To me, the biggest problem is things get reported in the popular press that are either untrue or have glaring errors. Sometimes even “science” plants stories to increase the visibility or market value of a product or institution (though it is really not science, but business)
@J.E.S, you seem to have a healthy appetite and desire to learn. Work on learning the basics of science and how things work, so that you can make wise informed judgements of what is true or not. Otherwise, you will be tossed by the wind in whatever direction it blows. Have a blessed day!
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First I would not suscribe to the term “evolutionary creationism” but instead “Trinitarian Evolution” by which the evolution of all life happened, with some freedom and randomness, from the divine love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and in accord with a shared will to bring forth life that would culminate in the evolution of rational creatures such as ourselves.
Second the dinosaurs (which were many species) were just part of the branches of a varied fanning our of life with all its unique and divinely loved existence. But the tragedy of their mass extinction millions of years ago led to an opening up of the further evolution of the earliest mammals that had already evolved.
Thirdly it is widely held that they shared strong genetic links with birds and so all the wonderful birds we see today are the only living and surving representatives of what dinosaurs had been.
Lastly dinosaurs existed milliions of years before the existence of the earliest humans, so they would nevr have existed at the same time.
This may be true for subjects such as the multiverse or the implications and meaning of quantum mechanics, but it is not true for the ages of rock strata and where we do or do not find dinosaur fossils. Or are you able to explain exactly how dating methods specifically extend beyond the realm of mathematics, measurement, testable predictions and reproducibility?
You are welcome to discuss any of their articles that are relevant to this thread’s subject here, or to start up separate threads to discuss those that are not. Regardless, they will be evaluated first and foremost on whether or not they get their facts straight, not on whether they upset anyone’s paradigm.
No, we write off claims of evidence that have not been subjected to any form of quality control whatsoever. Or assertions that claim to be evidence but are not.
You keep harping on about this Wikipedia article but you have not highlighted a single claim that it makes that you can demonstrate to be incorrect.
And just how often do you think that this happens? How does this compare to the millions of peer reviewed papers undergirding the scientific consensus? How much money do you think is being spent on such cover-ups and discarded research?
Jonathan, before you can complain about people rejecting your claims out of hand you must address the issue of quality control. Every single objection you have seen on this thread boils down to that one issue. Only when you provide evidence that matches the level of rigour seen in evolutionary science can you start to complain about it being dismissed because of presupposition and worldview.
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Jonathan, is your accusation of “very low esteem for the Bible” directed at anyone in particular? There are a great many of us here on the forums that hold the Bible in VERY HIGH esteem. Personally, that’s what bothers me most about young-earth creationism – the attempts to rigidly adhere to one interpretation of Genesis discredits the beautiful truth of the Bible when it contradicts what scientific discovery has made plainly evident.
I imagine a good many of us are familiar with the passage of Job describing the behemoth. I would agree that the English translation of Job does indeed seem to indicate a sauropod – but the English translation can certainly be misleading. Biblical scholars tend to think the behemoth is not a sauropod, and even AiG and CMI admit that there is no reliable evidence of humans and dinosaurs living together. If you want to read more about other Christian views of behemoth, check out a Christianity Today article here, or another article, more focused “what was behomoth?” here.
I’m not trying to “steal your thunder” before you present it, but if your iceberg of evidence on human/dinosaur cohabitation is built on behemoth and leviathin, you’ll find that most of us will rely more heavily on scientific evidence than on conjecture.
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@cosmicscotus makes a good and clear point. If all the dinosaur bones that have ever been found (excluding Birds!) were found below the “K-T” boundary, and all the large mammals including humans have been found above the K-T boundary, it means that 100% of all the dinosaurs discovered (100% beneath K-T) drowned before 100% of the larger mammals (100% above K-T) drowned. Do you really think things happened that way, @J.E.S ?
In other words, even the huge Brachiosaurus, or the robust Dino-period marine reptiles, drowned well before any of the mammals started drowning. Contemplating how this could have happened in any flood scenario may be a better use of your time than looking at carvings of dinosaurs on rocks of unknown origins.
NOTE: “K is … the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous period, and T is the abbreviation for the Tertiary period. So the K-T boundary is the point in between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. Geologists have dated this period to about 65.5 million years ago.”
2nd Note: I think you may see that 65.5 million can be variously rounded … to either be 65 million years ago or 66 million years ago!
You have a point. I will here review the Wikipedia article, and write my critiques here as I read.
He initially purchased more than 300 from two brothers, Carlos and Pablo Soldi, who also collected pre-Incan artifacts, who claimed they had unsuccessfully attempted to interest archaeologists in them.
True. After their death, I believe that the Soldi brother’s large collection ended up in the storage room of the Ica regional museum (I’ll fact-check that assertion in a moment).
In 1973, during an interview with Erich von Däniken, Uschuya stated he had faked the stones that he had sold.[3] In 1975 Uschuya and another farmer named Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana confirmed that they had forged the stones they gave to Cabrera by copying the images from comic books, text books and magazines.[2] Later, Uschuya recanted the forging story during an interview with a German journalist, saying that he had claimed they were a hoax to avoid imprisonment for selling archaeological artifacts. In 1977, during the BBC documentary Pathway to the Gods, Uschuya produced an Ica stone with a dentist’s drill and claimed to have produced a fake patina by baking the stone in cow dung.[3] That same year, another BBC documentary was released with a skeptical analysis of Cabrera’s stones, and the new-found attention to the phenomenon prompted Peruvian authorities to arrest Uschuya, as Peruvian law prohibits the sale of archaeological discoveries. Uschuya recanted his claim that he had found them and instead admitted they were hoaxes, saying “Making these stones is easier than farming the land.”
I hope that this entire snippet shows you the good reasons Basilio Uschuya had to lie. I would also be interested in knowing if baking a stone in cow dung actually makes patina believable enough to fool scientists.
In the end, not too impressed. They gave no evidence for the stones being fake other than that the supposed forgers admitted that they were. Now I can better understand why @T_aquaticus is constantly trumpeting this, and @gbrooks9 utilizes the circular reasoning of “since dinosaurs died out millions of years before humans came on the scene then, if we find evidence that dinosaurs and humans lived together, the evidence must be fake since dinosaurs died out millions of years ago.”
Not impressed. Case is still open as far as I’m concerned!
I still wish that some scientific organizations that you actually consider credible would do some tests on the Ica stones…However, I would be very surprised if they wouldn’t just blow them off right away. To be honest, though, I would like to get to the bottom of the whole Ica Stones thing, and (if I’m wrong) I want to be corrected as quickly as possible.
@jammycakes
That’s a pretty big piece of evidence which you hand wave away.
The other problem you have is that you have no evidence that these stones are legit. You are the one claiming that these are from Peruvian cultures thousands of years ago. The burden of proof lies with you to prove it.
@T_aquaticus
If I ever achieve the capacity to do so, I shall endeavor to prove it. If new clues come to light, I’ll try to let you all know.
I suppose some of you may. How much of scripture do you actually think is true, as it is written? And I would really like an honest answer here other than “our interpretations differ.” When I have a higher percentage of the answers I seek, I may change my judgement made in the above quotation. I mean, one can say that he holds the Bible in high esteem, and may think the opposite (even without knowing it).
If scientific discovery had made evolution plainly evident, the BioLogos forum would not be here today (neither would AIG, ICR, CMI etc.).
P.S: [quote=“cwhenderson, post:193, topic:36364”]
Personally, that’s what bothers me most about young-earth creationism – the attempts to rigidly adhere to one interpretation of Genesis discredits the beautiful truth of the Bible when it contradicts what scientific discovery has made plainly evident.
[/quote]
Personally, that’s what bothers me about EC. It just THROWS OUT (or “reinterprets” to use the euphemism) so much of the Bible. When all’s said and done, Christ may never have risen from the dead, by your numbers. He has to be in the tomb for a few billion more years. I don’t think he’s even been there a day yet.
With all of the reinterpreting done in EC, what’s left?
(Now, a quick disclaimer: If I have neglected to speak the truth in love, or have offended anyone, I sincerely apologize. But I do hope that you all see the points that I am trying to make.)
Jonathan, an admission of forgery is a deal-breaker. It can only be overturned by incontrovertible documentary evidence to the contrary. Anyone who thinks otherwise is, quite frankly, living in la-la land…
Jonathan, @gbrooks9’s line is simply that if you want to overturn a scientific theory, your evidence must, at an absolute minimum, match the quality of the evidence supporting that theory. There is nothing whatsoever that is circular about that.
Jonathan, there is a very good reason why they don’t. Scientific tests cost money. No bean counter in any university or any research council is going to sign off funding for any research project that involves performing tests on artefacts which have been admitted to be fake by the people who faked them.
Look, if humans and dinosaurs really had coexisted in the past, there would be much more evidence for that than just a few fake stones and highly ambiguous drawings. We would, at the very minimum, expect to find sequenceable dinosaur DNA somewhere. Where is it?
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I personally don’t think Behemoth refers to a single identifiable animal. It’s more likely a generic term for any large, intimidating animal. Thus you see a mishmash of traits here – an elephant’s legs, a crocodile’s tail, and so on.
In any case, if it really is a sauropod dinosaur, why is it not described as having a long neck?
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I don’t honestly know. But based on the weight of evidence suggesting that humans and dinosaurs were never on the earth together, my guess is that it was NOT a dinosaur. It will take more than Ica stone conjecture (that most young earth creationists reject) to outweigh the scientific evidence for me.
P. S. I will get back to your longer post addressed to me later.
@J.E.S, your insistence on getting hold of the wrong end of the stick leaves me speechless.
It’s not about money versus the truth, it’s about money and the truth. There are some times when making money depends on the truth. Oil exploration being one example.
I’m going to bow out of this thread now. It’s bearing more and more of a resemblance to the Monty Python dead parrot sketch with every post that passes. It is all getting rather too silly.
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While I am leaning toward what James said, i would like to address the statement:
So it’s not about the truth then…it’s all about money…as I feared.
(Excuse not using the quote function, on my iPad where it doesn’t work)
It is very often about the money. All research costs and grants are given for projects with promise. Someone has to finance those projects, and if the big creationist group offered grants to look at this, you can bet there would be applicants for those grants. But those grants are not offered. Why? Surely no one is afraid of what the results would show? Many organizations are closed to debate and examination of their ideas, because they fear loss of donations and funding if proven wrong. I think that is one of the great strengths of Biologos and this forum, as there is an openness to discussion and examination in the iron sharpens iron tradition, feeling that truth will prevail.
Who benefits from the ongoing indeterminate status of these stone? Obviously, the locals who make the souvenir stones, the websites and organizations that get donations and ad money for stoking the fires, the tourist industry, the book sales etc.
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It’s not about the credibility of the organizations, it’s about the credibility of the tests and their results. For example, what tests distinguish between natural and artificial oxidation?
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Actually, I’m glad you all have said this. I had gotten a bad feeling about this thread a while back, and I do indeed think this is a good time to quit (it may even have been a good time to quit a while back). It is quite exhausting after a while to watch the unending tide of denial and illogical refutations that turn a deaf ear to explanation…
Dinosaurs have been a fun topic…maybe a bit too fun 
.
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Since you agree, will close it down