pastorkevin said:
Real Sorceror's Question #1 RE: The Flood:
This is not an easy thing to answer. And the reason why is because we cannot go back and reproduce those situations to determine how those animals got to where they were. But below I will list some possibilities.
We can do better than just list some possibilities. We can test possibilities, we can assign probabilities. This is a real problem with creation science. It substitutes scenarios for science.
pastorkevin said:
One clue we can get is from a modern day example:
When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the island remnant remained lifeless for some years, but was eventually recolonized by a surprising variety of creatures, including not only insects and earthworms, but birds, lizards, snakes and even a few mammals. One would not have expected some of this surprising array of creatures to have crossed the ocean, but they obviously did. Even though these were mostly smaller than some of the creatures you are asking about, it illustrates the limits of our imaginings on such things.
Here are a few more pieces of relevant information:
Krakatau is only 40 and 80 km from Java and Sumatra, two large islands with huge source pools (i.e,. populations of potential colonists). You can't expect the same result to obtain from the exact opposite conditions (i.e., plants and animals from a tiny pool -- the Ark -- recolonizing an entire devastated planet).
The recolonization of Krakatau was highly non-random and predictable; your imagination would hardly be strained by comparing the attributes of the earliest colonists vs. those that colonized somewhat later vs. those that have yet to make it back. And the patterns hold for plants as well as animals. It is exactly those sorts of non-random, highly predictable regularities that make current biogeographic distributions so hard to reconcile with the notion of global recolonization from a single boat.
pastorkevin said:
Land bridges:
Most scientists would concede that people and animals crossed over a land bridge from Asia to America.
Science has also shown that it is possible that land bridges have existed elsewhere, such as from Europe to Australia for example.
Evolutionist geologists themselves believe there have been major tectonic upheavals, accompanied by substantial rising and falling of sea floors, in the time period with which they associate an ice age.
To be fair, you should know that the concept of land bridges was pretty much, er, sunk by the emergence of tectonic theory. But I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you accepting or rejecting tectonic theory as relevant to the distribution of modern and fossil organisms? If you're saying it's relevant, then you've raised a few interesting questions, because accelerating the rate at which continents slosh around on the earth's surface doesn't simply cause everything else to happen faster!
pastorkevin said:
Marsupials:
The claim that Marsupials are found only in Australia is made by evolutionists who will attempt to prove that they evolved there. The reality is that living marsupials, opossums, are found also in North and South America, and fossil marsupials have been found on every continent.
Any scientist who claimed that marsupials are only found in Australia deserves to have his or her membership revoked. To my knowledge no one who studies marsupials thinks they evolved in Australia either. The fossil marsupials in North and South America, North Africa, Europe, Antarctica, and Asia are all didelphoids, part of a distinct branch that includes all of the extent marsupials (possums) outside of Australia. The Australian radiation happened after Australia became isolated from the other continents, and thus all the truly weird creatures that we think of as marsupials are only found in Australia, and all the non-didelphoid fossils are similarly restricted to Australia.
So let's recap: your claims about what evolutionists say re: marsupials is so far offbase that I can't imagine what you were hoping to achieve, and if we tighten our focus from the most primitive possumy marsupials to the next branch up the tree (everyone else), which are after all what most people think of as marsupials anyways, then Real Sorcerer's question stands.
And it's worse than you think. Look past the familiar ones (kangaroos and koalas) and you'll see an extraordinary diversity of organisms that share a number of anatomical curiosities but precious little else. Which means either that large numbers of specially created, highly diverse mammals with a unique tooth formula and the same weird reproductive parts all coincidentally happened to dash from Mt. Ararat to Australia, leaving virtually all other placental mammals behind, or else that one pair of odd specially created marsupials arrived in Australia and underwent an absolutely amazing burst of diversification over the next few hundred years.
pastorkevin said:
Lemurs:
One theory possible is that they got to Madagascar was by “rafting”: The following is a quote directly from Duke University’s website (and within an article supporting evolution) “Scientists believe lemurs and other mammals reached Madagascar via "rafting" on clumps of vegetation, or trees.” I would say that is a distinct possibility, but that it happened much sooner than the Evolutionist believes.
Much more recently, you mean? And then once they got there, had a quick burst of ecological, morphological, and behavioral differentiation and then reproductive isolation? There's more than one species there, you know.
pastorkevin said:
Another thing to keep in mind is that populations of animals may have had centuries to migrate, relatively slowly, over many generations. Simply put: these animals had many years to get from where they were to where they are now. It is not impossible in the least that they have dispersed to where they are after only a few thousand years.
Sorry, this time table is not possible under the YEC interpretation. Perhaps I've been hasty; do you in fact favor an old earth?
pastorkevin said:
Real Sorceror's Question #2 RE: The Flood
Pastor Kevin's answer:
Many terrestrial seeds can survive long periods of soaking in various concentrations of salt water. Others could have survived in floating masses. Many could have survived as accidental and planned food stores on the ark.Ironically, Charles Darwin himself performed experiments floating snails on, and submerging seeds in, salt water, convincing him that they could have survived long sea voyages on driftwood and the like.
Yes, but what y'all seem to forget is that not all seeds are alike. Darwin, and others, found that SOME seeds can persist in salt water, and THOSE species make it to oceanic islands. MOST species can't do this. What I find interesting is that this marks the end of the voyage for the inquisitive creationist, whereas it marks no more than the beginning for the inquisitive scientist. That is, you've woven a few scenarios. Having shown, in your mind, a not entirely impossible scenario, you stop your discussion, as if that's all science requires. But it's only the beginning. You may protest that you're not a scientist, so I'm expecting too much from you, but didn't you get these scenarios from creationist websites who are purporting to give you the "creation science"? They're not going any farther than this either.
pastorkevin said:
Real Sorceror's Question #3 RE: The Flood
Pastor Kevin's answer:
I think that you should define what what kind of evidence you are looking for. First of all there is tons of evidence for the Ark in the history of mankind. When you consider that everywhere in the world we have versions of the Flood story handed down, that is a pretty significant piece of evidence that something happened!
Okay, I'll grant you that there is lots of evidence out there that "something happened." That kind of goes without saying. Hey, this may be something you know about. Who actually documented these flood stories, and how?
pastorkevin said:
The other thing to keep in mind is that wood grows petrified over time, and wherever the Ark currently is it is not obviously in the same shape it was in when it was built.
Whew! A basic understanding of taphonomy. I'm glad you're not going to turn around and blast scientists for the lack of transitional fossils!
pastorkevin said:
There have been many different theories on the location of the Ark. Some have claimed to have seen it and stand in it. Some have taken photographs of objects they think might be the Ark. Until the day actually comes that the Ark itself is found, we will probably have to answer these questions. There are indications that as of the 2nd century BC people were still reporting the Ark to be visible. I would have to go back and dig up my source of info on that, but I remember reading it somewhere.
In any case, the fact that a large boat that is thousands of years old has not yet been found doesn't support a statement that it didn't exist. Nobody could ever prove that it DIDN'T exist either, so we have no corroborating evidence against the Bible's story of the Ark and the Flood.
Good, so you also understand the problems with proving a negative. That's good, because creationists ask us to do that a lot.
pastorkevin said:
Again, looking at the above material will show that I have in fact made sound arguments and not dumb ones, and they have been based on good science. The replies I get are things of this nature from Fool:
Hmm. Did you really mean to generalize like that?
