Scientists find missing link between whale and its closest relative, the hippo

UC Berkeley News ^ | 24 January 2005 | Robert Sanders, Media Relations

[WildTurkey]

And, while you follow the article, follow the money. That's generally a good way to find a liar.

Yes. Some here have actually admitted sending their money to those creationists' websites.

[Jaysun]

I didn't say that. I said "the beginning" and that's what scripture says. To me, the "beginning" clearly means the time when something starts or begins.

That would be Day One, NO?

No, I mean the beginning of creation. He brought forth light, land and water, the heavens, animal life, man, then he rested.

I suppose your point is that man wasn't made on day one, so what says that man wasn't evolving in the meantime? I would point to what God said on day six. "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth."

That obviously indicates that man was made separately.

[Liberal Classic]

No, that sounds like the arguments evolutionists make. "No one can disprove evolution, therefore creation is false."

But this is not what I, and others on this thread are saying about the theory of evolution. This is a mischaracterization. No one says "no one can disprove evolution." Scientific theories by definiton are designed to be testable. If a test proves the theory to be in error, the theory must be revised.

But if you can prove the Lord, then evolution as purely the consequence of natural phenomenon is false. If you can prove the scripture is inspired, then macro-evolution is false.

This does not follow. One can have faith in the Creator and yet believe in the validity of science. You are setting up a false dichotomy.

[RadioAstronomer]

You mat want to do some research on Super Nova 1987A (SN1987A). You seem truly curious and I think you would find this fascinating. Here are a couple of links (There are many more):

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/StarDeath/sn1987a.html

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/supernova_agesize.html

[snarks_when_bored]

Thanks for that Tolstoy quote...I'd not seen it before. It's perfectly apt and worth remembering. Clearly, it's best to hold ones opinions lightly, recognizing that any or all of them might need revising (or discarding) in the face of fresh evidence.

Thanks, too, of course, for the wealth of links and information you've been providing us.

[traumer]

[Jaysun]

It says that God created man on the sixth day. Therefore, man was created toward the end of the process. All of this is perfectly consistent with the idea that man is a product of evolution, the same as all the other species of life on earth.

Not if you take all of the scripture concerning the creation of man into account. It then becomes clear that man was created separately. That's what I believe, you're free to differ. See post 382.

[Mamzelle]

re: Whatever you say, hon. )))

Hon? Childish. It's been fun watching the Descent of the Species. I'll see ya on the next "All About Eve" post from our Originator. Who knows, by then we might even have that new fly we've been promised.

[snarks_when_bored]

Willful blindness is almost always an incurable malady.

Sigh. This trend seems to be growing. :-(

It often seems so, doggone it (so to speak).

Hey, any luck with Parmenides?

[stremba]

If man is a product of evolution, is he not "formed from the dust of the ground"? If God created the first life, either directly or indirectly through the creation of laws of nature that led to the formation of life through natural processes, did He not "breath into his nostrils the breath of life"? I was assuming a figurative reading of the Scripture and asserting that evolution is consistent with that figurative reading. If you want to assert that the Bible is literally true, then you have problems other than evolution. For example, why do you have no problem with the Biblical assertion that the earth is fixed and does not move? I have heard it argued that relativity says it's correct to view things from a reference frame in which the earth is stationary. However, it's equally correct to view things from a reference frame in which the earth moves. Why then is there no problem with relativity?

[DannyTN]

"This does not follow. One can have faith in the Creator and yet believe in the validity of science. You are setting up a false dichotomy."

It's not a false dichotomy. You are reading it wrong. I specifically said if the Lord exists (and he claims to be Creator) then he did not use entirely natural proceses, or by definition, He didn't create.

Then I said, if scripture can be proved inspired, that Macroevolution (at least on the scale that we talk about) is false. That's because scripture makes very specific claims.

I believe in the validity of science. I believe in the scientific method. But I don't believe that the scientists who have adopted evolution are correct. There is a portion of scientific thought (evolution) that is wrong. It wouldn't be the first time and it wouldn't be the last time.

[RadioAstronomer]

That would probably raise the level of conversation in your house.

You made me bust out laughing! :-)

[Ichneumon]

So, a lion can inter-breed with a tiger, but not with a cheetah.

This brings up another interesting bit of biology: While common convention puts cheetahs in the "cat" family -- and they certainly do have a number of characteristics of the cat family -- they also are closer to canids in some way than cats. For example, they have non-retractable claws like dogs (and unlike cats), and some features of their skulls are quite "doggy". Native Africans often classified cheetahs as dogs rather than cats.

While none of this is conclusive by itself, I'd be interested to see what the DNA of cheetahs says about its phylogeny whenever the genome labs get around to sequencing it. I'd predict that cheetahs are on a clade which split earlier from the canid/felid branch than most other species in the same group.

(Background: Although people often think of "dogs and cats" as classic opposites, the "dog group" and the "cat group" are actually closest cousins to each other in the carnivore diversification radiation. So the cheetah may be a result of being closer to the ancestral dog/cat common ancestor than either of the more specialized groups of descendants. DNA analysis will be able to answer this for sure one way or the other.)

[stremba]

Agreed. I think it's wise to look to the Bible for moral guidance, but not for scientific information. I won't try to argue your views about the direct creation of man since I am sure there's no point in doing so. You believe what you belive as a matter of faith and there's no way any amount of logic, facts, or evidence will convince you otherwise. Like you, I don't see the findings of science as being particularly relevant in the spiritual realm, so I am not surprised that most of the findings of science are not mentioned in the Bible.

[WildTurkey]

I have heard it argued that relativity says it's correct to view things from a reference frame in which the earth is stationary.

This is astronomer Tycho Brahe's diagram of a stationary (geocentric) earth with the sun going around daily. It first appeared in 1588.

[general_re]

But if you can prove the Lord...

If you can prove the Lord, what do you need faith for?

[Modernman]

Funny you should mention cheetah genetics. I was just reading about them:

The cheetah originated about 4,000,000 years ago, long before the other big cats. The oldest fossils place it in North America in what is now Texas, Nevada and Wyoming. It was common throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and North America until the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, when massive climatic changes caused large numbers of mammals to disappear. All cheetah in North America and Europe and most of those in Asia and Africa vanished. Some experts think our present populations were derived from inbreeding by those very few surviving and closely related animals. This inbreeding "bottleneck", as theorized, led to the present state of cheetah genetics: all cheetah alive today appear to be as closely related as identical twins.

Cheetah Spot

[Ichneumon]

Not me, but the people who actually believe that a mammal went to the land, then went back to the water and develped some sort of mechanism to breath underwater or breach the water and breath air, they are the people who lost credibility.

...and since these "people" exist only in your own head...

[Modernman]

Creationists admit to speciation within kind. Man's demonstrated that with dogs, horses, pigs, cows, etc.

You need to define "kind."

[DannyTN]

"If you can prove the Lord, what do you need faith for?"

For those long times in between seeing proof when people are constantly telling you that He doesn't exist, or He said x when you know He said y, or when they claim that God is not trustworthy when you know He is.