Causes of mass extinctions

[Amelia]

[Neil D]

I just saw this....

My reaction-

LOL

Unfortunately, all I can do with this reality is

[Planey]

Consider it a "Happy Birthday" present, Neil.

Graeme

PS

Happy Birthday from me, too. Hope you had a great day!

[Neil D]

Thank you, Graeme,,,it is 5;45 am. and I am just waking up, figuring out the details of the day...My daughter is her to visit with her ol' man, and to celebrate, we are going on a picnic, a walk and then to a music theater in Ashland. Tomorrow, we go to the Shakespear festival...then it's back to work..[sigh]and she is off to see her brother in Boise, Id....

[Dr. Shane]

Well, people killing other people in the name of God is nothing new to our age. The dinosaurs were killed by an act of God and the woolly mammoths by the ice age that followed the flood. So I guess I missed the humor.

It comes off to me as atheist humor and a slam on organized religion. The atheist believes dinosaurs were killed by asteroids hitting the earth. The atheist believes mammoths were killed by multiple ice ages. The atheist believes organized religion is a curse to humanity.

[Vera]

Quote:

The atheist believes mammoths were killed by multiple ice ages.

I've not heard this one before. Where can I find more information? (Not about the atheists, about how the mammoths were killed.)

***Ignore completely!*** ***I completely missed your point!***

[aldona]

Quote:

The atheist believes organized religion is a curse to humanity.

Not just atheists, Shane...a lot of people who believe in God too. (Including myself sometimes...increasingly often actually... )

It seems that the more organized a religion becomes, the more dysfunctional it becomes.

aldona

[D. Allan]

Quote:

It comes off to me as atheist humor and a slam on organized religion. The atheist believes dinosaurs were killed by asteroids hitting the earth. The atheist believes mammoths were killed by multiple ice ages. The atheist believes organized religion is a curse to humanity.

too bad you missed the humor, Shane. It is really funny! It is not about atheists at all but about the stupidity of mankind which may eventually kill off all humanity with nuclear bombs ... and other environmental disasters... well i guess if u think 'bout it 2 much it loses all humor

what we need maybe is more disorganized religion - (that is to say - the real stuff) :)

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

Where can I find more information?

I just watched a documentary with my kids last week on Animal Planet about a mammoth they dug out of a glacier. It was a great program. Naturalists believe in various ice ages which occurred naturally - as this comic strip points out. Creationists believe in one ice age that was the result of the flood - thus caused by God. Either way, it wasn't good for the mammoths.

As far as organized religion goes... it is God's chosen means to spread the gospel. So if God is bad, then I guess organized religion is too. If God is good, then organized religion must be too - at least true religion.

[Amelia]

God didn't create religion. Man did.

[melvin mccarty]

Funny about those mammoths! Were they saved in the ark and then killed by the cold? How come some of them didn't wander south from where the ark landed?

mel

[Neil D]

Funny about those mammoths! Were they saved in the ark and then killed by the cold? How come some of them didn't wander south from where the ark landed?

mel

They did....We call them "elephants"....

And by the way, there are accounts where the elephant lived in one part of the world, and in the New World, the wolly mammoth also existed...

the reason why the wolly mammoth didn't survive in the New World was due to the hunting them to exstinction and the cold. At least this is what Louis 'Amore wrote in his book/stories.

[Dr. Shane]

Man didn't start an endangered species program quick enough.

Really, creationists believe that elephants and mammoths had a common ancestor on the ark. If the genetic information for both already existed in the common ancestor, mutations would allow both the elephant and mammoth to evolve in a short period of time after the flood.

As I read the Bible, organized religion seems to have come from God, not man. At least true religion. The organization part of it can be traced back to Abraham. Certainly God organized it in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The early church was certainly organized by the Apostle under divine guidance. It is false religion that is the invention of man.

[melvin mccarty]

Of course! How could I be so stupid? And every last mammoth that went to Africa turned into an elephant! So obvious isn't it? There should be a couple of "missing" links there somewhere wouldn't you think huh? lol

mel

[olger]

Those are some good points regarding religion Shane. If I had to pick a word to describe our age, the would would be disillusionment..or doubt. Truly we are living in the age of modern doubt.

That's where faith comes in, from reading the Word and praying daily for inderstanding. The doubt melts away.

happy melting to all,

olger

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

There should be a couple of "missing" links

When animals die they rot away or are eaten by scavengers unless a catastrophe buries the animal before that happens. There are a lot of missing links.

[melvin mccarty]

Well there have been elephants for a long time in Africa and India so they must have done some fast evolving right after the flood. Something doesn't add up really. Why didnt the odd group just remain wooly mammoths somewhere? Did they all have to turn into elephants?

mel

[Dr. Shane]

Mammoths didn't have to turn into elephants nor elephants into mammoths. They simply both had a common ancestor.

Natural selection requires evolution to take place over long periods of time. Divine selection can occur much quicker. If God created the common ancestor with the genetic codes already in place, evolution would take a much shorter time.

Example. A black woman whose grandmother was white with blond hair and blue eyes marries a black man whose grandfather was white with blond hair and blue eyes. Both have black skin, afro hair, brown eyes and yet give birth to a white child with blond hair and blue eyes. This can be done because both already had the genetic information in them.

In the same way, the common ancestors of the elephant and mammoth could have given birth to some offspring that had hair with long tusks and other offspring that had no hair and short tusks. Or the evolution could have taken a few generations. Those with hair would have migrated north to get away from the heat. Those without hair would have migrated south to get away from the cold.

The ice age is estimated to have began soon after the flood and lasted and estimated 700 years. It appears the mammoths were extinct by the end of the ice age.

[melvin mccarty]

Oh now I get it! The great freeze up in Siberia came soon after the flood so the hairy Woolephants hurried North so they could get frozen into the ice! Great thinking there!

mel

[melvin mccarty]

The woolephants would have had a generational span of many decades so if we allow them a few generations to evolve while rushing North to escape the heat it all fits together beautifully.

mel

[aldona]

Quote:

If I had to pick a word to describe our age, the would would be disillusionment..or doubt. Truly we are living in the age of modern doubt.

Read this somewhere recently..."Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith...they keep it awake and moving."

Anyone who doesn't have doubts at some stage of their spiritual walk isn't really thinking hard enough to ask questions. It's how we deal with those doubts that determines what happens to our faith.

aldona

[melvin mccarty]

But seriously it would take several generations of isolation for the animals that survived in the ark to evolve into a fixed type such as the mammoths or the elephants Several generations of those animals would mean at least a couple hundred years. If the earth assumed it's axis tilt at the flood then the freeze-up would have occured immediately with all the volcanos and the crustal plate movement and huge mountain ranges being pushed skyward.

Would Shane or someone care to draw a timeline for us showing how in fact these events happened?

mel

[Dr. Shane]

That would fit into the time line. Creationist think tanks estimate the ice age was caused as a result of sunlight being blocked by clouds and volcanic ash. Once the large polar caps were formed the big chill began. They estimated the ice age lasted about 700 years with some give and take on that. There were obviously many glacier advances and retreats. Natural science tends to see those as marking different ice ages. Creation think tanks see that simple as warm periods and cold periods.

The flood and the ice age that followed was a catastrophe that was like nothing the Earth had ever seen and is comparable only to the judgment to come.

[melvin mccarty]

Well my think tank says that it was winter in northern Siberia when the 40 days of rain started and it snowed in Siberia probably hundreds of feet of snow. So more likely the Mammoths just perished where they were and were preserved that way. Is that not reasonable?

mel

[Amelia]

Yes, considering the Mammoths that are being exhumed are in permafrost or glacial ice.