"There is no such thing as a 'transitional fossil'..."

Faith & Science Conversation
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Gotcha. It seems that the Bible does have rather robust descriptions of various kinds like the bird kind that includes bats. But let’s look at an article by Woodmorappe, something kind of recent: How Could Noah Fit the Animals on the Ark and Care for Them? | Answers in Genesis

In the section ‘how did the animals breathe’ I see:

The Bible is not specific as to the kind and size of window on the ark. It is reasonable to believe that one relatively small window would have adequately ventilated the ark. Of course, if there were a window running along the top center section, which the biblical description allows, all occupants would be even more comfortable. It is also interesting to note that the convective movement of air, driven by temperature differences between the warm-blooded animals and the cold interior surfaces, would have been significant enough to drive the flow of air. Plus, wind blowing into the window would have enhanced the ventilation further. However, if supplementary ventilation was necessary, it could have been provided by wave motion or even a small number of animals harnessed to slow-moving rotary fans.

Lots of just so stories here. Is that typical of these types of things?

I think you mean when evolutionists can actually predict such common ancestors and then find them. All the stinkin time. It was probably already mentioned but the most recent intermediate cetacean:
An Amphibious Whale from the Middle Eocene of Peru Reveals Early South Pacific Dispersal of Quadrupedal Cetaceans

Highlights:
• A quadrupedal whale is described based on a skeleton from the middle Eocene of Peru
• It combines terrestrial locomotion abilities and use of the tail for swimming
• This is the first record of an amphibious whale for the whole Pacific Ocean
• It supports early dispersal of cetaceans to the New World across the South Atlantic

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Genetic bottlenecks tend to usually not work out so well for various species like the Cheetah:
As a species, cheetahs show a dramatic reduction in overall genetic variation revealed by multiple genomic markers, including an ability to accept reciprocal skin grafts from unrelated cheetahs

Or the endangered Florida Panther:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/0960-9822(93)90197-V

An example of detecting population bottlenecks in wolves:
https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy2013122

Here’s a brief review paper on the negative and potential positive effects of invasive population groups:

And a nice overview:

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146

One of the biggest obstacles to life after a worldwide flood would be the covering of fertile soil by huge amounts of sterile sediment, much of which would also have large amounts of salt. Plant life would be very slow to return except perhaps on mountain tops where presumably the dove found the olive branch. Predator species would either die of starvation or quickly eradicate the few prey that were able to find enough food to survive. People would be out of luck finding food. No wonder Noah got drunk.

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147

Except, according to the YEC crowd even the tops of mountains were totally cover with water to the extent that marine fossils were deposited there. And how did an olive tree survive for a year submerged in water? Don’t think that is going to happen.

When you really think about the consequences of a truly global flood the idea just falls apart.

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Are you referring to the weight of the water, and the shifting plates which would cause the mountains to double in size from the originals and rifts in the oceans heating the water causing massive storms to pull down super cooled air, leading to polar ice caps? What about a moon closer to earth pulling some of the water in large tidal waves? Is there strata that was reversed in order where some of the land was seemingly flipped upside down? This is not the Bible account. This was the “observation” of natural man written in ANE text. They claimed a planet “split the earth in half”. They claimed the observers watched it happened, and told the descendants of the survivors of this apocalypse. Saying that plant life and animal life could not return based on one account, just makes the argument look one-sided. Could the claim be made that Satan had something to do with restoration as well? Being in charge of the planet, would not he want to outdo God in making it more abundant than God did? It would take thousands of years, where water action was at first fast acting, but as the moon moved further away, an equilibrium was finally realized. There could have been several “after” floods, and after tectonic action, that would have removed all definitive attributes of the first event. Even still, large “debri” chunks from the original planetary collision could have hit the earth at different times for hundreds of years. Even to the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, which seemed to have wiped out a few earlier civs that had to start over.

It is not that ancient humans and even Satan attempted to cover up the event. They were at the mercy of how nature works just like we are. They just experienced a lot more drastic changes, which were just everday normal experiences. Saying that all the evidence claims there was no drastic changes, does not make sense, and of course the only other answer would be time. But each change would mess with the clock itself. Resetting the clock would show different times, but it would not be proof that the clock was uneffected. The proof of constant evolution with only short intervals of interruption relies on the clock not being reset over and over again in rapid secession. Since rapid succession can be falsified, it has been ruled out. That is the bias, not the evidence itself.

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I got to learn about how Leonardo Da vinci wrote about that and rejected the global flood hypothesis to explain them due to a very careful study of the strata and the physics of floods:
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/vinci.html

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But the one account is the Bible. Do you have a more authoritative source? And I am just saying what the YEC model, as defined in “The Genesis Flood”, which seems to be the bible for the YEC folk.

To which clock are you referring? And what is the proof that this clock has been reset?

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I always thought he was one smart dude.

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The Bible account is a snapshot. It hardly explains, all that happened. How authoritative do you need, to accept what ancient humans thought happened? Now historically we understand it as the Flood. Should we not consider all accounts at the time relative to the account? The argument has been made that the Bible took the account from other sources and changed it around to fit their narrative. The argument can also be made that the Biblical account came from a different source and perhaps added to other sources when such sources were culturally mixed. So again what authority are you requesting? If you think that nature itself is a final authority it becomes meaningless. Humans are a fallible part of nature. Without getting into how firm into truth math and science can be, there will always be reasonable doubt in the hands of fallible humanity.

I am talking about the dating clock. We still have to reconcile the point that humans lived for a greater length of time than any physical evidence provides. I think we need to accept these humans were biologically the same as all animal kinds from the very beginning. Nor does this last event explain all the appearance of time passage neccessary. Humans however were not subject to the effects of decay, and the cycle of death and rebirth as the rest of the animal kingdom. The modern view is to use math and a dating clock and start from present time and look backwards. I do not think it is that simple. We have no reference in time to when it actually began. Was the reference yesterday, today, in months from now, or even centuries? I do not see how it can be a specific x billion year time frame, or even a 6k year time frame.

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I know what I consider authoritative. The question was what do you consider to be authoritative.

I do not.

True, but we are told in the Bible that the truth in nature comes from God.

Where did you get this idea?

Actually we do. Lots of them.

Personal incredulity is never a good way to consider science.

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I made breakfast.

A - he made breakfast.

B - how did he make breakfast?

A - he made it.

B - oh, it looks like he broke some eggs into a frying pan.

A - no. He made it. Don’t try to take him out of it.

B - well, breaking eggs into a frying pan and letting the stove heat them up doesn’t mean he didn’t make breakfast.

A - you are obviously interpreting incorrectly. It wasn’t the stove and frying pan that made breakfast. He made the breakfast.

B - …

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155

Are you referring to Leviticus 11:13-19?

13 These you shall regard as detestable among the birds. They shall not be eaten; they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, 14 the buzzard, the kite of any kind; 15 every raven of any kind; 16 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk of any kind; 17 the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, 18 the water hen, the desert owl, the carrion vulture, 19 the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat (NRSV)

As you can see there are various kinds listed in this passage so here “birds” refers to a collection of different kinds. Bats are included because they are flying creatures which simply shows that Moses was using the classification of his time and not the modern scientific classification.

This is one of those “Bible Errors” that has been refuted countless times but still persists among the willfully ignorant.

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That’s the point @aarceng. When the Bible says ‘kinds’ it uses the classification of their time, not a guideline for pinning the original baramin on the phylogeny.

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God for all things. Science for present phenomenon.

If truth in nature comes from God, it cannot contadict God. I do not think the goal of EC is to contradict God. I think it is a worthy task to attempt to reconcile any differences. I am not sure to what extent as obviously humanity is hard enough to reconcile on some issues much less all of them.

The state of humanity as portrayed in Genesis 1-6 is hard to comprehend, and has always been hard to comprehend. It was not given to Moses to comprehend. Not that God would use “I told you so”, but it seems to me that God will not be able to say in the final judgment. “I never told you.” Was it enough information? Did Adam have full understanding of the consequences of his disobedience?

Not many accept what it means to be God on earth. I do not see any other way, than humans were created to be God on earth, but with limited knowledge, thus using methods like science to be God’s physical senses on earth, with a free will to play and experiment with these senses. This was from the very beginning not billions of years later. There was not even a sense of time, because limited time was not fully understood, until Noah. It seems to me that God did not arbitrarily choose ages for those before the Flood, but gave them in the record for a purpose. If that purpose was for truth, would that not make any thought contrary to that truth wrong? Moses should have known the claim that Egyptians had previously ruled for thousands of years and extended ages of time. Either he adapted Egyptian time to fit what God said, or God gave him a specific timetable that was true.

Either God created the earth with the appearance of age, or Adam and the other humans who were God on earth lived for billions of years with no sense of time. But only humans, because the rest of creation lived normal physical lives, but longer periods than we do now post Flood earth.

The idea of evolution being projected onto beings who were actually God on earth does not fit the account that God gave. Nor would it fit the plan that humans think they need to get back to being God on earth. It does fit the point that the physical needs to work on, evolve to, a God like status, which is another plan besides the one we find in the Bible which claims to be the actual Word of God.

Is science an infallible method given by God or a way for humans to figure out how the physical works? If science is limited to the physical for the sake of humans and free will, how can there be an immutable law stating that science is infallible? Stating that there was no Flood already is a human bias that effects all scientific endeavors. So are you right when you say personal incredulity is the wrong approach when humanity declares there was no Flood? From the evidence we say we do know. We know something that God does not know? Unless you re-write history, to fit the evidence, and make the claim without knowledge, that Moses never existed, you have a contradiction of truth.

How do I know the Bible is the true version and the evidence is not? It is not personal interpretation. Being literal is not just one’s person’s private interpretation any more than peer review means evidence is the truth. Now if you start turning the Bible into a metaphor or just figurative language, you are making it the author’s private interpretation or any other human who interprets the Bible any way they want to back up some private thought process. I am not just saying that YEC are just as wrong as EC, because I have a belief system of my own. But if I cannot believe science, because it goes against God, it is not because of science. It is because others are not taking into consideration that God does not lie, nor contradict the evidence. If humans do not consider all the facts, and account for them, can they get a false interpretation? If we remove God from all equations, in the bias that God does not exist, Science will not change that bias and declare God’s glory. If there is no record given by God at all, the same applies. We will never figure God out or what God did or did not do at all in the physical evidence. It is not that God is diliberately keeping us in the dark anymore than the original humans who were actually the image of God on earth. God already knew what God was. But keeping with free will, God has to be sought out. Only after finding God, can we declare, “All of creation declares and glorifies God.”

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Problem being taking Genesis literally is interpretation, which is human and therefore fallible. BTW, many of the early Church Fathers did not take Genesis literally.

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Do you want me to take that literally or figuratively?

So once again, are the early church fathers authoritative or is Genesis? Jesus only figuratively introduced Moses to the disciples? The Hebrews were only to view God as figurative? How can reading the text literally be my interpretations coming from the text? Taking Genesis literally is my opinion, and part of the formation of my belief system, but not my personal take on what God was trying to communicate to us. I would have to change the words into something else with a figurative outcome for it to be my personal interpretation. It is possible that repeating the text shows my bias and interpretation when communicating to others. But I cannot change the literal written text. If you can convince me that God left us nothing to go by whatsoever, and we have only our personal feelings to go on, I may conclude this world is in a real mess.

But literally, you do not have to believe anything I say. Or read my words as literal. It may get confusing after awhile if we are even on the same topic after a few exchanges. If you do not agree with a literal reading of Genesis, then do you expect God to make us guess about everything claiming to be from God? If creation is from God it could be any one’s guess on how it happened with that logic. The one with the the most popular acceptance comes out as the truth? Or just remove the term truth altogether. Science is the way to figure out existence, but any literal reading of the results is just personal belief and interpretation.

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@Bill_II, it would be interesting and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is looking at it, but there is a lack of documentary evidence on the subject. What we do know is that vegetation was well established by the time the occupants left the Ark.

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That sounds like a just so story.

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You must certainly be aware that geologically, a local flood is impossible of the scale that would require an ark to save people and animals for the period of a year, which was how long they lived on the ark. The geology of the middle east simply would not permit such a flood of such a scale.

Further, you must also be aware that the ark did not need to house most species on earth; only the land dwelling species that could not survive in water. So the ark did sustain many birds, but not likely penguins, ducks, or swans, or pelicans. It did sustain many mammals, but likely not seals, walruses, whales, manatees. It did sustain many reptiles, but likely not turtles, alligators, swimming snakes. Probably most amphibians did not need the ark either. And of course, fish and clams, mollusks, bacteria, fungi, all could survive without the ark. And as a wolf could produce dogs and coyotes and other “dog” types (we have dogs today that look like they have virtually reverted to a wolf), not so many species as you might think, would have to represent their type on the ark.

163

your analogy is convenient, but misrepresents the discussion.

A - did you see him break the eggs?
B - No.
A - Do you know how old the eggs were?
B - No.
A - Do you know that his mother didn’t make his breakfast for him?
B- No.
A - Why do you believe him when he said he made the breakfast?
B - I believe him.
A - Good. Because someone else told me that his butler made the breakfast a month ago, froze it, and then brought it over after microwaving it. But that doesn’t make much sense to me either.