I understand the appeal of not causing theological dilemmas, but I don’t know how to get there without simply hand-waving away mountains of evidence, which destroys our credibility and integrity. Even theology itself is full of “dilemmas” and mysteries as well as seemingly contradictory ideas that we have to wrestle with and hold in tension. I don’t think we need to be afraid of where scientific evidence leads. God was under no obligation to inspire an ancient text in a way that fits in with modern, post-enlightenment, Western, 21st century science.
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sorry but your theology on this is absolutely wrong. Biblical theology 100% supports a global flood and so does much of the more recent research conducted by Kirt Wise, Andrew Snelling, Dell Hacket and many others who study in this area. Yes these guys are all creation scientists…of course they are, however, one cannot possibly use that as a means of discounting their research which clearly shows a very valid interpretation of the evidence that supports a global flood.
Illustrations I can think of off the top of my head that pose a problem for a biblical version of a localised flood:
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Sedimentary flows across North America that cover huge distances clearly not localised or even regional flooding
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Similar rock layering in different continents around the world that must have been deposited at the same time in history…also containing animal fossils of similar types (so they died at/or near the same time)
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A recent news story in Australia where studies have shown that the entire state of Victoria experienced a huge wave that washed across the Australian continent depositing sediment and marine creatures vast distances inland from the edge of the continent.
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Coal and oil deposits spread around the globe…evidence of fossil fuels that were once living things (plants and animals)…life that was buried on a huge scale.
On the balance of probabilities, the best explanation seems to match the Bible statement in Genesis Chapter 6,7&8 (a world wide flood that covered the entire earth for 150 days and killed all living things on the land that were not in the ark). I do not think the evidence outside of the Bible supports any theology that believes in a local flood! Add that to the fact the Bible very clearly states in Genesis 7
4 For seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living thing I have made.”
now before you latch onto the “I will wipe every living thing from the face of the earth” read verse 8. The writer clearly describes in verse 8 that God is talking about land animals…he clearly can perform a miracle to save sea creatures so I have no problem with them not being in the ark.
“God’s word must come first and the science interpretation must fit the bible WITHOUT CAUSING THEOLOGICAL DILEMMAS!” That is exactly the reason why we must reject creation science. It directly contradicts the myriad admonitions throughout the Bible to be truthful, in order to pretend that science supports its modernistic interpretation of selected bits of Genesis.
For example, the articles that you cite from ICR are dishonest. Whether or not the authors actually know that their claims are untrue, they have not bothered to check whether they are are accurately representing old-earth geology, evolution, or the evidence. Yet they claim to be providing trustworthy information, thus implying that they have done the research. For example, "I interviewed a scientist at the Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley who discussed a parrot fossil they had found in Cretaceous layers (‘dinosaur rock’). But the parrot fossil was not on display in the museum.” First of all, it is slander, accusing the museum of a coverup. Second of all, it reflects a Lamarckian misunderstanding of evolution as a continual progression. Some modern organisms have not changed much over long periods of time. If your body plan works, evolution will select against change unless the ecosystem changes to the point that the body plan doesn’t work so well. Thirdly, they didn’t investigate further, merely seizing on the news story. The reality is that the fossil in question is a single tiny bone, not particularly suitable for an exhibit aimed at appealing to the general public. Also, the reality is that the identification of the specimen as a parrot (and actually a specific group within parrots) is almost certainly wrong. The original (non-young earth but rather short) publication claimed that the fossil had distinctive features, but no evidence has ever been published to support the assertion that the bone features are actually unique to that group of parrots. Instead, the consensus (among the few people who actually study such stuff) is that the bone in question came from a small dinosaur. Although primitive forms of some modern major groups of birds slightly overlap with the last dinosaurs, many claimed specimens of dino-age modern birds turned out to actually be from something quite different, such as enantornithines. It is the young-earthers who are misleading the public, intentionally omitting evidence.
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I’m surprised by that argument…i seem to recall how the apparent missing link between humans and apes was concocted from bones fragments that in fact have now been conclusively shown by creation scientists to have been a manufactured myth. The scientist who apparently pieced together the specimen clearly machined bones from apes to fit the human parts of the skeleton…after doing this then on display went a manufactured fabrication claiming to be the missing link.
was not this specimen ( Australopithecus afarensis) called Lucy?
Here is the problem that Christians cannot get around…one cannot say with any authority “I was there” scientists were there" millions of years ago. The methods we use to date specimens is deeply flawed because the time frames are dramatically altered by environmental factors and even beyond that, humanism is attempting to make a huge claim that the level of the parent element from which the isotope is derived after decay is the same as what is found naturally today. Considering the catastrophic nature of the flood (huge volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate movements), which humanism denies because God is not allowed into their hypothesis about such an event, how is it possible to make such a claim?
You cannot make the claim…“oh but its such a tiny sample”. I can throw that straight back at you with the Big Bang. A mathematician attempted to write an equation that claims that if the energy and matter and that started the Big Bang was so tiny, and appeared for such a tiny period of time…essentially it never existed, then the lack of explanation for where the energy and matter came from that is the Big Bang is not a problem for the fundamental theory of all science (that energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed)
UPDATE
might I also add at this point an important theological dilemma one faces with a solution proposed by Answers in Genesis that I disagree with,
It is their claim that the fossil fuel deposits may have been already in existence…ie that God created them. Presently my gut instinct is that I cannot support such a view because it goes down the pathway of the “mature earth” solution. If one accepts a mature earth, then one immediately must take upon the theological doctrine of predestination. I disagree with such a doctrine because God did not create robots. He knows the future yes, but I do not believe he intentionally predetermined that all mankind must sin in order to fulfill some sense of omnipotent all knowing gloating!
Our creator did not create this earth to fail. That I do not believe is biblically supported…God very clearly created a perfect earth and inhabitants and he allowed us to choose whether or not we would sin. He did not refuse Satan access to this world in order to try to elevated his (satans) own attempts at gaining power in heaven. God has allowed this to play out to show that indeed Satan really is evil. The plan of salvation is aimed at two things:
- to restore us, His creation back to Himself and its former glory
- to show that God is just and the charge Lucifer made against Him in heaven is unfounded.
Actually this leads me to a new question that I will post on a new thread…its hopefully interesting to others.
Ignorance is louder than knowledge, than truth, than soundness, than rationality. It takes no effort at all.
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Fascinating that the article is about a microraptor, which was a small flightless dinosaur with feathers. One link in a chain of evolution from dinosaurs to birds. I’d also note that “a team of researchers” worked on the paper. You can find it here, by the way. It’s open access:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2022.2144337
The rising flood waters? A global flood isn’t responsible for fossils or sediment deposition. How many of the following fossils from various eras were made by flood?
Source: Gbob, our late friend Glenn Morton.
Humans are the apex predator. How many human fossils have been found with their last meals preserved? I’ll come back to the rest in a separate post.
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Not just humanists. The Bible does not teach that huge volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate movements were associated with the flood either.
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OK Adam, let’s assume that this assertion (for which you haven’t cited any sources whatsoever) is true and accurate, and that one scientist did indeed “clearly machine bones from apes to fit the human parts of the skeleton”—a claim that is basically an accusation of scientific fraud. Would that reduce the entirety of the theory of evolution to rubble and justify claims that the earth is six thousand years old?
It wouldn’t come anywhere close.
Here’s why. The evolutionary history of life on earth, and the multi-million-year ages of the individual rock strata, are established on the basis of hundreds of thousands if not millions of different scientific studies over the past two hundred years. The history that these studies testify to is extensive, complex, detailed, coherent and mathematically precise.
If you want to falsify something on that scale, a couple of isolated examples of casual scientific fraud aren’t going to cut it. You would need to provide evidence for a global, systematic, deeply entrenched conspiracy encompassing tens of thousands of scientists over a period of nearly two centuries, fabricating data on an industrial scale in a tightly coordinated manner at a cost of billions if not trillions of dollars.
And then on top of that, you would need to explain why there hasn’t been a single whistleblower anywhere in all that time exposing it, despite the fact that it would have to include everyone from undergraduates and postgraduates right through to retirees, people no longer working in the field who had moved onto different careers, people who had moved on from the field with some kind of chip on their shoulders, researchers in Islamic countries where the prevailing religious and cultural environment would incentivise blowing the whistle on something like that, and people in the oil industry who needed to get information on the history of the rocks they are drilling into that is accurate rather than just ideologically convenient.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: conspiracies on that scale simply do not happen. Period. End of story.
And here is the problem that young earthists cannot get around…one doesn’t need to be able to say with any authority “I was there, scientists were there” millions of years ago. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the “were you there?” argument is a lie. There are ways that you can figure out what happened in the past without having been there to see it happen. There are ways to test historical assumptions without watching them from end to end. There are ways to distinguish between which interpretations are valid and which ones are not. This has been explained to you over and over and over and over again.
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From your quoted ICR - More Proof That Dinosaurs Lived with ‘Later’ Creatures
According to evolution, dinosaurs lived during an age when birds and non-reptile land creatures were either present in just a few “primitive” forms or not at all.
YEC scientist Brian Thomas is either incompetent or dishonest. According to the evidence, both birds and non-reptile creatures were plentiful in the cretaceous. This is common knowledge and consistent with the evolutionary history of life over geological time.
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You need to start tacking on a few more miracles that weren’t recorded.
If the flood was marine, how did the fresh water plant/animal life survive?
How did the marine life that only survives in tidal pools / shallow water make it through a global flood of great depth?
How did the life in the soil, earthworms, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi, survive? Which, BTW, is needed if you want to grown plants.
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I made the mistake of reading your ICR article. I’m not linking it to spare others the trouble and deny them the traffic. To quote:
“Dinosaur rock layers contain all kinds of creatures from all kinds of habitats, including those of both land and sea. Evolution can provide no explanation for this circumstance. It is completely to be expected, however, if these creatures were created all together and then deposited in catastrophic mudflows powered by the year-long, world-destroying Flood and its residual effects.”
On the sudden deposition of fossils in a “world-destroying Flood,” see above.
David Krause of Stony Brook University in New York has been digging fossils in a Cretaceous deposit in Madagascar for over ten years. The interview with National Geographic highlighted his “most interesting and important finds,” and the array of remains he’s discovered lines up with what Werner found—plenty of non-dinosaur kinds located in dinosaur rock layers.
Please understand, this talk of “non-dinosaur kinds located in dinosaur rock layers” is just mealy-mouthed YEC jargon. The operative word is kinds, and evolution has plenty of explanations for the situation described.
Let’s start with the microraptor from the OP. It was a flightless dinosaur with feathers. Hmmm. Transitional species, anyone? The microraptor with a mammal’s foot in its gut was dated to more than 120 mil years ago. The first birds appeared in China around 125 mil years ago. When did the first mammals evolve? More than 250 mil years ago. When did pygmy shrews appear? About 145 mil years ago. When did dinosaurs go extinct? About 65 mil years ago.
I’d say evolution has a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the presence of “non-dinosaur kinds in dinosaur rock layers.”
The claims in the creation*com article are too ridiculous to address. @jammycakes mentioned some of the problems, but the idea that scientists are hiding data is ludicrous. As I pointed out, your OP about microraptors was based on an article published by an international team of scientists. Excavations are carried out by teams of people. Samples are sent to independent labs for testing by teams of technicians.
Should I go on? It’s a conspiracy theory on the grandest scale imaginable.
I know it’s tacky to quote yourself, but I forgot to mention that lizards, snakes, bony fish, amphibians, crocodilians and possibly turtles all predated the dinosaurs. Yet somehow, ICR claims evolution has no explanation for the fact that “Dinosaur rock layers contain all kinds of creatures from all kinds of habitats, including those of both land and sea.” That’s deliberately misleading, at best.
Appreciated @anon61138028’s thoughts. I’ll come back to it later. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
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I often start to look over threads like this one, because I feel like, “Well, it’s your duty, if you’re hanging around this forum, at least to look at some of the science related stuff.” 10 minutes into the debate and arguing, my eyes glaze over. All I often see is that I don’t have a background on the topic.
Somewhere in the first half of the 1980s was the last class I had that covered geologic eras, dinosaurs and fossils. What I really need is an organized overview of the topics (in case I need to add: by real scientists who are writing IN THEIR FIELD OF EXPERTICE, working for REAL ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS) at a complete beginner’s level. I am not too proud to read great kids’ books! DK is one of my all time favorite publishers.
So, do any of you have favorite books that cover these subjects well? (Maybe that you share with your kids?)
PM is fine, if you feel like answering in the thread is too distracting to the public debate.
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But surely a reasonable Christian might expect modern evolutionary theory to apply even when it causes someone with a very limited understanding of theology to experience a great many dilemmas. The Bible alone needn’t cause any Christian to run into any difficulty with science so long as no one goes looking in the Bible for something it was never intended to address.
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https://www.amazon.com/Story-Life-25-Fossils-Evolution-ebook/dp/B00PJ2JRA8?ref_=ast_sto_dp
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Earth-Rocks-Important-Geological-ebook/dp/B071P6XXM1?ref_=ast_sto_dp
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Ignorance is bliss. Eternal, indefatigable, unbeatable, incurable bliss.
A couple of good books from a Christian perspective:
- The Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth (introductory level, easy to understand, lots of nice pictures, looks good on your coffee table)
- The Bible, Rocks and Time (a more in-depth and technical treatment of the subject; contains a lot of information about the history of geology as well as about the subject of geology itself)
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I’m grateful, as you are, that there are other sources of bliss.
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Technically, “crocodilians” refers just to the order containing the modern groups (which appeared more like the mid-Cretaceous). Crocodylomorphs would be the more technically-correct term for things like Sarcosuchus or “sphenosuchians”. Psedosuchia is the term for “anything closer to modern crocodiles than to modern birds”.
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not necessarily a mean straw for a drowning man/woman, Klax. But there may be more to this story. It’s interesting on its own actually.