern all those sciences.  By the way, Biology was one of those sciences. 

I am reminded of a time, about ten years ago, when I was sitting in a waiting room at my doctor's office.  I was waiting for an X-ray and on the wall was a chart showing the skeletal and organ makeup of man.  Being a skeletal chart, much was left off, such as blood vessels, arteries, etc.   Looking at that chart, my first thought was, "How can a medical doctor know so much about the human body -- and NOT believe in the God who created it?"  You say, "Nothing that "proves" a divine hand in biology."   Take a look at some of the chart in your office.  Take a look at your own body.  What more do you need to see His divine hand in all Creation?

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill

________________________

You've just described Bill Gray.

From marinebio.org:

Fossil record

The earliest fossil crustaceans  date from about 513  million years ago in the Cambrian , [50] and fossil shrimp  from about 500  million years ago apparently formed a tight-knit procession across the seabed. [51] Crustacean fossils are common from the Ordovician  period onwards. [52] They have remained almost entirely aquatic, possibly because they never developed excretory systems  that conserve water. [30]

The oldest known arachnid  is the trigonotarbid  Palaeotarbus jerami, from about 420  million years ago in the Silurian  period. [56] Attercopus fimbriunguis, from 386  million years ago in the Devonian  period, bears the earliest known silk-producing spigots, but its lack of spinnerets  means it was not one of the true spiders , [57] which first appear in the Late Carboniferous  over 299  million years ago. [58] The Jurassic  and Cretaceous periods provide a large number of fossil spiders, including representatives of many modern families. [59] Fossils of aquatic scorpions  with gills appear in the Silurian and Devonian  periods, and the earliest fossil of an air-breathing scorpion with book lungs  dates from the Early Carboniferous period. [60]

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Sorry, but that is just ignorant. I don't mean that in a bad way as roughly 60% of American's believe in Creationism and they all aren't stupid. But the truth is the truth even if hardly anyone believes it.  The fact is that you simply haven't taken the time to see the tremendous amount of evidence that is out there.  The other fact is that fossils are the old way of determining origins and species inter-relatedness. that's all Darwin had and he did an admiral job. The people who came after him proved evolution even more decidedly.  The new, much more details way is through genetics.  We can toss out the entire fossil record and prove descent from lower animals and inter-relatedness far beyond any reasonable doubt. The problem is that one has to understand genetics to grasp the terms. If people can't grasp abundant fossil evidence, they have no hope of understanding genetics. 

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Bill the problem with this is that I understand, with high resolution, how the body evolved. I have to.  I learned the human body from dissecting a fish. Yes, a lowly fish. A fish has the exactsame body plan as a human. I learned where the basic nerves in the human body lie by cutting open a fish. The bones in the inner ear are shared with the jaw bones in sharks. It is all very clear to me because I have studied it. But you don't have to go to medical school or even cut open a fish to grasp the basics. The wonders of life are some of the most inspirational things one can possibly study. All that said, my faith lies in the things I've seen at the ends of life, not in the middle here where we are,. I don't need biology to reaffirm my faith.

Hi O No,

Thank you for your posted excerpts from marinebio.org titled "Fossil Record."   This agrees with what we find in Genesis 1:2--31 that God created some of His creation to live in the waters, some to fly in the sky, and others to live on the dry land -- and made them capable of reproducing AFTER ITS KIND.  That does not include a fish becoming a bird; nor a bird becoming an alligator or dog.  And, it surely does not include a crab becoming a spider.  When God said, "After its kind" -- that is what He meant.

We read this clearly in this passage from Genesis which describes in detail His act of creation:

Genesis 1:20-23, "Then God said, 'Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.'  God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.  God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.'  There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

Genesis 1:24-25, "Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind;' and it was so.  God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'

Genesis 1:27-28, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' "

Genesis 1:29-31, "Then God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food;' and it was so.  God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."

Notice that verse 27 tells us that, "God created man in His own image" -- and, I can promise you that God, in no way, resembled an ape, monkey, or lemur.  Nor did God, in any way, resemble a lifeless single cell amoebae floating in a primordial swamp.

The only way to deny this passage in Genesis -- is to deny God's Written Word, the Bible.  And, if one is denying God's Bible -- he is denying God.  And, quite honestly, I would not want to be in the eternal shoes of anyone who dies while still denying God.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill

"Sorry, but that is just ignorant."   This is the standard atheist/secularist answer we have come to know and love -- when they have no answer.

"The other fact is that fossils are the old way of determining origins and species inter-relatedness."   In other words, no fossil records exist to prove Darwinian Evolution -- so, it is time to punt -- right?   If you cannot make any headway running the ball -- you punt, hoping to find another way later.  Darwin himself said that if scientists do not find the "missing link" fossil record, Darwinian Evolution is dead.  RIP Darwinian Evolution!

Sorry, my secularist Friend, but nothing in the Bible supports your theory of Darwinian Evolution.  And, if the Bible does not support it -- it ain't so!

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill

I see no point in debating someone who is so deluded that they would deny the blue sky. Sorry but you are simply too far gone. for anyone else actually looking for how to reconcile belief in god with the facts of science, I'm here for you.

This is why "creationism" should never be taught to anyone.  It is a complete denial of all the scientific evidence, of which there is mountains, that proves evolution. 

Bill, are you purposefully ignorant, or congenitally stupid? 

Frankly, I am one who loves the Lord with all my heart, but I have no problem with scientific fact. The way I see it, the Lord created the laws of science when He created the universe, and everything is operating according to plan.

Bill, you always say that parts of the Bible are literal, and parts are allegory. You have said that if the literal meaning doesn't make sense, then read it as allegory. Well, to me the seven days are allegory. Each "day" of God's time is a LOT longer than the days of our time. When you read the creation story THAT way, everything falls into place, it all makes sense, and the conflict between science and faith no longer exists.

Bill doesn't believe the Bible has any allegories.  Instead, if the Bible doesn't make sense, then his interpretation is what counts.  Bill's threshold of "sense" is pretty low - almost non-existent - and he often resorts to mind boggling, head spinning feats of inconsistent reasoning ranging from ludicrous to ridiculous.

Yes, I have often written that, in reading the Bible, we first look for a literal meaning -- and if that fits, that is our interpretation.  If not, look for a metaphorical or symbolic meaning.

However, the Hebrew word for day is "Yom" which appears in the KJV Bible 2287 times and the vast majority of those times (2008 times), it does mean a lunar day, i.e., 24 hours.

And, in the New Testament Greek the word day is "hēmera" which is found 389 times.  Of those incidences 355 times it means a lunar day.

So, it would seem that most of the time that we read "day" in the Bible -- it is referring to a 24 hour day.

To attempt to read the Creation of Genesis any other way, in an attempt to agree with atheist and secularist, is compromising.  As you said in your post, when God created the heavens and the earth -- part of that creation was all the sciences and all the laws which govern and define those sciences.  So, there is no need to compromise.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill

If Bill were playing baseball, he would say that after hitting the ball, he should run to the base according to the rules.  Then he would run to third base.

Weird. Why would a god need evolution? Why would a god need "time" at all? Why would a god not just put humans/animals/plants on earth the way he wanted them to be? What a load of malarkey.

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Frankly,
Bill rolls out his tired old "missing link" trope any time the word evolution is typed. It's not that he hasn't been exposed to an abundance of evidence. He's been shown detailed evidence by me and others on "missing links" and whatever other nonsense he repeats numerous times. He typically responds to evidence and answers by not responding and pretending that he had the last word on the subject...

Possibly by accident -- you are mostly correct.  You are right that God did not evolution to create the heavens and the earth and all this is here.  And, He does not need Darwinian evolution to keep things on track.  He has beautifully created man, animals, plants, etc, -- to use micro evolution, i.e., adaptation, to live on the earth He gave us.

Does God need time?   No, and, in heaven there is no time.  On earth, time is one of our four dimensions -- height, width, length, and time.   Man needs time; God does not.

Then, you ask when He did not just put everyone and everything where He wanted us to be.  In a sense, He did -- but, He also gave man "free will" to be able to think and reason.  Some have used this "free will" for the better, i.e., believers.  Others have used it to their own detriment, i.e., the non-believers.

So, Jennifer, do you see -- you have it right.  Now, all you need to do is to get out of the non-believer's camp and get into the family of God.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill

Mudskippers and Tiktaalik.  Look them up.

DF

 Now, all you need to do is to get out of the non-believer's camp and get into the family of God.

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There is no god. 

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Some of these may have already been answered but basically, the solution to a lot of your questions is rooted in your basic misunderstanding of the evolutionary process. Species of organisms evolve to fit niches in nature that are under-exploited in order to lessen competition for biological survival. Individual organisms do not themselves evolve. Instead, entire species evolve.This process happens naturally, over vast periods of time and is unguided by thought. There is no intelligence in the evolutionary process involved whatsoever. Just natural, environmental pressures for species survival. For example, jellyfish have no brains or even nervous systems, yet they are one of the most successful species in the long history of the planet. On top of that, they're incredibly efficient predators, yet are completely thoughtless. Jellyfish don't think because they are literally brainless. They certainly don't contemplate expanding their species to fit an underused niche in the environment.

I would say that life first evolved from the sea because it had to.

Consider that the ancient saline solution which bathed the first life now flows in our blood stream.  The saline environment was essential to the first life... no matter how you think it arose/got here.

 The land was devoid of life.  It was barren and dead.  It took millions of years for the first plant life (in the sea) to accumulate enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to allow life to slowly creep up out of the sea and onto the land.

 What a sight it must have been in the early days of the world!  To have stood amidst the silent forests, silent, without even the stirring of a leaf, (only fronds).  To have seen the first water scorpions crawling out of the sea… to have seen the first insects who followed so shortly.

Now THAT would have been a sight.

O No, you are now officially a "liberal, feel-good" Christian.  I'm punching your ticket to hell, now.

Although my earlier post does seem to be saying that you are compromising -- that was not my thinking nor my intent.  I had such people as Dr. Hugh Ross of "Reasons To Believe" in mind.  I explain this and much more on Theistic Evolution versus Creation in my new discussion titled "Theistic Evolution, Day Age Theory, Gap Theory, And Progressive Creation: Real Or Compromise?"

Please take a look at it.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill

LIKE! I agree with you!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...-bill_n_1234185.html

Will be interesting to see how they vote.  

Here is a fascinating article about another possible way living things evolve. Human DNA, and in fact the DNA of all creatures, is partially made up of ancient VIRUSES. They inserted their RNA into the DNA of their hosts and become part of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01....html?pagewanted=all