Quick Quotes: Understanding how GOD engineered major evolutionary advances

One of the purposes of this blog is to help Christians appreciate scientific discovery washed of it's metaphysical naturalism bias and also see where the discoveries fit in a Creationist perspective on Genesis 1.

The article on sciencedaily.com Early animals: Death near the shoreline, not life on land includes reference to a few supporting facts for the Ages of Joy creation model, as well as a quote worth looking at.

The article's author, not the scientists themselves, sums up the article with this quote:

Understanding how life engineered major evolutionary advances within environments, and the rate and impact of these advances on the functioning of the Earth system, provides vital context for understanding global change at the present day, and underlines the inseparable relationship between life and the planet.

The AOJ perspective is that "life" cannot "engineer".  Life is an abstract phenomena.  It can't "plan, design, operate", aka engineer, on it's own, per se.

 The quote would better stand as:

Understanding how life GOD engineered major evolutionary advances within environments, and the rate and impact of these advances on the functioning of the Earth system, provides vital context for understanding global change at the present day, and underlines the inseparable relationship between life and the planet.

This quote would then reflect the Theistic Engineering philosophy behind the Ages of Joy creation model.

We can use this quote to differentiate three views:

• Metaphysical Naturalism:  "life engineered major evolutionary advances"
• Theistic Evolution: "God used major evolutionary advances"
• Theistic Engineering: "God engineered major evolutionary advances" 

Reflect on these differences and please post your thoughts below.

The conclusion of the research finds the following:

Shillito notes, "It reveals how even surprising events can be preserved in the ancient rock record, but -- by removing the 'earliest' outlier of evidence -- suggests that the invasion of the continents happened globally at the same time."

This is consistent with the descriptions in Genesis 1 of God working powerfully to engineer life and bless it to flourish.  The "simultaneous explosion of complexity" is something AOJ attributes to God's engineering prowess.

Facts uncovered in the article include:

• first animals on land emerged globally during the latest Silurian.

The Silurian is part of the mid-Paleozoic which AOJ places in the first part of Day 3 at about the same time that the first vegetation appeared, such as the bryophytes.  These first land animals were created by God when He first separated the land from the seas, but, unlike the plants created on Day 3, they would later go extinct to be replaced by the fauna created on Day 5 and Day 6.