Christian answering questions.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

What is a former Biologist?  Are you no longer in the field of study?  I would have a question or two that could possibly be in your wheelhouse.  I myself am not a scientist, nor do I have an abundance of letters after my name in my signature block.  I do believe myself to be intelligent and I honestly do hope to be different from most other professing Christians or theists that have passed through this forum.

I am no longer one because I was working as a field biologist for the state government, when I was incarcerated for nearly a decade for something I didn't do. It would have been longer than a decade, but I won my appeal to show the judge had been biased and that I couldn't have been convicted if I had been allowed to admit evidence that showed I was not guilty. So I was let out with a "so sorry" and what amounted to a shove.

After that long away from the field, I decided I didn't want to go back and take the amount of school and reading it would take to catch up on a decade of research/knowledge, so I decided to turn my hobby of custom motorcycle design and building into a career-- thus my handle. "Rocket Surgeon"... I work on fast motorcycles, now. But I still enjoy talking about science.

As to the discussion of a young earth or the age of the universe I would not think that my opinion on the matter to be a major sticking point within my understanding of Christianity.

Well, for some who are emotionally tied to the idea that EVERY word of the Bible must be literal, they have a lot of trouble looking at the story as an origins myth, or a metaphoric tale, rather than as dictation straight from God to a secretary. There are numerous Christians who are top-level astrophysicists, evolutionary biologists (I frequently point to Dr. Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project), and biochemists, all of whom would tell you why the sciences do say what we claim they say... yet they don't find those facts challenges to their faith. Collins wrote an entire book about it, called The Language of God. More than half of biologists, from studies I've read, report that they are Christians, and they do not find a need to embrace a literal reading of Genesis as their basis for understanding Creation.

I would phrase it, "If your beliefs do not conform to reality, it is not reality that needs to change."

TheRocketSurgeon, thank you for your response and explanation of the forum.  I am  not here to offend anyone.  I am a shy person and thought this medium would give me an opportunity to converse with others and fulfill a need in my life.  

My question for someone with your background would be your thoughts on the fossil record as it relates to evolution.  It is my understanding that the fossil record does not support evolution in the sense that there are few, if any, fossils of transitional species.  Examples of fish evolving into land animals and such.  That the record shows several periods of many  new species emerging, but nothing that would show evolving from one species to another.

There are those (primarily people at the Creation Research Institute, Answers In Genesis, etc.) who make that claim, but it's really a silly one. As has already been pointed out to you, it is rare to find fossils in large part because conditions in which fossils form are very specific, and even then it's mostly the hard parts that get preserved. However, we have used new technologies to look more closely at some, and have found evidence of feathers on Velociraptor-type dinosaurs called theropods (on the way from a branch of the theropods becoming birds) that even allowed us to see what some of the colors were. As for your example of "examples of fish evolving into land animals and such", I'd reference you to 2002 discovery Pederpes finneyae, which was a specific "missing link" they were looking for in the fossil record of the time period between 360 and 345 million years ago... a gap in the record previously known as "Romer's Gap" (see footnote). I won't even direct you anywhere; I'll leave you to Google it yourself, and see how and why it shows what it does, so you know I'm not trying to mislead you by pointing you to biased articles, etc.

If you have any other or more-specific questions, or would like more info about the above (or clarification on what you looked up but couldn't quite understand... I don't expect people to "get" science-writing terminology overnight!), please let me know.

Footnote: Romer's gap ran from approximately 360 to 345 million years ago, corresponding to the first 15 million years of the Carboniferous, the early Mississippian (Tournaisian). The gap forms a discontinuity between the primitive forests and high diversity of fishes in the end Devonian and more modern aquatic and terrestrial assemblages of the early Carboniferous. (Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romer%27s_gap)