From what I see, the others see no difference at all. Do you?
(I do not respond to threats. I have said close it. Do so if you wish. This thread should not be about me or my beliefs)
Richard
From what I see, they see all the differences consistent with a theistic stance on Evolution … mostly because you don’t seem able to articulate what you think is a better perspective.
There is something inherently flawed with this thread if you are unable to describe a better perspective.
Evolution for Dummies.
Even before Darwin coined the term it was believed that there was a hierarchy of creatures starting with single cells, developing complexity, and because there are boney fish it was assumed that land animals developed from them. The along comes Darwin with ideas of the mechanisms that could develop complexity or specialisations. But there was a problem to get from a fish to a land animal you have to lose aquatic features to be replaced by land dwelling. Hey, aren’t they called amphibians? so logic suggested that the first land creatures were amphibian and all other land creatures developed from them. But the problem remained. To get to a lunged creature you have to devolve the skin breathing an besides there are “Lung fish”, perhaps we can bypass amphibians? But fish do not have limbs as such. So we look for transitional creatures whereby the fins mutate into load bearing limbs. Not really forthcoming. Oh dear.
Lets thin again. What if there was an earlier creature, who never bcfame a fish but became a reptile in one development? Brilliant. We do not need a transition between fish and land animals, or even amphibians and reptiles, we go straight to reptiles. But wait the metabolism for reptiiles is completely different from mammals. How do we change thiem over. We look for transients, and fail again. Therefore there must have been an earlier break where the creature develops self regulating heat. We do not go via reptiles we go straight to mammals. But what about Dinosaurs? Oh they were all reptiles and when the meteor crashed all the advanced reptiles died out allowing the mammals to take over. Then someone realises that some of the dinosaurs must have had self regulating heat to be the size they were. Whoops! Now the cat is amongst the pigeons. There is no clear cut way to develop each type of creature. I know, we will let reptilian dinosaurs become birds and other dinosaurs become mammals, or even have primal mammals scurrying around under massive dinosaurs waiting for them to become extinct.
(There is a little bit of diverse thought on this aspect, and I am not going to spell them all out)
You see its these transitions!. To change metabolisms you need to devolve before you evolve and that is not natural, or evolutionary.
So instead of aquatic mammals being some sort of downgrade or devolution, they are just mammals that never left the water. The primal mammal was aquatic.
Boney fish are just paralleling other types of creature. That is how evolution works. The fact that a fin looks like a hand is morphological not evolutionary. There is no need to change a fin to a leg. Each develops to its natural peak.
Common Ancestry? Everything comes from a single cell. But how they develop from there…
The point being there are only so many ways to construct a living organism. Once you get a bone structure it will mirror other boney creatures. Similarities are functional not developmentally ancestral. The flaw in Common Ancestry is to try and develop a reptile from a fish, or a mammal for a reptile.
As for theistic development. Traditionally God makes a prima cat and it diversifies, then a dog, and so on. OK so lets be a bit less specific. God could make a primal mammal and let it go, But Humans? Aren’t they special?
Without getting out of hand, Theistic evolution removes much of the chance in development, There is logical order in development that mirrors in each line of development because that is how God created things to develop. There are hidden funnels, and biases that mean y can’t get Pegassi or griffins. Humans were always going to be bipedal and intelligent. That is no fluke. But science will never identify where or how God did it, all they will see is the development of each type of creature. Yes there is Natural Selection with the limits of God’s plans, but there is also allowance for the exotic, and evolutionary anomaly and apparently weaker or less perfectly adapted to survive and thrive.
Richard
Mudskippers are not transitional, but their pectoral fins are load bearing. Tiktaalik pectorals were load bearing.
2 Likes
So, you are essentially a Creationist. Young or Old Earth? Either way, you don’t accept the idea of Evolutionary forces forming pioneer populations one ecological niche at a time.
As for your example of fish to amphibeans…. tetrapods don’t have to LOSE anything. We have fish with fins as legs. We have fish with leggy fins and alternate methods of taking air from the atmosphere ….
But whales are mammals without legs. So is a whale an enhanced mammal? … or a ruined mammal?
Instead of getting bogged down in these categorical discussions, answer a simple question?
Do you believe a global flood wiped out the dinosaurs? If you do, we are making progress.
Behind all these considerations are God’s clear use of natural laws to create the living creatures that cover the Earth. You and I could agree on this fundamental fact.
1 Like
Because the prevenient laws of nature explain everything above eternal instantiation by the intentional ground of being? Or does it require unnatural tweaking?
1 Like
Why must bones only be “invented” once? Why must every boney creature come from one source? Bones are just a fact of nature, they are not a once off “fluke”.
Stop thinking linearly.
Stop comparing Ancestrally.
Compare functionally.
The basic structure of a vehicle has not changed in thousands of years. You need a rectangle with a wheel in each corner. That will arise whether one has been invented before or not. (Simplistic, and there are exceptions, but there is no need to go there)
If you stop thinking ancestrally across creation and follow each line of development, it works. There are no “impossible” transitions" because you are always going from simple to complex. A heart is a heart, is a pump, so when a pump becomes necesary a pump will develop. One pump or four? Who cares if it works. Why must a four chambered heart have originally come from a disparate creature who had a single one?
The trouble with fluke or chance is that Lightening never strikes twice in the same place, except that it does! Instead of finding the first example and assuming everything derived from it, assume that the feature is always possible and will occur wherever.
Stop thinking ancestrally!
And?
Why does that mean that all load bearing limbs came from this obscure fish?
Load bearing limbs are a part of creation. They occur when needed. They do not have to wait to be invented!
Stop thinking ancestrally
Get out of the tunnel vision and see thing from a global perspective. Marsupials are not the missing links, they are a divergence. Mammals did not have to arise via marsupials! (When I was taught, they never were!) This whole notion of Plattypus beings God’s hint for development is so ludicrous I did not believe people could think it. Talk about clutching at straws!
A pouch works fine, there is no need to develop a placenta,
Richard
It is a mammal who developed in an aquatic environment.
Why a flood? because of Scripture? Give me a break. I see no reason to dispute the climate change due to meteor or similar and they did not have time to adapt.
There is no need to impose Scripture onto science. (all the time, I admit to including it philosophically)
There is no need for miracles until there is one. Creation did not need any. God worked within the parameters He set which is why Science cannot see His hand at work.
Science identifies natural functions and development it is only when they start postulating in terms of chance and fluke that God gets ignored. Chance is a tool like any other. You can factor it in. it does not have to be the driving force.
Richard
None that will admit it? How close do they come? What’s the spectrum of natural-unnatural? Minimally it has to be eternal unnatural intentional instantiation of the prevenient laws of physics, all THEISTS must believe at least that, as nothing can exist outside of THEOS for them.
1 Like
Oh, I don’t know. Any theist who accept scientific evolution as it stands does. They claim humans could be anything that became sentient from a reptile to an insectoid. It was just “fluke” that produced the human form. God’s image, for them, is a function not a shape or design
Richard
How God’s image could be anything other than functional, i.e. moral (whatever that is?), I don’t know.
You have never come across literal Biblical understanding?
Human vanity can believe anything
Richard
Geologists and Archaeologists are perfectly capable of finding most of the creatures who were in the right place and the right time to contribute their anatomical novelties to the global “mix” of life. Do you think scientists PREFER to have only ONE example of a successfull innovation?
There were several branches of winged reptiles discovered. They all competed for the top spot. God let one win. One can say the same thing about “Homo sapiens sapiens”. Out of many there was one winner.
It’s almost as if you reject the idea of God creating a winner species in various evolutionary scenarios. Insects have six legged bodies with tripartite anatomies (head, thorax abdomen). Do we really need TWO identical sources of these land-based arthropods to be convinced that Evolution is valid?
God also created centipedes, which are different from millipedes. And spiders. And scorpions.
God must have LOVED arthropods, yes? Multiple lineages of marine arthropods splashed up on the coastal strips - - avoiding marine predators and/or finding new sources of food.
Evolutionary studies find dozens of species of marsupials in Australia… coming from just a handful of marsupial lineages. But once these original species “radiated” into new ecological niches, it was rare to see a lineage reverse itself. Apparently God didn’t love marsupials quite as much as placental mammals …. because only a small number of placentals found homes in Australia well enough to survive the competition (bats who flew across the ocean, and rats who floated across).
@RichardG , God could have created two versions of tasmanian devils (one placental). And if he had, that would make a great story!
Instead, God left Australia mostly to the marsupials…. and the rest of the world mostly to the placentals.
1 Like
@RichardG
Agreed! Theistic evolutionists can look to a higher source when we see a superbly amazing case of evolution. But other than just enough miracles to become a well-adjusted Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist (etc., etc.), we “theist evolutionaries” are usually happy with the idea of God using the seemingly random pattern of billiard balls, on a pool table, to execute God’s extraordinary creation. Even Dr. Behe uses this metaphor.
Scientists who are not theists certainly assume that all evolution is random. They have no choice.
Scientists who are theists can allow for a LEVEL of metaphysically miraculous evolutionary steps. But if they are scientists they know that there is no way to scientifically document the miraculous. But PROVIDENTIAL RANDOMNESS is one of our best ideas!
1 Like
@RichardG
There are millions and millions of humans around the world who believe God guided the seemingly random pattern of evolution. They do NOT think humans could be any way OTHER than the way God wanted.
P.S.
I am sorry that you have become a victim of the zeal of unspecified immature atheists. Theist Evolutionaries need a club house badly. I am hoping BioLogos can be that supportive club house!
1 Like
Now you are the one playing the zealot. Leave the Atheists be. Christian Evolutionists have more than one interpretation for the Platypus. Be content with your religious inclinations. Accept science’s limitations. Which religious tome would you refer to for explaining the Platypus?
1 Like
@RichardG You are becoming a teleogical bully. Scientists can only go where the evidence leads them. They aren’t going to conclude: “By gosh, the platypus is so divergent, it must be a de novo miracle!”
2 Likes
I do.
That is not how God works.
There is a mental process here, you either follow it or break it. Not for me to dictate, but I see no reason to make things more complicated.
If we are going to apply Scripture it would be “everything to its kind” It has always been the transition from one type to another that causes issues, whether it is the changing of system to the simplicity of compatible offspring. If everything follows its own path and progression that will not occur. The only debate becomes how fine tuning the division has to be, a in, all mammals, or subdivisions, or as fine as hominid and ape. Does the 2% matter.
I am not convinced that science should really care! It has the basics, why quibble over a few details.
Evolution has always been best at fine tuning and adaption, it was never cut out for creating from scratch. The Examples Darwin saw were just that: adaption and fine tuning.
Richard
No one said they did, but I was told that platypus and marsupials are considered precursers for all mammals, only Australia never had the “fluke” adaption to go that way
I am being no more a bully than all those trying to ram Common Ancestry down my throat. so I bit back: diddums.
Richard
@RichardG
Read a book on these topics that upset you like this. I don’t believe either animal group can be considered PRECURSORS for all mammals. [TYPO FIXED]