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Science has been an interest of mine from as far back as I can remember. I always enjoyed finding out how something worked, what made the planets do what they do, why was fire so fun to play with, and so darned hard to control.
I remember when I was 11 or 12 years old, coming home from church (at that time a So. Baptist church) after listening to the idiot in the pulpit having expounded on Adam and Eve vs. Evolution. Turns out he was responding to a discussion that took place in one of the youth groups. He pontificated on the literal nature of the Bible and the errancy of science. Of course, what he knew about science would rattle around in a thimble.
I was baffled then, and I am baffled now about how otherwise intelligent people can decide to ignore the facts placed before them by science, and consciously adopt a view that literally has no support in the real world. And in order to hold to the religious views, they must sometimes make up the silliest stories to explain away the science.
Did you know that Satan put fossils into the ground to confuse people and cause them to doubt the Bible? Unless, of course, it was the Bible's god that put them there to test the faith of his followers.
Fossils are amazing evidence for life that has gone before and it's transitions from simple to complex forms. There are clear trails showing transitions from, for example, a small land animal to whales over some 10 to 15 million years. Yet the millions of years themselves produce objections from those who deny the validity of scientific measurements because it messes with the 6000 years claimed by Mr. Usher and modern creationism. A time frame that comes about through the sole use of the Bible, sans any science, and Mr. Usher didn't even have the status of infallibility on the subject. It was his interpretation of Biblical “evidence” that got him to 4004 B.C. as a date for the beginning of the world.
Fossil evidence is not complete by any means. It never will be. That's why it is so nice to have many other disciplines in sciences that make up for the lack therein. Paleontology, morphology, molecular biology, embryology, and geochemisty all provide further evidence for the story presented by the fossil record. Paleoenvironmental, paleobiogeographical, vestigial, and chronological evidence put the icing on the cake. Whales evolved.
For a really good article on the evolution of Whales, read “The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence” byRaymond Sutera (My source for the above information).
