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Oldest Fossils Aren’t
CreationSafari.com ^ | 03/11/05 | CreationSafari.com

Posted on 03/12/2005 6:21:51 AM PST by 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.


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KEYWORDS: bfd; crevolist; fossil
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To: DannyTN
To go back to your original statement, and I will try to keep it simple:
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.

The Pentateuch gets its authority directly from Moses – assuming that Moses wrote or dictated it. Do we have the copyright available or an original copy that can be examined?
No, we take the authorship as a matter of faith.
“…he was confirmed by a number of miracles before Israel and Egypt to be God's prophet.”

We know this because it is included in the Pentateuch. Belief in the truthfulness of the Book of Genesis is again a matter of faith. Using the Bible to prove the Bible?
“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.”


It can be said with just as much validity that the Council of Trent made its rulings based on self interest.

“Weaker evidence includes the fact that all of the nations surrounding Egypt converted to monotheism about the same time as the Exodus.”


As I read it, it was a case of Convert or Die – and it wasn’t “all the nations surrounding Egypt but those occupying the country wanted by Israel.

I have nothing against religion. I have nothing against Christianity. I do have objections to a Sacred Congregation of the Index deciding what is and is not scientifically sound.

21 posted on 03/12/2005 4:16:05 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: DannyTN
Much of evolutionary science isn't checked because the scientific community has a predisposed bias to accept it.

As the religious community has a predisposed bias to reject it?
In every case that I am aware of when a new idea is introduced in evolutionary science, it is checked by others. When a new specimen is discovered others look for similar examples. When it was suggested that dinosaurs were warm blooded people went out in attempt to check it out and define the limits. When it was proposed that some dinosaurs were nurturing of their young the same thing happened.
22 posted on 03/12/2005 4:21:22 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: R. Scott

Then why haven't they been subjected to DNA testing?
Fact is they weren't from the same animal.
If they were, folks would be bragging about the proof, not hiding the contrary evidence.


23 posted on 03/12/2005 4:30:53 PM PST by G Larry (Aggressively promote conservative judges!)
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To: DannyTN

Fossilized rock?


24 posted on 03/12/2005 4:33:37 PM PST by Doohickey ("This is a hard and dirty war, but when it's over, nothing will ever be too difficult again.”)
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To: R. Scott
"We know this because it is included in the Pentateuch. "

We don't just know it because of the Pentateuch. The nation of Israel testified to it, to their kids and grandkids. That is the reason that they accepted it as true. Because their parents and grandparents saw it and testified to them that it was true.

I don't know what you mean about the council of Trent.

And no, it wasn't just the land Israel occupied. Historians record that the entire region converted to monotheism. They didn't all convert to the worship of the Jewish God. But the belief in multiple Gods like Egypt had worshipped prior to the plagues, ended for all the nations close to Egypt. I didn't get that from the Bible. I got that from a college course at a state university.

25 posted on 03/12/2005 8:08:07 PM PST by DannyTN
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To: G Larry
Then why haven't they been subjected to DNA testing?

If you are referring to fossilized bone, you’re joking, right?
26 posted on 03/13/2005 2:52:54 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: DannyTN
I don't know what you mean about the council of Trent.

To refresh your memory:
“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.”

It was in the Church’s self interest to have only one Church, one doctrine, one system of belief and ritual.
I refer to the Catholic Encyclopedia:
In treating the canon of Scripture they declare at the same time that in matters of faith and morals the tradition of the Church is, together with the Bible, the standard of supernatural revelation; then taking up the text and the use of the sacred Books they declare the Vulgate to be the authentic text for sermons and disputations, although this did not exclude textual emendations. It was also determined that the Bible should be interpreted according to the unanimous testimony of the Fathers and never misused for superstitious purposes. Nothing was decided in regard to the translation of the Bible in the vernaculars.

On 24 May the general congregation took up the discussion of original sin, its nature, consequences, and cancellation by baptism. At the same time the question of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin was brought forward, but the majority of the members finally decided not to give any definite dogmatic decision on this point. The reforms debated concerned the establishment of theological professorships, preaching, and episcopal obligation of residence. In reference to the latter the Spanish bishop, Paceco, raised the point whether this obligation was of Divine origin, or whether it was merely an ecclesiastical ordinance of human origin, a question which led later to long and violent discussions. In the fifth session (17 June, 1546) the decree on the dogma of original sin was promulgated with five canons (anathemas) against the corresponding erroneous doctrines; and the first decree on reform (de reformatione) was also promulgated. This treats (in two chapters) of professorships of the Scriptures, and of secular learning (artes liberales), of those who preach the Divine word, and of the collectors of alms.
And no, it wasn't just the land Israel occupied. Historians record that the entire region converted to monotheism. They didn't all convert to the worship of the Jewish God. But the belief in multiple Gods like Egypt had worshipped prior to the plagues, ended for all the nations close to Egypt.

During the time of the Judges of Israel: According to Ugaritic literature, the Canaanite pantheon was headed by El, the creator god, whose wife was Asherah. Their offspring was Baal, who married Anath (The OT indicates that Ashtoreth, a.k.a. Ishtar, was Baal's wife). Dagon, Resheph, Shulman, Koshar and Mot were other gods of this pantheon. The cultic practices included animal sacrifices at high places; sacred groves, trees or carved wooden images of Asherah. Hardly monotheistic.

27 posted on 03/13/2005 3:18:11 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: R. Scott
It's in everybody's "self-interest" to discuss the truth and come to a mutual understanding of what the scripture says. You make it sound like the church was evil for doing so. Remember the Lord told us to assemble ourselves together and search the scriptures to see if the things being taught are really so. That's what the church was doing.

Reading the Bible, praying, loving your neighbor, obeying God, caring for the poor are all in your "self-interest" if you want to put it that way.

The canaanites weren't monotheist but then they were the people God told Israel to wipe out. And Archeological digs show that they sacrificed children in fires, and practiced other bizarre sick rituals. There were several other nations other than the Canaanites that converted to Monotheism. I don't remember the names of them, they were probably all 'ites.

Egyptian Papyrus detailing the plagues

Ipuwer Papyrus

An interesting article on chariot wheels in the red sea with pictures. However Wyatt has claimed to have found a lot of stuff from these to the ark of the covenant to Noah's ark to the real Mt. Sinai. The sheer volume of his claims and lack of independent confirmatoin make me leery.

Evidence from Jericho

28 posted on 03/13/2005 8:17:01 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
You make it sound like the church was evil for doing so.

Why would you state that? Self interest is not necessarily evil. If the fledgling Church had not consolidated its beliefs and tenets, it wold have fragmented into even more sects than we now have.
I have often commented that the Old Testament is a fine historical document. I doubt it has any more historical inaccuracies than the average history text of today. What does that have to do with using the Bible to prove the validity of the theology of the Bible? Theology is and should be a matter of faith.
I often wonder if some religionists' fear of science is that their own faith may be too weak to hold up without scholastic support from all scholars and scientists.
29 posted on 03/13/2005 9:40:42 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: R. Scott
"It was in the Church’s self interest to have only one Church, one doctrine, one system of belief and ritual."

In addition to the other comments, it was also the will of Jesus that the church be united as one. But in typical man fashion, we screwed that up quick.

John 17:11 - And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. John 17:21 - That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. John 17:22 - And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

30 posted on 03/13/2005 9:45:44 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
It's backed up by Egyptian censis records.

Do you have a source for that?

To my knowledge there is no historical evidence whatsoever to support the idea that Egyptians held the Children of Israel as slaves, nor that the plagues brought the Egyptian empire to its knees, nor that an exodus occurred afterward.

It's long bugged biblical scholars who have searched Egyptian antiquities, writing, and any other evidence from the time.

31 posted on 03/13/2005 9:48:21 AM PST by Dog Gone
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To: R. Scott
"What does that have to do with using the Bible to prove the validity of the theology of the Bible? Theology is and should be a matter of faith."

It's a check. The doctrines come from the Bible, if the Bible is somehow proved false, then the doctrines are suspect.

Theology is not a matter of "blind" faith.

I don't see God saying, "blindly believe in me". Insead, he says, "Come find Me","Ask Me","look". He gave us prophecies and miracles and confirmation of the prophets. God provides evidence to build up faith in people. He gave us a conscience and the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the truth. It might be on a personal basis, but He does provide evidence.

Jeremiah 29:13 - And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

James 1:5 - If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

"I often wonder if some religionists' fear of science is that their own faith may be too weak to hold up without scholastic support from all scholars and scientists."

No. We are the ones wanting to debate, examine the evidence, and examine the assumptions. It's the scientists who are the ones saying don't debate them. Don't look for evidence of design. Completely ignore their theories, regardless of the scientific evidence. Don't give them creditials even if they pass the curriculum. Get their employers to fire them if they believe anything other than the so-called "established" dogma.

It's science that fears their established rationale will fall down if examined too closely.

32 posted on 03/13/2005 10:32:36 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
But in typical man fashion, we screwed that up quick.

Unfortunately Man does get involved with religion – and will often claim Divine Guidance.
33 posted on 03/13/2005 11:00:10 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: DannyTN
It's the scientists who are the ones saying don't debate them.

Too often the religionists who wish to debate are a bit lacking in scientific knowledge – much like the poster earlier who wondered why science didn’t check the DNA of ancient fossilized bone. The religionist wants to use theology to debate science. It won’t work as the two subjects have little common ground – unless you wish to claim that science is a belief system. I will concede that I believe that 2 + 2 = 4.
34 posted on 03/13/2005 11:05:01 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: Dog Gone
"Do you have a source for that? (Egyptian Census Records)"

Not yet, but I haven't completed the search either. The only source I've found quickly was mormon and I don't trust it. But in the meantime, concerning the exodus...

Look at the evidence in post 27.

More archaeology - lack of references though

35 posted on 03/13/2005 11:06:43 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
Your link doesn't work.

My personal theory, after doing a lot of reading about Egypt and the Exodus story is that it is a mixture of fact and lore. It's the written historical tradition of the Israelites finally written down after generations of oral telling.

Some embellishment and mistaken tales were included when it finally made it to the written word.

Archeology doesn't line up with the exodus adventure. A more tantalizing explanation is that the exodus originated in the Iraq/Saudi Arabia region, the historical home of Abraham. The timing would line up with the volcano at Thebes, explaining the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.

The direction of the migration would also coincide with that explanation.

A migration from that area would also help explain the similarities between the Gilgamesh Epic and Noah's Flood.

An exodus from Egypt just doesn't fit with the overwhelming number of objective facts we know of.

36 posted on 03/13/2005 11:23:16 AM PST by Dog Gone
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