Just wondering, Iams, but in your idea when the Earth first formed was it formed complete with oceans etc? I.E. your theory presumes the Earth was created more or less as it is today, rather than as an accumulaiton of solar disk material going through a hot, molten phase, and with a oxygen-laden reducing atmosphere as we have today?

If not, how do you allow for the adaptation (evolution) of animals into the environments to which they would not be suitable for survival?

That's an interesting question, Leo, but it is beyond the scope of this thread. This thread simply looks at the possibility that what we currently see as the fossil record of a species of cow over time changing into a species of whale could actually be the fossil record of a species of cows that had a large enough population to leave fossils then dwindled to such a point that it was no longer significant enough (in size) to leave fossils while at the same time a contemporary population of whales (which had some similar traits to the cows), too small in size to leave fossils, grew to a significant enough size to leave fossils. I will leave speculations about how the Earth would have to be formed for another thread possibly.

Leo's question has everything to do with your hypothesis. Any species that is alive today must also have existed billions of years ago, even though they can't have been well suited at all. So for example, animals require oxygen, even though evidence shows that billions of years ago there was none. Species specialized for hot environments must have endured through cold ones and vice versa, ones specialized for wet environments must have endured through dry ones and vice versa.

In other words, your hypothesis depends on a stable environment. All evidence points to the contrary.

Plus we still have a problem in that your hypothesis doesn't satisfy evolutionary observations.

I disagree, after all, evolutionists have no problem disassociating the question of HOW life began from the rest of the theory and just going from the assumption that life is here, so answering how it got here is not necessary to the discussion of how it evolved into the variety we see today.

Not really, I have not disallowed adaptation, after all, we can see we don't have a stable environment today, nor have we had it throughout known history and animals have adapted without having to even begin to change from chipmunk to buffalo or from canary to crocodile, so whales could adapt to survive and thrive without having to become something else.

Like I said, adaptation does not negatively impact my idea.

Evolutionists don't disassociate abiogenesis from evolution because they want to, they do it because the two actually are two separate fields. Evolutionists don't discuss abiogenesis for the same reason that a geologist doesn't discuss astronomy.

Right now we're not saying that it matters how life appeared in the first place, but you need to explain how the organisms we see today managed to survive.



The only way it couldn't impact your idea was if there was a strict limit to how much a species could adapt, otherwise we're inevitably going to end up with the usual evolutionary processes which contravenes your entire idea to begin with.

Why do I need to? The question I'm asking has to do with whether the fossil record we are currently interpreting one way can actually fit another interpretation just as well. I'm not trying to be obtuse, I just really don't see how attempting to guess how life started has any impact on the question I'm asking.



Simple, an animal can adapt until the environment just does not support that kind of organism and then it becomes extinct. Fish live in a small lake, the lake begins to dry, the fish populations adapt to living in shallower waters, until eventually.. no more water.. and no more fish.

Except in reality this does not happen. Adaptations occur to better suit an organism to its environment, changing ones. The environment is always changing, its never static, never has been nor will be. Also, for that to work you then need to assume that animals are only adapting as a response to environmental pressures. In reality, Coevolution likely drives more evolutionary adaptations than environmental based ones. There are no barriers to evolution save time. Which can work for or against an evolutionary response.

Sorry, you want us to take your idea seriously don't you? Now we're pointing out something that invalidates your hypothesis, it must either be explained or your hypothesis rejected.