Posted on 04/01/2009 10:38:11 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
The 'Mystery' of Octopus Fossils
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*
Around 150 years ago, Charles Darwin asserted that “no organism wholly soft can be preserved.”1 He concluded this based on the assumption that fossilization required long periods of time.
The reality is, however, that fossilization must occur rapidly, at a faster rate than the specimen would decay. Darwin’s belief in vast geological ages, borrowed from Charles Lyell and perhaps from his grandfather Erasmus, led to his misinterpretation that fossils form slowly and gradually. Since Darwin’s time, however, many organisms that were “wholly soft” have been found preserved and fossilized, and by far the best explanation for their formation is not through slow and gradual means, but rapid and catastrophic ones.
Although extremely uncommon...
(Excerpt) Read more at icr.org ...
I doubt this will make even a single ‘scientist’ stop treating every word by Charles Darwin as their Gospel.
If only it were possible to have a rational debate about anything like species evolution, biology or global warming with violating somebodies religion (on the left)....
Personally, I don’t give a crap whether octupii existence 1M years ago or not. I don’t care when kind of ape they find. I (and that is a capital I) am not an ape variation. I’m not even sure I agree with being human if that means I’m going to be compared with some of the people i see on TV. I think there has to be a more intelligent answer to this question. Or tell me how Darwin explains where my thoughts come from and where they go when I’m not thinking about them. I got way to many questions which don’t get answered entirely by any one theory in existence today.
Scientists have continued working. Priests of Evolution have just been spending their time stifling criticism and apologetics, calling themselves scientist and using the power of the government to force us to call them scientists.
Actually I’m a Christian.
And I’m certainly free to ask Creationists to meet their own standards, especially for a claim that should be easily replicated if it were true.
You'd think so, particularly considering if they can duplicate the conditions that produced those results, they should also be able to duplicate the conditions that turn organic matter into petroleum in a relatively short time.
Perhaps an education of what is a fossil is in order for these folks?
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources//rfl/pdf/dino_02_fossils.pdf
It’s not the first cephalopod fossil ever found nor will it be the last. These are impression fossils (trace fossils) and not at all similar to the more famous boney remains. They are very common in all their assorted forms.
Once again, poor understanding of the subject results in poor assessment of the result.
As for the "...by far the best explanation" statement, I reject it entirely. There are at least two, subject, of course, to the effects of "vast" and "rapid" discussed above.
It could just as easily be the suspension of the normal decay mechanism due to unknown peculiar local conditions, or much more rapid mineralization than is normally assumed.
The scientific method requires all possible alternative explanations.
You’re a Christian but you deny the Bible, the only revelation of Christ? The foundation of Christianity is the fall of man, our need for a Saviour. The fall of man is impossible within the religion of Evolution. So did Adams sin separate subsequent generations from God?
I’ll just believe what the Bible says, it wont change. In another 150 years the evidence will be overwhelmingly in favor of the Theory of Space Alien ancestry.
The notion of rapid preservation is NOT a description of the time required for fossilization but instead is the time in which the specimen was buried in an anoxic environment that would prevent rapid decay long enough that an impression could be formed and preserved in the strata.
This does not affect the age characteristics of the rock formation.
Please stay on topic and quit crying heresy when you find yourself stalled.
“You’re a Christian but you deny the Bible, the only revelation of Christ?”
Evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible.
I am not a "bible creationist," and I can grasp the distinction between hard science and soft "science." debating those that can't is a waste of time.
But the human reactions on both sides of some arguments are fascinating.
Creationists predicted that this would happen.
“Stalled”?
Was I supposed to answer for something? The replication of rapid fossilization? I, as a rule, don’t argue science because I’m not a scientist. I argue in defense of God’s Word and try to show how God’s Word is compatible with true science and not compatible with Evolutionary mythology. Others who are scientist can answer those sorts of questions.
One of the MO’s of the evos on FR is to immediately discredit the author of the article without answering any of the claims. It shows they’ve made up their minds and no amount of evidence will change it. That mentality is predicted in the Bible. I could go on forever and don’t really have a good stopping point so I’ll just stop here.
Say’s you and others who would corrupt the Bible. Evolution isn’t really even compatible with logic, much less God’s Word.
The existance of a Creator has HUGE consequences. That's why it's so vehemently argued [against].
I think that you may have missed the point. Fossils are never formed slowly; they are only formed quickly as a result of catastrophy. That is why when you see a strata of fossilized shellfish, it is always a complete spectrum of all ages from larva, to fully grown adult in real life proportions, kind of like a "family portrait."
In real life, when an animal dies, the predators and scavengers consume it quickly. When a complete body fossil is found, it is because a catastrophic event buried it before the scavengers could get to it.
I accept your justification and applaud your effort. I disagree in your definition of mythology, however.
Be that as it may. I, too, believe in the compatability of God and science. If the creator could make the world to his design then he would be perfectly capable of building a failsafe into his creation that would allow it to adapt to change (e.g. evolution is change over time within a species).
I do not see that as inconsistent.
Wrong!
It is the only condition that has been observed, but it has been deliberately mischaracterized. - The Mt.St.Helens eruption is a beautiful example of all the principles, fossils, geologic formation, and all in a very rapid fashion. It has to be typical of all volcanic events, since there was no unnatural intervention was taking place.
That's right. That's why soft-tissue fossils only show up in certain places in the world ( Lagerstätten ) where either mineralization happens unusually quickly, or absence of oxygen causes decay to happen unusually slowly. See here for more info about the fossil octopus.
God could have done that, I guess, but He told us in His Word that He did it another way. Which would lead me to believe, He did it the best way. But death and pain, pre-sin, is not compatible with the foundational message of the Bible: Man is separated from God by sin and in need of Salvation that only God can provide.
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