Haven’t seen the flowering plants used for an argument against evolution in a while:
Blog article by Richard Buggs here.
The paper here:
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This came up in my feed today. Genetic sequence for parasitic flowering plant Sapria
Seems to baffle plant biologists too. Fascinating organism.
What struck the group immediately was the striking degree of gene loss Sapria experienced as they abandoned their bodies and adapted to become endoparasites. Nearly half of all genes found in most flowering plants are absent in the Sapria genome. That extent of gene loss is more than four times the degree of loss in other plant parasites. Many of the genes lost include what are considered the key genes responsible for photosynthesis, which converts light into energy.
“In many ways, it’s a miracle that these plants exist today, let alone that they seem to have persisted for tens of millions of years,” said Charles Davis, who led the project and is a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and curator of vascular plants in the Harvard University Herbaria. “They’ve really jettisoned many things we identify as a typical plant yet they are deeply embedded within the plant tree of life.”
This paper was published yesterday, adding more weight to the idea that angiosperms originated prior to the Cretaceous, perhaps even in the Triassic:
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Hmm. 
with molecular clocks generally placing their origin much further back in time than the oldest unequivocal fossils.
I can’t see the article…but it’s not too surprising.
I look forward to reading through these. Botany is one of my favorite subjects.
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In one concordant model, found at Ages of Joy, Days of Creation: A Functional, Historically-Concordant Creationist View of Genesis 1, Day 3 of Creation is said to span from about 600 million years ago to 100 million years ago. This finding would support that.
No it wouldn’t, as the events of days 5 and 6 (or most of them) would seem to be happening during that time as well.
Why should someone assume that Day 5 and Day 6 are the only times animals were created? The description of animals on those days is not even comprehensive of all animal types.
The text does not assert that all animals of every kind were all created at one time, or even at these two times. The vast majority of species that lived prior to the emergence of fruit trees went extinct long before mankind arrived. Why would extinct animals be mentioned in Genesis 1?
Why should one assume that the days mean anything at all? What’s the point of concordism if you’re going to make the words mean so little? So day 5 is the day on which some small number of fish and birds was created, no different from any other day in that respect.
Well of course they aren’t. Genesis 1 is fiction and deals only with what the ancient Hebrews knew about. But you must understand that all the angiosperms that were alive 100 million years ago are extinct too, and that there were almost certainly no fruit trees among them. If we’re talking only about extant species, very few of them are more than a few million years old. Condordism leads to self-contradiction just like you display here. You need to find some other exegesis.
Thanks for actually trying to contribute for what I was hoping would be a scientific conversation.
Genesis 1 is revealed history which science is slowly discovering and illuminating with additional details. Your assertions, John, are merely that.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871174X08000176
Ok, to the science. When did fruit trees (woody angiosperm) originate?
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That’s one of the most obvious double-standards I’ve ever seen.
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No it is fiction just like every other creation story out there. Evolutionary history looks nothing like what was described in Genesis 1.
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As are yours, right? The revealed history seems quite obscure and in clear contradiction to the facts. That’s what I base my assertion on.
“Woody angiosperm” does not equal “fruit tree”.
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In what way does a woody angiosperm fail the definition of a “tree on land that bears fruit with seed in it”? All fruit trees are woody angiosperms, at least by most common definitions. Pointing out that some woody angiosperms might fail to be recognized as fruit trees is really besides the point.
There was a time on Earth when there were no seed-bearing plants at all of any kind. Then, seed-bearing plants arose and there have been seed-bearing plants continually on Earth ever since.
There was a later time on Earth, that occurred after the first seed-bearing plants, when the first trees arose that bear fruit with the seed in the fruit. There have been trees like that continually on Earth ever since.
That is what Genesis 1 is saying. There was time before seeds and fruit trees, and then there was a later time when we can say that Earth has continually had both since that later time.
Some would say the first seeds appear 400 million years ago and the first fruit trees about 120 million years ago. I am happy to hear evidence for other dates for these two occurrences. Let the science speak. But, none-the-less, there is some time window. That’s just reality.
The Bible describes the Earth as starting out formless (uninhabitable) and void (uninhabited), which it was during the Hadean.
The Bible describes the Earth as getting seed plants and fruit trees as some point after that. Which it did, during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic.
The radiation of all modern birds occurred after the appearance on Earth of fruit trees and seed plants and well before the appearance of human beings. This occurred in the wake of the K-Pg after 66 ma. Coincident with the radiation of modern birds, there was a radiation of teleost fish that now comprise 96% of fish. The Bible does not teach or require fixity of species. It does reference a time in Earth’s history when God commanded birds and fish to be fruitful and multiply and fill their domains. The Bible does not say that these are the first fish and birds to ever exist. After K-Pg this happened. It goes down as one of the most important events in the history of life on Earth.
The Bible describes human beings as coming to exist at some time after the seed plants and fruit trees and after the radiation of modern birds and fish. This is all scientifically true.
It’s exactly the point. You are equivocating on the definition of “fruit tree”. When you want to talk about Adam introducing cultivation, then fruit trees are limited to what we usually mean. When you want to make fruit trees really ancient, possibly Jurassic, you change the definition to refer to any woody angiosperm. Bad form.
No, that’s not what it’s saying. There’s a lengthy history of plant evolution, and supposedly it’s all plants created on Day 3, not just “fruit trees”, whatever you think that means. And of course seed plants != angiosperms != fruit trees.
Notice that it’s before the sun, moon, and stars, before sea life, before aerial life, before land animals. None of that is true with the possible exception of the last, if you’re weaselly enough.
No, just not true. You have to use a special definition of “modern” in order for that to be the case; as I recall, you could never settle on a consistent one. Cherry-picking.
More weaseling about what “fish” means, and “radiation” too.
That’s the only thing that’s scientifically true, and trivially so as it covers a single species instead of whatever much larger groups you think are meant by bird, fish, and plant.
Yes. It is what it is saying.
Absolutely agree with you. Starts as far back as the Proterozoic, possibly, with green algae and lichens. But science text books are pretty clear about the evolution of seeds being a key innovation that allowed plants to cultivate dry land and move inland from constantly moist soil conditions. The biological entity known as a plant seed may have gone under some development between its first appearance and human cultivation, but scientists still call them seeds.
Clearly, basic third grade science. Seed plants include both gymnosperms (think, pine trees) and angiosperms (think, flowering plants). Angiosperms can be either herbaceous (think, flowers) or woody (think, fruit trees).
Not so. You are leaning on common English translations, a poor understanding of Hebrew, and no apparent knowledge of literary devices.
The Hebrew word “asah” translated “made” is from a root word with broad meaning and is translated many ways in the Old Testament, based on context. In Genesis 1, a better translation is “And God appointed the two great lights–the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night–and the stars”. (appoint goes with rule based on context). The Hebrew word “nathan” is often translated “set” but also means “gave”, so the following is a better translation: “God gave them in the expanse”. See Deuteronomy 4:19 where it says God gave the sun, moon, and stars as a lasting inheritance to all nations. God appointed the Sun and moon to rule and gave them as a gift. Genesis 1 does not actually say when they were made, but based on the function they perform, it was on or before Day 1, obviously. I place Day 4 during the Late Cretaceous because that is when Earth’s rotation rate slowed to about 24-hours per day, an appropriate time to designate them as a gift and mark the beginning of their rule for future human benefit.
It is in fact true that birds underwent a diversification event after the K-Pg. You yourself suggested that perhaps only 7 species survived to leave descendants among birds alive today. Birds were wildly successful after the K-Pg. Lots of “history of the Earth books” claim that. It’s true.
In terms of “radiation of fish” after the K-Pg. It’s also textbook. Genesis 1 only says they were fruitful and multiplied and filled the waters. It’s not that hard to see that it’s true. That God created creatures on the 5th day does not imply there were no creature before hand, see Psalm 104:30.
I was very specific about what I meant by plants (seeds bearing plants and woody angiosperms), fish (teleost), birds (post-K-Pg varieties). All creatures commonly regarded as cattle also emerge well after the post-K-Pg expansion of fish and birds. That covers many species, not just one.
It fact, it’s quite easy to line Genesis 1 up with the geologic history of the Earth. It parallels quite nicely. You see, there are a lot of things Genesis 1 does not in fact claim, that many people think it is saying. It’s short. It doesn’t make a lot of broad statements - it make a few significant, specific statements because it is history. That is how histories work.
The only real difficulty with Genesis 1 is that is does not mention other things God also did, other creatures He also created. So be it. Any brief history of Earth will skip over many more details than it includes.
You may have encountered the Genesis 1 narrative as a child with a Sunday school teacher who told you to draw pictures for each Day of creation. I am sorry if that is the case. I know those lessons can burn in the mind and make it seem like the simplistic 5-year-old way is the only way to look at the narrative. But, if you really want to understand it, you have to work at it a little bit harder than you are.
Around 23.5 hours per day, yes, but this isn’t a discrete change. The length of days has been constantly increasing for billions of years to the 24 hours it is today. Where do you draw the line of when the “appropriate” number was? Is it 23.500001 hours per day? 23.6 hours per day? 23.9 hours per day? Why not 23.499999 hours per day or even 23.1 hours per day?