Question 1: The Fossil Record

[Simon]

According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms "is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." What new fossil finds, if any, have occurred since Darwin wrote these words nearly 150 years ago? Do they overturn Darwin's bleak assessment of evolutionary theory? If the absence of intermediate fossil forms holds as much today as it did back then, why should anyone accept evolution?

[micatala]

YEC wrote:
I've presented a biblical linage several times on this forum....did Jesus in his incarnation descend from a myth as the evos claim?

The bible compares Jesus to Adam...why is Jesus compared to a myth?

Did Adam (mankind) actually fall in the Garden of Eden...or was that also a myth?

Jose wrote:
These are excellent questions. I'd love to know why they compare these myths to each other. Y'know, that doesn't precisely portray my thoughts on this. The story compares Adam and Jesus, and provides lineages of the main characters. That's great. The only problem is that if we attempt to consider it literally, we rapidly run into contradictions between it and the reality of God's Creation. I take this to mean that we were only meant to take the book literally until we figured out the clues God put into the world itself. Why shouldn't the creation itself take precedence over a story that was composed millenia ago, and that was told and retold orally for generations before being put to paper?

Good point, Jose. Galileo tried to make this exact case (the precedence of World over Word), shortly before the Catholic heirarchy put Copernicus on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1616.

I think it may be worth pointing out that, just because a story is 'mythical,' it does not mean that there is no basis in fact. It may simply mean that we cannot count on all of the details to be true in fact. In fact, there is a whole 'spectrum of factual truth' that is possible, in my view.

Even historical figures of recent times may have 'mythic' aspects about them. For example, we all (well, I should say all we Americans at least) carry around in our heads an image of Abraham Lincoln. This is based on what we learned in school, for the most part, and is based on actual historical fact. But it is common for us to have misconceptions about Lincoln, ideas that are not true in fact. For example, we think of Lincoln as the liberator of the slaves and many of us read into this that he believed in the equality of blacks. But, many of Lincoln's actual statements belie this. He very probably did think of blacks as 'inferior.'

THis is maybe not the best example, but the idea is that it is all too easy for us to mix fact with fancy. For figures of recent history, we can go back and correct our misconceptions. For a figure like Adam, if he did in fact exist, we cannot as we have only the one account to go by and we cannot probably do any independent verification. This account was admittedly written hundreds if not thousands of years after Adam was supposed to have existed. If the write of this account put some aspects in that were not factual, we have no way to check. I personally feel this is very likely. Whether you believe this happened or not, this belief is largely an assumption.

YEC seems to feel that if the Bible refers to both Jesus and Adam as actual persons, we should accept that as witness that both Jesus and Adam existed exactly as described in the Bible. I don't see any reason to assume that the 'level of factuality' is the same in both cases.

For YEC, I certainly did not mean to put any words in your mouth. As Jose has already ably responded, I won't say anymore about it.

[Jose]

As an intersting note, micatala, yesterday I had lunch with Rev. Locke, a biblical scholar with two advanced degrees, who very adamantly told me that the bible, and especially Genesis, is STORIES. They tell us who, not how. That is, God is the creator, but HOW he creates is not explicitly stated. For that, we must read his creation, and take the clues that exist in the earth and its creatures, and use our brains to figure out what they tell us.