What was the justification for the prediction that the intermediate would be
"a critter with both mesonychid and cetacean features which had four feet"?
You (and evolutionists) suggest that there will be (what we consider to be)
gradual changes from the mesonychid to the whale. This will _only_ be true
if gradual "genotype" (DNA string) changes correspond to gradual "phenotype"
(resultant animal body) changes. As I understand it, geneticists only have
a small understanding about how genotype changes affect the phenotype, thus
evolution, as it stands, has very little predictive power.
The only way to give evolution more predictive power is to add to your
theory something like the assertion "small changes in genotype lead to small
changes in phenotype". But this is an unsubstantiated claim - it is not
backed up by a biological-mechanistic justification. If you allow
evolutionists to make this claim, why not allow Progressive Creationists to
make the claim: "God formed the animals by taking one animal and slightly
modifying it to form another". With this addition to the theory of
Progressive Creationism, PC would be just as likely to predict the
ambulocetus as evolution.
So surely, evolution as it stands, is no more predictive than PC?
>Now, quantitative predictions are not always necessary for a science. Science
>can not predict the quantitative location of a particular electron next year.
>This does not mean that physics is useless or that Schrodinger was wasting his
>time.
Yes you can predict locations of electrons. You can not predict it with
arbitrary precision, but you can predict it. You can say quantitative
things about the electron - eg, it will be in "such and such" small region
of space at "such and such" small interval of time.
>I can think of a theological reason for rejecting the latter, PC model. The
>Scripture says that God created things in 7 days. I know the arguments that
>the days can be periods of time, the plain fact is that long periods of time
>do not have evenings and mornings.
If the Genesis 1 account is taken to have a poetic nature and use metaphor
(which seems quite reasonable to me), then, metaphorically speaking, long
periods of time _do_ have evenings and mornings.
>Thus the PC view must make the Bible not
>say what I believe it IS saying. We don't talk about the evening and morning
>of the Cretaceous Period, nor the evening and morning of the Mesozoic Era.
>The language doesn't fit long ages.The creative acts took place on single
>days. Secondly, God must have engaged in tens of thousands of creative acts
>over the years, so what is this stuff about creation being done in seven
>events/acts/days or periods? How do you divide the geologic ages into seven
>periods? On what evidence? PC raises some thorny and unaswered questions.
If you read Genesis 1, not as a scientific account, but as an account
telling, in broad terms, about the creator creating the world - talking to
people who didn't know science and passed things down by word of mouth, then
it seems quite reasonable that the account would not be strictly accurate in
a scientific sense. The reason for the separation of the creation event
into days then, is then done, not as a scientific theory about separate
geological ages, but rather as a literary tool, making the account easy to
remember and easy to retell. It also serves a secondary purpose, providing
a foundation for sabbath observance.
> Why must God be limited to creating each species rather than creating a
>system which can in turn produce the varieties?
What do the seven days mean to you? Do you mean to tell me that God took
six literal days to create a "system", that would later create the
relevant objects and life forms? This doesn't seem to fit very well.
>I love those wave tanks you
>can buy in which blue water lies under clear mineral oil. The motor causes
>the tank to tip back and forth producing waves. The creator of this
>time-waster could have come to my office and created each individual wave form
>me if he wanted to, but other customers would want him to do the same for
>them. He solved his difficulty by attaching a motor which would produce each
>different wave. In a very real sense, he is the creator of each wave even
>though he is nowhere in sight. Why must we limit God to standing in the
>office?
Maybe we don't need to limit God to standing in the office - maybe TE
is correct? But maybe PC is correct? The advantage with PC being
correct is that, potentially anyway, we may be able to discover objective
evidence that God is indeed standing in the office. On theological
grounds, it seems to me that any problems PC has, will also be problems
for TE.
Mark.