More About Koalas

A recent visitor commented anonymously on blog “Koalas on the Ark.” He took many exceptions to my arguments. Though he claims to be a creationist, his comments sound more like what I usually hear from atheists, evolutionists, and other critics. I started to write a reply but realized I had written enough to make a post so rather than reply in a comment, I thought I'd simply use his comments to make another post. It's actually longer than a typical post so I apologize in advance.  

The visitor's comments are in blue and are italicized.  He begins very abruptly.

HORRIBLY explained.

That's odd. Another commenter on the same article, “roylopez,” felt it was “well explained.” Of course, “horribly” is a somewhat subjective term and difficult to quantify. I'll put the “horribly” aside for now and see if any specific criticism has merit.

I stumbled onto your site while looking up pics of platypii.

People find my blog in all sorts of strange ways. I'm sure I don't have any pics of platypuses. But, hey, however the visitors get here, they're welcome.

By the way, there's some disagreement over the correct plural form of “platypus.” I lean toward “platypuses.” To me, it seems to follow the same form as “walruses.” No one would say, “walrusi.” Most words that use the “i” ending for their plural (like “alumni”) are Latin. “Platypus” is Greek.

I am open to lots of theories but this thing you've written has mistakes, dead ends, and huge leaps of logic to 'conclusions'.

Wow, how could I make so many mistakes in so few words? For some reason, I don't believe this poster is sincere when he says he's open to lots of theories. It sounds very much like he already has one interpretation of the fossil record and anything that doesn't comport with that is “wrong.” Let's look at a few of his criticisms.

You would lose miserably in an argument against an evolution scientist.

I guess we'll get to the criticisms in a moment.  Considering that I was a business major and am not a scientist, I don't think anyone would expect me to do well against a PhD biologist in a debate. However, I have engaged many scientists online for years (including those who comment on my blog) and I feel I've held my own. I appreciate his concern, though. If I ever have the opportunity to formally debate a biologist on evolution, I'll remember that I was warned!

I am a Creationist.

“Creationist” is a fairly broad term. I'm a young-earth creationist. From his comments, I suspect my visitor is not a YEC. I don't want to misrepresent him but if he's not a theistic evolutionist, I would guess he's a progressive creationist in the same vein as Hugh Ross.

But the Bible is not specific on everything.

Yet the Bible is specific on some things. We use the things we know to help us understand the things we don't know. We KNOW that all terrestrial mammals outside of the Ark died in the Flood. We KNOW the Ark landed in the middle east. Therefore, we must conclude that the ancestors of koalas were on the Ark, they landed in the middle east, and migrated to Australia after the Flood. There is no other possibility.

One point you make is that we don't know much about koala distribution before the flood. But we DO know where they Weren't hanging out. There are no fossils, no matter how old they might be, of any koalas anywhere but Australia.

Finally, a specific criticism!

First, this is an argument from silence. He's saying that since we've not found koala fossils outside of Australia that it's evidence there were never any koalas outside of Australia. There is an oft quoted phrase that says, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Besides that, I refer my readers to my article, “They Weren't Polar Bears Before They Got There.” We have found marsupial fossils on every continent. Koalas are a species (Phascolarctos cinereus) and speciation occurs when “kinds” become adapted to their environments. The “Phascolarctidae-kind” (if I may invent a term), to which the koala species belongs, was on the Ark. There were no koalas on the Ark. They weren't koalas until they reached Australia and became adapted to that environment.

Fossils, even if they were created 12,000 yrs ago, of all Australian mammals are found there.

Ditto my last comment. They weren't “Australian mammals” until they reached Australia. Panda bears, too, for example, weren't panda bears until they reached Asia. The bears that reached the Arctic became polar bears. Get it?

Where ever the surface of Australia was located before the flood, that's where they lived.

You have got to be kidding me! This visitor is saying virtually the same thing as the atheist-evolutionist I was quoting in my article. His straw man argument of the Bible was that Koalas swam from Australia carrying eucalyptus leaves, lived on the Ark during the Flood, then swam back to Australia.

Actually, the visitor is probably a subscriber to a “local flood” interpretation of Genesis. In that case, he is using the shifting views of science to interpret the clear, immutable words of Scripture.

Marsupial fossils are found on every continent... but Australian mammal fossils are only found in Australia. [ellipsis in original]

That's really funny, when you think about it. “Australian fossils are only found in Australia.” What a riot! And American Indians were only found in America. Asians were only found in Asia. Australian aborigines were only found in Australia. Please excuse the sarcasm but I thank my visitor for stating the obvious.

[quoting RKBentley] "In the case of koalas, they ended up in what is now Australia." What do you mean by 'ended up'? This implies that they were traveling, and then they stopped there. Huh? How? And along with all the Australian-specific animals?

I mean exactly what I said. The ancestors of koalas were on the Ark. They landed in the middle east. They began to spread out over the globe. Their descendants ended up in what is now Australia. And every other animal that ended up in Australia could now be considered “Australian-specific.”

Did you know that ALL native mammals in Australia are marsupials? That's pretty significant to the evolutionists.

Technically, no animal is native to anywhere. Wherever their ancestors lived before the Flood, all animals arrived at their “native” habitat after the Flood. Marsupial mammals simply arrived in Australia first. Since marsupials generally don't compete well with placental mammals, perhaps it's only because there were no placental mammals there that allowed the marsupials to prosper in Australia.

Panda bears are different since they live, and are from, a huge continent, which is known to have been connected in the past to other continents, fairly recently in geologic terms. Not the case for koalas or any other Australian land animals.

It's comments like “fairly recently in geological terms” that make me suspect my visitor is a progressive creationist. Hugh Ross generally subscribes to evolutionary time lines but believes they roughly correlate to the Biblical days of creation. Ross believes that God specifically created the koala species in Australia and they've been there since. The Flood did not reach them since it was a local event, limited to the middle east.

It is late and I'm tired, sorry if I am coming off as being crabby... but there are a half dozen more points that even a garage scientist would laugh at...
I'm not saying I have all the answers, but this is def full of holes. But you're right, koalas can eat other stuff but eat mostly eucalyptus, because they taste the best.

Well, at least it was nice of him to acknowledge that I was right in saying koalas can eat other things besides eucalyptus leaves. Look, I'm used to being laughed at by evolutionists so that doesn't bother me. Laughter and ridicule hardly rebuts any argument I've made anyway. And if we strip away all the “you're so wrong” comments and look at this visitor's actual criticisms, I don't see any rebuttals either.