Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Paleontology & Creationism meet in Kentucky


NYTimes:

Tamaki Sato was confused by the dinosaur exhibit. The placards described the various dinosaurs as originating from different geological periods — the stegosaurus from the Upper Jurassic, the heterodontosaurus from the Lower Jurassic, the velociraptor from the Upper Cretaceous — yet in each case, the date of demise was the same: around 2348 B.C.

“I was just curious why,” said Dr. Sato, a professor of geology from Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan.

For paleontologists like Dr. Sato, layers of bedrock represent an accumulation over hundreds of millions of years, and the Lower Jurassic is much older than the Upper Cretaceous.

But here in the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, Earth and the universe are just over 6,000 years old, created in six days by God. The museum preaches, “Same facts, different conclusions” and is unequivocal in viewing paleontological and geological data in light of a literal reading of the Bible.

In the creationist interpretation, the layers were laid down in one event — the worldwide flood when God wiped the land clean except for the creatures on Noah’s ark — and these dinosaurs died in 2348 B.C., the year of the flood.

“That’s one thing I learned,” Dr. Sato said.

The worlds of academic paleontology and creationism rarely collide, but the former paid a visit to the latter last Wednesday. The University of Cincinnati was hosting the North American Paleontological Convention, where scientists presented their latest research at the frontiers of the ancient past. In a break from the lectures, about 70 of the attendees boarded school buses for a field trip to the Creation Museum, on the other side of the Ohio River. [...]

16 comments :

  1. Well, wikipaedia seems to contradict this thesis.

    velociraptor: 75 to 71 million years ago (cretacean) (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velociraptor)

    diplodocus: 150 to 147 million years ago (jurassic)

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  2. The more I think about these issues, the more I feel that the MO/Intellectual Judaism crowd has really missed the boat on this, and that the potential for damage is very great. Of course, they would say that the potential for damage in the traditional approach is very great. Now, after Evolution has been around 150 years, they taaneh that from genetics they can bring rayos g'dolos. But when scientists knew little or nothing about genetics (DNA was first discovered around 60 years ago), the theory was seemingly insane. (insane theories can turn out to be true). But why should a rational person believe that a mammal that until now breathed through its mouth, started wandering into the sea and "developed" the ability to breath through a blow hole on the top of its head. Not on the bottom or side, but on the top, behind the brain, unlike nostrils which are in front of the brains. And only when the animal is is at the surface, not automatically like we breath. And the mouth opening, that now is used to take in huge amounts of water with plankton of fish does not connect to the lungs, as other mammal nostrils do. And did many pre-whales wander on into the sea and all develop independently into early whales that just happened to be able to inter-bread with the other early whales despite a lock of common whale parenthood? Or di d ONE prewhale develop a whole new species despite it great lack of survival ability? Gevaldig. So before they came with all sorts of highly technical rayos that only professionals can understand, it is clear that you had to be an imbecile to believe in evolution.

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  3. At least they not to say that God planted the fossils and made them look old to trick us and to test us, they do seem to follow the shita of nishtana hateve

    And where did they get the idea that there were fifty kinds of dinosaurs in the ark ?

    Michoel said...

    it is clear that you had to be an imbecile to believe in evolution.


    Some derech eretz Tropper taught you in Kol Yaakov

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  4. I quote my 5 year old on you...
    "nana nana kiskeh".

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  5. .

    "Why do you think that matters?"
    I understood that this article claimed that all kinds of dinosauruses disappeared at the same moment, namely around 2300 BCE.

    However, books about dinosaurs set a timeline where some kinds of dinosaurs could never have met each other, since one species died out before the other appeared.

    this clearly contradicts the theory that they disappeared simultanously.

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  6. Shoshi,
    If all dinosaurs (and other species) lived simultaneously, the theory of evolution could not be true. A very large percentage of evolutionists are atheists (or at least don't believe firmly in an omnipotent Creator that COULD have created the world in a finished state all at once). Therefore they work from an assumption that life appeared on earth very slowly over time and render themselves incapable of considering other possibilities. This does not mean that they are wrong. But to think that they are not married to certain viewpoint is not realistic.

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  7. the Monsey tzadikJuly 2, 2009 at 6:56 PM

    Michoel said...

    it is clear that you had to be an imbecile to believe in evolution
    quote my 5 year old on you..."nana nana kiskeh".


    Proves my point that many problem in the community such as kanaanut, intolerance and domestic violence and other problems stem from BT influence.

    Of course there are many normal, well adjusted kind BT [...]

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  8. Proves my point that...and domestic violence..problems stem from BT influence.

    In truth, the correct response would be to ignore you. However, in the world of blogs, the ignoring could be interpreted as just not seeing your post, or being intimidated or some other reaction. There, I need to tell you that you are a twit. You don't know me from Chaim Yankel. You are just a batlan with too much time on your hands and a bitter heart. You should have refua shleima.

    For the record, I am not a talmid of Rabbi Tropper on the ongoing sense. My primary influences when I was there were other rebbeim. I learned in two other mainstream top yeshivos for 4 years after leaving Kol Yaakov.

    Of course a person is nogea to himself, but I think others that know me would say I am quite tolerant.

    I repeat: I believe that before the advent of modern genetics, only an imbecile or a highly commit atheist (which is also a type of imbecile) would believe in evolution. Since the advent of genetics, I am in doubt whether one needs to be an imbecile or just a victim of group-think. (I am speaking of unguided, random evolution, starting from one celled organism and resulting in all life forms).

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  9. the tzadik said: "At least they not to say that God planted the fossils and made them look old to trick us and to test us"

    I would like to just briefly point out that statement is a very commonly expressed straw-man. Who says that fossils are planted there to test us? Please quote a source. Yes, they are there to test us, in the sense that all phenomena in this world are there to test us. But they are not there to test us in the sense of "If you get faked out by the fossils and believe in evolution you don't get Shabbos Party." I don't know what the test is and I doubt anyone else does.

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  10. The torah also says that there were creatures who died out eventually.

    Take the giants. How many giants are around today? Where have they gone? Obvious conclusion: if they ever existed, they went extinct...

    Why is it so easy to believe that giants existed and so difficult to believe that dinosaurs did?

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  11. "the Monsey Tzadik said...
    At least they not to say that God planted the fossils and made them look old to trick us and to test us, they do seem to follow the shita of nishtana hateve"

    So was Hashem trying to trick us or test us by creating a world through materialistic processes over ages and then giving us His Torah which said it happened over a seven day period a few thousand years ago?

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  12. Michoel,

    Before you make fun of something, why not actually understand what it is that you are making fun of? It's quite obvious that you don't know the first thing about whale evolution.

    Incidentally, here is a question for you. Why do whales have to come to the surface to breath air? Why didn't Hashem make them able to breath underwater, like fish?

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  13. Shmuel,
    I would sincerely like to be enlightened about whale evolution. I say that without any irony or sarcasm. To me, it seems extremely wacky but I would like to learn.

    If I am understanding you correctly, you see the fact the whales must surface to breath as evidence of evolution from land animals, since the ability to breath underwater would be advantageous for them. This seems to me to be a great example of something evolutionists do all the time. They show a phenomena that can be explained in an evolutionary format and assume that this is evidence that evolution occurred. "If whales were directly created by God, He would have created them with the same advantage as fish. So it must be that they evolved by (seemingly) random process." This is pretty simplistic reasoning (no personal disrespect intended). One could just as well ask "If God created fish and whales directly, why did He create them with ANY NEED to breath?" If animals have a need to eat, but inanimate matter does not have a need to eat, it must be that animals evolved, because if not, why would God create them with the relative disadvantage of needing to eat? The answer is simply that if they did not have the need and have the ability to eat, they wouldn't be animals and Hashem, for His reasons wants animals in His world. If whales could breath through gills, they wouldn't be whales and Hashem wants whales. As a person with know formal background in the hard sciences beyond a few college courses, I would guess that they are lots of practical reasons as well for why it is advantages for whales to surface to breath, for both them and for other species. Whales, unlike fish are warm blooded and the process of breathing surface air probably makes the air warmer. Perhaps if whales could stay submerged full time, they would create an imbalance in the lower marine ecosystems. I am just guessing. Also, we people would not have the awe inspiring spectacle of seeing a huge sea animal surface and blow out water.

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  14. Yirmyahu,
    You are asking good. but even without that, if one starts without any p'sukim or maamarei Chazal and only with a hanacha that there is a Borei Olam who "could" create the world be any means, we could still ask that if all life forms were created by evolution through seemingly random process, Hashem would be tricking us.

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  15. Shoshi,
    I am quite certain that dinosaurs existed and did not mean to imply otherwise. I just don't think one should take wikpedia as kodesh kadoshim on the subject, in terms of when, how many etc.

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