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Posted on 08/13/2003 9:02:05 PM PDT by nwrep
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2 hours, 55 minutes ago
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By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer
BOMBAY, India - U.S. and Indian scientists said Wednesday they have discovered a new carnivorous dinosaur species in India after finding bones in the western part of the country.
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The new dinosaur species was named Rajasaurus narmadensis, or "Regal reptile from the Narmada," after the Narmada River region where the bones were found.
The dinosaurs were between 25-30 feet long, had a horn above their skulls, were relatively heavy and walked on two legs, scientists said. They preyed on long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs on the Indian subcontinent during the Cretaceous Period at the end of the dinosaur age, 65 million years ago.
"It's fabulous to be able to see this dinosaur which lived as the age of dinosaurs came to a close," said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. "It was a significant predator that was related to species on continental Africa, Madagascar and South America."
Working with Indian scientists, Sereno and paleontologist Jeff Wilson of the University of Michigan reconstructed the dinosaur skull in a project funded partly by the National Geographic (news - web sites) Society.
A model of the assembled skull was presented Wednesday by the American scientists to their counterparts from Punjab University in northern India and the Geological Survey of India during a Bombay news conference.
Scientists said they hope the discovery will help explain the extinction of the dinosaurs and the shifting of the continents — how India separated from Africa, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica and collided with Asia.
The dinosaur bones were discovered during the past 18 years by Indian scientists Suresh Srivastava of the Geological Survey of India and Ashok Sahni, a paleontologist at Punjab University.
When the bones were examined, "we realized we had a partial skeleton of an undiscovered species," Sereno said.
The scientists said they believe the Rajasaurus roamed the Southern Hemisphere land masses of present-day Madagascar, Africa and South America.
"People don't realize dinosaurs are the only large-bodied animal that lived, evolved and died at a time when all continents were united," Sereno said.
The cause of the dinosaurs' extinction is still debated by scientists. The Rajasaurus discovery may provide crucial clues, Sereno said.
India has seen quite a few paleontological discoveries recently.
In 1997, villagers discovered about 300 fossilized dinosaur eggs in Pisdura, 440 miles northeast of Bombay, that Indian scientists said were laid by four-legged, long-necked vegetarian creatures.
Indian scientists said the dinosaur embryos in the eggs may have suffocated during volcanic eruptions.
No one claims that science is infallible. Science is constantly looking for new evidence, and revising old theories. If you're arguing against infallability, you're arguing against something that isn't there.
... and Darwinistic science has no foundation for answers about life (not the biological mechanisms, the rest of life)because it has no foundation for such having thrown out the supernatural.
Darwin never set out to write a book of morality. He wanted to explain the way species develop over time. Nor did he throw out the supernatural. No more than other sciences do when they explain natural phenomena that had been previously believed to be divinely caused: disease, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, comets, lighting, the power of the sun, etc.
The TRUTH belongs to God, and all truth is His truth.
Yes, now we're back to my original question. If a scientific observation clearly conflicts with scripture, how do you decide what to believe? This is exactly the problem presented to the Christian world when Galileo discovered evidence for the solar system, which was believed to contradict several passages of scripture. The church forced Galileo to confess heresy, they banned his book, and they confined him to house arrest for the last seven years of his life.
Do you reject the solar system? If not, why not?
You have to use the <PRE> </PRE> HTML tags to post Splifford.
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You: We are begining to see the Scientists that are Bible believing Christians enter the fray. The recent genetic discoveries has lead scientists to pursue the science from the logical perspective of life as it was designed.
1) There have always been Bible-believing Christian scientists. Think of Simon Conway Morris for a recent example.
2) I'm not sure what you mean by your second sentence. What research are they doing that is different than that done by any other scientist? Are they, for example, sequencing specific pieces of dna in hopes of casting doubt on standard biological evolution?
Yup, the functionality, specificity, and complexity of biological systems is showing to many that evolution's claim of random, stochastic change accomplishing anything worthwhile are totally ludicrous. This is especially true in the field of developmental biology where hardly anyone would be willing to claim that the programmed development of an embryo could in any way have been due to random change.
Perhaps you're not aware that science deals only with what can be seen, measured, and tested. If you can figure out a way to do scientific research into the supernatural, which by definition is beyond such methods, please reveal the technique.
No theory comes forward in a vacuum. People's experiences, presuppositions, and biases all shape how they look at things.
That is why scientific observations and tests are reviewed by other labs, to filter out the biases of some individual. Often, results are studied and confirmed by people halfway around the world. There is no reason why scientists in America, India, Japan, and Israel will all come out with the same results unless there's more to the story than the biased outlook of some flawed individual.
Darwin sought to explain world without God then superficially added a few "The Creator" phrases to make it more palatable to an 19th century audience. He was not a Christian and the theory he proposed did not honor the creator of anything.
I don't think you have any evidence that demonstrates such was his purpose. But even if it were, none of that affects the scientific value of the theory itself. It's either good science or it's not. Is Evolution Science?.
Chance mutation is all we are, and that is diametrically opposed to the Word of God.
The solar system is also opposed to the Word of God. There are probably more geocentric passages in scripture than there are which conflict with evolution. But that doesn't bother you. I still don't know why.
Galileo taught things which contradicted not the Bible but church teaching. This is where he ran into trouble. There is no conflict between Scripture and true Science.
Sorry. Actual scriptural passages were presented at Galileo's trial. There's no getting around it; the bible is a geocentric book. I can give you a list of several such passages, but I assume you're already familiar with them. The churchmen who prosecuted Galileo were quite well informed about their scripture.
The Bible was not meant to be a science book, and the Catholic church was dead wrong in what they did with Galileo.
I agree. The Bible was not meant to be a science book. And the Catholic church has recently admitted their error regarding Galileo. He was pardened. Alas, it was about 360 years after the event, but they faced up to the error.
Castigating Christians (many of whom aren't even Catholics)today for something that happened to Galileo 400 years ago is the ultimate of a straw man tactic (which I have so often been accused of building).
I'm definitely not castigating Christians because of Galileo. What I'm trying to suggest is that the struggle you are waging (for the literal interpretation of scripture) is a battle what was waged -- and lost -- nearly 400 years ago. If you can accept the solar system, you can also accept evolution. The Roman Catholic church has learned from its past errors, and now accepts both.
It is important to set proper limits to the understanding of Scripture, excluding any unseasonable interpretations which would make it mean something which it is not intended to mean. In order to mark out the limits of their own proper fields, theologians and those working on the exegesis of the Scripture need to be well informed regarding the results of the latest scientific research.The source of the above is available for you to check for yourself: The Pope's 1996 Message on Evolution. I praise them for their enlightened attitude. That is not castigation.Pope John Paul II
MESSAGE TO THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES: ON EVOLUTION
22 October 1996
As for believing in the solar system, I can see it and Scripture attests to it (including more stars than can be numbered).
Sorry. The solar system is nowhere to be found in scripture. As I said, the Bible is clearly a geocentric book. If you want some passages which illustrate this, just ask.
The oldest known Jewish work not included in the Bible is the Book of Enoch. This is a complex work, written in the third (or perhaps even the late fourth) century BCE, after the return from the Babylonian Exile and the establishment of the Second Jewish Commonwealth (6th-5th centuries BCE) and before the Maccabean revolt in 172 BCE. The oldest copies of the Book of Enoch, dating from the third century BCE, were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls (see below).
The Dead Sea ScrollsBy Ayala Sussman and Ruth Peled
The Qumran sect's origins are postulated by some scholars to be in the communities of the Hasidim, the pious anti-Hellenistic circles formed in the early days of the Maccabees. The Hasidim may have been the precursors of the Essenes, who were concerned about growing Hellenization and strove to abide by the Torah.
Archeological and historical evidence indicates that Qumran was founded in the second half of the second century B.C.E., during the time of the Maccabean dynasty. A hiatus in the occupation of the site is linked to evidence of a huge earthquake. Qumran was abandoned about the time of the Roman incursion of 68 C.E., two years before the collapse of Jewish self-government in Judea and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E….
The historian Josephus relates the division of the Jews of the Second Temple period into three orders: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. The Sadducees included mainly the priestly and aristocratic families; the Pharisees constituted the Jay circles; and the Essenes were a separatist group, part of which formed an ascetic monastic community that retreated to the wilderness. The exact political and religious affinities of each of these groups, as well as their development and interrelationships, are still relatively obscure and arc the source of widely disparate scholarly views.
The Book of Enoch & the Church Fathers
Tertullian, for example, wrote, "I am aware that the Scripture of Enoch, which has assigned this order (of action) to angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish canon either. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the deluge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher of all things. If that is the reason (for rejecting it), let them recall to their memory that Noah, the survivor of the deluge, was the great-grandson of Enoch himself; and he, of course, had heard and remembered, from domestic renown and hereditary tradition, concerning his own great-grandfather's "grace in the sight of God," and concerning all his preachings; since Enoch had given no other charge to Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowledge of them to his posterity. Noah therefore, no doubt, might have succeeded in the trusteeship of (his) preaching; or, had the case been otherwise, he would not have been silent alike concerning the disposition (of things) made by God, his Preserver, and concerning the particular glory of his own house.
"If (Noah) had not had this (conservative power) by so short a route, there would (still) be this (consideration) to warrant our assertion of (the genuineness of) this Scripture: he could equally have renewed it, under the Spirit's inspiration, after it had been destroyed by the violence of the deluge, as, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storming of it, every document of the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have been restored through Ezra.
"But since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us; and we read that "every Scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired”. By the Jews it may now seem to have been rejected for that (very) reason, just like all the other (portions) nearly which tell of Christ. Nor, of course, is this fact wonderful, that they did not receive some Scriptures which spake of Him whom even in person, speaking in their presence, they were not to receive. To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude."
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