My brethren, the reason why you have not got contentment in the things of the world is not because you have not got enough of them. That is not the reason. But the reason is because they are not things proportionable to that immortal soul of yours that is capable of God Himself. Many men think that when they are troubled and have not got contentment, it is because they have but a little in the world, and if they had more then they would be content. That is just as if a man were hungry, and to satisfy his craving stomach he should gape and hold open his mouth to take in the wind, and then should think that the reason why he is not satisfied is because he has not got enough of the wind. No, the reason is because the thing is not suitable to a craving stomach.
Jeremiah Burroughs

Archaeopteryx Quotes Part 3

Archaeopteryx Quotes Part 3

Archaeopteryx part 3

Other quotes from people concerning the Archaeotperyx:

“Evolution and Christian Faith” by Dr. Bolton Davidheiser Ph.D. Zoology Johns Hopkins Univeristy. (Altho this book has an original copyright of 1969 it is presently in its eleventh printing and is copyrighted 1986).

The derivation of birds from reptiles seems to be one of the most thoroughly accepted sequences in evolution. Thomas Henry Huxley called birds glorified reptiles, and this witicism is still frequently encountered when the evolution of birds is discussed. It is commonly stated that if the remains of Archaeopteryx ,”the earliest known bird”, had been found without feathers, it would have been reconstructed as a bipedal reptile…

…Among living creatures birds, and only birds, have feathers. Thus a feather defines a bird. This definition is extrapolated backward into the past, and Archaeopteryx is called a bird. Altho’ a great many othe anatomical characteristics, including such things as eyes, hooves, and excretory tubes, are believed to evolve separately in different evolutionary lines, it seems that very few evolutionists have even considered the possibility of feathers having evolved more than once. The possibility of feathers having been created is not considered at all, and they are usually said to have evolved from the scales of reptiles.

Archaeopteryx had fully developed wings. Nothing has ever been found evolving from a reptile with partially developed wings. Since the Archaeopteryx has some reptilian characteristics and some avian characteristics it is considered to be a link between the reptiles and birds.

But this does not necessarily mean that it does connect the reptiles with the birds. As previously mentioned, a fossil named Seymouria has some amphibian-like and some reptile-like characteristics. It seems to make a good connection between the amphibians and reptiles, but G.F. Kerkut points out that it cannot be a connecting link because it lived at the wrong time. If a “suitable” fossil cannot be a connecting link because it lived at the wrong time, it is obvious that a “suitable” fossil is not necessarily a connecting link if it happens to live at the “right” time…

…Except for the frequently repeated statement that birds evolved from reptiles, the evolution of birds is by no means clear in the minds of evolutionists. J. Arthur Thomson of the University of Aberdeen said, “Our frankness in admitting difficulties and relative ignorance in regard to the variations and selections that led from certain dinosaurs to birds cannot be used by any fairminded inquirer as an argument against the idea of evolution. For hoe else could birds have arisen?”

W.E. Swinton of the British Museum says, “With some imagination we can link the Archaeopteryx with the forms that came later, but it requires much speculation to see the origin of even the power of flight this first known bird displays…None the less, nearly a century after the publication of that monumental work [Darwin’s Origin of the Species], there are still monumental problems that remain to be settled about the succession of life. This is especially true of the birds.”

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Concerning the use of purely skeletal remains to show evolutionary relationships:

Evolution: A Theory in Crisis Dr. Michael Denton:

pp177-178 To demonstrate that the great divisions of nature were really bridged by transitional forms in the past, it is not sufficient find in the fossil record one or two types of organisms of doubtful affinity which might be placed on skeletal grounds in a relatively intermediate position between other groups. The systematic status and biological affinity of a fossil organism is far more difficult to establish than in the case of the living form, and can never be established with any degree of certainty.

To begin with, ninety per cent of the biology of and organism resides in its soft anatomy, which is inaccessible in a fossil. Supposing, for example, all the marsupials were extinct and the whole group was known only by skeletal remains- would anyone guess that their reproductive biology was so utterly different from that of placental mammals and in some wayseven more complex?

Modern birds differ greatly from reptiles in many physiological and anatonomical characteristics, particularly, for example, in their central nervous, cardiovascular and respiratory systems… but, because information about the soft biology of a fossil form is difficult to obtain from its skeletal remains, to what extent Archaeopteryx was avian in its major organ systems will always be largely a matter of conjecture.

One aspect of an organism’s soft biology which can be sometimes studied in a fossil is the gross morphology of the brain. This can be done by preparing a cranial endocast of the intracranial cavity in the skull which reveals the gross shape and outline of the brain. On the evidence available from study of the cranial endocast of Archaeopteryx , it would seem that its brain was essentially avian in all important repects, exhibiting typical avian cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum (the part of the brain involved in balance and the coordination of fine motor activities), a part of the brain proportionally larger in birds than in any other class of vertebrates and generally considered to be an adaptation necessary for the control of the highly complex motor activities involved in powered flight. The possession of an essentially avian central nervous system lends furthur support to the idea based on the basically modern form of its flight feathers and wing, that Archaeopteryx was as capable of powered flight as a typical modern bird.

If Archaeopteryx was indeed capable of powered flight, might it not also have possessed, of necessity, a fully avian heart, circulatory and respiratory system to supply the vastly increased demand for oxygen that occurs during powered flight? In other words, might it not have been as avian as any other bird in all important anatomical and physiological characteristics?

Then there is the problem of convergence. Nature abounds in examples of convergence: the similarity in the overall shape of whales, ichthyosaurs and fishes; the similarity in the bone structure of the flippers of the whale and an icthyosaur; the similarity of the forelimbs of a mole and those of the insect, the molecricket; the great similarity in the design of the eye in vertebrates and cephalopods and the profound parallelism between the cochlea in birds and mammals. In all the above cases the similarities, although very striking, DO NOT IMPLY CLOSE BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP.[authors emphasis, not mine- G.F.] pp 194-5.

It is possible to allude to a number of species and groups such as Archaeopteryx, or the rhipidistian fish, which appear to some extent intermediate. But even if such were intermediate to some degree, there is no evidence that they are any more intermediate than groups such as the living lungfish or monotremes which, as we have seen, are not only tremendously isolated from their nearest cousins, but which have individual organ systems that are not strictly transitional at all. As evidence for the existence of natural links between the great divisions of nature, they are only convincing to someone already convinced of the reality of organic evolution.