Originally posted by telerion
Do you, whodey, and you, ahosyney, think we find vestigials throughout the animal kingdom because evolution did occur on a mass level over long periods of time and these vestigials are transitory "leftovers" from a time/environment where the vestigial played a critical role to the species survival?
If so, then please respond, "Yes," and elaborate.
If not, then please respond, "No," and elaborate.
Either way, let's quit playing games.[/b]
Yes, it seems that vestigals are transitory "lefovers" from an evolutionary process. Am I 100% sure, no, and neither are you but it appears to be the case.
I view the Creation of man occuring in two phases. The first phase was forming the physical aspect of mankind from other biological organisms. The last phase occured when God breathed life into man thus seperating mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom. I will even use Genesis to back what I am saying!!
In Genesis 1:26 it says that God will make man in God's image and likeness and in the following verse it says that God created mankind in his image. The verbs make and create are both used, and so, it appears that both making and creating were involved in the appearance of mankind as we know him today. In both Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 2:19 we can plainly see that God formed both man and beast from the dust of the ground thus common decent can be inferred. In fact, we can see a process for God's creation as he starts in the oceans and then moves to dry ground which is the evolutionary pattern seen in science. Notice also in Genesis 1:11 we see God speaking to the earth to bring forth grass and in in 1:20 he speaks to the waters to bring forth moving creatures in the sea and in the air and then progressed to larger animals in the oceans in 1:21 to whales. Then in Genesis 1:24 God commands the earth to bring forth animals on dry land.
First of all, why does he speak to the earth and the waters, etc, to create? Why not just zap them out of thin air? It appears that God was simply using the materials on earth already created as he progressed even further to his masterpiece which was mankind. Then when he achieves the physical masterpiece seen in Genesis 2:7 we see God breath life, or in Hebrew "neshamah" or "soul life" into mankind and then he was done. Creation, of which the goal was mankind, was completed and then God "rested". A better way of saying it is that he was finished.
You may say that I am simply taking my current knowledge of scientific facts and applying them to what I read in Genesis. However, ancient scholars of Genesis came to similar conclusions. A man by the name of Nahmanides who lived from CE 1194-1270 wrote in his "Commentary on Genesis" that he believed Genesis to be saying that every material thing that was eventually to exist was derived from what was created in the first instant of creation. Perhaps this instant is what we know as the Big Bang today? In fact, he also wrote that in the first seconds of the universe that he believed that ALL matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place which was no larger than a grain of mustard and then it expanded into our known universe. So tell me, how does one living from the years 1194-1270 have such scientific insight derived from the book of Genesis?
Another ancient scholar by the name of Maimonides (1135-1204) wrote in "The Guide for the Perplexed that in the time of Adam there coexisted animals that appeared as humans in shape and also in intellegence but lacked the "image" that makes man uniquely different from other animals, being as the "image" of God. Nahmanides wrote something similar in that he viewed mankind as having come about in stages. The first stage was the force that produced growth "like that of a plant" from the dust of the earth. Then with further Divine input, man was able to move, first as the fish and then as the land animals. Nahamanides continues by saying that animals that became man had both the physical structure and the power perception of a human. Only when this was accomplished was the spirit of God, or neshamah, breathed into him. The neshamah, placed into mankind by God, was the last act in the making and the creating of mankind according to Nahmanides.
What I do know is that there is a huge difference between mankind and the rest of the animal world. Is it genetics? Are we not very similar to monkeys genetically? Yet we are very different indeed! However, this problem is for the atheist, not the person of faith.