Evidence for God from Science

What are the common OEC explanations for the formation and diversity of life on earth?
[I looked at http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... ation.html and http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... ories.html for example but don't get the details.]

Presumably in OEC, there was a time when life did not exist on earth. Then it did.

1) So what were possibilities for the first life forms and how did they come about? Was it necessary for any currently accepted physical laws to be broken for this to happen? [Was it just a nudge to make something extremely unlikely happen or were living organisms created out of nothing?]

The fossil record shows that some species existed in the past which are now extinct. Likewise, there now exist forms which are not represented by old fossils. There seems to be a distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.

2) How and over what times did new species appear? By the same process as for the first life? If so, has anyone tabulated how many (and when) creation events have occurred?

Or if these questions don't make any sense, what are descriptions of how life came about? Or what is the range of explanations considered possible?


thanks
s

The Bible says that the spirit of God was hovering, or 'nesting, brooding' over the face of the waters before the creation of advanced, multicellular life. The first kind of life God created was archaeobacteria, a microorganism that can thrive in intense conditions. After two billion years the atmosphere had been regulated enough, and God would proceed to create the plants after the formation of the continents (i.e., the mountains being raised out of the waters). Notice how the Bible doesn't say how the Earth was created, it just begins with 'there were the heavens and the earth'. The Bible also does not mention the creation of single-celled organisms.
There was only one creation event, or 'week' spanning around two billion years total, which ended at the creation of the homo sapiens.
The seven days were not distinct time periods separated from each other. They overlapped each other and related to each other for millions of years.

As Hugh Ross pointed out on his site he believes that the hebrew word Yom can mean literal days or time periods and I see no problem there as the in my parents culture they use a root word from that that is almost pronounced the same way and it is used to mean eitehr literal days or time periods also, as anyone from an israeli or levantine arabic culture will also confirm. I also agree with Calum that the 7 days overlapped with each other.

I believe that God breathed the word of life though information. To me complex information is the key that always requires a mind behind it (DNA).

bippy123 wrote:As Hugh Ross pointed out on his site he believes that the hebrew word Yom can mean literal days or time periods and I see no problem there as the in my parents culture they use a root word from that that is almost pronounced the same way and it is used to mean eitehr literal days or time periods also, as anyone from an israeli or levantine arabic culture will also confirm. I also agree with Calum that the 7 days overlapped with each other.

I believe that God breathed the word of life though information. To me complex information is the key that always requires a mind behind it (DNA).

It is indeed the same word: yom.

I'm going to disagree about the overlap. The phrase "and was evening" is the ending of the work of the previous period of work (Psalm 104:22-23). It is a time of rest. That is why I believe it comes first. On day one "and was evening" is closing off the period called "In the beginning." "And was morning" is the dawning of the new work period. This is also why I believe day seven does not contain either phrase. The whole day is a period of rest. God just closes off the work week (Gen. 2:2-3) and hasn't dawned another period of work.

Also, the creation week lasted at least 4 billion years. Genesis 1:2 gives conditions that match what earth looked like about 4.5 bya. and man was created about 100,000 yrs ago.

sandy,

The fossil record shows that some species existed in the past which are now extinct. Likewise, there now exist forms which are not represented by old fossils. There seems to be a distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.

Psalm 104:29-30 seems to describe the past extinctions and replacements.

How and over what times did new species appear? By the same process as for the first life? If so, has anyone tabulated how many (and when) creation events have occurred?

Well the phyla from the Cambrian Explosion were all created in 5 million yrs or less.

Research published in Science 5/30/2002 showed that in less than 30,000 years after the last Triassic taxa, large Jurassic theropod dinosaurs appeared. In less than 100,000 years of the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, dinosaurian diversity reached a stable maximum.

How? Well the Bible speaks of God using the material of the earth to produce the physical bodies (Genesis 2:7, 19). He likely used these building materials to produce new creatures, based on modifications He made in previous blueprints (i.e. genetic materials). Like a home designer/builder. They often modify previous blueprints to come up with a new house design and then build it. The new design will have many, if not most, of the features of the previous design, but each was a separate building project.

Obviously, micro-evolution occurs. For instance, God did not have to create the different types of tigers (Bengal, Siberian, Indochinese, etc.) they naturally diversified.

Thanks for the explanation, dayage.

I was wondering about the differences between standard scientific interpretation and OEC. [Obviously, mainstream science clashes with YEC at almost every turn.]
But OEC presumably is consistent with the present geological model.
OEC also seems ok with micro-evolution.
But using scientific data only, how would OEC rewrite biology texts?
Would species go extinct on their own, or with assistance?
Do new species appear in groups, continuously, or only on a few occasions?
Would OEC modify the evolutionary bush by cutting it at all the major branching points and adding a "start here" at the cut off point? Has anyone tried to assemble such a model?

Has anyone tried to assemble such a model?

Sandy, I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for:
More Than a Theory

RickD wrote: More Than a Theory

I've seen some of his books but not that one. I'll see if my boss has a copy. Thanks.

Sandy the key here isn't just that God used materials to form life but a major clue here is INFORMATION. The cell is an incredibly complex informational system. Let's make an analogy with a book. A book contains pages and words made from ink, but are those words just pieces of ink? No they represent an idea coming from an intelligent mind, which makes them trenscend the material (ink) that creates them. Hubert Yockey's informational theory recognizes that information is in a class of it's own right up there with mass and energy. This is also why a purely materialistic view of the world isnt sufficient to describe life.

Perry Marshall in my opinion describes this perfectly.

This takes us right back to genesis: In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word is God.
How could any human being know this unless he was inspired by God to write it.