I have recently been reading about the topic of biogeography.\u00a0 I am not a biologist and so I am far from being an expert on this.\u00a0 But this illustrates some differences between how evolutionist scientists\u00a0think and how creationist scientists think.\u00a0 Evolutionists have made a lot of statements about biogeography supporting evolution.\u00a0 This is about the fact that there are peculiarities about where various types of animals live across the world.\u00a0 Some animals like marsupials (such as kangaroos and other animals with pouches) are confined only to Australia whereas elephants only seem to live in Africa and India.\u00a0 Then there are many interesting things about fossils versus todays living forms.\u00a0 Sometimes fossils are more widely distributed than todays\u00a0living forms.\u00a0 For example living\u00a0marsupials are restricted today to Australia and South America (the opossum is a marsupial).\u00a0 But fossils of marsupials are only found in Europe, Asia, and North America.\u00a0 Evolution’s main idea on biogeography is that animals evolved to be what we know them to be as they spread out.\u00a0 So, it took many generations for them to distribute around the world and as they did this over millions of years, they changed.\u00a0\u00a0So new species came about that were different on the different continents.\u00a0\u00a0Evolution has to approach the distribution of animals (and plants) in such a way that the various types do not all exist at the start but they come about over time as they travel and spread out.\u00a0 Evolutionists thus have had trouble explaining a number of puzzling\u00a0cases.\u00a0 There are a number of examples where the drift of the continents from evolutionary geologists does not agree well with the scenarios from evolutionary biologists.<\/p>\n
For small changes within basic kinds, some creatures can travel and become isolated groups on their own.\u00a0 For example on the Galapagos Islands there are differences in the finches on the various islands.\u00a0 But how would other animals spread out to the various continents?\u00a0 There may be natural disasters occasionally\u00a0that cause floating log and vegetation mats to drift across oceans.\u00a0 Also in some areas there are places between islands or continents where if the sea level were less, it would open up a land bridge that animals could cross over on.\u00a0 But evolutionary scenarios for using\u00a0such ideas, though some work in\u00a0some locations,\u00a0some of the ideas proposed are just assumed without any evidence that it really happened.\u00a0 Often evolutionists are left with just making up hypothetical implausible\u00a0stories.<\/p>\n
Creationists can use some of the same ideas as\u00a0evolutionists in biogeography but creationists put the idea in a very different context that makes it work better.\u00a0 In a creationist approach,\u00a0all the “kinds” of animals start from the same location, which is\u00a0in the area of Mt. Ararat in Turkey.\u00a0 Animals spread out from there, as did humans.\u00a0 In a creationist Biblical view of history this works because 1) you have all the animal types living at the same time and 2) you have humans who can take animals with\u00a0them where they\u00a0travel.\u00a0 In evolutionary thinking, humans don’t have much to do with the distribution of animals across the world because the animals\u00a0distributed and evolved before humans, for the most part.\u00a0 A third factor in a creation approach is Noah’s Flood.\u00a0 The Flood\u00a0would\u00a0have uprooted vast forests\u00a0and there could have been very large floating mats of vegetation\u00a0and logs for some time after the Flood.\u00a0 Animals died in the Flood, but as animals spread out after the Flood they could have found floating mats and climbed\u00a0aboard because they would be likely places to find food.\u00a0 Floating mats have been known to happen occasionally in historical times but\u00a0if there was really a global Flood such mats could be much bigger and more common immediately after the Flood.\u00a0 So in a creationist approach floating mats could be more applicable than in an evolutionist view.<\/p>\n
Then there’s people.\u00a0 In the Biblical view of history, humans could have built boats soon after the Flood and they would likely\u00a0take\u00a0some animals with them for\u00a0food and for other reasons.\u00a0 There could also have been land\u00a0bridges in certain places after the Flood.\u00a0\u00a0For instance one obvious one is between Alaska\u00a0and Russia.\u00a0 There are good reasons to believe there was an ice age (just one) after the Flood.\u00a0 The ice age would have caused variations in sea level.\u00a0 Other tectonic\u00a0after-effects of the Flood\u00a0and post-Flood volcanic eruptions\u00a0might have had a role in making land\u00a0bridges also in some areas.\u00a0 Because\u00a0humans were capable immediately after the Flood of\u00a0building boats and traveling, they could have had a major importance in distributing\u00a0animals around the world.\u00a0 Some animals would have spread out to\u00a0areas where they later died out because of changes in the climate or because of disease or because of being hunted out by humans.\u00a0 Animals adapted to the post-Flood world.\u00a0 So there would be situations where new species could arise in the post-Flood period, but not new kinds.\u00a0 Creation allows for limited changes to adapt to the environment.\u00a0\u00a0But there are limits to how much animals can adapt and so\u00a0many species probably did go extinct after Noah’s Flood.<\/p>\n
This is a quick simple summary of biogeography and why the Biblical view of history makes sense.\u00a0 There are good sources with more details I could recommend if anyone is interested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have recently been reading about the topic of biogeography.\u00a0 I am not a biologist and so I am far from being an expert on this.\u00a0 But this illustrates some differences between how evolutionist scientists\u00a0think and how creationist scientists think.\u00a0 Evolutionists have made a lot of statements about biogeography supporting evolution.\u00a0 This is about the … Continue reading Animal Distribution and Creation<\/span>