Ultimately, the debate about evolution depends on the age of the earth, and collagen in Dino fossils is not much of an argument either way at this point in our knowledge. I think if presented that as evidence, I would say it is irrelevant, though not inconsistent with an old earth, but the real evidence comes from multiple independent disciplines that confirm one another, including physics with dating techniques, astrophysics with measurement of distances in light years, geology, plate tectonics and so forth.
Those obviously have had responses from fro the YEC community, but might crack open the door to discuss different interpretations of the Bible, that are independent of scientific interpretation. You can discuss problems with the literal plain reading approach, such as days before the sun appeared, the idea of a firmament the mistaken cosmology of the plain reading, and perhaps guide the discussion over to something actually useful, such as what message you think God was trying to convey and how that affects how you live your life and relate to him.
Intimately, it may be futile as suggested, but at least planting the seed that you don’t have to reject God if you come to reject the YEC interpretation may someday be meaningful for that individual.
I usually point to the lack of angiosperm pollen in dinosaur strata—because YECs say “We would expect all mammals to run away from dinosaurs to avoid getting eaten!”
Of course, ya can’t win in such discussions.
And yet we find plant eating and meat eating dinosaurs together all the time in the same sedimentary levels… you can’t outrun your place in time…
Herbivores and saber tooth lions …
Okay… how about this … if Hippos and herbivore dinos stick together to avoid being eaten… how come we don’t FIND them together…
I think you gave up too soon on this one…
Pair up the Carnivore dinos and mammals… and the herbivores …and the YECs still got NADA!!!
I certainly agree with your arguments, @gbrooks9. Unfortunately, whenever such evidence gets overwhelming, YECs will usually just jump to an unrelated topics by saying something like, “I really don’t think so…but what about radiometric dating? We all know that that is totally bogus. So no scientists can know anything about when those animals lived!”
By the way, if the YEC is someone who says that schools should teach the “strengths and weaknesses of the Theory of Evolution”, I ask them, “Which do you consider the greatest strengths of the theory?” It has been so funny NOBODY has ever summarized such strengths. (Not once have I had a YEC even try!) Many will suddenly revert to “There are NO strengths to the Theory of Evolution because there is zero evidence for it!”
So I ask them, "Does that mean that all of the Young Earth Creationists and IDists demands for teachings the strengths and weaknesses of evolution theory are just political theater and insincere manipulation while pretending to care about even-handed treatment and a genuine pursuit of truth?
I’ve also asked them if any ministry like AIG, ICR, CMI, or The Discovery Institute has published a sample lesson plan containing “the strengths and weaknesses of the Theory of Evolution.” I ask them if that suggests that those ministries are insincere in making that demand at school board meetings around the country and in media interviews.
It’s pretty clear this isn’t your first Rodeo!!! I absolutely love this!:
^^^ Genius trap for the zealous opponent!
What drives me nuts about pro-Evolution debating methods is to list 2 or 3 of our strongest evidences … and then the YEC side-steps all of them, and starts talking about “information lost” - - the pro-Evolution person starts chasing after the YEC on the YEC’s topic… and not our 3 or 4 top evidences!
BioLogos folks all come with their various expertise levels. So to drop our Best Material and suddenly try to refute a topic or charge that we are least familiar … that is a losing proposition!
We need to stick our guns if we have something specific, and not let a YEC start topic-hopping!
If you don’t know anything about “folded proteins” or “information theory” - - tell the person that you don’t and stand firm with your “top 3 or 4”!
Every time they keep trying to change the topic, just remind them that if Evolution is so obviously incorrect, then they should be able to refute some basic pro-Evolution arguments without having to get all “bio-chemical” and “micro-molecular” on the topic!
I think we also have to call the denialists on their pretending that the weight and preponderance of the evidence doesn’t matter. I compare it to a murder trial where the prosecutor tells the jury that they must convict the defendant because:
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His wallet with driver’s license was found at the murder scene.
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His DNA was found on the murder weapon found at the murder scene.
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A neighbor saw the defendant running from the murder scene seconds after all of the neighbors heard a gun shot.
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The victim’s blood was all over the defendant’s clothes when he was apprehended.
But the defendant’s attorney says to the jury, “My client COULDN’T have murdered the deceased because I have this quotation from his girlfriend, ‘My boyfriend was with me all evening and I am absolutely, positively certain of that! Besides, everybody knows that he is a paragon of virtue who could not possibly have murdered anyone. Besides, all of that stuff you’ve been told is just circumstantial evidence based on the fact that all of the neighbors, the prosecutor’s office, the forensic lab, and the police are all biased against him. But most of all, were any of you actually there to see who committed the crime? No! Nobody knows who killed the deceased. So there is not a shred of evidence for the murder charges!’ Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is exactly what his girlfriend said and anybody who says that she didn’t say that is lying After all, lying is all that they do.”
Then the defendant’s attorney summarizes the case: "My client’s girlfriend is the most honest person who ever lived and is an authority on forensic evidence because she has read dozens of crime novels. So her sworn testimony outweighs everything the prosecutor claims. Besides, the prosecutor spends all of his time accusing people of crimes and he even gets a big salary to do exactly that! That’s all he ever does! Not once has he ever come into this courtroom to say that somebody was innocent. So he is OBVIOUSLY biased. It should be clear to anyone with common sense that the police, the forensic lab, the neighbors, and even the news media are biased and have conspired against my client. Remember, truth is not a matter of numbers or some alleged consensus!
That is all too close to what these kinds of debates are like. Young Earth Creationism depends upon being able to keep a straight face. I have far more respect for the rare and candid YEC who simply looks at me and admits:
“I don’t know much about the scientific evidence. I just know that my trust is in the Bible and when I read it, it sounds to me like the earth is young and that God made all of the animals exactly like they are today. God spoke and they suddenly appeared full-grown and ready to multiply. That’s what I believe because I trust the Bible with all of my heart and I don’t think God wanted us to think much beyond our first impression when we read a Bible passage. Clearly, God created everything and wants me to love and obey him. That’s what I know. Jesus loves me and died for me. I’m going to focus on that.”
I wish more Young Earth Creationists would say that! I love that kind of honesty.
A very credible hypothesis that explains soft tissue in dinosaur bones is that the dinosaurs are not millions of years old by rather thousands. Even if you refuse to entertain this hypothesis it will not go away. The iron solution is ridiculous and has never been observed in nature and has not been shown to affect a tissue for more than 3 years let alone 65 million years. There is no reason that some large dinosaurs couldn’t have survived the KT extinction and live into the period of mankind. There are certainly many ancient legends of man fighting dinosaur type creatures. Perhaps some of these unfossilized dinosaur bones are recent, this is the best answer to the evidence of soft tissue.
What do you mean the preservation of collagen soaked in blood has never been observed in nature? Never is a strong word. You mean because they only ran an experiment for three years instead of 65 million years, we can’t conclude anything from it no matter how dramatic the results were?
There are no unfossilized dinosaur bones. It would be extremely dishonest for anyone to claim seriously that there were. Where are you getting this idea?
The preserved osteocytes were extracted from the mineralized bone matrix separate from the blood supply. I used the word unfossilized to mean not petrified. Yes, I do mean your extrapolation of 3 years of preservation equals 65 million years in reality is a stretch of the imagination and dishonest. Ancient bones are exposed to a wide range environmental conditions that can affect the preservation. None of these conditions were examined or controlled for in the iron blood experiment, and therefore a very weak hypothesis for soft tissue preservation.
Could you provide a reference for the information that you have quoted? It would be helpful to reference where you got your information, to allow us to look at it firsthand. What I have seen of “soft tissue” findings has been near molecular fragments of collagen, which is fascinating, but not a game changer.
The article we’re talking about has nothing to do with osteocytes, if you’re going to bring up things like that maybe provide links so people know what you’re talking about?
All dinosaur bones are pretty thoroughly petrified, and finding molecular traces of unpetrified material does not change their categorization. There’s still a world of difference between mineralized dinosaur bones and modern, frozen or mummified bones, and none of the latter belong to non-bird dinosaurs. Period.
Woah there. Is that what I said? Let’s look.
Nobody ran an experiment for three years and said, woohoo! Now all our questions have been answered! An experiment — any experiment, no matter how famous — is only one piece of a puzzle. In this case, they wanted to know if iron-rich blood could act as a preservative to keep collagen intact for longer than they used to think it could last. The experiment answered a resounding yes. It didn’t say anything about 65 million years; that was all the previous experience and research science has done on factors affecting preservation and fossilization.
So tell me, what in your opinion are the environmental conditions that would lead only some species to always be found in fossilized (petrified) form, like dinosaurs of all shapes, sizes, and ecological niches, while only ‘modern’ species are more recently buried or found frozen in permafrost?
I don’t think the iron blood test is very compelling as a most plausible explanation. Both Mary Schweitzer and Mark Armitage have both reported finding preserved osteocytes which would have little if any contact with iron rich blood. Most dinosaurs fossils are very old but soft tissue evidence does support a much younger age for specific specimens. I don’t know how young but not 65 million years, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years? It is certainly possible.
I found the skeleton of a bird in my backyard not long ago. I think a housecat got him. Perhaps that should count.
I think I’m sensing a general distrust of scientific dating methods in your response. If there were indeed much younger dinosaurs as you say, we would expect to find some of their bones fossilized significantly above the iridium layer in the geological record from the meteorite 65 million years ago. The scientific community would be completely wowed if anyone could demonstrate this.
I’m not sure what the theological advantage is to positing that some dinosaurs are only hundreds of thousands of years old? This doesn’t make any difference as far as I can tell for Genesis interpretation. It seems like doubting scientific dating just for the sake of it.
Are you familiar with how scientists independently cross-check dating methods against each other for consistency?
Lynn, I have zero theological interest in this topic, and I understand very well how radiometric dating is done. The KT boundary does support very well the impact of an asteroid, but I have a difficult time believing that it caused world wide extinction of all dinosaurs. I don’t see the evidence to support this hypothesis. I do see evidence accumulating including the current soft tissue evidence that supports large dinosaurs living with mankind even if in very diminished in numbers. I believe radiometric dating can be accurate but it I can also be flawed. Jack Horner has been unwilling to test dinosaur bones with C14 even when offered to be done for free and with a $20,000 dollar grant attached to it. Why? Because he is afraid of the accuracy of the results. If he wasn’t then he would gladly do it with confidence and put the creationist in their place with, “you see I told you so”. But he doesn’t. So how accurate can radiometric dating be if Horner doesn’t have confidence in it?
A recent article discussed how computer modeling has shown how a big asteroid may have lowered temps an amazing amount. If true, it is easy to see how life for dinosaurs would be very difficult, and having fur or fluffy feathers would be a big plus:How global cooling may have done in the dinosaurs • Earth.com
Thank you for clarifying your position.
Part of the accuracy of radiometric dating methods means knowing when and when not to use them. One common fallacy I saw, reading comments about this issue, is that a sample older than the age range for effective C14 dating will have “zero carbon 14,” “no detectable C14,” or even “will give the answer of infinity.”
This is wrong. Many samples may have no detectable C14, but the fact is that we live in a big, messy world with C14 everywhere in it, and contamination happens all the time. Reliably dated samples not only have careful attention paid to provenance and chain of custody to try to minimize the chances of contamination, but they also fall into a range of dates where miniscule amounts of contamination will not affect the overall results, because there is enough C14 remaining to be confident the results represent a real signal and not just noise. A lab may report a result which is just noise anyway, since there are border cases where something may be signal or may be noise, depending on other factors and other methods of dating the result, but this is supposed to be understood by those sending in the samples. When a group then creates a public hullabaloo about “obviously wrong” dates obtained by the lab, I don’t blame the lab for wanting nothing more to do with that type of publicity-stunt-seeking group.
Basically, all C14 dates over 20,000 years are suspicious and should be carefully corroborated by other methods of dating, like placement in the geologic column.
Do you have any references for this outlandish claim?
Yes, there is a video on youtube where he discusses the issue at length with a radio host who represents some creationist group. It is without a doubt Dr. Horner.
Thank you Lynn for your information on C14 testing, very interesting. If the soft tissue found in Schweitzer’s sample is not remarkable then it shouldn’t be hard to find in other samples. If this is the case then these tissues should be found easily in many Censozoic creatures. The magnitude of decay for dinosaur soft tissue should be much greater than that of much more resent creatures. Yet Schweitzer’s images of red blood cells seem to have not decay very much. Osteocytes have also been preserved. Would that be normal for a fossil 65 million years old or remarkable?