Your creation belief

[bbyrd009]

Originally Posted by pelathais

... interestingly (at least to me!) when plants colonized the land they found an atmosphere that was incredibly rich in CO2. Atmospheric CO2 levels dropped incredibly fast at this time and have never really recovered. This loss of an important greenhouse gas eventually led to the Ice Ages which devastated life on the planet.

Because colder air is drier - it doesn't carry moisture like warmer air - deserts expanded along with the ice sheets. I've got an entry in my blog that goes into more detail: http://xcomplex.com/.

Basically, life is "killing" our planet because carbon-base life buries the carbon needed for warmth and life in the rocks where it can't be recycled. I have to ask - Is one of the purposes of man to return at least some of this carbon to the biosphere? Check out the graph on my blog. The loss of CO2 was dramatic and even man with his full industry pumping out CO2 won't ever recover it all.

Wow, that's extreme, but I've just finished a discussion about how a 3 degree or so avg. global warming would actually benefit mankind? Lots of land opens up, I guess, to ag, etc.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by bbyrd009

I've had that explained as re-creation, after the first earth age?
"...the earth became void," "...re-populate the earth," etc.
What do you think?

Dunno. Augustine and other ancient Christian writers held the idea that the creation accounts of Genesis were intended as ex nihilo - out of nothing; however, "The Fathers" were notoriously in disagreement on many points as well.

I think Augustine did have some insight. His take was that the creation produced "wrappers" (some older translations use this word) which contained the "seeds" of the future forms of life that he observed in his day (and that we still observe today). When placed beside evolutionary biology, Augustine actually come out as being quite prescient in his understanding of the development of life.

At the dawn of modern science many people offered the idea that "special creation" was something that happened over and over. What we see from natural history, however, is that even after the most massive extinction events, life from the past survived (even if just barely like after the Permian Extinction) and provided the "seeds" for the life that "replenished" the earth.

The ancients don't appear to have had an understanding nor even any information available to them concerning these past extinctions and the vast, vast time periods in between. The inspired accounts can only be said to hint at this, though many would argue that they don't even do that.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by bbyrd009

Wow, that's extreme, but I've just finished a discussion about how a 3 degree or so avg. global warming would actually benefit mankind? Lots of land opens up, I guess, to ag, etc.

Warmer air will be wetter air. We will of course lose some sea coast - but what would we prefer? New York under 20 feet of water or New York under a mile thick ice sheet and the rest of North America a desert covered with sand dunes as it was 50,000 years ago.

And, there are dead, bleached out coral reefs all along the "spine" of central Florida. Those reefs used to be thriving and filled with life. Was it a "bad thing" or a "good thing" when they died? Greenland was covered with forests and had huge herds of animals including the ancestors of the polar bears which roamed freely throughout what can best be call a sub-continent... AND! Greenland was at the same latitudes as today when these conditions existed.

Was it a "bad thing" when Greenland froze over and all life there perished while the polar bears were forced to roam the cruel ice packs for food?

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by bbyrd009

Well, I've just started that book, went to 4 editions, at least; dense but very interesting. Hislop documents how the Hebrew Rahm became Brahm, as well as the pagan roots, I guess, of the trinity, and notes the descent of Hinduism to the point where there are now no more temples of Brahm, and shows where Brahmins mis-translate the Vedas...pg 14-18, 4th edition.

As to the second, I believe just recently that steady-state--said to be so unlikely that it was never seriously considered, if the energy is off by like 1 part in a quadrillion it changes the model to one of contraction or expansion--has been verified?

Hisslop is interesting, though many Indian scholars today dispute his assertions concerning the Hindu language. When Hisslop was writing (1850s) our own understanding in the West of the Hindi language was just developing.

[bbyrd009]

Actually he is chiefly connecting various religions descent from Oneness to Babylon here, that was all kind of an aside. This must have been written at the end of his life, first edition 1913.

[seekerman]

Originally Posted by pelathais

There were a variety of plant lineages that moved from the sea onto the land. Lichen, for example is a symbiont of algae and fungi - so the predecessors of lichen were at least two-fold.

Plants like seaweed and kelp which live in the inter-tidal zone were adapted to both underwater and terrestrial environments and were thus ready to make the transition. Their predecessors were algae. Algae lives as a single cell organism while swimming freely in the sea, however when it becomes attached to something like a reef (or the bottom of your fishing boat!) the single cells release a hormone that attracts other algae cells and they form a colony.

Stromatolites are mats of algae that form in inter-tidal areas and are found in some of the oldest rocks in Australia. They don't form very readily today because grazing animals like fish and turtles eat the mats as they form. Modern stromatolites are found only in hyper-saline environments where animals don't graze. In the very distant past, there were no animals to graze on them so they grew everywhere.

Wikipedia has a good general article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluti...tory_of_plants

Ok, thanks, very interesting. I'm assuming then that you believe that bacteria is the predecessor to all life on earth, both plant and animal?

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by seekerman

Ok, thanks, very interesting. I'm assuming then that you believe that bacteria is the predecessor to all life on earth, both plant and animal?

It's a bit more complicated than that, but yes. Generally speaking, genetic evidence as well as the fossil record points to the fact that all life on earth is related and developed from single celled organisms over billions of years.

"The first man was from the earth, a man of dust..." 1 Corinthians 15:47 (ESV)

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by bbyrd009

Actually he is chiefly connecting various religions descent from Oneness to Babylon here, that was all kind of an aside. This must have been written at the end of his life, first edition 1913.

I may have misunderstood. I thought you were speaking of Alexander Hislop and his book, "Two Babylons." He died in 1865.

[bbyrd009]

hmm, well that's the guy, but 1st pub in 1916?
With a note by the Editor,
"Had the lamentable author been spared to superintend
the issue of the 4th edition of his work..."
implying i thot something diff.
surely the same guy.

[bbyrd009]

Regardless of what info has superceded him,
one can't form a creation belief until after
they have read this book.