Hey ... Parade Magazine ... here is your answer about man and dinosaurs living concurrently.

About that dinosaur display in the

Petersburg, KY, Creation Museum

A response to the Parade Magazine solicitation for comments.

The Parade Magazine of July 29, 2007, ran a short blurb on the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, which opened in May, 2007. The brief article said:
"The privately funded museum, designed by a former Universal Studios exhibit director, even depicts dinosaurs among the animals on Noah's ark. Let us know what you think at Parade.com."

Since there will undoubtedly be many folks weighing in with their "well-informed" opinions about how bizarre and ridiculous may be such a notion of man and dinosaurs living at the same time on earth, here are a few things "informed" critics should know about before they throw too many rocks at Noah's (God's) big boat:

(1) The Bible in Job 40:15 - 41:34 clearly describes two creatures ("behemoth" and "leviathan") which are clearly not animals living today, despite Jewish or Christian commentaries to the contrary.

(2) And no problem to get all the animals, including the dinos, on the ark. See J. Woodmorappe, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study (El Cajon, CA; Institute for Creation Research, 1996). Hint: you take the young dinosaurs before they get too big. Duhhhh.

(3) Dinosaur activity has been reported and recorded at many sites around the world. Just one result of that is the "dragon" is one of the 12 "zodiac" creatures of the Chinese calendar. The other eleven are all observed today, so where did the dragon idea come from? And the Chinese name for dragon ("long") has been in use throughout China for centuries. For example, the snow-peaked mountain in SW China called "Jade dragon" by the Chinese was called "Old Scarface" by the WWII Flying Tigers because of the number of planes which crashed on the mountain during cloudy weather.

(4) Following is a photo of a really scary reptilian creature over 25 feet long known as "Queen of Nagas" seized in the Mekong River by American military men, Laos Military Base, on June 27, 1973. Many river areas of SW China are virtually clear of fishermen and boats due to fear of "dragons" in the rivers. Maybe "Queen of Nagas" shows why.

If creatures like this are still around, what else has lurked in human history - or even yet lurks?

Dec 31, 2007, update. The "Queen of Nagas" photo is of a fish now claimed to be found on a beach in southern California in 1996. The title has been edited for fun and profit in Thailand. Says Trevor Ranges, who claims to be one of the men in the photo, "the photo was taken September 19, 1996, at the Naval Special Warfare Center, Coronado, California. We were on our morning physical fitness run when we came across this huge fish lying on the sand. At 23 feet in length and four feet in circumference, it was quite a shocking sight for the Navy SEAL cadets. We called it the AGE fish, because if you saw it underwater you would rocket to the surface, exploding your lungs, hence AGE (Arterial Gas Embolism)." My (DU) take on it is that the photo took on a life of its own in Thailand (with added title and not much touchup) because the ancient stories of serpentine fish in the rivers of SE Asia did in fact have observational basis. I personally interviewed two people in SW CHina who had knowledge of recent sightings of large serpentine fish in a major river next to the Mekong in China, I personally interviewed the local guy in SW China asking why no fishermen on the river and have his "dragons in the river" story on video. I also personally know individuals who were with reliable groups who had sightings of such creatures in the rivers of far northern Burma in the mid-twentieth century. So the phony title on the California fish picture still does not rule out the existence of some really strange serpentine water creatures around the world. And of course that one in the photo would surely give you the willies if you saw it just past your snorkel.

(5) The book "After the Flood: The Early post-Flood History of Europe" (by Bill Cooper, New Wine Press, West Sussex, England, 1993), mentions that dragon activity has been reported at nearly 200 sites in England (p. 133), of which 81 are listed (p. 143). And there is much much more in that book.

(6) Only one of the many examples mentioned by Cooper is the most unfortunate demise of King Morvidus: "The early Britons, from whom the modern Welsh are descended, provide us with our earliest surviving European accounts of reptilian monsters, one of whom killed and devoured king Morvidus (Morydd) in ca 336 BC. We are told in the account, translated for us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that the monster 'gulped down the body of Morvidus as a big fish swallows a little one.' Geoffrey described the animal as a Belua."

(7) The 2005 discovery of "fresh" tissue in the femur of a fossilized T. rex in Montana was quite a surprise (except to informed creationists), reported for example March 25, 2005, by Reuter News Service, "Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue: 70-million-year-old fossil yields preserved blood vessels". National Geographic News reported also in an article March 24, 2005, in which lead researcher Mary Schweitzer was quoted as saying, "Finding these tissues in dinosaurs changes the way we think about fossilization, because our theories of how fossils are preserved don't allow for this [soft-tissue preservation]." One photo of the "stretchy" "squishy" material follows:

(8) More on the T. rex "fresh tissue": A more recent article, "In Startling Advance, Study Identifies Dinosaur Protein" by John Noble Wilford in The New York Times, April 13, 2007, summarized analysis on the Montana T. rex femur material by two research teams and reported in the journal Science on the same date. The NYT article reported: "In a retrieval once thought unattainable, scientists have recovered and identified proteins in a bone of a well-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex that lived and died and was fossilized 68 million years ago." Further along in the article there is a most telling statement: "In a press release from Harvard, Dr. (Lewis) Cantley said, 'Basically, this is the breakthrough that says it’s possible to get sequences beyond one million years,' which had been thought of as the absolute time barrier for the preservation of organic matter in animal remains. In the fossilization process, minerals replace the constituents of bones, turning them to stone."


So ......

there you have it ... only a surface scratching of all the stuff available to suggest that man and dinosaurs coexistence was a likely reality (and may still be if you have movie cameras aimed at Loch Ness).


Hmmmm …... the folks who put together the Creation Museum in Kentucky did not have to rethink rates of fossilization processes in bones. The soft-stretchy-squishy stuff fits quite well into the museum's Biblical time scale, thank you. It seems more reasonable that it is the (unobserved) evolutionary time scale that needs rethinking instead of the (very well observed) rates of mineralization processes in organic material. When intact proteins, which had been heretofore thought to not survive beyond an "absolute" time barrier of one million years in natural environments, are found intact in material "known" to be 68 million years old, that is a stunning result. It fairly demands that all the assumptions be questioned. And the Creation Museum's Biblical time scale should be on the table for consideration rather than summarily dismissed.


Oh, and I forgot to mention the final documented proof of the concurrent existence of man and dinosaur. The coup de grace, provided by no less than the official U S of A Postal Service, follows in (1995) pictorial form:






See you at the museum in Kentucky.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

Witness of Bible reliability continues to grow: Jeremiah Chapter 39 character affirmed

This one is not exactly a creation thing this time. But the point is that as the Bible again and again and again and again shows itself to be reliable and accurate historically, our confidence in EVERY word of "The Word of God" continues to grow. And that includes the creation and flood accounts.

Here is a really cool recent example. Although the article is a Daily Telegraph article, the link is to the article as published by the New York Sun.:

http://www.nysun.com/article/58185

Ancient Document Confirms Existence Of Biblical Figure
By NIGEL REYNOLDS
The Daily Telegraph. July 11, 2007

Michael Jursa, a visiting professor (to the British Museum) from Vienna ... made "what has been called the most important find in biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Bible are based on fact."

Searching for Babylonian financial accounts on ancient clay tablets in the British Museum, "Jursa suddenly came across a name that he half remembered — Nabusharrussu-ukin, described there in 2,500-year-old writing as 'the chief eunuch' of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon."

"Mr. Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked Chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, and he found, spelled differently, the same name — Nebo-Sarsekim. Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II's "chief officer" and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in the year 587 before the common era, when the Babylonians overran the city."

"The small tablet, the size of 'a packet of 10 cigarettes' according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussuukin's payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon. The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595 B.C.E., 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem."

Submitted with awe at and for our great God of History,

D.U.

Floods of evidence slowly surely washing away the pseudo-science of "uniformitarianism"

Well, now. The worm of evolutionary dogma continues to turn - and burn.

I just saw on Yahoo News about an article to be published yesterday (July 19, 2007) in the journal Nature. The Yahoo News post was:

Megaflood Created Great Divide Between Britain and France

Here is the link:

news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070718/sc_livescience/

If you are a discerning and informed observer of science, education, Judaeo-Christian scripture (the Holy Bible), and natural philosophy, you will know that the notion of "uniformitarianism" now nears completion of its second century of (choose one or more) (1) rightful prominence, (2) philosophical dominance, or (3) intellectual tyranny.

So what is "uniformitarianism"?

Ian Taylor (In the Minds of Men, TFE Publishing, 1984) explains that the dogma of uniformitarianism is primarily attributed to British lawyer-turned-geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875):

"Lyell's geological principles, based on Hutton's dictum that the present is the key to the past, make the assumption that all natural processes have continued as they were from the beginning (if there was a beginning. d.u.). This view has been called 'Uniformitarianism'. Lyell published his work in three volumes entitled Principles of Geology in the years 1830-33, and his principle has since become the foundation of modern geology."

So where is the rub? Hutton's idea that "the present is key to the past" sounds - well - downright reasonable. Reasonable, that is, until you realize that Lyell took it further to infer that 'all natural processes have continued as they were from the beginning', meaning "no miracles allowed." Lyell's "principle" has become the axiom (an unproveable beginning idea which must be assumed to proceed logically) upon which modern geology has been based. Why is this an axiom? Because it is impossible to prove by observation of present processes that no supernatural events have occurred at the beginning (e.g. Biblical creation) or in intervening time (e.g., the global flood of Noah).

This "axiom" has now been mainstreamed to redefine science into something that is in reality "scientism", a kind of intellectual tyranny.

To demonstrate the absurdity of the full-bloom uniformitarianism axiom:

You see a nice shiny functional automobile sitting in a driveway with this kind of "new car smell" emanating from the interior. Then Charles Lyell walks up and tells you that the car has been formed there as the result of eons of time and natural processes such as wind, blowing debris, rain, random bird droppings, falling branches, and so on. You would object that the automobile was created by intelligent designers and engineers (although you never saw them personally) for a purpose (teleonomy). To which former lawyer Mr. Lyell, with words poisonous yet smooth as silk, says, "But we know that science says that only currently observeable processes have formed all we see now. And all we see is wind, rain, and occasional droppings of bird poop." To which you of course reply, "Well, gee .. golly ... ummm... well, if science says that, I guess you are right. How could I have been so wrong for so long?"

I assert that the above comparison is not silly, but is in fact precise to show how nonsensical is the idea that creative and intelligent forces and agents can be defined out of existence merely on the basis of a capricious definition demanding that the unseen is non-active, irrelevant, and maybe unreal.

So, more about catastrophism.

Michael Oard has written a book entitled "The Missoula Flood Controversy" in which he details how difficult it was to get geologists to recognize the monstrous flood(s) now known (not by observation but by the remnants left behind) as the "Missoula Flood)s)" or the "Bretz Flood(s)." You can read all about it elsewhere. I will just include here a photo (right) of the apparent "shoreline" marks visible in Missoula, Montana, USA. The practice field for the University of Montana football team is in the foreground and the giant "M" on the mountain behind rests on the actual shoreline marks. In Chapter 7 of his book, Oard explains:

"The Lake Missoula flood controversy is a lesson on how certain scientific biases about the past intrude when new ideas or data are introduced. The public expects scientists to be objective, carefully weighing all the possibilities before coming to conclusions. We do not expect a scientist to censor ideas with which he disagrees. But instead he is to use hard evidence to prove or disprove them. David Alt (2001, p. vii) ponders what the dispute over Bretz’ hypothesis means in regard to the condition of science in general:
"This is also a story of scientists grappling with an emerging science controversy. Some handled it well, others miserably as personalities, pride, and outright prejudice superceded scientific evidence. This is not how science should work, but how it often does work.
"The public perception of science is mostly a myth.
"Despite the obvious signs of a gigantic flood, the leading lights in geology opposed Bretz and his hypothesis with vehemence (Baker, 1983, p. 122). Most of them went to their graves still believing that he had gone too far. They feared he had committed the ultimate scientific sin by straying from “good science” into the realm of biblical catastrophism, thereby rejecting 100 years of “enlightenment.” In their mind’s eye, a flood of biblical proportions was reminiscent of the so-called dark ages when most scholars believed Noah’s Flood produced the earth’s rocks and fossils. E. C. Olson (1969, p. 503) pontificates: “Geology was not a science until the legendary Noachian flood and six-day creation were replaced by explanations derived from careful study of the rocks.” The “careful study of the rocks,” however, has been accompanied by a straightjacket mentality of how they should be interpreted. This explains why controversy raged over the Lake Missoula flood – it challenged the dogma of uniformitarianism."

Now excerpting the July 18, 2007, Yahoo Livescience "megaflood" report:

"About 450,000 years ago, a 'megaflood' breached a giant natural dam near the Dover strait and began the formation of the English Channel , according to a study detailed in the July 19 issue of the journal Nature. Following this first disastrous flood, a second deluge finished the job.
'The first was probably 100 times greater than the average discharge of the Mississippi River,' said Sanjeev Gupta, a geologist at Imperial College London and co-author of the study. 'But that's a conservative estimate—it could have been much larger.' ... An even larger and more cataclysmic event, however, outdid the first megaflood, sometime prior to 180,000 years ago. This second deluge created the characteristic English Channel bottom seen today, according to the study. The second torrent added insult to injury, whittling polished mesa-like islands out of the basin floor. Gupta said such structures are tell-tale signs of megafloods."

So your fearless blogger observes that the seemingly unassailable and tyrannical doctrine of uniformitarianism is beginning to topple as catastrophic fact slowly displaces uniformitarian folly chip by chip. Keep watching for stuff like this.

Just one more tidbit for this time. Here is a picture (right) of rounded flood cobble deposits several thousand feet deep in China at the east end of the Tibetan Plateau. This site is traditionally considered to be the birthplace of Taoism. Look carefully at the size and shape of the stones and consider the SCALE of the deposit (thousands of feet deep). Now consider the creationist notion of a rapid uplift of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau with attendant water runoff in the waning time of the Biblical Noachian flood and in the post-flood period of resettling and stabilization of the earth's features. If your mind is open, you will begin to realize that only a hydrologic-hydraulic event of the scale of the Noachian flood would be able to produce geologic features commensurate with the scale of the flood cobbles in the photo.

Keep your mind open and this stuff gets more and more interesting.

HAVING FUN AND BEING BLESSED EVERY DAY,

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

"Vaticanspeak" affirms why I am not Catholic

Today's post is also a bit afield from our usual discussion of evolution and creation, but read on and you will find a connection at the end.

So ....

Yes, I am not Catholic.

But I am a believer in the Bible as the inspired Word of God, trying to follow the path of Jesus, so imperfectly yet by grace.

I believe the Catholic Church has altered many basic Biblical doctrines. And Foxe's Book of Martyrs clearly shows the result of this going afield. Volumes are written on the subject , so I will not belabor the minutiae here. But I do feel compelled to respond to a couple of things coming out of the Vatican recently.

(1) "Vatican text angers Protestants." July 10, 2007, by David Willey, BBC News, Rome:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6289014.stm

Willey and BBC inform us that Pope Benedict has approved a new text asserting that Christian denominations outside Roman Catholicism are not true Churches in the full sense of the word.

From my view of the Biblical view, the "Church" with the capital "C" does not belong to the Pope, the Vatican, or any other such. It is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and "where two or three are gathered together," the Lord Jesus is there. That is the true church in every instance globally until the Lord returns.

The institution known in the world as the Catholic Church appears to be a hierarchical mutatation of the true "Church of the Lord Jesus Christ." It claims authority for a celibate Pope with succession traced back to the Apostle Peter himself. But scripture is clear in two places that Peter was a married man. The Catholic church claims leadership authority for pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests who are likewise celibate by requirement (but, from news reports , not always in practice). But scripture says:
"The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come
through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot
iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from
certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those
who believe and know the truth." (I Timothy 4:1-3).

Also, scripture teaches clearly that, if the Catholic church's priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes have never been married and raised children, they are not qualified to be leaders of the church. Scripture says:
"If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer (traditionally "bishop") he desires a noble task. Now the overseeer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?)" I Timothy 3:1-5. See also Titus 1:5-6.

So it is interesting that, by scripture, the Catholic pope in Rome is not qualified by God's Word to have authority over even the smallest group of believers meeting in a brush arbor in the remotest jungle or in a tiny fifth-floor apartment somewhere in Asia.

(2) Reuters article, July 17, 2007, "Sexual abuse not just a Catholic problem: Vatican" by Philip Pullella, Reuters staff writer:

This also newsworthy article regards the Vatican response to the very large financial settlements in Los Angeles and elsewhere for sexual abuse - typically toward children. The record $660 million settlement between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and victims of sexual abuse was an attempt to "close a painful chapter and look forward."

The Vatican's chief spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, "reaffirmed a position taken by other Catholic Church leaders in the past -- that other organized religions and institutions should also deal with pedophilia as publicly as the Catholic Church has been forced to by various scandals. Lombardi said, 'The problem of the abuse of childhood and its adequate protection certainly does not regard only the (Catholic) Church, but also many other institutions and it is right that these take the necessary decisions as well.'"

It seems to me that the Catholic Church's copout of "everybody else is doing it" in order to lessen the impact of its own culpability is truly despicable. I say that with sorrow since the Catholic Church is the first banner bearer carrying the name of Jesus, the Lord and Savior and only begotten Son of God, before much of our world. Just above you can read that the Holy Scripture says that "deceiving spirits and things taught by demons" would forbid marriage, and scripture further teaches that a man can not be a church leader unless married and having raised his children well. Yes, it is true that here and there, now and then, other institutions (including churches) may have occurrences of pedophelia, but not in the pandemic scale and scope seen in the Catholic church scandal.

Is it unfair to observe Catholic Church realities? Should we not observe that the Catholic Church, which denies marriage to clergy despite the requirement of the Holy Word of God to the contrary, seems to have reaped "'wickedness' within their own ranks" as a direct result of sowing this very clear and direct disobedience to the Word of God?

My observation is that sexual abuse of children is less common in the conservative Protestant Christian world than in the world in general. And sexual abuse of children in the world in general is far less common than now being revealed in the Catholic church.

Fair observers should demand that the Catholic Church first correct its non-Biblical practice of denying marriage. Rome should restore a healthy and Biblical practice of procreation and family within its leadership. Only then should it consider even thinking about talking about occasional incidents in churches and institutions elsewhere.

This also is the admonition of our Lord Jesus:
"You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:5).

The "first," it seems, is begun so far only in words but not in enduring substance.

(3) The Pope and Darwin:
See: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1516073,00.html

But maybe at least one thing in Catholicism is changing for the better. This August 31, 2006, TIME article (with CNN) reported: "Headline writers (even TIME's) might be tempted to advertise a grudge match between the Holy Father and the high priest of natural selection. But look again. Our title promises the Pope AND Darwin, not the Pope VS. Darwin. ... But don't expect the Catholic Church to start disputing Darwin's basic findings, which Pope John Paul II in 1996 called 'more than a hypothesis.' Moreover, advocates of the teaching in U.S. schools of intelligent design — which holds that nature is so complex that it must be God's doing — should not count on any imminent Holy See document or papal pronouncement to help boost their cause."

Despite the gloomy spin put on the Pope's meeting last summer by TIME/CNN in the above paragraph, there were seeds of hope in the article.

You may remember hearing about Pope John Paul II's 1996 pronouncement bringing a sea-level change in the creation-evolution controversy as he described evolution as "more than a hypothesis," referenced above. It seems that maybe now, under the guidance of Pope Benedict XVI, we may begin to see the reversal of that slide away from scriptural authority. As the above article mentions, "The issue of evolution has been on this pope's agenda from Day One, as Benedict proclaimed at his installation mass: 'We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.'"

How heartening to see a glimmer of hope for a positive affirmation of creation coming from this instition which remains the foremost witness of God and Jesus to much of the world. Isn't it nice tht Benedict did not say evolution is "more than a hypothesis"? Let's just pray that Benedict will lead the Catholic Church to the Biblical position of creation, not just to some compromise that really says little or nothing to today's seeking world.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.