From: kck+@cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge)
Subject: Re: YOUNG EARTHERS _AND_ BIBLE CRITICS WATCH OUT! (huh?)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 08:10:38 GMT

> From: muehlhau@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John Muehlhausen)
> Subject: Re: YOUNG EARTHERS _AND_ BIBLE CRITICS WATCH OUT! (huh?)
> Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 09:33:43 GMT
> 
> From: kck+@cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge)
> 
> >> {Genesis 1:11}
> >> And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,
> >> and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in
> >> itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
> >
> >This is day 3, before the creation of water creatures and birds on day 5.
> >Unfortunately, fruit trees are angiosperms, and angiosperms didn't evolve
> >until about 140 mil years BP in the early Cretaceous, well after the
> >appearance of water animals. Ross is wrong; this is out of order.
> 
> "'Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds 
> fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.' And God created 
> the great sea monsters, and _every_ living creature that moves, with which
> the waters swarmed, after their kind, and _every_ winged
> bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good." (emph mine)
> 
> First, what is meant by water creatures is far less clear than what is meant
> by fruit trees.  I'll give you this one, pending point #2:

"and _*EVERY*_ living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed..."
I don't see what is unclear about this.

> I am wondering about these periods (more on "day" later).  Assume for a
> moment that "day" should be rendered as "indefinite period".  Let day 3 be
> the creation of all vegetable life, and day 5 be the creation of all water
> "creatures" and birds.  Draw lines on a time line, with the start being at
> the supposed occurrence of such life, and the end a realistic conclusion to
> development.  Which region (in general) occupies the earliest time?  

How far back are you willing to go on the evolutionary tree? The problem
with this approach is that given Genesis (incorrectly) mentioning X before
Y, you can always find some Z ancestral to X that appeared before Y did.

What do you want to call a "plant"? At the end of the Cambrian, the highest
(sic) form of plant life was algae, i.e. pond scum. On the other hand, you
have members of at least 20 different groups of arthropods in the Cambrian
(there are currently three -- spiders, crustaceans, and insects).  Group
here means basic body plan -- number and arrangement of limbs. 80% of the
species on the planet today are arthropods, so that's nothing to sneeze at.
I'd say the arthropods (mostly marine -- "living creature[s] that moved,
with which the waters swarmed") were doing a heck of a lot better for
themselves in the Cambrian than plants, which wouldn't develop to include
flowering plants for a few hundred million years.

As for birds, this brings us to a delicate matter of semantics. Was
_archaeopteryx_ a "bird"? Where one draws a line at levels above species is
an essentially arbitrary matter of taxonomic convenience. On the other hand,
I think the average 5 year old Hebrew at the time of Moses encountering
_arch._ would almost certainly point and utter the early Hebrew equivalent
of "BIRDIE!" The specimens of _arch._ come from late Jurassic strata, which
is the geological era preceding the Cretaceous (where flowering plants
appear).

> I am genuinely interested, and I am guessing that you have better
> resources than I.  

Gould's books in general are a good starting place. WONDERFUL LIFE talks in
detail about the strange and unusual critters swimming around in the
Cambrian. Go the the nearest university bookstore and look for whatever
they're using for intro to evolutionary biology -- that should give a basic
outline of the time sequence.

> In fact, "and there was evening, and there was morning, a third day." would
> seem to suggest this completion scheme, would it not??  

It suggested sequencing to devout Jews and Christians reading the chapter
with (one would assume) the aid of the Holy Spirit for several millenia. The
notion that the Holy Spirit was impotent to inspire a correct understanding
of the chapter without the help of 3000 years of scientific progress bothers
me.

I'm not saying that to be flippant -- as a Christian, what Ross is
suggesting bothers me. It's one thing to say that the HS isn't going to
inspire Moses (or Q, or whoever) to talk about galactic redshifts. It is
another thing entirely to suggest that when the Bible says...

"[14] And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to
divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons,
and for days, and years:  [15] And let them be for lights in the firmament
of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.  [16] And God
made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser
light to rule the night: he made the stars also.  [17] And God set them in
the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, [18] And to rule
over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness:
and God saw that it was good."

...that what this *really* means is the clearing of an (unmentioned) cloud
cover to allow preexisting sun, moon, etc. to become visible. After all,
Moses was no doubt perfectly capable of describing that clearly if that was
what was intended, and the Hebrews were no doubt capable of understanding
such a description.

> >> >> The odds that Moses could have guessed the correct order even if he
> >> >> were given the events are 1 chance in 40 million.
> >
> >Given that 11! is 39,916,800, it seems pretty clear what Ross' model is.
> >It's a stupid model. No one would give an ordering in which land plants
> >appeared before the land. No one would give an ordering in which land
> >animals appeared before land. No one would give an ordering in which ocean
> >animals appeared before the oceans. No one would put the creation of any of
> >2-11 before the creation of #1 on Ross's list (can you picture a creation
> >account that described plants as created before matter?). 
> 
> I agree totally and 100%... I also noticed this, and thought it was
> exceedingly strange.  It would still be a remarkable bunch of guesswork,
> though, wouldn't you say?

Not really, on two counts. 

First, the items in the list are not the events in Genesis (sun, moon, stars
created day 4), but Ross' interpretation of those events (sun, moon, stars
_become visible_ day 4). Since Ross specifically tried to interpret the
events to match the scientific evidence, it is unsurprising that they do.

Second, the correct test is not to consider the possible permutations, but
the order in which the same events occur in other cultures' creation myths.

> By far most of the book is on cosmology, and even I think he does a better
> job on that than on applying his conclusions to Genesis.

No doubt. In fact, I think his views on the objections to a long creation
period based on Romans are pretty spot on from what I've heard of them.
Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:24953 alt.pagan:14831