I have answered this previously in the thread.
The fossil record is obviously incomplete, the conditions for fossils to be laid down and preserved are a rare event (not every living thing has the honour of being fossilised). The further back in time we go, the less likely it is we find them.
There are numerous fossils of our recent ancestors if you care to look hard enough but there will never be every 'single stage'. If someone unearthed my father in a thousand years time they would find no difference between his remains and mine, the same for my grandfather and his father and his father...
100 generations ago my ancient Egyptian ancestors or Romans or wherever I came from would still look like me as skeletal remains.
When we look at my ancestor from 1000 generations back there would be slight differences but still very similar. If we went back 10,000 generations it would be different again in subtle skeletal features but still recognisable as my ancestor. Go back 200,000 generations and we look markedly different and something resembling Lucy. There are examples recovered throughout this period.
Based on this description, how many fossil specimens would you want to see to prove the lineage of our evolutionary tree, every single one of those 200,000 bodies?
So Olivia, what exactly do those bones of Lucy mean to you, anything or nothing?
Again, Lucy can be an extinct animal, or mixed pieces, faked. You yourself say fossil records are incomplete. What boggles me is why you would want to even entertain a belief in it with such a lack of evidence, which is the point you would try to make with each of us who believes in God. However, we all have experiential evidence which is more than what you have.
It comes back to my initial argument of you can't prove the so called proof. If Lucy was true and found why would he/she be preserved and nothing else preserved. Obviously for procreation and survival their would have been those like Lucy in the same area and some would have been subject to similar preservation.
The point is that you are holding onto something sketchy and non verifiable since you yourself were not there and since science tools cannot be verified since they were not used back then so no one can be sure they are accurate.
My question is why you hold onto this. I have written spiritual things and no response from you, yet the bible is here and the complexity is astonishing and can be looked into now.
Not to be mean, but since a child evolution has always seemed preposterous to me. My parents believed in it, but I from the start (I was never one to go by another's opinion just because they said it) thought it seemed like a ritualistic ideology. I however feel this way about much of the medical industry as well. Ritualism in thought produces stagnation. The true inventors are the ones who are willing to think outside their boundaries allowing real discovery.
You were talking about DNA earlier. My daughter, who is in college now, just wrote a report in which part of what she talked about was how it has been discovered that DNA gets reprogrammed by words. She was also talking about how thinking programs DNA in such a way that it allows pathways for possibility (faith).
Now this is biblical. Perfect DNA from perfect speech and faith. If you are really interested in discovery about the bible won't don't you research more of these types of things?
I just can't imagine basing my whole hope or ideology on stagnation of thought. Rehashing the same thing over and over.
My belief in God is not something I have to continuously go back to in the past as a set moment that I am stuck in. God constantly speaks life making His existence a constant renewal and awakening.
Is there really some type of security in being set in this.
Some people have explained why for all the tragedy on earth, but I don't think you are satisfied. What is it in what has been said that is still leaving you with unanswered questions? You still believe God to have done wrong and I do not in any way judge you for this, but I would like to discuss it with you because I can understand from that view point that it could make someone closed to everything else. I understand when people question God and I believe you still have those questions. How could you even begin to entertain people having the experiential that directly conflicts with your opinion of God? I just want to answer in a non judgmental way any questions you have.
