The Discovery Institute is having its sixth annual conference in Dallas in seven days.
Stephen Meyer will be talking about ID generally.
Jay Richards about “Darwinism and gender ideology”.
Two YECs I know are getting sick of asking me to consider evidence for a young earth like soft tissue found with fossil bones.
I tell them peer review is basically a system I trust and people would consider young-earth ideas if anomalies related to the established old earth view piled up and forced a paradigm shift in the scientific community.
They keep saying I am relying on others for my views. Am I supposed to set up a research lab?
They want me to “consider the evidence”.
I told them after 30 years of thinking about it I put Darwinism into my belief system, which already contained belief in the Gospel miracles for example.
Their response was….”so you definitely won’t consider anything that contradicts or challenges Darwinism. We got it.”
Our relationship is at a point of maximum strain.
I don’t know if the ID conference is the wisest thing to go to, because one of these YECs will be helping.
But I am going with local Reasons to Believe people because Hugh Ross’s hospitality toward nonbelievers is something I strive to emulate, even though he is an antievolutionist.
“Hi friends. You are the one’s saying all sorts of live dinosaurs came off the ark, right?”
Sure did.
“Show me a live dinosaur with living soft tissue.”
Uh, blah blah conditions blah jungle in Africa blah blah
“OK, got it, consider the evidence considered. No contradiction or challenge to evolution noted.”
YEC has the strained exceptional claims. They say so themselves in rejecting observable processes being applied to historical data. They have the onus and burden of explanation.
Before you start making any claims about what soft tissue in dinosaur fossils proves, you must make sure that you get your facts straight about what soft tissue in dinosaur fossils consists of. Breakdown products of unstable biomolecules are not unstable biomolecules.
If the soft tissue really were less than six thousand years old, we would have sequenced the entire T-Rex genome by now. Why haven’t we?
These are the two points that young earthists MUST address to your satisfaction if they are to make any claims about soft tissue in dinosaur fossils. Until and unless they do so, their claims in that department are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Its interesting that a number of TEists clash with ID. Both are often old age theology.
In terms of your YEC friends…i have illustration that i hope will be of some use:
when i was about 11 my parents became Christians. My late grandfather was a devout evolutionist and atheist. I recall my mother trying to convince him of God and Christianity. Coincidently it was in the early 1980’s when the Lindy Chamberlin “Dingo took my baby” case hit the headlines.
My grandfather was convinced from day 1 that Lindy was guilty. I am quite certain it was because Lindy was a Christian and her husband a church pastor of a religious organisation that is considered by quite a number of other denominations to be a cult…so therefore, Lindy was guilty because she was in a cult!
For years my mum and grandfather were at odds over this and it placed great strain on our family life…but you know what…they got over it. They found common ground and managed to move past their differences.
No i know that blood is thicker than water might also apply here, particularly in the case of father and daughter, however, my presence on this forum is testament to the fact that whilst we have strong dissagreements, it can work. I try to always give credit to any of the forum posters on these forums when i find something they write that i agree with (even if its small and seemingly insignificant). I do that for two reasons:
it reminds me that these people are sharing their experiences, knowledge and passion with others and are blessed because of that (either Christian blessing or personal satisfaction of helping others.)
That they know i care about them and recognise their input as valuable
Your YEC friends may be just as stubborn in their belief as i am. That is ok, it doesnt mean they are evil or liars… they have a different conviction to yourself. I think we generally tend to follow our convictions, the real dilemma is knowing which convictions are lead by the Holy Spirit and which are not.
The summary point of everything i have written above…
IF yo are Christian, then your knowledge about the revelation of God can only come from a few places.
The bible
The still small voice in your ear (the whisperings of the Holy Spirit)
The heavens declare the glory of God
The difficulty is in knowing which of the three at any one time is being corrupted by Satan and confusing your belief system.
For me as a YEC, the only one of the above that cannot be corrupted is the Bible. That is because there are so many variants of the scriptures in so many languages over such a long period of time, that Satan has not been able to corrupt it.
Also, if the Bible is corrupted, then there is obviously no God and its just a fairytale useless toYEC, ID, TEist, and indeed Atheist as we all end up the same in the end anyway.
The other two revelation sources i believe are open to corruption because they rely on a deep understanding of scripture. If one does not understand the scriptures than its easy to get it wrong.
However, you know what, the bible tells us that we are judged according to our hearts. God knows your heart and in the end, as Christ said that is all that matters.
I think of a couple of really simple guildelines in the bible:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
In as much as you do it to the least of these My bretheren, you do it to Me.
Go to the event because you wish to learn more about Salvation and the glory of God and to engage with others…dont do it because everyone else there supports your doctrines.
perhaps that is something that Myers will address as to be honest, i do not think its an argument that is revelant given the usual claim against it was “it cant be, tissue doesnt last that long (ie 65 million years)”
No, Adam, the usual claim against it isn’t “it can’t be, tissue doesn’t last that long (ie 65 million years)”. The usual claim is, as I said, that before you can claim how long something can or can’t last, you must first get your facts straight about what it actually consists of. Young earthists may determine what something consists of on the basis of how long they think it can or can’t last, but real scientists do not. Real scientists determine what something consists of on the basis of measurements that are observable, testable and repeatable even by criteria of what it means for something to be “observable, testable and repeatable” that both young earthists and real scientists agree on.
As for Stephen Meyer, I know for a fact that he’s an OEC, not a YEC. I’m pretty sure he’s no more convinced by young earthists’ claims about soft tissue in dinosaur bones than either I or @jbabraham88 or @rsewell are.
The irony! Of course, just about all of us rely on others for the information we base our views on. There are a few who do primary research, but even they have to rely on other researchers for any conclusions outside of their area of experimentation and expertise. With educationand wisdom, we are better able to discern good from bad information both about biology and theology.
My response to that line of criticism would then be to compare the research and professional judgement , as well as the ethics and openness of those who make competing claims. Of course, you will be met with cries of how the system is unfair and biased, to which you can examine the truthfulness of that claim as well.
Well no-one should just consider “anything that contradicts or challenges Darwinism.” If you had to consider anything and everything that “contradicts or challenges Darwinism,” then you would have to consider that mermaids contradict and challenge Darwinism, because treknobabble.
No, if they want to contradict or challenge Darwinism, then their arguments need to be of satisfactory quality. This means, in particular, that (a) they need to come clean about exactly what they mean by “Darwinism,” and (b) they need to make sure that the things they are presenting really do contradict whatever they mean by “Darwinism” in the first place.
did you read my original post? i said ID were often old age! (Myer is ID). perhaps you didnt quite extrapolate that…although it was a pretty obvious thing to comprehend from what i wrote…its on the opneing line of my first post on this topic!
A caveat…
some of what i post below is very deep theology and id suggest that if you dont agree with the theology, you need to adquitely show from the bible where that theology is wrong otherwise your rebuttal is nothing more than “sea gull squawking over the food droppings at a family picnic”.
Ok, jammycakes…
in response to your next statement that isnt referenced…
In the most recent three decades, there has been an outpouring of research on the preservation of cells and soft tissues within fossil bones. Cells and soft tissues that are documented to have been preserved in fossil bones include osteocytes, chondrocytes, blood vessels, nerve fibers, nerves, and the sheets of collagen in bone matrix. Recent studies identify Fenton reactions as a plausible preservation mechanism for cells and soft tissues within bones, document the chemical signatures of Fenton reactions in the cells and soft tissues of fossil bones, and indicate that such preservation occurs early in diagenesis and is facilitated by oxidizing depositional environments and by protection via external concretions and other factors. Additionally, recent advances in the study of archaeological bone have identified a suite of factors that enable a bone and its cellular and soft tissue contents to survive into the fossil record Philip J. Senter
Article number: 25.3.a34
Copyright Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, December 2022
Now the evolutionists are scurrying around trying to create theories on how tissue in dinosaur bones may be preserved for 65 million years in a low oxygen environment as it shows in the latter part of the above paper. The fact is, if the original interpretation about fossils was true, the error shouldnt have come up in the first place.
“What she found instead was evidence of heme in the bones—additional support for the idea that they were red blood cells. Heme is a part of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood and gives red blood cells their color. “It got me real curious as to exceptional preservation,” she says. If particles of that one dinosaur were able to hang around for 65 million years, maybe the textbooks were wrong about fossilization.” Dinosaur Shocker | Science| Smithsonian Magazine
Now the real problem here is that dinosaurs were used by secularists as a means of proving the bible false. The fact that these bones had no evidence of anything that could indicate recent burial was used directly against the bible. Now that argument has been trashed, little ants are scampering around all over the place developing a new ant mound from which to attack the Bible Creation account.
Now whether you like it or not, the bible states very clearly in 2 Peter the following things:
Peter an apostle of Christ revieved direct revelation from God about the historicity of the flood and that Noah and his family were saved from a world wide deluge that killed everyone else
the dectruction of Sodom and Gomorah were real events and Lot was saved from that destruction
Satan and his angels really were cast out of heaven because they sinned.
4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,aplacing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;
IF satan and the rest of his angels sinned in heaven prior to the fall of Adam and Eve, then that means the law of Moses actually was only a reaffirmation of a law that has existed eternally in the past…it was the very law Satan and his angels transgressed in heaven!
We should not forget Lucifer was an angel of light…so he was an angel like the rest of them who were cast out.
The above statement from the Apostle Peter, given direct revelation by God as an eyewitness to Christs ministry on earth, means that the “new covenant” claims of Sunday worshipping churches is completely demolished. Now for Sunday worshipping churches, the problem gets even worse… they are now faced with the untennable position that God gave the Israelites a flawed covenant at Sinai that Lucifer+his angels, and Adam and Eve had already failed to uphold!
Therefore theologically, the covenant argument against keeping the 4th commandment is a dead horse!
That mean as Christians we must obey the 10 commandments in order to be saved (patience of the saints in Revelation 14:12…“here are those who keep the law”):
Exoidus 20
8Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. [9]11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them,"
The above creates enormous problems for TEism as in the apostle Peter making the claim he received divine revelation from God and Christ as an eyewitness, it completely destroys one of TEisms main theological arguments against a literal reading of Creation, the fall, the worldwide flood that destroyed all mankind, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah!
So when we return back to the fossil discussion again…TEism has no theological support for its doctrines of Old Age Earth. It must therefore rely enitrely on naturalism and uniformatarianism for its evidence. It then attempts to twist scripture, ignoring the above dilemmas in order to provide some sense of legitimacy to its world view.
So when i look at the naturalism arguments, it absolutely is relevant that i should pluck out examples where the secular scientific method is deeply flawed and indeed errant.
Lets not also forget, there are 78 human ancestory fossils that deny the claim the Homo erectus is part of the evolutionary timeline. What those 78 finds demonstrate is that, and in the particular case of the Cossack Skull, Homo Erectus existed only 6500 years ago and quite likely in Australia only a few hundred years ago!
All that we seem to hear from TEism is the word Pseudoscience. That is nothing more than a “political white paper implementation”…a use of new words to apparently show an improvement to an already existing system (such as in education). Every time there is a change of government, there is a white paper, new words popup and voila, we’ve improved the education system! Usages of the term Pseudoscience is apparently evidence that can be used to discredit any research…even very sound research!
Id suggest you explain the 78 homo erectus fossil issues before subscribing to that given the bible supports my claims and doesnt in any way support yours unless you twist scripture by intentionally avoiding any form of cross referencing to ensure appropriate doctrine!
Why are people as excited as they are about mineralized soft tissue in dinosaurs when preserved bivalve ligaments from the Carboniferous have been known about since before radiometric dating existed?
So? Homo erectus overlapping with Homo sapiens says nothing about Homo sapiens being descended from Homo erectus, other than that H. sapiens isn’t descended from the individuals of H. erectus overlapping in time. This type of claim is the logical equivalent of “I am alive, therefore, my uncle cannot be”, just over a much longer time scale.
Perhaps with some, but most researchers really could not care less what religion thinks. The real problem is actually that scientists have learned a great deal about dinosuars, including that they all lived prior to 65 mya when the chicxulub event deliver a final blow and rendered them immanently to be extinct. Adherents, and particularly youth in the church learn about this, and they are the ones asking uncomfortable questions. YEC exists to invent responses to reassure parishioners, not to engage with science.
Later research by Kaye et al.[11] published in PLoS ONE (30 July 2008) challenged the claims that the material found is the soft tissue of TyrannosaurusMary Higby Schweitzer - Wikipedia
There was push back from several paleontologists to Mary Schweitzer’s paper. It took time, but it appears that her work has become accepted.
What was supposed to happen? That she publish remarkable results, and every researcher just swoon and immediately and uncritically accept it as gospel?
Consensus in science doesn’t happen because scientists are in some big secular group hug that loves and affirms each other. Results, especially if in some way exceptional, are always subject to challenge - the methods, the controls, the conclusions which may be deducted, are all subject to scrutiny. This secondary peer review is ultimately the deciding arena for scientific ideas.
Which is why the YEC dismissal of consensus as just some majority opinion is so out of touch with reality. Consensus is hard won, and not offered up readily. If an objection can be raised, it generally will be. Science is as much about savaging falsehood as it is about promoting truth about nature.
The consensus that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago is supported essentially universally by researchers in every applicable discipline such as academic and resource geologists, paleontologists, geochronologists, physicists, and biologists, because there is a vast consilience of evidence that yields a coherent history from hundreds of lines of investigation.
now we are finding some common ground and a lot of what you say i agree with.
The thing is, the picture that you portray here works both ways. You are simply siding on that of the majority concensus even if that concensus is proven to be wrong.
When it is proven wrong, you claim…“thats not an issue, we are learning” even when that proof takes you over into the YEC camp complaint as it was from the outset!
YEC say, the age of the dinosaurs cant be 65million years. Mary accidently finds evidence that sheds light on that statement and supports the YEC model. Secularists then attempt to find a workaround…again. This has happened on numerous occasions, its not just this one scenario (example homo erectus)
Lets also not forget, Mary stumbled across the discovery she made completely by accident. She wasnt looking for this specifically. If she hadnt tried to solve an unrelated problem by disolving the bone in acid, this discovery might never have even been found. If the discovery had not been found…how many more decades would it have been before someone proved that the argument, dinosaur fossils must be millions of years old beause there is no tissue in them, was false?
In the last few decades, the above has increasingly happened time and time again. We find it with human ancestory, age of the dinosaurs, geology, microwave background radiation…these kinds of discoveries are poccuring in most areas of science and they do not support the naturalism world view. In every scenario i can think of where this has happened, the discovery has discredited the majority view and a workaround has been developed to whitewash the problem.
So, where ever one aligns in the above, for me its all about 2 things…
Im Christian and my religion comes from the bible. I do not make stuff up…its all there right in the text and the writers of scripture have already done the interpreting for us (despite some here claiming that we cannot know the interpretation…they have no biblical support for such claims)
With regard to secular scientific interpretations…these are the minds of sinful men. Easily corrupted and easily enticed into making up alternatives to Gods revelation (as Satan did to Eve in the garden of Eden). There is enough reasonable doubt to suggest that YEC is the surer pathway for me.
One thing i will add in finishing up this post…for years ive heard people say “the bible isnt a history book”. Well the problem with that statement is this, how does one explain multiple writers across hundreds of years who did not know each other or have access to the local library to read a peers works, end up with identical historical narratives? It cant be because they plagerised…thats simply not a satisfactory answer for that time period.
Bible writers were consistent with other bible writers because they were lead by an allknowing God who revealed it too each of them. Now despite what some here claim, words are not a limitation of divine revelation…God regularly revealed using visions…imagery is not difficult to accurately describe even if one doesnt understand its meaning (eg Nebuchaddnezzars dream of the statue in Daniel Chapter 2). The king recognised the imagery Daniel reminded him of immediately…whilst he did not understand the full implications of his dream, it deeply troubled the king. Clearly he was worried it meant something significant. Im sure he would have been very concerned when the statue was demolished by a massive stone coming down from the heavens. That would have had any king deeply concerned…enough to summon all of his astrologers and wise men
We can trust that the historical record in the bible is indeed accurate because of its internal consistency and quite extensive external evidence we are finding regularly as time passes.
one significant method for knowing that Darwinian interpretation is heresy and false is exactly because the majority view (as you put it) says “there is no room for God in science”! (dont believe that, read Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkings, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Nye…)
And did you read mine? I said that the fact that he’s old earth means he won’t buy into young earthists’ arguments about soft tissue. “Dinosaur soft tissue means that the earth is young” is a young earth argument, not an ID argument.
The point here, Adam, is that none of these are unstable biomolecules that shouldn’t last millions of years. Not all organic compounds decay to nothing in only a few thousand years. That’s a misconception that preys on people’s misunderstanding of what the word “organic” actually means. It doesn’t mean “unstable and biological”; it means “carbon based.” Nothing more, nothing less. Some organic compounds can last for a very long time. Such as oil or plastics, for example.
And just because something old has the superficial form of osteocytes, chondrocytes, blood vessels, nerve fibres, nerves or sheets of collagen, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is original osteocytes, chondrocytes, blood vessels, nerve fibres, nerves or sheets of collagen. Rather, it’s cases where the originals have been chemically altered to stabilise them. Collagen, for example, gets cross-linked by iron to form much larger, more stable molecules. It’s exactly the same principle as what plastics are made of.
Unstable biomolecules that shouldn’t last millions of years would be things such as sequenceable DNA or original haemoglobin. These have never been found in fossils more than a couple of million years old or so. This is my central point: DNA breakdown products are not sequenceable DNA, and heme breakdown products are not original haemoglobin.
And no, there’s nothing “evolutionist” about this whatsoever. It’s simply basic high school level organic chemistry.
I would venture that that statement only comes from YEC literature, as the presence or absence of tissue is not a criteria used to age fossils in the rest of the world. Aging is usually done by geologic means, except for perhaps young fossils that have organic material sufficient to allow C14 dating, mammoths and such. The tissue remnants found in dinosaur fossils are too minute to allow that, even if they were appropriate for such testing, and barely enough to identify as being present.
You are correct that science and particularly scientific hypothesizes are often wrong. That is pretty much how science advances, by proving previous ideas are wrong. Thus, Pasteur showed soup does not grow bacteria from abiotic material, but from airborne contamination and maggots do not grow from rotten meat, but from flies laying eggs. Proving stuff wrong is a feature, not a bug. In science as in God’s word, humility is a virtue, though we are well aware that we are often not virtuous!
“Old earth” isn’t theology, it’s just an assertion about natural history and measurement.
ECs and ID people tend to have theological differences around divine action and natural theology, and stark differences of opinion on the topic of Christian apologetics.
But mostly what is at issue is not theological truth claims, it’s claims around what belongs in the domain of science, what counts as science, and what the scientific method entails. Also what claims certain empirical evidence supports or does not support. Science is the main place you find tension points, not theology.
