What if Veloci-Raptor looked like this

This is gibberish! “I’m ancient near east”? What’s that even supposed to mean?

You need ancient near east studies to even know if something qualifies as “historical evidence”.

Because the source organization is demonstrably untrustworthy.

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That’s the only reason I bothered to watch the video – I thought it would be fun to get an artist’s guess for once.

That was a bit offensive.

Kind of like trusting Homer Simpson as a source for particle physics.

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It’s a figure of speech that communicates my confidence that I am right. I am not literally offering a guarantee. I think you know this.

Better for whom? Not better for me, I learn from my experiences and I know watching AIG videos is a waste of time and disrupts my sense of peace and equanimity.

I wasn’t attempting to critique someone’s work, I was attempting to warn people not to bother critquing it, because it will be a waste of time. This is my opinion, presented as such, and I am certainly allowed to express my opinion on the internet. An unsupported opinion will probably only be taken seriously by people who know and trust me, but that’s okay with me, because some people here do know and trust me. I don’t feel the obligation to do other people’s homework for them.

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Don’t know if you ever saw this, but I wrote an article up once on a better source for dinosaur/dragon links.

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Cool.

No I hadn’t, but I think I’ve seen one of the shows on tv that is referenced.

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The above is not what the video promotes at all.

the notion of a huge length of time is based on uniformatarianism (i am not earbashing the idea there, just making the very clear observation that it is a well known habit within science…we look at what we see today and make the assumption it has always been the same. The problem is, that is an assumption you have inserted there which does not align with the already stated YEC position. So this point is outside the boundaries of the YEC world view and i don’t see it as relevant (because the YEC young earth position is already known there…you cant insert your timeline into someone else’s timeline and claim that’s evidence…its doesnt work that way given your own timeline is an assumption and therefore not fact)

I think a generalisation of the term evolution there is being aimed incorrectly…better to make the distinction…its “Darwinian Evolution”. My understanding is that the overarching agreement is that Creationists as a whole are not anti-evolution…we all accept mutation and the umbrella of adaption and survival…I think we all agree that life has the capacity to do those things and for the Christian, its God inspired.

No there are not a relatively high number of fossils…it is well known we do not have even 1% of the fossil record! Lets also remind oursleves that the vast majority of dead creatures DO NOT FOSSILIZE!

I will work backwards in responding to this one

  1. What other Christians believe is not relevant to the truth. A group/individuals interpretation of the bible does not constitute evidence. The evidence comes from the internal evidence supported by the external evidence. Because the Bible is both a historical and philosophical book, we cant pretend that both do not need to align with each other.
    Mormons call themselves Christians, however, they do not align with the Biblical Christian model…hence they wrote their own book (The Book of Mormon) which is full of absolute nonsense that introduces themes which are not even remotely related to the Bible. Mormons also believe in the notion that humans will become gods who create their own worlds…that is simply not biblical.

  2. I agree 100% with your criticism that he generalises the use of Christians instead of YEC. I cringe every time i hear AIG harp on about that…it starts to become a bit of a stumbling block i think…we shouldn’t be doing that without the appropriate biblical evidence…making generalisations sounds a lot like indoctrinating i think…because its as the individuals biblical evidence is lacking sometimes. I recall how Hillary Clinton used to smile and laugh at Donald Trumps statements during their debates…she was minimising/ridiculing him…i think she lost the election 9 years ago partly because of that. We should try to evidence our disagreement with others, not generalise (and i will take this criticism on the chin here…in my layiness many times I’ve done the same thing)

  3. which assumptions had no connection to the evidence? In his drawings, he went through a lot of evidence and made comparisons between his choices vs ANE choices on elements of the artistic work…I think the video evidence is not consistent with your statement there. (perhaps you could be more specific so we can discuss )

Im sorry but im not following your logic there…

ANE artists draw dragon-like creatures with fierce predatory features, and you claim that a YEC artist, going through the process of interpreting and drawing a predatory bird (rather than a lizard capable of walking on two hind legs with the intelligence of a supercomputer) is “story look scary and selling”?

I think that is a “pot calling the kettle black” statement…its not a defence.

Christy,
in your article you write:

If you search for them on the websites of Answers in Genesis (AIG), or the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) you will find plenty of articles. And there is a whole exhibit dedicated to dragons at AIG’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. Promotional material for the exhibit notes the similarities between dragons and dinosaurs in ancient art and architecture and asks, “Could it be that the artists behind these depictions were drawing a real-life animal they’d seen with their own eyes?”

Along the same lines, the host of AIG’s video Dinosaurs and Dragon Legends asks, “What could have inspired all these stories? Is the dragon simply the creation of inventive minds? Or could dragon stories be based in reality—possibly related to dinosaurs, or other amazing reptiles that we find in the fossil record?”

Creationist organizations claim that the existence of dragon lore in so many cultures and time periods is compelling evidence that humans coexisted with the creatures that inspired the legends. Since we know from the fossil record that dragon-like dinosaurs walked the earth at some point, they contend that humans must have observed these dinosaurs alive before they allegedly died out after Noah’s flood.

However, the scientific consensus is that dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago, long before the earliest human ancestors arrived on the scene.

I can demolish that entire article with a single name:

Mary Sweitzer

Dinosaur fossils are very clearly NOT 60 million years old…her unintentional discovery and further work has turned that uniformitarian belief into absolute chaos. There are plenty of other evidences outside of paleontology that also agree with the notion that the earth is much much young than that…complexity of the cell, geological evidences of rapid sedimentary deposition on a global scale, human fossils found alongside both Neanderthal and Hominids suggesting that they all lived at the same time in the ancient past and even inbred.

For the Christian, we also have the Biblical history…Genealogies, historical theological themes…we have at least 3 bible authors who lived more than a thousand years apart, in different cultures and using different languages who 100% do not support the ANE world view.

The Apostle Peter and Christ (the Creator of this Earth) very definitely align with the historical account of the flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as illustrated by Moses.

If Christ, the Creator of this Earth, isnt capable of approriately verbalising to us how old this earth is and whether or not Noahs flood and the desctruction of Sodom and Gomorah were real (as he did in Matthew 24)…if he cant do this in his own words, then clearly, Christ isnt God, His resurrection is nonsense, and there is no Second Coming or Salvation. Its all a lie.

The theological dilemmas that i present on these forums…these are not my opinion btw, they are proven by just about any bible concordance you wish to research…cross referencing scripture completely debuncts the claims of allegory, literary techniques, prose…whatever…for bible writings that do not appear to align with Darwinian Evolution

You may as well write your own bible like the Mormons did to resolve that dilemma! (which funnily enough some ANE are already trying to do that are they not?) The idea that an ancient scripture thousands of years old needs to be rewritten with fixes applied…if thats not twisting and changing EXISTING scripture, then all of us are deluded.

Finally, you start out your article rubbishing YEC claims that these carvings may represent real animals interractions between ancient cultures and dinosaurs…the you go on and state this in your article:

After exploring the links between Greek mythology and fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, Mayor went on to research the connections between local fossils and Native American mythical creatures. She concluded that ancient cultures were very attuned to the natural world around them and made careful observations of the fossils in their environment. Based on their understanding of how the world works, they came up with imaginative explanations for the histories they saw in the bones and rocks they found. Their stories convincingly speak of the fossilized creatures as real because they knew only real creatures leave bones behind!

Then you attempt to downplay the above with…

But their vivid depictions do not prove humans actually coexisted with the prehistoric creatures.

i will challenge your conclusion there…with what evidence can that conclusion be made given the overwhelming statement of evidence that preceeds it?

For all your supposed expertise there Christy, you make some very unusual conclusions from the evidence you introduce…indeed even the complete opposite of what the evidence invites you to conclude…irrespective of it!

It seems to me that your evidence for downplaying the ancients and their mythology is nothing less than atheism and also the notion that fire breathing dragons cannot exist.

I wonder if it wasnt for the fact that we have specimens of them…would we believe that Bombardier Beetles exist? Would we believe that snake venom is so toxic that it destroys human flesh but that the snake itself remains unaffected by its own venom?

The notion that fire breathing dragons cannot exist…i dont think that is actually as problematic biologically as many here believe (especially given a man can injest mouthfuls of alcohol and eject it into flame without burning his insides)

Do i believe in fire breathing dragons? Honestly, given the bible talks about them (both prophectically and literally) and they are in human legend across many cultures worldwide and, we also havent found physical fossil evidence of them as of yet, I dont know. If someone asked me this question 10 years ago, i would have said no…now im not so sure.

Stop it, Adam. That’s just a lie. Mary Schweitzer herself hates how young earth creationists misrepresent her work. She did an interview with BioLogos, you know.

“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.” -Mary Schweitzer

Do you actually think I’m going to explain to you the evidence for evolution and an ancient earth? I’ve watched people write pages and pages of evidence up for you. No one can make you learn things. It’s fine. But I’m certainly not going to waste my time putting evidence in front of your face. Again.

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Mary Sweitzer agrees that dinosaurs became extinct 65mya.

Your demolition fails.

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Not sure if it’s been mentioned yet, but I think several main ideas go along with the video:

  1. there are things everyone takes for common knowledge that are mistaken (fits well with the YEC worldview)
  2. scientists have been wrong all along and if they were wrong about something like dinosaur feathers… well they are obviously wrong about the age of the earth and evolution and geology and everything
  3. it fits well with the scientists are just mixing up fossils crowd… their reconstructions are based on their “evolutionary worldview” imaginations
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It’s less of an assumption than what YEC uses. They won’t even admit that they’re imposing a modern worldview onto the scriptures.

So why does YEC ignore the external evidence?
(And a great deal of internal evidence as well.)

What “ANE choices”? I watched the video all the way through just now and I caught no mention of the ancient near east!

Well of course they do, since that’s how the folks in the ancient near east portrayed dragons. They also had them in all sizes and various shapes; some were like snakes, others like fish, some looked like gryphons.
Would you rather have them lie???

Every writing in the Bible fits the ancient near eastern worldview perfectly.
Have you ever even taken any ancient near eastern studies? Do you have the slightest clue what you’re talking about?

Where does scripture say that Christ is at all interested in telling us the age of the earth, or of any other scientific information?

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IOW, you need to drastically change the most fundamental laws of physics in order for YEC to be true, and change them for no other reason than to protect a singular interpretation of scripture.

The conclusion that the Earth is 4.55 billion years old requires us to change zero laws of physics. We are only applying the laws of physics we observe throughout the universe back through billions of years. We know that the decay rates of unstable nuclei was the same in the past as now because we can measure their decay millions of years ago in distant supernovae, as one example.

What organizations like AiG propose is no different than a defense attorney claiming the fingerprints and DNA found at a crime scene don’t count as evidence because he believes they were planted by invisible Leprechauns.

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You’ve already admitted that no evidence could ever falsify YEC. AiG admits the same:

“No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation.”–Answers in Genesis

You seem like a fine person, and I would probably have a great time having a discussion over a cup of coffee or the like. However, I think you need to take a deep look at your position and understand why it isn’t honest to ask for evidence when you will never accept any evidence that contradicts your beliefs. A bit of self awareness and self reflection would be quite handy.

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Codswallop.

The 4.5by age of the Earth is not an assumption, it’s derived from radiodating and other techniques, and is confirmed and cross-checked in multiple ways.

If it was an assumption, there would have been no reason to change it following Hutton and Lyell’s discoveries, Kelvin’s work or the discovery of radioactive heat. But all those led to a revised age estimate.

If you came up with discoveries that showed the Earth was actually a lot younger that currently thought, the timeline would be changed - just as it was when discoveries[1] showed the Earth was much older than previously thought.


  1. Genuine discoveries, not the pack of lies touted by creationists who get stooges to stand in front of the evidence so that they can pretend it’s not there. ↩︎

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The claim that the “soft tissue” traces occasionally reported from dino bones gives support to a young- earth position has been repeatedly addressed. Invoking Mary Schweitzer is proof that creation science is dishonest.

Likewise, making noise about uniformitarianism is a dishonest excuse to ignore evidence that young-earthers don’t like rather than a valid argument. All reconstruction of past events depends on uniformitarian assumptions. If you read a written account of the past, you are making numerous uniformitarian assumptions, such as that the meaning of words did not change as well as all the common sense background not mentioned in the text.

Of course there are well-supported uniformitarian assumptions, weakly supported uniformitarian assumptions, and definitely wrong uniformitarian assumptions. Each must be examined. But saying “that’s based on assumptions, so I can reject it” or “that’s uniformitarian, so I can reject it” are hypocritical and dishonest excuses to ignore the evidence.

For example, the claim that “soft” tissue from dinos supports a young earth is a uniformitarian argument. The reasoning is “soft tissue often decays quickly, therefore any soft tissue must be young.” Typical of young-earth uniformitarian arguments, it does not examine the evidence in detail but proclaims that the particular uniformitarian assumption must be true.

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It’s also theologically dishonest: uniformitarianism is what we should expect from a God Who can be described as “faithful and true”.

Yep – and thus have the meanings of many Hebrew words in the OT been pinned down.

Is pretentious, since all systems of thought rely on assumptions.

Heh – good point. For that matter, the arguments from St. Helens that YEC uses rely on uniformitarianism.

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Echoing St.Roymond, YECs cite the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption as evidence for mechanisms they claim were active during the global flood. That’s uniformitarianism.

It gets even more basic than that. YECs claim grains of broken up rock fell out of flood waters which created the geologic strata we see today. They cite the modern observation of sediments settling out of water. That requires uniformitarianism.

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YEC loves uniformitarian arguments, but when they indulge, they do no call it uniformitarianism, and they botch it up.

Salt in the sea. They are uniformitarian for deposition, but disregard uniform processes of lithification which remove solutes.

Dust on the moon. YEC has largely given up on that one.

Shrinking sun. Solar radius is periodic and prior measurements turned out to be bogus.

Jeanson assumes human mutation rate equals the fixation rate.

Lunar recession. Disregards tidal influences.

Hawaiian islands should have eroded away. Huh? Where did they even get those numbers?

Decaying magnetic field. Disregards fluctuations and periodic field strength increases. What do they think happens during a reversal? There is electrical current inertia in the Earth held by the magnetic field??? How much are you going to pay me for my room temperature superconducting motor trade secrets?

Helium in rocks. Like diffusion rates, as conjured by the RATE project, would be more reliable and consistent than than the physics of nuclear decay?

C14 in diamonds. Invalid. Referenced measurements are below the threshold of detectability.

Short lived comets. Refuse to consider replenishment from outer solar system.

Blue stars have too short a lifespan. Refuse to acknowledge ongoing star formation.

Rings around Saturn. Refuse to acknowledge tidal breakup of orbiting bodies.

All of these arguments rely on uniformitarian assumptions, and in each case YEC either blithely ignores associated and equilibrating processes, or outright misrepresents the facts, but that is what you have to do when you are out of touch with reality. I’m sure that there are far more examples of this than I listed here off the top of my head.

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The gist of the video doesn’t really reveal anything we didn’t already know about dinosaurs. Maybe we should ask the more fruitful question of if velociraptors were as intelligent as they are depicted in Jurassic Park, would we need to share the gospel with them?

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Peter and Christ did clearly tell us how old the earth is… well you have to dig a little to understand it. Does Jesus come right out a say anything so plainly? Lets look at what He says:

  • Mat 16:9 Do you still not understand? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand,

Thats one loaf for one thousand. How many people does one loaf of bread normally feed? Its actually one loaf of bread that feeds one person for one day.

  • Luke 11:3 Give us each day our daily bread.

Our daily bread is one loaf of bread, not what we think of today as a loaf but was like a flat pancake the size of a plate:

Lend Me Three loaves - Michael A. Verdicchio
The bread in the Bible was round and flat, like a pancake, about the size and thickness of a plate. Most people could only eat one of those “loaves,”

So, one loaf represents one day. Note that that one loaf (5 total) was provided by the disciples who were following the Lord, were with the Lord. For each disciple one loaf was food for one day. But for the thousand that one loaf feeds them or represents one thousand days, and there were still basketfuls of leftover broken pieces of bread. I see these broken pieces as days representing the pieces of one month.

  • Mark 8:19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of broken pieces did you collect?” “Twelve,” they answered.

There are of course twelve months in a year and this leftover bread was picked back up by the disciples. So really, the basketfuls of broken pieces represents one year, and that can be multiplied by one thousand to feed the multitudes of the earth.

  • Mark 8:21 Then He asked them, “Do you still not understand?

Its a piece of bread to understand. :wink:

I think this is what the five loaves for the five thousand and the twelve basketfuls of broken piece represent. I have not talked about the seven loaves for the four thousand but think that is some other lesson.

But I think Peter, one of the disciples, understood the five thousand and he lays it out for us as I have previously discussed here: