Deer tusks!!!?

[Lance]

You said it Rembrant. I would have loved to hear Darwins first conversation with his heavenly father after he died. Who knows, maybe I did? It's prity cool though and I will be looking for tusks on every deer from here on out!

 

Lance

[billrquimby]

I will not debate creationism vs. evolution. I leave that to people much smarter and skilled at persuasion than I.

 

My own belief (for what it is worth) is that our Creator created everything according to His plan; however. I also believe evolution is not a theory but just one of the tools He uses to implement that plan.

 

Be that as it may, I would like to point out that there are dark marks on each side of the lower jaws of a great many of the world's deer species, including white-tailed deer, mule deer, black-tailed deer, elk and moose (but not caribou, for some reason).

 

It's been my opinion that these marks are holdovers from when deer had tusks. It's been a long time since I could look at a deer's head and not immediately notice those marks. They are positioned exactly where tusks would be.

 

It's just my opinion, though. I have never read or heard of anyone attempting to explain why so many different types of deer all over the world are similarly marked.

 

Bill Quimby

[GRONG]

REMBRANT you rock!! I don't buy into the evolution theory either. Why would tusks get smaller as antlers grew bigger? The logic in that doesn't sit right with me, nor does it even make much sense. Did they stop ripping flesh off of other animals (like deer have always been noted to do) and feel the need for larger antlers because of the ol "small penis syndrome"? LOL!!! Seriously though, how'd they logically even come up with a theory like that?

[az4life]

The evolutionists always "conveniently" leave out the Theoretic part of their arguments.

 

I get a real laugh out of the paleontologists (fossil freaks) who go out and dig up a bone or 2 and then "determine" with 1% of a complete skeleton what species, sex, age, size and color hide this critter had from 10 million years ago.

 

Rembrant has it right in my opinion. The fact is, Even Darwin refuted and argued against his own theories later in life! Those promoting the evolution theory don't tell you that either.

[billrquimby]

You guys need to look at the complete skeletons of the stags dug out of peat bogs in Ireland and re-assembled. Theoretically (there, I said it), these monsters -- theoretically, ancestors of today's 180-pound fallow deer -- had 8-foot-wide antlers and weighed more than 2,000-pounds. Theoretically they adapted to living in marshes (death traps for such huge animals) by evolving into a smaller size deer.

 

Then take a look at the large deer that range across Eurasia. As you move east from Britain across Europe and enter Asia red deer begin to take on many of the characterists of elk. By the time you reach China and Mongolia, they ARE elk, identical to those in North America. (I defy anyone to tell the difference from a bull I shot in Mongolia and those I've shot on this continent.) Chromosome studies show red deer and elk are the same species ... except the red deer forms bellow (roar) like brahma bulls while elk bugle, squeal and grunt. Red deer antlers typically are different from elk. Elk have straw-colored sides, yellow rumps and dark brown manes and legs. Red deer are basically a single color and lack the manes of elk.

 

Say what you want, but IMO these deer are theoretically adapting (evolving) to a variety of environments. If you check a gazillion million years from now I suspect our North American elk, which theoretically came from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge, will look nothing at all like they do now.

 

I think humans will be different, too, thanks to the blending of Asian, African and European races.

 

That's just my opinion, though. Theoretically I could be all wet.

 

Bill

[TwoGuns]

Cool pictures of the tusks, would never have thought about sticking my head into a deers mouth to see if they were there, and have never had the privelage of boiling and animals head...

 

Anyway, to throw in my two cents on the issue that came up, I dont think you can blame Bill or anyone else from seeing similarities and differences in various animals, and I also dont think that the variations can be used to prove or disprove evolution or creation. I think old Noah only took two dogs onto that creaky boat of his a long time ago, and today we sure have a very wide variety of dogs to choose from at Petsmart.

 

Fortunately, our salvation doesnt depend on what we believe about evolution, or on any theory.

 

twoguns

[Rembrant]

Two Guns, you are absolutely right that thoeries don't affect our salvation, people living under the promises of the Bible have nothing to worry about. But there are a lot of people who's belief system is based on Darwinism; this belief being that we came from a cosmic accident that mutated over and over, increasing in complexity as it went and resulted in human beings. People that refuse to consider there could be Creator prefer to accept this other belief system, and call it hard scientific fact.

The thoery of evolution is not scientific fact, but in fact, a thoery; hardly something to trust your eternal whereabouts on.

Please don't confuse the wonderful ability of nature to adapt to different conditions with evolution.

Micro evolution is this ability, built within the genetic make-up of all living things, to adapt to changing conditions. Take the coues whitetail for example. This animal lives in elevations ranging from 2000 ft (or even less) to 8 or even 10,000 ft. on mount Grahm and the San Fransisco Peaks. Some Coues deer live where there is a lot of water, some live where the only water they get is after a rain storm. Some Coues deer have small tight racks, and some have gigantic racks. Some deer have red tails, and some deer have grey tails - and there are other variations, Don't the high counrty deer tend to have larger bodies and longer hair? Don't the desert deer tend to have larger ears? These are all the same kind of deer! But wait! It gets even better. The Coues deer is a sub-species. It is still the same deer (species) as the Northern Whitetail, and the Southern, and the Western, and the Florida Keys Deer. If it is the same species, it can produce off-spring. A Coues Whitetail can make a baby with a Northern Whitetail. Knowing this, NOW look at the variations and adaptabilty within the same species of animal! This adaptability is what bill is talking about. This is "micro-evolution", not evolution at all.

Macro-evolution is the theoretical concept of a known species turning into another species; one-celled organisms eventually turning into fish, then into amphibians, then to some kind of land animals like reptiles, birds, or some kind of mammal, then throw in a few billion years and you get primates and finally humans.

When you breed a horse with a donkey you get a mule - and it ends there because the mule is sterile. Same thing happens with cross-breeds of mule deer with whitetails. Different species are not allowed to mix according to the laws of nature, there is not one example of macro-evolution, The transitional fossils that Darwin predicted would be found, have not been discoverd in over 120 years, yet evolutionists insist that this is how we came to be.

Preposterous!

Mike

[Rembrant]

One day I was in the Barns and Noble book store and paused at the SCIENCE shelf to look at the various publications of all the Darwin stuff, thinking to myself, "Man, the folks that read this stuff aren't getting the full picture". Then a couple of books caught my eye. I leafed through them and realized that I needed to read them. One is "The Science of God", and the other is "The Hidden face of God". They are written by the same author, Gerald L. Schroeder, who has Ph.D and undergraduate degrees in physics and molecular biology from MIT. AND is considered an "applied theologian."

These books will tick-off the scientist and the theologian alike; the scientist because he criticises the Darwinians, and the theologians because he theorizes about the great flood being regional and not global, and thinks that God breathed a soul into Cro-Magnon man, thus creating Adam.

Lots and lots of Christians believe like my wife does (pure unadulterated faith) - "God said it, I believe it, that settles it". She has no need to read theories and work her mind around science and religion. I also believe what God has had recorded in the Bible is the truth, but man, what fun it is to look into the mysteries that surround us!

These books help us take a trip through creation, scientifically, and then point out that this incredible existance could never have happened by "chance".

One chapter in "Science of God" is intitled, "The Age of Our Universe: Six Days and Fifteen Billion Years". Incredible reading!! And another, "Evolution: Statistics Versus Random Mutations". This guy painstakingly describes the chromosome helix and the endless possiblilities of variations of the match-ups with protiens, and amino acids, and then provides models and statistical compulations that describe the mathematical impossibilities of evolution by random chance.

Here is a qoute from "The Hidden Face of God". After describing what a miracle each and every one of us is in three chapters, "The Orderly Cells of Life", "Mieosis and the Making of a Human", and "Nerves; Nature's Information Network", Schroeder says this,

"Knowing the complexity of the processes involved, when we see a diagram showing how simple evolution is, how one organ can change into another mearly by adding a feature here and there, we must realize that those demonstrations are a farce. As long as the intricate workings of the cell are disregarded, there's no problem for a Steven Pinker, or a Stephen Jay Gould, or Richard Dawkins to talk of random reactions producing the goods of life.

It is hard not to be fooled by the foolish arguments when they originate from intelligent foolers. Abraham Lincoln is qouted as having said that while you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, you can not fool all of the people all of the time. The more knowledge one has, the harder it becomes to be fooled.

Those diagrams that in ten steps evolve from a random spread of lines into people-like outlines, and in a few hundred steps simulate a light sensitive patch on skin evolving into an eye, once had me fooled. They are so impressivly convincing. Then I studied molecular biology."

I write this because there is probably someone, a Christian and/or scientist, who will be as tickled to read this stuff as I am. I thank God that there are people like Dr. Schroeder in the world. He shows us that to be a believer, one does not have to check his brains at the door.

Mike

[KGAINES]

Rembrant to me when it comes to believing there are those that need it proven that it is, and those that need it proven that it isn't, and then there are those that just know in their heart that it is right no matter what. The word of God is the Bible, but it was written by men and therefore I believe there are interpretations that could have occured from the way it was written and then even more in the interpretations from lanuage to language. Thank goodness I believe John 3:16 was written as said and that is the essence of my beliefs.

[missedagain]

billrquimby- I believe that there is considerable more scientific and physical evidence to support the theories of evolution than there are to support the theory of a supreme being.

 

From what you decribe in the writings of Mr. Schroeder his arguments do not seem to have much merit. To say that evolution could not be true because the laws of probablities are against it is an unqualified statement, we do not even know how many trillion life supporting ecosystems that there are in the universe or for how many eons they have had to evolve. Therefore he has no way of knowing what the odds would be. Nor do I think any scientist believing in evolution would say that the composition structure of DNA's proteins, nucleaic acids, etc is a random event. That is a major concepts of evolution is that it is not random but specific to the environment around it.

[billrquimby]

billrquimby- I believe that there is considerable more scientific and physical evidence to support the theories of evolution than there are to support the theory of a supreme being.

 

 

I agree. The proof that evolution is more than a theory is all around us.

 

But why must this abundant evidence of evolution rule out the presence of a supreme being?

 

Bill Quimby

[Rembrant]

Bill, I like that (leaving the door of your mind open for the possibility of a God), yet there is no PROOF for evolution. There is evidence, but it is circumstancial, or it would be a law and not a theory, right? Life on earth came in stages per the fossil record. Life on earth came in stages per the Biblical account in Genesis. The fossil record lacks the periods in between the explosions of the stages of developed life. The mechanism of development between the stages is what we debate. The Bible says, "God spoke". The fossil record is silent.

The Bible says that God is eternal. Scientists believed that the universe was eternal until a few decades ago when they realized the universe is measurably expanding and therefore the thoery of the "Big Bang". The first three words in the Bible are, "IN THE BEGINNING...God made the heavens and the earth". What an incredible book!

Keith, The Bible has been translated from language to language but it has lost nothing in these translations.

The original manuscripts exist and they are qualified by the dead sea scrolls. The King James version was the first english translation in the 16th or 17th century. Modern translations are not translated from that, they are translated from that, AND the original manuscripts of hebrew and greek by modern folk who know what they are doing. So, the contemporary versions are MORE accurate that the King James Version. We can debate till kingdom come about men, not God having written the Bible. This book is full of examples like the one given above - something written 8-10 thousand years ago that modern science just recently proved is absolutley accurate!

A very dear friend of mine who is a chief prosecuting attorney here in Arizona took me fishing one day on Roosevelt. He asked me why I believe in Jesus. Had to think about it, then said I thought it was because of an early exposure that my parents gave me through the Catholic church, and that I have seen answer to prayer, plus the fact that God's power helped me kick alcohol and substance abuse problems. In short, simple faith. I fired the same question back to him. His answer astonished me. The answer that the prosecuter gave me was, " The evidence, Mike. The overwhelming evidence." The evidence he is talking about can be found in these books, "More Than a Carpenter", "The Case for Christ", "Evidence That Demands a Verdict", "More Evidence That Demands a Verdict". Most or all of these books were written by Josh McDowell. When Josh was a college student he was greatly irritated by Christian students so he set out to study the Bible to prove it wrong, and wound up accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior! Now he writes books to share all of the evidence he found that is scientific and also the legal means by which literature is proved or disproved in our courts of law.

Again, to be a believer, one does not have to check his brain at the door.

Missedagain, Darwinians most certainly do lean heavily on RANDOM mutations, but you are correct in that these changes are a result of invironmental impact causing these changes - theoretically. So, organisms/animals change as they need to, or be eliminated. This is natural selection. Theoretically, CHANGES COME AS A RESULT OF A NEED FOR SURVIVAL.

Have you ever heard that Einstien, as smart as he was only utilized only 5% of his grey matter? I don't know how anybody figured that, but the point is that we have more brains than we could ever use. So, if changes come as a result of an invironmentaly caused need, why/how did we get the brains? Not from evolution, I assure you.

Mike

[muleybull]

Its the sabertooth coues!!!

[billrquimby]

"Bill, I like that (leaving the door of your mind open for the possibility of a God), yet there is no PROOF for evolution. "

 

 

I am not leaving the door of my mind open for the possibility of a God.

 

I am convinced He exists.

 

However, using the standards you have applied to evolution, there is no real proof that He does.

 

Why does the possibility of evolution frighten you?

 

Bill Quimby

[Rembrant]

Bill,

Not sure what you mean about the standards/proof He exists statement.

I am not afraid of evolution, but I used to be. I grew up hanging around biologists. They were all athiests, and the science they put thier faith in was very convincing, yet I had always had a sense about God - the simple belief in my heart, but could never even begin to defend it in the circles in which I ran.

Decades later, when I came out of the cloud of substance abuse (with God's help), I went back to church, considered it school, and began soaking up more information about the God I have always simply believed in. The above mentioned books are wonderful compilations of research; both Schroeder and McDowell. There are others as well, but I like these because they are factual.

I wrote the above in this string because I know that even life-long believers still have doubts. It's not always easy to believe in a God you cannot see! The deciples walked and talked with Christ - He told them exactly what would happen - and when it did, they doubted, ran, and hid in the upper room! They pulled some real bone-head moves, just like we do.

I don't like it when scientists talk of evolution as if it were law. It is not. I don't like the idea that believers, like me, may be caused to doubt because the thoery of evolution is so convincing. I do like the fact that the more we learn about science, the more that God, and His Word, are substantiated - if people will only dig in and take a look. And if we don't? Then we can SIMPLY believe in anything we want to, science or God.

Thanks Bill,

Mike