Oldest Fossils Aren’t

CreationSafari.com ^ | 03/11/05 | CreationSafari.com

[DannyTN]

Oldest Fossils Aren’t   03/11/2005
A new analysis of the world’s oldest claimed fossil rock, a banded deposit off the coast of Greenland said to be 3.8 billion years old, probably contains no signature of life, reports Stephen Moorbath (Oxford) in Nature.¹  He has visited the Akilia site twice where rocks were purported to contain graphite of biological origin.  He couldn’t find it. 

This persuasive discovery seems an almost inevitable, yet highly problematic, consequence to the increasing scientific doubts about the original claim.  We may well ask what exactly was the material originally analysed and reported?  What was the apatite grain with supposed graphite inclusions that figured on the covers of learned and popular journals soon after the discovery?  These questions must surely be answered and, if necessary, lessons learned for the more effective checking and duplication of spectacular scientific claims from the outset.
    To my regret, the ancient Greenland rocks have not yet produced any compelling evidence for the existence of life by 3.8 billion years ago.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Add to that the downgrading of claims about life-signatures in Western Australian rocks said to be 3.5 billion years old, and there is a big gap until the more reliable claims of bacterial fossils in Ontario’s Gunflint formation said to be 1.9 billion years old.  “ To have a chance of success,” he warns, “it seems that the search for remnants of earliest life must be carried out on sedimentary rocks that are as old, unmetamorphosed, unmetasomatized and undeformed as possible.  That remains easier said than done.”

---

¹Stephen Moorbath, “Palaeobiology: Dating earliest life,” Nature 434, 155 (10 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434155a.

This admission does nothing to help the Darwinists.  Even trusting the shaky dating methods for the sake of argument, it adds to the problem that life appeared suddenly in a profusion of forms.  Moorbath has just robbed his fellow Darwinists of half their allotted practice time for bacteria to hone their engineering skills.  Those bacteria are going to have to really race now to invent all the molecular machines needed for the higher organisms to follow.  Simultaneously, the microbiologists are finding evidence of sophistication in the most “primitive” forms of life (see next entry).  A cartoon of a man’s head in a vice comes to mind.

[b4its2late]

Nice title. :-)

[xcamel]

At least the fossils in my back yard are still certified to be 750 MYO..

mostly all limestone/dolomite stromatolites

[R. Scott]

The advantage of science - claims are checked and double checked. That can not be done with religious doctrine.

[DannyTN]

"The advantage of science - claims are checked and double checked. That can not be done with religious doctrine."

On the contrary religious doctrines are often checked and double checked.

[DannyTN]

I don't know what that code does. But it works in the article itself, just not in the heading. I'll have to remember to remove any codes like that in the future.

[G Larry]

Ya?
Tell me about the dicovery location of Lucy's hip bone relative to where her knee bone was found.

[Just mythoughts]

Where do evolumites get their funding?

[R. Scott]

On the contrary religious doctrines are often checked and double checked.

How? Can a belief be put under a microscope? Can a tenet be physically examined?

[R. Scott]

Sorry, I don't understand the question.

[Oztrich Boy]

The Creationist account is a pack of lies.

NB This may be one of the Eternal Verities.

[G Larry]

ATFQ!
I only questioned the crap that is passed off as "science" to promote evolution.

I didn't say anything about Creation.

[G Larry]

The hip bone and knee bone attributed to Lucy were found hundreds of yards apart, at several yards difference in depth. Yet these are the bones critical in determining walking characteristics. Lucy defenders refuse to answer the obvious questions. Lucy is a fraud.

[DannyTN]

"How? Can a belief be put under a microscope? Can a tenet be physically examined?"

There are several checks on religious doctrines that can and should be done.

1. Religous doctrines usually derive from some religous authority. That authority should be examined.
   • For example, the first five books of the Bible get their athority directly from Moses. Moses' authority comes from the fact that he was confirmed by a number of miracles before Israel and Egypt to be God's prophet. A case for proper authority can be made for practically all scripture in the Judeo Christian religion.
   • For example #2, let's go to Islam. The Koran gets it's authority from Mohammed. Mohammed claimed to be a prophet, but he has no support for the claim. He has no miracles, nor does he have prior scripture giving him authority. The Koran contradicts prior scripture. And worse than that Moses laid down tests of a prophet. Mohammed fails those tests. To make matters even worse, the Koran tells Jews and Christians to examine their own scriptures to see if the Koran is true. Thus there becomes a clear internal contradiction within the Koran which openly proclaims itself to be free of internal contradiction. Thus upon examination, unique doctrines originating out of Islam may be rejected on the basis of no authority.
   • Likewise, unique doctrines originating from Joseph Smith (Mormons) may be rejected by an examination of the authority
2. Although doctrines are based on properly authorized scripture, those scriptures must be properly understood. And if there is a way to misunderstand them, men will find it.
   • For that reason, scripture tells us not to forsake assembling ourselves together and commends those that searched the scriptures to verify whether the things being taught were really so. Effectively this is the "peer review" process.
   • That's why things like the council of trent were so important. Several conflicting doctrines about Jesus had arisen. What the councils did, were to examine scripture in depth, hear all of the arguments and decide whether the doctrines were scriptural or not.
3. Doctrines should be internally consistent. The Muslim doctrine of hating the Jew is not consistent with the Jewish and Christian scriptures which call one to love your enemy. Thus, again, you have a basis for rejecting Islam, which claims to accept both Jewish and Christian scriptures.
4. Any source that claims to be directly inspired by God, should not have errors of fact in them.
   • Frequently, the Bible has been challenged as not being historically correct. Archeological digs have proven the Bible correct with many of the challenges for items dating from King David forward.
   • Radiometric dating stands as a challenge to the Bible's account of how old the earth is.
     • Some have decided that the geneaologies in the Bible are not complete and that the ages should not be used to date the earth.
     • Some have decided that Genesis should not be taken literally.
     • Some have examined radiometric dating and think that between assumptions about starting ratios of elements, assumptions about contamination, assumptions about the consistency of radioactive decay in the past, that there is enough room for the radiometric dating to be wrong. (I take this approach).

   There are probably a lot more checks that are done and should be done. But notice we aren't turning a blind eye to observations. Sometimes we discount them on faith that the bible is right and the observation must be wrong. And in many cases we have eventually been proven right to have discounted them. Some we have yet to be proven right on.

[DannyTN]

"The advantage of science - claims are checked and double checked. That can not be done with religious doctrine."

That's one of the reasons evolution is so controversial and why G Larry is pointing you to Lucy.

Evolution often does not allow it's critics to check it. Creationists are routinely discriminated against in certain evolution related science fields. Creationist scientists are routinely prevented from reviewing specimens. Scientists like Dr. Sternberg at the Smithsonian Institute are threatened with having access cut off if they support anything other than evolution.

Evolutionists are trying their best to silence discussion of Intelligent Design in scientific circles, because they do not want their claims challenged.

That's why Eugine Scott, the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, recently told scientists to avoid debates.

How do you check and double check a scientific theory, if it's proponents won't debate you, won't let you view the evidence, and won't publish your work for other scientists to see?

[R. Scott]

There are many reasons for the bones to be separated both vertically and horizontally. Scavengers, mudflows, weathering all contribute.

[R. Scott]

Religous doctrines usually derive from some religous authority. That authority should be examined.

For example, the first five books of the Bible get their authority directly from Moses. Moses' authority comes from the fact that he was confirmed by a number of miracles before Israel and Egypt to be God's prophet. A case for proper authority can be made for practically all scripture in the Judeo Christian religion.

This is predicated on belief, not examinable fact.

[R. Scott]

Evolution often does not allow it's critics to check it.

???
Evolutionary science is constantly checked! That is why new facts are questioned!

That's why Eugine Scott, the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, recently told scientists to avoid debates.

Debates within the scientific community - or debates with creationists? A debate with a creationist would be similar to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

[DannyTN]

This is predicated on belief, not examinable fact.

No. It's predicated on:

• The testimony of the entire nation of Israel that the miracles occurred.
• It's backed up by Egyptian censis records.
• Weaker evidence includes the fact that all of the nations surrounding Egypt converted to monotheism about the same time as the Exodus.
• And finally, Jesus quoted Moses as authoritative. Now I realize this last one is a little bit circular, in that Jesus get's part of His authority from the Old Testament Prophets. But to the extent that Jesus was confirmed independently by miracles, and is unquestioned in his impact in the world for good, Jesus has sufficient authority derived from other sources to validate Him and thus His claim about Moses.

And this by no means exhausts the evidence in favor of the scriptures, which would include miracles confirming others who spoke of Moses and Jesus as authoritative as well as time datable prophecies that authenticate prophets.

[DannyTN]

"Evolutionary science is constantly checked! That is why new facts are questioned!"

Yeah, 50 years down the road. How old was piltdown before it was caught? How old is this fraud in this article? Much of evolutionary science isn't checked because the scientific community has a predisposed bias to accept it.