Christians and Dinosaurs

[Mr. Neil]

Now, CT!

 

We do not argue our opponents into silence here. Just because txviper doesn't answer doesn't mean that he's wrong. Why, if that's the kind of standard science employed, to talk one's opponent into submission, then that would be a grand blow to the integrity of peer review.

 

Fortunately for us, however, the reason why txviper hasn't been able to answer is because all of his opening suppositions of his opposition were demonstrably incorrect, hopelessly misrepresentative, and antithetical to truth!

 

In other words, his silence is not the proof of our victory, but rather the expected result after having the rug pulled out from under him. He never had an argument, and so he had already lost by the time he began promising the forthcoming rebuttal that never came.

 

 

So yes, let's stick a fork in him, 'cause he's done.

[scitsofreaky]

Mr. Neil, I'm surprised you even addressed the Oviraptor as one of the "'strongest.'" I don't see any resemblence at all, except maybe that they both have a mouth, tail and appendages.

I learn nearly every time you post anything, for that I thank you.

[Mr. Neil]

Well, they're all pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel, if you think about it. All of them are very, very bad.

 

It wasn't so much the vague resemblance, but the fact that it was even the same region where Oviraptors are commonly found that that statue was made. It does have one or two similar features, but then you look at everything else on the page that just has nothing at all.

 

Like I said, It's more of a "least weak" than a strong.

[scitsofreaky]

I realize it is just a "least weak" one. The only two that I considered to be "least weak" were the Bracheo-esques and Plesio-esque drawings.

I doubt too many even think about regions, as far as they are concerned all dinos roamed everywhere at the same time.

I was going to ask about the cave drawing of the sauropod because it seemed to be the strongest, but then I realized that its tail was dragging. I still wonder what they were drawing, assuming they are legit.

[Mr. Neil]

I doubt too many even think about regions, as far as they are concerned all dinos roamed everywhere at the same time.

You know, that's a very good point. I'm always awarding creationist with my level of knowledge and detail. Quite often, coincidences such as these are just lost on creationists. They're not really thinking about things like that.

[txviper]

It’s taken me awhile to respond as I can only find few-minute intervals to read or compose.

 

 

In retro-regards to the T-Rex soft tissue anomaly:

 

“viper obviously doesn't understand what it is that was actually found”

 

Schweitzer’s description of what they are dealing with does not match your perception.

 

"This is fossilised bone in the sense that it's from an extinct animal but it doesn't have a lot of the characteristics of what people would call a fossil," she told the BBC's Science In Action programme”

 

 

 

“the misconception that this sample is a wholely perserved, hemoglobin-and-blood-rich sample

of dino soft stuff. Nothing could be more wrong”

 

What was found is what was found:

 

“She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone”

 

 

 

“Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately

assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

The sample didn't yeild blood or anything like that"

 

Sorry, but yes it did yield “something like that”.

 

 

 

“What was found was fragments of degraded hemoglobin and what they think might be the remnants of blood that had to be demineralized in a weak acid”

 

It was the bone that had to be demineralized, and at that, some of the subject bone was not mineralized at all:

 

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything."

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4379577.stm

 

The material was obviously not fossilized. Fossilization means that the tissues have been replaced with minerals. No dilute acid is going to liberate the tissue so that it will appear as it does in these (very cool and variable) photos:

 

http://ltc.smm.org/buzz/node/67

 

 

 

“I tried to lead him with some subtle clues about animals preserved in amber”

 

Animals, namely insects, preserved in amber, are a problem for evolutionary theory. Stasis of species over supposed millions (billions in the case of bacteria) of years, flies in the face of the effectiveness of mutations. As often as not, the preserved specimens are not appreciably different than those living now. While we are near the subject, punctuated equilibrium, which you accept as “correct”, is a theory which was formulated for a reason. Perhaps you’d like to explain to the readers here just what this theory is about and what phenomena it is supposed to address.

 

 

 

Back to the T-Rex:

 

“creationists thinking that this is somehow evidence against the great ages of the Earth”

 

It is. But you have to have the capacity to appreciate how long 65 million years is. For a perspective, the pyramids are dated something near 5,000 years old. What do you suppose they will look like in another 5,000? 25,000? 100,000? 500,000? A million? Five million? Twenty-five million? Sixty-five million? There is such a thing as entropy and there is no hiding from the effects of it. That soft tissue could remain in state 65 million years is nothing short of ludicrous.

 

 

 

“They didn't find anything about this fossil that was even remotely damaging to the scientifically accepted age of the Earth…..the fossil preservation of the t-rex tissue doesn't yet show to contain anything that would be difficult for the great ages of the Earth! There's absolutely no argument that can be made at all!”

 

This is a pronouncement, made with no lab or other analysis. If you search for it, you will find very little in the way of information concerning time and taphonomy beyond expectations that fossilization occurs quickly, in a short number of years, not thousands or millions. If you are comfortable and convinced that long ages are a sure thing, well good. You believe lots of amazing things. Serious issues are still involved here whether you have the capacity to appreciate them or not.

 

 

 

“the intellectual dubiousness of such fine creationist organizations as Answers in Genesis”

 

AIG has some very respectable people on staff and their arguments are quite strong. Being and atheist does not enhance a person’s doctorate nor IQ. In fact, atheism in scientific pursuits is hobbled by a circularity in reasoning. God is rejected because there is no proof, proof of Him is rejected because there is no God. Creationists are not inhibited by this breach in logic.

 

Further, it should be pointed out that the fathers of the sciences were creationists, some of them profound Bible thumpers. You would perhaps consider their views as quaint, they would perceive yours as shallow. Newton spent years on the book of Daniel, but I am not aware of him stumbling on anything as innocuous as the Genesis reference to the creation of the moon.

 

 

 

“In fact, the sample is chemically altered that it barely constitutes as the original matter that made up the tissue. Rather, it appears to have become a polymer resistant to normal fossilization”

 

The above would fall into the technical category of “completely wrong”. The structures are intact, not some dissolved mass. Anything beyond this is conjecture, nothing more.

 

 

 

On radiometric dating:

 

“You'll also notice that I highlighted one section in particular, Hell's Creek. That's where the T-rex with preserved tissue was found. As you can see, the animal was buried in rock formations that have been dated very precisely to 64+ million years old”

 

The veracity of radiometric dating will be in dispute for the foreseeable future. It is still an assumptive and indirect methodology. Sedimentary rock, where all the fossils are found, cannot be r-dated.

 

Hell's Creek is a 180 foot deep sedimentary formation. What is your theory as to where all that material came from?

 

 

 

”Now, it's typical for creationists to handwave radiometric dating”

 

No, it is typical for young earth creationists to remark on the problems associated with radiometric dating and the checkered history of these methods. Old earth creationists, which I was until just a few years back, accept the accuracy of rd. It might be a gun, but it is by no means a smoking gun. I don’t anticipate having to revert to a theological framework which I comfortably discarded. Radiometric dating is only one of a plethora is issues involved in this debate.

 

 

 

“instances where dating has been inconsistent…… as discomforting as it may initially appear that radiometric dating can be fooled, it's important to note that there are actually relatively few cases in which this happens”

 

This is simply false. Entire rd methods have been set aside on account of reliability problems.

 

 

 

“a problem with excess argon in 40Ar/39Ar dating would not carry over to another method. If all of these tests are wrong, then what could possibly be making them all register dates of 64+ million years?!”

 

But they don’t. There is a great deal of selectivity in r-dating. Sometimes for good reason, but in other cases, it is shopping for a desired outcome. It the Dalrymple article you referenced, there are several things worth considering:

 

“the radiometric ages agree, within analytical error, with the relative positions of the dated ash beds as determined by the geologic mapping and the fossil assemblages”

 

“both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils”

 

The author here is referring to, but avoiding direct use of the term, index fossils. These are fossils presumptuously dated and used to set targets. In other words, if you find x fossil, you are in x strata which is supposed to be x geologic period. R-dating will never be stand-alone. Index fossils keep evolutionary geologists in the safe haven of expectation and out of anomalous harm’s way.

 

Also interesting is this quote from your NCSE article:

 

“In addition to shocked quartz grains and high concentrations of iridium, the K-T impact produced tektites, which are small glass spherules that form from rock that is instantaneously melted by a large impact. The K-T tektites were ejected into the atmosphere and deposited some distance away. Tektites are easily recognizable and form in no other way”

 

First, tektites have by no means be conclusively determined to be related to meteor or other impacts. That is strictly a theory, and perhaps the prevailing one, but the facts are still antagonistic to that idea. There are only a few (4 to 7 depending on who you are reading) places on the earth that qualify as tektite-strewn. With hundreds of known impact sites, very few are associated with tektites, which are believed to be molten glass ejecta generated by the impact. There are substantial questions about their origin, lots of odd circumstances about their occurrence and numerous theories about them. Periodic showers of e-t material is much more plausible in my mind. Dalrymple is way out on a limb about their formation. Also, though I can't say that the data is not there, I was not able to find anthing indicating that tektites have been dated at ages near 65 million years. Most of them are thought to be much younger. The oldest date I saw was around 35 million, the youngest 700,000.

 

Continuing:

 

“so the discovery of a sedimentary bed (the Beloc Formation) in Haiti that contained tektites and that, from fossil evidence, coincided with the K-T boundary provided an obvious candidate for dating”

 

Here again, index fossils are used to pre-assign the dates before they are “determined”. Creationists often point out the circular reasoning involved in this technique. The fossils date the layers, the layers date the fossils.

 

 

 

”The coincidence that txviper would have to appeal to would be absolutely absurd"

 

Well, while we consider that absolute absurdity, let’s not lose sight of the fact that anyone reading this has 11 billion specialized nerve cells and a million billion synaptic connections in their brain. You believe that this incomprehensively complex structure happened as the result of accidental, random DNA replication errors called mutations.

 

A good exercise for you would be to explain how something like liver function ever developed. If that is too involved, perhaps you could comment on how sight and hearing developed without any awareness that there was light or sound to perceive. You have to admit, that is one fine long streak of luck in the mutations department. Especially since these senses could not function until all of the hardware components, the transmission apparatus to the brain, and the brain function of translating the signals into images and sound were all in place. Which one of these do you think was the last to occur by way of random mutation? Can you explain the environmental pressure which would keep selecting blindness and deafness anticipating that sight and hearing were only a few million years away?

 

 

 

Back to dating:

 

“He would be suggesting that somehow, hundreds of analyses (or even the fifty or so in the table above) are all insanely wrong, despite being so consistant with each other”

 

These conclusions are arrived at on the basis of assumptions and are anything but direct measurements. You are wrong about consistency and low anomalous numbers. There is plenty to read about it on the net. But you will likely not find trustworthy material in NCSE literature. The National Center for Science Education is a political lobby group seeking to have their exclusive religion publicly funded and propagated. Dalrymple, who is a very smart guy, is nonetheless a very political figure in the C/E debate and is no less subject to bias than anyone else. Dawkins would be one of your apostles, Dalrymple is an evangelist.

 

 

 

“Tx, why is it so different that something could survive 65 mil years or 6,000 years?.........If it would be destroyed because it's 65 mil yr, then it would not be able to be 6,000 years either……Couldn't the same process save it for 65 mil years? If not, why?”

 

Reasonable limitations. If I put fish in the freezer, it will keep for about a year, maybe two. It will not be suitable to eat 150 years from now.

 

 

 

"This is, of course, in reference to viper's Kevin Padian quote, which was, “The conventional wisdom has been that you can’t get residues like this after 10,000 years.” Here's a clue, viper. Conventional wisdom also tells us that you can't get residues like that after 4,000 years"

 

There is considerable difference between 4,000 years and 65 million. But this is a backwards argument anyway. Mummified material exists that is this old. No one is claiming that mummified stuff is millions of years old. Except evolutionists.

[crazy-tiger]

In retro-regards to the T-Rex soft tissue anomaly:

 

“viper obviously doesn't understand what it is that was actually found”

 

Schweitzer’s description of what they are dealing with does not match your perception.

 

"This is fossilised bone in the sense that it's from an extinct animal but it doesn't have a lot of the characteristics of what people would call a fossil," she told the BBC's Science In Action programme”

 

 

 

“the misconception that this sample is a wholely perserved, hemoglobin-and-blood-rich sample

of dino soft stuff. Nothing could be more wrong”

 

What was found is what was found:

 

“She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone”

 

 

 

“Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately

assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

The sample didn't yeild blood or anything like that"

 

Sorry, but yes it did yield “something like that”.

 

 

 

“What was found was fragments of degraded hemoglobin and what they think might be the remnants of blood that had to be demineralized in a weak acid”

 

It was the bone that had to be demineralized, and at that, some of the subject bone was not mineralized at all:

 

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything."

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4379577.stm

"Cortical and endosteal bone tissues were demineralized, and after 7 days, several fragments of the lining tissue exhibited unusual characteristics not normally observed in fossil bone. Removal of the mineral phase left a flexible vascular tissue that demonstrated great elasticity and resilience upon manipulation"

 

"Complete demineralization of the cortical bone released thin and transparent soft-tissue vessels from some regions of the matrix, which floated freely in the demineralizing solution."

Ref. here...

The material was obviously not fossilized. Fossilization means that the tissues have been replaced with minerals. No dilute acid is going to liberate the tissue so that it will appear as it does in these (very cool and variable) photos:

 

http://ltc.smm.org/buzz/node/67

Tsk tsk... go to the source, instead of relying on media outlets and a kids science site.

 

By the way, you'll find a lot of lovely pictures with plenty of information (that refutes your claims) here...

“I tried to lead him with some subtle clues about animals preserved in amber”

 

Animals, namely insects, preserved in amber, are a problem for evolutionary theory. Stasis of species over supposed millions (billions in the case of bacteria) of years, flies in the face of the effectiveness of mutations. As often as not, the preserved specimens are not appreciably different than those living now. While we are near the subject, punctuated equilibrium, which you accept as “correct”, is a theory which was formulated for a reason. Perhaps you’d like to explain to the readers here just what this theory is about and what phenomena it is supposed to address.

But it doesn't fly in the face of mutations and selection process...

 

If it works and if the environment stays similar, then mutations have little to no effect. (you keep on leaving that out... naughty naughty as it shows you're deliberately arguinmg a strawman )

Back to the T-Rex:

 

“creationists thinking that this is somehow evidence against the great ages of the Earth”

 

It is. But you have to have the capacity to appreciate how long 65 million years is. For a perspective, the pyramids are dated something near 5,000 years old. What do you suppose they will look like in another 5,000? 25,000? 100,000? 500,000? A million? Five million? Twenty-five million? Sixty-five million? There is such a thing as entropy and there is no hiding from the effects of it. That soft tissue could remain in state 65 million years is nothing short of ludicrous.

It's not the original soft tissue, you great plonker! The stuff was mineralized... NOT soft tissue.

“They didn't find anything about this fossil that was even remotely damaging to the scientifically accepted age of the Earth…..the fossil preservation of the t-rex tissue doesn't yet show to contain anything that would be difficult for the great ages of the Earth! There's absolutely no argument that can be made at all!”

 

This is a pronouncement, made with no lab or other analysis. If you search for it, you will find very little in the way of information concerning time and taphonomy beyond expectations that fossilization occurs quickly, in a short number of years, not thousands or millions. If you are comfortable and convinced that long ages are a sure thing, well good. You believe lots of amazing things. Serious issues are still involved here whether you have the capacity to appreciate them or not.

 

“the intellectual dubiousness of such fine creationist organizations as Answers in Genesis”

 

AIG has some very respectable people on staff and their arguments are quite strong. Being and atheist does not enhance a person’s doctorate nor IQ. In fact, atheism in scientific pursuits is hobbled by a circularity in reasoning. God is rejected because there is no proof, proof of Him is rejected because there is no God. Creationists are not inhibited by this breach in logic.

Not to put too fine a point on it...

 

AIG's purpose is to find evidence that backs-up the Bible... anything that doesn't, is thrown out. (look... there's that breach of logic you claim they are not inhibited by)

Further, it should be pointed out that the fathers of the sciences were creationists, some of them profound Bible thumpers. You would perhaps consider their views as quaint, they would perceive yours as shallow. Newton spent years on the book of Daniel, but I am not aware of him stumbling on anything as innocuous as the Genesis reference to the creation of the moon.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA114.html

“In fact, the sample is chemically altered that it barely constitutes as the original matter that made up the tissue. Rather, it appears to have become a polymer resistant to normal fossilization”

 

The above would fall into the technical category of “completely wrong”. The structures are intact, not some dissolved mass. Anything beyond this is conjecture, nothing more.

The above is quite right... in that the structures are intact. However, that is not what Neil said, was it? Nor is it what Dr Mary Schweitzer said...

Yes, this link again...

[crazy-tiger]

On radiometric dating:

 

“You'll also notice that I highlighted one section in particular, Hell's Creek. That's where the T-rex with preserved tissue was found. As you can see, the animal was buried in rock formations that have been dated very precisely to 64+ million years old”

 

The veracity of radiometric dating will be in dispute for the foreseeable future. It is still an assumptive and indirect methodology. Sedimentary rock, where all the fossils are found, cannot be r-dated.

 

Hell's Creek is a 180 foot deep sedimentary formation. What is your theory as to where all that material came from?

So, the results of RD for the sedimentary rocks were just made up?

”Now, it's typical for creationists to handwave radiometric dating”

 

No, it is typical for young earth creationists to remark on the problems associated with radiometric dating and the checkered history of these methods. Old earth creationists, which I was until just a few years back, accept the accuracy of rd. It might be a gun, but it is by no means a smoking gun. I don’t anticipate having to revert to a theological framework which I comfortably discarded. Radiometric dating is only one of a plethora is issues involved in this debate.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD010.html

 

That's 2 claims you've made that are very easily shown to be false... should I keep counting?

“instances where dating has been inconsistent…… as discomforting as it may initially appear that radiometric dating can be fooled, it's important to note that there are actually relatively few cases in which this happens”

 

This is simply false. Entire rd methods have been set aside on account of reliability problems.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD010.html

 

Claim number 3...

“a problem with excess argon in 40Ar/39Ar dating would not carry over to another method. If all of these tests are wrong, then what could possibly be making them all register dates of 64+ million years?!”

 

But they don’t. There is a great deal of selectivity in r-dating. Sometimes for good reason, but in other cases, it is shopping for a desired outcome. It the Dalrymple article you referenced, there are several things worth considering:

 

“the radiometric ages agree, within analytical error, with the relative positions of the dated ash beds as determined by the geologic mapping and the fossil assemblages”

 

“both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils”

 

The author here is referring to, but avoiding direct use of the term, index fossils. These are fossils presumptuously dated and used to set targets. In other words, if you find x fossil, you are in x strata which is supposed to be x geologic period. R-dating will never be stand-alone. Index fossils keep evolutionary geologists in the safe haven of expectation and out of anomalous harm’s way.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC310.html

 

Claim number 4...

Also interesting is this quote from your NCSE article:

 

“In addition to shocked quartz grains and high concentrations of iridium, the K-T impact produced tektites, which are small glass spherules that form from rock that is instantaneously melted by a large impact. The K-T tektites were ejected into the atmosphere and deposited some distance away. Tektites are easily recognizable and form in no other way”

 

First, tektites have by no means be conclusively determined to be related to meteor or other impacts. That is strictly a theory, and perhaps the prevailing one, but the facts are still antagonistic to that idea. There are only a few (4 to 7 depending on who you are reading) places on the earth that qualify as tektite-strewn. With hundreds of known impact sites, very few are associated with tektites, which are believed to be molten glass ejecta generated by the impact. There are substantial questions about their origin, lots of odd circumstances about their occurrence and numerous theories about them. Periodic showers of e-t material is much more plausible in my mind. Dalrymple is way out on a limb about their formation. Also, though I can't say that the data is not there, I was not able to find anthing indicating that tektites have been dated at ages near 65 million years. Most of them are thought to be much younger. The oldest date I saw was around 35 million, the youngest 700,000.

Hmm....

 

"Tektite glass and microtektites from the presumed Cretaceous/Tertiary Period (K/T) boundary impact at Chicxulub Crater (beneath northernmost Yucatan) have been recently found in Haiti and in Montana. These glass areas have both been dated (Ar39/Ar40) at 64.6 my ± 0.1 my. The K/T tektite and microtektite glasses are the oldest found so far."

Ref. here...

Continuing:

 

“so the discovery of a sedimentary bed (the Beloc Formation) in Haiti that contained tektites and that, from fossil evidence, coincided with the K-T boundary provided an obvious candidate for dating”

 

Here again, index fossils are used to pre-assign the dates before they are “determined”. Creationists often point out the circular reasoning involved in this technique. The fossils date the layers, the layers date the fossils.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC310.html

 

Claim number 4, again...

 

 

You're boring... and you're lying. You might think you're spreading the truth, but it's all lies.

 

 

 

Oh, and while we're at it...

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC371.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC371_1.html

 

Claims 5 and 6 in your list of lies...

 

 

 

In summary, you've swallowed the lies promoted by Creationists in general and AIG in particular and now you're vomiting them up at us...

 

Unlike you, we prefer to follow the evidence where it leads, not state where it leads then force it to conform.

[Mr. Neil]

Viper, you're a piece of shit. First I give you three tries to make an argument out of the dino tissue before providing my own, and even after I laid out all of my evidence, you couldn't make an argument. Instead, your response was to change the subject into an ad hominem, followed by several days of silence.

 

And now you spit in my face by trying to contradict me with lies that you got from Answers in Genesis.

 

I showed you actual documentation about what was discovered and what Horner and Schweitzer actually said. I noted, quoting from resources for everyone here to read and that you could have easily gone and read yourself, that the find was fossilized and that no claim of blood had been made. Instead, you went and made up your own facts. Like this one...

 

(Neil's quote) “Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

The sample didn't yeild blood or anything like that"

 

(txviper's complete rebuttal) Sorry, but yes it did yield “something like that”.

And then you post the expected quote, taken entirely out ot context...

 

“She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone”

Note key phrases like, "There were traces" and "what looked like red blood cells". THIS PARAGRAPH IS NOT SAYING THAT THEY FOUND BLOOD!

 

In fact re-read this same quote from the exact same BBC article(Linkaroo):

 

Dr Schweitzer is not making any grand claims that these soft traces are the degraded remnants of the original material - only that they give that appearance.

Now tattoo that backwards on your ass so you can read it in the mirror!

 

So despite the obvious problem with any claim of blood, you openly contradicted me anyway! I showed everyone here already that the claims made by people like you are not true by bringing the actual quotes made by Schweitzer into play, and you came back and LIED!

 

And worst yet, you made me wait around for days for your response. If all you were going to do was lie, then why didn't you just get it out of the way sooner? You could have easily just posted something like "Nuh-UHHHH!!!!" And you know what? That would have been equivelent to the crap you just posted.

 

And then there's this baloney...

 

“What was found was fragments of degraded hemoglobin and what they think might be the remnants of blood that had to be demineralized in a weak acid”

 

It was the bone that had to be demineralized, and at that, some of the subject bone was not mineralized at all:

 

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything."

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4379577.stm

You know, and I had made such a beautiful point about the 2-dimensional thinking of creationists in my opening argument. I even pointed out their inability to understand false dichotomies. Txviper, being a creationist, had no choice but to assume a false dichotomy, contrary to what was stated by Schweitzer and Horner. He assumes that "preserved" is a synonym for "unfossilized". After I had already laid out the problem with this sort of thinking, he went and did it anyway!

 

In fact, when txviper quoted from my "stupid wrong" quote above, notice that he actually leaves that part out. Here's the full quote, with the damning, juicy parts highlighted...

 

The problem stems from the creationists' misunderstanding of false dichotomies. They can't help it. Their entire worldview is littered with assumptions like, "If A is false, then B is true", while excluding the possibilities of C, D, or E.

 

Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

As far as I'm concerned, viper, the "debate" ended when I presented my evidence and you had nothing to offer in return except to poison the well and second-guess my psychology. You showed everyone, better than even I had, that you were firing blanks at that point. You have NOTHING.

 

Either concede or run away, but don't fucking waste my time by trying to lie your way out of the argument. Because you know what happens when you lie? We find out about it. And then we make a bigger ass out of you than before.

 

I'd like to thank CT for fielding this one, because I'm way too disgusted with persistant stupidity to even respond to each of viper's "points".

[crazy-tiger]

It was the bone that had to be demineralized, and at that, some of the subject bone was not mineralized at all:

I just spotted this, and I have to ask... if some of the bone was not mineralized at all, why would they need to demineralize it?

 

 

 

I'd like to thank CT for fielding this one, because I'm way too disgusted with persistant stupidity to even respond to each of viper's "points".

[txviper]

“your response was to change the subject into an ad hominem, followed by several days of silence”

 

“you spit in my face by trying to contradict me with lies”

 

“you came back and LIED!”

 

“made me wait around for days for your response”

 

“and you had nothing to offer in return except to poison the well….”

 

 

Neil, you seem to have an unnecessary emotional investment in this exchange. Perhaps answering the questions I posed above would be therapeutic. They are somewhat thorny though. Take your time.

[crazy-tiger]

“your response was to change the subject into an ad hominem, followed by several days of silence”

 

“you spit in my face by trying to contradict me with lies”

 

“you came back and LIED!”

 

“made me wait around for days for your response”

 

“and you had nothing to offer in return except to poison the well….”

 

 

Neil, you seem to have an unnecessary emotional investment in this exchange. Perhaps answering the questions I posed above would be therapeutic. They are somewhat thorny though. Take your time.

Erm... Tx?

Did you happen to notice that I've answered your "questions" and easily shown that you've been badly mistaken throughout?

 

 

As for the "emotional attatchment", go here and read why...

 

Any futher attempts to bring the emotional card up again will be evidence that you are not trying to learn, just troll.

[Mr. Neil]

Viper, you didn't raise anything that wasn't already beaten by my initial salvo. You simply lied. You stated that there was actually blood found in the dino tissue when in fact there was not. The BBC that you appealed to even explicitly said so.

 

Furthermore, you contradicted yourself by first claiming that the there was no fossilization and then admitting that the bone had to be demineralized. Why do you think it had to be demineralized?! That's fossilization!

 

Besides, CT pretty much nailed it, so why don't you respond to that? He pretty much hit all the bases, so I see no reason to be redundant.

 

You've been answered. Now respond, please. And without lies this time.

[Thurisaz]

You've been answered. Now respond, please. And without lies this time.

 

Gee, Neil, you should know that you're asking the impossible of fundie brat...

[Gnosis of Disbelief]

I guess we'll soon see what else he's got in his magic bag of red herrings....

 

[txviper]

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything."

 

“She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone”

 

 

These were the quotes. I pretty much let them speak for themselves. What was found is totally unsupportive of the idea that these remains are 65 million years.

 

 

"You stated that there was actually blood found in the dino tissue"

 

 

No, I did not. Here was the exchange.

 

“Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately

assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

The sample didn't yeild blood or anything like that"

 

Sorry, but yes it did yield “something like that”.

 

 

There were, as indicated in the quotes and the photographs, what appear to be blood cells parked in the vessels. That more than qualifies as "something like that".

 

 

I raised several other issues in my post which you should have an evolutionary persective on. I'll summarize them for you again if necessary.

[Asimov]

These were the quotes. I pretty much let them speak for themselves. What was found is totally unsupportive of the idea that these remains are 65 million years.

 

How so?

[crazy-tiger]

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything."

 

“She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone”

 

 

These were the quotes. I pretty much let them speak for themselves. What was found is totally unsupportive of the idea that these remains are 65 million years.

I will point out, again, that they had to demineralize the samples before they had any of these "soft tissues"...

 

Oh, and... "The unusual preservation of the originally organic matrix may be due in part to the dense mineralization of dinosaur bone, because a certain portion of the organic matrix within extant bone is intracrystalline and therefore extremely resistant to degradation"

 

 

Once more, read something other than Media outlets and kiddies science sites... Link

"You stated that there was actually blood found in the dino tissue"

 

 

No, I did not. Here was the exchange.

 

“Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately

assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

The sample didn't yeild blood or anything like that"

 

Sorry, but yes it did yield “something like that”.

 

 

There were, as indicated in the quotes and the photographs, what appear to be blood cells parked in the vessels. That more than qualifies as "something like that".

But it didn't yield blood or anything like that... all it managed to yield was microstructures that are similar to bloodcells but were fossilized.

 

"Something like bloodcells"? Not in the context you're using...

I raised several other issues in my post which you should have an evolutionary persective on. I'll summarize them for you again if necessary.

No need... I answered them and proved them all to be fallicious. Why are you ignoring my reply?

[Mr. Neil]

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything."

 

“She discovered transparent, flexible filaments that resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone”

 

 

These were the quotes. I pretty much let them speak for themselves. What was found is totally unsupportive of the idea that these remains are 65 million years.

No, they don't "speak for themselves", because when quoted apart from the rest of the article, the can potentially portray a context that is not intended, which is what you're trying to do. This is a dishonest tactic that we've come to expect from creationists.

 

For one thing, you're not really explaining what these quotes are supposedly revealing. So there's a bone that's a little more preserved than the average fossil. And your point would be what, exactly?

 

See, this is a problem for you, because as I demonstrated earlier, you just don't have an argument here. You're trying to jump up and down about some silly sample that was found in Montana, and there's really nothing here that amounts to anything. In fact, your best weapon, which was the soft tissue, was taken away from you, because as we see, the sample is not blood and hemoglobin. It only looks like it. That's a form of preservation that's been recorded before.

 

So, again I emplore you to construct an argument.

 

"You stated that there was actually blood found in the dino tissue"

 

 

No, I did not. Here was the exchange.

 

“Thus when the creationist hears that a "preserved soft material" was found, they immediately

assume that it was unfossilized. This, however, is wrong. It's stupid wrong!

The sample didn't yeild blood or anything like that"

 

Sorry, but yes it did yield “something like that”.

 

 

There were, as indicated in the quotes and the photographs, what appear to be blood cells parked in the vessels. That more than qualifies as "something like that".

Well, then you're admitting that you don't have an argument, because then you've got nothing actually preserved that would indicate that this bone was young. Hence, you never had an argument with this fossil. I win!

 

Besides, when I said "or something like that", I wasn't saying that there wasn't anything blood-like. Clearly, there is an appearance of being remnants of blood, and I even acknowledged that. When I said "or anything like that", I was referring to other organic materials, like hemoglobin.

 

Go back and read my original post in context, and you'll see that that's clearly what I meant.

 

So, now that you've acknowledged that the sample only gave the appearance of blood residue without any actual organic material, are you going to concede? That was really the only hope you had was to show that the sample was organic. Actually, not really, but it would have been at least a little stronger than what you have now, which is a polymerized piece of something that only resembles dino-tissue.

 

The only tactic that you have left is to try to tear away at radio-metric dating, which you won't be able to do, because you clearly don't understand it. And even if you could find significant problems with these dating methods, there are other forms of evidence, such as erosion and star formations that really make any hope for a young universe utterly unwinnable.

 

You just don't have anything, and you're going to get creamed the longer you stay here.

 

I raised several other issues in my post which you should have an evolutionary persective on. I'll summarize them for you again if necessary.

Huh? What the hell are you talking about? Evolutionary perspective? We're talking about dating a fossil. This has nothing to do with biology.

 

And in case you try to bring evolution back into this, a word of advice: DON'T! It's not going to work, and it's only going to further reveal your total ignorance of this topic.

[Gnosis of Disbelief]

These were the quotes. I pretty much let them speak for themselves. What was found is totally unsupportive of the idea that these remains are 65 million years.

 

 

You know, Talking Xtian Viper....is this the best that you can

really do? You've dodged everyone of Mr. Neil's and Crazy

Tiger's points, and all you're doing now is repeating these

assertions over and over again, as if doing that will somehow

make them true. So far, you've proven.....nothing.....

 

 

[spamandham]

These were the quotes. I pretty much let them speak for themselves. What was found is totally unsupportive of the idea that these remains are 65 million years.

 

How so?

 

I second the motion. There is not nearly enough information to be drawing conclusions one way or another. Until we understand the actual chemical process that created this material, and study it to learn how long it could last in what amounts to a hermetically sealed chamber completely protected from light and the elements, we really can't say much other than "cool!".

[Mr. Neil]

Exactly! Viper hasn't presented a single argument. He's appealed to no study of bone fossilization showing that this couldn't have happened. This isn't even the first time something like this has been discovered, and it wasn't a problem before. So, what the hell?

 

Why is it that insects and small animals preserved in amber doesn't raise the ire of creationists, but this does? You know that plot device from Jurassic Park, where the scientist drills into the amber with the misquito inside to extract dino blood? Well, that doesn't actually happen, and for the same exact reason. It's because although the appearance of the original animal and all associated organic material, it's actually not!

 

Well, then the creationist thinks, "What about the bone?! It's mostly bone!! HAHA! PWNED EVOLUTIONORZ!!!" But when we're talking about bone, we're talking about hard material that usually hangs around long after all the soft material has disappeared anyway. And it's not even as though the bone wasn't fossilized, because it most certainly was!

 

So what argument does Viper have, aside from "I don't think this could happen"?

[pandora]

I could be completely wrong here, but I was under the impression that there was something special about amber that allowed the extraction of preserved DNA....

[Ssel]

We do this because we want to, because it helps people, because it makes the world a better place for people to live in...

 

It's one hell of a point, and it's one that you will never understand...

 

Yes, we are angry... angry that people willfully lie about things even when the truth has been shoved in their faces so many times it's left an imprint on their forehead...

 

No, we are not bitter... though we do resent people who come along and state what we are even when they know next to nothing about us...

 

Yes, we are sometimes vulgar... although when you make the same point for the Nth time just to have someone repeat the same old lies, a good expletive is a great way to release some frustration.

 

Yes, this is more than just an argument... Yes, there's something else involved...

 

It's promoting the truth about things...

 

And the terrible thing is, you won't understand us because you're certain that you already know the truth about us...

 

but all you know is lies.

I couldn't sound more fundy Christian than that if I tried.

[crazy-tiger]

We do this because we want to, because it helps people, because it makes the world a better place for people to live in...

 

It's one hell of a point, and it's one that you will never understand...

 

Yes, we are angry... angry that people willfully lie about things even when the truth has been shoved in their faces so many times it's left an imprint on their forehead...

 

No, we are not bitter... though we do resent people who come along and state what we are even when they know next to nothing about us...

 

Yes, we are sometimes vulgar... although when you make the same point for the Nth time just to have someone repeat the same old lies, a good expletive is a great way to release some frustration.

 

Yes, this is more than just an argument... Yes, there's something else involved...

 

It's promoting the truth about things...

 

And the terrible thing is, you won't understand us because you're certain that you already know the truth about us...

 

but all you know is lies.

I couldn't sound more fundy Christian than that if I tried.

Thank you for removing a lot of context and for placing emphasis in places where there is none...

Thank you very much for twisting the meaning of what I posted into a personal attack...

Thank you for not having the guts to say who you were quoting...

Thank you for reading and not understanding...

Thank you for being more fundy Christian than what you twisted my post into...