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Alberta Scientists Discover Largest-Ever Cache of Dinosaur Bones
Cryolithic writes "The largest cache of dinosaur bones ever found has been unearthed in Alberta. From the article: '... officials at the Royal Tyrrell Museum say the Hilda site provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers comfortably in the high hundreds to low thousands. ... Rather than picturing the animals as drowning while crossing a river, a classic scenario that has been used to explain bonebed occurrences at many sites in Alberta, the research team interpreted the vast coastal landscape as being submerged during tropical storms or hurricanes. With no high ground to escape to, most of the members of the herd drowned in the rising coastal waters. Carcasses were deposited in clumps across kilometers of ancient landscape as floodwaters receded.'"
"God put those there to test our faith."
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
"they seem to have died in some kind of dino org ... uhm, you know."
"what was the exact cause?"
"crushed pelvises."
What did this remind you of?
Put away your bullshit anti-religious rhetoric and look at the evidence honestly. Mitochondrial Eve, this flood evidence are all examples of science rediscovering what people have known for centuries. Scientist see something right in front of them but they just have to change a few details around to keep themselves from sounding like "creationists" to their colleagues.
Science now knows that it is possible for humans to live for centuries if their Telomeres were to not deteriorate. There have been examples this phenomenon. Google "immortal cells" for a story about cancer cells that are still alive when their original host had passed on long ago.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Fido I told you to stop burying your leftovers in the yard.
Former Curator and original collector of many of the bones in the cache, "Skippy," was unavailable for comment. However his lawyers, have stated that he is not pleased with this "discovery" by the human scientists and will be submitting an injunction against removal of any bones after his "walkies."
Demented But Determined.
There are a lot of crap comments so far but I know I'd like to say to those involved that this is an outstanding find, way to go!
I was heading to Drumheller later this summer anyway but I should see what kind of stuff they might have open to the public now.
Awesome stuff!
crazy dynamite monkey
The religious have always managed to adapt their pet mythologies to the evidence of the day. Scientists avoid sounding like creationists in front of their colleagues by following the evidence, rather than exclaiming "GODIDIT!", rolling around on the floor, and speaking in tongues. Nice try, tho.
They were found near a site that has been described as a prehistoric drive in, along with what appears overturned car.
rewriting history since 2109
Okay I'm not surprised or upset some nut job decided to post the usual whackjob theories. I'm surprised that multiple modded him. I'm upset that you modded him "interesting" and not "funny".
WTF is wrong with you people today?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I'll bite. What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?
Is it simply because a particular religion has that in their beliefs, or is there actual evidence for numerous "great" floods as opposed to one global flood?
What disproves [...] the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?
Because there simply isn't enough fucking water on the planet?
It's the first dinosaur cemetery ever discovered. They're often mis-dated because dinosaurs were really big and could dig really deep. All the way down to where we find oil fields today.
The biblical flood clearly put a mile of water above another massive site located under the Deepwater Horizon rig.
With a State of Emergency declared in most places East of Medicine Hat all the way to the Saskatchewan border, flooding is a bit of a sore spot at the moment. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
Bush caused global warming...
I'll bite. What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?
Many different reasons:
First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go?
Second, we don't see in the geological record evidence for a flood all at the same point in history. We see at different levels in the geologic column floods in different locations and some with no floods at all. If there were a global flood we'd see a universally dated flood (much as we see a universal iridium layer at the major asteroid impact 65 million years ago). This by itself should be enough.
Third, and related to the above, we don't see any global die off that is closely connected to flood deposits.
Fourth, we don't see the genetic bottlenecking that would have wiped out that many species. The genetic diversity of many species shows us that a global flood could not have occurred in the last 50,000 years at least, on genetic evidence alone.
So the upshot? No global flood in the last 50,000 years just by easy genetic evidence. No global flood at all given lack of water. No global flood at all based on the geologic columns. If it turned out there had been a global flood anytime in the last billion years, we'd have to be so wrong about so much of basic science that it is difficult to find a good analogy for how wrong we'd have to be. We'd have to be about as wrong as it turning out that Julius Caesar never existed.
...largest ever cache of dinosaur remains continues to flow from Deepwater Horizon as crude oil.
Study that, archaeologists!
Their response was probably "Hey, let's do a test: if we grind these bones up, how will it take to become something useful - like Tar Sands?" , or "nah-these are just Stone Age KFC leftovers - full speed ahead raping the land for oil!"
Fuc-n-l, Alberta Scientists ...
What don't you know? God drank all the water, he got thirsty after making a hot pocket so hot even he couldn't eat it.
I hear a lot more from you guys that babble about what religious people would say than I do from the people you're talking about. There's not one mention of religion in the summary or article, but there's over 50 out of 65 comments about that severely beaten topic. Way to be super cool, guys. Love your priorities.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Living in Alberta it is generally pretty self evident that there are a lot of dinos in these parts. The most common dino bones we have are Conservativasorous, Republicansorous, and Stelmachochasorous. Most TriKleinotops have been put in museums by now along side the Deficitosaurus.
This is great! Now we can have far quicker access to dinosaur bones without high latency.
Isn't a cache a deliberately constructed thing? How can a "cache" of dinosaur bones be discovered? Who put them there, and when did they plan to come back for them?
I'll bite. What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood? Because it seems like a lot of fossils are created during "great floods." Nobody seems to ever even suggest the idea that there was a global flood... every other idea is proposed (numerous "great floods," meteors hitting the earth, etc) but why is a global flood not proposed?
Is it simply because a particular religion has that in their beliefs, or is there actual evidence for numerous "great" floods as opposed to one global flood?
Because to be a global flood it has to happen everywhere at the same time.
And for a biblical flood the water has to be 5-1/2 miles deep.
As for what disproves it, other than the utter lack of evidence, is the fact that every living creature would show an extreme genetic bottleneck in the recent past.
But let's cut to the chase: For those of you who believe in the biblical flood, why did God try to fix the stated problem with a solution that didn't work. Forget the fact that He drowned all those babies and kittens, and the fact that he magicked up a gazillion gallons of water when he could have just as easily magicked all the evil people dead. Why are you worshipping a reputedly all-{knowing,powerful} God who can't come up with a solution that works?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
atmospheric escape? metal oxidation? ejection? Recent science says the moon's crust contains lots of water.
That's like saying WWII was not a global war because we saw no evidence of it in Ireland and Portugal.
Um, the article is about the largest amount of evidence ever found!
So the upshot? I think there is plenty of validity to your facts. Enough to make me question mine, but your arguments require just as much faith as I already have. Don't be so hard on religion, You obviously believe in lot's of things you don't understand too.
Anybody that offers Hollywood movies as part of the evidence supporting their argument...
Oh, screw it. You're am utter moron. An imbecile. I'm amazed you can figure out how to post to Slashdot without sustaining a mortal wound from your keyboard. In fact, I'm rather astounded that you've managed to stay alive long enough to be able to leave that post here.
I'd tell you to go measure the depth of the ocean with this handy yardstick, but you'd probably accidently impale yourself upon...
Hey, howzabout you take this yardstick and back up your argument by measuring the average depth of the ocean? I'll wait.
I mean, doesn't it imply something having been buried deliberately in order to dig it up again? I hereby reject 'cache' in favor of 'deposit' - oh that isn't much better.
-- thinkyhead software and media
What disproves - not Biblically speaking, but just the simple idea - the idea that there was a global flood?
So if nobody disproves it, your theory must be right? You're asking the wrong party for proof.
I'm sorry... Either you're trying to be funny, or you're trying to be sarcastic.
Either way, you fail.
Well, at least you agree that The Great Flood happened, and are just quibbling over whether these animals died in The Flood.
I'd point out that both Waterworld and 2012 were not scientifically accurate, but I doubt you'd accept that argumen.
I'd also point out that Avatar does not take place on Earth, but you'd probably tell me it could just be on a continent we haven't discovered yet, because apparently you live in the 1400's.
Exactly! And in Bambi they depicted animals talking, just like they did in the Garden of Eden.
Seriously, melting all the world's ice would require unimaginable amounts of energy. Even in the worst-case runaway greenhouse scenarios it would take decades, if not centuries for the ice to melt, resulting a slow rise of the ocean levels. Hardly a flood...
And if all the ice would melt, the water would rise at most 100m or so, hardly enough to submerge all the land.
There is no time in Earth history when there weren't terrestrial sediments being deposited somewhere. The signature of a truly global flood would be pretty obvious, geologically-speaking -- it would be a massive extinction event of terrestrial creatures, but most marine creatures would be fine by comparison. Soil horizons, river channels, and other terrestrial sedimentary signatures would completely disappear for a time. There is simply no time in Earth history that matches that. In all the mass extinction events the marine realm suffers more or less the same as the terrestrial one.
This is ignoring the crazy physics involved in even trying to make a global flood: assume it could happen and the evidence just isn't there that it did. That's why most geologists abandoned the idea of a global flood back at the start of the 1800s. It doesn't work.
atmospheric escape? metal oxidation? ejection? Recent science says the moon's crust contains lots of water.
You're off by several orders of magnitude here. The earth is kinda large after all ;)
That's like saying WWII was not a global war because we saw no evidence of it in Ireland and Portugal.
A global flood would have covered the entire globe (by definition). Hence we would see evidence for it everywhere. WWII did not cause (direct) effects everywhere on the world. (Though I'm pretty sure if you allowed more indirect evidence, you'd find plenty of evidence for it in both ireland and portugal (i.e. books, newspapers, economic impacts, ...). Just because you're not aware of it does not mean it's not there.
Um, the article is about the largest amount of evidence ever found!
The article is about a flood in "an area of about 2.3 square kilometres" about 76 million years ago. That's like saying the recent oil spill is evidence for a global oil spill. It's even larger than 2km after all!
Besides, civilization as we know it was limited to that area. A flood in the Middle East, would be "the whole world."
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
atmospheric escape? metal oxidation? ejection? Recent science says the moon's crust contains lots of water.
Do you have a mechanism for this atmospheric escape or metal oxidation? If not, why should this be considered at all likely? As to the last one, how would the water get from the Earth to the moon? Moreover, the orders of magnitude are all wrong. The amount of water we are talking about on the moon is at most on the order of the great lakes (or maybe an order of magnitude or two more). That's not nearly enough. Think about it this way: Let's say the entire moon was covered in a .1 kilometer of water (a massive, massive overestimate). How much water would that be? The moon has a mean radius of around 1700 km, so a quick calculation of
4/3Pi(1700.1 km ^3 - 1700 km ^3) is about 3*10^7 km ^3. The Atlantic Ocean according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_ocean has a volume of 323,600,000 which about 3*10^8 km ^3. So even if we make ridiculous overestimates for the amount of water on the moon, we're still ending up with about a 10th of the amount of water in the Atlantic Ocean. That's nowhere near the water level necessary to flood the Earth. There's a lesson here: Instead of just throwing out something that seems vaguely plausible to defend a pre-existing belief, do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if it is at all reasonable. In this case, it clearly isn't.
That's like saying WWII was not a global war because we saw no evidence of it in Ireland and Portugal.
No it isn't. Unless by global flood you now mean "most of the globe" or "a large chunk of the globe." Is that the claim being made? Because from a reading of the Biblical text it doesn't seem like that.
Um, the article is about the largest amount of evidence ever found!
You mean for a die-off connected to a flood? If that's the case then that's pretty weak evidence. This isn't a mass species die-off at all. First, this a tiny flood (a few square kilometers of land, again orders of magnitude matter) and all of these are species that lasted for millions of years after the flood event in the article. So tiny flood and no mass-die off. How did that becomes evidence for a global flood?
So the upshot? I think there is plenty of validity to your facts. Enough to make me question mine, but your arguments require just as much faith as I already have. Don't be so hard on religion, You obviously believe in lot's of things you don't understand too.
Excuse me, but what faith is there at all in any of the arguments? Data with basic estimates isn't "faith" last I checked. This is about evidence, pure and simple. There's a good reason that in 1730 most scientists (such as they were) believed in a global flood and by 1830 almost none of them did. For the simple reason that has nothing do with faith: the evidence doesn't support a global flood. There's no way to get it to work given geology or physics. This has nothing to do with things that I "don't understand" but simple evidence. Please don't project your faith-based epistemology onto the rest of us who use evidence.
First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go?
Didn't you pay attention in 2nd grade history and science classes? Until like a thousand years ago, the Earth was flat, and the Earth is 70% water. That means water was once like 9000 miles deep. We're just lucky God dug such big holes for the oceans.
comments like this show an almost entire lack of understanding of why creationists reason what they reason.
"First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go? "
the oceans. it is believed by creationists that the vast majority of water on the surface now was once under the crust of the earth and that during the flood the vast majority of the water came from underneath the earth, as opposed to most of it coming from the sky when the preflood canopy of water/ice in the outer atmosphere collapsed. it is believed the massive fault lines are the areas through which the waters came from (and the huge amounts of diatoms in fault lines are used as one proposed evidence for this). ((Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.))
"Second, we don't see in the geological record evidence for a flood all at the same point in history. We see at different levels in the geologic column floods in different locations and some with no floods at all. If there were a global flood we'd see a universally dated flood (much as we see a universal iridium layer at the major asteroid impact 65 million years ago). This by itself should be enough. "
creationists believe that there were multiple factors that contribute to there being order in the layers of strata that we see today. for example, clams are typically going to be in far lower layers of strata than birds because clams are already below sea level when the flood starts and birds will be able to get to higher ground before they eventually can no longer find a place to land, at which point they fall exhausted into the water. also varying explanations are offered in regards to hydrologic sorting. there is an unbroken layer of chalk around the world, which can only form in water, suggesting that at one point that layer was completely under water. in many places in the grand canyon and various coal strip mines they find places where two layers which are supposed to be millions of years apart from eachother finally meet in a sort of unconformity merge
"No global flood at all based on the geologic columns."
polystrata fossils found all over the earth. many of which are massive petrified tries, some upside down. yes, local floods can explain these, but once you gather enough of them around the world.... occams razor. when we look at the bottom of spirit lake after the partial helens eruption and the ensuing flood we see the same sort of thing.
"If it turned out there had been a global flood anytime in the last billion years, we'd have to be so wrong about so much of basic science that it is difficult to find a good analogy for how wrong we'd have to be."
thats the thing that always strikes me as odd.... virtually every time we discover something new we realize that we were wrong about so much. humanity has an incredible track record for being wrong about all sorts of things. in fact, i can think of few conceptions that have stood the test of 100 years-- usually, when we are right in the end result, we later discover that we were wrong about the details of how we were right.
im not really convinced either way to be honest. i actually read stuff from both camps. on my bookshelf right now i have tyson and goldsmiths origins next to morris' the genesis flood (how many people can say that honestly? im not bragging, its depressing. ive never met anyone balanced on this issue. much less have i ever met anyone else thats read both. usually they only visit talkorigins or only visit answersingenesis. its sad.) i was actually going to take note of every single time a totally speculative idea was built upon by more assumptions to prove a point in both, but i gave up because that is almost entirely what both books are comprised of.
First, there's not enough water on Earth. So if it did occur, where did the other water go?
Where did all the water go?
Second, we don't see in the geological record evidence for a flood all at the same point in history. We see at different levels in the geologic column floods in different locations and some with no floods at all.
Actually, creation theories have been talking about tectonic effects coinciding with the flood. With such upheaval, on the epic scale, you might actually expect to see variation in these things. It's not just as simple as water gently pouring into a container. A global flood would have been immensely chaotic. At the same time, tectonic movements would have been shifting many areas in many different ways.
But, it's always a good idea to read up on it: Geology Questions and Answers.
Third, and related to the above, we don't see any global die off that is closely connected to flood deposits.
Fossils, by definition, must be buried quickly. It might be surmised that most fossil deposits are actually a mark of a global die off and the reason for many might be Noah's Flood.
Fossils Questions and Answers
Fourth, we don't see the genetic bottlenecking that would have wiped out that many species. The genetic diversity of many species shows us that a global flood could not have occurred in the last 50,000 years at least, on genetic evidence alone.
On the other hand, this is actually what you would expect if the earth was ~6000 years old and Noah's Flood was real. A thorough grasp of Genesis indicates animals and humans were created for diversity and adaptation which, it would seem natural, they were made such because they had to populate the earth from a relatively small number. So, you would not expect a genetic a bottleneck. All creatives had all the genetic information with which to propagate and create the variations we see today.
If it turned out there had been a global flood anytime in the last billion years, we'd have to be so wrong about so much of basic science that it is difficult to find a good analogy for how wrong we'd have to be.
Perhaps it's not that dramatic of a case. Many common concerns about Noah's Flood have long had responses, as early as the 1950s IIRC. The theories being developed by creationists are every day progressing to propose credible scenarios to the scientific questions pointed at the creation account in Genesis.
Different view points will give different responses to the same facts. Secular people assume evolution and millions of years. Creationists look at your interpretation of the data, see that it disagrees with their assumptions, and attempt to see how the facts can logically be interpreted to support them. This is actually a tribute to creationists: They have to put more effort into their research and theorizing in order to think of a reasonable solution that the majority are unable to think of.
This personally interests me: In a subtly different light, creationists are putting on their "God-caps" and trying to think of how an omnipotent, omniscient God might have done things to turn out the way that we see them now - all the while thinking in natural terms, not supernatural. It's personally fascinating that God said we were created in His image, as if we had the intelligence to ponder His (mysterious) ways...and yet we do, and he allows it and encourages it, and we often discover that, after all, he was telling the truth.
Finally, let me suggest this: We're all bombarded by evolutionary science and media coverage. It has no real competition in mind-share. That makes it something like an echo chamber or a feedback loop, serving to reinforce itself without the need for hard critique. It would all do us a world of good if we investigated as much of the contrary science as we do the mainstream science.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
The religious have always managed to adapt their pet mythologies to the evidence of the day. Scientists avoid sounding like creationists in front of their colleagues by following the evidence, rather than exclaiming "GODIDIT!", rolling around on the floor, and speaking in tongues. Nice try, tho.
Sort of like politicians, but in reverse.
Ya wanna get elected? You better have a really big kickass god backing you!
And don't EVER display any hint of your (possible) agnosticism. (At least in North America)
.
- aqk
F U
Fossils, by definition, must be buried quickly. It might be surmised that most fossil deposits are actually a mark of a global die off and the reason for many might be Noah's Flood.
Rubbish. First, don't use "by definition" when something isn't a definition. That's' a terrible abuse of the English language. Moving on from the nitpicking,mMany fossils have zero to do with flooding at all. Many are fossilized after exposure to volcanic ash, or falling into lakes or riverbeds. They look different. If there were a global flood, we'd see the signs of that in the types of rocks that fossils were found and the dating of the rocks and fossils. We don't see that.
On the other hand, this is actually what you would expect if the earth was ~6000 years old and Noah's Flood was real. A thorough grasp of Genesis indicates animals and humans were created for diversity and adaptation which, it would seem natural, they were made such because they had to populate the earth from a relatively small number. So, you would not expect a genetic a bottleneck. All creatives had all the genetic information with which to propagate and create the variations we see today.
That's nonsense. First of all, as someone who can read Genesis in the original Hebrew, nothing in the text says anything at all about humans being created for diversity and adaption. So how you are getting that from there is beyond me. Second of all, that doesn't work. There's far more genetic diversity in even just the human population then what you would get from about a dozen people on a boat 5000 years ago, even if if every single one of them had very different genetic backgrounds.
Different view points will give different responses to the same facts. Secular people assume evolution and millions of years. Creationists look at your interpretation of the data, see that it disagrees with their assumptions, and attempt to see how the facts can logically be interpreted to support them. This is actually a tribute to creationists: They have to put more effort into their research and theorizing in order to think of a reasonable solution that the majority are unable to think of.
No. This isn't a tribute to creationists. This is a classic example of bad reasoning. I don't know where you get the idea that "secular people assume evolution and millions of years." Evolution and and old earth are both *conclusions* reached by the evidence. In 1750 almost everyone was a Young Earth Creationist, by 1850, almost no geologist was a young earth creationist. They were still almost completely religious Christians but they didn't believe in a young earth. Why not? Because the evidence didn't support it. The model that fit the evidence best was an old earth. This is well before Darwin even came up with his theory of evolution. The geology alone doesn't allow people honestly looking at the evidence to reach any other conclusion. The creationist behavior isn't a tribute to them: What they are doing is constructing defensive hypotheses after defensive hypothesis to protect cherished beliefs. Instead of saying "This is a convoluted set of mutually contradictory hypotheses, maybe we're wrong" they construct claim after claim that (like the claim about mountains or the attempt to deal with the bottleneck issue) generally have no plausible mechanism and don't actually even completely handle the problem other than at a very superficial level.It is important to be creative when doing science. But it is far more important to be able to admit when you are wrong and when the evidence doesn't fit your hypotheses. Scientists have accepted an old earth and evolution because of the evidence. Claiming that scientists are making "assumpti
1. Not enough water: You're answering from a position of ignorance of Flood ideas. (I'm not saying you're stupid or ignorant; just that you don't know what Flood proponents claim.) The idea proposed by Flood advocates is that the surface of the earth was much flatter pre-Flood than post-Flood. Take a huge sawz-all and lop off the continents at sea-level and dump the material into the deep parts of the oceans, and there's plenty of water to flood the Earth. The proponents claim that during and after the Flood, great movements of earth (which lifted the Himalayas, separated the continents, etc) opened the ocean basins and raised the mountains so that the water ran off the freshly-flooded continents into the freshly-opened ocean basins. That's where the water went, and is how the great sheet-erosion on large continental expanses occurred.
2. You're interpreting the geological record from a non-Flood view and then claiming that disproves the Flood. Again, this indicates a lack of familiarity with the Flood model. If the geological record is a result of the Flood, and you then interpret the geologic evidence as something other than the Flood, of course you're not going to see evidence of the Flood in your interpretation. This sort of misinterpretation can be seen in the interpretation of the channeled scablands in the early 20th century - for about 40 years it was vehementlly denied by the professionals that this land was the result of great flooding, mostly because of philosophical objections, not geological evidences. During this period, the "evidence" as interpreted by the mainstream was simply misinterpreted. Flood geologists claim a similar misinterpretation of the evidence by mainstream geologists when considering a global Flood.
3. If the bulk of the sedimentary record and its entombed fossil record is actually a record of a great Flood, as Flood proponents maintain, then yes, we do see a global die-off. The earth's surface is covered with billions of dead things buried by water-laid sediment, in layers roughly corresponding to ecological zones. Like your point #2 above, it's an interpretation issue; not a factual issue.
4.Lots of evidence lately indicates that genetic diversity can be expressed extremely quickly in the right environment. The idea there has been insufficient time to recover from a recent bottleneck is a claim without justification at this time.
In short, you're arguing from a standard college education that knows one side of the arguments. Risking the wrath of all Slashdotters everywhere for daring to quote the Bible, I can't help but think of the proverb: "The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him." (Prov 18:17 NIV)
OK. So the claim made about the water is that the entire Earth was flat so it wouldn't need nearly as much water.
Not entirely flat. Just not what we see today. It's interesting that the biblical text says the water covered all the "high hills" and not all the "mountains." This is actually quite in agreement with regular plate tectonic theory. The major difference is the timeline. Secular theory puts it way in the past. Creationist theory puts it recently at the time of Noah's Flood.
See Runaway subduction as the driving mechanism for the Genesis Flood. The subtler point here is to show how serious Creationists have become about researching and theorizing scientifically plausible mechanisms that would produce what we observe today.
Rubbish. First, don't use "by definition" when something isn't a definition.
From the wikipedia article on fossils,
Fossilization is an exceptionally rare occurrence, because most components of formerly-living things tend to decompose relatively quickly following death. In order for an organism to be fossilized, the remains normally need to be covered by sediment as soon as possible. However there are exceptions to this, such as if an organism becomes frozen, desiccated, or comes to rest in an anoxic (oxygen-free) environment. There are several different types of fossils and fossilization processes.
In the context of fossil formation, fossils must, by definition, be buried and preserved quickly, one way or another.
That's nonsense. First of all, as someone who can read Genesis in the original Hebrew, nothing in the text says anything at all about humans being created for diversity and adaption. So how you are getting that from there is beyond me.
There are a number of occurrences of the command to "populate the earth," both to humans and to animals. Using good deductive reasoning, if God did really do what he said he did and in the way he said he did it, then it is reasonable to also say that animals and humans were designed up front for adaptation to a large number of environments. It follows that if they needed to survive in different environments, they must have had the genetic diversity from which natural selection specialize traits to best fit the environment.
There's far more genetic diversity in even just the human population then what you would get from about a dozen people on a boat 5000 years ago, even if if every single one of them had very different genetic backgrounds.
The assumption is that that information has not been there the whole time. If the Genesis account of creation is true, all that genetic diversity was present at the beginning and benefited animals, given the command to populate the earth, by natural selection helping the animals to adapt to all sorts of environments.
For the last two issues above, see Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics.
The geology alone doesn't allow people honestly looking at the evidence to reach any other conclusion.
Actually, it does. The problem is that we're inundated with the popular view, that of an evolutionary take on the evidence. It is no longer questioned in the mainstream. There are counter-arguments and there are failures and set-backs to evolution, but you don't hear about them. You hear about the new discovery but not the later debates between secular scientists, themselves, realizing the discovery doesn't mean much at all. It's a system into which all the pro arguments enter but none of the con arguments enter and so it's vastly imbalanced.
Take some time to rationally consider the links I've been leaving and this list of creation/evolution topics with a Creationist perspective. Taken with a level head, I
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
Not entirely flat. Just not what we see today. It's interesting that the biblical text says the water covered all the "high hills" and not all the "mountains." This is actually quite in agreement with regular plate tectonic theory. The major difference is the timeline. Secular theory puts it way in the past. Creationist theory puts it recently at the time of Noah's Flood.
Ok. First of all, what the Biblical text actually says is "kol heharim hag'voim." (I'm transliterating because Slashdot isn't happy with Hebrew characters. "heharim" means "tall mountains." The word "har" is a mountain, the prefix "he" is the direct article, and the "im" ending makes it plural. This Genesis 6:18. There are a few different Hebrew words for "hill" but har is unambiguously a mountain. I don't know where you got the idea that the text said anything about "high hills." (Ok, actually checking now and I see that the KJV translates it that way. This seems like an oddity of the KJV more than anything else. The Vulgate for example says "omnes montes excelsi" and that clearly means tall mountains, not tall hills. I can't discuss the Septuagint's text at all reasonably because I don't know enough Greek. It may also be an example where the meaning of the Englihs word has changed and so there's no fault to the KJV. A lot of the claimed bad translations in the KJV are really due to the shifting nature of English) Even aside from this abuse of the text, "secular theory" doesn't do anything like that at all. Geology suggests long-term processes which are still ongoing and observable today (indeed, we can use precise laser beams to measure ongoing continental drift).
See Runaway subduction as the driving mechanism for the Genesis Flood [icr.org]. The subtler point here is to show how serious Creationists have become about researching and theorizing scientifically plausible mechanisms that would produce what we observe today
No. Runaway subduction is the sort of thing that if it could happen (there's not enough energy in the system for it to occur over such a short timespan) would leave evidence. You can't just make up mechanisms to protect a cherished hypothesis. That's not science. Science looks at the evidence and says "ok, what's the simplest explanation of the evidence we have? What is the most probable explanation" you don't just keep making marginally plausible hypotheses to defend an idea. That's not science. That's apologetics. There's nothing subtle about that.
In the context of fossil formation, fossils must, by definition, be buried and preserved quickly, one way or another
Do you understand what the term "by definition" means or what I was saying about being careful about uses of short inferential distance? Because you don't seem to be getting the point. Saying something follows quickly from a definition is not the same as saying it is by definition! For example, if we define a prime number to be a positive integer that has exactly two distinct positive divisors, one can conclude that 2 is the only even prime. That's an easy conclusion from the definition. But to say "by definition, 2 is the only even prime" would be wrong. That's the exact same sort of thing you are doing. The definition of "fossil" says nothing at all about fossilization times. That's a conclusion from the definition.
The assumption is that that information has not been there the whole time. If the Genesis account of creation is true, all that genetic diversity was present at the beginning and benefited animals, given the command to populate the earth, by natural selection helping the animals to adapt to all sorts of environments. For the last two issues above, see Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics [creation.com]
Yay, more apologetic cargo cult science that doesn't work at all. That article posits under no evidence other than their reading of the Biblical text very high mutations rates. There's no way
Ah, found the link I was looking for earlier where Razib Khan crunches the numbers for belief in Biblical literalism and IQ: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/05/biblical-literalism-or-low-iq-which-came-first/.
Ok. First of all, what the Biblical text actually says is "kol heharim hag...
What I'm seeing in Gen 7:19 is "har". The lexicon link for "har" provides different meanings according to biblical usage of the word: hill, mountain, hill country, mount.
I completely blanked on Gen 7:20 saying "mountains" and using the exact word "har".
At any rate, some creationists theorize such a world where high(er) mountains were created due to coinciding plate movement along with the flood. The root words used in the bible imply that water covered hills and mountains: Creationists are theorizing how that might have been possible.
You can't just make up mechanisms to protect a cherished hypothesis. That's not science. Science looks at the evidence and says "ok, what's the simplest explanation of the evidence we have? What is the most probable explanation" you don't just keep making marginally plausible hypotheses to defend an idea.
They're not just making up mechanisms. They're theorizing and modeling with concrete physics. That was the point of linking the runaway subduction proposal.
It's worth repeating: Theories are falsifiable. It's not rational to criticize a theory based on "intentions." So what if they're starting from a religious stand point? Judge the theory on its merits.
I have read a number of creation ideas, proposals, models and theories that are no longer credible and creationists know it. They discover the holes and move on. Just like science has done. I just got done reading A Brief History of Time. The history of physics it describes is exactly like that.
Do you understand what the term "by definition" means or what I was saying about being careful about uses of short inferential distance?
Okay. I am not being pedantic about it but I think you are. I think we both know what the most important communication is with a statement like the one I brought up. Faulting the semantics of the syntax in the medium in which it was delivered is of little value.
Yay, more apologetic cargo cult science that doesn't work at all. That article posits under no evidence other than their reading of the Biblical text very high mutations rates.
I agree. Probably that one article doesn't do a good enough technical job of describing the vast body of work that backs up the ideas. But I really recommend reading more of the Q&A documents and trying to find the technical ones because, as a whole, they are quite intriguing.
Apologetic nonsense. Why is the "mainstream" not quesitoned in this context? Because we have 200 years worth of evidence. In 1750 most educated people were still young earth creationists. By 1850, almost no one was.
Most people would rather not have a god they owe their existence and their obedience to. Is it any wonder that these ideas would catch on like wildfire?
Sincerity is not in doubt. Intellectual honesty and objectiveness are. You aren't linking to anything I haven't seen dozens of times before.
You've poured over their 6000 documents with at least a mind to giving them a chance? I'm impressed.
If a text tells obvious truths then that doesn't say anything significant about the text, full stop.
I don't know why you stopped there. The rest of the paragraph continued on that thought.
You can't just start with a preconceived notion (in this case the correctness of the Biblical text) and then when you reach marginally plausible conclusions decide that that's how things must have happened.
You are right and you ar
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
At any rate, some creationists theorize such a world where high(er) mountains were created due to coinciding plate movement along with the flood. The root words used in the bible imply that water covered hills and mountains: Creationists are theorizing how that might have been possible.
And in this case going so far as to pick a specific meaning of a word which doesn't even fit with the word meaning. In the desire to preserve their interpretation of Genesis they twist the language in a way that no native speaker would. Indeed, the general lack of actual understanding of the text manifests itself in a great many ways (for example the term they use to talk about kinds, "baraminology" which is supposed to come from the Hebrew for "created kind" which they apparently thought was "bara min" when the correct Hebrew would be "min baru." In this particular case, what apparently happened was they knew that "bara" translated as "created" in Genesis 1:1 and didn't realize that unlike in English the active and passive forms were different. This summarizes their general level of scholarship pretty well.)
They're not just making up mechanisms. They're theorizing and modeling with concrete physics. That was the point of linking the runaway subduction proposal.
No. They are engaging primitive speculative hypotheses that only fit the data at a very cursory level.
It's worth repeating: Theories are falsifiable. It's not rational to criticize a theory based on "intentions." So what if they're starting from a religious stand point? Judge the theory on its merits.
Intentions are a useful heuristic about likelyhood of correctness. If someone tries to find the truth they are much more likely to be correct than if they start with a preconceived set of notions (in this case the ideas that the Earth is about 6000 years old and that there was a global flood some 5000 years ago).
I have read a number of creation ideas, proposals, models and theories that are no longer credible and creationists know it. They discover the holes and move on. Just like science has done. I just got done reading A Brief History of Time. The history of physics it describes is exactly like that.
Not at all comparable. When physicists do that they *change.* The creationists will never alter their underlying premises which they insist on, that the Earth is young, and that there was a global flood. That's not good science. And comparing that to physicists who are willing to alter all their hypotheses as the data dictates is almost laughable. Do you understand what the term "by definition" means or what I was saying about being careful about uses of short inferential distance?
Okay. I am not being pedantic about it but I think you are. I think we both know what the most important communication is with a statement like the one I brought up. Faulting the semantics of the syntax in the medium in which it was delivered is of little value.
You don't seem to be getting the point here. The problem is not one of simple "semantics." How one thinks, how one speaks and how one writes are all deeply interconnected. Sloppy speach and sloppy writing lead to sloppy thinking. Using the phrase "by definition" when something isn't definitional is one easy way to encourage poor thinking.
I agree. Probably that one article doesn't do a good enough technical job of describing the vast body of work that backs up the ideas. But I really recommend reading more of the Q&A documents and trying to find the technical ones because, as a whole, they are quite intriguing.
They have about as much validity as that one. They just manage to disguise it even more with fake technical expertise.
Most people would rather not have a god they owe their existence and their obedience to. Is it any wonder that these ideas would catch on like wildfire?