Whenever I so much as mention the Platypus, I gets a lot of thumbs down - are christians embarassed it?

Question

Does this animal's existence cause them stress over how they believe the world was made? I mean, an egg-laying mammal with a bill sure seems an awful lot like a "transitional species", doesn't it? Is that why they don't like it?

Is it the Crocoduck??

Paul...I don't know if it's transitional or not, I actually don't know too much about the Playpus ;)

I'm just wondering why the subject gets so many thumbs down

Answer 1

While evolution is certainly a well supported fact, if you are suggesting that the platypus is transtional between birds and mammals, you really don't know any more about evolution than the Christian fundamentalists do.

Answer 2

Even evolutionists don't consider the platypus a transitional species.

Anyone who reads any evolutionary literature, even at a basic level, will quickly find out that birds are thought to have evolved from dinosaurs in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, and that mammals are thought to have evolved from a reptile-like group of animals called the therapsids in the Triassic about 220 million years ago. No competent evolutionist has ever claimed that platypuses are a link between birds and mammals.

Platypus is a good example to show how void the claims of evolutionists are. Members of the Platypus species lay eggs even though they are mammals. Its mammary glands and hair, are sufficient as evidence of its being a mammal. Moreover, the creature has a beak-like mouth.
Since the creature owns characteristics that resemble both reptiles and a mammals, it is depicted as a transitional form of a simple animal. Actually, the facts are not so. Platypus is such a highly developed animal that it even has extraordinary senses. It is furnished with a mechanism which allows it to move with electrical signals since it lives in the mud. In this aspect, it is possible to state that Platypus has a sixth sense in addition to the ordinary five senses of other animals. The electroreceptor system of Platypus is not similar to those that exist in some fish. It is more complex. Platypus forms an electric field with special movements and gives shape to the surface of the river.

Answer 3

I don't know what you are going on about. Look, you have to believe one of two things. Either there is a creator who always was and always will be who created the universe or all the matter that is the universe always was and always will be. Both are equally as unlikely, I suppose.

Where you go off the track is in believing that evolution disproves creation. If you realize that the story in the Bible about the creation of the earth was being told to extremely simple, ignorant and illterate people it had to be related to them in terms they could comprehend. I don't think it was a literal explaination.

Evolution or Natural Selection exists. It is demonstrable. Just look at the various breeds of dogs mankind had developed. That does not preclude a creator. Or to put it another way what's to say that the creator did not creat evolution?

But if you study evolution and natural selection well, you will discover that it does not explain everything. It does not explain the sudden appearance of modern man. Modern man was equipped with a super powerful but highly expensive to operate brain. Not the stuff of natual selection. This brain required loads of high quality protiens and other difficult to supply nutrients.

Human offspring are literally helpless until around seven or eight years old. My goodness, what a burden for early man to bear! Just look at a horse. The mare drops her foal and the thing stands up and starts running.

Evolution does not explain these things. The large expensive brain, however, is necessary if the goal was to have a creature that was capable of self-awareness. Man is the only creature on earth with this ability. Even to this day, no other species shows any inclination to achieving this.

That, dear reader, is a good case for divine or some other kind of intervention. I believe the highest primate on earth was taken and modified to create "man". Why? That is a question man has been seeking the answer to ever since.
Why are we here? Is this all there is? Is there a creator?

I believe so.

.

Answer 4

This is a phony question. The duck billed platypus is one of the best evidences for creation. There are no evolutionary forces that would have created an animal so fragile and so unsuited for propagation and continued existence. If it is a transitional form then what is it transitional between? Ducks and mammals? I hadn't heard that transition before.
Classification of mammals, arachnids, etc is arbitrary. We do it for convenience. God divides animals and plants into kinds. We divide them into kingdoms and phyla and families, geni and species. We arbirtrarily decide what animals should be with what each group. We have the ability to create inconsistencies wherever we decide to draw lines.

Answer 5

No.

I have always had the conclusion that God put the platypus there to make scientists wonder. I mean because it has the characteristics of all three. No trace of where it came from. I would have hoped by now that using this animal the scientists would have questioned evolution. To me the animal does not seem like a transitional species at all.

Answer 6

I don't understand why species have to 'boxed' into groups? Thats a man made thing. The animal was created, it exists as other creation does, doesn't seem like an embarrasement to me?

Answer 7

Just to play devil's advocate here: doesn't a "transitional species" still alive undermine the concreteness of evoltuion so many put stock in to disprove God?

Answer 8

God made a variety of creatures, including mammals that live in water and swim like fish, but that does not mean they will magically turn into something else.

Answer 9

I don't know why you get a "thumbs down" for that. I think the platypus just shows God's creativity.

Answer 10

I think that the Platypus is cute and funny. I'm a Christian and don't find it an embarassment at all. But I also believe in evolution so...