Evidence for God from Science

I was looking at one of the articles about whether or not Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 contradict each other. The article has helped me out a lot, but the interpretation is somewhat different from another old-earth creation site (I think it was Answers in Creation).

The article on this site says that God created the creatures and brought them to Eden, but the article on the other site said that God probably created the creatures again after Adam was created. He called it the 'overlapping theory' and he supported it with evidence from the fossil record. On day 5, sea creatures and birds were created, and then on day 6, mammals were created. He said the fossil record showed that birds and mammals came together at the same time so his theory could be correct. Also, without that theory, the sea mammals are out of place too (I don't really know what he means). So my question is, does the fossil record show that birds and mammals came together at the same time? And what does he mean by sea mammals being out of place? Could this theory work?

How do OECs defend that birds came before land mammals? (I don't have a belief on how the earth was created yet, and I want to find out more about Old Earth Creationism).

A theistic evolutionist told me that the fossil record shows that mammals existed at around the same time as dinosaurs, and dinosaurs came before birds. Also, another way to date the age of when which creatures came are by measuring their rate of which mutations occur, and the difference in homologous genes between species are calculated roughly from when their last common ancestor existed. Apparently, the dates found are around the same as the dates from the fossil record.

Well I'm not an OEC but I didn't want to let your inquiry go completely unanswered. I only have a few comments...

How clearly does the fossil record support the idea that all birds came after land animals? I think we have to be extremely careful with the fossil record as it's not as unambigious and complete and it's often claimed to be.

I guess that's where I'd start - by determining how certain we can be that birds do appear to have begun to live long after animals appear. I understand the prevailing theory that dinosaurs evolved to birds, but is that consistent in the fossil record for all birds and all animals?

Assuming we can conclude that birds came after animals, that's a very good question... Should not OEC tend to indicate that the fossil record would support birds living long before animals?

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c015.html

How do OECs defend that birds came before land mammals?

Don't they just turn Genesis 1 and possibly 2 into a fable?

A word of caution here in that OEC (i.e. Day-Age Creationism) should not be equated with Theistic Evolution.

That link does a good job debunking why we should stay clear of theistic evolution. For that matter, I wouldn't even consider theistic evolution on the grounds that evolution itself is a flawed theory.

Edit: Or at least with bearbite's reference to this site, my understanding is that by OEC he means Day-Age... Techinically TE is OEC too, I guess.

Felgar wrote:Well I'm not an OEC but I didn't want to let your inquiry go completely unanswered. I only have a few comments...

How clearly does the fossil record support the idea that all birds came after land animals? I think we have to be extremely careful with the fossil record as it's not as unambigious and complete and it's often claimed to be...

Hmm actually I don't know...do you know if is it really clear that mammals came before birds according to the fossil record? You know, I'm a Christian, but I really don't know anything about old earth creationism or theistic evolution, so I'm trying to find out which makes more sense. What do you believe?

A word of caution here in that OEC (i.e. Day-Age Creationism) should not be equated with Theistic Evolution.

I know there's a difference, but the content of the question pointed to OEC and theistic evolution.

You know, I'm a Christian, but I really don't know anything about old earth creationism or theistic evolution, so I'm trying to find out which makes more sense. What do you believe?

OEC, in general, says that the universe is billions of years old. There are several different groups of belief, one being theistic evolution. Someone on this site, for example, says that God spent billions of years creating the universe then made life (said this already but I'll do it again!). This does most of the things theistic evolution does. Turns Genesis, Eden, and the Fall into nothing but fables. Also destroys the credibility of the beginning of the Bible...and if the Foundation is cracked, the building will fall down. Correct me there Felgar, I have a feeling I might have goofed....call it a hunch....and do it before someone more aggressive comes after me

Theistic evolution basically says that God evolved life from some speck of life. The problems with this include: Dehumanizes man, makes him an animal, makes him not made in the image of God, turns Genesis, Eden, and the Fall into nothing but fables, removes our need for a savior, since we didn't bring death into the world through sin or anything, God brought death into the world. Also destroys the credibility of the beginning of the Bible...and if the Foundation is cracked, the building will fall down. Possibly oversimplified that.

Man, Kmart, you'd think Winston Churchill was talking about you when he made that statement.

Oh why don't you just astral project yourself into a speeding freight train Mastermind....must you be rude whenever I disagree with you.

And upon further examination, I deleted all the things that might have been wrong, so I see no errors....

Because I'm tired of having you spew the same YEC crap about us calling Genesis a fable. The idea that a viable interpretation that is different from yours could be possible doesn't seem capable of penetrating your thick skull.

Maybe OEC in general doesn't to such an extent of theistic evolution....but it still becomes less of a real event and more of a story....and stop being such a jerk....don't make me send you off in the ark back to that flooded planet!

"He occasionally..."

"In their foolishness they professed themselves to be wise....."

Admission is the first step towards solving the problem.

Well just so you two aren't always quibbling, I'll present my views and you can attack me for a while. Bearbite gains nothing from your arguments.

Anyways, I had always thought that Theistic Evolution had God as eternal and all-powerful as normal, but just that God used evolution as a method to create mankind. So it would still leave open the possibility that God influenced the process of evolution in order to create mankind in his own image. But I dunno, maybe I've been misstaken about it...

A more respectible version of OEC is Day-Age. The basic theory here is that each of the 6 days referenced in Genesis 1 are actually very long periods of time. This theory has actually had support long before we understood exactly how old the Earth and our universe appear to be. Bearbite, you can read up on it - and if you absolutely cannot get past the age that the Earth seems to be, then you might be very agreeable with it. At least the theory does actually use scripture as a base, except that scriptures are just interpretted differently than by YEC's. You can read the details here: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/day-age.html

Me personally, I adhere to the "Appearance of Age" theory. The basic gist goes something like: In 6 literal 24-hour time periods, God created the universe, our solar system, and the entire planet *AS IT WOULD BE* had it actually existed and naturally progressed for X billions of years. Some of the implications of this are: The light from the stars was actually created by God on the way to Earth, (YEC's do have an issue with star light and these apparent distances) much of the life and fossils on the Earth (though, not all as much can be explained by the flood) would simply have been created in place.

Appearance of Age (AOA) pretty much gets attacked by both YEC's and OEC's. YEC's because it nullifies the need for the very complex mechanisms that are theoriezed by which a universe that's only 6000-10,000 years old can possibly appear to be 13 Billion years old. OEC's don't like it because they see it as a giant deception by God, which would be contradictory to His very nature. BUT, I do not see it as a deception... I see it as God providing us with a unique environment for sustaining life that is required to be of a certain age. Also, I don't agree that it's a deception because it seems perfectly logical to me that God would create the world ready for life... And given that He also created the laws of nature, it is entirely consistent that God would create the world according to those laws. Another way to look at it is just like God hit the Fast Forward button each day (He does control time after all), or else He just "popped" into existance the Earth at an aged state. Either way, since God is perfect, He created the perfect natural history of the universe *along with* the universe itself. So the Earth actually IS naturally 4.5 billion years old, regardless of how long it has actually existed for.

As another quick example, suppose I'm God and you and I are standing on my lawn. I decide that a tree would be nice for shade on this summer day, so I create one, right in the middle of the lawn. Now, a scientist drives up and you ask him to determine how old the tree is. Being logical, the scientist takes a core sample and determines by the # of rings that the tree is 50 years old. Is it? Yes it is, because I created an old tree. The scientist is only mistaken because of his limited perspective, and given the world in which he lives, he really isn't mistaken at all. Plus, I always point out that God appears to have created Adam in an aged state too - it's not like Adam was created an embryo and then breast-fed for a few years, then cradled for a few more... Lived an adolescence, etc. So to me, that right there is a precedence for God creating things already aged.

Really what brings me to AOA is that it 1) can fully adhere to an obvious literal interpretation of all scripture, and 2) it requires no esspecially complex explanations to try to account for the overwhelming and increasingly conclusive evidence that the universe is much, much, older than a hundred thousand years.