Scientist finds evidence of "hobbit."

[CGM]

Well clearly the story came first. Evolutionary belief has been around since the days of the ancient Greeks and Anaximander. Prior to Darwin Lamark was already postulating on it and Charles own grandfather Erasmus was part of some cult think tank called the Lunar Society that tried to create an evolutionary explantion for our origins.

...

If you believe in evolution that's fine for you, I have no interest in trying to 'convert' or dissuade you. I will just maintain however that as someone who has studied the debates on both sides for the last 15 years or so that evolutionary belief is the biggest myth of modern times with not a single piece of real evidence to support it.

Well then, that would mean that the story came first on "both sides" then.

I'm sure I said a few posts back that there were holes in the theory. But it's the best we have.

Obviously we disagree about what constitutes evidence, but so be it.

I also am familiar with both sides. I'm not sure we can limit this to two sides, but I wouldn't say the evidence of "your side" is any more convincing. But then again we don't agree about what is evidence, so that's a moot point too.

Life goes on.

[Andre]

Very sane and interesting debate between you two gentlemen.

[Kev]

Well clearly the story came first. Evolutionary belief has been around since the days of the ancient Greeks and Anaximander. Prior to Darwin Lamark was already postulating on it and Charles own grandfather Erasmus was part of some cult think tank called the Lunar Society that tried to create an evolutionary explantion for our origins.

...

If you believe in evolution that's fine for you, I have no interest in trying to 'convert' or dissuade you. I will just maintain however that as someone who has studied the debates on both sides for the last 15 years or so that evolutionary belief is the biggest myth of modern times with not a single piece of real evidence to support it.

Well then, that would mean that the story came first on "both sides" then.

I'm sure I said a few posts back that there were holes in the theory. But it's the best we have.

Obviously we disagree about what constitutes evidence, but so be it.

I also am familiar with both sides. I'm not sure we can limit this to two sides, but I wouldn't say the evidence of "your side" is any more convincing. But then again we don't agree about what is evidence, so that's a moot point too.

Life goes on.

I don't have a side though really. There are many theological problems that I have and as I said I'm not a church goer.

I reject macro evolution purely for scientific reasons, it's simply not science.

The problem is most laypeople are confused as to what is the difference between macro evolution and natural selection.

Everything Darwin found on the Galapagos Isles and his assertations about finches, lizards and tortoises adapting to fit their enviroment I agree with completely.

Organisms adapt over time to fit their enviroment, and successful traits are passed on, it's absolutely proven and beyond doubt, we witness it happening all the time.

However that is NOT macro evolution. All of the information required to make those changes was already present within the DNA of that species. Nothing new was added.

It's like a computer game or piece of software. The user can tinker around with all kinds of settings to customise it the way he wants, change the fonts, colour layout, add or remove certain features, change the resolution etc.

But unless he adds new material, i.e new lines of programming code he won't be able to add anything new or change the program beyond what the already preexisting code will allow.

DNA is exactly the same. A dog can be bred to be all different size and shapes, to exhibit different kinds of behaviour etc but it can never ever ever grow wings because there simply isn't any coding in its DNA for wings, it will always, no matter how much it changes, remain a dog.

The fossil record literally screams this at us. When a creature appears in the fossil record it appears complete and fully formed, and identical to its descendents today with no trace of any evolutionary lineage whatsoever.

The best examples they have are whales or snakes with tiny bones they try and claim are vestigial legs or a bird that has teeth and is hence reptillian.

These just highlight how much they are clutching at straws.

Imagine if dinosaurs really did evolve over millions of years into birds. So we have 200 million years worth of dinosaur fossils, and 150 million years worth of bird fossils.

But for all the millions of years in between we have nothing. An entire animal group of dinobirds that must have lived on this planet for millions of years all over the world is completely missing.

And now they are going to any lengths possible to try and find this missing dinobird even to the extent of falling for the biggest hoax of modern times when the National Geographic unveiled to us Archaeoraptor in the nineties, the missing link proving beyond doubt that dinosaurs are birds. Then it turns out it was actually two seperate fossils glued together by a Chinese man selling hoax fossils for profit. In fact its a huge industry now, especially in China and Liaoning where every villager is now skilled at finding fossils and 'enhancing' them to sell to the Paelontologists.

We are told that there was once a bear like creature that went back to the sea and became the whales. Again sadly this entire millions of years period has left no evidence and we can't find the bear or any of his descendants.

The whole thing is a big bust. The more we learn about molecular biology the more we know things can't just spontaneously develop new information in their DNA.

We scoff at the idea that the ancients used to believe maggots and flies spontaneously appeared from decaying flesh and carcasses but we still believe in the spontaneous generation of life becuase scientists have somehow convinced us it did happen, but just once and billions of years ago.

None of this is science, and the evidence you keep talking about (for macro evolution) simply doesn't exist.

This has nothing to do with a religious stance, it's a purely scientific position.

Show me the actual scientific evidence that proves evolution and we can discuss it piece by piece.

[CGM]

OK, interesting post, but too much to tackle at once.

Again, and again, we seem to keep butting heads on issues of what is theory, proof, evidence, etc. I have never said Evolution can be proven, any more than you can call it disproven. Which you can't. And you haven't proven or even come up with a better alternative, as far as I can see.

Two points:
I don't agree with the way you have rejected scientific dating out of hand, it's a little more than pure fantasy I would say.
Your apparent claims that DNA cannot change (evolve, mutate) is certainly debatable.


Shall we try and resolve these issues, or move on to whether or not birds evolved from dinosaurs?

Birds from Dinosaurs.
What exactly will satisfy you? Do you want absolute proof? Or just evidence. What about the following.

Dinosaurs are extinct,
Birds are not extinct,
Dinosaurs layed eggs.
Many dinosaurs had three toes and walked upright,
As far as I know, there are no lizards that have three toes and walk upright, but there certainly are birds with three toes that walk upright.
There is evidence of dinosaurs with feathers. (Intermediary evidence)

I would say that constitutes evidence, but maybe not proof.

[Kev]

OK, interesting post, but too much to tackle at once.

Again, and again, we seem to keep butting heads on issues of what is theory, proof, evidence, etc. I have never said Evolution can be proven, any more than you can call it disproven. Which you can't. And you haven't proven or even come up with a better alternative, as far as I can see.

Two points:
I don't agree with the way you have rejected scientific dating out of hand, it's a little more than pure fantasy I would say.
Your apparent claims that DNA cannot change (evolve, mutate) is certainly debatable.


Shall we try and resolve these issues, or move on to whether or not birds evolved from dinosaurs?

Birds from Dinosaurs.
What exactly will satisfy you? Do you want absolute proof? Or just evidence. What about the following.

Dinosaurs are extinct,
Birds are not extinct,
Dinosaurs layed eggs.
Many dinosaurs had three toes and walked upright,
As far as I know, there are no lizards that have three toes and walk upright, but there certainly are birds with three toes that walk upright.
There is evidence of dinosaurs with feathers. (Intermediary evidence)

I would say that constitutes evidence, but maybe not proof.

Sorry but how is that anything more than conjecture, where is the science in that?

How about this.

Flies lay eggs
Flies actually fly
There are types of fly that are extinct
Are they related to birds?

There are so many different kinds of creature on this planet that it is inevitable that many share similarities.

A platypus also lays eggs like a bird.
It also has a beak

Is that a link between bird and mammal?


Plus a common build pattern doesn't indicate shared ancestery any more than it indicates a common designer.

If you believe that God created all life on earth then if things share a similar design its because the same God designed them.

In fact if you believe that one God created all life on earth you would expect them to share similar structures would you not?

We cannot prove or disprove either theory by looking at the similarities of organisms as both creation and evolution would predict such similarites.

[CGM]

OK, interesting post, but too much to tackle at once.

Again, and again, we seem to keep butting heads on issues of what is theory, proof, evidence, etc. I have never said Evolution can be proven, any more than you can call it disproven. Which you can't. And you haven't proven or even come up with a better alternative, as far as I can see.

Two points:
I don't agree with the way you have rejected scientific dating out of hand, it's a little more than pure fantasy I would say.
Your apparent claims that DNA cannot change (evolve, mutate) is certainly debatable.


Shall we try and resolve these issues, or move on to whether or not birds evolved from dinosaurs?

Birds from Dinosaurs.
What exactly will satisfy you? Do you want absolute proof? Or just evidence. What about the following.

Dinosaurs are extinct,
Birds are not extinct,
Dinosaurs layed eggs.
Many dinosaurs had three toes and walked upright,
As far as I know, there are no lizards that have three toes and walk upright, but there certainly are birds with three toes that walk upright.
There is evidence of dinosaurs with feathers. (Intermediary evidence)

I would say that constitutes evidence, but maybe not proof.

Sorry but how is that anything more than conjecture, where is the science in that?

How about this.

Flies lay eggs
Flies actually fly
There are types of fly that are extinct
Are they related to birds?

There are so many different kinds of creature on this planet that it is inevitable that many share similarities.

A platypus also lays eggs like a bird.
It also has a beak

Is that a link between bird and mammal?


Plus a common build pattern doesn't indicate shared ancestery any more than it indicates a common designer.

If you believe that God created all life on earth then if things share a similar design its because the same God designed them.

In fact if you believe that one God created all life on earth you would expect them to share similar structures would you not?

We cannot prove or disprove either theory by looking at the similarities of organisms as both creation and evolution would predict such similarites.

I read this post and quite frankly I think we are wasting our time. No mate, the theory of evolution is a little more than just conjecture. But I sure as hell ain't goona spends hours and hours assembling a scientific thesis for this thread. For starters, I ain't a scientist, and neither are you.

For the umpteeth time, I can't prove evolution, and you can't disprove it, nor can you prove anything else. In fact some of the evidence you have presented is just plain false. Your flood evidence for example I have already shot holes in that.

Your rejection of scientific dating is wrong from a logical point of view. A couple of counterexamples does not reject the validity of a technique, or series of techniques, any more then 100% perfection is required to validate those techniques.

You reject something because it does not fit your notion of science, but neither is the concept of an omnipoptent, all knowing, all seeing creator science either.

[Kev]

OK, interesting post, but too much to tackle at once.

Again, and again, we seem to keep butting heads on issues of what is theory, proof, evidence, etc. I have never said Evolution can be proven, any more than you can call it disproven. Which you can't. And you haven't proven or even come up with a better alternative, as far as I can see.

Two points:
I don't agree with the way you have rejected scientific dating out of hand, it's a little more than pure fantasy I would say.
Your apparent claims that DNA cannot change (evolve, mutate) is certainly debatable.


Shall we try and resolve these issues, or move on to whether or not birds evolved from dinosaurs?

Birds from Dinosaurs.
What exactly will satisfy you? Do you want absolute proof? Or just evidence. What about the following.

Dinosaurs are extinct,
Birds are not extinct,
Dinosaurs layed eggs.
Many dinosaurs had three toes and walked upright,
As far as I know, there are no lizards that have three toes and walk upright, but there certainly are birds with three toes that walk upright.
There is evidence of dinosaurs with feathers. (Intermediary evidence)

I would say that constitutes evidence, but maybe not proof.

Sorry but how is that anything more than conjecture, where is the science in that?

How about this.

Flies lay eggs
Flies actually fly
There are types of fly that are extinct
Are they related to birds?

There are so many different kinds of creature on this planet that it is inevitable that many share similarities.

A platypus also lays eggs like a bird.
It also has a beak

Is that a link between bird and mammal?


Plus a common build pattern doesn't indicate shared ancestery any more than it indicates a common designer.

If you believe that God created all life on earth then if things share a similar design its because the same God designed them.

In fact if you believe that one God created all life on earth you would expect them to share similar structures would you not?

We cannot prove or disprove either theory by looking at the similarities of organisms as both creation and evolution would predict such similarites.

I read this post and quite frankly I think we are wasting our time. No mate, the theory of evolution is a little more than just conjecture. But I sure as hell ain't goona spends hours and hours assembling a scientific thesis for this thread. For starters, I ain't a scientist, and neither are you.

For the umpteeth time, I can't prove evolution, and you can't disprove it, nor can you prove anything else. In fact some of the evidence you have presented is just plain false. Your flood evidence for example I have already shot holes in that.

Your rejection of scientific dating is wrong from a logical point of view. A couple of counterexamples does not reject the validity of a technique, or series of techniques, any more then 100% perfection is required to validate those techniques.

You reject something because it does not fit your notion of science, but neither is the concept of an omnipoptent, all knowing, all seeing creator science either.

I'm not attempting to prove the existance of God, just saying that there is no actual evidence for macro evolution.

I've not attempted to convinve you that God exists I'm merely pointing out that there is no evidence, or even body of evidence that proves that evolution has happened.

The dating methods I reject because I reject the geologic column.

You believe in the principle of uniformitarionism, i.e that all of the geologic features we see in the world today are a result of the same gradual processes that we see at work in the present day.

So gradually over many millions of years rock layers and strata have been built up to represent a nice neat timeline for us to explore.


I however view the world through the prinicple of catastrophism, i.e that the geologic features we see today are borne out through catastrophic events over short periods of time.

Look at the Grand Canyon. Science tells us that was created over hundreds of millions of years by the gradual erosion of the Colarado river.

I don't believe that. I believe it was likely carved out in a few weeks or months due to some catastrophic force of nature.

When Mount St Helens erupted 11 years ago it created a canyon, tiny compared to the Grand Canyon for sure, but it still displays similar features to the Grand Canyon and it created it in a single afternoon.

And Mount St Helens is just one tiny volcano of little significane geologically.

A whole series of eruptions or some kind of massive seismic upheaval could have led to the Grand Canyon being formed over a period of a few months rather than the hundreds of millions of years it is supposed to represent.

That's why I reject the timelines and radiometric dating, because I simply believe an alternative explanation for how the geological rock strata's were laid down.

And then you have polystrate fossils, inconvenient things like for example a fossil tree that has somehow managed to grow through several layers of the geologic column.

Of course the scientists will attempt to explain them away but the problems still remain and are visible for all to see.

Anyway there is no need to get annoyed. You are perfectly entitled to your belief just as I'm entitled to mine.

[CGM]

I'm not attempting to prove the existance of God, just saying that there is no actual evidence for macro evolution.

I will agree to disagree on this point.

I've not attempted to convinve you that God exists I'm merely pointing out that there is no evidence, or even body of evidence that proves that evolution has happened.

If you are now saying that evolution has not been proven, then I agree. I always have, obviously.

The dating methods I reject because I reject the geologic column.

Kind of begs the question, I would say. Agree to disagree.

You believe in the principle of uniformitarionism, i.e that all of the geologic features we see in the world today are a result of the same gradual processes that we see at work in the present day.

I don't accept that this claim of yours necessarily follows from anything I have argued in this thread. Nor do I accept that it is a prerequisite for anything I have stated that I believe

So gradually over many millions of years rock layers and strata have been built up to represent a nice neat timeline for us to explore.

The timeline is not nice and neat. But it does represent a timeline, for the most part. Obviously we are far apart on what that timeline is.

I however view the world through the prinicple of catastrophism, i.e that the geologic features we see today are borne out through catastrophic events over short periods of time.

I think it is likely that yes, some features are borne out through catastrophism, and some are gradual over long periods of time.

Look at the Grand Canyon. Science tells us that was created over hundreds of millions of years by the gradual erosion of the Colarado river.

I don't believe that. I believe it was likely carved out in a few weeks or months due to some catastrophic force of nature.

When Mount St Helens erupted 11 years ago it created a canyon, tiny compared to the Grand Canyon for sure, but it still displays similar features to the Grand Canyon and it created it in a single afternoon.

And Mount St Helens is just one tiny volcano of little significane geologically.

A whole series of eruptions or some kind of massive seismic upheaval could have led to the Grand Canyon being formed over a period of a few months rather than the hundreds of millions of years it is supposed to represent.

Based on what I know, definitely possible, I suppose. No big disagreement here.

That's why I reject the timelines and radiometric dating, because I simply believe an alternative explanation for how the geological rock strata's were laid down.

Hmm, previously you had quoted some poor results as a reason for rejecting scientific dating, but I'll accept that the above is your reason instead. I can accept the possibility alternatives in some cases, but not all. And I don't accept that scientific dating came about as a means to justify a theory. Therefore, agree to disagree on part of your post.

And then you have polystrate fossils, inconvenient things like for example a fossil tree that has somehow managed to grow through several layers of the geologic column.

Of course the scientists will attempt to explain them away but the problems still remain and are visible for all to see.

That's interesting. But I can think of a few ways this might happen. No issue with this point.

Anyway there is no need to get annoyed. You are perfectly entitled to your belief just as I'm entitled to mine.

Not annoyed, maybe a little frustrated. Because not only do we disagree on the "science" we also disagree on what is logic. And I find myself having to repeat my arguments because some of my points don't seem to be acknowledged.

I can prepared to leave it at this. It depends on how you respond.

p.s. don't quote this entire post if you can avoid it, it'll get too messy

[Kev]

ok this post is long but read it carefully especially the bit about the bath as it explains my mindset. See if you can at least see where I'm coming from even though you may disagree. It's a fundamental difference of opinion regarding how the world came to be that leads to a total rejection of dating methods for me.


I gave some examples of bizarre dating results just to show how biased they are.

You may not realise but in recent years 'fresh' i.e unfossilised dinosaur bones have been found, especially in Alaska.

Some, most famously a specimen of T Rex even had remains of red blood cells in the tissue.

If you look on wikipedia you'll see it says it was preserved by some fossilisation process, as yet unknown to science. Obviously they still believe it's millions of years old because of their timelines, just that some hitherto unknown process of preservation has been at work.

What is the relevance to dating methods?

Well how are we expected to believe that they know for a fact the atomic clock rate of decay for potassium into argon, or that Carbon 14 has a half life of exactly 5,700 years when they are now finding unfossilied dinsosaur bones even with blood cells and collagen still present preserved for millions of years longer than previously thought possible by some as yet unknown method of preservation?

The dating methods cannot be tested or verified in any way accept by testing them on samples where we already know the date of creation.

Interestingly carbon dating on dinosaur bones has typically given dates of around 6000 - 20000 years. Of course scientists reject these dates as they are obviously at least 65,000,000 years old and hence they don't use carbon dating on dinosaur bones becuase it doesn't give them a usuable date.

Bascially they use a dating method that will give them the result that matches what they want based on the geologic column.

So for example if you dated the same fossil using 6 different dating methods you would get 6 totally different dates, millions of years apart.

They use the dating method appropriate for each rock strata and hence time period they are dealing with.

It's a bit like body fat monitors.

Obviously a body fat scale has no idea whatsoever how much fat is in your body. What it does is send an electrical current through your body and time how long it takes to go from one foot, up your leg and back down again.

Then in conjunction with certain measurments you give it, i.e height, sex, muscle mass it will give you a number that represents your body fat level.

This level will change hourly based on your hydration level, body temperature, whether you are wet, wearing socks or change any of your height, weight details etc.

The results will then be completely and utterly wrong.

It's exactly the same with dating methods. Based on a nice untouched sample that has not been interacted with in any way for millions of years and has suffered no contamination and had no enviromental or physical pressures put upon it, then you might be able to argue that the decay of potassium into argon has happened at a constant rate. If you knew exactly how much potassium was present to begin with and can guarantee the decay process has happened at exactly the same rate for the entire time you can get an accurate date, hypothetically. You could never actually test it of course as we have nothing that can be independently verified to be millions of years old to test it against.

It's like a finding a bathtub half full of water, and with a tap that is dripping at the rate of one drip every seven seconds.

A scientist could look at the bath, measure the volume of water and the rate of drip and then calculate how long the bath would have taken to fill based on how many water drips would have been necessary to fill it. He could then check how much water was being lost through evaporation, tiny holes in the bath etc and assuming all of these things remained constant give you a calculated length of time it took to fill the bath.

Of course his result would likely be utter bollocks. The bath wasn't filled by a tiny gradual drip of water into the bath over several weeks but was likely filled in a matter of minutes when the tap was turned on. Furthermore in the time frame of several weeks that the scientist gave the bath may have been emptied and refilled several times. It's even possible that the bath wasn't filled by the tap at all. Maybe the tap doesn't work as the water has been cut off and so someone filled it up with buckets from a well.

As you can see without knowing how the bath was filled in the first place any attempt to date when it was filled and how long it took are just impossible.

This is EXACTLY what it is like with the world. Without knowing how the world was formed, the processes involved and the history of the planet for the times we wern't here to observe it we simply cannot possible know or date how long it took for things to happen.

Does that make sense?

[CGM]

ok this post is long but read it carefully especially the bit about the bath as it explains my mindset. See if you can at least see where I'm coming from even though you may disagree. It's a fundamental difference of opinion regarding how the world came to be that leads to a total rejection of dating methods for me.


I gave some examples of bizarre dating results just to show how biased they are.

You may not realise but in recent years 'fresh' i.e unfossilised dinosaur bones have been found, especially in Alaska.

Some, most famously a specimen of T Rex even had remains of red blood cells in the tissue.

If you look on wikipedia you'll see it says it was preserved by some fossilisation process, as yet unknown to science. Obviously they still believe it's millions of years old because of their timelines, just that some hitherto unknown process of preservation has been at work.

What is the relevance to dating methods?

Well how are we expected to believe that they know for a fact the atomic clock rate of decay for potassium into argon, or that Carbon 14 has a half life of exactly 5,700 years when they are now finding unfossilied dinsosaur bones even with blood cells and collagen still present preserved for millions of years longer than previously thought possible by some as yet unknown method of preservation?

The dating methods cannot be tested or verified in any way accept by testing them on samples where we already know the date of creation.

Interestingly carbon dating on dinosaur bones has typically given dates of around 6000 - 20000 years. Of course scientists reject these dates as they are obviously at least 65,000,000 years old and hence they don't use carbon dating on dinosaur bones becuase it doesn't give them a usuable date.

Bascially they use a dating method that will give them the result that matches what they want based on the geologic column.

So for example if you dated the same fossil using 6 different dating methods you would get 6 totally different dates, millions of years apart.

They use the dating method appropriate for each rock strata and hence time period they are dealing with.

It's a bit like body fat monitors.

Obviously a body fat scale has no idea whatsoever how much fat is in your body. What it does is send an electrical current through your body and time how long it takes to go from one foot, up your leg and back down again.

Then in conjunction with certain measurments you give it, i.e height, sex, muscle mass it will give you a number that represents your body fat level.

This level will change hourly based on your hydration level, body temperature, whether you are wet, wearing socks or change any of your height, weight details etc.

The results will then be completely and utterly wrong.

It's exactly the same with dating methods. Based on a nice untouched sample that has not been interacted with in any way for millions of years and has suffered no contamination and had no enviromental or physical pressures put upon it, then you might be able to argue that the decay of potassium into argon has happened at a constant rate. If you knew exactly how much potassium was present to begin with and can guarantee the decay process has happened at exactly the same rate for the entire time you can get an accurate date, hypothetically. You could never actually test it of course as we have nothing that can be independently verified to be millions of years old to test it against.

It's like a finding a bathtub half full of water, and with a tap that is dripping at the rate of one drip every seven seconds.

A scientist could look at the bath, measure the volume of water and the rate of drip and then calculate how long the bath would have taken to fill based on how many water drips would have been necessary to fill it. He could then check how much water was being lost through evaporation, tiny holes in the bath etc and assuming all of these things remained constant give you a calculated length of time it took to fill the bath.

Of course his result would likely be utter bollocks. The bath wasn't filled by a tiny gradual drip of water into the bath over several weeks but was likely filled in a matter of minutes when the tap was turned on. Furthermore in the time frame of several weeks that the scientist gave the bath may have been emptied and refilled several times. It's even possible that the bath wasn't filled by the tap at all. Maybe the tap doesn't work as the water has been cut off and so someone filled it up with buckets from a well.

As you can see without knowing how the bath was filled in the first place any attempt to date when it was filled and how long it took are just impossible.

This is EXACTLY what it is like with the world. Without knowing how the world was formed, the processes involved and the history of the planet for the times we wern't here to observe it we simply cannot possible know or date how long it took for things to happen.

Does that make sense?

OK, I looked into the "famous" case of the Trex with apparent red blood cells found in the bone marrow cavity. The original research, published in 2005, is found here.

Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex -- Schweitzer et al. 307 (5717): 1952 -- Science.

This is very interesting, if true it does in fact shake things up a bit. This original research did not make any claims as to the age of the earth or the age of the dinosaurs that I can see. The only such claims that I can find are those made on websites dedicated to the "proving" of Genesis. For example this site,

Sensational dinosaur blood report! ,

says that this discovery supports claims that dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old.

Usually when there is this kind of discovery, it gets a lot of attention from other scientists, who do their own research, on the same materials and other materials, in an attempt to verify what has happened. In fact subsequent research has been done. Research published in 2008 points to an entirely different conclusion, something quite different from red blood cells. This 2008 research can be found here.

PLoS ONE: Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms

Ok, so at the very least the jury is still out, but as it stand it looks like something other than red blood cells and soft tissue.

OK, moving on to the bathtub example. I do indeed understand your point, more specifically it seems to be an analogy to what you referred to earlier as uniformitarionism.

I also understand what you say about the age of dinosaur bones being determined by the age of the strata in which the bones are found.

I really don't have a lot to say about these last two points at the present time, I intend to do a little more research into scientific dating methods first.

[Kev]

ok this post is long but read it carefully especially the bit about the bath as it explains my mindset. See if you can at least see where I'm coming from even though you may disagree. It's a fundamental difference of opinion regarding how the world came to be that leads to a total rejection of dating methods for me.


I gave some examples of bizarre dating results just to show how biased they are.

You may not realise but in recent years 'fresh' i.e unfossilised dinosaur bones have been found, especially in Alaska.

Some, most famously a specimen of T Rex even had remains of red blood cells in the tissue.

If you look on wikipedia you'll see it says it was preserved by some fossilisation process, as yet unknown to science. Obviously they still believe it's millions of years old because of their timelines, just that some hitherto unknown process of preservation has been at work.

What is the relevance to dating methods?

Well how are we expected to believe that they know for a fact the atomic clock rate of decay for potassium into argon, or that Carbon 14 has a half life of exactly 5,700 years when they are now finding unfossilied dinsosaur bones even with blood cells and collagen still present preserved for millions of years longer than previously thought possible by some as yet unknown method of preservation?

The dating methods cannot be tested or verified in any way accept by testing them on samples where we already know the date of creation.

Interestingly carbon dating on dinosaur bones has typically given dates of around 6000 - 20000 years. Of course scientists reject these dates as they are obviously at least 65,000,000 years old and hence they don't use carbon dating on dinosaur bones becuase it doesn't give them a usuable date.

Bascially they use a dating method that will give them the result that matches what they want based on the geologic column.

So for example if you dated the same fossil using 6 different dating methods you would get 6 totally different dates, millions of years apart.

They use the dating method appropriate for each rock strata and hence time period they are dealing with.

It's a bit like body fat monitors.

Obviously a body fat scale has no idea whatsoever how much fat is in your body. What it does is send an electrical current through your body and time how long it takes to go from one foot, up your leg and back down again.

Then in conjunction with certain measurments you give it, i.e height, sex, muscle mass it will give you a number that represents your body fat level.

This level will change hourly based on your hydration level, body temperature, whether you are wet, wearing socks or change any of your height, weight details etc.

The results will then be completely and utterly wrong.

It's exactly the same with dating methods. Based on a nice untouched sample that has not been interacted with in any way for millions of years and has suffered no contamination and had no enviromental or physical pressures put upon it, then you might be able to argue that the decay of potassium into argon has happened at a constant rate. If you knew exactly how much potassium was present to begin with and can guarantee the decay process has happened at exactly the same rate for the entire time you can get an accurate date, hypothetically. You could never actually test it of course as we have nothing that can be independently verified to be millions of years old to test it against.

It's like a finding a bathtub half full of water, and with a tap that is dripping at the rate of one drip every seven seconds.

A scientist could look at the bath, measure the volume of water and the rate of drip and then calculate how long the bath would have taken to fill based on how many water drips would have been necessary to fill it. He could then check how much water was being lost through evaporation, tiny holes in the bath etc and assuming all of these things remained constant give you a calculated length of time it took to fill the bath.

Of course his result would likely be utter bollocks. The bath wasn't filled by a tiny gradual drip of water into the bath over several weeks but was likely filled in a matter of minutes when the tap was turned on. Furthermore in the time frame of several weeks that the scientist gave the bath may have been emptied and refilled several times. It's even possible that the bath wasn't filled by the tap at all. Maybe the tap doesn't work as the water has been cut off and so someone filled it up with buckets from a well.

As you can see without knowing how the bath was filled in the first place any attempt to date when it was filled and how long it took are just impossible.

This is EXACTLY what it is like with the world. Without knowing how the world was formed, the processes involved and the history of the planet for the times we wern't here to observe it we simply cannot possible know or date how long it took for things to happen.

Does that make sense?

OK, I looked into the "famous" case of the Trex with apparent red blood cells found in the bone marrow cavity. The original research, published in 2005, is found here.

Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex -- Schweitzer et al. 307 (5717): 1952 -- Science.

This is very interesting, if true it does in fact shake things up a bit. This original research did not make any claims as to the age of the earth or the age of the dinosaurs that I can see. The only such claims that I can find are those made on websites dedicated to the "proving" of Genesis. For example this site,

Sensational dinosaur blood report! ,

says that this discovery supports claims that dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old.

Usually when there is this kind of discovery, it gets a lot of attention from other scientists, who do their own research, on the same materials and other materials, in an attempt to verify what has happened. In fact subsequent research has been done. Research published in 2008 points to an entirely different conclusion, something quite different from red blood cells. This 2008 research can be found here.

PLoS ONE: Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms

Ok, so at the very least the jury is still out, but as it stand it looks like something other than red blood cells and soft tissue.

OK, moving on to the bathtub example. I do indeed understand your point, more specifically it seems to be an analogy to what you referred to earlier as uniformitarionism.

I also understand what you say about the age of dinosaur bones being determined by the age of the strata in which the bones are found.

I really don't have a lot to say about these last two points at the present time, I intend to do a little more research into scientific dating methods first.

Yeah I never suggested for a second that evolutionary scientists regard the T rex with blood cells as being a few thousand years old.

Instead they believe they have discovered an entirely new form of preservation which has preserved these materials for 70 million years longer than previously thought possible.

It just highlights their logic however, that not once did this discovery make them doubt the fact that these were millions of years old.

Another interesting thing to research are the laetoli footprints.

They are footprints found in 3.5 million year old rocks that are indistuingishable from habitually unshod tribespeople today. Totally human feet.

When the Leakey's discovered them they hired a tracking expert called Russle Tuttle to analyse the tracks and he compared them to habitually unshod Peruvian tribespeople and found no difference. He compared them to a number of animal tracks and even got a dancing bear to make tracks.

He concluded they were indentical to footprints made by habitually unshod tribesman today.

The conclusion, that our ancestor the Australapithicines (think Lucy skeleton) had by this time evolved our human feet and thus were clearly bipedal.

Never once did it cross their mind that they might actually BE human footprints, as they are obviously too old

The evidence is effectively unfalsifiable.

By the way, the oldest human bone ever found is an elbow bone labelled KP 271. It has been dated as 4.5 million years old.

Evolutionists believe it is evidence that the australopithicines had at this stage also developed human elbows, seriously

[CGM]

ok this post is long but read it carefully especially the bit about the bath as it explains my mindset. See if you can at least see where I'm coming from even though you may disagree. It's a fundamental difference of opinion regarding how the world came to be that leads to a total rejection of dating methods for me.


I gave some examples of bizarre dating results just to show how biased they are.

You may not realise but in recent years 'fresh' i.e unfossilised dinosaur bones have been found, especially in Alaska.

Some, most famously a specimen of T Rex even had remains of red blood cells in the tissue.

If you look on wikipedia you'll see it says it was preserved by some fossilisation process, as yet unknown to science. Obviously they still believe it's millions of years old because of their timelines, just that some hitherto unknown process of preservation has been at work.

What is the relevance to dating methods?

Well how are we expected to believe that they know for a fact the atomic clock rate of decay for potassium into argon, or that Carbon 14 has a half life of exactly 5,700 years when they are now finding unfossilied dinsosaur bones even with blood cells and collagen still present preserved for millions of years longer than previously thought possible by some as yet unknown method of preservation?

The dating methods cannot be tested or verified in any way accept by testing them on samples where we already know the date of creation.

Interestingly carbon dating on dinosaur bones has typically given dates of around 6000 - 20000 years. Of course scientists reject these dates as they are obviously at least 65,000,000 years old and hence they don't use carbon dating on dinosaur bones becuase it doesn't give them a usuable date.

Bascially they use a dating method that will give them the result that matches what they want based on the geologic column.

So for example if you dated the same fossil using 6 different dating methods you would get 6 totally different dates, millions of years apart.

They use the dating method appropriate for each rock strata and hence time period they are dealing with.

It's a bit like body fat monitors.

Obviously a body fat scale has no idea whatsoever how much fat is in your body. What it does is send an electrical current through your body and time how long it takes to go from one foot, up your leg and back down again.

Then in conjunction with certain measurments you give it, i.e height, sex, muscle mass it will give you a number that represents your body fat level.

This level will change hourly based on your hydration level, body temperature, whether you are wet, wearing socks or change any of your height, weight details etc.

The results will then be completely and utterly wrong.

It's exactly the same with dating methods. Based on a nice untouched sample that has not been interacted with in any way for millions of years and has suffered no contamination and had no enviromental or physical pressures put upon it, then you might be able to argue that the decay of potassium into argon has happened at a constant rate. If you knew exactly how much potassium was present to begin with and can guarantee the decay process has happened at exactly the same rate for the entire time you can get an accurate date, hypothetically. You could never actually test it of course as we have nothing that can be independently verified to be millions of years old to test it against.

It's like a finding a bathtub half full of water, and with a tap that is dripping at the rate of one drip every seven seconds.

A scientist could look at the bath, measure the volume of water and the rate of drip and then calculate how long the bath would have taken to fill based on how many water drips would have been necessary to fill it. He could then check how much water was being lost through evaporation, tiny holes in the bath etc and assuming all of these things remained constant give you a calculated length of time it took to fill the bath.

Of course his result would likely be utter bollocks. The bath wasn't filled by a tiny gradual drip of water into the bath over several weeks but was likely filled in a matter of minutes when the tap was turned on. Furthermore in the time frame of several weeks that the scientist gave the bath may have been emptied and refilled several times. It's even possible that the bath wasn't filled by the tap at all. Maybe the tap doesn't work as the water has been cut off and so someone filled it up with buckets from a well.

As you can see without knowing how the bath was filled in the first place any attempt to date when it was filled and how long it took are just impossible.

This is EXACTLY what it is like with the world. Without knowing how the world was formed, the processes involved and the history of the planet for the times we wern't here to observe it we simply cannot possible know or date how long it took for things to happen.

Does that make sense?

OK, I looked into the "famous" case of the Trex with apparent red blood cells found in the bone marrow cavity. The original research, published in 2005, is found here.

Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex -- Schweitzer et al. 307 (5717): 1952 -- Science.

This is very interesting, if true it does in fact shake things up a bit. This original research did not make any claims as to the age of the earth or the age of the dinosaurs that I can see. The only such claims that I can find are those made on websites dedicated to the "proving" of Genesis. For example this site,

Sensational dinosaur blood report! ,

says that this discovery supports claims that dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old.

Usually when there is this kind of discovery, it gets a lot of attention from other scientists, who do their own research, on the same materials and other materials, in an attempt to verify what has happened. In fact subsequent research has been done. Research published in 2008 points to an entirely different conclusion, something quite different from red blood cells. This 2008 research can be found here.

PLoS ONE: Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms

Ok, so at the very least the jury is still out, but as it stand it looks like something other than red blood cells and soft tissue.

OK, moving on to the bathtub example. I do indeed understand your point, more specifically it seems to be an analogy to what you referred to earlier as uniformitarionism.

I also understand what you say about the age of dinosaur bones being determined by the age of the strata in which the bones are found.

I really don't have a lot to say about these last two points at the present time, I intend to do a little more research into scientific dating methods first.

Yeah I never suggested for a second that evolutionary scientists regard the T rex with blood cells as being a few thousand years old.

Instead they believe they have discovered an entirely new form of preservation which has preserved these materials for 70 million years longer than previously thought possible.

Ok let's stay on topic. Forget Australopithicus (sp) for now, you're changing the subject.

You're the one who raised the issue of soft tissue, all I did was follow up and take a look at the available research. I don't think you even looked at the research, you didn't give yourself nearly enough time.

No, in fact the original scientists did not say that they believed they had discovered a new form of preservation.

Where exactly are you getting your info. You know, the occasional reference might be helpful here.

The subsequent research, which you seem to have ignored, did not make statements about these apparent conclusions about preservation, what this new research did do was dispute what the first group thought they had found.

See the difference?

[Kev]

OK, I looked into the "famous" case of the Trex with apparent red blood cells found in the bone marrow cavity. The original research, published in 2005, is found here.

Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex -- Schweitzer et al. 307 (5717): 1952 -- Science.

This is very interesting, if true it does in fact shake things up a bit. This original research did not make any claims as to the age of the earth or the age of the dinosaurs that I can see. The only such claims that I can find are those made on websites dedicated to the "proving" of Genesis. For example this site,

Sensational dinosaur blood report! ,

says that this discovery supports claims that dinosaurs are only a few thousand years old.

Usually when there is this kind of discovery, it gets a lot of attention from other scientists, who do their own research, on the same materials and other materials, in an attempt to verify what has happened. In fact subsequent research has been done. Research published in 2008 points to an entirely different conclusion, something quite different from red blood cells. This 2008 research can be found here.

PLoS ONE: Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms

Ok, so at the very least the jury is still out, but as it stand it looks like something other than red blood cells and soft tissue.

OK, moving on to the bathtub example. I do indeed understand your point, more specifically it seems to be an analogy to what you referred to earlier as uniformitarionism.

I also understand what you say about the age of dinosaur bones being determined by the age of the strata in which the bones are found.

I really don't have a lot to say about these last two points at the present time, I intend to do a little more research into scientific dating methods first.

Yeah I never suggested for a second that evolutionary scientists regard the T rex with blood cells as being a few thousand years old.

Instead they believe they have discovered an entirely new form of preservation which has preserved these materials for 70 million years longer than previously thought possible.

Ok let's stay on topic. Forget Australopithicus (sp) for now, you're changing the subject.

You're the one who raised the issue of soft tissue, all I did was follow up and take a look at the available research. I don't think you even looked at the research, you didn't give yourself nearly enough time.

No, in fact the original scientists did not say that they believed they had discovered a new form of preservation.

Where exactly are you getting your info. You know, the occasional reference might be helpful here.

The subsequent research, which you seem to have ignored, did not make statements about these apparent conclusions about preservation, what this new research did do was dispute what the first group thought they had found.

See the difference?

lol I've been following the debate for the last 3 years or so. Seriously I have read countless books on evolution both for and against.

The T Rex soft tissue is a sensational new find. It's been being debated for the past few years with many different opinions on both sides.

What you have to remember is that creationists will always see things one way and evolutionists will always see things another way.

Any examples presented will be interpereted according to the belief system of the person writing the article, it's up to you to decide (after a good few years of research ideally) which worldview makes more sense to you.

The T Rex blood cell debate is an excellent case in point.

If you research Mary Scheiwtzer directly (the discover) you'll see she and her team believe in some form of miraculous preservation going on.

[CGM]

LOL. I suppose you have no intention of providing refs to support your claim. Not only do I have to support my claims, I have to support yours as well.

[Kev]

LOL. I suppose you have no intention of providing refs to support your claim. Not only do I have to support my claims, I have to support yours as well.

Support what claims? It's a FACT that they have found soft tissue in dinosaur bones. It's a FACT that they have found unfossilied Hadrosaur bones that for over 20 years were discarded as they assumed they were just fresh bison bones from a hundred or so years ago.

What interperations the evolutionists give to this is up to them and you.

I believe it's compelling evidence that they arn't millions of years old but if you wish to believe the scientific account that somehow bones can remain fresh and not deteriorate for 70 million years due to some unknown natural preservatin technique that is fine.