Very well said. Thanks!! And I do especially agree with your “lab notes” analogy. There is likely MORE to creation than we have yet discerned. So even if God had given Moses scroll after scroll (tablet after tablet??) on plate tectonics, the development of black holes, nuclear fission, and so on — there would have been other data that we have still not uncovered—and we would be debating it instead of what we are debating.
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I watched Princess Bride.
That’s a very good point. We think it’s cute how little kids will keep asking “How?” or “Why?” but we never really lose that inclination; no matter how much we know we often don’t consider it enough – it’s just that our question repertoire changes somewhat to include things like “But what about this?”
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I’ve officiated at two weddings: a nephew’s and a niece’s. I haven’t had the nerve to use any of the lines from The Princess Bride, … but I ain’t dead yet, so who knows? I may be able to before I die.
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I never officiated, though I’ve been the backup a few times, on call in case the officiant somehow couldn’t make it.
They were all before I saw Princess Bride, so I didn’t have the temptation. Interestingly, though, I first saw the movie starting with the scene with the priest just saying, “Meh-widge” and I wondered what the heck someone had picked for a movie.
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Priceless. 
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You took this a step farther than I did - brava!
You’re welcome…it is hardly likely that we have “arrived” and know all things. So it makes sense to think that unknown data or peculiar mathematics (things not yet formulated by us) would lead to controversies and arguments of some other kind.
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The Bible supports an Old Earth and Evolution. Anecdotal data to the contrary must be rigorously examined and independently verified.
Some of the stuff in amber is actually remnants of bacteria involved in the decay (as is true of some other traces of soft tissue). I don’t know how much chemical analysis of amber-preserved material has been done, and what is basically a hole in amber preserving the form versus actual tissue bits. Insects have a quite tough exoskeleton that will hold up when the softer parts are gone. Contrary to Jurassic Park, by sealing in water amber is a bad place for DNA.
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Note that the Microscopy Today article does not actually make any young-earth claims. That’s the spin that Armitage and others have put on it in marketing to young-earthers, but the article itself simply describes the features. It doesn’t give evidence to prove that the material really is dinosaur rather than much younger material. Armitage has solid qualifications in running a microscope, but not in paleontology.
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Despite the attemps to downgrade the importance, for me, the finding of soft tissue in dinosaur bones is a nice topic that disturbes the opinion that these bones are tenths of millions years old. However, even more strange is de finding of living bacteria in mile thick salt rock layers of hundreds of millions years old. These bacteria deserve absolutely a place in the Guinness book of records.
I agree that it is an exciting topic, and no doubt has the potential to give us a much fuller idea of what dinosaurs were, but would stop short of thinking that it tells us anything about the age of dinosaurs, which relies on much different data unrelated to the preservation of organic molecules. I more likely just tells us that our knowledge of the breakdown of organic material over deep time is lacking.
The bacteria in salt deposits is fascinating also, with bacteria evidently able to live in such a harsh and hostile environment, evidently originating when the salt was deposited by a dried up sea, then adapting to that environment as it was covered in sediment and buried deep within the earth. i suppose an alternative would be the colonization at a later date due to groundwater intrusion, but either way is pretty awesome.
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The bacteria are well adapted to salt (Halobacteria). However, rock salt is very impenetrable. For bacteria and for nutrients. They are thinking about storage of nuclear wast in salt domes. After bacteria were deposited, both pressure and temperature couldn’t have been extremely high.
It can be really confusing. They know so much–and there’s so much to know. However, they are in different areas.
In medicine, I think it’s a bit like asking a pathologist to remove an appendix, the domain of a surgeon. Without a knowledge of anatomy, harvesting, cutting, and preservation, he could wind up with a poor quality liver or bone biopsy by accident.
One can argue it’s a bit like asking me, as a family doc, to make observations outside of my specialty, too. It’s really humbling! I wish I knew more–ophthalmology, dentistry, podiatry–just about everything!
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- If the topic of this thread’s OP has been addressed and is done with, I think it’s time to bury the “dead horse”, because beating it some more ain’t likely to get it move on its own power.
- Unless somebody wants to make an administrative decision that designates this thread as some sort of YEC argument garbage dump.
- Adding “living bacteria in mile thick salt rock layers of hundreds of millions years old” may prolong the agony of YEC-TE debate, but it’ll never close the “chasm” between them.
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May be, you are right and this is not the right place. For me as microbiologist, this topic is close by. But for others its boring.
I’m thinking it is the repetitive nature of @adamjedgar’s ignorance of (as in ignoring) good science and his refusal to deal with it. I do wish he would listen to the podcast and read the transcript of A Wrinkle Occurred about the nature of science and Christians participating in it so he would not be so clueless about how it really works, and works well.
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Rock salt is highly penetrable by objects that start out on its surface. Besides flowing relatively easily for a rock, it can also easily dissolve and be redeposited. So bits of something found in a salt deposit can easily be far younger than the salt deposit. Of course, proving that bacteria are not contamination is very difficult, also. I would not be at all surprised at bacteria being able to eat their way into salt, which could easily redissolve and precipitate or squish and close the holes again.
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