Evidence for a young Earth

[Jorge]

LOL! Wow, just look at the flap those wings and move that goalpost!

First it was ANY organic material (i.e mineralized protein strands) should not remain.

Then it was "red blood cells" should not remain.

Then it was "red blood cells with DNA included" should not remain.

Now it's "red blood cells with DNA included exposed to an open environment" should not remain.



Tell you what . You find an example of where any scientist says they found "red blood cells with DNA included exposed to an open environment" in a tens of millions of year old fossil and I'll donate $100 to Ken Ham and AIG.

When will you be radiocarbon dating more fossils and showing us those 4500 year old results you say we should get every time?

- T

*********************************************************************

The more posts of yours that I read, the more amazed
I am that a creature such as you walks freely amongst us.

You take the prize, Tiggy ... you have no peers.

Jorge

[phank]

We seem to have reached the end of the line here. None of Jorge's sources say a single word doubting the ages of their samples. Jorge apparently links to them (or more accurately, links to a religious sources that links to them) on the grounds that IF one ignores everything they say and substitutes unsupportable assumptions, THEN one can use those assumptions to arrive at conclusions unrelated to anything in the links. OK, typical Jorge, what else is new?

Meanwhile, for reasons I haven't been able to decipher, some folks here have wandered off into scriptural debates having nothing to do with former soft tissue, mineralization, preservation of molecules and/or structure, or anything of the sort.

Anyway, I would like to thank Jorge for finding a source willing to link to the actual studies so that those who are willing can all read about this very interesting topic and roughly where understanding of what's happening stand today - and as an added bonus, get to enjoy the spectacle of creationists using direct refutations of their doctrine to support that doctrine.

[phank]

*********************************************************************

The more posts of yours that I read, the more amazed
I am that a creature such as you walks freely amongst us.

You take the prize, Tiggy ... you have no peers.

Jorge

And we also appreciate all the links you provided showing Tiggy is wrong. Why, that's as much supporting evidence as I've ever seen from you. Impressive, as usual.

[JonF]

********************************************

Are you some kind of new species of Dodo bird???

What the heck did you think I was referring to?

In one case the T-Rex blood cells were found in fossils allegedly 68 million years old.
Obviously this T-Rex died in some open environment.
This means that its body - flesh, blood, bones, proteins, etc.- were in an OPEN environment.
And so it must have been, for those (allegedly) 68 megayears.
Ergo, you people believe that under these conditions these materials remained organic
for 68 megayears. Guess what? You are believing in fairy tales.

Yes, it is indeed there for all to see with one simple click.
Now everyone knows that your brains are as scrambled as yesterday's breakfast eggs.

Jorge

Silly me, Jorgy-worgy, I was thinking you meant what you wrote. Re-read my message until you understand it. See you next year.

[lilpixieofterror]

Yes LPOT, you are misrepresenting Cerebrums argument, or perhaps misunderstanding it, atleast when it comes to 2 Peter 3. He never suggested that does who doesn't take the story of Noah "word for word literal" are doomed, which, if I didn't know you better is what you seem to be implying that he is.

Saying that in the end a person will 'follow their own evil desires' and saying that Peter is talking about the literal of the flood kind of implies that how literal you take the Bible goes into play with salvation. Sometimes are argument lead to things we may not like, but that has to be covered too. What makes one 'follow these desires' cause they do not believe the story of Noah is not 100% literal?

You're also saying that you believe that Peter is making a larger theological point here, and that he doesn't necessarily have to refer to a historical event to make his point. But even if that would be true it doesn't deal with Cerebrum's argument in the slightest. Peter could have used an ahistorical event to make his point, true, but the text itself suggests that this is not the case. If we look at the relevant part of the text again it reads:

2Pe 3:1 NIV - Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.
2Pe 3:2 NIV - I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
2Pe 3:3 NIV - First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.
2Pe 3:4 NIV - They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
2Pe 3:5 NIV - But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
2Pe 3:6 NIV - By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

I.e What Peter is saying here is that in the "last days" (whatever that time period refers to) there will come scoffers, who, willingly ignores that "long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water." and that "By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed." in order to be able to believe that "Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."

And again, why does the events of Noah have to be word for word literal for what he says to be true? Where is concept of 'world wide' in the time of Noah? What is the primary purpose of the story of Noah? What is the lesson it has in mind? As Christians we can't simply ignore evidence we dislike, remember, we are told that creation speaks of the majesty of God and we can use them to tell us about the nature of God, why would God tell us this when the physical evidence is not there to support such things as a 6,000 year old earth or a literal global flood? If we can not provide an answer for these things beyond faith, then guess what, we have given the scoffers of the faith every reason to mock. Remember, we have to learn to answer everybody, that is what the Bible commands of us.

I.e Peter appears to be saying that there will actually come scoffers that uses arguments like this (I.e "everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.") sometime in his future, he's not, as far as we know, appealing to some sort of group of "hypothetical scoffers" to make his point.

Yet, humans were not around, according to the most literal views, for 6 days and we are not sure how much of a time would have passed between the creation of humans and their fall, so did scoffers of the faith always exist from the beginning or is Peter trying to make a larger point?

And if Peter is alluding to a group of real people who will actually use aforementioned argument, his counter-argument (I.e "They deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.") makes no sense unless he thinks that what he's referring to is historical in atleast some major sense, because he's refuting a claim about history from the scoffers.

And think about what you are saying. I have not forgot God and I don't take the flood as word for word literal and neither has rogue or Jim. We have brought forth plenty of defense of the faith in the past and I do not know about them, but I do not accept the flood as being literal because I believe it leads to contradiction. On the one hand, we are told that creations speaks of God's majesty, but on the other, we have to ignore evidence against a literal flood. Is that very logical?

The short version: The scoffers that Peter is writing about will try to use historical claims to argue against the coming of Christ. Peter refutes these claims by pointing out that they are deliberately forgetting about creation and the flood. Which is is an extremely inept argument if he doesn't believe that these events are not historical in some major way, because:

1. You can't deliberately forget something that never happened.

2. Using an ahistorical event/allegory/whatever to try and refute a historical claim is one of the dumbest things you can do.

You can deliberately forget God and you can use a thing that may not be literal word for word history to make a larger point.

[rogue06]

Does calling God a "revengeful tyrant" count as hostile? When speaking of Christianity, and specifically concerning Hell he had this to say "I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine."

He compared a belief in God to the instinctive belief of a monkey to fear a snake "May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake."

These are all things from his autobiography. He may have had a respectful attitude in public, but his own beliefs and writings show that he was no friend of Christianity. Hostility doesn't necessarily come about in the form of those like Richard Dawkins, and can actually be quite passive. That's why we have the term "passive aggressive".

I have to admit that I hadn't read his autobiography and want to see the context of some of the remarks before commenting. I really can't blame him for being unhappy about the thought of loved ones going to hell though.

[rogue06]

********************************************

Are you some kind of new species of Dodo bird???

What the heck did you think I was referring to?

In one case the T-Rex blood cells were found in fossils allegedly 68 million years old.
Obviously this T-Rex died in some open environment.
This means that its body - flesh, blood, bones, proteins, etc.- were in an OPEN environment.
And so it must have been, for those (allegedly) 68 megayears.
Ergo, you people believe that under these conditions these materials remained organic
for 68 megayears. Guess what? You are believing in fairy tales.

Yes, it is indeed there for all to see with one simple click.
Now everyone knows that your brains are as scrambled as yesterday's breakfast eggs.

Jorge

The "soft tissue" was encased within the femur of a T rex. The femur is a thick, large bone and especially so on a T rex. The last one I personally saw was at least 4½' tall. This image of a paper-mâché replica next to a girl helps to make the point:

The proteins and alleged blood are deep inside the bone meaning they are not in "some open environment" as you assert.

As I noted in an earlier post Kevin Padian, Curator of Paleontology at the University of California Museum of Paleontology explained it best while commenting on Schweitzer's work: "Chemicals that might degrade in a laboratory over a short period need not do so in a protected natural chemical environment...it's time to readjust our thinking."

[rogue06]

Rogue, for point 1, changes in gene frequency over time has been observed, but "evolution" in the way needed for single celled organisms to have multiple cells, and other such vast changes has not been observed. This is equivocation

You don't need to observe every stage in such a process to be able to determine what's going on. That's like claiming that since you blinked a few times while watching a horse race means you can't say the horses actually ran the entire distance.

And it isn't like we have no clue at how single-celled organisms could have progressed multi-cellular organisms. For instance, analysis of varieties of green algae, some of which are quite primitive, has provided several important clues.

Then there was some interesting research concerning yeast released less than a year ago (see HERE and HERE for details). As the last link puts it, "IN JUST a few weeks single-celled yeast have evolved into a multicellular organism, complete with division of labour between cells. This suggests that the evolutionary leap to multicellularity may be a surprisingly small hurdle."

For point 2, that's interesting, but I would wonder why they are thinking that it might not be history.

It's hard to get a straight answer really. Most explanations sort of trail away if offered.

For point 3, semantics, and YEC is NOT about taking the most literal reading of the Bible, that is a straw man. It's about taking the Bible in the correct context ie. history as history, poetry as poetry, prophecy as prophecy etc. Also if you made a chart for the timeline of YEC compared to evolutionary timeline, and put the creation of man on it, you would have man at the END of the scale on the evolutionary chart, but at the BEGINNING of the YEC chart, and by far less than 1 percent on the YEC chart.

Semantics my eye. It clearly shows that Jesus wasn't taking the creation story as literally as modern YECs do. Try as you might to massage things that fact still remains.

As to taking "history as history, poetry as poetry, prophecy as prophecy etc." do you take the description of the firmament given in Genesis 1 literally and historically? After all its description constitutes roughly a quarter of the verses in that chapter (7 out of 31) and you obviously consider this section to be historic.

As for point 4, another straw man, lpot used the same straw man in her post. My position wasn't that every point a person makes has to use historical sources, but that the points that WERE made, don't make any sense UNLESS they are referring to literal history. This one especially fits into that category.2 Peter 3
New International Version (NIV)
3 Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

"Another strawman"? Don't you usually have to have a previous one before having "another" one? This is one lpot is already covering but I'll add that II Peter 3 is also where we're told "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." This echoes Psalm 90:4 (For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.") though in the former instance the context is the creation. Just food for thought when trying to understand the nature of the creation "days."

More later

[rogue06]

Just want to point out the starkly different ways that Cerebrum123 and Jorge have approached the subject.

[phank]

The proteins and alleged blood are deep inside the bone meaning they are not in "some open environment" as you assert.

A point made by all of the cited papers! Which leaves one wondering, why would anyone (like Jorge's immediate source) provide links to a whole bunch of papers which carefully document the opposite of what they then assert? Could it be they didn't read the papers, or that they didn't understand them? Or could it be that their religious convictions were so strong that they could read one direct refutation after another of their convictions and actually see the corroboration they KNEW had to be there?

And could it be that the only defense of the OP, in page after page, consists of personal insults because Jorge is as impervious to the content of all those posts as he is to the content of all those papers? All of which leaves one wondering what the world must look like through his eyes. Talk about the demon-haunted world!

[lao tzu]

I have to admit that I hadn't read his autobiography and want to see the context of some of the remarks before commenting. I really can't blame him for being unhappy about the thought of loved ones going to hell though.

One of the more interesting observations about Christianity is that there's a Christianity for anyone, but not for everyone. Do you want a Biblically literal Christianity? We've got that. Do you want an exclusive Christianity? Got that, too. Prefer an open, "many paths to God" Christianity? Right over here!

I've got friends in the OSAS camp that claim, by their lights, that I'm still a Christian.

I think there are many forms of Christianity that are truly abhorrent, and many that are admirable. I'd imagine it's not the Christianity that can spur an otherwise disinterested participant to open a soup kitchen for the homeless that Darwin was speaking of here, but rather the Christianity that resurrects the peacefully dead for an eternity of torment. There are plenty of Christianities that find this concept just as damnable as Darwin did.

And in that acquiescence to simple humanism, they are entirely admirable. I can only wish that all of Christianity believed likewise.

As ever, Jesse

[pancreasman]

The "soft tissue" was encased within the femur of a T rex. The femur is a thick, large bone and especially so on a T rex. The last one I personally saw was at least 4½' tall. This image of a paper-mâché replica next to a girl helps to make the point:

The proteins and alleged blood are deep inside the bone meaning they are not in "some open environment" as you assert.

As I noted in an earlier post Kevin Padian, Curator of Paleontology at the University of California Museum of Paleontology explained it best while commenting on Schweitzer's work: "Chemicals that might degrade in a laboratory over a short period need not do so in a protected natural chemical environment...it's time to readjust our thinking."

Aha! This girl is obviously less than megayears old and therefore PROVES evolution false. Ta-dah!

[phank]

Just want to point out the starkly different ways that Cerebrum123 and Jorge have approached the subject.

I urge caution here, however. Jorge is simple to dismiss, since he doesn't actually say anything substantive, he just chants insults and changes the subject.

Cerebrum123 strikes me as much more dangerous, not because he understands the biology or chemistry (which he might, for all I can tell), but because he casts the entire issue into a biblical, scriptural, textual-analysis context, where it most emphatically doesn't belong and which is utterly irrelevant. And I regard this as dangerous because some people here are BOTH scientifically knowledgeable, and scripturally knowledgeable, and it's easy to side-track those people into the weeds.

Really, rogue, we're interested here in learning the means by which certain biological structures and materials can be preserved within certain environments. I don't think we're really all that concerned with what Jesus might have said about it, had Jesus been a paleontologist.

[oxmixmudd]

We seem to have reached the end of the line here. None of Jorge's sources say a single word doubting the ages of their samples. Jorge apparently links to them (or more accurately, links to a religious sources that links to them) on the grounds that IF one ignores everything they say and substitutes unsupportable assumptions, THEN one can use those assumptions to arrive at conclusions unrelated to anything in the links. OK, typical Jorge, what else is new?

Meanwhile, for reasons I haven't been able to decipher, some folks here have wandered off into scriptural debates having nothing to do with former soft tissue, mineralization, preservation of molecules and/or structure, or anything of the sort.

Anyway, I would like to thank Jorge for finding a source willing to link to the actual studies so that those who are willing can all read about this very interesting topic and roughly where understanding of what's happening stand today - and as an added bonus, get to enjoy the spectacle of creationists using direct refutations of their doctrine to support that doctrine.

It is interesting that Jorge will accept the science based on extrapolation and significantly greater levels of assumption that concluded these materials could not have survived in any form this long, he treats it as absolutely true in fact, capable of completely upending the much stronger evidence which supports that calculated age of the rocks from which the fossils were removed.

I find this intriguing because in this case Jorge becomes the 'scientist' whose 'faith' in science derived from a great deal of speculation and assumption denies the clear evidence at hand such assumptions were in fact flawed.

The real story here is that evidence does in fact upend dogma in science. A reality that is quite contrary to the YEC dogma concerning why scientists reject YEC 'evidence'.

Jim

[rogue06]

And I regard this as dangerous because some people here are BOTH scientifically knowledgeable, and scripturally knowledgeable, and it's easy to side-track those people into the weeds.

On a Christian website called Theologyweb I don't see discussing both political and religious issues and implications as being sidetracked into the weeds.