Christians and Dinosaurs

[Ssel]

Blinding over emotionalism - "IT IS what IT IS"

 

But I agree that MrNeil wasn't being too over emotional.

But then neither was txviper.

 

A little is fine, taking offense, is what makes it grow.

"Offense can't be given, if it is never taken."

[Mr. Neil]

Lying is offensive, because it's a deliberate attempt to defeat discovery. Often we find ourselves having to go back and find the original references to correct our creationist visitors, and more often than not, they just end up repeating the very thing that was shown to them to be false.

 

Now, I have no problem showing the third party that the creationist has to rely on unsupportable assertions to make his arguments, but it does wear thin on you after a while. Especially after I spend a couple hours to type out a beautiful argument, and all I get in return is the same bad arguments, most of which were already defeated by my first post. I don't like when people waste my time.

 

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....

Well, amber does preserve organic material for a very long time. Much, much longer than something you'd expect from the open air. I think there are actually known cases where original material was preserved for several million years, but nothing anywhere near as old as the dinosaurs.

 

Besides, DNA is one of the first things to start breaking down. Even in amber. You'd never be able to clone a dinosaur.

[Asimov]

Blinding over emotionalism - "IT IS what IT IS"

 

But I agree that MrNeil wasn't being too over emotional.

But then neither was txviper.

 

A little is fine, taking offense, is what makes it grow.

"Offense can't be given, if it is never taken."

[Ssel]

Lying is offensive, because it's a deliberate attempt to defeat discovery. Often we find ourselves having to go back and find the original references to correct our creationist visitors, and more often than not, they just end up repeating the very thing that was shown to them to be false.

 

Now, I have no problem showing the third party that the creationist has to rely on unsupportable assertions to make his arguments, but it does wear thin on you after a while. Especially after I spend a couple hours to type out a beautiful argument, and all I get in return is the same bad arguments, most of which were already defeated by my first post. I don't like when people waste my time.

I agree completely as long as that declaration of being "offensive" isn't taken too far.

 

And Dinosaurs could be recreated, but not likely from an original DNA. DNA fragments can help refine the recreation.

[Mr. Neil]

The best way to get a dinosaur in today's world (the creationists aren't going to like this) might be just to take bird DNA and start reactivating all of the traits that have been switched off, like teeth, claws, and tails, and so forth.

[crazy-tiger]

Blinding over emotionalism - "IT IS what IT IS"

 

But I agree that MrNeil wasn't being too over emotional.

But then neither was txviper.

 

A little is fine, taking offense, is what makes it grow.

"Offense can't be given, if it is never taken."

You don't have to take offense for something to be offensive... If what you say is designed to cause resentment or hurt, then it's offensive... if it's been said knowing that it's gonna cause hurt or resentment, then it's offensive.

 

Twisting what someone says so that you can equate them to a group that is disliked is gonna cause hurt and resentment... especially when it isn't true. (Actually, so is accusing someone of re-defining a word when they haven't...)

 

 

How should we react to someone who is being offensive? Should we ignore them and allow them to continue? Or should we strike back and try to insist on a modicum of respect for each other?

[Mr. Neil]

Tonight on Science Channel is T-Rex: Warrior or Wimp. It's on at 8 EST, which is really short notice, I realize, but it also replays at 11. It's on every three hours all night and all day tomorrow. If you can't watch it, TiVo it. And if you don't have TiVo, blow the dust off the VCR and tape it.

[Asimov]

Tonight on Science Channel is T-Rex: Warrior or Wimp. It's on at 8 EST, which is really short notice, I realize, but it also replays at 11. It's on every three hours all night and all day tomorrow. If you can't watch it, TiVo it. And if you don't have TiVo, blow the dust off the VCR and tape it.

 

 

V.....C.....R???!!!

[Mr. Neil]

Silly me. I forgot. It's the 21st Century. How about a DVR?

[spamandham]

The bottom line from the show is that the evidence suggests T-rex was a scavenger rather than a hunter. Ooooh, look creationists! Those evilutionists finally had to eat crow just like Ken Ham had been saying all along - oh wait, he never said t-rex was a scavenger, he said it was an HERBAVORE.

[Mr. Neil]

Kent Hovind pulls that stunt in his debate with Massimo Piglucci from their debate on Infidel Guy. When Pigliucci calls him on his bullshit, Hovind backs down.

[Wertbag]

I was reading the Christian "proof" that the bible talks about dinosaurs. Seems to be some major gaps in the claims (as per usual).

The most famous one is Behemoth:

 

Behemoth has the following attributes according to Job 40:15-24

It “eats grass like an ox.”

It “moves his tail like a cedar.” (In Hebrew, this literally reads, “he lets hang his tail like a cedar.”)

Its “bones are like beams of bronze,

His ribs like bars of iron.”

“He is the first of the ways of God.”

“He lies under the lotus trees,

In a covert of reeds and marsh.”

"neither an elephant or a hippopotamus has a “tail like a cedar” (that is, a tail like a large, tapered tree trunk). In your kid’s dinosaur book you will find lots of animals that have “tails like a cedar.”

 

What amazes me is the incorrect reading of a simple statement. It does not say "has a tail like a cedar" simply "moves like a cedar". Imagine a tree swaying in the wind... fits perfectly with an elephant.

 

Leviathan is described as a giant sea creature based on:

Job 41, Psalm 104:25,26 and Isaiah 27:1. This is only a partial listing—just enough to make the point.

“No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up.”

“Who can open the doors of his face, with his terrible teeth all around?”

“His rows of scales are his pride, shut up tightly as with a seal; one is so near another that no air can come between them; they are joined one to another, they stick together and cannot be parted.”

“Though the sword reaches him, it cannot avail; nor does spear, dart, or javelin. He regards iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee; slingstones become like stubble to him. Darts are regarded as straw; he laughs at the threat of javelins.”

“On earth there is nothing like him, which is made without fear.”

Leviathan “played” in the “great and wide sea” (a paraphrase of Psalm 104 verses 25 and 26—get the exact sense by reading them yourself).

Leviathan is a “reptile that is in the sea.” (Isaiah 27:1)

 

And of course the claim goes that no creature today is impervious to weapons and nothing like that lives in the sea. Usually Christians who quote this will leave out the other descriptions of Leviathan:

“His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”

Which automatically rules out all creatures (how would a sea creature breath fire?). Matches the ancient stories of dragons which have been shown to be myth, but for the Christians who do know the full description this is quite a problem. The answer I've seen given is that they believe many dinosaurs breathed fire (not based on any fact that I could find), so therefore Leviathan must be a dinosaur...

[Mr. Neil]

And of course the claim goes that no creature today is impervious to weapons and nothing like that lives in the sea. Usually Christians who quote this will leave out the other descriptions of Leviathan:

“His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights; sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.”

Which automatically rules out all creatures (how would a sea creature breath fire?). Matches the ancient stories of dragons which have been shown to be myth, but for the Christians who do know the full description this is quite a problem. The answer I've seen given is that they believe many dinosaurs breathed fire (not based on any fact that I could find), so therefore Leviathan must be a dinosaur...

What I've seen some Christians do is they try linking Leviathan to the ancient marine reptiles, like pleisiosaurs, which isn't even a dinosaur. Heck, it's not even an archosaur (not that a YEC would know what an archosaur is). What this shows us is how astonishingly ignorant these people are, that they don't even know how to distinguish dinosaurs from other reptile groups. They're completely lost in their early 20th Century ideas of dinosaurs, as though they're just large reptiles.

 

I mean, sure, dinosaurs are reptiles, but they're not in the way that creationists are used to thinking of reptiles. They don't realize that reptiles are much more diverse than the slithering, crawling, scaley creatures that modern society is used to thinking of. After all, birds are technically reptiles, and they don't fit any of those criteria. And yet a bird is fairly similar to a crocodile in terms of genetics; much more so than a crocodile is to any other reptile group. This, again, is one of those little nuances that is completely lost on creationists.

 

Kent Hovind goes even one step further. So convinced is he that the pleisiosaur is a dinosaur, that he even includes it on his list of dinosaurs "still living today". Now you might say, "Wait a minute, Neil. Pleisiosaurs are extinct." Yes, that's true, but you see, Kent Hovind happens to be a big fan of Reader's Digest, so a lot of his "evidence" is simply comprised of blurry pictures of Nessy and Champy; the Lock Ness Monster and Lake Champlain monster, respectively. And so we see that Kent Hovind is not only an ignorant moron, but he's actually trying to form a bridge between two forms of lunacy.

 

I don't even know how to respond to this shit sometimes. I just sit there with my mouth open, thinking "How could you be so stupid?".