What are Turtle's Anyways?

Continuing the discussion from Alternatives to Modern Evolutionary Theory:

I’m curious about this story…

What more do you want to know? Morphological cladistic analyses have tended to group turtles in one of two ways: either with parareptiles as primitively anapsid or with archosaurs (or sometimes sauropterygians) as highly modified diapsids. Molecular analyses always put them with diapsids, and most recent ones have identified them as sister to the croc and bird clade.

A few quick links:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0331

For a look at the parareptile theory, see various works by M.S.Y. Lee, e.g.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JHw8DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA451&dq=reptile+phylogeny+lee&ots=mNZA51KhhZ&sig=QT_ZvV-BKQqJaPntDlpHDgoxtsA#v=onepage&q=reptile%20phylogeny%20lee&f=false

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As a YEC creationist I have wondered about turtles. On creation week they would not of needed a shell. No death. nobody eating them. I wonder if some sea fossil creatures they find are just turtles without shells.
the problem with dna scoring is that it scores items in biology.
So if turtles have some like traits with crocs etc it WOULD show the dna score for same traits. Yet this is not evidence of relationship but only evidence of parts having a dna relationship.
Once again god would give crics and turtles the same traits in limited options in a collective blueprint and so dna likeness yet both were separately created and unrelated to each other.
In both cases the God created kind is gone but only the deformed results remain.

How did their shell’s evolve?

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Well, no wonder Adam and Eve ate that damned fruit.

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That’s a much more difficult question than finding their phylogenetic relationships. Part of it is easy: they’re composed of fused osteoderms and ribs overlain by big scales, all of them common in amniotes. Otherwise, there’s a literature on this from fossils, but it’s confused by uncertainty about which fossils are actually in the turtle lineage. There’s also work in developmental biology. I don’t know if there’s any evo-devo on the question, but there probably is by now.

Here’s the first reference I found:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)00566-6

Be warned that the relationships of Eunotosaurus are unclear, and it may have nothing to do with turtles. But it still might be a good model.

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Yet the Bible says nothing about an absence of animal death prior to Adam’s Fall. The Apostle Paul only states that Imago Dei human death didn’t occur prior to the fall. (Of course, Genesis states that once Adam and Eve were driven from the garden and the Tree of Life, they wouldn’t get the benefits of the fruit of the Tree of Life.)

How do you know that turtles didn’t die before the Fall? How did turtles far from the garden and even thousands of miles away avoid death when they didn’t eat fruit from the Tree of Life?

Considering that DNA is a part of living things, how would it be “scored” in any way but in a biological context? Your statement is baffling.

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DNA scoring is so inimate with biology that its not a independent evidence for biologys origins. if biology is hand in glove with dNA, it is, then DNA oNLY shows a trail of the bodies prigins.
I’m saying that sNA is just a parts department number.
Its not a OTHER trail to show evolution.
If marsupials have like DNA unlike other creatures ITS only because of the marsupial traits/parts department numbers. Yet actually they are just the same creatures as elsewhere.
The DNA does not connect marsupials but only the few traits. thus a error is made in relationships.

people have the same dna as apes but not because of being related. jUst because we have the same body type. It could only be we have the same DNA!! Yet don’t be decived its a trail of origins. its not a trail but a trivial parts score in a common blueprint.

The bible is clear to most bible believers and scholars that death did not exist before the fall.
People and creatures would live always. No immune system existed.
The tree of life is a issue but not enough to nullify the great conclusion from the bible.

I have a hard time making sense of much of that. However, I think you said something like this: “…then DNA only shows a trail of the body’s origins.” I agree! We can trace the evolution of the morphology of organisms’ bodies through countless generations. And that “trail” has becoming more and more evident over the years. Visit any natural history museum and you will see exhibits explaining that evolutionary “trail”.

How do you explain ERVs and atavisms?

Now you are talking my field of study. I challenge you to cite the scriptures which indicate:

(1) No death to any organism existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve.
(And seeing as how Adam and Eve ate food, how did they manage to do that without the death of the organisms they consumed?)

(2) All organisms were created to be immortal. [What scriptures say that?]
(Considering that God said that all organisms would be fruitful and multiply, what would prevent overpopulation if there was no death.)

(3) No immune systems existed. [What scriptures say that?]

You can’t provide any compelling scriptural evidence for those three claims. You also need to acknowledge that the Bible (God’s Book of Scriptures) says nothing about turtles----but God’s Book of Nature (i.e., Creation) tells us much about turtle evolution.

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I think those claims are based on KenHam 11:3 (or something like that).

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You will also find those ideas in First Opinions 3:16.

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@Robert_Byers, the Bible says that Adam and Eve avoided death while they were in the Eden garden by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. If all organisms likewise avoided death prior to the Fall, how did those organisms which were far from the Eden region consume its fruit? And even for those which lived nearby, are you claiming that all of them included such fruit in their diets? Did immortal tapeworms, mosquitoes, vampire bats, blood-sucking leeches, amoebas, earthworms, sharks, sea cucumbers, and turtles all eat the fruit of the Tree of Life?

Please include the supporting scriptures in your answers.

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Funny mental images. Did sheep eat fruit? :slightly_smiling_face: (I guess they do, but I don’t see them picking it. :slightly_smiling_face:)

The only animal cursed was the serpent. YECs (and many others) don’t realize that God had a two-creation model to begin with – Jesus was not Plan B, the first creation was subjected to futility and death from its beginning.

And isn’t ‘lion’ a derivation of ‘tearer’? Psalm 104 is a creation account, and the Psalmist is praising God for providing prey for them.

Not usually. The sheep were poorly suited to steadying a ladder—so even the bravest sheep refused to volunteer to go up the ladder to pick fruit. They didn’t understand that prior to the Fall, death was impossible, so falling while climbing a ladder would have been no big deal for them.

(Perhaps Ken Ham will propose a pre-Fall cooperation between sheep and giraffes. The sheep would harvest potatoes while the giraffes would pick fruit from the trees. At the end of each day, they held swap meets and engaged in complex barter. On the other hand, creation before the Fall was “perfect” and therefore the animals were much more sophisticated than today. So perhaps sheep engineers designed scaffolds for fruit picking—until gasoline-powered hydraulic cherry-pickers were developed by sheep prodigies.)

[I hereby rebuke myself for an excessively facetious post and subject myself to an overnight time-out.]

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The bible is superclear that death/decay only came from Adams sin. Nature/creation moans only because of death. Its impossible there was death for creatures with breath of life. The world was a paradise.
Its not just death of humans that started.
the being must have some alive concept. spirit. not plants.
overpopulation is impossible.
once the earth was filled the creatures were done. they reproduced only to fill the earth.
today they reproduce because of death stopping their peace.
thats why for people its a demanding prediction we were meant to fill the universe.
its that big because its for eternal mankjind to populate iin our hundreds of billions. its unused real estate right now.
Scripture does not need to have a verse for every obvious fact.
Its clear enough.

Please post the specific supporting scripture evidence—not just your declarations of personal opinion.

What made it “impossible”? What is your scripture evidence?

No. At most the garden which God planted in the Eden region was a “paradise”.

Please define the “spirit” which is in animals and not plants. (I’m not saying that you are wrong. I’m asking you for your supporting evidence.)

How do you know? What scriptures state that overpopulation was impossible?

Where does the Bible make this claim?

Well don’t look at me. I’m not that prolific.

If your “facts” are not in the Bible and you have no scientific evidence for them, how did you determine that your personal opinion is correct?

Clear enough for you, perhaps. What makes it clear to you if it is not in the Bible?

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It turns out that sheep don’t need ladders. :slight_smile:

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Yes its clear to historic evangelical scholars and regular folk. to say death did not come with Adam is just silly if one believes the bible is Gods word. To say death meant only people is also clearly contrary to the whole concept of decay and a groaning creation.
There is no gain to list verses. There is no need to accept this is in doubt.
Anyways you didn’t offer any verses for Death existing in critters before the fall.
There are none . Don’t look!
Anyways turtles would not have shells and would be quite different looking creatures. Possibly some fossils of seas creatures were giant turtles that were too big for shells. just a option.

You remind me of a politician I met at a major political party’s state convention in 1974. His name was Earl Landgrebe. Even when the evidence against President Richard Nixon was overwhelming (just one day before Nixon’s resignation), Landgrebe became a footnote in the history books for the following statement:

Don’t confuse me with the facts.
— Earl Landgrebe

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Interesting! Let’s follow this logic and see where it goes …

Turtles would not have shells (no predators).
Predators would not need have sharp teeth and claws (no predation).
No animals would eat (no death = no starvation) or drink.
No need to eat, therefore no digestive systems (no need).
Birds would not fly (no need to flee danger).
Animals (including humans) would not have immune systems (no disease).
Animals would not need lungs to breathe (no death from asphyxiation).
Fish would live on land (no death from asphyxiation).
Animals would not have babies (no need).
Animals would not have sexual organs (follows from above).

Meanwhile, plants are still growing, producing food that no thing needs to eat.
Plants continue to conduct photosynthesis, using sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to produce sugars and oxygen.
No animals are not using oxygen respiration, therefore oxygen in not being converted into carbon dioxide.
Plants eventually use up all the available carbon dioxide and stop growing, and stop producing food (which is OK since no can eat it anyway).

Interesting place, this world of literal Genesis! :wink:

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