There were swimming dinosaurs, running dinosaurs, even a form of flying dinosaur.
This is a minor nitpick, but as someone trying to portray himself as making scientific points, Schroeder really should be more precise. I don't know what he meant by "swimming dinosaurs". If he meant plesiosaurs, they were not considered to be dinosaurs but were their own separate group. If he meant Pterosaurs with his "flying dinosaur" reference, he'd also be wrong. Pterosaurs, like dinosaurs, were a type of archosaur, but are not considered to be dinosaurs themselves. If he meant birds by flying dinosaur, then that would be more accurate, as birds are considered to fit within the dinosaur group. It's really strange though that he mentioned "A" form of flying dinosaur, as if there were only one species. I'd hardly call an eagle and a duck "a" form of flying dinosaur. I think it's weird he would open his article in such a way that would make it difficult to know what he's talking about, and also is really inaccurate if taken at face value.
and all animals larger than about five kilograms disappeared from the fossil record.
Again this is not very accurate. There were large animals that survived, mostly in the ocean or aquatic environments, such as large crocodiles and fish. I point this out because he specifically mentioned 'swimming' dinosaurs before. I'm not sure what he meant by that, but when he later goes on to talk about animals, I assume that he would include aquatic or marine animals due to that, yet he seems to forget they existed.
From a secular view - what luck for us; not so lucky for the dinos. From a theological view, G-d has stepped into re-direct the development of
animal life.
He's framing this in secular vs. religious terms. In scientific terms it would be neither lucky nor G-d stepping in. It would just be what happened. The demise of the dominant dinosaurs making way for mammals to expand would be neither good nor bad, lucky nor unlucky. It would just have been history. Any subjective reactions to it are just that.
Personally I believe that G-d did set in motion events that would lead this to happen to serve His will. However this can not be in any way demonstrated.
It's just a belief. The facts do not say one way or another why this happened or whether it was good or bad.
Dinosaurs were getting bigger, but they were not getting smarter. A vessel was needed that could eventually embrace the neshama - the soul of humanity - and dinosaurs were not heading in that direction. Perhaps mammals would.
This isn't really a scientific argument but a theological one. I don't really agree with it though. For one thing some dinosaurs were getting smarter. There was a small type of predatory dinosaur called Troodon which was human sized and was 'brainier' than other dinosaurs. It had potential to evolve to be smarter (or less smart) if there had been more time and the right selective pressures. Schroeder seems to think that G-d was using evolution as a trial-and-error system of creating a body for a person's neshama. I don't personally believe that G-d has errors. I think that the human
form was planned from the beginning. Troodon dinosaurs had potential but were not ultimately meant to be. All this is theological though, and since Shroeder and I don't even share the same religion, we're bound to disagree on points like that.
He says dinosaurs raise two basic theological questions. The first of them has to do with the Biblical age of the universe. He goes on to explain how he synchronizes this with the fossil record. I don't really have too much of a problem with how he rationalizes this except that I don't personally think that it needs to be synched up. In my opinion the days and what happens on them are symbolic and have symbolic meanings. Since I'm not a theologian and I
don't read the original languages then it's hard for me to know precisely why the language was used in Genesis/Bereshit or what its symbolic meaning was. So that's for philosophers and theologians to figure out.
The second question he discusses why G-d destroyed part of his creation (the dinosaurs) when he could have created the world in such a way that this was not necessary and the implications this has over G-d's control of nature. Personally I think it has to do with the entire environment influencing the evolution of all the animals in it. If G-d's will was to produce humans from mammals, then the other creatures alive at that time would have influenced the environment
that the early mammals were in. A different step required a different environment. Again this is all theological, not scientific.
Life appears first on day three ((Genesis 1:11), immediately after liquid water formed on earth (Gen. 1:10). This immediate conjunction of water and life had, for decades, evolutionary biologists rolling in the aisles with laughter. All life on earth is water based. No water, no life.
This doesn't even make sense. he says life appeared AFTER liquid water. So the "no water, no life", doesn't follow. Obviously if life appeared after water, then there was water there for water-based life. Either he's badly quoting his opponents' arguments, which is likely, or he doesn't know how to make his points very clear.
Conventional wisdom was that billions of years passed in which random reactions changed rocks and water in living organisms.
That doesn't sound right the way he describes it. There are chemical reactions which can lead to formation of the building blocks of life, such as amino acids, etc. from non-living materials, some of which are found in rocks and water, but he's making it sound like scientists claim that rocks and water just spontaneously started spitting out cells. It's a more complex process than that. And it's not really random reactions. There was a selective process at work. Early nucleotides lead to things like RNA and DNA and some of those formed into life using cells as survival machines. Others used just a simple protein coat or something of that nature and became things like viruses.
The laughter was swallowed when in the 1970's Prof. E. Barghoorn and Stanley Tyler discovered micro-fossils of bacteria and algae in chert rocks (a form of silicon dioxide once considered an unlikely source of fossils) 3.6 billion years old, just after the time when oceans and dry land formed on earth. Genesis was correct all along. Life appeared very rapidly, not after billions of years.
Genesis doesn't say anything about whether you're going to find fossils in those rocks or not. Only his convoluted explanation of "days" of Genesis is tailor made to fit in with that. Also he acts like it was scientists versus the Bible when in reality it was the scientists discovering more evidence to refine the known science, and really the Bible never said anything one way or another about whether those fossils would be found.
But note that on day three, the word "creation" does not appear. The first life was not specially created.
The universe was equipped for life from its inception. It was organization that was needed, organization that could produce the phenomenally intricate functioning of life's genetic map: DNA, RNA, amino acids, the bio-chemical sources of energy ATP. How that organization occurred in a geological blink of an eye remains an enigma to the scientific community.
Notice here
he admits abiogenesis is valid. That part is true. He even directly states that "the first life was not specially created". He then goes on to say that how the organization occurred is "an enigma to the scientific community". What's his point in stating this last part? Is he trying to imply special creation of the first life AFTER he just said "the first life was not specially created?" Which one is it?
Life remains microscopic for three billion years, and then in a burst of animal forms, known as the Cambrian explosion, every basic animal body plan (the 34 animal phyla)
extant today appeared in the fossil record. Animals with jointed bodies, limbs, eyes (with lenses), swarmed in the seas. There was not a hint of this impending proliferation
in the underlying fossils.
What is he implying here? That these phyla were specially created? That they POOFED into existence? Soft bodied ancestors of these creatures might not have left very many fossils, that's one point. Another
point is that if they rapidly evolved, geologically speaking, that there may not have been enough time for a lot of fossils to be left behind on top of that.
We always have to remember that whatever we do have of the fossil record is incomplete. The other point he fails to mention is that just because all the modern phyla were present doesn't mean very many modern creatures themselves were present.
Humans, cats, elephants, snakes, birds, frogs, and sea squirts are all in the
same 'phylum' Chordata's most primitive members don't resemble any of the animals you're familiar with but look more like this:
Here kitty kitty!
Rest of the article coming tomorrow.
Topic: Shalom (Read 1351 times)