Bible Bob <biblebob@saintly.com> said :

Midwinter,

In order to know what the Bible says about the birds so that one could
compare what science says to what the Bible says one would have to
know what the Bible says.

I'm actually pretty familiar with what the Bible says, having been raised
Christian and spent my life amongst Christians. My point here is that
Gabriel appears to be trying to use an element of evolution to disprove -
or at least undermine - the concept of evolution.

If I've got his/her motivation wrong then by all means correct me.

Whether or not the claim s/he's made about the archaeopteryx, or about
the nature of feathers, is true is not the point. The point is that
s/he's attempting to make evolution disprove itself.

Some birds were made on day five and other birds were formed from the
earth on day six - water based and eath based forms of flesh; hence of
the different kinds of flesh spoken of in Corinthians.

All according to a religious tradition I don't subscribe to, since not
only is there no evidence to support a literal interpretation of that
story but there is ample evidence for a model that would contradict it.

I don't discount things simply because there's no evidence FOR them - the
most I can say in that case is that such things can't be evidenced. But
if, as well as being no evidence FOR, there is evidence AGAINST, then I
*must* discount them. Genesis creation falls quite clearly into that
category.

1Co 15:39 KJV
All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of
men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

Isn't it suprising that goatherders knew about genetics, DNA, and
evolution before scientists.

Isn't it surprising that Creationists are so willing to embrace evolution
when it suits them?

Yes - goatherders knew about evolution to an extent, in the sense that
animal husbandry and directed breeding have been practised for millennia.
It's hardly accurate to say that they knew about them 'before'
scientists, except to the extent that there were no 'scientists' in those
ancient times. But scientists aren't simply being slow on the uptake, as
you seem to imply: natural philosophers became naturalists, naturalists
became biological scientists - and everyone with an interest in the
subject knew that if you breed individuals with a specific trait together
you are likely to find the offspring will inherit that trait.

This is why the Creationist resistance to evolutionary principles
perplexes me: it requires the Creationist to reject so many solid
historical (and contemporary) facts in order to claim that evolution
doesn't happen.

The fact is that evolution is only a threat to *religious dogmas* (and
therefore to those who benefit from those dogmas), NOT to the possibility
that God exists.

What creationists and scientists fail to consider is that some
creatures were brought forth from the water on day five and others
from the earth on day six. That is because they fail to blend the
information from chapter two with the information from chapter one to
get the whole story of the reconstruction (not creation) period.
Logically, creatures formed from the water and minerals in the oceans
and creatures from the ground of the earth with water added (Gen 2:6)
would be of different compositions and forms.

Or, if one is able to accept that Genesis is myth and metaphor, and
respect it for what it is, one is freed immediately from the need to
construct such elaborate rationalisations.

Genesis speaks about reproduction within "kind"; hence evolution with
species which is the only true form of evolution.

It's not a matter of finding 'true' forms of evolution. Evolution simply
is. Any species that adapts over generations through mutation and
breeding is undergoing evolution. And there's no direction of evolution,
either: a species does not 'de-evolve' - it simply adapts to its
environment, even if that means returning to a form it had once evolved
away from (there's those dolphins again).

Even mutations ocur within speicies.

Mutations usually affect only one individual. They are normally genetic
replication errors and most will be either harmful or completely inert.
Some will be beneficial. You know, like mind-reading or invisibility
(it's true - I saw it on 'Heroes').

But seriously, if a mutation affects only one individual, then the
mutation occurs only within a species. Although that individual may find
that the mutation equips them better for survival, in which case the
mutation is likely to be passed on to future generations. However, at
that point it becomes an inherited characteristic, and ceases to be a
mutation.

You cannot breed and elephant and a mouse and get a
mousey elephant; or a bat and a robin and get a batbird.

True dat, as the youngsters say. But part of what makes a species a
distinct group is that its members can't usually breed outside of the
species - at least producing offspring that can continue to breed.

If the word of God is right (and it is)

And that's the problem: because it's a fundamental principle of
Creationist belief that that book is the Word Of God, and that is then
their test of *all other things*. It's the first premise against which a
Creationist judges ALL new information. The possibility that the book
might not, in fact, be the inerrant Word Of God, is discounted
immediately: yet only the book says that it is so. And even if we assume
that the book contains truth, what Creationists often don't take into
account is that 'truth' doesn't necessarily denote literal, historical
truth. There is truth, for example, in poetry - yet the events and
people featured in the poem might not necessarily have existed.

But because they're invested in the idea that if it's in the Bible it
must be absolutely true in the literal sense, they waste all that energy
fighting a battle that doesn't benefit anyone. God doesn't NEED Genesis,
you see. God doesn't NEED the Bible to be 'literal truth'. He doesn't
NEED us to understand how he's done things - in fact, it's rather
arrogant to assume that we could. Science, at least, deals with what
little of the natural world it can and - and this is important -
recognises that there're things it doesn't and might not ever know.

The trouble is that too many people worship the book rather than the God.
If God is responsible for all things then He is responsible for how they
ARE, not how we think they OUGHT to be after reading a book. Someone
somewhere first claimed that the Bible was the written Word Of God - and
people have obediently toed that line ever since. But if God is the
creator of all things, then the universe we live in is His Word - and if
that doesn't tally with what we see around us, then it's an affront to
that supposed God to reject what's actually there in favour of a book
written hundreds of generations ago by people who didn't have the ability
to see what we can see (just as we can't see what future generations may
see).

If God has created us, then He's done it through evolution. He's built
the universe through gravity. He's done it through electromagnetism and
the nuclear forces; through the interplay of time and space. And to
argue that God COULD NOT have used those methods - on the basis that they
aren't mentioned in that ancient text - is simply a declaration that one
does not believe in an all-powerful God.

Gabriel wrote:

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:45:36 GMT, Elmer
<nylicens@frontiernet.net> wrote:

Gabriel wrote:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/did-dinosaurs-turn-into-birds

Partial outline of the scientific discussion:

Problems with Dinosaurs Evolving into Birds
- Warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded
- “Bird-hipped” vs. “lizard-hipped” dinosaurs
- The three-fingered hand
- Avian vs. reptilian lung

Origin of Feathers
- Do feathered dinosaurs exist?
- Feathers and scales are dissimilar.

Archaeopteryx, a True Bird, Is Older than the “Feathered”
Dinosaurs.

Origin of Flight

Part of the conclusion:
" Having a true bird appear before alleged feathered dinosaurs,
no mechanism to change scales into feathers,...(snip rest)

Isn't it rather silly to lie about something so easily checked? Pay particular
attention to the full abstract and its highlighted sentence in citation 16 below:

Ok then, let's talk about item 16 in your list:

[cut]

16: Dev Biol. 2000 Mar 1;219(1):98-114.

"beta-catenin in epithelial morphogenesis: conversion of part of avian foot
scales into feather buds with a mutated beta-catenin." Widelitz RB, Jiang TX, Lu
J, Chuong CM. Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Los Angeles,
California, 90033, USA.

We explored the role of beta-catenin in chicken skin morphogenesis. Initially
beta-catenin mRNA was expressed at homogeneous levels in the epithelia over a
skin appendage tract field which became transformed into a periodic pattern
corresponding to individual primordia. The importance of periodic patterning was
shown in scaleless mutants, in which beta-catenin was initially expressed
normally, but failed to make a punctuated pattern. To test beta-catenin
function, a truncated armadillo fragment was expressed in developing chicken
skin from the RCAS retrovirus. This produced a variety of phenotypic changes
during epithelial appendage morphogenesis.

*In apteric and scale-producing regions, new feather buds with
normal-appearing follicle sheaths, dermal papillae, and barb ridges were induced.*

In feather tracts, short, wide, and curled feather buds with abnormal morphology
and random orientation formed. Epidermal invaginations and placode-like
structures formed in the scale epidermis. PCNA staining and the distribution of
molecular markers (SHH, NCAM, Tenascin-C) were characteristic of feather buds.
These results suggest that the beta-catenin pathway is involved in modulating
epithelial morphogenesis and that increased beta-catenin pathway activity can
increase the activity of skin appendage phenotypes. Analogies between regulated
and deregulated new growths are discussed. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Since you are the one claiming this is proof of what you think it
is, it follows that you must completely understand everything
said to make this claim of yours. If you didn't understand it, or
barely understood it, or merely thought you understood it, you
could not honestly make such a bold claim. So if you would be so
kind as to give a line by line recap of exactly what *you* think
was just said, and we can go from there.

You claimed: "no mechanism to change scales into feathers" These scientists
inserted beta-catenin protein into developing chicken skin scales.

They found that:

"In ... scale-producing regions, new feather buds with normal-appearing follicle
sheaths, dermal papillae, and barb ridges were induced."

Also, if you could provide an online reference so I can read this
straight from the source for myself, that would be great. Thanks!

It's from the March 2000 issue of "Developmental Biology", a journal published
by Elsevier, pages 98-114 for the full article. This publication should be
available in any fairly well equipped university library near you. Failing that
it's a 1.5 mg PDF file that you can find here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_tockey=%23TOC%236766%232000%23997809998%23303193%23FLP%23&_cdi=6766&_pubType=J&_auth=y&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1c0f4d72e1dc7b8323135bf80504957f

Watch the wrap.

Look for article number 8 and then you can download the full article.