I would like to raise a couple of issues which I think supports my
conception of phase space and the way God uses it. This problem is only for
those who believe in an old earth as it will be inapplicable to YEC. The
first life appeared on earth around 3.8-3.5 billion years ago. The
earliest metazoan (according to a very quick look through my files) appears
to be around 700 million years ago. The first mammal about 225 million, the
first primate about 65 myr and the first hominid about 5-5.5 myr ago.
During the 3.1 billion years from the origin of life to the first metazoan,
there appears to be little change. If God were pushing the evolutionary
system along, why wasn't He pushing harder? Why did He start so far from
the intelligent form that we believe was his goal? In other words, if God
were pushing things along, why isn't the earth relatively young? What was
it that prevented intelligent life from arising in the Devonian with other
land animals? After that, God appears to have sped up his pushing almost
exponentially. Why?
I would suggest that this slow progress over the first 3 billion years of
life on earth and then the rapid accumulation of complexity and speciation,
is because God put the rules into the substrate of the universe when He
formed it. He could use the tracks in the DNA phase space as a guarantor of
our eventual creation, even if it took another billion years than it did.
He was in no hurry to create us (what is 3 or 14 billion years to Him?) He
could wait, watch and be entertained by what was going on.
This problem to me is the biggest problem I see for progressive creation.
The difference between the YECs and PCs in this regard is nothing but the
speed that God pushes things.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm