Re: Dino-Birds
David Campbell (bivalve@mailserv0.isis.unc.edu)
Wed, 2 Jun 1999 11:33:21 -0400
>> You are not alone in thinking that you know the mind of God. What basis
>> do you have for saying that God made the wrong numbers of what you
>> define as "kinds." JS Gould of course made a big case of his proported
>> understanding of the wisdom of God in The Panda's Thumb. Who knows why
>> he made the diversity of kinds (a human definition) and what gives you
>> the insight into the workings of his mind. Further, what limites the
>> Creator from making whatever it pleases him regardless of you dismay
>> what how it fits into the current human model of biodiverstiy. I will
>> follow the postings very carefully and I await your explanation. I
>> would want at least to hear that you:
>>
>> Give us a listing of all the "kinds" of creatures on the planet.
>>
>> Tell us how they interact to form the integrated biological system.
>>
>> Explain to us your criteria for selecting the mistakes and give us some
>> integrated explanation.
It's Steve Gould, not TEs, who claims that these are mistakes. If one
assumes that God uses natural processes and that He knows what He's doing,
even when we do not know, then "imperfections" are no problem. They can be
a problem for some special creationist points of view, but not others.
Archaeopteryx is the oldest fossil with definite feathers; older things
have been claimed to have skeletal features associated with possession of
feathers, but this is not agreed upon.
Obviously, the Cretaceous bird-like dinosaurs cannot be ancestral to
Archaeopteryx, but they may be descendants of those ancestral forms that
changed less than did the birds.
David C.