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  Re: Plants The sixth sense
From: StellrJ at aol.com on 2002.02.03 at 16:41:08(8151)
In a message dated Fri, 1 Feb 2002 11:47:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, "Plantsman" writes:

> Just to add fuel to the fire: I heard awhile back that some
> scientists hypothesize that basically all species alive today have
> always been around and other, less flexible cousins became extinct
> for various reasons over time. Perhaps most ancient plants and
> animals will always be unknown due to fossilization never occurring
> or never being found. We may have only discovered a tiny amount of
> species that have existed and just got lucky with what we have.
> Scientists can't even agree on the dating methods of fossils. In
> any event, I don't think we'll ever know for sure. I just have
> faith in the Original Designer's handiwork.
>
> Please no flames, just thoughtful discussion.

No flames here; I grew up Creationist, so I know from whence you are coming. You are close to right in that all known animal phyla have been found as early as the Cambrian (phyla are the basic groups, e.g., arthropoda, chordata [which includes all vertebrates as well as several marine invertebrates], echinodermata). But within those phyla, we do see change over time, which is all evolution really means (we can speak of the evolution of human societies, of languages, of technologies, in exactly the same way; we know that all today's Romance languages evolved from classical Latin).

How do I reconcile belief in evolution with belief in religion? Perhaps evolution is one of the created laws of the universe, like thermodynamics. Just a thought.

Jason Hernandez

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