DSM

"Filling in the knowledge gap with 'evolution' is just another variation of 'god of the gaps'."

No it isn't.

Putting the fossil records together is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. So far the pieces are coming together to make a coherent picture. The god of the gaps consists only of the few as yet missing pieces.

The god of the gaps has no picture of his own.

What alternative? I'm glad you asked.

There are two alternatives, as I see it. Either the order which we observe within the present universe, with it's body of empirical data was given rise to by a conscious plan and purpose, or it was not.

Let's presuppose the latter, just for the sake of argument. We would need to assume material causes, which would eventually lead to a material explanation, i.e. some form of evolution.

Alternatively, let's assume the former, again for the sake of argument. If so, what would we expect to see? Does it match the empirical data?

You say the fossils, etc. in this instance do not match the data. I suggest otherwise. A worldwide catastrophic flood, as mentioned in genesis, would give the perfect conditions to trap the billions of living things in silt and mud layers which later harden and mineralise as fossils.

There's the beginning of a discussion, perhaps a long one, based on factual evidence.

Yet, Pericles, I don't think you are ready or open to listen to an argument coming from the other side of the table.

You suggest that the quote from Lewontin was out of place in this context. I thought it most appropriate in revealing the bias certain people have against even the possibility of viewing the evidence from a theistic perspective.

Do you wish to deny that you or other people ordinarily hold biases?

Saltpetre,
Yes, I would suggest that the evidence supports the idea that mammals have always co-existed.

You suggest a clear line of progress from reptile to monotreme, marsupial, and then placental mammal. Can such a clear progression explain why some pairs (such as wolf and thylacine) are so similar while the deer and macropod are so different? And with such equivalence between marsupial and placental, can we find marsupial equivalents of such diverse creatures as bats and whales when placentals have evolved with such diversity (bats, whales, cats, rodents, humans?) I think such diversity requires a different explanation.

I would also dispute several of your other assertions, including the idea that human embryos and foetus display any clear evidence that they were once reptiles or anything non human. It's the abortion clinics (or abortion industry, if I could call it that) that often wish to promote the idea that human foetus are mere animals or something less than human. From conception, human embryos have 23 pairs of chromosomes, just like their parents, and though unique individuals they are already as human as they'll ever be.

We "are told" on someone's good authority that Australian aborigines have been in Aus for 30-40000 years. Yet any model of population growth would make this untenable. People tend to multiply quickly. Starting with a small population and multiply that number by any minimal growth rate would lead to astronomically huge numbers after even ten or 15 thousand years. There's no evidence of these untold millions of people existing, or that Aboriginal people ever reached a maximum carrying capacity for their environment. The only other explanation is that the aborigines spent most of their 40000 years with a growth rate bordering on extinction. The real figures are more consistent with them being in Australia for only a few thousand years.

Oh, I listen, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Yet, Pericles, I don't think you are ready or open to listen to an argument coming from the other side of the table.<<

I most definitely listen. And I enjoy listening, especially because it is a constant source of fascination to me that there is someone around who still believes these stories.

Or, perhaps I should say, appears to believe.

Because I do have to admit that there is a part of me that suspects that you are having a lend of us all, and chuckling away at our persistence in responding to your tall tales. So I will always listen, the better to understand your thought processes. Think of it as an ongoing social experiment, or highly focussed survey.

>>Do you wish to deny that you or other people ordinarily hold biases?<<

Absolutely not. However, I tend to make allowances for my natural bias - in this case for fact over faith - when assessing different arguments. Your bias is in entirely the opposite direction - yet you make no such allowance, and let your faith determine absolutely your response to the facts.

Which is why you make elementary mistakes like this one...

>>You say the fossils, etc. in this instance do not match the data. I suggest otherwise<<

I said no such thing.

I simply pointed out that if you start with fossils, and without a presupposition that there is a God somewhere who made them, that you would not independently determine the latter from the former.

In other words, there is nothing inherent in the evidence - the facts, the fossils, the rocks themselves - that would lead you to a single fixed conclusion: that there was this guy called Noah, and he built this ark thingy to put all the animals in. In order for that to work, you need the story to exist first, only then can you "fit" the evidence to it.

As always, I look forward to your next contribution.

Dan,

I notice you completely ignored my question regarding the emergence, or continuation, of species after the mass extinction event which extinguished the dinosaurs. There is of course one obvious reason for your reticence, and that is the huge unavoidable flaw in the whole creationist argument - the inability to fault carbon dating. So simple to just deny the science out of hand, but with absolutely no proof whatever of how the science may be flawed. A conspiracy, I suppose, but on who's side?

You state "Yes, I would suggest that the evidence supports the idea that mammals have always co-existed."

The idea is patently absurd, an impossibility. The only reason lower mammals still exist is because of isolation due primarily to sea level rise - which closed the land bridges between South East Asia, PNG and Aus, and that between Europe and North America. Everywhere higher mammalian species have migrated or have been introduced they have displaced the vast majority of the lower mammalian species in short order - by sheer competition. The only remaining monotremes are found in Aus and PNG - in habitats isolated from invasion by higher species - though there is evidence of an earlier wider distribution, and similar applies to the earlier distribution of marsupial species.

Higher species displace lower species wherever they compete for the same resources. Hence, in Asia, Europe and Africa the only evidence of lower mammal occupation is by way of long dead fossils.

I take it then that some virus or other must have wiped out the bulk of placental mammals which formerly must (by your hypothesis) have formerly existed in Aus and PNG?

As for Aus Aboriginal population, they have always lived in harmony with the environment, and, like the San people of Sub-Saharan Africa, have maintained modest population numbers, partly by choice and partly due to the limitations imposed by the environment. Carbon dating confirms a long occupation of Aus pre- colonisation.

Dan,

I am not disputing that human embryos and foetuses are human beings, Homo Sapiens, from conception, but am only asserting that early human embryonic development bears distinct similarities to the embryonic development of reptiles - notably in the development of a notochord which then develops to become the brain and spinal chord. In higher mammals the similarities are greater still. This is then seen as evidence of a close relationship in the development of all mammalian embryos, Man included, pointing accordingly to an 'evolutionary' ascent of species - or otherwise to a remarkable similarity in design - the same 'design' accounting for whales having a remarkably similar skeletal structure to all placental mammals, including Man. Design, accident, or evolution? Which is the closest fit?

Proof of evolution? See Archaeopterix.

Regarding God. I originally stated that I recognise the possibility of ID in the creation of the universe and of the 'spark of life' (in the primordial 'soup'). There is however a third possibility, which is that God existed but did nothing to interfere in the development of the universe or of 'life', nature, until the advent of Mankind (either as Homo Sapiens or a close predecessor).

It must remain unlikely that any of Earth's inhabitants prior to Man would have had any notion of God, or any recognisable interraction with God. Thus, Man became aware of God, and in a way 'created' God, or the idea of God, in the mind and consciousness of Man.

It is also possible that God may have had little interest in Mankind until the conception and birth of Jesus Christ, in which case any earlier history could only have come from ungodly men, and whose veracity might then be somewhat questionnable.

Hence, a God of Man, or a God of the Universe and of all possibilities? I still think Man expects too much of God, with some laying unfounded and egotistical 'claim' to God (in war, etc), 'Our God', while others claim 'their' God is the only true God, and is supreme. Why do we have to have this conflict at all?