l record. If you say that God was talking
>about seed bearing plants rather than spore bearing plants ...
Glenn, there's not a high confidence among Bible scholars concerning
Genesis 1-11 as to the precise meaning of every phrase. You corrected
me earlier on the basis of information that bore a 1995 copyright date.
In succeeding years do you think any new data will surface to change some
of the things we are so sure about today?
>then you still
>have the problem that the sun and moon must have been created less than
>195 million years ago, after the plants. You have made your problem
Please reread earlier post. Sun, moon and many stars all created before
the earth had birth pangs, maybe not visible, though.
>Teleosts, bony fish, which most modern fish are, appear long before seed
>bearing plants. Sharks appear 500 million years ago long before
>seed bearing plants (Ivan J. Sansom, M.M. Smith and M. P. Smith, "Scales of
>Thelodont and shark-like fishes from the Ordovician of Colorado," Nature,
>379, Feb. 15, 1996.)
Yes, I agree, although ancient vegetation preceded ancient fish and more
modern vegetation preceded modern fish. Putting plant life ahead of animal
life can be justified for at least a couple of reasons. Furthermore, the
"days of creation" may overlap. I'm not saying they do, but others have
suggested that, and I have heard a case for that method of explanation.
In other words, God started plant life first on earth and plant life is
first mentioned in Genesis. But the chain of plant life talked about in
the text doesn't have to be complete on the third day, it may overlap the
fifth and sixth days.
>>But what about "grass" on the third day of creation? Grasses did not
>> emerge until after the dinosaurs became extinct. How can 62 million
>>year old grass predate the dinosaurs, for example, who came into
>>existence over 200 million years ago?
>>Massive dinosaurs leave huge bones, which make wonderful fossils. The
>>Cambrian explosion left a permanent record of hard-shelled marine
>>creatures that is impossible to ignore. Any soft-shelled predecessors
>>left scarcely a trace. The same could be said for any land-based
>>vegetation that might have been.
>Good try, but pollen is given off in vast quantities by grasses. And
>pollen is a very easily fossilized material and is very difficult to
>destroy. If grasses existed prior to the dinosaurs, grass pollen WOULD be
>found in rocks of those ages. I know several palynologists and they
>assure me that no pollen evidence of grass exists prior to the early
>tertiary. This suggestion simply will not work
Glenn, that leads into the next paragraph.
>>Sparse fossil evidence gives us no way of knowing exactly what plant
>>life first began to grow on dry land. Try to find last year's grass
>>clippings on your front lawn today. More to the point, the Hebrew word,
>>deshe' translated "grass," can mean simply "vegetation." We can verify
>>that the earth has had land-based vegetation for over 400 million years.
>Yes, but marine life has been on earth for 3.4 billion years.
And the first marine life was plant life, but I don't know how that could
have been said in ancient Hebrew. If in this instance "earth" means the
entire earth - this planet - then that would include the sea, and deshe',
the Hebrew word for vegetation, should be broad enough to mean plant life.
Beyond that I would say, ask Moses.
>>Modern fruit trees certainly were not in existence before fishes. That
>>seems to be true, but these verses say nothing about "modern" fruit
>>trees. In English, fruit trees bear edible fruit; apples, pears,
>>cherries, and so forth. The Hebrew term includes seed-bearing trees, and
>>shade trees that do not bear edible fruit.
>You are being internally inconsistent Above you wanted to use "modern"
>fish to explain the concordance and now you say the Bible says nothing
>about "modern" fruit trees. Well the Bible didn't say anything about
>"modern fish" either. This is ad hoc.
I should have said trees bearing edible fruit. "Modern" is a relative
term, but I was running into a conflict wit