More Nonsense from Ken Ham

“Magically” is an inappropriate term to use in the discussion, as is the suggestion of God giving a specific drug to horses.

Thomas is presenting his views in a way that is appropriate and respectful,whether the views are right or wrong.

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I apologize in advance, but I do not do videos for a variety of reasons. But as you know from interacting with me on another thread, I often read literature suggested to me.

Who is “she”?

Can you kindly point me to their laboratory work published in peer-reviewed journals so I will know what you are referring to? Or even laboratory work published direct to the web?

Meet Oetzi. Hikers discovered him in the Italian Alps in 1991. Italian authorities sent a forensic examiner to handle the disposition of the remains because he was obviously a victim of a recent hiking accident, and they wanted to inform the next of kin.

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Upon further examination, it became clear that Oetzi had died about 5000 years previously.

Going back to the question of microstructures and protein fragments: Paleontologists had simply assumed they could not persist millions of years based on day-to-day observations, similar to the way Italian authorities assumed Oetzi was a recent hiking victim. Mary Schweitzer and her team did great work to disprove the hypothesis of recent (past few thousand years) lineage, and they also identified a biochemical mechanism that explains the preservation of protein fragments under rare circumstances over the course of millions of years.

Just as Oetzi’s mummification in place is extremely rare, so is the preservation of dinosaur protein fragments. But extremely rare things can and do happen.

Best,
Chris Falter

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The important question here is, what kind of similarities?

As I understand it, the structures they are seeing are merely similar in shape. They aren’t similar in chemical composition, having been replaced by breakdown products and even partial permineralisation. Mary Schweitzer had to soak the soft tissue remnants in demineralising solution for a week before she was able to extract them. That is exactly what one would expect after millions of years.

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In case this hasn’t been posted here yet

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Geological superimposition and morphological changes visible of speciation within the fossil record makes it pretty clear we evolved.

There is a reason why you never see any dinosaur fossils with weapon damage done to them by people. We also don’t find humans with dinosaur damage done to them. We don’t see bipedal primates older than roughly 11-12 (mya) million years ago. We don’t see bipedalism before the earliest tetrapods. We can look at so many things like how many teeth we have and what sizes they are and how they are positioned and go through the fossil record seeing it outlining these morphological differences.

Why do we not see angiosperms earlier than the first gymnosperms?

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The most important quotes from the Mary Schweitzer interview (in my opinion):

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. Pastors and evangelists, who are in a position of leadership, are doubly responsible for checking facts and getting things right, but they have misquoted me and misrepresented the data. They’re looking at this research in terms of a false dichotomy [science versus faith] and that doesn’t do anybody any favors.

that leaves us with two alternatives for interpretation: either the dinosaurs aren’t as old as we think they are, or maybe we don’t know exactly how these things get preserved. We’ve known for a while that skin gets preserved. It’s the same with anything controversial—for example, it was decades ago now that somebody first proposed that continents move, and everybody laughed and said that shouldn’t be possible. Nowadays if you say that isn’t true you’d be a laughingstock. DNA, too—nobody wanted to believe that DNA was the carrier of biological information because it’s too simple a molecule.

One time I was visiting a church and the pastor got up and started preaching a sermon about people not being related to apes, and he started talking about this scientist in Montana who discovered red blood cells in dinosaur bones—he didn’t know I was in the audience—and it was my research he was talking about! Unfortunately, he got everything wrong. I just got up and left. I don’t feel that I’m discrediting God with the work I’m doing, I think I am honoring him with the abilities he’s given me.

I go to church because I want to learn and be held accountable. I want to learn more and more about what the Bible teaches, and in a lot of progressive churches you don’t get that as much—you get politics, building projects, etc. Everyone has to figure out what they need and why they go to church. The hunger in me which is fed in the churches I go to has to do with the fact that they preach right out of the Bible, and I need that.

I’ve gotten a lot of pretty cruel, harsh, judgmental emails over the years—and if you’re a Christian saying things like that, it’s no wonder my colleagues don’t want anything to do with faith. Christianity is about love, and these are not really loving responses to anything.

If you believe 24/7 creation is really the only interpretation possible and ignore tons of evidence that the earth is billions of years old and that life was a simple construct that got way more complex over time, that’s fine—we may be wrong about the science (I don’t think we are, but as a scientist I have to leave that minute possibility open). I think that parents need to tell their kids that there are a lot of REASONS scientists say what they do, and virtually NONE of those reasons are to disprove God’s existence. That doesn’t enter in.

I love how this faith-filled, shy mother of three is rocking the world of science!

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One bit of nonsense I keep hearing about and have almost my whole life. I’m not sure if Ham mentions it or not. I feel like I heard then mention it in connection with giants before or something but I’m not sure.

But I keep hearing people refer to cavemen as these giants with 12 fingers and 12 toes. So many people seem to think of “cavemen” as these 7 foot tall muscular super hunters when in reality it seems we are larger now as a species than ever. Neanderthals we’re not these giant club swinging tarzans but we’re like 5’5 abd stuff.

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Neanderthals were certainly not giants, and not even tall, but they did have thicker bones than modern humans so they would have been more muscular. Their skeletons differed a bit in some other ways also, e.g. heavy brow ridges. The Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History includes a modern human skeleton mounted next to one of a Neanderthal so you can really see the differences. Still, they were pretty much like us and even interbred with us.

Creationists feel the need to distance themselves from our ancient relatives.

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Dr. Schweitzer is going great work.

My wife and I have supported her work for several years.

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Nephilim mutations. White crows - not demon seed - that were quickly eliminated.

Neat! Do you have a relevant website you can share? Thanks.

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That’s just nice false humility. There is no (rational - redundant I know) possibility that we are wrong. There’s a meaningless probability, let me count the sigmas. What is the possibility that relativity, QM, the multiverse, the big bang, abiogenesis, evolution, Covid-19 are wrong? What is the probability?

That’s how science is supposed to work. It’s always open to correction, however remote the possibility is.

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I agree in part with some theories and laws it’s most likely false humility but the other end is true to. It’s only our best interpretation that it’s true. However, then probability that we are wrong with things like the overall picture of evolution is so low it would be considered statistically insignificant.

It’s like if I head dive off a 500 foot high spot towards concrete. Is there probably some kind of chance I may survive, maybe. But whatever it is it’s so low that I consider it a fact I’ll splatter and die. The same goes for evolution. I have zero reason to believe it’s wrong. Maybe some aspect of it may change but the over all theory will remain intact.

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Yeah. How much of Newton was corrected by Einstein?

If my history is correct, many scientists in there day refused to accept that Einstein was correct… mainly because they were so gosh darned sure they were right.

History has shown time and again that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

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Plate Tectonic Theory and Big Bang Theory are other examples of new theories that overturned existing scientific thought. They gained acceptance (not always quickly) from the scientific community by presenting evidence. (Positive evidence. Poo-pooing evolution doesn’t count as evidence.) A long time ago, back when Karl Giberson was in charge here, there was a really good essay about how all science is supposed to be open to correction. (Can’t remember if he was the one who wrote it.)

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None really. Newton’s equations were still correct under certain assumptions (objects not moving too fast, gravity not too strong to name two). Many calculations are still done using Newton’s equations of gravity instead of Einstein’s which are more complicated and aren’t necessary in most scenarios. Probably the biggest change was just where Newton’s equations actually come from, which can be understood as a result of the curvature of the time dimension. Before this time, nobody really knew where Newton’s law of universal gravitation came from or how gravity worked at all.

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Science is hard work. Hard to come by. It shouldn’t change without a superior dialectical antithesis to the existing thesis for there to be a new synthesis. It’s got nothing to do with arrogance. It’s to do with… truth. Never putting desire before truth.

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See above. Nothing is going to even refine QM, let alone overturn it.