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Now this whole idea of Commenorative Days I learned from you, including the idea that the full fruition of a kind of life like plants is mentioned in Genesis, even though it took millions of years to reach. Is that not more or less what you said?
That's right. A Commemorative Day is like Memorial Day. It was initiated shortly after the Civil War for the respect of all those who died in that war, and from that point forward it came to represent all similar events along that line which followed the initiating event (i.e., Civil War). Similarly, if we were to explore the galaxy, maybe we would have a Vegetation Life Day which would commemorate the creation of life on other planets, and use the same day to commemorate events such as plant life, trees, grass, etc. (which might follow millions of years later). We might add a different day, such as Sea and Air Day, which would commemorate the first fish and flying creatures which would later include the commemoration of bird evolution.
Now plants did come first, some 1.3 Byrs ago, but grass only evolved some 33 million years ago. Not sure about fruit trees. So the bible is specific about what is created, if not when.
It's specific about the examples of what counts in that commemoration, but it is not specific to the process or methodology by which those lifeforms are created and/or disappear from the zoological record of active species. So, for example, Memorial Day is specific to the kind of events and people that should be commemorated on that day, but it is not specific as to the length of wars, or other details as to whether such war events are active wars or inactive wars.
Now regarding extinction: if God is responsible for the creation of life, he is also responsible for its extinction. And if there is some kind of design objective, it appears that the reason for extinctions is to eliminate the errors of creation. That is a trial and error process to my way of thinking.
Not necessarily. Natural selection and other natural processes might be acting in response to a nomological (lawful) order. Think in terms of Feynman's path integral formulation. The particle is said to take every path and that the most probable path is the one where all the other paths mathematically cancel themselves out. Natural selection might be the most probable path based on the 'objectives' that God has setforth. Evolution might have nothing to do with trial and error, instead it might be the path which best reflects God's action in the world. For example, if God's action is minimal to obtain the path's destination, then the world we see is what you might expect from a minimalist approach to creation. |
