Posted on 07/17/2009 9:28:19 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
A set of fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex teeth was found in a rock layer that it had no business being in, according to evolutionary interpretations. Discovered in Hyogo, Japan, the teeth came from a 15-foot-tall dinosaur entombed in early Cretaceous rock, supposedly deposited 140 million years ago.
The problem is that T. rex dinosaurs of this large size are not supposed to have evolved until about 30 million years later. Thus, what is “known” about dinosaurs must undergo drastic revision.[1] Haruo Saegusa, a curator at the Museum of Nature and Human Activities, recently told JapanToday, ‘‘If the dinosaur belongs to the same era of the strata [early Cretaceous], the tyrannosaurus could have started to grow larger much earlier than previously thought.’’[2] The thought seems to be that merely adjusting evolutionary development backward will be enough to make the fossil fit the strata.
But the very concept of strata representing “eras” does not come from the strata themselves. That concept began with eighteenth-century French naturalist Georges Cuvier, and it has been in vogue ever since, despite the fact that it causes more problems for interpreting rock strata than it solves, and stands in stark contrast to scriptural history. Young-earth creation geologists have long held that most sedimentary strata—including the Cretaceous layer in which these teeth were found—resulted from waterborne deposits during Noah’s Flood that may harbor fossils from a particular local environment, but do not represent a particular “era.”
The assignment of a certain number of “millions of years” to a rock formation does not derive from the strata either. It is another assumption that is used to prescribe what constitutes “valid” interpretations.
Radioisotope dating is used to bolster the vast time spans ascribed to the geologic record. However, geologist John Woodmorappe cogently revealed that the radio dates are actually hand-picked to coincide with the dates already assigned from the geologic column diagram. ICR’s RATE research also conclusively demonstrated with independent lines of evidence that radioactive decay rates, widely used to bolster deep time, were dramatically accelerated in the past.[4]
Many other natural processes—like the recession rate of the moon, the decay of earth’s magnetic field, or the diffusion of helium from zircon crystals in granite—can be used, along with some basic assumptions, to measure the age of the earth, but these methods give maximum dates that are incompatible with evolutionary time spans.
Thus, the nineteenth-century strata/age/era correlation is in serious trouble. However, an oversized T. rex found in the “wrong age” and the “wrong time” doesn’t surprise creation scientists. If the rock that these T. rex fossil teeth was found in was indeed deposited during the year-long Noahic Flood, then it is easy to explain why a large dinosaur is found mixed in with smaller ones.
There never was an “era of smaller T-rex dinosaurs,” but there was an unimaginably massive Flood that wiped out whole environments, layering and sorting sediments and fossilizing the creatures buried therein.
References (for ref. links, go to original--GGG)
1. For recent examples of drastic evolutionary revisions, see Sherwin, F. The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue. ICR News. Posted on icr.org June 1, 2005, accessed June 25, 2009; Thomas, B. Data Derails Dinosaur Dominance Idea. ICR News. Posted on icr.org September 18, 2008, accessed June 25, 2009; Thomas, B. Dinosaur Fossil Erases 40 Million Years. ICR News. Posted on icr.org June 23, 2008, accessed June 25, 2009. 2. Teeth of tyrannosaurus ancestor dating back 140 mil years found in Hyogo. JapanToday. Posted on japantoday.com June 20, 2009, accessed June 24, 2009. 3. Woodmorappe, J. 1999. The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 27-49. 4. Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE). Posted on icr.org.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
You seem to have this backward.
Wow, ummmm no no, this is FR, perhaps you're lost!?
But more to the point, again, it's not the Christian normal people that are suing to get their ideas across, they get their ideas across, or try to and then it gets shut down, and a sure fire way to understand this is by looking at what happens right here! Lies, insults, attacks, deceit, strawmen, misrepresentations and projections.
Pretty much ANYTHING to stop the message from getting out.
If liberals here could sue GGG they'd no doubt be doing exactly that!
But no, the only people getting it backwards are the liberals.
Yeah, I know shocking to liberals!
Although I stopped collecting about a decade ago, I have a couple hundred antievolution volumes in my library, and have read all or portions of most of them. I also used to attend local meetings of an antievolution group, and twice attended national creationism conventions. I'm probably more familiar with antievolution literature than your average antievolutionist.
I don't have Strobel's book, but from the summary here it doesn't look like there is any ground covered that I am completely unfamiliar with.
The fact that the earth has warmed slightly over the last century is pretty much settled. An "anthropomorphic" cause therefore is not at all settled, and is heavily debated WITHIN the scientific community.
The algoresque curricula simply LIE about the scientific status of this debate. In fact this is a very close analogue to creationism. algoresque global warming propaganda has been inserted into curricula by politically motivated activists rather than as the result of it's having actually prevailed within science. In the exact same way creationists and IDers use popular and political pressure tactics demanding the insertion of their views despite their failure as actual science.
By seeking to have antievolutionism represented in textbooks and currical on the basis of intellectual affirmative action, you're only validating the methods of econuts, leftists, gratuitously aggrieved ethnic groups, and other identity groups looking to have curricula shaped in their interest.
The most effective stance in opposing such crap is to insist on high, hard-nosed and uncompromising standards of intellectual and academic integrity in all subjects. This is the attitude conservative should take, but they can't do that if they're playing the same game as econuts and leftists.
All of which may be irritating, but not nearly so irritating as whining about it. Get over your victimhood already. And your hypocrisy. (The most cursory examination of your own posts quickly demonstrates that you give as good as you get in all cited respects.)
Sorry to all. Usually I ignore both insults and whining, which I think by far the best policy since both the rude and the whiners (and especially the rude whiners) ultimately only crave attention. I'm probably foolish to think an occassional comment will do any good, so I'll henceforth return to ignore mode.
Oh please. Like creationists haven’t used the courts to try and get their “science” taught in schools or in textbooks.
Truth and ideas? Truth #1 is that no scientific theory can start “well something miraculous happened and the evidence is a book” written in 300 AD and you have to take it on faith. Thats religion. Creation makes a great religious story ( guess what I DO believe that a Creator was involved in the beginning of the Universe ).
You have no scientific argument.
Never argue with an idiot.. they drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
Actually, I was not talking so much about anti-evolution as about opening oneself to God. I, personally, grew up in a communist country, was indoctrinated in marxist-leninist ideology, including and especially evolution, because my PhD work was in the field of biological sciences, but at the end, if you are really open to exploring the possibilities, the evolutionary theory doesn’t quite cut it. I realize, that to atheists, questioning evolution seems like attacking their religion, but so be it.
The reason I usually don’t post on these threads is that they turn very ugly real fast, and generally it’s not the believers in creation and ID that start it.
I appreciate you staying polite and will be praying for you.
“Well then maybe you should discuss this w/ DevNet (see post 54) and get one or both of your stories corrected. And then explain all the age-dating anomolies found w/ the recent Mount St. Helens eruption.”
—I’m not positive, but I believe DevNet may have been referring to xenoliths. Lava flow may contain rocks dragged up from within the earth that haven’t melted, which are called xenoliths. Since such rocks are just random rocks dragged up, they can be of thousounds, or millions, or billions of years old, while the lava they are contained in is very young. Fortunately, such xenoliths are easy to spot (thus the name - “xenolith” - foreign or strange rock that sticks out like a sore thumb).
When you were talking about the million year old rocks found in 200 year old lava, were you referring to the study done in Hawaii using K-Ar dating? IIRC, that was a study done specifically to date xenoliths. The xenoliths SHOULD date much older than the lava flow, since the xenoliths ARE rocks while the lava hasn’t hardened into rock yet - so by definition, the xenoliths must be older.
I believe the layering you are referring to from St. Helens are the layers of unsolidated ash from the pyroclastic flow. It was well known that volcanoes can create many layers of such ash in a single eruption long before 1980. Other examples of such are known around the world, such as Cathedral Rock in Oregon, which has many layers put down instantly from an eruption millions of years ago. The difference between these layers and other layers is, well, these are just layers of volcanic ash. If there was a layer of limestone in there, and a layer of shalestone imbedded with fossils and footprints, than that would be interesting.
I'd have a problem with that too if that's what "science" actually said, but since it's not what science says, there's no problem. Competent radiometric dating of recent lava flows yield recent results, as expected. The dating methods work.
No one can seem to explain this fact.
I can explain it just fine. The "creation scientists" who gathered the samples and ran the tests lied, in order to have a dishonest excuse to try to discredit radiometric dating methods.
The dating methods, when used correctly, yield accurate and reliable results. When purposely used *incorrectly*, as was done by creationist Austin during the "RATE" project, unsurprisingly yield incorrect results.
Here's a post I wrote about this on another thread:
Now, "kingpins10", I'm curious to know whether you've learned anything about the reliability and honest of "creation scientists" from this experience. And I'm curious to know if you're in any way upset that they lied to you.In layman’s terms, these volcanic rocks that we know were formed in 1986—less than 20 years ago—were “scientifically” dated to between 290,000 and 3.4 million years old!
No, in layman's terms Austin the creationist is either a fool or a charlatan (perhaps both).
"In layman's terms", here's what he did wrong (I'll leave it to you to decide whether he did so out of dishonesty or incompetence):
1. He chose an analysis lab which CLEARLY STATES that its analysis equipment is not sensitive enough to correctly measure samples less than two million years old. Read that again until it sinks in.
2. Austin then took the first set of measured results, WHICH INDICATED LESS THAN TWO MILLION YEARS OLD, and rather than doing what an honest scientist would have done (which is say, "ah, these results are below the lower bounds of the testing equipment, thus they're just reporting equipment noise"), instead Austin ran around in circles and tried to ridicule K/AR dating for giving him out-of-bounds results that made perfect sense.
3. As for the 2.8 +/- 0.6 Mya sub-sample, Austin sort of "forgets" to inform the reader that almost without exception lava rock contains what are known as "inclusions", which are bits of older crystalline mineral mixed in with the fresh lava flow. A volcanic eruption is a violent and hardly "clean" event and pulverized (but unmelted) minerals are incorporated into the lava as it flows up and outward from the volcano. These inclusions will produce K/Ar dates older than the date of the lava flow because they are, indeed, *older* than the lava flow. A real scientist (unlike, say, Austin) will take a great deal of care to extract inclusions from his sample before sending it to a lab to determine the date when the lava itself flowed, and/or hand-pick a "clean" lava sample which has relatively few inclusions compared to the flow as a whole. That's because they *want* to get as valid a date as possible for the lava flow. Now, guess what Austin didn't do? Gee, now guess *why* he didn't do it? Can you say, "*trying* to get an apparently invalid date so as to have a cheap, dishonest excuse to allege that there's something 'wrong' with K/Ar dating"?
As the old saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out" and Austin (unlike the honest scientists who *want* to produce valid dates) had no interest in getting a clean result -- the more "garbage" the result, the more he could claim a creationist "success". So he *submitted* garbage as his sample (i.e., a sample with inclusions, to a lab unable to date anything younger than roughly two million years).
As Henry Barwood notes, "Bad measurements, like bad science, reflect only on the measurer (Austin), not on the measurement (the procedure)."
For more details, see: Young-Earth Creationist 'Dating' of a Mt. St. Helens Dacite: The Failure of Austin and Swenson to Recognize Obviously Ancient Minerals.
Here is a link showing similar problems with the Rubidium-Strontium dating method. Where one set of rocks are dated much older than they are known to be.
Exact same issue (lava rock with inclusions) submitted by the exact same creationist "researcher" (Steven A. Austin). He appears to be a one-trick pony.
Whether such problems have been identified in all radiometric dating methods, I do not know.
"Such problems"? Yeah, if you submit "dirty" samples for testing, you get "dirty" results. So what else is new? Honest scientists clean their samples first. Creationist "scientists" don't, then try to discredit the testing methods when they get bogus results. Go figure.
But it certainly casts significant doubt on it.
The only thing it "certainly casts significant doubt on" is the honesty/competence of "creation scientists".
See also:
Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion "Dates": Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable DataRATE Project Turns to Deception
R.A.T.E.: More Faulty Creation Science from The Insitutute for Creation Research
So to correct your comment, "When a CREATION SCIENTIST tells you that science tells you a 200-year old rock is 4.5 million years old, I have a problem with the gross dishonesty of the creation scientist." You should too. Creationists lie over and over and over again about science because they see it as a threat to their beliefs.
Trying to "learn" about science from creationists is like trying to "learn" about conservatism from Michael Moore, and for exactly the same reasons.
Anti-science creationists are shameless propagandists and liars. They've been caught at it over and over again. By their fruits you shall know them.
The astute reader will note that I explained these so-called "anomalies" to BrandMichaels back in May, in this post, and even provided him with numerous links to further documentation, and yet now here he is pretending that he has never been made aware of how the creationists manage to dishonestly produce these "anomalies"... Why do you suppose that might be?
Oooh - and please don’t forget to explain how all the layering that represents just one volcanic eruption differs from all other layering worldwide where each layer represents much longer time spans.
It differs from *some* other volcanic eruptions, but not from "all other layering worldwide" -- not every volcanic eruption is completely identical to all others. Duh. Some are fast, some are slow, some are massive, some are on a small scale, some produce mostly ash, some produce huge amounts of lava, etc. Geologists study each historical flow to determine what particular kind it was and how long it took.
This is all taught in Geology 101 -- you know, the same junior-high level class where they teach that rock formation has been ongoing during the life of the planet, and is still taking place today, a very elementary and basic fact you appear to be totally unaware of, given your jaw-droppingly uninformed post #67 in this thread...
Look, if you're going to attempt to find a flaw in modern science, wouldn't it help if you bothered to *learn* some first? If perhaps you managed to miss basic science in school somehow, for pete's sake, there's still WIkipedia to fill in the huge gaps in your knowledge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_of_rocks
I mean, at least try to learn as much as the average 14-year-old... That'd put you at least two years ahead of the average anti-evolutionist, in my long experience. The vast majority of them are grossly ignorant of the fields they attempt to attack; I am constantly having to explain even the easy stuff to them, introduce them to the kind of thing most grade-schoolers already know. The few others know better but are grossly dishonest (e.g. Austin).
Is anyone else getting dizzy from all this circular logic?
Just yours and that of a lot of other anti-science creationists.
I happened to go in almost exactly the opposite direction.
I was open to exploring the possibilities. This would have been somewhere around 1980 or '81, I think, I had read one or two creationist books. I wasn't really convinced to adopt a fully antievolution view, but I did think that the creationists probably had some objections that were sound. (In the posturing and presumption common to young men, I then smugly considered myself an "anti-Darwinian" evolution skeptic, even though I had only read about Darwin, and never Darwin himself, nor any really important scholar of Darwin.)
So, anyway, I got my hands on some more creationist material, read it very carefully, picked out some of what seemed to me the most promising arguments, and then headed to the library (actually a couple local university and medical libraries) where I spent about two or three weeks tracing all the footnotes out to original research sources.
Although it turned out to be a valuable and enlightening experience for a young man, at the time I was shocked by my results. Not a single one of the seemingly promising objections I investigated had a scintilla of validity. They were all based on multiple and egregious misrepresentations of fact and theory. (See Ichneumon's #169 for an absolutely representative example of the kind of thing I found, although IIRC I only looked at one or two examples of a young-earth argument. One, though, also involved xenoliths. In this case the creationist, Henry Morris, didn't do his own dating, but simply lied about what a mainstream scientist did, i.e. suppressing the fact that xenoliths were the intentional target of the dating and pretending it was the surrounding lava that was dated.)
So, ironically (as it seemed at the time) I came out of my in-depth encounter with creationist literature with a fairly high confidence, which I did previously possess, in the essential soundness of modern evolutionary theory, and a perception of antievolutionism as pathologically dishonest.
Ah, yes. The self cleaning blank slate. The name of the perp is new to me, but otherwise the phenomena is only too familiar. Thanks for keep'n em honest (ar at lest limiting the mendacity) Ich!
“Actually, I was not talking so much about anti-evolution as about opening oneself to God.”
Evolution and all faiths, including Christianity, are perfectly compatible. Evolutionists are open to God. All but a few noisy, cultish Christians are open to evolution.
Thanks for your reply goodusername (and you too Ira). I learned a few things from both. But too be honest I still see too many problems for evolution too be fact or beyond criticisms. I may again be showing naivete but why don’t new lava rocks establish a base point then for the ratio of father/daughter elements in the radio isotope dating?
Ichneumon - I won’t bother to reply directly to your post in 170 as it is too heavily sprinkled w/ half-truths and insults. I’ve yet too see any of the facts you present as ‘geology 101’ taught in public schools nor does the average 14 year old present same. Surely you’ve noticed there are quite a few things neither creation nor evolution can describe satisfactorily - any honest assessment does show this at least.
The point I failed to describe previously about the worldwide layering is that most of it has to have been laid down by flood rather than volcanic activity, just the same as most fossils show a quick burial which is the best explanation for polystrate fossils. And the best explanation for soft-celled fossils as well as DNA fragments and soft tissue remains is a young earth of no more than 10,000 years.
Also I have read both Ichy and Ira links and simply see too many problems sprinkled in again w/ the facts. Lastly, not too many FR folks consider wikipedia a good source nor talkorigins.
Our view of the facts do not agree. We will agree to disagree then.
“Thanks for your reply goodusername (and you too Ira). I learned a few things from both. But too be honest I still see too many problems for evolution too be fact or beyond criticisms.”
—That’s fine - I’m not so much into converting or proselytizing, I just like to help with aiding understanding, and learn things myself along the way.
Having knowledgeable skeptics is required if science is to progress.
“I may again be showing naivete but why don’t new lava rocks establish a base point then for the ratio of father/daughter elements in the radio isotope dating?”
—Each dating method is slightly different, but in the case of K-Ar dating, a fresh rock shouldn’t have argon because it’s a gas that can escape. And once hardened, new K can’t get in, and Ar can no longer escape. Thus once hardened, the rock is like an hourglass, with K at the top becoming Ar and flowing to the bottom, both trapped in the hourglass, and all one needs to do is look at the ratio of the two to see how much time has passed.
In essence, each time the rock melts, the sand is allowed to escape out of the bottom of the hourglass thereby resetting the timer to zero.
(Of course, there can be conditions that add complications to this dating method, but those conditions are easily identifiable and other methods are readily available).
All of which may be irritating, but not nearly so irritating as whining about it. Get over your victimhood already. And your hypocrisy. (The most cursory examination of your own posts quickly demonstrates that you give as good as you get in all cited respects.)
Sorry to all. Usually I ignore both insults and whining, which I think by far the best policy since both the rude and the whiners (and especially the rude whiners) ultimately only crave attention. I’m probably foolish to think an occassional comment will do any good, so I’ll henceforth return to ignore mode.
Let’s see, I point out all the whining and rude insults coming form the Michael Newdow types and this makes me the one whining and insulting and rude?
Interesting.
OK, have it your way...Michael Newdow whines and rudely insults, I whine and rudely insult Newdow and all his liberal FReeper ilk...
and NOW, guess what....yup that’s right, you’re whining and be insulting and rude now.
So I guess that would make YOU the super-duper whiner and rude insulter!
Congratulations! (For whatever it was you were searching for, you know this one and only (HOEPFULLY) time!
Try to get creation getting taught BACK into schools as it used to be for how many hundred years.
Sure creationists are trying to get creation BACK into schools after it was forced out by lawsuits from the evo side.
Evolution only has the monopoly these days and has for years. Poll after poll has indicated that the majority of the parents who pay the taxes and whose children attend the schools, want ID and creation taught alongside evolution. Only a few are asking for a monopoly and they're the using the lawsuits to have evolution only taught.
Of course people are going to fight back against tyranny. Control of the local schools belongs in the hands of the local community and if they want creation and ID taught in addition to evolution, there's simply no reason, in a free country, that that shouldn't happen.
So save your *Oh please* about creationists trying to get creation back into schools. What else would you expect after it had been strong armed out? That creationists are going to roll over and play dead while the evos use the judicial system to run roughshod over them? Think again.
If the judicial system is what the evos understand, then that's what is going to be used back.
And if that's too much to ask, there's always the movie.
The algoresque curricula simply LIE about the scientific status of this debate. In fact this is a very close analogue to creationism. algoresque global warming propaganda has been inserted into curricula by politically motivated activists rather than as the result of it's having actually prevailed within science. In the exact same way creationists and IDers use popular and political pressure tactics demanding the insertion of their views despite their failure as actual science.
Ohhhhh no you don't; the ultra-liberal no God, no intelligence, no design, no debate allowed in anything algore is on your side of this debate, not ours.
Along with Chrissy-Fit Matthews and his ilk spewing spittle on the lens with his "settled science" nosensical godless liberal rants about evolution...and this is where you're getting confused...algore exclaimed "the debate is over" Hissy fit "the science is settled".
By seeking to have antievolutionism represented in textbooks and currical on the basis of intellectual affirmative action, you're only validating the methods of econuts, leftists, gratuitously aggrieved ethnic groups, and other identity groups looking to have curricula shaped in their interest.
There's projection and then there's 'this takes the cake projectionism'. Congratulations for the most obvious disconnected projection I've seen in some time!
Uhhhh....NO. Evo-cutlists ARE the liberal left. The only way this so-called theory can stand at all (and forget on it's own two feet) is via lawsuits and shutting down debate and dis-honestly misrepresenting the actual facts and of course liberals bleating 'settled science' and 'the debate is over' nonsense.
But oh no sir...the NEA, ACLU and various other nutty liberals parrot the same insane tripe and demand the rot that is evolution be indoctrinated in public schools period. Ala algore and his 'debate is over' lunacy.
NO dissent, no debate, no questioning or examining the cult is allowed.
All intellligence and design is simply not allowed!
EPIC FAIL stultis, epic fail, and I'm not sure even most liberals will buy such obvious projection!
What's next, algore and Hissy-fit are bible-thumping evangelicals? GOOD GRIEF!
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