Marsupials are similar to placental mammals, but differ in how they reproduce. Most marsupials lack a placenta, so they are unable to feed their offspring in the womb. Instead, after only a few days of gestation, their young must crawl out of the womb to feed from a nipple inside the mother’s pouch. (Thank god we humans don’t give birth this way, I can’t imagine any woman would want baby fetuses crawling out of her nether regions. Creepy. Although… the current method isn’t much better.)
What’s also intriguing about marsupials is where they’re located. There are 334 known species of marsupials; 70% live in and around Australia, 28% live in South America, and 2% live in Central and North America.
Looking at the map below, we can see that marsupials make their homes about as far away as you can possibly get from the Middle East, where Noah’s Ark would’ve settled.
What’s also interesting is that there are no truly native placental mammals in Australia. How did all these marsupials manage to pull off such a long and segregated migration? Secular science and creationists offer two very different competing explanations, let’s take a look at both.
The Secular View
Fossil evidence suggests that the earliest marsupials originated in China and then became quite common in North America (even outnumbering placental mammals, for a time). As their numbers dwindled in North America, they began to thrive in South America. Most of the marsupials that remain in the Americas today are from the opossum family (didelphidae).
Scientists say that millions of years ago, our earth was a very different place. Back then, Australia was connected to South America by way of Antarctica. Scientists once theorized that a small number of marsupials must’ve found their way from South America to Australia by way of Antarctica. It was a pretty fantastic claim, but the discovery of marsupial bones in Antarctica have all but confirmed this suspicion.
For years and years people thought marsupials had to be there, this ties together all the suppositions made about Antarctica. The things we found are what you’d expect we would have.
— Dr. William J. Zinsmeister, Paleontologist at Ohio State University’s Institute of Polar Studies
More recent evidence from retroposon markers in DNA also suggests that all Australian marsupials descended from South American ancestry.
Other plant and animal fossils found in Antarctica match up with those found in Australia and South America, strongly suggesting that not only were these continents once connected, but that Antarctica once enjoyed a warmer climate before these lands split apart.
Roughly 35-50 million years ago, Antarctica wished Australia “bon voyage” and it slowly began drifting toward the equator. The Australian rain forests gave way to extensive grasslands, and the marsupial stowaways spent the next few million years in isolation, learning to survive in the new ecological niches that Australia offered.
Most palaeontologists agree that Metatheria originated in Asia, diversified throughout the northern continents, dispersed into Gondwana (the modern Southern Hemisphere) around the beginning of the Palaeocene epoch (65 million years ago), then moved through Antarctica to Australia before the Australian continent was isolated by the opening of Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.
— Bennett, Verity. 2012. Fossil Focus: Marsupial evolution – A limited story? Palaeontology Online, Volume 2, Article 10, 1-9
Today there are far more species of marsupials in Australia than in South America, and it’s believed that this is due to Australia’s changing environment, and a lack of competition from other animals.
In other words, a handful of stranded marsupials evolved into all the marsupial species we find in Australia today. There are no native placental mammals there, because there were few, if any, on the continent when it set sail from Antarctica. Presumably, the route leading from South America to Australia was not a very heavily traveled one.
The Creationist View
Creationists have a largely different view; they believe a global flood wiped out all mammals except for those aboard Noah’s ark.
While creationists believe the landscape of the earth may have changed dramatically during the flood, most don’t believe that the earth has changed much since then. This means marsupials would’ve had to cross multiple bodies of water in order to reach Australia and South America. To bridge these gaps, creationists suggest an ice-age occurred soon after the flood.
Creationists theorize that this ice age lowered sea levels and created a land bridge between Asia and Australia. To the north, a snowy land bridge connected modern-day Russia to Alaska via the Bearing Strait, allowing for some marsupials to cross over the frozen landscape and make it down to South America (hopefully without becoming tiny, frozen, “marsupcicles” in the process).
To explain the absence of any placental mammals in Australia, creationists theorize that marsupials outpaced all placental mammals because they were able to carry their newborn in pouches as they continued their journey. The Australian marsupials then crossed the land bridge before rising waters (and possible earthquakes) caused the land bridge to disappear, preventing any placental mammals from passing.
When a marsupial has its young, they can hop into the mother’s pouch, and the mother can continue migrating. In other words, marsupials can travel farther faster than many placentals.
— Bodie Hodge, Answers in Genesis – June 8, 2012
So which explanation is correct?
Obviously, these explanations are very different. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more debatable points.
Land Bridges
Subduction zone along tectonic plate boundaries (shown in red) around Australia (source: Geoscience Australia).
Both creationists and secular scientists believe in ice ages, and that there was once a land bridge across the Bearing Strait. But few (if any) scientists believe that water levels dropped low enough to create a land bridge between Asia and Australia during the “Last Glacial Period.”
Part of their reasoning is that there are deep trenches where subduction divides these continents. This tectonic border would likely prevent any land bridges from forming. Creationists counter this by suggesting that earthquakes may have since changed the landscape or made these trenches deeper, or that all the marsupials found other, more creative, ways to get across…
“In some cases, animals could have ridden on floating debris to make it to islands or other far-reaching places.”
— Bodie Hodge, Answers in Genesis – June 8, 2012
How did all the marsupials get their first?
Even assuming a land bridge existed, how did all marsupials arrive in Australia ahead of all placental mammals?
Marsupials can carry their young, which allows them to avoid having to stop to care for them, but some mammals are born with the ability to walk — and even run — while some marsupials would’ve surely made for extremely slow travelers.
The southern marsupial mole, for example, spends most if its life underground… and has no eyes. Did it blindly burrow its way to Australia?
The koala bear is another example. It sleeps or rests 22 hours a day and is completely arboreal (lives in trees). When it’s not resting, it’s busy filling up on yummy eucalyptus leaves (which are indigenous to Indonesia and Australia, but that’s another problem).
It’s hard to imagine that all these blind, sleepy, and slow marsupials could’ve managed such a migration, let alone beat every single placental mammal to boot! (Especially when you consider that placentals outnumber marsupials 15 to 1!). What’s also amazing is that not a single marsupial stayed behind to make its home elsewhere along the way — they all migrated to the furthest ends of the earth before making their home.
How did this migration happen?
It’s almost as if all marsupials traveled together in one large group, one that outpaced all the placental mammals. Perhaps one marsupial, I imagine it would’ve been the kangaroo (because they’re obvious natural leaders), stood up after the flood and said, “Alright mates, listen up! I want everyone with a pouch to line up over here. God wants us to go on a walkabout to the ends of the earth, so that means there will be no settling anywhere in Africa, Europe or Asia. Got that? Also, some of us are much slower than others… or completely blind… so we may need to carry these guys on our backs or in our pouches.”
Perhaps, when they’d traveled as far as Mongolia, the kangaroo announced, “The God of Abraham has sent an ice age so that we may finish our journey. Some of the opossums will head north, across the Bearing Strait, and down through Canada, and into the Americas.” (Of course, these places didn’t actually go by these names back then, but I’m not sure what a kangaroo would’ve called them).
The kangaroo continued: “It’s going to be a long, cold, arduous journey with weather like you’ve never seen, so make sure you opossums dress warm and have a snow buddy. The rest of us will be heading south to Australia ahead of all the placental mammals. We will never see each other again, so ladies and gentlemarsupials, I want to say what an honor it’s been making this long journey with you all.”
It may sound crazy, but if we can have talking snakes and donkeys, this trip may have required a talking kangaroo.
The Fossil Record
Unfortunately, there is no fossil evidence for a migration of modern marsupials across Europe and Asia. Creationists reason that just because we don’t find these fossilized remains, it doesn’t mean it never happened. They acknowledge that it’s rare for fossils to form, and insist that an absence of fossil evidence does not disprove their theory. (Wait… why is this all sounding so familiar?)
When we think with a Biblical perspective, we realize that all kinds of land animals must’ve once lived in the Middle East, because they came with Noah’s ark.
— Ken Ham, President Answers in Genesis, USA
Meanwhile, scientists had made an almost equally absurd claim about marsupials once journeying across Antarctica… and the fossil evidence proved them right!
Marsupial Evolution
Evolution can sometimes seem like a leap of faith, because we can’t see it happening. How does something like an opossum morph into something as different as a koala bear, a wallaby, or a kangaroo?
While scientists might rely on things like fossils and genetic evidence, this evidence cannot be readily observed by the layman like myself. I’m more comfortable with evidence I can actually see.
In the case of marsupials, some of that observable evidence comes from similarities in features, like the trademark pouch. Another thing that’s observable is that all these similar animals live in an isolated neighborhood.
While many marsupial transitional forms may be long gone (even creationists admit fossils are difficult to find), when I look at the marsupials that exist today, I can see the family resemblance. The brown dorcopsis looks like a small wallaby, and the wallaby looks like a small kangaroo, and the tree kangaroo, with its long tail, looks like the lovechild of a kangaroo and a koala.
Considering their isolation and similarities, I feel I can safely conclude that these animals must be somehow closely related. While it’s reassuring that other lines of scientific evidence confirm this relationship, we don’t need this evidence to make this initial observation.
Miraculous intervention?
If we wanted to press the matter, we could suggest that God performed some form of miracle — perhaps magically transporting all these mammals. But if that’s true, why transport only marsupials, and not placental mammals? Why deceive us with the impression that these similar animals must’ve evolved on this island?
Conclusion
The natural evidence suggests one history, and the Bible another. While I’m willing to accept the flood account, I must insist that it be accompanied by respectable evidence. If we didn’t have the Bible, there’s just no way we’d conclude that all Australian marsupials emerged from the Middle East after a great flood and an ice age.
Because we only find these uniquely similar marsupials in Australia, I’d have to conclude that the most logical explanation is that this is where they originated.
Think what the geographical distribution of animals should look like if they’d all dispersed from Noah’s Ark. Shouldn’t there be some sort of law of decreasing species diversity as we move away from an epicentre — perhaps Mount Ararat? … Why would all those marsupials – ranging from tiny pouched mice through koalas and bilbys to giant kangaroos and Diprotodonts — why would all those marsupials, but no placentals at all, have migrated en masse from Mount Ararat to Australia? Which route did they take? And why did not a single member of their straggling caravan pause on the way, and settle — in India, perhaps, or China, or some haven along the Great Silk Road? … Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?
— Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, 2009, pp. 268-270
While the prospect of marsupial evolution may be difficult to believe, is it really any less absurd than believing that an ancient man built a ginormous boat and filled it with two of every animal on earth? And that all marsupials (including the slow and the blind) hiked their way from the Middle East to Australia, across a non-existent land-bridge, together, ahead of all placental mammals, after a global flood?
500 Questions about God & Christianity 
500Q, an utterly brilliant question and embarrassment for biblical inerrantists! You’ve done an outstanding justice for science, reason, and common sense. Thank you Sir!
This isn’t about this specific post, but your blog in general. I am a Christian and I read quite a few of your posts, and after every one I doubted my faith a little more and became confused as to what I believed. Even as I was doubting, when heard someone preach about God, in my heart I knew what was true and the confusion that I previously held with my doubt evaporated. I know that I don’t have all of the answers, but in my heart I know what is true and gives understanding but it is sometimes harder to know what is untrue and breeds confusion. I do, however, respect your search for truth and pray that you find it.
p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzJE1Xtkm6o&list=PLeSQIcdKj0oGzlKNwbD496HR9D1p5twI1
If you are as interested in God as I think you are, watch this video from about 27 minutes in.
I Julie,
Thanks for reading and writing. You raise an extremely important objection (one that my wife also uses) and it just happens to be the question I was planning on exploring next.
But I know how you feel, I’ve often described it as a war between my emotional side and my logical side. Many of us use these strong feelings as evidence of God. But the “logical” part of me has seen so many people passionate about things they “knew” to be true. Harold Camping and his followers, for example, KNEW the world would end on May 21, 2011. And many believers in religious sects “just know” that their faith is the correct one (but logic dictates that most of them are wrong).
I think this war between logic and intuition is one many Christians face, and there is some new evidence to suggest that those who trust in intuition tend to believe in God, while those who put their trust in logic tend not to.
I did watch the video (from 27 min on). John’s argument presupposes that God exists and has always existed. I’ve explored this question (see #6), and come to the conclusion that it would be more logical to believe the universe (or all that is) is the thing that has always existed, for a number of reasons. This may be the incorrect conclusion, but it does appear to be the most logical conclusion.
Notice how John makes a very strong appeal to emotion, almost to the point of his being overcome with it. By 45 minutes in, he begins rambling like an overzealous cult member. John appears to be one of those people who is more interested in putting his trust in his emotional intuition than logic and reason.
If you have belief, you don’t need proof. If you have proof, you don’t need belief. This is not because logic and faith are mutually exclusive. It’s because they are mutually complimentary. I wouldn’t use a religous text to learn geometry, and I never found anything about how I should treat others in a book on diesel mechanics. “Horses for courses”, as they say.
Your guardian while growing up should have taught you how to treat others. Otherwise, treating people well is instinctual in humans, we don’t need a book to tell us that. We evolved this so that our species would prosper, as helping others usually means helping ourselves in the long run. We can see babies that have a sense a morality before ever reading a religious book:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/us/baby-lab-morals-ac360/
But julie, you know that followers of Islam, followers of the gods of Hinduism, and followers of other gods, have the same amount of conviction in their heart when they hear one of their leaders preach, that you do when you hear your religious leader preach.
Couldn’t it just be that all humans are susceptible to religious thought because it makes us feel good emotionally, and also gives us a reason to unite (in ancient times, religion would have prevailed because it united the people under one banner and also gave them answers to the world around them that they did not understand).
I also used to be a christian, but after discovering the logic and evidence against god, i couldn’t believe anymore especially when i found that preachers would always appeal to emotion. Don’t get caught up in emotion, look at the evidence as well. People who follow any religion usually ignore logic and evidence because they get caught up in the emotion.
You know what? I don’t know what to do with myself. On one side, I know that some of what you’re saying is right. I always used to think to myself, “If I were born in India, I’m pretty sure I would have believed Hindu, if that’s how I was raised. Why was I born in a Christian home in America?” But maybe my Christian home is the same as my theoretical Hindu home. All of my beliefs could easily be supported by emotion. What if everything I’ve ever known is wrong? On the other side, I can’t accept atheism. It is just too illogical to me. I can’t accept the Big Bang Theory, and not because of my religion, but because it doesn’t make logical sense. It makes more sense that the explosive point that our expanding universe points to was Creation; the universe is far too complex to be anything else. Sometimes, though, I feel like I might be Christian still because it’s the base for all of my views, and that’s a hard thing to give up. That I can almost accept, but it feels too shallow (of course, that might just be my emotional justification. I honestly don’t know)
You know, the day i stopped believing in god and Christianity, i was the same as you, i couldn’t accept evolution and the big bang, i thought it was illogical. But i found it impossible to go back to Christianity (or any god or religion), if i did i would be lying to myself because i didn’t believe it. So i did a lot more research on the origins of the universe and on evolution. Now i don’t deny these facts because i understand them a lot more. They actually make perfect sense. Understanding them is key, you shouldn’t reject them if you haven’t studied it and understood it first.
Before making a judgement on those topics, i encourage you to research them up. Go on youtube, do a google search on the big bang and on evolution. Im not asking you to accept them, im asking you to learn about them first.
I have to agree with Shaun. I was adamantly opposed to evolution and didn’t really bother to look into it seriously until I began having doubts. Also, there are a lot of great YouTube videos on these subjects.
The Big Bang itself is actually accepted by many modern apologists, they just say “they know who banged it.” But origins questions are always inherently difficult to solve.
It’s interesting to note that less than 100 years ago, all of mankind believed that ours was the only galaxy. (Why would God need more than one?) Then we realized there were actually hundreds of billions of galaxies just like it. And while they’re too far away to observe, our Universe may be just one of billions of other Universes, we just don’t know. But if we reason that our Universe is far too complex to infinitely exist without cause or design, then we should also conclude that it’s even MORE unlikely that an infinitely more complex god could exist without cause or design.
Questioning my faith was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, because it meant so much to me to believe, and to feel I understood what life was all about. But knowing the truth was more important. Still… should I ever discover that there is better evidence on the side of God, the Bible, and/or Christianity, I’m willing to accept it and defend it.
I cannot agree with these sentiments more. I was raised a Christian, learned all about Creationism, but struggled with unbelief (and not just as it pertains to the origins of life). I begged God to strengthen my faith but the opposite happened. I was terrified of what my friends and family would say to me and how they would treat me.
When I finally came clean, I lost about 2/3rds of my friends. Most of my family stuck by me though.
The great thing about finally being honest about what I believe is that I didn’t have to live a lie anymore. I didn’t have to feel ashamed to say I am a Christian and wonder if people were secretly mocking me for my ridiculous religion that even I didn’t believe.
For a while it took some SERIOUS getting used to. I found myself with a new fear, a fear of failure. As a Christian, I always prayed and whatever felt right and like what God wanted is what I did. I had no worries because I knew God would protect me and it would always work out in the end. Taking off those training wheels was hard, and terrifying, but it gets better. I learned to live with my mistakes, own up to them, and make MYSELF a better person, which, I would argue, I am.
As for losing all those friends, well, I found out who my REAL friends were, and I made new one who love me for me, not my religion.
I remember songs and pastors always saying that there is freedom in Christ. For me, that freedom came when I gave up Christ. It’s not rebellion, it’s accepting the truth, the REAL truth. It’s ugly and it’s not as awesome sounding as a loving God who wants to spend eternity, but it’s real. And, in a way, it has a beauty all its own. Now, instead of seeing humanity as sinners who need God, I see us as creatures who have progressed beyond our animal origin, who are learning generation after generation to become more than tribal warriors, and I have great hope for our future, one for which WE are responsible.
Christians will urge you to read the Bible, seek God, and you will find truth. I say, seek truth, and you will find knowledge, though incomplete, but most importantly, happiness. Remember, it’s okay to say you don’t know. You say you could never be atheist; that’s fine, neither am I. It’s okay to say that while you don’t know who or what started it all, Christianity isn’t the answer.
As a Creationist I was dead set against evolution. But, once I released myself from the shackles of religion, I was able to explore everything I had previously accepted as wrong! Suddenly the whole world became new! Imagine what it felt like for me to go to the zoo for the first time after my rebirth. Where I would once scoff at zookeepers who would impart upon me knowledge, I now drank it up, and it all make perfect sense to me!
Christians say they are born again? I say you are born again when you finally wake up from a long, religious slumber. The world is now, finally and truly, a beautiful treasure and this last year has been the happiest of my life, despite many sad and unfortunate events which I’ve had to endure, I still wake up every day ready to learn something wonderful and new! And it’s all thanks to finally being real and accepting who I am.
Be who you are, accept yourself, always seek truth, and you’ll find the way.
This exactly! It is a rebirth. To me, the world is so much more beautiful now that i understand the process of how it came to be that way, than when i was a christian.
A few things I think would be beneficial to clarify:
A deity or god who created the universe, (or heck even deities, because we don’t know, we shouldn’t claim to know that it is one deity that created this universe) is not the same as God creating the universe. God, capitalized, is referring to the specific Abrahamic God of the Bible or Quran or Torah, etc. When thinking that you believe the universe *had* to be created, don’t automatically jump in logic to the God of the Bible. It could have been any god if you want to use that reasoning. But there needs to be specific evidence for the God of the Bible, and many people, myself included believe that not only is there none, but there is plenty of evidence to *disprove* the God of the Bible. So it is true that science can neither prove nor disprove a deity or deities that created the universe, but science and logic surely *can* disprove the God of the Bible.
Next is clarifying what an atheist is, because when I was a Christian, I really didn’t know. Most atheists are agnostic atheists. I believe they were two different groups as different as theist and atheist, but this isn’t true. Atheists can be and most ARE agnostic, meaning, we’ll believe things when we see evidence for it, and we don’t claim to know anything beyond that. We aren’t saying that we know for certain a deity or deities doesn’t exist. We just won’t believe in one until there is evidence for it.
Another thing:
“It makes more sense that the explosive point that our expanding universe points to was Creation; the universe is far too complex to be anything else.”
I like this quote:
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”
When you think about it, the above quote is the same reasoning we are using when saying the universe is so complex that it had to be created.
I believe that it is complicating things by adding an extra step and saying, “Well instead of saying that we don’t know what created the universe, how about we say we don’t know what created the deity or deities that created the universe?”
When you think about it, is it more simple to argue that the universe became so complex gradually and came from something very very simple, or that the universe came from something as infinitely complex as a deity?
Please feel free to comment more here, I love heart-warming and friendly discussions like these!
Julie, the big bang could be true as it could have been set in motion by God.
Julie, if this particular blog post made you counfused, I hope that you understand that many Christians are scientists and biologists and believe in both evolution and secular science and Christ. You should definitely check out Francis Collin’s autobiography “The Language of God” and his website biologos.org.
By the way, , Francis Collin, the guy who’s book I recommended you is the biologist who headed the human genome project, which was a successful effort to record all the geneetic information in the human body. He is also an evengelical Christian and a convert to Christianity. From what you’ve posted here, I think you will really enjoy his story.
Francis Collins is an interesting bloke and I’ve learned a lot from him about the evidence for evolution. I wonder what his take is on Noah’s Ark, and how that fits with what he believes about evolution (and things like Australian marsupials). My guess he believes it’s a local flood, or is some kind of spiritual metaphor (see question #40).
Skeptic Michael Shermer often says that being smart doesn’t necessarily mean giving up beliefs, it just makes you better at finding clever ways to continue defending them.
I decided to take a look at the video but I was disappointed. When I discovered that ‘John’ was in fact John Piper the preacher, the alarms went off. This guy is extremely emotional. He plays on emotion but very rarely does he offer any evidence to support his often outlandish claims.
I have watched many of John Piper’s videos. I’m not surprised your alarms went off. He does play heavily on emotion. In fact he rarely provides anything else.
I was a Christian for 35 years but a few years ago I was challenged to defend my faith. I went through a period where I was confused. When I entered into a logical rational analysis of the evidence I started to doubt more and more but when I listened to Christians, I again felt the strong emotion ties pulling me back.
I decided that an open minded unbiased analysis of the evidence was the intellectually honest approach and that if Christianity were true then the claims would hold up. Well they didn’t and now 7 years on I call myself an atheist. I am open to a belief in God. I will never claim there is no God but I am waiting for the evidence for a god which as yet has not been forthcoming.
I’ve done a lot of searching in my life, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I will never know everything, and the more I learn, the more I realize how little I truly understand. I have become pretty sure that there is a God, although I’m pretty sure that a good portion of the things that I believe about him aren’t correct. What you keep saying about it being difficult to believe in a God more complicated than the universe not having a creator is true, it is hard to make sense of. I can’t write something off as false just because I can’t understand it, though. I believe that there is truth, and it is true regardless of if I accept it as truth or not. It is quite possible that I do reject what is truth and accept a lie fed to me by society, but I can only do the best I can. The biggest reason that, even though I have considerable doubt sometimes, I still believe in God is this- I have searched for a deep and meaningful happiness all my life. I have tried a number of things to try to be happy, but they only made me happy for a short period of time before a need for more found me again. The only time in my life that I’ve ever had a dependable and lasting happiness is after I became a Christian, and it hasn’t gone away after 5 years, and I don’t ever expect it to. My God means a lot more to me than my doubt does. I will always earnestly search for the truth with all of my heart, and I hope that you do as well.
Im glad that Christianity has brought happiness to you. I don’t know your situation, but to down and out people, Christianity is a beacon for them.
But for me, Christianity was a horrible shackle upon my mind. No longer believing in god is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, for many of the reasons that matt said above.
Like many have said here, I was in the same camp as you, Julie, as a Christian, and shortly after. When I very first began doubting my faith, I looked up and researched, much like you have done. To be honest, I was always more of an evidence-based man. I just thought that the evidence backed up my beliefs. I figured that I could *easily* convince others of my beliefs with shear evidence, so I went on a science forum and laid out my case. I believed the prophesies in the Bible, for one, were the strongest points in the evidence for the Bible. So I made a thread here:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?106878-A-challenge-to-Atheists
You will see my faith slowly dwindling down. That wasn’t the end of my evolution to being atheist, but it was really the start. I also chatted with another guy who was an ex-member of my religious sect who helped me a lot. I found Reddit.com and that site really helped a lot also.
Try http://www.reddit.com/r/debatereligion, look at some of the threads, maybe search using the search bar, and post your own questions. ANY question you want, they’ll answer! Just put, “To Atheists: *Your Question*” after registering and clicking “Make A Post”. It’s really simple and it will be really rewarding for you.
The same with SciForums. Just register and make a post there like I did! Ask your questions about the Big Bang Theory or Evolution (not sure about your opinion on that).
I actually copy-pasted some post on Youtube to see what they would said a few days ago (I don’t actually believe what I posted, it’s just a facade).
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?134919-Questions-about-The-Big-Bang-Theory-amp-Evolution-Theory
The answers they made will shed a lot of light on Evolution and The Big Bang Theory.
Next is a video that answers a question pretty much all of us have wondered about when deconverting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iClejS8vWjo
Finally, I’d like to address the emptiness you feel like you’ll feel by leaving behind religion. When you think about it, if we take life as we know it, it really is as futile as an ant being born into a world only to do the same things over and over with a few variations to die by old age, or a water hose. And then no doubt someone will reply here speaking of all the good things in life to live for, without realizing it doesn’t matter in the end if it all dies. I know that it is a depressing thing to think about and that our first instincts — survival instincts — are to turn away from that and not think like that, but it is really the truth. The only truth that we have evidence of.
That’s why hope is sometimes the only way to keep living. Hope for a lot of things we have no evidence of. That’s why pure evidence-based living is depressing. Hope is our survival mechanism. I’m not saying you have to believe in things with no evidence in order to survive, but hope for them. Hope in the same way someone being held captive in dungeon with no sunlight hopes to be home and see the sun again. He doesn’t have to belief or know for certain that it will happen, but he can hope for it. He doesn’t have to hope for a certain way of him to get there. Who cares if he escapes on his own by knocking a guard over the head with his plate and crawling up 20 fleets of stairs, or if someone else comes and rescues him, his captors lying unconscious at his feet. The specifics don’t matter; only the end result. In the same way…I’m an anti-theist, no way am I recommending you put your hope in something another person or organization dictates. All that matters is that you put hope into an end result. No one should tell you the kind of end result you need, or the specifics of how to get there. You should come up with that yourself, because you’re doing it for yourself, not anyone else.
Tagline for Science Channel: Question everything.
Speaking of science, keep learning cool stuff about science. Science and rationality in itself has replaced ALL of my Christian beliefs, such as hope for living forever, peaceful living on Earth/Heaven, etc. Now I’ve realized how much COOLER science is than any religion. You never hear about virtual reality and robots in paradise/heaven which is so much better than building houses in a field with tame animals, playing harps in heaven, or whatever you believe you’ll do in heaven. Why? Because not only can you have that in something like virtual reality, BUT you can also have ANYTHING you can dream or think up. Why not try going back in time to medieval times, or with the dinosaurs, or in early human civilization and see how life was as a peasant or a king, or a hero, or a villian, or WHAT THE HELL EVER???? Your “Paradise or Heaven” won’t be limited to what one (or a few) guys or gals dreamt up, but YOUR OWN dreams. And we are getting closer to true virtual reality every day. Ever seen Minority Report? Where there are virtual reality machines at a nightclub-type place? Only eventually the technology will be in every home…you wouldn’t need to go to a place like that. The technology would interact with our brains directly, so it would be exactly like real life, none of this conduit nonsense like the Occulus Rift (even though that’s cool…for now).
Then robots would be doing almost everything for us. The only work we’d ever have to do is creative work that needs high intelligence.
This stuff is in the far future, but if we could hit longevity escape velocity, we will at least have a very long time (providing we don’t get killed unnaturally) to enjoy it all, if not eternity (this would rely on the fact if we can prevent this universe from dying or perhaps escape this universe to another suitable one).
The point is we can still have hope in something a lot more certain than a Christian’s “Paradise or Heaven”.
Helpful subreddits for that: Reddit.com/r/transhuman or /r/singularity (and I’m sure those subreddits link to good material in their sidebars also).
Wow. I just read that long thread on sciforums. It really was fascinating to see your convictions kind of melt away. Congratulations on joining the rational side, btw!
Good for you Julie! Many people don’t need insurance to feel happy or secure. In fact, many people feel uneasy for having an insurance to cover your life, because they’re living under a circumstance, but for you, having an insurance is the greatest thing that makes you feel profoundly secure and that’s good for you. It is the most intelligent and logical thing for an intelligent mind to do.
The evidence for God’s existence out weigh evolution. Don’t forget, many people don’t believe because they don’t want to, not because there isn’t a God.
You do realize the existence of God and the validity of evolution are to separate issues. Even the Catholic church acknowledges evolution, because it is the most rational explanation for the variety of species on Earth. Modern science has all but proven evolution, through genetics and even evolution being observed occurring in the lab.
A fool has said in her heart, there is no evolution.
They may be two separate things but they are in contradiction of one another. Evolution occurs only to an extent, but most people take evolution as the process though which the entire existence came from a single thing/cell/organism and this is how the term “logical fallacy” came to being.
So you don’t believe single-cell organisms can evolve into multiple-cell organisms?
I am saying man did not come from monkey and neither do chicken is a sub specie of another.
Evolution does NOT state man came from monkey. Whoever fed you that information was LYING to you and you should feel betrayed by that. This is like saying Jesus was a cannibal. You would take offense to that, right? So don’t misrepresent our claims please. =) Thank you!
You should rather say this:
“We couldn’t have evolved from apes it is impossible.”
And my answer would be:
And yet our DNA is almost identical to ape’s DNA. God sure likes to troll people, I guess?
Evolution does no contradict the Bible or the Catholic church wouldn’t approve of it. Evolution does NOT explain how life came from nothing. That’s abiogenesis’ job.
Like I said, it should be noted that evolution does not include any explanation for Abiogenesis. Evolution relates to what happened afterwards.
Those who deny the theory of evolution cannot deny the facts of evolution. If they want to argue against it, they must provide an alternative explanation of the facts.
The fossil record & DNA analysis clearly show a progression of similar species: Eohippus to horse is a clear example. Primate evolution is another good example. Those who believe in a diety must give up creation mythology in favor of some form of diety directed evolution.
Another diety based explanation is the concept of the creation of a mature universe. For example, consider cutting down in tree in the Garden of Eden & polishing the stump. If the tree appeared to be 100 years old, it would have 100 growth rings even if a diety created it the day before it was cut down. The astronomical evidence for a 13-14 year old universe could be dismissed by claiming that the diety recently created the distant stars as well as light appearing to have traveled for billions of years. This explanation suggests that this diety is a practical joker: He/she/it & the angels are chuckling at the scientists who have been fooled by planted evidence.
Similarly, there are the facts supporting the notion of an expanding universe. Extrapolating backwards to a singularity & inflation might not be valid, but the basic concept is based on the facts of expansion.
Various diety based explanations can be entertained, but they do not seem at all convincing.
Being an atheist, I have no problems accepting evolution & the concept of an expanding universe. Those with other points of view must provide an explanation for the facts or accept a view similar to the following.
“My POV is based on faith, which is belief that is able to ignore or deny any facts suggesting an alternative POV.”
You can’t claim it’s a “logical fallacy” without explaining why. 99.85% of scientists support evolution as fact. If there were a “logical fallacy” there, it is likely scientists would have caught it by now.
If you breed wolf pups over thousands of years(and kill all the unruly ones)you will breed dogs, a few thousand more and you can breed both chihuahuas and Great Danes, the chihuahua is not a potential mate for the original wolf, it is a walking, yapping cocktail weenie. The Great Dane is well on it’s way to evolving into a horse-like creature. Man has been breeding horses for much longer, the donkey and the horse were once the same breed. The horse and donkey can still produce offspring, but they are sterile(mules, jennys), therefore the horse and donkey have been bred into two species by man. Give a breeder ten million years and he could create fish from birds and horses from dogs. (Or more accurately things that look just like fish and horses.)
Evolution is a well supported(by massive evidence in many different forms)scientific theory that I accept as being true. Belief is accepting as true without evidence. Evolution is both a fact(it has been conclusively shown to have occurred throughout the 3.5 billion year history of life on Earth(and probably even earlier))and a theory. Any changes we have to make in our theories(as we learn more or understand better)do not change the fact that evolution has occurred. Nor will willful ignorance of the facts change those facts.
“I am saying man did not come from monkey and neither do chicken is a sub specie of another.”
Just because you are ignorant of the facts does not change the facts. Species do come from other species, even over timeframes as short as a few thousand years.
“The various Ensatina salamanders of the Pacific coast all descended from a common ancestral population. As the species spread southward from Oregon and Washington, subpopulations adapted to their local environments on either side of the San Joaquin Valley. From one population to the next, in a circular pattern, these salamanders are still able to interbreed successfully. However, where the circle closes — in the black zone on the map in Southern California — the salamanders no longer interbreed successfully. The variation within a single species has produced differences as large as those between two separate species.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html
The FACT is that we see evolution throughout all the various forms of life on Earth, especially when it comes to diseases, which mutate ANNUALLY, requiring new vaccines. You are sadly misinformed on the subject of which you speak, if everyone were so misinformed the death toll from simple influenza would be measured in percentages of world population, in the 20s one third of the population of the WORLD died of the flu in the years after WW1. Today we get upset if the flu kills a few tens of thousands. That’s because we now understand how rapidly the viruses can mutate and evolve, we keep up with them much better today because of our knowledge of evolution. There’s a 30-50% chance that you are alive ONLY because we understand the evolution of flu viruses as well as we do(one in three of your generation, plus one in three in your parents generation plus one in three of your grandparents generation…). There is also a growing likelihood that you will die from MERS or several of the other drug resistant organisms that evolution has developed, largely because we used our best antibiotics to fatten cattle and pigs(which knowledge of evolutionary principles should have told them was a really stupid, greedy and short sighted idea). Evolution is a two edged sword, we either learn to wield it well or it will cut us to pieces, and ignorance of the science will not change that.
Google Idiurus macrotis. It’s a flying squirrel (flying rodent actually) that has a new “wing bone.” It lets it glide a little further.
“But wait!” you say. “That’s just an adaptation! It just grew another foreleg bone.” That’s right – and that’s what evolution is. Adaptation.
A whale’s spout? That was a nose – it adapted.
A bat’s wing? That was an arm. It adapted.
Our arms? They used to be forelegs. We adapted.
The enzymes that clot our blood? They used to be digestive enzymes. They adapted.
Our four chambered hearts? They used to be two chambered, and one chambered before that. They adapted.
Etc etc.
If you still don’t understand how adaptation can produce dramatic changes, go to the Grand Canyon – and see if you can stretch your mind and understand how “microerosion” created that.
Sorry, don’t have time to read and respond to gibberish.
You JUST responded. Are you that moronic? You are just a troll and most likely don’t even believe the bull that comes out of your mouth.
☻☺
So sad that someone takes the time to respond with detailed, accurate information and you dismiss it as gibberish.
daniela is a well-known troll. She’s amusing, but vapid and mentally inept. Just pray to science she is able to release herself from the bondage and unhappiness of religion someday and finds real freedom and joy in truth.
What a ridiculous closed minded attitude! That was not gibberish. How about presenting evidence instead of insults.
I think you did a great job explaining this. I do not fully understand evolution, but I’m wanting to learn as much as my brain can handle!!
This PBS documentary is good: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/index.html
Hope you like it!
I will watch this now. Thank you!!!!
I have the same experience as you Julie. I think I believe that there is a God. But at the same time I believe 100% that all that is in the bible is man made and therefor not from God. The biggest problem in my life is WHY did God allow all this stuff to be written in His book?? That allows me to doubt again.
Hey 500 Questions, I posted here before, don’t know if you’ll remember me, but I just thought of an interesting question that I posted at that link. I would love if you could take a whack at it in a blog post. 😉
Hi Garbonzo,
Of course I remember you. 🙂
It is an interesting question (to paraphrase), “Why doesn’t God give women the ability to prevent pregnancy as He did with some animals?” I’ll have to ponder that one.
In cases of rape, it certainly would be handy. It’s also an interesting question from an evolutionary perspective. Natural selection may benefit either way (i.e. forced reproduction still results in offspring, while selective breeding probably results in more fit offspring).
I really enjoy your posts so much and everyone’s comments too. This is helping me to move away from the biblical stories that I always had issues with. So basically God sent every single animal, bug, everything to the Ark. It took 120 years for them to get there (that’s how long the ark took to build too) so these poor animals has to trek to the Ark, do the flood, then return to their homes!!!
Have u researched about the OT people living over 900 years? Christians believed that changed after the flood. But I want to know, did they live 900 years? When did they start having kids? Did the women birth children for 850 of those years (poor things) Did they look really old for 800 of those years. Lol.. Can u research this for me??!! Ha ha
That is an interesting question, but practically speaking, I don’t know how one would even begin to go about disproving it.
I guess you’re right lol. Just the claim that they lived 900 years seems far fetched. I’ve been reading on it. One site said the neanderthal man was evidence because our skulls keep growing (not at the rate as children). Most sites say it dropped after the flood because of the water vapor barrier was gone after the flood.
If you run across anything by accident shoot it to me lol
If there ever was a “water vapor barrier” on the Earth, the Earth would quickly burn up like Venus killing almost all, if not all life on Earth (except perhaps extremeophiles). It’s a ridiculous notion, but one apologists had to come up with to account for just some of the scientific inaccuracies in the Genesis creation account.
Thank you!!!
Marsupial fossil found in india.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/India-was-home-to-kangaroo-like-animals/articleshow/1327084.cms
Hi GHP,
It’s important to note that many marsupials once roamed Europe and Asia (just not the species we find in Australia today). This article references the tooth of one such animal, but unfortunately doesn’t name it. If it is a new species, how they derived from a single tooth that the creature not only looked like a kangaroo, but also “used to hop around in India,” is beyond me (though I suspect the author was just trying to make the story easier to digest). I tried to find out more about Sunil Bajpai and this specific tooth, but this seems to be the only article claiming it to be “kangaroo-like,” and the article cites no other papers or sources. If modern-day kangaroo fossils were discovered in India, it would be headline news.
500Q
As a thinking Christian who likes to consider evidence and be part of an inclusive Church I am so tired of seeing the Bible hijacked by those without any imagination They dictatate their “truth” and use a very important set of documents for the purposes of power and control so they can become little dictators. Praise God for a 4Bn year old Earth the process of evolution and the gifts or race creed colour and gender diversity!
So you don’t believe Adam and Eve were literal? How do you decide which parts of your holy book is literal and which parts are metaphorical?