Aloysium:
To say that we are evolved from apes, that we are a form of hominid is to step into what is beyond the physical.
Is that the case if speaking of birds and dinosaurs?
I don’t know. Birds are very interesting, and dinosaurs may have been a 2.0 version to the birds’ 3.0.
The dinosaurs that existed in the past are no more. The category “dinosaur” represents individual organisms with similar characteristics that existed as part of their environment. They were conceived as eggs, developed, hatched, grew and did what dinosaurs do, and died, leaving behind remnants of what is no more. A bird today can be described in a similar manner.
It is paradoxical that in either case, of what originally constituted the life form at its beginnings as a single egg, probably nothing is left. The creature’s physical form, constructed of atoms and molecules has been given to it from what was other to it and incorporated into itself. An evolutionary theory founded on the laws of chemistry simplistically imagines what is essentially an infinitely complex flux of inter-related electrochemical events. There is no organism and no species. They are illusions from the perspective that sees reality as simply these basic atomic and molecular forms of being.
But, they are the building blocks, which brought together express the complexity of the unified being, which is the creature itself. If organisms and species are to be considered illusions, a bigger problem arises - to explain illusion.
There are different possibilities. A naturalist approach sees all life as one, giving itself over to itself, in its various individual forms, thereby bringing about all the diversity. Two creatures may mate and the offspring arise with different instinctual and/or physical characteristics, reflecting what nature does (as an expression of God’s infinite creativity). The true substance, the reality that is moulded into different forms, different individual organisms would remain the same.
There is a difference between plants and animals. I believe that this resulted from a new creation, utilizing the information inherent in botanical life, to bring about a new type of existence which not only grows and reproduces, but perceives, feels and acts, through the instincts, which are actually more true to its nature than the physical form.
We are very different, as eternal beings possessing a free will and designed to love.