PhD: Twitter quote 41
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Bonus
I had an interesting Gmail/email interaction with Sir Robin today. I did some reading after...
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The following tables give an overview of notable finds of hominin fossils and remains relating to human evolution, beginning with the formation of the tribe Hominini (the divergence of the human and chimpanzee lineages) in the late Miocene, roughly 7 to 8 million years ago.
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The early fossils shown are not considered direct ancestors to Homo sapiens but are closely related to direct ancestors and are therefore important to the study of the lineage.
I am not a scientist, and I can accept that evolution exists, not Darwinian evolution with a secular, naturalistic, worldview. But as a philosopher of religion and theologian, 'not direct ancestors', 'but closely related to direct ancestors' allows for debate and interpretations. Are these fossils demonstrating the same species, or similar species in regards to DNA and ontology? These creatures exist within same and similar ecologies and environments.
Further, notably within Christian theism, all creatures come from the same initial divine source (Genesis 1, Colossians 1).
In regards to God the Son
The fall: Archives
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF SCIENCE (2010) Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Colossians 1: 16-17
16. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: 17. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
I am not claiming that human beings are ontologically, exactly the same today as they were at creation. There has been the fall (Genesis 3) and the flood (Genesis 6-9), as key biblical events of change. The fall corrupted the nature of humanity (Romans 1-6), for example. But I do reason that humanity was created rationally and fell rationally.
Berkeley Evolibrary: Transitional forms
On the idea that Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-3 can perhaps be fictional the question should be asked: "then where does sin come from?, and why did Jesus Christ, the God-man, come to earth to rescue us from Adam’s sin?" The apostle Paul in Romans 5:12-21 seems to clearly portray a literal Adam as falling, and thus a literal Christ is needed for restoration. I think if Adam is deemed as not necessarily literal true man, then Christ may just as well be fiction, and this basically challenges the core of the Christian faith.
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Our understanding of the evolution of horse feet, so often depicted in textbooks, is derived from a scattered sampling of horse fossils within the multi-branched horse evolutionary tree. These fossil organisms represent branches on the tree and not a direct line of descent leading to modern horses.
Transitional forms
Fossils or organisms that show the intermediate states between an ancestral form and that of its descendants are referred to as transitional forms. There are numerous examples of transitional forms in the fossil record, providing an abundance of evidence for change over time.
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Similar. Not a direct line. All horses or horselike?
Theologically, if they were all horses, this would be far less important than the issue of the creation and evolution of humanity, as horses or horselike creatures are not documented in biblical manuscripts to have been made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27), with in philosophical terms, significant moral and ethical responsibility to each other and most importantly, to their creator, God.
If God, did create humanlike creatures through evolution that spiritually and mentally lacked the image and likeness of God, they were not human beings. Even if they evolved into human beings, which is not my position as a non-scientist, Christian, Reformed theologian and philosopher of religion.
The Oxford Dictionary of Science
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Evolution
The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arise from the earliest and most primitive organisms...(304). This is believed to have taken place the last 3000 million years. (3 billion, my add). (304).
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Most controversial, however, and still to be clarified, are the relationship and evolution of groups above the species level. (304). In other words, evolution from scientifically reasoned species to species.
