Contrary to popular impressions (not just on the part of antievolutionists), there is a huge range of degrees of ability to interbreed. Ironically, there are major contradictions within current YEC sources between trying to claim that species are far more isolated than they really are to claiming that any sign of interbreeding is proof that things are just one big kind. The various types of domestic dogs are varieties of wolf, genetically modified by human selection. Although it would certainly be difficult to cross a St. Bernard and a chihuahua, there are quite an assortment of odd mutts out there, and it certainly would be possible in a few generations to have more compatibly-sized individuals with chihuahua and wolf ancestry. If two populations show no obstacle at all to interbreeding, we consider them the same species. If they cannot interbreed at all, we consider them different species. But there are many cases where there is a degree of interbreeding and a degree of difference. Seagulls are notorious for hybridization. There are cases where population A can breed with population B and B with C and C with D but not D with A. Rarely a mule is fertile. Practically all of the white oaks can interbreed, as can the black oaks. Some species can breed if you stick them together, but they would never pair up in the wild. For example, frogs that rely on hearing the right call note to find a mate may not respond to the other’s call, but you can get tadpoles by putting the two in the same small aquarium. It’s a continuum, exactly what we should see if species are gradually evolving and developing differences.
4 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
423
We know it was written in two waves over two centuries. The second wave contains the ‘prophecies’ used by the gospel writers. From a forensic point of view that proves nothing at all. Furthermore the problematic theology is germane. If Jesus was prophesied in Isaiah 52-53 in about 540 BCE then penal substitutionary atonement was in the mind of the writer. Divinely inspired? Or off his own bat? It’s only possibly prophetic in hindsight if one accepts the gospels as true and they were written decades after the event. Things blur. As I said, there are more, far more questions than answers. And I want to believe.
I think he’s talking about the dual interpretation–where something isn’t clearly about anything in the future, but NT has appropriated it as foreshadowing. I confess it really does bother me.
In 25 years of photographing the Pillars, nothing has changed. They are not creating stars.
Again, with gas planets or rock planets we don’t see them forming. God made the stars and the planets as they are.
And then you’ve got plenty of other wacky things that plants do - like hybridization, whole genome duplication, and speciation all basically occurring within a single generation.
Will two 2.7 gram ping pong balls in a vacuum ten thousand miles apart with no other forces be attracted enough by their own gravity to eventually touch each other? (You now have numbers.)
2 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
432
Steady Randy. For some years now I’ve internalized the fact that the epistemology of Christ and the early Christians and most of their heirs to date is nothing like ours; people like us, beneficiaries of the Enlightenment.
And that’s OK.
I still want to believe that they, starting with Jesus, God incarnate, were right, for the ‘wrong’ reasons.
It’s OK.
The true gospel is such infinitely towering good news. It has to be true regardless.
First, where will you get 10k miles of vacuum with no outside forces? In such a perfect system, if it did draw them together, it would take a long time, and only work because of the absence of real forces, such as stellar wind, radiation, heat, magnetism, etc.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
437
I don’t believe, I know. You know otherwise. You don’t believe either. You have no doubt. Neither do I.
That’s fine. That’s epistemology for you.
We are talking star formation. How does two ping pong balls in a perfect vacuum advance any theory on star formation? Tell me that, because any positive force will draw these together, no matter how negligible.
You do not see the correlation. Hydrogen and helium atoms have mass, do they not? (Recall from earlier that it does not matter whether they are gas, liquid or solid in earth’s environment.) And having mass they have gravity, no? Two objects with mass separated by a distance in a vacuum.
There ya go. Including helium and hydrogen atoms and molecules. Lots of them. They form stars. Slowly, especially at first. Over eons.