Dinosaurs frolic with Adam and Eve at creationism museum

afp ^ | may 20, 2007 | Mira Oberman

[celmak]

PETERSBURG, United States (AFP) - Dinosaurs frolic with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and an animatronic Noah directs work on his Ark in a multimillion dollar creationism museum set to open next week in Kentucky.

Designed by the creator of the King Kong and Jaws exhibits at the Universal Studios theme park, the stunning 60,000 square foot (5,400 square-metre) facility is built for a specific purpose: refuting evolution and expanding the flock of believers in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

"You'll get people into a place like this that you can't get into a church with a stick of dynamite," said founder Ken Ham from his office overlooking the museum's manicured grounds.

Polls consistently show that nearly half of Americans believe God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. Only about 13 percent believe God played no part in the origin of human life.

Ham does not blame evolution per se for society's ills. He believes that sin has been around since Adam and Eve took their fateful bite of apple about 5,700 years before Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species."

But he says the theory of evolution has been used to undermine the validity of the literal truth of the Bible, heralding a dangerous age of moral relativism which can be blamed for everything from racism to the Holocaust.

Located just outside of Cincinnati near the intersection of the states of Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, nearly two thirds of the population of the United States lives within a 650-mile (1,050-kilometer) drive of the Creation Museum.

It is expected to draw at least 250,000 people a year when it opens on May 28.

[Coyoteman]

And sorry...there are no transitional fossil forms. Not one.

Wrong. Here's one (and see the link below for more). Note the position of this handsome critter in the chart which follows (hint--in the upper center):

---

Fossil: KNM-ER 3733

Site: Koobi Fora (Upper KBS tuff, area 104), Lake Turkana, Kenya (4, 1)

Discovered By: B. Ngeneo, 1975 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.75 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal, paleomagnetic & radiometric data (1, 4)

Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7), Homo erectus ergaster (25)

Gender: Female (species presumed to be sexually dimorphic) (1, 8)

Cranial Capacity: 850 cc (1, 3, 4)

Information: Tools found in same layer (8, 9). Found with KNM-ER 406 A. boisei (effectively eliminating single species hypothesis) (1)

Interpretation: Adult (based on cranial sutures, molar eruption and dental wear) (1)

See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=33

Source: http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/environment/eePages/eeDating/HumanEvol_info.html

But wait! There's more!

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent, by Douglas Theobald, Ph.D.

[Coyoteman]

Archaeological evidence confirms the writings as well.

The global flood has not been confirmed by archaeology.

And early geologists (pretty much all creationists) gave up on the global flood about 1830.

[Stultis]

10.) 12% (3 out of 26) random mutations in a strain of bacteria improved fitness in a particular environment.This is just one line, you will notice the information may have made it stronger in one environment only to weaken in another.

Well, DUH! Fitness is ALWAYS, and in the very nature of the attribute can ONLY, be measured and attributed wrt to a "particular environment". Therefore mutations can only be considered beneficial, neutral or harmful with respect to a specific environment.

You demand examples of beneficial mutations, and then respond by trying to define away the concept altogether by (apparently) demanding inherently beneficial mutations. Such things do not exist. It's as if you're asking us to pour you a glass of dry water.

all of these mutations were done in a laboratory by intelligence and not through natural processes

Not so. The mutations occurred naturally and randomly. It was just the environment that was manipulated in order to establish an adaptive deficit that the bacteria would benefit from overcoming.

You're speaking as if the grounds keeper who laid out the lanes at a track and field event should get the credit for winning or losing the races run, rather than the runners.

[Stultis]

The whole article is filled with man selected controlled environments

Of course if I give you an example that didn't involve a controlled environment, you'd just say something like, "how do we know that 'mutation' didn't already exist in the population, or in some other population that contaminated the original bacterial colony?"

And therefore you'd reject the example. The only way to absolutely overcome such objections is to do an experiment where you know for sure that the mutations occurred de novo because you started with a clonal population. But then you reject that because of the very controls that make such proof possible.

IOW you've essentially made it clear you won't accept any possible evidence in refutation of your claim that beneficial mutations never occur.

[music_code]

The global flood has not been confirmed by archaeology. And early geologists (pretty much all creationists) gave up on the global flood about 1830.

Oh come on. Weren't the first big batch of dinosaur fossils discovered around 1850? And within a few years paleontologists discovered that these kinds of fossils were found all over the world? For bones to become fossils you need: rapid burial; lots of water; minerals in the right amounts. Hmmm...you mean like the Flood of Noah?

Not only is 1830 WAY off as some sort of "consensus date" for suspending belief in the Flood of Noah, there are many reputable scientists TODAY who believe that the earth was once covered by a global flood.

[Coyoteman]

The global flood has not been confirmed by archaeology. And early geologists (pretty much all creationists) gave up on the global flood about 1830.

Oh come on. Weren't the first big batch of dinosaur fossils discovered around 1850? And within a few years paleontologists discovered that these kinds of fossils were found all over the world? For bones to become fossils you need: rapid burial; lots of water; minerals in the right amounts. Hmmm...you mean like the Flood of Noah?

Not only is 1830 WAY off as some sort of "consensus date" for suspending belief in the Flood of Noah, there are many reputable scientists TODAY who believe that the earth was once covered by a global flood.

You are confusing what scientists are finding with what creation "scientists" are finding. They are two different things.

Science has long since determined that the global flood did not occur as described; the evidence for such a flood is simply not there while the evidence against such a flood is overwhelming. Geologists made this determination based on both geology and soils, while subsequently archaeologists and other scientists confirmed that determination based on several additional lines of evidence.

You can cite worldwide fossils all you want, but unless you can show that those all occurred at the same time it is meaningless.

The date commonly given for the worldwide flood is ca. 4350 years ago. Dinosaurs date to at least 65 million years ago, and spread over a considerable time period prior to that.

The only ones who equate the demise of the dinosaurs with a global flood are creation "scientists" who have abandoned the scientific method and substituted their religious beliefs.

[ColdWater]

Let's see now...these old writings were authored by more than 40 different men, from all walks of life, on 3 different continents, in 3 languages, across about 1600 years in time, makeing collusion impossible...yet they tell one cohesive story.

Thanks to a group of religious people that put them into the bible in a manner that would tell the story. Of course there has been thousands of years of re-editing to work out the bugs.

[ColdWater]

there are many reputable scientists TODAY who believe that the earth was once covered by a global flood.

Where are they hiding?

[music_code]

Things evos are not allowed to say:

That any scientist who believes in creation is not a real scientist. Also, no putting the word scientist in quotes.

Like it or not, you evos must accept the reality that there are reputable scientists who accept creation. It does not matter what the biased liberal media or other sources, such as the many liberal science journals, have to say about creation scientists not being real scientists.

[ColdWater]

Like it or not, you evos must accept the reality that there are reputable scientists who accept creation.

Where are they hiding?

[Stultis]

Not only is 1830 WAY off as some sort of "consensus date" for suspending belief in the Flood of Noah

Excerpt below from the webpage indicated.

Note that Adam Sedgewick was one of Britain's (and the world's) leading geologists, and at the time speaking as president of the the Geological Society of London, the world's most important professional society of geologists.

The "diluvial" theory Sedgewick refers to was itself the last gasp of global flood geology in any professional context. (There were a few amateurs around sometimes referred to for the obvious reason as "Mosaic Geologists" who insisted on a global flood well into the mid-19th Century, but like today's "flood geologists" they did no important original research, and their arguments failed consistently and spectacularly to prevail in open scientific debate.)

The diluvial theory attributed poorly sorted gravels found in various places around the world to a global flood. This theory was killed definitively when Louis Agassiz (like Sedgewick himself both a creationist and an antievolutionist) and others following demonstrated convincingly that these "diluvia" were in fact glacial, not flood, deposits. Although as the author I'm quoting notes, this was to follow a few years after Sedgewick's comments, putting Coyoteman off by not more than a decade.

Anyway, the date of Sedgewick's recantation? As near as dammit to Coyoteman's ball park figure which you baldly assert is "WAY off":

Sedgwick, Adam. 1831. Anniversary Address of the President, 1831. Proceedings of the Geological Society of London. v.1 p. 281 -- 316.

A Flood Geologist Recants
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr02.html

A noted geologist once delivered a remarkable statement in a public address before what was, at that time, the premier geological society in the world:

...But theories of diluvial gravel, like all other ardent generalizations of an advancing science, must ever be regarded but as shifting hypotheses to be modified by every new fact, till at length they become accordant with all the phenomena of nature.

In retreating where we have advanced too far, there is neither compromise of dignity nor loss of strength; for in doing this, we partake but of the common fortune of every one who enters on a field of investigation like our own....

Bearing upon this difficult question, there is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established -- that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period. It was indeed a most unwarranted conclusion, when we assumed the contemporaneity of all the superficial gravel on the earth. We saw the clearest traces of diluvial action, and we had, in our sacred histories, the record of a general deluge. On this double testimony it was, that we gave a unity to a vast succession of phenomena, not one of which we perfectly comprehended, and under the name diluvium, classed them all together.

To seek the light of physical truth by reasoning of this kind, is, in the language of Bacon, to seek the living among the dead, and will ever end in erroneous induction. Our errors were, however, natural, and of the same kind which lead many excellent observers of a former century to refer all the secondary formations of geology to the Noachian deluge. Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation.

We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood....
(Sedgwick, 1831, p. 312-314)

This statement is exceptional not so much because it displays the courage to publicly admit to significant error (although such courage is both admirable and sadly rare), but more because of who made the declaration, when, and why.

The speaker was Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University, and at the time of his 'recantation' President of the Geological Society of London. He was a highly respected geologist (and is still considered by many to be one of the greatest geologists of all time), and until shortly before that address was considered to be one of the staunchest supporters of the deluge as a major event in the history of the earth. It should be noted that Sedgwick went on after that statement to confirm his belief in the flood of Noah as a historical event; he did not concede that the flood did not happen, but that it was not a significant geological factor:

...do we deny the reality of a historic deluge? I utterly reject such an inference. Moral and physical truth may partake of a common essence, but as far as we are concerned, their foundations are independent, and have not one common element. And in the narrations of a great fatal catastrophe, ... there is not a word to justify us in looking to any mere physical monuments as the intelligible records of that event...
(Sedgwick, 1831 p. 314)

This was a remarkable change for a man, who just a few years earlier (in 1825) had been arguing just the opposite:

...The sacred record tells us -- that a few thousand years ago 'the fountains of the great deep' were broken up -- and that the earth's surface was submerged by the water of a general deluge; and the investigations of geology prove that the accumulations of alluvial matter ... were preceded by a great catastrophe which has left traces of its operation in the diluvial detritus which is spread out over all the strata of the world.

Between these conclusions, derived from sources entirely independent of each other, there is, therefore, a general coincidence which is impossible to overlook, and the importance of which it would be most unreasonable to deny. The coincidence has not been assumed hypothetically but has been proved legitimately, by an immense number of direct observations conducted with indefatigable labour, and all tending to the establishment of the same general truth.
(Sedgwick, 1825; Quoted in Hallam, 1989 p.43)

His recantation marks the death-knell for that hypothesis, although it would be a few more years before the final convulsions ceased. By 1840, however, no respected geologist continued to propose that the flood was a major factor in the history of the earth.

The timing of this statment is also somewhat important to note, since it establishes the context of his statement with regard to other important concepts in the history of geology. Sedgwick delivered his recantation at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of London, on 18 February 1831. Obviously, this is well prior to Darwin's work; in fact, it will be another ten months before he departs on the Beagle. The first volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology has only been out for a few months, and it will be another couple of years before William Whewell coins the term 'uniformitarianism' to describe the underlying philosophy of Lyell's work. Catastrophism is the reigning school of thought in 1831, and Sedgwick one of its deans.

The factors that dictated Sedgwick's change in perspective are important, but so are some factors that did not play a major role in this conversion. I will deal with those the non-factors first:
-Sedgwick's scientific views did not change because his religious views had changed. In fact, as I demonstrated above, his religious, faith-based acceptance of the Noachian deluge did not change despite his admission that there was no physical evidence for the flood. (See quote above.)
-Sedgwick did not change his views because of the influence of Lyell's uniformitarianism. Although Sedgwick had read volume one by the time he recanted, he was strongly opposed to much of Lyell's work, including the uniformitarian core. In fact, he made this abundantly clear earlier in that same address, when he reviewed Principles.
-Sedgwick did not change his views because new discoveries had made it possible to dispense with divine influence as a cause for those deposits. The nature of the deposits had been clarified, but no new causes had been suggested. In fact, it would be several more years before Agassiz proposed and popularized the idea of the ice age, and several more before that hypothesis became generally accepted.

Why, then, did the good Reverend's views shift so completely? His assumptions and presuppositions did not shift. God was not squeezed into a smaller gap by a new explanation for the evidence which rendered a larger divine role unnecessary. Nor did any of the other unobservable conditions Pagano claims play such a major role in the removal of God from science pertain. What then was so critical a factor to convince a man of the cloth to stop using the flood to explain major geological features?

The answer is simple: empirical evidence. Because the 'diluvial' strata which had been cited as evidence for a global flood were composed of gravel and other unconsolidated sediments, they were harder to investigate than the older, consolidated sedimentary rock. However, after a great deal of study, some geologists had been able to map portions of the 'diluvium' and demonstrate conclusively that they were the result of different events, clearly separated in time. Once this was firmly established, it became clear to Sedgwick and others that if the deposits were clearly the result of a series of distinct events, they could not have been the result of a single global flood. Therefore, as a conscientious scientist, Sedgwick rejected his previous hypothesis.

[Coyoteman]

Sedgwick's 1831 speech is the event I was referring to when I said "about 1830."

Thanks for filling in the details.

It won't do any good however.

[b_sharp]

The transitionals found in the human, whale, reptile, bird, fish, bivalve lines, and many others would all disagree.

"There are no transitions.

The evidence of common descent in the genomes of many organisms would also disagree.

"God was smart enough to use common genome sequences where possible.

The age of the Earth, the distance of the stars, supernovae, the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt would all disagree.

"The earth is approximately 6000 years old. Due the relativistic time shift, the universe was able to age billions of years in the six days of the creation. Oh, that was good,... scary good.

[Creationist]

Read your posting it is controlled environments. Mutations do not increase DNA information, they use existing information and lose abilities.

You have a closed mind to the fact of a God who has created it all.

There is no way what so ever that the theory of evolution can go against the laws of conservation.

Order to disorder is all we see yet you believe that order comes from disorder.

If I begin a new language right now with out you knowing how to glean the information it would be useless as would a change in the DNA information without a receptor to disseminate.

You are essentially propagating Lamarck's theory that external pressures add information.

If it does not happen at the macro why do you think it would happen at the micro.

The Jewish population has been circumcising for over 4000 years to no avail they still have to do it.

Mother's have said they have eyes in the back of their head.

No you are just pushing Lamarck in a different format, sticking your head in the sand to the fact that information is not added.

[Creationist]

Sorry I did not see your post sooner.

Are you serious with that statement.

You are arguing knowledge over DNA, that is Apples and worms.

DNA is a pre-written language that must be interpreted by a receptor that knows what is being said.

It would have to be a mutation to both the sender and receiver for it to work.

You have an invalid rebut, and therefore your last statement is also invalid.

[Stultis]

DNA is a pre-written language that must be interpreted by a receptor that knows what is being said.

Huh? What does RNA polymerase "know"? What does an mRNA strand "know"? What does a ribosome "know"?

It would have to be a mutation to both the sender and receiver for it to work.

Again... What?!? There's no need for any of the transcription/translation equipment to "mutate" in concert with the nucleic DNA! The whole point of the t/t equipment is that it always works the same way, at least for any protein coding gene. Your claim is like saying that MS-Word would have to be recoded if you decided to write a detective story on it instead of a romance novel.

[Stultis]

Read your posting it is controlled environments. Mutations do not increase DNA information, they use existing information and lose abilities.

Yet within those "controlled evironments" (experiments) organisms are perforce doing what you deny they can: increasing their DNA information to adapt to the challenging conditions they presented with. The mutations occur randomly, in the normal way. The controls only ensure that the mutations are occuring de novo and allow them to be documented.

The same thing happens in nature all the time, which is why, for instance we are continually having to devise new antibiotics.

You have a closed mind to the fact of a God who has created it all.

No I don't. Strictly speaking I'm an agnostic, but am situated well to the theistic end of that spectrum. I am inclined to think that a Creator does exist.

There is no way what so ever that the theory of evolution can go against the laws of conservation.

Yeah....

Order to disorder is all we see

First of all: WRONG. Second of all, what in the heck does this have to do with laws of conservation? (Clearly you have no idea what a conservation law actually is.)

Order arises spontaneously ALL THE TIME. All it takes is some energy. Crystals form, sand is sorted by decreasing grain size up the beach by wave action, covenction cells for in liquids and gases, tornados form spontaneously, as do all other manner of storms, as to jet streams, and ocean currents.

If your claim was even remotely correct -- that systems ONLY move from order to disorder -- the entire earth, indeed the entire universe, would be nothing but a choas or an undifferentiated muddle.

If I begin a new language right now with out you knowing how to glean the information it would be useless as would a change in the DNA information without a receptor to disseminate.

Again, you are obviously without a clue about how DNA and it's processing in the cell works.

You are essentially propagating Lamarck's theory

Um, no.

[Creationist]

Sorry you are misinformed, there is nothing on the the planet with increased DNA.

That is zero.

If the information does not exist within the organism already it does not happen.

And by the way natural selection will weed out anything that is mutated as it always is weaker and will not survive the long haul.

You believe what is told you with out questioning if it follows the laws of physics.

Evolution does not follow the laws and is a dream a religion. It does not happen now and never has it is always breaking the natural laws in the unseen past.

[Stultis]

Sorry you are misinformed, there is nothing on the the planet with increased DNA.

Half of what's on your dinner plate, and half of what's growing you your garden, refutes you. A large number of agricultural food plants, and garden flowers, were created by polyploidy (doubling, tripling, quadrupling, etc of the genetic material). This also occurs in nature. Many mutations that are additive in nature (e.g. gene duplications) are observed in nature, in both plants and animals.

You're just wrong.

[gathersnomoss]

What was in those apples?