The tetrapod link

The evolution from fish to tetrapod (four-legged animals, land animals) has always been a subject of debate, not the least in the creationist discussion. The last few years, much has become clearer about the transition from fish to tetrapod (amphibian). Classical Ichthyostega from Greenland, which is a devonian aphibian with a number of fish characteristics, is nevertheless a clear tetrapod. It is no longer however the most fish-like one. Nature reports new findings on Ventastega curiona, found in Latvia. (See Science Daily) The species has been known for some time, but newly described fossils (by among others Per Ahlberg from Upsala) shedsnew light on the animals limbs. This devonian tetrapod can be considered the most fish-like of them all. From the fish side, a very tetrapod like fish Tiktaalik was described from the devonian of Canada in 2006. Thus, the gap between tetrapods and fish is closing as we have more intermediate forms and better understand the development from fish extremities to tetrapod limbs.
Creationists may find that difficult, but I would say that my admiration for the Creators creativity only grows.

New species: the richness of nature

We know a lot about creation, but a lot we do not know. The enormous diversity of creation is well-known. There are numbers and numbers of living species. Around one million described. How many undescribed - another million or two? New species are discovered all the time - contrary to what most people think. Most of them small. Like insects or worms. Most people seem to think that we have discovered all the "large" or "higher" species, like mammals or birds. But we still discover new ones. And a considerable number - small and large - will undoubtly go extinct before we even discover them.

An illustration of this is a website I happened to see: http://marcvanroosmalen.org/newspecies.htm
Marc (a dutchman like myself by origin) works in the Amazonas. He describes a considerable number of new species he has discovered. Sea cows, pigs, monkeys, tapirs etc. A number of them are rare, and threatened with extinction. Marc uses his discoveries to stimulate preservation, as he states on his website: "My goal as a field biologist is to use new species as an ethical means to save entire ecosystems in the Amazon."

Have a look at his site and have again confirmed the diversity of creation and the urgent need of conservation. Do whatever you can for protecting the Amazonas and other precious natural environments!

Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Just now the Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is going on in New York. (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/session_seventh.html) This time, issues on climate and biodiversity are in focus. Important issues. In the opening session, Bolivias president Morales (belonging to an indigenous people himself, the Amaya) warns against ethanol growing which threatens the land rights of indigenous peoples in South America.
It has been stressed that indigenous peoples should be part in negotiations on climate issues. On the one hand, many indigenous peoples way of life are heavily affected by climate change. We can see already what warmer winters will do to reindeer husbandry in Sápmi and to the Inuit of the Arctis. On the other hand, indigenous peoples have traditional knowledge to offer which can be of great value.
The view of many indigenous peoples on the way we ought to treat the earth, as stewards rather than just taking its resources, shows a way to live in a sustainable way on this earth. Too long, western society has not acknowledged that we are stewards and that our life and all creation are interdependent.

For a Christian this should be clear. Man is put to steward Creation in the Bible, and creation theology should be an important cornerstone in any theological system. Strangely enough, this has not been the case in most of western theology. The church has joined the rest of society in exploiting rather than stewarding the earth. Only very recently, climate issues and creation theology has become more important in the west. We should however not think that we have to do everything ourselves. Let us listen to what the indigenous peoples traditional values have to learn to us - in society as well as in church.

Meeting old friends of another kind...

During our visit in the Netherlands we made a visit to Burgers Zoo, one of the most beautiful zoos in Europe, in the town of Arnhem where I grew up. Here I could visit the chimpanzee colony, which was established 1972. In 1979-80 I spent more than a year with those chimps on a daily basis, working on an ethological project under the guidance of Frans de Waal (now one of the leading primatologists in the world, working in the US). Many of the chimps from that time are now gone, and a new generation grew up. But the oldes female from that time, named Mama, is still there 50 years of age, and her daughter Roos, who was very small then is now a mother herself. Also some other "old friends" were still around.

Chimp behaviour is fascinating. I can still spent the whole day just observing them. The chimps make one think about our own place in nature. Chimps and the other apes are the animals, physically most like ourselves. Even their behaviour reminds many times of humans. The way they have conflicts, their reconciliation (the aspect I worked on back then), their way of doing "politics", it seems so familiar to us. As we know today even their DNA is more than 95% identical with ours. Of course, chimps are our evolutionary cousins so to say. Paleontological evidence is abundant.

Still, there is this difference which is difficult to put our finger on. In spite of all those resemblances something makes us very different as well. Even if our bodies and our psyche remind of eachother, there is an aspect making human human. It might be that difference, that extra aspect which made the writer of Gen 1 use that unique word bara (create out of nothing) about the creation of man. It might be that which is said in Gen 2, that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living being (nefesh, a living soul). Gods breath - the hebrew word is ruach and can as easily be translated Gods spirit. The text also says man was made of dust - materia, our physical roots are in the material creation (as the evolutionary model confirms). But our spiritual roots come from the Spirit of God. That is why a chimp is so very like ourselves, but so very different.

A meeting - again - with my chimpanzee friends sure give a lot to think of.

Hemavan

It was too long since I wrote. Have been in Hemavan in the southern Lappland mountains for 1 week. Hiking, going down in caves and as usual take a look at the beautiful orchid Gymnadenia runei. This orchid was discovered in the seventies and it is only found here on one mountain slopes as well as in one or two places nearby. Must be one of the rarest flowers in Europe. I can't write the exact place here but if you join next years Flora and Geology week in Hemavan I might guide you to the place...

This year there were extremely many flowering. Beautiful as ever. For me a symbol for the diversity of creation.

Life's solution

Science and theology is one of my favorites, being a paleontologist by profession as well as a pastor. Just now I am re-reading Simon Conway Morris' book Life's solution - inevitable humans in a lonely universe.

I really must recommend that book. It is not a narrow specialist book, it is fully readable for anyone with a scientific interest. Written with humor also. Morris is challenging - with succes - the quite common view that evolution is a process steered by chance, humans happen to be one of the outcomes, but it could really have been anything. He challenges that other great paleontologist, the late Stephen J Gould, and his famous thesis that if the tape of evolution could be re-run the outcome would be quite different. It would not. Life has a tendency to move to certain specific solutions. Tendencies which apparently are rooted in the earliest organisms living long before the Scandinavian mountains I see from my kitchen window even started to form. The outcome in the end could not have become anything you can or can't imagine. It had to be humans - or something very much like humans. Evolutionary theory and theology have a bearing on each other. You get the feeling that evolution could very well be teleological (something of course the writer of Genesis 1 and 2 would happily agree with).

Simon Conway Morris is a believing evolutionist, as I am myself. He gives no room for genetic fundamentalism (with Richard Dawkins and his selfish gene as main advocates), nor for so-called creation science.
Curious?
Read the book if you haven't done that before.



A balanced book, written by a man with great knowledge and a very clear mind.