Posted on 05/26/2007 4:48:47 PM PDT by celmak
So, for the lurkers, here is everything compressed into two links:
First, PatrickHenry's List-O-Links (now the Un-Missing Links).
Second, Mark Isaak's Index of Creationist Claims
Why are human bones and human artifacts NEVER found buried together with dinosaur remains anywhere on earth? Why are dinosaur bones NEVER found buried anywhere on earth in upper strata, but only in much deeper strata that is more than about 65 million years old?It's not always so simple or easy as a dino leg sticking out of the earth in the right way.
Wrong answer. The reason dinosaur remains are not found with human bones and human artifacts is that dinosaurs died out something like 65 million years earlier!
If dinosaurs were around during the last, say, 10,000-20,000 years, their bones would be found all over the place, as are the late Pleistocene fauna. They are not there!
Otherwise, evolutionists wouldn't have deluded themselves into their old-age beliefs.
Son, with this Flintsones nonsense you keep pushing, you are the one whose beliefs are being shown to be to be without evidence.
I’ve been following this issue since the midseventies. I used to hear creationists debate evolutionary scientists. Invariably, the evolutionary arguments call for a certain set of faith-assumptions at certain key points, especially the overarching unprovable assumption that nature has always worked the same way in the past (uniformitarianism). If a thinker is granted any set of faith-assumptions he wishes, and is then allowed to shout down any other set of assumptions, then the thinker can erect a theory impenetrable to disproof, by simply clubbing the opposition out of the picture.
The question is ultimately a religious or philosophical question, not a scientific question, no matter how many graphs, recreations, or museum “how-it-might-have-been” exhibits one might erect. Our big cultural mistake has thus been not recognizing the religious nature of the question itself.
Sir Karl Popper, said by some to be one of the great philosophers of science (and certainly not himself a creationist, as he ridiculed theists), said:
“I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program—a possible framework for testable scientific theories. It suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that.
“This is of course the reason why Darwinism has been almost universally accepted. Its theory of adaptation was the first nontheistic one that was convincing; and theism was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached.
“Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation; it is therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research program is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized and improved.” (Unended Quest, Fontana Books, 1976).
Popper is not saying much for Darwinism, because just about any strange idea can be “criticized and improved upon.” At any rate, my point is that the word “metaphysical” is merely a way of tap-dancing around the word “religious.” Granted, many (perhaps most) of those who accept Darwinism (now the term is “neo-Darwinism”) are also theists; but I can’t see how anyone can survey history, examine the controversy with an open mind, and fail to see that the real driving force for the acceptance of evolutionary ideas is that it puts all those “woodenheaded fundamentalists” in their place. As Harvard paleontologist Richard Lewontin stated:
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs,…in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Some translation: Lewontin’s last sentence is a metaphysical declaration of his “prior adherence” to a personal faith? Does it sound “scientific” to speak of rigging your experiments (“create an apparatus…”) to produce materialistic (atheistic) explanations? For a long, long time, it is has been the voices of the Lewontins, the Dobzhanskys, and the Huxleys, with this sort of passionate religious belief in the self-organization of matter, that have controlled what is put in textbooks and what is displayed in museums. Any theory or point of view can reign supreme if its proponents are allowed to protect it in this way.
Let's see how many fields of science you have to NOT trust: Physics, geology, archeology, astronomy, biology, geneology, ...
(scrolling back about a hundred years) ...Show us one instance where a man has flown in a heavier than air aircraft ...
“I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program—a possible framework for testable scientific theories. It suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that.
It seems you get you knowledge from the biased creationists' websites that intentionally distort the truth for their benefit. Read on about Popper:
Many Creationist books have printed this quote:
"I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme - a possible framework for testable theories." Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography 1976, La Salle, IN: Open Court Press
If you read the book, Popper is actually raising the famous "natural selection is a tautology" objection. Popper recanted two years later:
"I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. ...
The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological."
Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind, Dialectica 32:339-355, 1978. See 344-346 for this quote.
and he repeated the recantation three years after that: "... some people think that I have denied scientific character to the historical sciences, such as paleontology, or the history of the evolution of life on Earth; or to say, the history of literature, or of technology, or of science. This is a mistake, and I here wish to affirm that these and other historical sciences have in my opinion scientific character; their hypotheses can in many cases be tested."
Letter to New Scientist 87:611, 21 August 1980
Bunk.
That is your evidence of the great flood. Thank you.
That article was written by "John Woodmorappe," a high school science teacher whose real name is Jan Peczkis, and who is a creationist.
I didn't waste my time reading it. I read a previous article, "The non-transitions in ‘human evolution’—on evolutionists’ terms" by the same author, and it turned out to be garbage.
Did you know he supports evolution? The article I just cited claims modern man, after the Tower of Babel incident, gave rise to Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis. That is a rate of evolution several hundred times greater than science proposes, and in reverse!
Do you see why I didn't bother with "Woodmorappe"?
Whatever. I have seen many references to the 'fact' that evolutionists don't adjust for the global flood but not any posts to show that their was a global flood.
I can’t help but notice that the list of misplaced fossils massively overrepresents such microfossils as spores, pollen, foraminifera, and other small fossils such as conodonts. Of the larger organisms given (relatively speaking, they’re still small), most are marine.
Such small fossils and marine fossils will be especially prone to reworking, in which erosion and runoff carry soil containing fossils to be deposited in crevices in older rock, or surges of water or submarine landslides churn up underwater sediments.
I notice there is only one instance of misplaced vertebrate bones (excluding the unreferenced!! case). I’m suspicious that this is not actually anomalous. The paper is “A New Early Oligocene Beaver of the Genus Agnatocastor from Kazakhstan.” The Oligocene is fairly early in the Tertiary period, yet the chart says that the fossil is from the late Tertiary. Considering the authors called the beaver an early Oligocene beaver, I suspect that this is a case of a fossil being “anomalous” because the creationist reader supposed, “Oh, that’s too early for a beaver, I’ll put it here instead!”
Isn't he a self-avowed Marxist?
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