More Nonsense from Ken Ham

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@SixDays

Why do you think this is exactly what you would find in a millions of years. I want to see your empirical evidence!

This is what soft tissue looks like after six thousand years:

Complete carcasses. Masses and masses and masses of fully sequenceable DNA. If the Earth really were six thousand years old, we would expect to find T-Rex carcasses in at least as good a state of preservation as that all over the place. We have never found so much as one that comes even remotely close.

@SixDays

I would like to know what she thought he got wrong. She assumes an old earth where these are supposedly many millions of years old.

I am not saying she cannot put forward a theory how these could be old, but given the supposed age I would hope she would have significant humility about it. This is definitely not a “hard” science and conclusions that this is evidence for a young earth are very reasonable.

There’s something you need to realise here. The age of the Earth is not “supposed” and it is not “assumed”; it is measured. It is measured on the basis of processes whose rates have been measured and whose initial conditions have been measured. The extent to which these rates and initial conditions could have varied in the past has also been measured. And I’m sorry, but there are ways in which these conditions can be measured that do not require you to have “been there,” and that do not require you to make blind assumptions of “uniformitarianism.”

And I’m sorry, but measurement is a “hard” science. It has strict rules, principles and standards that must be adhered to. Rules, principles and standards that have nothing whatsoever to do with “naturalism” or “secularism” or “uniformitarianism” or any other weasel word ending in “ism” that you may try to throw at them. And it is not reasonable to claim that anything is evidence for a young earth unless it sticks to those rules, principles and standards.

Would you like me to explain what those rules, principles and standards are?

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@SixDays

She assumes an old earth where these are supposedly many millions of years old.

While Young Earth Creationists celebrate Mary Schweitzer’s pioneering discovery of trace soft tissue in the permineralized fossil bones of a T. Rex, they then double back to infer that she does not possess the mental faculty to realize the implications of her own work. She’s the one who made the discovery, and her insight is worth more than that of arm chair quarterbacks whose job is to crank out YEC articles. For her part, Schweitzer responds, one thing that does bother me, though, is that young earth creationists take my research and use it for their own message, and I think they are misleading people about it.

First, the amount of material Schweitzer found is miniscule, visible only under very powerful microscopes. Which raises a question…if this demonstrates that dinosaurs are actually young, why is dinosaur tissue not plentiful? We have intact wooly mammoth carcasses, but none of the dinosaurs even though by the fossil record we know they also lived in overlapped regions, notably Alaska and Siberia. There exist largely intact specimens of saber tooth cats, wooly rhino’s, coyotes, camels, llama’s, Sloths, mastodons, bears, caribou, horses, wolves, bison, birds, humans and more, all thousands of years old, from permafrost, caves, tar pits, and bogs. Yet, though tens of thousands of dinosaur fossils have been found, not even one solitary specimen has ever been uncovered with macroscopic amounts of flesh and hide. If dinosaurs roamed the Earth at any time over the past five thousand years, we would have much better preserved remains of at least some in our possession. This lack of soft tissue is evidence of millions of years.

[SixDays (Thomas)]

I did not say there was no degradation of the DNA but the fact is that it exists, branching blood vessels exist, red blood cells exist, as well as delicate cell structure which suggests it is much younger than millions of years. This is not uncommon to find in dinosaurs bones and your insistence that it is old is based on your initial assumption that it is old.

[SixDays (Thomas)]

@rsewell

While Young Earth Creationists celebrate Mary Schweitzer’s pioneering discovery of trace soft tissue in the permineralized fossil bones of a T. Rex, they then double back to infer that she does not possess the mental faculty to realize the implications of her own work.

Yes we do celebrate it because it is evidence of a young earth. Even Schweitzer couldn’t believe it when she initially found it and she had her research team redo the testing over and over again! If you would watch the video, you would see her disbelief in both her voice and expressions seen on her face. Now she is so convinced of an old earth that she automatically jumped to the conclusion that the branching blood vessels, red blood cells, DNA structures and delicate cellular structures are all able to survive millions of years. Creationists look at this and go “Wait a minute here! Are you really saying that this is millions of years?” Now she claims she is open minded about this but her reaction is anything but open-minded. She accuses creationists of misleading people about it when the find is extraordinary.

First, the amount of material Schweitzer found is miniscule, visible only under very powerful microscopes. Which raises a question…if this demonstrates that dinosaurs are actually young, why is dinosaur tissue not plentiful?

I would say that the alluvial sorting was hard on certain layers with extreme temperatures and pressure. The powerful hot water flows probably ripped the skin and tissue off. The KT layer shows the residue of the meteor that hit the earth causing the great flood and the rapid deposition of massive layers of sediments like what happened at Mount St Helens. Some of the animals after the flood probably had much better preserved tissue, where most the dinosaurs seen in the fossil record are leftover from the flood.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@SixDays

I did not say there was no degradation of the DNA but the fact is that it exists, branching blood vessels exist, red blood cells exist, as well as delicate cell structure which suggests it is much younger than millions of years.

I’m sorry Thomas, but you’ve completely misunderstood what Mary Schweitzer actually found.

She did not find actual red blood cells. She only found round red microstructures that were the remnants of blood cells. Remnants of red blood cells are not actual red blood cells.

She also did not find any sequenceable DNA. She only found DNA breakdown products at best. DNA breakdown products are not sequenceable DNA.

@SixDays

She accuses creationists of misleading people about it when the find is extraordinary.

Well if you don’t want to be accused of misleading people, then don’t mislead people.

Look, it’s as simple as this. Before you can make any claims whatsoever about what scientific evidence does or does not support, you need to make sure you are getting your facts straight about what the scientific evidence actually consists of. Claiming that someone found actual red blood cells, when they only found remnants of red blood cells, or that they found DNA when they only found DNA breakdown products, is misleading people. Period.

@SixDays

If you would watch the video, you would see her disbelief in both her voice and expressions seen on her face.

There’s something else you need to realise here. Personal incredulity is not a factor for consideration in deciding what is legitimate science and what isn’t. Science throws up strange results all the time – just look at quantum mechanics, for example. (Electrons are both waves and particles? C’mon!) The only thing that scientists go on in determining what is legitimate and what isn’t is, as I said, measurement. And it is measurement, not closed-minded dogma, that tells us that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and not six thousand.

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

And on radiometric dating: (I can’t find my previous posts on the topic quickly)

If you crunch radiometric decay into 6 months, that would give every human on the planet a guaranteed-to-be-lethal dose of radiation every 10 hours, boil the oceans within 10 seconds, vaporize the planet within a few minutes, and, at equilibrium, turn the planet into a ball of plasma emitting a billion times as much energy as the sun normally does. Except to increase the decay rate, you have to decrease the binding energy, which causes not only every atom, but every composite particle to fall apart.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

And probably trigger a false vacuum decay in the process.

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

Not sure, I would have to be much more familiar with the relevant physics to know.

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@SixDays

I would say that the alluvial sorting was hard on certain layers with extreme temperatures and pressure. The powerful hot water flows probably ripped the skin and tissue off.

That you have to make nonsense up like this tells people all they need to know about YEC. Any natural process that would do this, and there is none to begin with, would have completely disarticulated and scattered the skeletons of every creature caught in the flood. This in not what we observe, so it did not happen. Furthermore, in your world, dinosaurs were on the ark and existed post flood, so even as a rescuing device that does not work.

@SixDays

The KT layer shows the residue of the meteor that hit the earth causing the great flood

The KT layer dates to 65 million years old, but that is not the most problematic concern for YEC. Flood advocates have never presented a satisfactory explanation for the simple objection that the fossil record is segregated. Every dinosaur, pterosaur, and Permian amphibian ever found has been from below the KT boundary. Each and every large or Paleogene mammal, and human, is from above that boundary. A global flood would have completely mixed all these up. That is not what we find, so it is apparent that all these creatures did not live at the same time as any deluge.

[Chris_Falter]

@SixDays

red blood cells exist,

Fragments of red blood cells exist.

@SixDays

This is not uncommon to find in dinosaurs bones

Schweitzer has indicated that it is in fact rare. Would you be so kind as to provide a link to a scientist who has published research you’re relying on?

@SixDays

your insistence that it is old is based on your initial assumption that it is old.

Absolutely not. The dates are the product of careful measurements that rely on physics constants that God has woven into the fabric of creation.

Why don’t you describe how it is, in your opinion, that the field scientists attributed a data of 68mya to the T. Rex specimen in Schweitzer’s 2005 paper. Do you think they just said, “Must be really old” without doing any testing?

Have you ever worked alongside a paleontologist in the lab?

If not, who is it that’s making assumptions here?

Food for thought.

Best,
Chris

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

If you have faith in God and don’t doubt, you can tell this mountain of evidence based reasoning to get up and jump into the sea, and it will.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

@Klax

you can tell this mountain of evidence based reasoning to get up and jump into the sea, and it will.

But you can’t make it disappear. It’s still there … now displacing the rising ocean water!

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

Oh ye of little faith!

[cewoldt (Craig Ewoldt)]

There is nothing in the Genesis account of kangaroos or giraffes either, so the assertion that there are no dinosaurs mentioned is just silly. The biblical account is not an extensive account of all the details, just a basic outline of the facts. And what are the behemoth and leviathan in Job, one of the earliest books of the Bible? They may be descriptions of a dinosaur and an extinct massive sea creature.

Behemoth is certainly not a hippo or elephant as some commentators suggest. Just read the description and then look at a picture of a hippo and an elephant. What are the dragons of history if not a name for dinosaurs? The Chinese have a cycle of ten years, each with an animal that they knew and is still with us except the dragon. Why would we think that the dragon/dinosaur was mythical rather than extinct? (Yeah, there were mythical accounts of horses and fish and other animals too.)

Genesis 7:8 “Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.” Came to Noah–he didn’t go out and collect them according to the biblical account.

“The terms dragon and dinosaur were used interchangeably in scientific writings throughout the nineteenth century. The word dinosaur was invented in 1842 by Richard Owen, an evolutionist, meaning literally “terrible, powerful, wondrous lizards”. Prior to 1842 such animals (and fossils of these animals) were referred to as dragons.”

There are hundreds of cave drawings, descriptions in literature, burial stones, pottery, ancient temple depictions of dinosaurs, many that my grandkids can name when the see the drawings and depictions. How did this happen if there were no dinosaurs on earth with people? Or maybe you go with the suggestion that there is a genetically passed memory from when our ancestors were apes.

Why would Noah take large animals on board when smaller ones would do? Most reptiles continue growing throughout their life, but are still able to reproduce while they are smaller.

[cewoldt (Craig Ewoldt)]

National Geographic’s article titled, “Many dino fossils could have soft tissue inside” reveals that the scientific community is expecting many more examples of dinosaur soft tissue in the future." 2014

2014 again–“Many evolutionists now admit the existence of such dinosaur soft tissue and organic material in not just one or two specimens, but well over thirty.” More have been found since 2014.

Sweitzer’s find was because they had to cut the bone to transport the fossil. So do we assume that fossils and horns that are not cut open don’t have any of these tissues? I think not. And most dino fossils are found when part of them is exposed by erosion, which means that they are now close to the surface. That makes finding intact tissue even more remarkable.

But what if these soft tissues are rare? 64 million years and even more for others using deep time accounts? Who has the rescue mechanisms.

[cewoldt (Craig Ewoldt)]

The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be viewpoint discrimination. If public money is used as an incentive for one tourist attraction, it can be used for another with a different viewpoint. If a school rents rooms for after school activities, it must rent to all comers regardless of viewpoint.

But increasingly, there are additional official, tax sponsored worldviews such as evolutionism and critical race theory, gender theory and preferred pronouns, and the 1619 Project that are funded by taxpayers, and are promoted at every level in our educational institutions. Of course, each of these positions proponents claim that they are backed with science and real history, so are the only viewpoints that should receive taxpayer funding. And other viewpoints should be suppressed because they are “anti-science.”

[Chris_Falter]

@cewoldt

(Yeah, there were mythical accounts of horses and fish and other animals too.)

And centaurs (half-man, half-horse)

And minotaurs (half-man, half-bull)

And pegasus (a horse with wings)

And mermaids.

If you think mythology and cave paintings are valid sources of information about biology, then you need to accept half-men/half-horse creatures, half-man/half-bull creatures, winged horses, and mermaids as creatures that lived in the recent past.

Biology, according to mythology:

Do you accept centaurs, minotaurs, Pegasus, and mermaids as actual biological creatures, Craig? If not, then you must reject mythology as a valid epistemological source for biology, and restrict your claims about living creatures to what is known from paleontology and biology.

@cewoldt

How did this happen if there were no dinosaurs on earth with people?

Some dinosaurs still live today; we know them as birds.

As for the non-theropod “dinosaur” depictions, I do not underestimate the power of human creativity and/or the lack of skill in artistic rendering with crude tools to cause a few accidental resemblances from time to time.

@cewoldt

Why would Noah take large animals on board when smaller ones would do?

Mammals and birds depend on culture to thrive and oftentimes to survive. Juvenile creatures need attention from adults to learn their culture.

@cewoldt

And most dino fossils are found when part of them is exposed by erosion, which means that they are now close to the surface. That makes finding intact tissue even more remarkable.

When the protein fragments are completely enclosed in rock, it’s not remarkable.

@cewoldt

“Many evolutionists now admit the existence of such dinosaur soft tissue and organic material in not just one or two specimens, but well over thirty.”

What is the total number of dinosaur specimens? Thirty would still be considered rare if there were 300,000 specimens, right? (1 in 10,000).

Respectfully,
Chris

[LM77 (Liam Maguire)]

1 Clement (an early post-New Testament Christian letter) contains a lengthy passage about the phoenix. A creature the author believed not only existed but was proof of the resurrection (Cf. 1 Clement 25).

Tertullian in Ch 19 of his ‘On the Resurrection of the Flesh’ argues for a similar belief which he argues is warranted by the Septuagint (LXX) translation of Psalm 92:13 (91:13 in the LXX).

Belief in mythological creatures has been common throughout human history, and even in the church. But that does not mean they are grounded in fact anymore than then phoenix is proof of the resurrection. Asserting a correlation between dinosaurs and dragons does not prove that the former is the causation of the later.

NB: minor edit to P2 for clarity.

[cewoldt (Craig Ewoldt)]

Thanks Chris for your responses.

@Chris_Falter

If you think mythology and cave paintings are valid sources of information about biology, then you need to accept half-men/half-horse creatures, half-man/half-bull creatures, winged horses, and mermaids as creatures that lived in the recent past

I may not have been clear. Let me try again. The fact that there are mythical winged horses doesn’t mean that there are not real horses; the fact that there are centaurs doesn’t mean that there are not real horses and men. I was anticipating the response that because there are mythical dragon/dinosaurs in literature, there were not real dragon/dinosaurs contemporaneous with humans.

Well, of course, we do not underestimate human creativity. But that is not an adequate explanation for what we see.

Sauropod dinosaurs on brass inlay at Bishop Bell’s tomb–1496.

Ica burial stones showing circles on dinosaur skin. The provenance of the stone has been questioned, but it is likely genuine. But if it is not, how do you explain a “fake” that was made before the fossilized skin with the circles was ever discovered?

Stegosaur dinosaur at Ankor temple in Cambodia, around AD 1200.

Anasazi petroglyph

Lots of "accidental resemblances from time to time

@Chris_Falter

When the protein fragments are completely enclosed in rock, it’s not remarkable.

Wow, “not remarkable.” Even Mary Sweitzer thought it was remarkable, and has tried to explain it various way. “Encased in rock” is not one of them. 65 million years, how was this portion left unfossilized? And casually dismissed.

Further, no attempt was made to test for C-14. But it is found in these fossils even though none should be found after 100,000 years. Of course, these are “encased in rock”, so how could there be contamination? If the rock protected soft tissues, how could it be contaminated by C-14?

@Chris_Falter

What is the total number of dinosaur specimens? Thirty would still be considered rare if there were 300,000 specimens, right? (1 in 10,000).

Rare or not, it is remarkable. And since evolutionists are not looking for this, most bones are not opened up. And it is likely, given the bias of evolutionists, not all finds are reported.

[LM77 (Liam Maguire)]

@cewoldt

Well, of course, we do not underestimate human creativity. But that is not an adequate explanation for what we see.

Sorry Cewoldt but all I see is confirmation bias in action. One wants them to be dinosaurs and so that is what one interprets them to be.

There are are only two to my mind that look remotely like dinosaurs. The Ica burial stones, which if they are genuine I would like a non-YEC source providing evidence of their provenance, please.

The Rock Pictograph from Utah is the other that looks most like a dinosaur. However, again I am are going to need more evidence than an image as proof.

In both instances I would gladly accept articles from a peer reviewed archeology journal. Journals would be even better.