The first birds had evolved before the dinosaurs died out. Dogs evolved from wolves, and wolves are still with us.
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You don’t have any examples? Animals today resemble animals that lived long ago because of evolutionary relationships. Look at the genus Equus or the genus Homo. What kind of “research” did this Werner guy do? Did he actually work on dig sites? Did he get access to non-public areas of museums? Or was he pretty much a tourist? Did he publish his research in peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals? Or did he merely put out trade books and slick videos (for sale, of course)?
So let’s say there is a systematic error built into that radiometric method for dating rocks that throws dates off by 100,000 years. This would mean a date of 100 million years would be off by 0.1%. How is that a problem?
Domestic dogs supposedly evolved from wolves, and yet domestic dogs and wolves exist side by side. How can that be?
Why is this a problem?
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supposedly?
Uh we have new solid evidence on that question.
Darwin was wrong about dogs. He thought their remarkable diversity must reflect interbreeding with several types of wild dogs. But the DNA findings say differently. All modern dogs are descendants of wolves, though this domestication may have happened twice, producing groups of dogs descended from two unique common ancestors.
How and when this domestication happened has been a matter of speculation. It was thought until very recently that dogs were wild until about 12,000 years ago. But DNA analysis published in 1997 suggests a date of about 130,000 years ago for the transformation of wolves to dogs. This means that wolves began to adapt to human society long before humans settled down and began practicing agriculture.
(from pbs)
This is also evidence of how a relationship over time can have quite an effect on the evolutionary process. It doesn’t take necromancy with golems of dust and bone to make something different. A shepherd can do this without any intelligent design whatsoever. 
(P.S. the alterations of domestic sheep don’t go back nearly as far as dogs. Only about 12,000 years for them)
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Maybe God dropped chihuahuas into the fossil record?
Some creationists claim that animals that could run for higher ground appear in the top layers of the fossil record. But that doesn’t explain the relative late appearance of flowering plants, that are not so good at running for high ground.
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Yes, that is the stock response. Of all the misrepresentations that come out of YEC, I consider this to be one of the most self deluded. Who has never seen the results of even modest floods? They leave a jumbled, chaotic mess.
There are some elements of flood geology that, even with no science background at all, just a shred of common sense, should be obvious. That giant sloths would not outrun velociraptors should be apparent to the village idiot. Elephants and triceratops are roughly the same size and would float the same, bloat the same, and sink the same. And as you mention, there are the plants. In fact, the whole ecosystem is neatly segregated in the fossil record. The only possible explanation is separation in time. Hundreds of thousands of fossils, and not one Precambrian rabbit.
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Dr. Carl Werner, on creation.com (we call that a clue), complained that the mammals found alongside dinosaurs are not displayed. As if that’s a strike against evolution. Sorry peanut, but it was scientists who discovered and discussed the tiny mammals that lived at the same time as dinosaurs. And most visitors wouldn’t choose to crowd around a glass case peering at a mouse-sized mammal when they’re in a magnificent hall with dinosaurs. These little fossils are in museums and available for study, just not in public areas. Oops I didn’t think of that.
Worse still are oysters, chamids, coral, physids, and other relatively immobile animals way above dinosaurs.
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That might be connected to the “Creation Moments” claim that “until recently, evolutionists believed that mammals did not live alongside dinosaurs.” Like a depressingly high proportion of creation science claims, this is mere slander. Mesozoic mammals were discovered in the early 1800’s, before people had realized that dinosaurs were a distinct group, and were well-publicized. It is true that there are relatively few eye-catching specimens, so Mesozoic mammals don’t show up in public museum displays too often. Likewise, all the worn-down specimens that show a long history of erosion before final burial aren’t often displayed or featured in books, which allows myths about fossil preservation usually requiring rapid burial.
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Actually, most of the redating of these particular layers was based on microfossils, which are more global in distribution than the previously-studied macrofossils. (In turn, that means that the microfossils are also likely to occur in other parts of the world where volcanoes conveniently supplied radiometrically datable ash layers). The earlier dating was based on the percent of living species in the fossil mollusks. An added complication comes from adjustments due to a more precise drawing of the official line between age units (and occasional decisions to draw the line between age units a little higher or lower, at a point considered to be more distinctive).
Microfossils are a good example of something incompatible with young-earth and global flood claims, largely neglected by young-earth advocates because the public is ignorant about them. They do not have significant differences in escape ability or hydrodynamic properties. Various types of microfossils do reflect different habitats, but such occur at various levels through the geologic column - there is no pattern of lower elevation to higher elevation habitats. But the types of microfossils change over time, with hundreds of totally different sets of microfossils being found in different layers.
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The putting in order of the geologic column was likewise essentially established before any significant acceptance of evolution, and most of the scientists who established the sequence rejected the then-current evolutionary ideas. For example, Michael Tuomey, in his 1848 geological survey of South Carolina, has a section on how the geologic evidence supports the Bible. He briefly dismisses the old-fashioned idea that an old earth is any problem, focusing instead on the fact that geology points towards a beginning, with simpler organisms prevailing as you get older, then eventually rock with no trace of fossils, and thus hinting back towards an ultimate beginning, versus eternalism. The first major publication of William Smith’s work (begun in the late 1700’s) on the sequence of layers and fossils was in a book published by a clergyman friend of Smith’s: “The Character of Moses as an Historian, Recording Events from the Creation to the Deluge” (1813).
The evolutionary ideas of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s were generally perceived as advocating a continuous steady progression towards more advanced forms. As the fossil record did not show such a pattern, these ideas were generally unpopular among paleontologists. Ironically, many current young-earth arguments continue to assume this sort of pattern for evolution and completely fail to address a more C. Darwinian version of evolution.
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My research showed many scientific approaches and technologies used to prove evolution, all of which are leaps of faith, full of holes, inaccurate, leaving me with one choice - God’s Word, 6 days(24 hours) of creation. What a surprise, the inerrant Word of God is true!!!
You couldn’t give some specifics could you? What leaps of faith, holes and inaccuracies do you think that you see in the evidence for evolution or geological time?
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Hello, Reginald - and welcome to the forum.
Stick around if you are up for it! You can learn a lot here.
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Welcome Reginald,
I’m glad you have joined the conversation here. I want to encourage you to engage in a meaningful way. For example, David Campbell (@paleomalacologist) made the point in post #38 that:
Microfossils are a good example of something incompatible with young-earth and global flood claims, largely neglected by young-earth advocates because the public is ignorant about them. They do not have significant differences in escape ability or hydrodynamic properties. Various types of microfossils do reflect different habitats, but such occur at various levels through the geologic column - there is no pattern of lower elevation to higher elevation habitats. But the types of microfossils change over time, with hundreds of totally different sets of microfossils being found in different layers.
@beaglelady pointed out that flowering plants do not have the ability to run to higher ground, so how does “flood geology” account for the fact that fossils of flowering plants appear in the highest geological strata but not in lower strata?
And Timothy Campbell (@Paraleptopecten) pointed out that immobile animals appear far higher in the geologic column than dinosaurs. Again, this is consistent with animal evolution happening over a period of hundreds of millions of years, but it is not consistent with a global flood in which mobile animals might try to flee to higher ground.
Personally, when I examine evidence like this, I think it might be time to re-evaluate the hermeneutical methods I’m using when I read the Bible. Over 400 years ago, the discoveries of astronomers forced an upheaval in the exegesis of Psalm 104 and other similar passages. Luther and Calvin had insisted that the inerrant Bible in passages like Psalm 104 teaches geocentrism. But the exegesis of Psalm 104 changed–in a good way–when Galileo and then Newton showed that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
Similarly, I have learned much about Hebrew thought and the meaning of Genesis 1 - 3 – good things, I think – when I reckoned that a literalistic hermeneutic could not be sustained. I had to rebuild, and what remained after the rebuilding was much stronger and more helpful.
Please give some thought to what friends like David, beaglelady, Timothy, and I have written in this thread.
Best regards,
Chris Falter
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Other depositional scheme problems:
Hydrologic sorting:
The fact that I can find 100 + mm Mercenaria, Glycymeris, or Ostrea compressirostra in the same bucket with a few dozen Caecum (not to mention all the sand) suggests that the deposit was experiencing relatively slow water movement. Santeevoluta never overlapping with Triplofusus, despite their being about the same size, also discredits this.
Elevation:
Volutids, diverse “turrid” faunas, and abundant Conus imply water depths of ~50 m. They are mixed with Donax, Oliva, and Littoraria, al of which are very shallow water, let alone their being way above (occasional fragmented) dinosaurs.
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There are plenty of MDs who have actually done the work of examining fossils in their spare time from medical practice, and have done sound work in paleontology. What Werner has done, however, is a completely superficial “A looks enough like B to a casual untrained observer that I can claim they are the same and use that for an illogical antievolutionary argument.” The first problem is that, upon looking more closely, there are critical differences between the forms that he is claiming are the same. To give modern examples, koala bears look somewhat like bears, but as marsupials they actually have more important similarities to kangaroos. American “robins” are thrushes, European robins are Old World flycatchers, and Australian “robins” are yet another bird group. Classification involves a careful examination of all the features. Ironically, Werner is making the same mistake as the careless paleontologist of the early 1900’s who gets lots of inaccurate young-earth ridicule for naming “Nebraska Man”. The tooth was actually a peccary molar (not a pig), but humans and peccaries are both omnivores, so our molars are pretty similar. Other paleontologists were doubtful from the start, and the correction was soon made, despite the popular publicity.
The Creation Studies Institute claims “Dr. Carl Werner traveled 160,000 miles to find the answer, visiting 10 dinosaur dig sites and 60 natural history museums. To his surprise, he found examples of all of the major plant divisions and all of the major animal phyla groups living today, fossilized alongside the dinosaurs.” All of the plant divisions and animal phyla that have hard parts are found alongside dinosaurs, exactly as evolutionary theory expects. (Non-evolutionary views might also expect to find them all together; that particular fact does not specifically support one or another.) The first dinosaurs lived over 250 million years after the origins of animal phyla; of course they overlap in time.
A specific fossil example that has been claimed to be “just the same” from dinosaur time to now in the young-earth literature (in part based on inaccurate popular reports) is Castorocauda. As the name suggests (castor=beaver, cauda=tail), it has a beaver-like tail and roughly similar body shape. This led to false claims that it’s really a modern beaver along side of dinosaurs. But anyone familiar with beavers, or even with Buc-ees, knows that beavers have the buck teeth typical of rodents. Castorocauda has wildly different teeth, and in fact a platypus is more similar to a beaver in some key features than Castorocauda. Similarly, Answers in Genesis proclaimed that a dinosaur-aged fossil plant was identical to a modern lily. “Lily” actually refers to multiple very different types of plants. The fossil is not identical to any of them and actually represents a primitive monocot (the same major group as lilies, but also palm trees, grasses, orchids, and many other things).
But evolution has no requirement for continuous change. If an organism has something that works, natural selection will favor keeping it the same. (This is why punctuated equilibrium occurs as an example of evolution in action.) There are some organisms that have shown very little change over very long time intervals. So the effort to claim that things are actually just the same is no good as an antievolutionary argument anyway.
If birds occurred in the fossil record before the first dinosaurs, that would be a problem evolutionarily. As birds tend to be more fragile and often live in places that aren’t good for getting buried, their fossil record is likely to be patchier than many dinosaurs. But there is no problem with birds overlapping with dinosaurs, as has already been pointed out.
More generally, the popular Kuhnian model of scientific revolutions is wrong. While there are some valid points, it is extremely oversimplistic and based on an inaccurate picture of the events selected as most closely fitting his model. The reality is that a new scientific idea gains support by convincing people that it better explains all the evidence than the previous ideas. Young-earth and other crank models claim “here is a problem for the standard model, therefore, we can throw it out and accept my model instead.” This ploy is also popular in politics - all about how bad the other candidate is without any evidence that yours is actually better. Of course, it is also often true that the supposed problem for the standard model is imaginary, but the “one problem overturns the standard theory while no amount of problems for my view matter” approach is a basic logical error.
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To clarify, Caecum is a genus of tiny snails, usually well under 1 cm, which would not be hydrodynamically sorted into the same layers as large, thick-shelled clams.
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