Job 33:6
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- Jun 15, 2017
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My disappointment is growing. All you’ve done is said, “Because reptiles are descended from fish and horses from reptiles, we will find fish lower than reptiles and reptiles lower than horses in the fossil record.”
Have you considered other ways for that to happen? For instance, fish live at lower elevations than reptiles, and reptiles lower than horses, generally.
Well remember, fish are very common in cenozoic strata. And fish are of course alive today as well. So it isn't really an issue to find ceolacanth (also a fish) living just the same, no more is it an issue that any other fish lives today. And ceolacanths species today are morphologically different than ceolacanth species of the carboniferous and morphologically different still than ceolacanth species of the Devonian. So keep that in mind as well. Most people don't know that. They think ceolacanth species today are the same species of the past, but that's actually incorrect. And if you would like more info on that, feel free to ask.
It's not about where any fossils are present but rather it's a question of when their physical traits appear. So it doesn't have anything to do with elevations they live at. Plus whales are also found above most mammals. So that would just turn that idea on its head anyway.
Also, further still, if you think about how fossils are collected, we aren't typically digging deep quarries to get to them. They're exposed at the surface by tilted strata that extends deep into the earth. The structure of the earth is not what it once was. Think big picture. What elevations things lived at is irrelevant, because eons of time, mountains, seas, deserts, frozen tundra etc are all flattened together into these layers we are discussing. "Cenozoic" or "cretaceous" encompasses all elevations, deep sea and highest peaks. It's temporal not geographic.
Ultimately I'm just doing this all for fun, for entertainment purposes. If fish appear lower in strata, it's interesting to see that their DNA is more basal than a reptile or horse as well. And whale DNA is nothing like a fishes, though they appear physically the same (until you look at their skeletons).
I digress.
You’ve said evolution would be disproved if an animal was found out of sequence, but such happens fairly often, and the sequence is adjusted to fit. Coelacanth is an example, though in reverse—after it supposedly went extinct with the dinosaurs, suddenly some are found alive. All by itself it casts a huge shadow on the veracity of the fossil record, where a creature can hide for 60 million years undetected.
But of course ceolacanth dates back to the Devonian.
Think about it like this. If reptiles hypothetically evolved from fish, such as from ceolacanth (which is a fish), then it must be true that reptiles cannot be found before the first appearance of fish (with respect to first appearance). However, it absolutely can be true that fish still live on and fish are still alive today. Ceolacanth, just as any other fish existing today simply tells us that they lived on. So it's not an issue that fish live today. But the reverse is true that if reptiles lived back then, then you would disprove the theory.
It's not illogical for me to live along side my father at the same time in this current day. But it is illogical for me to pre-date the existence of my father. Keep this in mind.
Other examples:
If you found a bird or mammal in Paleozoic strata. And I mean literally any bird or any mammal in the Paleozoic. It would disprove the theory. Because how could a mammal or bird exist if reptiles had not yet come to be?
I'm sure you've heard scientists say that birds evolved from dinosaurs. So imagine if you found a bird in rocks older than dinosaurs, you would twist the whole succession apart. But, there is nothing unreasonable about reptiles and birds living side by side today.
If we found any tetrapod in the Ordovician, Cambrian or earlier, it would disprove the theory. Etc.
Grasses are another example. Until recently, grasses weren’t thought to have evolved until after dinosaurs were extinct, but now fossil coprolites have been found to have grasses in them.
Same deal as above.
Grass:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poales
The Poales are a large order of flowering plants in the monocotyledons, and includes families of plants such as the grasses, bromeliads, and sedges.
"The earliest fossils attributed to the Poales date to the late Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago, though some studies (e.g., Bremer, 2002) suggest the origin of the group may extend to nearly 115 million years ago, likely in South America. The earliest known fossils include pollen and fruits."
There's nothing unreasonable about discovering grass to be older than it was previously thought, or finding a fish to be younger than was previously thought.
The key is to pay attention to the phylogenies.
Grass is a flowering plant. Flowering plants date back some 150 million years ago, descended from seeded plants which extend back 350 million years ago. So moving grass from 50 to 100, or 100 to 50, doesn't really change the succession of non vascular>vascular>seeded>flowering. You would have to find grasses back over 300 million years for it to become a logical problem. So finding grass at 65 million years or 70, that's just an update to good science, but it isn't a logical conflict with common descent.
If my father is 70 years old, it might be shocking to you if you thought I was 30 years old then later found out that I was 40. Surprising? Sure. But illogical? Not at all. But if I were 75 years old, then it would become illogical.
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