Science or history?

reply to post by theophilus40

First, although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different “kinds” of dinosaurs.

That's a bloody lie.

Read the full article

How many types of dinosaurs were there

Furthermore, not all dinosaurs were huge like the Brachiosaurus,

Right. Some were bigger.

theophilus40

drivers1492
reply to post by theophilus40

 

A question about fossils. You said that we find all of these fossils of animals that no longer exist is part of proof of the flood. Why exactly do we not find all the fossils of animals that do exist now in the same strata? If nothing evolved from previous species this should be the case correct? I'm on my phone so no I did not click the links to aig.

Some of the fossils [I]are[/I] of animals that still exist.

Very very few. And the rest of them are where? It's a fairly straightforward question.

theophilus40
A physician who has made a complete examination of a person without having been told his age could probably make an accurate estimate of it because of his knowledge of how the aging process works. But what would happen if he were to travel back in time and examine Adam and Eve immediately after they were created and was then asked to estimate their age? If he didn’t know they had been created directly he would assume they had been born as babies and base his estimate on how long it would take for them to reach their present state if they had undergone the normal aging process. The result would be that his estimate would be much higher than their actual age.

Youre looking at this as though its just simple black and white yet there are multiple variables that you don't account for which can alter the answers significantly. When were Adam and Eve created? you can't send anyone back in time with an open ended landing date, you've got to know when they were going as well as where so that you can be in the proper geographic location for your time jump. But on to our physical exam of the denizens of the land of make believe. What were the ages of Adam and Eve when they were created? were they created to appear age 15? age 20? 30? Were the 100% physically identical to us? Did they have navels?as being created they wouldn't have been attached to a placenta negating the existence of a belly button. if they appeared physically to be 30 and they had no navels and their wisdom teeth never erupted the doctor would likely perform additional testing beyond a cursory physical. If they had the tech to travel backwards in time then Its also logical to conclude that medical tech has likewise progressed in such a fashion making on the spot genetic testing a distinct possibility, especially when compared to the likely existence of Adam and Eve created from dust and a rib. But I digress... a simple genetic test would determine for your time travelling super doctor that while physically adults, these individuals had only recently been created or cloned or wished into existence, whichever your guilty pleasure involves. And for the record, my great medical and technological leaps of faith are no more illogical than asking a question with a predetermined outcome due to the narrow, black and white interpretation of the inquiry and negation of all extraneous variables and outright assumptions with no basis.

Scientists who try to discover the age of the earth begin by assuming that the natural processes which are occurring now have always been going. They have come to the conclusion that the earth is billions of years old because that is how long it would take for these processes to bring about the conditions we see existing today. But what if the Biblical account of creation is true? Then scientists who try to measure the earth’s age are in the same position as the doctor who tried to estimate the age of Adam and Eve. Their age estimates are off because they have a false idea of how the earth came into existence.

is that really how they've come to determine the age of the Earth? by deciding it should take X amount of millennia for it to occur naturally and extrapolating that date from the guesswork? If you truly believe that's how geology works I can see why creation science/YEC is so appealing to you. it looks amazing when you compare it to the incorrect understanding and ignorance to how an entire scientific discipline works and operates. And while I don't believe for one second the young earth version of history, I'll play along. No, these scientists are not in the same position as the doctors examining adam and eve. In both cases you're making serious assumptions on the diagnostic processes involved and neglect to address that in medicine and geology, often times several other outside disciplines are involved in reaching a consensus. Not just the geology and stratigraphic data but also the chemistry of the samples and radiometric dating are involved in determining the ages of samples.

www.paleobiology.si.edu...

www.cnn.com...

Science can tell us a lot about the world we live in but when we try to find out about its past scientific methods alone can’t give us all the information we need. We need historical information as well. Did the earth come into existence as a result of natural processes or was it created by God? Was there ever a worldwide flood? We must know the answers to both of these questions in order to correctly interpret the data that we observe.

And what historical information exists that answers these questions for you? What historical record proves god created the earth? if you think its the Christian Bible, why the are Hindu texts that predate Christianity by several millennia not an appropriate authority on the past but the Christian bible supercedes it as well as the original source material from the Hebrew texts?

There is scientific evidence that the earth can’t be as old as most people believe. One example is finding soft tissue in the bones of dinosaurs that supposedly lived millions of years ago. This is from an article titled “Soft Tissue in Fossils” in the October 2012 issue of Answers magazine.
Ask the average layperson how he or she knows that the earth is millions or billions of years old, and that person will probably mention the dinosaurs, which nearly everybody “knows” died off 65 million years ago. A recent discovery by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, however, has given reason for all but committed evolutionists to question this assumption.

Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone (femur) of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana were studied under the microscope by Schweitzer. To her amazement, the bone showed what appeared to be blood vessels of the type seen in bone and marrow, and these contained what appeared to be red blood cells with nuclei, typical of reptiles and birds (but not mammals). The vessels even appeared to be lined with specialized endothelial cells found in all blood vessels.

Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially, some skeptical scientists suggested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently Schweitzer and coworkers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria. (See Schweitzer’s review article in Scientific American [December 2010, pp. 62–69] titled “Blood from Stone.”)

Soft tissue couldn’t have survived for such a long time so this is evidence that previous estimates of the age of the world must be wrong. Unfortunately belief that the world is old is so strong that most scientists ignore or try to explain away the evidence rather than changing their theories to conform to the evidence.

There's so much so very wrong with the links you posted that Im just going to skip ahead here and give this link to the paper written by Schweitzer where she herself describes how she thinks the soft tissue was preserved, and shes a Christian and still believes the geological date from the Hell Creek Formation. If the soft tissue ids one "proof" of a young earth, what are some others?

www.smithsonianmag.com...

Some evolutionists have strongly criticized Schweitzer’s conclusions because they are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur bone dated at 68 million years old.
Other evolutionists, who find Schweitzer’s evidence too compelling to ignore, simply conclude that there is some previously unrecognized form of fossilization that preserves cells and protein fragments over tens of millions of years. Needless to say, no evolutionist has publically considered the possibility that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old.

www.answersingenesis.org...

The existence of soft dinosaur tissue isn’t the only evidence that the earth is young. You can read about some of the other evidence here.

www.answersingenesis.org...

Can you quote the names of these "evolutionists" who have criticized Schweitzer's conclusions? Can you prove that any of them

are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels, cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur bone dated at 68 million years old.

? Or is that your personal supposition? Additionally, why in the face of overwhelming data that suggests dinosaurs died out nearly 65 million years ago, is it more likely that they really didn't and the entire planet is only a few thousand years old because we have found fossils with soft tissue? yes I sad fossilSSSS as in more than one. Its not an unknown phenomena as you try to make it out to be. The ignorance of the general population to science shouldn't be treated as an analogy to what people who study science are aware of.

Everywhere in the world we find fossils of life forms that no longer exist. The Bible tells us that God sent a flood that covered the entire world; this would explain the existence of these fossils.

that's some really sweet Monday morning quarterbacking there. that's a 20th century grasping at straws interpretation of the "maybe's and what if's?" of biblical lore in the face of science. There is no mention of this in the bible at all, how does that stand up to any sort of biblical scrutiny?

Those who reject the idea of divine intervention claimed that the fossils were formed gradually over millions of years.

The fact that fossils contain soft tissue is evidence in favor of a flood. There is also historical evidence. Here is what Wikipedia says.

The Flood myths or deluge myths are, taken collectively, stories surviving from human prehistory, of a great flood which has generally been taken as mythical. These legends depict global flooding, usually sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution. Flood stories are common across a wide range of cultures, extending back into prehistory.

The fact that flood stories are found in all cultures is evidence that the flood really happened.

It's evidence that Floods happened, not a singular world wide flood. The fertile crescent is situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a flood plain, with evidence of several cataclysmic flood events over the past 10 millennia. These cultures are the ones that all the Abrahamic religions have based their flood myths on. You keep claiming that its a historical question not a scientific one yet don't seem concerned with actual historical context. its a little odd. There is no dispute that multiple, region devastating floods occurred throughout history. It just didn't happen all at once and everything wasn't saved by Noah and his family of incestuous world saviors. How exactly is soft tissue in a fossil evidence for a singular world wide flood?

Those who believe the earth is young are often accused of rejecting science. In fact those who claim the earth is old are using scientific methods to answer what is really a historical question.

Why do you believe that it is a historical question and that science has no part in answering the question? because that's what you're claiming, that even if it is a matter of historical question that science shouldn't be involved in answering the questions which in my opinion is ludicrous because even in science no answer is truly validated until it has been checked by people of multiple disciplines in many cases. I don't see why having any extra set of eyes and ears to corroborate data is such a frightening concept to you unless you're trying to stack the deck in your favor by setting the rules in order to fabricate a "gotcha" moment.

peter vlarWhy do you believe that it is a historical question and that science has no part in answering the question?

Science does have a part in answering the question but historical information is needed in order to enable us to correctly interpret the scientific data. It is a mistake to regard this as simply a scientific problem and ignore history.