More Nonsense from Ken Ham

Faith & Science Conversation
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You make all these assumptions about the wording of the text but it makes so much more sense if it is a global flood. Why have the ark if God could cause the animals to go to another location to get away from the flood?

Gen. 6:7,8 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Gen. 6:17 And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth will die.

In 2 Peter 2:5 also mentions the destruction of the ungodly with only eight surviving. It seems to me you do damage to the word if you read it in the fashion you do.

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Hi Joshua.

It’s problematic because the dinosaurs lived and then died out millions of years ago, not because of common descent.

If you watched the video I linked to, you would see the part about dinosaur soft tissue. The fact that the DNA and cells are still in existence after millions of years should bring into question the actual age of the dinosaurs.

I am saying we can put forward a reasonable explanation of the events surrounding the flood showing it did happen. You assume the dinosaurs were extinct but that doesn’t make it so. Please listen to the video and it talks about the dinosaur soft tissue which brings into question the age of the dinosaurs.

What killed the dinosaurs? They likely died out after the flood, the difficult years following with the extreme global cooling.

I said all the animals likely hibernated. There may have been some awake but likely most were in hibernation caused by God. This idea that God could only use natural means to accomplish his ends is baseless especially with all the miracles we see in the Bible.

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Gen 7:14 “They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing”

Nope. Not a mention of juvenile creatures of any sort, let alone dinosaurs.

Gen 6:21 "You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Sounds a lot more like alert people and animals needing to be fed than hibernating.

All of this YEC extra-biblical stuff about hibernation, juvenile forms, hyper speciation and ark “kinds” is just a pile of ad hoc rescuing devices which only arises due to our far greater awareness of the immeasurably vast number of species over time and geography. Nobody would be talking about juvenile dinosaurs if dinosaur fossils had not been uncovered, there is nothing in Genesis that gives the slightest intimation of their existence. What you imagine isn’t scripture, it is just made up.

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These aren’t assumptions about the text. It is not an assumption that the Hebrew words can be translated mountains or hills and earth or land. It is not an assumption that the text actually says the water rose 15 cubits and covered the high hills/mountains. It is not an assumption that the Hebrew text says the ark landed on hills (plural), not a particular mountain.

Did you look at the NET Bible notes?

And if you want to look at the evidence that God has given us in creation, look at the diversity of animals around the world. There are thousands of examples, but start with the dodo bird. How did the flightless, slow bird move from the ark 5000 years ago to an island in the Indian Ocean and nowhere else?

God has given us the example of the dodo bird, perhaps so we won’t insist the early chapters of Genesis are literal history. The scriptures also give us two creation stories with different orders and methods of creation, perhaps so we won’t insist the early chapters of Genesis are literal history.

I know it takes time to realize the things you were taught may not be right, it did for me. But we need to move past the teachings of childhood and into a fuller understanding of God.

One of the things that helped me understand the way the ancient Hebrews were willing to share stories that had wonderful pictures and truths was the story of David’s rescue from Saul. The actual events are described, with David avoiding the spear thrown, hiding with the Philistines, sparing Saul in a cave.

And then there is their second version—with God flying down on a cherub hurling lightning bolts with smoke pouring from his nostrils (found in Psalms 18 and 2 Samuel 22). The second version is not untrue, and it is not literal history.

Thomas, going back to making assumptions: you and the video are making a huge assumption: that the story is a lie if it is not literal history.

Jesus told a story about a Good Samaritan. He never said “this is a story, not literal history.” He wasn’t teaching history, he was giving spiritual guidance.

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If you are trapped on what is now an island, you can’t run away very well.

It is collagen, which is nearly as tough as bone, and the DNA is “we can tell this was DNA”. If dinosaurs died out ~4,000 years ago, we would have multiple complete genomes. You cannot mess with radiometric decay rates without destroying every atom.

Indian Ocean, not Pacific. It lived on Mauritius. Far more challenging, what about Unionids? How do freshwater clams survive?

The video presents a false dichotomy of either a small, local flood, or a global one. We have not had any catastrophic regional floods in the last few thousand years. If you are in a large, flat basin, then a regional flood will cover all the local hills before it spills out.

I have no idea where they got this geologic time scale, but it is about 50 years out of date.

This uses the standard “Mt. St. Helens deposited 700 feet of ash, therefore sedimentary rock layers can form in minutes.” non sequitur. How do separate rock layers in a clear, unchanging sequence contain animals that lived for 50 years, if they formed in minutes?

“The faces [of the Grand Canyon] are steep, therefore, they haven’t been getting weathered over a long period” Is it just me, or do those cliffs have big piles of material that fell off of them sitting at the base?

The grand canyon is clearly eroded by the Colorado river, as all of the sediment is piled up in the Gulf of California.

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Thank you. I will edit.

Thomas, do you know the story of the Christian who found soft tissue and evidence of blood products (not DNA) in dinosaur fossils? Dr. Mary Schweitzer (now at North Carolina State University) was a young earth creationist and came to understand that YEC is not supported by the evidence that God has given us in creation nor is YEC required by an honest reading of the scriptures.

So she kept her faith in God and the saving grace of Jesus Christ while realizing she had been wrong about YEC.

She made those groundbreaking discoveries after she came to the revelation that YEC is wrong.

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Hello, friend. I hope you’re well today. :slight_smile:

I already knew about dinosaur soft tissue. Here’s an article from Biologos that deals with the issue. I used to be YEC, so I’m not unfamiliar with it.

I wonder why God, in His omniscience, would bother having Noah save dinosaurs that would die out shortly after the flood. Of course, I’m no one to question God. But I do question the YEC understanding of things.

Fair enough–you did say that. My mistake.

However, as Ron points out in the text, Genesis 6:21 indicates that the animals would likely not be hibernating, since Noah was commanded to take food with him into the ark, both for him and the others and for the animals.

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Here’s your problem. The recorded miracles all point to God. When a YEC starts to layer miracle upon miracle (and there is almost an unlimited stream required) to save their interpretation of Genesis then the unrecorded miracles don’t point to God but to man.

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So God magically changed their physiology for the boat ride and then changed it back after the ark landed?

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Of course, anything is possible with God. Even that He is a liar for the truth.

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This is not a fact, Thomas. While I do not doubt your sincerity, this statement is an egregious misrepresentation of the findings of Schweitzer, whose abstract I quote here:

A histological ground-section from a duck-billed dinosaur nestling ( Hypacrosaurus stebingeri ) revealed microstructures morphologically consistent with nuclei and chromosomes in cells within calcified cartilage. We hypothesized that this exceptional cellular preservation extended to the molecular level and had molecular features in common with extant avian cartilage. Histochemical and immunological evidence supports in situ preservation of extracellular matrix components found in extant cartilage, including glycosaminoglycans and collagen type II. Furthermore, isolated Hypacrosaurus chondrocytes react positively with two DNA intercalating stains. Specific DNA staining is only observed inside the isolated cells, suggesting endogenous nuclear material survived fossilization. Our data support the hypothesis that calcified cartilage is preserved at the molecular level in this Mesozoic material, and suggest that remnants of once-living chondrocytes, including their DNA, may preserve for millions of years.

Note the vocabulary Schweitzer uses:

  • “microstructures morphologically consistent with nuclei and chromosomes” (not nuclei and chromosomes)
  • “extracellular matrix components”
  • “remnants” (not whole cells in original state)
  • “nuclear material” (not chromosomes or even genes, and not capable of being sequenced)

There is zero possibility that Ken Ham will be able to use Schweitzer’s samples to build a Jurassic Park next door to the Ark Park.

I am aware of the fact, Thomas, that you are simply repeating what your sources told you. Unfortunately, your sources have misread Schweitzer’s research.

Best,
Chris

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Chris, did you look at all the video where she talks about the cellular structures comparing them with present day cellular structures of similar cells. This is work that Creationist scientists have conducted and they show remarkable similarities. You would not expect the structures after a million years.

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“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.

image

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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