Evolution is like a frozen river with ice that gets thinner and thinner as one approaches the middle of it.

Micro-evolution is a fact that all scientists agree on. That is that some species have evolved for others of the same species. New cats can evolve from previous types of cats.

It is a big leap to go to macro-evolution. That is to say a complex form of life evolved from a simple form. Then it evolved into a type of fish which evolved into some type of aquatic mammel which than evolved into an amphibious mammel and then a land-dwelling mammel, etc. etc. etc.

It is an even bigger leap to than say that the simple life form evolved from a non-life form.

It is an unimaginable leap to than say that basic non-life forms such as elements came to be from nothing.

I think we have a much stronger sense of where the elements came from: the processes of star formation and star 'life cycles' are pretty well understood in broad outline. Many creationists (including David Koot, IIRC) are willing to posit that the universe and earth are very old, and consider that the creation story basically pertains to the creation of life.

The Big Bang is a description of a 'what the evidence says happened' and not a 'why this happened'. Suggesting that God caused the Big Bang to occur is something I'd be 100% comfortable with. (Remember, I've always said I believe God is the Creator.)

There's no stronger explanation out there (as far as I know) than 'in the beginning there was nothing, which exploded'. I think most astronomers are humble enough to acknowledge that we don't know what *caused* the Big Bang... but from the first attoseconds of the Big Bang beginning, the laws of nature were composing themselves, and those have led to the universe we see around us. Or, I should more carefully say, it is possible to explain everything we see around us using those laws.

The more usual conjectured order is

• prokaryotes - organisms with cells with DNA but no nucleus, eg bacteria. There are fossilized ones dated at 3.5 Billion years old, and they can survive in extremely harsh (low temp, high temp, high pressure) environments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote.
  They live either alone or in groups. They use a variety of fuels - including hydrogen sulphide. Some live inside you.
• eukaryote - organisms with cells with a nucleus, eg you. Fossils start at around 1.2 Billion years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote
• fish
• air breathing fish
• amphibians
• land dwellers
• mammals
  http://www.earthlife.net/mammals/evolution.html
• shore dwelling mammals
• whales

Challenge to the short-age creationist model. Why do we find prokaryote fossils at 3B and eukaryote only at 1B years? Why did the Flood separate them out like this?

This explains a lot about whales - including why they have the DNA for legs and occassionally it gets expressed.

/Bevin

The issue is not how elements formed the stars but how elements came into existance in the first place.

First, we don't know how old the earth is. Evolutionists can lie to their students and willfully ignorant followers but should give it a rest when addressing creationists who think outside the box a little more than the rest of the follow-the-crowd scientific community.

We don't know why the flood seperated the fossils or if the flood did. Creationists do not believe all things continue the same. Creationists believe the planet was dramatically different before and just after the flood. Adam lived 930 years. Seth lived 912 years, dying 1,042 years after the fall. If we believe the Biblical account, that means there was about 1,000 years of other life forms dying before man started dying. The fossil record should tell us the order the life forms dyed off.

Agreed - and it does, modulo its incompleteness.

But the prokaryotes are still all around us. They didn't die off. The question is "Why do they appear FIRST in the fossil record?"

/Bevin

If they are in the fossil record it is obvious that they died. If they are still with us it is obvious that they didn't completely die off. If they are first in the fossil record, it would seem they were the first to die. I don't see a mystery there.

[quote=bevin]

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/quote_wald.html



The George Wald quote is also found on page 393 of CREATION-- Accident or Design? by Harold G. Coffin, which is where I read it. Coffin's book was published before the Jehovah's Witness book.



Yes, 1954 is certainly a long time ago, yet despite many scientists working diligently to bring life out of non-life all of that time, they are not any closer to doing so than they were back then. It says a great deal about the probability of a living cell being formed completely by accident when we realize how long scientists have been putting forth such heroic efforts to accomplish it in their labs, yet to no avail.

Does anyone know how many molecules are contained in the average-sized cell?

Recently I found this newspaper article from 6-19-93:

'LIVING FOSSIL' discovered in caves in Australia

CANBERRA, Australia--- A small invertebrate, much like a shrimp and dating back to the time when Africa, South America and Australia were one continent, has been discovered living deep in Australian vaces, scientists said Wednesday.

Dubbed "a living fossil," the syncarid was found in caves at Wee Jasper, 44 miles west of Canberra, and is closely related to ancestors of modern crustaceans such as crabs and crayfish, a spokeswoman for the National Parks and Wildlife Service said.

"Fossils of forms similar to this have been dated at about 180 million years old," biologist Stefan Eberbard said in a statement. "It's an exciting find because this animal...is very rate and scientifically very interesting."

Eberhard, who called it a relic from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland, found the syncarids while surveying caves hundreds of yards below the surface.

My question about such finds is, isn't it rather remarkable that this animal has not evolved in the 180 million years it has been alive and since it was supposed to have become extinct? It is evidently virtually the same as the syncarid that lived and died 180 million years ago.


Another interesting article, this one from Dec. of '93 says:

SKELETON COULD BE LINK BETWEEN BIRDS, REPTILES

The skeleton of a tiny dinosaur that goes on display in Finland this week could be a missing link between reptiles and birds, the display's organizers said Thursday.

The fossilized skeleton, between 6 and 8 inches long and up to 70 million years old, is believed by some scientists to show that birds evolved from reptiles. Scientists, lacking fossils showing various stages of a gradual transition, have deduced the connection in the past from skeletal similarities.

The newspaper article admits the truth that many others find hard to face, which is that scientists lack fossils showing various stages of gradual transition and have been reduced to relying on deducing the connections on the basis of skeletal similarities. It's interesting also that the article reflects the truth that there is by no means agreement among the scientists on whether birds evolved from reptiles. Actually, a great deal of disagreement among scientists exists over virtually every aspect of the question of evolution.

[quote=Shane]

There are some plausible explanations for these things from the creationist viewpoint in such books as CREATION-- Accident or Design by Harold G. Coffin and in A Search For Meaning in Nature by Richard M. Ritland.