You know, anyone refers to him as Jesus the Christ, my mind starts singing, “Jesus the Christ! The wonderful, wonderful Christ! Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches for his crucifix!”
Out of wonder, at what level of genetic diversity does a species count as “extinct?” I’ve heard rumors here and there about so-and-so genus/species/group of animals being “the same as they were <some large number> of years ago” like sharks. Is this, like everything else, random happenstance that they didn’t encounter any impetus that weeded out the ones that didn’t express different genetic traits, or is it a disingenuous pop-science assertion that hides the fact that sharks are as close to 15-million year old proto-sharks as we are to 15-million year old primates?
It’s that their main body form, which is all we know about something more than a few thousand years old, is remarkably similar to the body form of a modern day animal or plant. For prehistoric sharks it often means: “They still have the same teeth.”
To continue with the “my ancestors came from Germany” analogy, if you go to Germany today you wil not find any of my ancestors. There are lots of Germans, some of whom are older than me, but none of them are my ancestors.
Because while my branch of the family was making a living in America, the rest also kept moving and growing. Just because no one over there speaking German today is my direct ancestor does not mean we are not both descended from the same people.
Would it interest you to know that religious people worldwide, specifically Creationist Christians, believed in evolution before Darwin came along?
Darwin explained a method by which this evolution occurred (natural selection) – this evolution that everyone, Christians included, could see had happened and already agreed upon.
Evolution is just “change over time.” It’s obvious that life in the past was different – even “natural and revealed religion” professors could see that.
The idea that “evolution” itself does not exist, or even the idea that it somehow stands in opposition to religion, is a recent creation specifically in reaction to the perceived rise (success) of Darwinian teachings about natural selection.
Christians who question Darwinisim already believed in evolution before Darwin published. It’s a matter of historical record – you can look it up.
So whoever in your church or belief structure is telling you to question evolution is lying to you – deliberately – to control your beliefs.
That ought to alarm you a lot more than a monkey in the family tree.
To answer your question about sharks, just think about this: Which shark are you talking about? A shark that is as big as a whale, and eats by filter feeding, or a shark that looks pretty much like a stingray (and rays are closely related to sharks)?
Evolution has some specific meanings. What Darwin wrote contradicted the belief that God created all species. He ran into immediate problems with Christian believers. It’s not in any way something that is a “recent creation.”
Darwin was not the first to express the notion of evolution, true, although he gave it a coherent logic that explained most of the problems of earlier attempts. However, while some Christians wrote about evolution, the vast majority of Christians did not agree with either the general or the specific at the time. The Church - the various Churches of various Christian denominations - agreed that Darwin was wrong.
You need to name names, times, books, denominations, anything and everything you think is support for this odd assertion.
Eeek. Yet another witnessing thread cunningly disguised as poorly phrased question about a scientific topic. Await the OP’s return with his debunking of the scientific theory in question!
Eh, Darwin is recent as far as I’m concerned. What I meant was, religious people weren’t against evolution before Darwin published. Stephen Jay Gould has written about that.
Of course, they thought the evolution seen in the rocks was part of God’s plan.
edited to add: My point being that being “against evolution” is aiming at the wrong target. “Against natural selection as an explanation for observed evolution” is a more coherent position, although of course still demonstrably wrong.