Land Plants Came First

 One of the paradoxes from nature and scripture had been that Genesis describes land plants coming before the seas were full of living creatures. The fossil record had indicated the reverse- that the seas were full of living things prior to plants making their way to land. 

Two studies now indicate this may have been an instance of science needing more time to catch up to scripture. This study from Nature, "The late-Pre-Cambrian Greening of the Earth" claims evidence of terrestrial photosynthesis as early as 850 million years ago. Long before even the Edicaran fauna. That study inferred the existence of these first land plants based on change in the carbon cycle, but this study may have found tiny fossils (1 millimeter or less) of them. 

That leaves only the question of why plants took so much longer to unfold into their current diversity than did ocean animals. My book on early Genesis already addressed that issue, but I am not sure talking about it in isolation would make as much sense as it would from seeing the larger case about the nature of creation being laid out and how it would be just what should be expected given a close reading of the text. The best I can do is say that it has to do with the fact that God commands the land itself to bring forth the plants and the land does so without any further help from Him, but when He commands the seas to bring forth He also participates in the process. 

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Strother, Paul K.; Battison, Leila; Brasier, Martin D.; Wellman, Charles H. (2011). "Earth's earliest non-marine eukaryotes". Nature. 473

Knauth, L. Paul; Kennedy, Martin J. (2009). "The late Precambrian greening of the Earth". Nature. 460

Should Neanderthals Even be in the same Genus as We are?

This researcher says "no", and he gives a lot of good reasons, He also gives some interesting history about the classification of Neanderthals. There was considerable support for placing them in a different genus until World War II. At that point, he claims that Hitler's talk of a "master race" led to social and political pressure for scientists to go the other way- to lump everything they found in together. So he implies the decision was a political one, not a scientific one. If we based our classification of hominids on the same standards we used for other creatures, Jeff Schwartz says most of them, even some classified as "Archaic Homo Sapiens", would not even be in the same genus that we are.

The science media's big push to repeat the false idea that Neanderthals were very much like us also ties in to transhumanist ideas. That is, there is nothing special about mankind and if we have any ethical obligations at all it is to change humans into something better- to improve on the blind creator that is naturalism. 

I found this history of interest. What science is supposed to do is make finer and finer distinctions. What it does now in the case of hominids is to blur those distinctions. This is a sign that politics has infested the science. It isn't reasonable to "trust the science" when it has been tainted by political agendas. 

Kings from ancient times used to hire men to be priests, dress them in robes and speaking in the name of the gods they would support what the rulers who hired them really wanted.

But those were primitive times. Now days the state hires men to be 'scientists', dresses them in labcoats and degrees, and they speak in the name of science to support what the rulers that hired them really wanted.

For some reason, one of the things they seem to want science to say is that humans are not special, that other hominids were basically the same as us. They ignore a category that the ancients had of creatures that were like us, interested in us, but yet distinct from us.

Schwartz says that based on the fossil differences, not even many of these things that are considered "archaic Homo Sapiens Sapiens" should not be in our genus, much less Neanderthals. This is something I've said myself. Not even many of those so-called "archaic modern humans" were in our lineage. Humanity isn't 6,000 years old, but it isn't 106,000 years old either. We are a distinct population which appears relatively recently. I urge you to read his whole article, linked at the top, for details. 

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Other People Survived Noah's Flood - refuting a rebuttal

I don't normally get serious attempts at rebuttals when I share the Christ-centered model for Early Genesis. It doesn't matter the denomination or education status of whoever I am attempting to dialogue with, the pattern is consistent that they simply will not seriously engage. I finally got one, and I thought it deserved a thought-out answer, so I am making a post about it. This is best read with your bible open to Genesis chapter eleven. 

My claim that Genesis chapter eleven suggests that there were other people besides the clan of Noah after the flood- 
“Gen. 11 says that the whole earth shared one manner of speech yet the reason given for building a city was to 1) keep them from being scattered over the whole earth and 2) make a name for themselves. If Noah's clan were all the humans in the world, then who is doing the speaking "over the whole earth" since they were not at that time scattered over the whole earth. Also, re "making a name for themselves" who were they trying to impress?”

Here is the closest thing I have gotten as a serious answer in five years of doing this – They weren’t “speaking ‘over the whole earth.’" It was the “whole earth” which had one language.
1) “The whole earth” can mean a number of things: the whole planet, just a region (Gen. 2:11, 13), or as here, all of the human population.

Genesis 11:1-2 tells us that the “whole earth” had the same language, and that this “whole earth” moved from the east, or to the east (it can be translated either way). So, although a large group, it’s small enough to move as one. In Genesis 11:6, God indicates that this “whole earth” is a group of people. \

So KH is saying that "the land" was the people of the land. So it meant "the clans of Noah" were of one manner of speech as they travelled. While the phrase "the land" can refer to just the people of the land, I've never seen it used of people who did not yet have a land, a tribe on the move. When "the land" is used of people in scripture, it is quite sensibly using it as shorthand to describe the inhabitants of a particular region, not nomads on the move. 

Further, it is unlikely that the writer would use "the land" to mean the inhabitants only in verse one while using it to mean the literal territory in verse four, but this is what KH is suggesting. He seems to think that the "they" in verse two ("as they journeyed from the east") refers to "the whole earth" (or land). It doesn't. The chapter headings came along later. Just go up to the last verse of the previous chapter and it tells you who the "they" are. It is the families of the sons of Noah. The text isn't saying that they were the "whole earth" that was of one manner of speech, it is just saying that the whole earth was of one manner of speech when they, the clans of Noah, found Shinar. 

And to ice it, when he mentions verse six and it says "the people are one", the word for people there is "am", which means people in the sense of a nation, not the whole human race. So it isn't saying that "humanity is one", it is saying that particular nation, the clans of Noah that entered Shinar, are as one. Verse five doesn't help because when it says "the children of men" the Hebrew says "children of Adam". IOW this is also perfectly consistent with the Christ-centered model where there was Adam and Even inside the garden and other people outside it. 

KH even recognizes this in a way when he then says...

Based on Gen. 10:32, these are the descendants of all three sons of Noah.

Yes, that is who the "they" is in verse two, which means the "they" in verse two is not referring to "the whole earth:. When it says "by these were the nations divided" KH takes it to mean (like most people) that this is saying that the nations were exclusively composed of descendants of these individuals. That's not what that means when it says "divided". The early patriarchs normally attracted large groups of people to their households. Not all were their direct descendants, but they could easily form the core of a new nation. But I think if we just stick with what the text is saying there and not add meaning to "divided" that isn't there, then we can see that this verse isn't a statement that the descendants of Noah constituted the entire population of earth. 

As to my question of "who were they trying to impress" when they said they wanted to "make a name for themselves" KH wrote...

The name/reputation was for the current and future generations to remember. It need not have anything to do with there being contemporaneous populations around them.

I can't take this argument as seriously. "Making a name for yourself" is superfluous if your name is the only one on earth. No one is going to forget your name if it is also their name. I don't think he's answered the question "who were they trying to impress" at all by saying in effect "themselves". That's not "making a name". 

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