Fossils out of order?

True. But notice that in each case it happens right after they sin. To be honest I also find it difficult to imagine God “walking in the cool of the day”, as well as Adam and Eve “hiding behind a tree.” As if they could escape The Lord of Heaven and Earth by hiding behind a tree — Jonah does the same thing (same phrase being used) and thinks he can flee from God by taking a ship to Tarshish! It’s interesting how God asks a question, “Where are you?” That he most surely already has the answer too … Perhaps He wants your response and your relationship, and not just a one-sided conversation.

P.S. Touché about Thanksgiving :smile:

-Tim

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Don’t forget the “windows of heaven”!

[T]he windows of the heavens were opened. - Genesis 7:11

That was not figurative; it has an obviously literal sense in the account. During the creation week, God had used the dome of heaven to split the great waters into two parts: one part above the dome of heaven and one upon which the land/earth rested. To get water from above the dome of heaven to fall to the earth, you need literal open windows! Case closed.

There is no reason to dispute the literal interpretation of the windows of heaven–unless you want to be unfaithful to the plain meaning of Scripture by introducing modern concepts that are completely foreign to the Bible.

And here the definition of “out of place” is critical. If by it, you mean that paleontology has already decided the exact time of every single transition for every single species/genus/family within a margin of error of 0.001%, and anything outside of that definition constitutes an “out of place” fossil, then yes, discovering a tetrapod that dated to 380 mya, when the previous evidence showed the earliest tetrapod as 365 mya, would be “out of place.”

If you decide to allow for a little error tolerance due to limitations inherent to the scientific process as applied to paleontology, then moving the boundary of a transition to a date 4% earlier would be no big deal. Or no big deal with respect to the explanatory power of the theory of evolution, in any case.

I suspect that Dawkins’ definition of an out of place fossil would be a primate in the Jurassic, or a T-Rex in the Pleistocene. But I am only speculating. Since you seem to have read Dawkins, dcs, perhaps you could share the passage you have in mind with us? In which book or article did he make the argument? What examples did he supply?

Thanks!

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Certainly every figure of speech has a literal understanding. We would understand “windows” to be figurative, but heavens to be literal, in the sense of “that area up there above us”. The firmanent of heaven is clear in scripture that it refers to waters under the heaven to be gathered into one place. Now this does not refer to water in the sky, but on earth. It does not gather water under the dome, which would still be in the sky, but only water on the earth, under the firmanent. This suggests that the firmanent is not limited merely to some dome which separates, but involves a separation of earth and oceans from water above the firmanent, above the sky. You prefer your dome fixation, and would like to take that literally, yet deny others the right to take other things literally? Or merely because one word is figurative, all others must also be figurative? This type of reasoning would force heavens also to be figurative, rather than literal, so the rain must therefore not come from the heavens, since this is a figurative term? So certainly, firmanent or dome is reasonably to be understood as sky or expanse, and these words are partially figurative, and contextual. Even translating as expanse demonstrates the difficulty, since what is the limit of the expanse? But we get the idea.

But this is a diversion from the topic. The question is whether fossils are out of order. My statement was related to why the fossils would be out of order for evolution, but not for the flood. But in this case, I am just as guilty for not sticking to the topic.

Interesting.

No commentary necessary.

Yes. We do get the idea here.

Thank you for posting this explanation.

so where is the limit actually? 10 my? 20? 100? there is no such a limit.

try here:

"Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said that the discovery of fossil mammals in Precambrian rocks would "completely blow evolution out of the water.

You are importing foreign assumptions that obscure the plain meaning of Scripture. It was literal water that fell from above. The opening of the windows allowed that to happen. If the water is literal, the windows are literal. Case closed.

I hate to say it depends, but it does. Think of (American) football officials spotting the forward progress of a ball carrier. Suppose the running back comes down around midfield, and the official spots the ball at the 49-and-a-half. Was the official right or wrong? Almost certainly, his decision is good enough. If he spots the ball at the 41 yard line, he is certainly wrong. Where is the boundary between right and wrong? What if he spots the ball at the 49? Probably OK. How about the 48-and-a-half? Probably wrong, but maybe defensible. How about the 47? Almost certainly wrong. And the 40 yard line would be indefensible.

As in football officiating, so in paleontology. There is no bright, numerical line between what can be accounted for by evolution and what cannot. But there are some things like Precambrian rabbit, or a Jurassic primate, that would be paradigm-shaking. They would be the equivalent of spotting the ball at the 40 when the runner was tackled at midfield.

So do you have any examples of Precambrian rabbits or Jurassic primates to offer?

EDIT: Fixed grammatical mistake.

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Okay, if you say so. Or, if the windows are figurative, then the water is figurative, and the heavens are also figurative. No mixing of the two allowed.

lets check this. so you are claiming that we cant push back species lets say by dozens my? we actually do have such examples:

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/04/16/rsbl.2011.0228

Huh? Where did Chris make that claim?

@Dcscccc, did you read the article? I don’t think you understand what it says.

Meanwhile, how about answering Chris_Falter’s question:
So do you have any examples of Precambrian rabbits or Jurassic primates to offer?

Do you? Yes or no?

(I don’t think Dcscccc knows what “Precambrian rabbits” means. If he/she did, he/she wouldn’t have posted the royalsociety link. )

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i will answer your questions.but first answer mine:

thanks.

@dcscccc and I have gone around on these questions previously. S/he typically wantonly evades nuanced discussion and refuses to dig into the philosophy of science questions surrounding how science is actually done and what it might mean to falsify a theory, preferring instead to stick to facile oversimplifications and substance-less objections, pretending that these are in fact slam-dunk “gotchas.” I suspect you won’t see another response to your reasonable (reiteration of @Chris_Falter’s) questions, just as I didn’t see any to mine.

What is interesting, is that there are apparently as many mammal species in the “dinosaur layers”, as there are dinosaur species… 432 mammal species found so far. While it is true that many geologists are aware of mammals in these layers, the numbers and variety certainly do not attract much attention. So they evidently lived at the same time, in the same climates, and often in the same locations. Hmmm

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Really? That’s a surprise to the paleontologists I know who study them. Can you quantify your evidence that they “do not attract much attention”?

The reason why geologists don’t spend a lot of time on them while paleontologists do is because they are scientists conducting research into different specializations.

I love it! It’s that traditional tactic of making simply statements and then trying to imply that those statements are somehow a problem for scientists but somehow bolster the science-denialists’ argument.

It’s humorous on the one hand but also sad in how it reflects the state of science education in the USA today. These kinds of tactics actually gain traction and impress some people.

Time to move on. Nothing to see here.

What’s really sad is the continual adhominem perjoratives tossed into the ring by the trolls who never really read nor understand what the real posters are saying. As long as you equate every anti-evolutionary argument with “science-denialist”, you will simply reduce all the rest of your comments to sheer irrelevant nonsense. When you make a conscious effort to avoid making such a conflated equilibration, you may begin to achieve a wee bit of credibility.

Do you understand why paleontologists do not find Jurassic mammals to be a challenge to the theory of evolution?

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What’s interesting is that mammals could easily live in the same climatic conditions as dinosaurs. Those mammals and similar mammals still exist today, yet the dinosaurs do not. This implies that climate alone is not the criteria for why the dinosaurs do not exist today. In addition, the idea that the animals were small and so could hide from the dinosaurs also appears to be a flawed theory, a fallacy of conjecture. Predators in general are not larger than the largest mammals, and yet both larger animals and smaller animals that might be prey, continue to exist, whether giraffes, antelope, wildebeest, bison, rabbits, sheep, goats, mice, squirrels. There is no reasonable logic for the size of the mammals in the dino sediment layers, and there is no significant difference in the number of species of both kinds.

Paleontologists find the challenge to be surmountable, because they are flexible, and the theory itself is so flexible as to have no discernible shape; thus one never knows whether one is surmounting a challenge or sliding underneath it.

Hi @johnZ -

Actually some dinosaurs did not become extinct; instead they became the ancestors of birds.

Also, you are generalizing far too broadly by speaking of all dinosaurs as if they were the same. Some were large, some were small; some had feathers, some did not. When the climate was plunged into a terrible chill and food sources became extremely scarce, the (relatively) small feathered dinos were able to survive. As were the (relatively) small mammals that had fur.

This is all off the top of my head. If you are convinced I’m just wrong, I’ll go find some links for you. But I think the conversation would be more productive if we focused on what paleontology actually claims.

Peace,

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I think you are a reasonably charitable and decent contributor, Chris. However, don’t you agree that this sentence above is not quite right? Just because a species was ancestor of birds, does not mean that they didn’t go extinct. Evolutionarily speaking, that is a nonsequitor.

And it is not I who speak of all dinosaurs as if they were the same… it is the generalization most commonly made , that dinosaurs have gone extinct. Today there is a claim that birds have not just descended from dinosaurs, but actually are dinosaurs… which is more semantics and arbitrary categorization at play. Today I learned that crocodiles are somewhat warm-blooded, not cold-blooded (foolish me to think that reptiles were all cold-blooded) , but mostly due to size, since they still require external heat since they don’t generate enough internally. So the postulation now seems to be that dinosaurs are somewhere between warm-blooded and cold-blooded, which is convenient of course, since it allows for more endless possibilities. But if so, then it makes more sense that crocodiles are dinosaurs, than birds are dinos.

We have mammals large and small in all environments across the globe. There is no reason for only small mammals to exist in the fossil record with the dinosaurs that have gone extinct. The large dinosaur herbivores were not hunted to extinction, and there is no reason why large mammal predators, or for that matter large mammal herbivores could not have found a reasonable niche. In fact, the larger size would often give them an advantage against predators, and it would be the young that would be most vulnerable, which is also true for the dinosaurs.

Food sources might become scarce, but so would the predators. Furthermore, food sources would not become scarce everywhere on the globe.

You are also confusing the conditions before the demise of the dinos with the aftereffect of the conditions which supposedly made them extinct.

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@johnZ

You write:

“We have mammals large and small in all environments across the globe. There is no reason for only small mammals to exist in the fossil record with the dinosaurs that have gone extinct. The large dinosaur herbivores were not hunted to extinction, and there is no reason why large mammal predators, or for that matter large mammal herbivores could not have found a reasonable niche. In fact, the larger size would often give them an advantage against predators, and it would be the young that would be most vulnerable, which is also true for the dinosaurs.”

Did you REALLY write this? Or are you quoting someone. If Young Earth Creationism were true … you would be right!

You are actually arguing with circular logic now. Since all the big dinosaurs are gone in the modern era we are left with the presumption that they WERE around until the Flood.

If they were around until the Flood, then SOMEWHERE ANYWHERE in the world there should be pre-flood bones for cows or horses or elephants or whales with dinosaur bones.

The fact this has NEVER been seen tells us that the young earth model is QUITE WRONG!

THEN …we offer a predictive hypothesis that explains/predicts that even HUMANS would not have successfully shared the earth with carnivorous dinosaurs!

Hi @johnZ - I hope this little communication of mine finds you doing well and doing good, by God’s grace.

My understanding is that biologists use the term pseudoextinction to refer to a species that evolves into a daughter species, and reserve the term extinction for the situation in which the last living member of the species dies without a descendant. Of course, I am not a biologist, so if you can find an authoritative source that says differently, I would be happy to change my terminology.

This is a plausible set of hypotheses. Unfortunately, it is not supported by the fossil record. Ultimately, any scientific hypothesis needs to be weighed against the evidence. The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, and the sharp distinction between fossil species on either side of it, is very well substantiated

Grace and peace,

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