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What makes you believe that this is the truth?

Jimd — thanks for your understanding and compassionate response. It can be awful tough, sometimes, not knowing whether one ought to exist or not...

Hi Gideon,

Moving on to the latest questions you singled out:

I mentioned Pakicetus and Dorudon. A few more transitionals between early artiodactyles (a group of mammals whose modern descendents include hippos, camels, giraffes and cattle) and modern cetaceans (whales, porpoises and dolphins) are Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus and Basilosaurus. I'm purposely not including links with these names. At this point, I'm going to request that you do a share of the research as well. I'm assuming we're both laypeople with an interest in science. We probably both have access to the same resources. You can easily find information about the number and completeness of fossils for each species. If you have evidence that some of these species are hoaxes, please share it with me.

I'm not up to date on the way the large creationist organizations try to discredit these finds. I know that up until a few decades ago, before they were found, the absurdity of a half-whale half-land mammal creature was a major point of ridicule in their keynote speeches. That seems to have largely dried up. Then, they claimed that these species were only based on a few bone fragments and a lot of imagination. But again, more fossils have been found, including more complete skeletons, and that approach has lost its effectiveness as well.

Perhaps they are now saying that these are just other species that God created without ancestry that have since gone extinct. That is always an option for them, no matter how many transitionals are found. Find one transitional, and you just open two more gaps, one on each side! The fossils don't preserve information about who their descendents were, so we can't tell precisely whether these species were cousins to modern whales or direct ancestors. However, scientists had predicted that species like these would be found based on evolutionary theory. The creationist explanations do not account for how these species fit the pattern predicted by scientists long before they were unearthed. It also doesn't explain why all these similar species seem to have existed in roughly the same time period (60-30 million years ago, so none are found in the same strata as dinosaur bones) and typically the same area (modern day Pakistan), or why only the later species appear to radiate further away from Pakistan.

Yes. In addition to the whale transitionals above, Archaeopteryx is a well-known transitional between dinosaurs and birds, and Tiktaalik is a more recently discovered transitional between fish and tetrapods. Each of those transitions also contain many other transitional species, and most other major transitions also have a number of transitional species. I'm not aware of a scientist who isn't working for a creationist organization that doubts the existence of transitional forms. Even many creationist scientists will grudgingly admit that what earlier creationists had predicted as transitionals that would never be found have indeed been found (though often they go on to suggest a redefinition of what a transitional fossil is, such as a fossil where we know its exact family tree).

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"Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." (1 Cor. 15:58, NRSV)

Unmarked Scripture is from the ESV.

Mercury,
The language you are using of "transitional" already assumes that the critters under pervue are links in the evolutionary chain between other critters, rather than simply creatures who happen to have some characteristics in common with others. Commonality is not proof of evolutionary descent, it is simply evidence of commonality. You are begging the question. Further, what defines the evolutionary patterns of descent -- genetics? anatomy? or whatever? The patterns of similarity are regularly (subjectively and selectively) imagined to be demonstrative of evolutionary descent, while it is really nothing more than recognizing that we have this propensity to categorize things that don't always fit neatly into categories. It demonstrates nothing definitively beyond the notion that there is in some instances commonality of anatomy, or genetics, or whatever' and differences in others. But didn't God speak to commonness of descent along certain lines without crossing over (concerning certain creatures aquatic, aviary, terrestrial, etc.) in Gen. 1?

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Explicit statements within the 66 books of our Bible point to God's creation as a real source of truth.

Revelation 16 uses the word phiale to describe seven bowls or vials that are filled with God's wrath and poured out on the earth. Now, can we figure out if God's wrath will literally be poured into bowls by studying the word phiale? Will we find out if the word is literal or figurative? No. In general, there is not one set of words that are literal and another set that are figurative. Words that literally mean one thing can also be used figuratively or symbolically. It's precisely because the word has a literal, physical meaning that it is useful when speaking symbolically!

I think Revelation 16 uses the word phiale to mean a bowl or vial, but I think the overall framework of seven bowls is a literary framework to describe something beyond the physical in physical terms. I don't believe God's wrath is really a liquid that can be poured into and out of literal bowls! Similarly, I think Genesis 1 uses the word yom to mean a solar day or (in verse 5) the light part of a solar day. But, I think the overall framework of seven days is a literary framework that again describes something beyond the physical in physical terms. (As to why those physical terms are used, I already gave my view earlier in this thread.)

Exactly. The prediction based on evolution, made long before transitional whale fossils were uncovered, is that whales descend from land mammals. The transitionals and DNA evidence (and even the discovery of DNA!) came much later.

If you want to read that meaning into those groups, then whales would share descent with other sea creatures, not with land mammals. How well does that idea fit the evidence?

What really makes the evidence persuasive is corroboration from multiple areas of study. If whales were genetically most similar to sharks, while fossils showed intermediary species between crocodiles and whales, while sometimes modern whales were found with tiny feathered wings, then the idea of common descent would be in serious trouble.

Instead, evidence from various fields confirms and clarifies the same conclusion. Whale atavisms (recurrence of an ancestral trait, like hind limbs) point back to land mammals. Whale vestigial traits (such as those atrophied muscles to move external ears that no longer exist) point back to land mammals. Fossil evidence of intermediary whale species point back to land mammals. Whole-genome sequencing shows that whales are most similar to land mammals, such as hippos and camels.

Evolution requires the pattern that we find. It requires the pattern to be the same, whether we're looking at DNA or fossils. The idea that whales were created without ancestors gives us no reason to expect such a pattern, and offers no explanation for it once it's found.

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"Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." (1 Cor. 15:58, NRSV)

Unmarked Scripture is from the ESV.

I think Mercury's last paragraph sums up the argument excellently.

The text itself is proof enough that GOD wanted it known that he did it in precisely 7 days of 24 hours each. Hence, his statement in Exo 20:11 as a part of the Commandments. Or would you believe he would misrepresent himself to Moses? I think not! The commandments are not figurative, they are literal. Otherwise they would be suggestions.

I believe that our GOD is big enough that if he wanted to he could have done it in 1 day of 24 hours, but, he had a different plan which included the creation of a Sabbath day. There is plenty of text to support the 7 day fact.
Also, since the Flood was the reason for the fossil layers, there is no basis to say that fossils are older than the Flood. Unless one doesn't believe that the text concerning a global flood is accurate.
But that’s a different thread.
I stand Firm in my belief in the text and that the world is less than 6000 years old, as according to the genealogies and lines of Israel’s kings.

Grace and Peace.
Robert

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First, the glance back to creation in Exodus 20:11 is demonstrably not part of the Sabbath command. Deuteronomy 5 recounts the same command with no mention of seven days of creation, but instead an allusion to the exodus from Egypt (with the figurative imagery of God's mighty hand and outstretched arm, no less). After this listing of the Decalogue, the author concludes, "These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me" (Deuteronomy 5:22). So much for Exodus 20:11 being etched in stone by God's finger!

A possible reason for this is that both the delivery from slavery explanation and the creation explanation are commentary on the Sabbath command by Moses. Those verses are still inspired Scripture, but they shouldn't be elevated to some special status above the rest of Scripture.

As for the precision of documenting the account in seven days with repeated refrains after each one, that unnatural structure is quite unlike the way Scripture recounts history elsewhere. During the events leading up to Jesus' crucifixion, you won't find one of the Gospel writers adding "and there was evening, and there was morning, the ___ day". As I suggested earlier, the place where we see the most similar form of writing to Genesis 1 is in Revelation's use of seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls -- and again, the literalness of those items is hotly debated. Most agree that they point to real actions by God, but they describe them using physical, human terms that we can relate to. That also seems to be the purpose of God inspiring an account of creation that describes the events happening over a work week, and that also explains why other creation accounts in Scripture do not use the same seven-day framework.

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"Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." (1 Cor. 15:58, NRSV)

Unmarked Scripture is from the ESV.