Thus the
fact that dinosaurs indeed once existed, along with various other species that
are now extinct, does not prove that they evolved-it
merely shows that they died off and no longer exist today. This is a point that
should not be lost with the current popularity of dinosaur documentaries
produced by evolutionists attempting to lend validation to their ideas. It is
also possible that dinosaurs did not actually live millions of years ago either,
as will be shown later on in this chapter.
In
fact the demise of the dinosaurs has been an enigma to evolutionists, with
recent explanations for the "Great Extinction" contradicting one of the bulwarks
of Darwinian ideology, known as the doctrine of uniformitarianism.
Until the
theory of evolution began making it's rounds in the universities among the
skeptics in the early part of the nineteenth century, catastrophism had been the
explanation for the presence and preservation of fossils and for the
various layers of the rock strata found in the upper portions of the
crust of the earth. Basically, catastrophism stated that much of the history of
the surface of the earth could be explained by great, cataclysmic disasters that
involved tremendous changes in the climate of the world, and along with these
disasters large numbers of living creatures became extinct.
Cuvier, the
father of paleontology, comparative anatomy and stratigraphy was an advocate of
catastrophism. One of the main causes of the largest disaster was considered to
be the Biblical Flood of Noah. This story, found support first not only in the
Biblical record, but also in the legends of almost every ancient tribe and
culture on the face of the earth, from the ancient Babylonians with their legend
of Gilgamesh, and the ancient Greeks and Chinese, to the legends of the Indians
of North and South America, 
and it was believed in by two of the major founders of the sciences of
geology and stratigraphy, Nicholas Steno and Baron Cuvier, as well as by many
other distinguished scientists at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard.
In 1830,
however, Charles Lyell published his Principles
of Geology,which directly contradicted the theory of
catastrophism. He developed the Uniformitarian Theory,which stated that there
had been occasional periods of local floods and earthquakes in the past, but
that they were no different than what we see occurring around us today. His
motto was “the present is the key to the past” i.e., present processes could
explain everything that had occurred in earths history, and that nothing had
ever occurred on the extent of a worldwide disaster such as the flood of Noah.
Darwin took
a copy of Lyell’s book with him during his trip on the Beagle,
and this profoundly shaped his thinking of the supposed descent of species from
a common ancestor, since the theory of evolution required extremely long time
periods, thus as evolution gained popularity uniformitarianism became the
accepted explanation for the history of the earth. Catastrophism conflicted with
the theory of evolution, since if the extinction of a species could be explained
by a universal catastrophe (say, for instance, a comet striking the earth), then
the theory of a species becoming extinct as a result of a struggle for survival
with other species would be cast into doubt. So the theory of catastrophism was
gradually shelved as evolutionary minded men ascended to prestige in the higher
halls of learning of our Universities, and the books that were eventually
written by these men heaped scorn upon the idea that something like a disaster
of Biblical proportions had ever occurred on the face of the earth.
So
catastrophism was laughed out of the intellectual and literary circles for quite
a few years, but in this case Darwin couldn’t conveniently dispose of the corpse
- it just kept reappearing all over the place, like that bothersome body in
Arsenic
and Old Lace.
Massive
fossil graveyards of dinosaurs still exist all over the world. The Morrison beds
in North America, the dinosaur beds in Montana, in the Rocky Mountains, in
Alberta, the Dakotas, China, Colorado, Utah, Africa, etc., etc., contain
literally millions of dinosaur fossils piled together in tremendous heaps. Ten
thousand Hadrosaurs were found on Egg Mountain alone, jumbled together in what
appears to have been a mass death.
Would this
happen under normal, uniformitarian conditions? Think about it. Millions of
buffalo were slaughtered on the North American plains during the nineteenth
century, so this should be an ideal reason why multiplied thousands of fossil
buffalo should be scattered all over the place. Are there any great buffalo
fossil graveyards to be found?
Most assuredly, there are not- their remains
were disposed of by the normal ravages of the weather, scavengers, and
decomposition. So why are there great fossil graveyards of dinosaurs, where the
bones of millions of these beasts lie entombed in vast heaps, sometimes buried
together with the piles of fossilized mammals, fish, insects, plants etc.,
testifying that they all perished together in a great mass death?
Let us find
out what Stein and Rowe have to say about the process of fossilization.
They
state: “Effective fossilization usually depends on having hard parts, such as
bones or shells, and being
buried immediately after death. The work of predators and
scavengers and the weathering effects of rain, heat, cold, and wind often serve
to destroy most or all of an organism before burial takes place.”[1]
They further state: “Once an organism dies, it is seldom
buried immediately . . .The point of ultimate burial and fossilization may be
hundreds of miles from the place of death.”[2]
They then
give us four conditions necessary for the preservation of fossils.
First, an
organism must have hard parts like teeth, bones and shells that are preserved,
but that is not all that is necessary, (else we would find numerous buffalo
fossils in North America). They further state: "Second, the
organism must not be destroyed immediately by other organisms or by the action
of climatic or geologic forces. Third, the organism must be protected
immediately from decaying. This usually takes the form of rapid burial, which
also protects the organism from being totally destroyed." [3]
What
natural occurrence then could account for the great dinosaur graveyards under
these conditions, simultaneously killing and burying 
multitudes of
dinosaurs, mammals, birds, fish, etc. in huge numbers, many of them apparently
dying in the prime of life, some of them caught in the very act of eating
smaller animals that became preserved as fossils too?
It had
to be something sudden, to kill them in what appears in many cases to be an
unnatural, violent death; it was something universal that destroyed them in
every part of the earth at roughly the same period in history; it was something
that swiftly covered them up to "mummify" their remains so that the normal
exposure to water or air and other predations wouldn't obliterate their remains,
and it did this on a massive scale to create such numerous and extensive fossil
graveyards.
Only one
possible event could simultaneously meet all of these conditions: the onrush of
swift moving sediment from a tremendous, worldwide Flood.
The last of the dinosaurs were supposed to
have died off about 65-100 million evolutionary years ago. One of the greatest
dinosaur collections in the world is at China’s Zigong Dinosaur Museum.
Scientist Rick Gore, when visiting this Museum wrote: “This site of mass death,
probably from flooding, records the surge of giantism in the middle Jurassic.
Dong and I carefully descend to the mudstone floor and walk amid a petrified
forest of bones.” [4]
Here is
some interesting food for thought. When most evolutionists discuss how the
fossils were preserved, they will almost universally state that the great beasts
were browsing near some river bed, by a large lake, in a swamp, or that they
were simply enjoying a Jurassic vacation at the beach, when suddenly a mighty
rush of water and sediment overwhelmed them and preserved them for us to
come along and sniff out some (supposedly) millions of years later.
One recent
A&E television program (Voyages, December 23, 1995) discussed a herd of
fossilized Centrosaurus dinosaurs, which were similar to triceratops, found in
the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The evolutionists could only come up with one
reasonable explanation as to how all of these great beasts could possibly have
died at one and the same time and place, and then been buried and preserved
together. A flood. Of course it was not to be considered that this could have in
any way been connected with the world-wide flood of Noah, which would explain
everything very well, since mass graves of dinosaur remains are found in nearly
every part of the globe, while even evolutionists acknowledge that it was a
world-wide catastrophe that caused the demise of the dinosaurs.
Could any
of this be explained by uniformitarianism? With normal sedimentary processes,
even fish don’t normally form fossils when they die; they float to the surface
and are devoured by other fish, bacteria, and by the action of the elements. Yet
we find great numbers of fossil fish buried together in many parts of the world,
in quite a few cases buried with the dinosaurs, right along with the bones of
mammals, birds, and the remains of insects.
Voyages
also dealt with a huge number of dinosaur eggs that were found in the Gobi
desert, yet the shells had not been damaged, simply buried and fossilized. In
attempting to fathom what force of nature could have killed the mothers and
preserved the eggs at the same time, perhaps not wishing to waver too close to
the Biblical account, they suggested that a sudden sandstorm or a sand dune
falling on these beasts caused their death and preservation. [5] (Recently
new evidence has turned up that has contradicted this view, and it has now been
presumed that they were suddenly buried by the action of water and sediment.)
The huge
sedimentary action necessary for the death and burial of such large numbers of
giant beasts would not occur in normal hydraulic action in river currents in
sufficient intensity and scope to preserve the vast fossil graveyards that
exist. Rivers don’t generally bury such large numbers of animals together; their
carcasses are carried downstream where they are eventually deposited along the
shoreline somewhere. The process that created the vast dinosaur fossil
graveyards would require a flood of truly monumental proportions.
Even Darwin
had to admit that large formations of fossils could only be formed and preserved
underwater: “But we have seen that a thick formation, fossiliferous throughout
its entire thickness, can accumulate only during a period of subsidence . . .”
(Origin, Chapter 10: On the Absence of Numerous varieties in any Single
Formation)
Even though
it might be argued that he could be referring solely to marine life in this
section, we find that Darwin also stated that under gradual, uniformitarian
conditions, neither marine life norterrestrial life would normally leave
fossils: “We probably take a quite erroneous view, when we assume that sediment
is being deposited over nearly the whole bed of the sea, at a rate sufficiently
quick to embed and preserve fossil remains. . . .The remains which do become
embedded, if in sand or gravel, will, when the beds are upraised [by geologic
processes above the level of the ocean onto comparatively dry, terrestrial,
strata] generally be dissolved by the percolation of rain water charged with
carbolic acid.” (Origin, pp. 155, On the Poorness of Palaeontological
Collections)
It
is also known now that it does not take millions, or even many thousands of
years for fossils to form. This process can take place over a few centuries in
some cases, so fossils in themselves do not mean that the species died out
millions of years ago either.
Evolutionists will go to any extreme to ignore
the evidence of creatures dying in a massive global flood, even when that
evidence is nearly incontrovertible. They will insist that it was only a local
flood, and this always has it's difficulties, as is evident from the following
article.
It
was reported in National
Geographic, January, 1993 that paleontologists had excavated
about 80 Centrosaurus fossils at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta Canada.
Here is the description of the find, given by Philip Currie: "‘It looks like a
catastrophe,' says Currie. 'We think a herd was trying to cross a river in
flood. These animals weren't too bright.'"
Well, we
have a herd of animals running into
a flood.
The authors
continue their reconstruction of the event: "'All that meat drew carnivores.
We've found a lot of shed teeth and bones with tooth marks. Also, a lot of the
bones were broken. Others were pushed-probably trampled-into the mud.'" [6]
So
now we have another herd of animals that arrives at the scene and they rush
headlong into the same flood to have dinner, subsequently drowning along with
their intended victims! Not just a few, but "a catastrophe." Many
of them were trampled and their bones were broken! Evidently, at least according
to the evolutionists, they really couldn’t have been too bright, and they must
have been ravenously hungry.
In
the explanation that the evolutionists give do you see something seriously wrong
with the picture?
If you do, then consider this explanation. How about a
massive herd of animals trying to escape
a flood, until they had reached the last bit of dry land, and as the waters rose
up to eventually engulf them they became desperate and panicked, trampling one
another and turning on each other in a feeding frenzy.
Here is
another mass death by flooding that shows the utter blindness of evolutionary
minded paleontologists when trying to explain the presence of massive fossil
dinosaur graves apart from the Biblical version of the flood.
Rick Gore
states: “As a scientific journalist, I have covered the on going debate over why
dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago. Were they chilled to death
in the catastrophic aftermath of a comet or asteroid striking earth? Were they
done in by a virus or by gradual climate change? The arguments have been
heated-and unresolved . . . All we can say is that near the end of the Triassic
period, about 210 million years ago (these time frames are entirely subjective,
as a quote from a noted scientist will show)something extraordinary happened on
planet earth: a global mass extinction. Many species were hard hit . . . Did the
last of the dinosaurs die after an asteroid struck earth 65 million years ago,
or were they already extinct? We may never know.”[7]
To
try and explain how thousands of dinosaurs and literally millions of other
animals of all sizes and species were thrown together in gigantic fossil
graveyards in Montana and Alberta, at Dinosaur National Park in Utah, in the
Gobi desert in China, in Africa and in South America, in fact in nearly all
parts of the world, by any event other than an enormous flood and massive tidal
action, combined with great volcanic and tectonic upheavals, is almost
unimaginable, however evolutionists, in attempting to avoid the Biblical
account, can construct quite elaborate stories with their imaginations.
The most available evidence
that exists for dinosaurs are their footprints, [8]often embedded in
soft clay and mud, then preserved for (supposedly) millions of years by some
unexplained (by evolutionists) method. But how could anything besides a Flood
of truly
Biblical proportions explain the 300,000 square mile Entrata
formation running across the central part of the United States, where hundreds
of thousands, perhaps millions of dinosaur footprints are preserved over the
coast of an ancient seashore. These footprints were all created in roughly the
same layer of strata, showing that they were all formed at nearly the same time.
But unless they were swiftly covered up by a massive amount of sediment, the
footprints would have been erased by normal tidal action, wind, and erosion.
That they were not erased shows that something unusual on a massive scale
occurred to create the conditions to preserve these prints.
One other
notable characteristic concerning these footprints is that they are
nearly all going in the same direction! There is no indication
that these beasts were simply milling around browsing or peacefully gathering
together at their favorite watering spot. Instead there is clear evidence of a
sudden mass migration in one direction. What could have caused all of these
beasts to suddenly travel in the same direction all at once? Clearly they were
motivated by survival instinct to avoid something quite deleterious to their
existence, something on such a grand scale that hundreds of thousands of
dinosaurs all headed off together to avoid it.
Indeed,
massive deposits of dinosaur tracks are found all over the world. Stretching
along the coast of Samchonpo, South Korea, the writers of National Geographic
reported that “embeddedin petrified mud lies one of the world’s richest
concentrations of dinosaur footprints . . .” [9]
Paleontologist Martin
Lockley of the University of Colorado described the scene, as related by Rick
Gore: “ Nearby we find the three-toed tracks of an unknown therapod in a run.
Then we reach a chaotic patch of ancient mud. It looks like a trampled circus
ground, pocked with footprints of sauropods . . .”
On
February 24, 1996 The
Discovery Channel aired the program Paleoworld,
where they discussed Larks Quarry Trackway in Central Queensland, Australia,
where hundreds of tracks of a herd of small dinosaurs were preserved next to the
tracks of a much larger carnivorous dinosaur near an ancient watering hole by a
creek. The writers suggested that the smaller dinosaurs had supposedly been
hunted as prey by the carnivorous dinosaur.
There is
one very serious problem with this explanation. The tracks of the two types of
smaller dinosaurs run straight toward the much larger dinosaur, in fact they run
right
over the tracks of the larger dinosaur, as though they were all
trying to escape a much larger and more impending danger from the opposite
direction, with the larger dinosaur in the way! This did not in any way sway the
evolutionists from surmising that the 160 smaller Ornithopods and Celeosaurs
“charged toward the gaping jaws of the predator and certain death”.
It
makes no sense that the small dinosaurs did not wish to cross the stream or run
along it, even at an angle, to escape their enemy unless they were running in
terror from something much worse coming from the opposite direction, something
that swept them away butpreserved their footprints by rapid sedimentation.
[10]
The
previously mentioned article in National Geographic has an extraordinary picture
of dinosaur tracks high up on a nearly vertical, flat rock face in Argentina!
The authors state: “. . . dinosaurs walked here along the wave-rippled shore
of an inland sea. Several agile, bipedal creatures-perhaps hadrosaurs feeding on
aquatic plants-left trails that crisscross. A claw-toed carnivore passed nearby,
possibly coming to the water to drink or to stalk the hadrosaurs.” [11]
It
is not to be reasonably supposed that large, heavy dinosaurs walked straight up
smooth, vertical cliff faces high up in the mountains. These impressions had to
have been raised into place afterward, but with the normal, slow processes of
mountain building that evolutionists subscribe to the prints would have all but
been obliterated into broken and ground stubble during the ages-long period of
uplift: even soft impressions along lakeshores do not normally last long
enoughfor somebody millions of years later, or even a few hours, days, or weeks
later, to come by and discover, however a sudden hydraulic cataclysm that
covered the footprints with other sedimentary strata and preserved them almost
immediately after they were formed, followed by the uplifting of the strata into
a vertical position by a massive tectonic upheaval within a few months or
yearswouldmake more sense, and this is exactly what thefloodmodel of geological
formations postulates!
Dinosaur Ridge near the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains of Colorado is covered with hundreds of dinosaur tracks on an almost
vertical cliff-face! This is part of the great “Dinosaur Highway” running
through the region, with millions of dinosaur prints preserved.
On
May 1, 1996 The
Discovery Channel aired Guide to T
Rex where we find another example of the preservation of
thousands of dinosaur tracks that defies the evolutionists explanations.
Beginning with the unsolved mystery of the origin of Tyrannosaurus Rex, they
reported:
“Anatomical detective work can usually identify dinosaurs to whom
T-Rex is not related. But tracing its family tree back through time is more
difficult. A huge gap in the fossil record precedes the sudden appearance of
T-Rex’s first large[and unknown]predecessor. . . But recently some of the
missing clues have been found 4,000 feet up in the mountains of Alberta, Canada,
on a prehistoric beach frozen in time, thrust on it’s side over millions of
years.”
The
evolutionists want you to believe that over the period of millions of years
a prehistoric beach was gradually subjected to the pressures of uplift, erosion,
and compression, along with the fracturing, weathering, tidal action and
distortion that this would involve, and turned completely on it’s side,
yet with
the footprints relatively undisturbed, in fact scientists have been able to
measure the very stride of the animals that made them!
Why would a
swift, sudden uplift be more credible? If you have ever watched a pizza
cook toss a pizza skin up in the air and twirl it, he has to do it with enough
thrust and speed so that it keeps it's size and shape. If he raised his arm
slowly the pizza skin would flop down over his hand and lose all of it's shape
and contour. This is a fairly simple demonstration in physics, but the principle
still applies with the dinosaur footprints; it makes much more sense that they
were raised with a sudden uplift over a short period of time rather than over
millions of years.
Paleontologist
Philip Currie reported on these tracks as he was scaling down the huge
vertical cliff face on which they were preserved: “The richest
dinosaur footprint sight in all of Canada is in a coal mine in Grand Cash,
Alberta. In these hundred million year old rocks, we have evidence of armored
dinosaurs, meat-eating dinosaurs of different kinds, and large plant eating
dinosaurs [All of them
traveling in roughly the same direction and preserved intact at the same
time! ]. The footprints are all in trackways and they go across
this enormous cliff face which at one time must have been a mud flat at the edge
of a sea. What’s important about this sight is that, because of the age, one
hundred million years ago, we don’t have equivalent bone sights in this part of
the world, and so we have to do a little bit of guesswork in terms of
identifying the dinosaurs.”[12]
Notice the
repeated emphasize on the many millions of years ago that these beasts
supposedly lived-one hundred million years is repeated twice in one paragraph by
Currie. The phrase “millions of years ago,” is constantly woven into dinosaur
lore, not because there is any credible evidence for dinosaurs having lived that
long ago, but because this is necessary to perpetuate the evolutionists myth:
these time periods are necessary for the evolutionary stories to stay afloat,
since the closer we get to present time (and more reliable data for or against
evolution), the less we find of any evidence that supports it. Using the phrase
“millions of years ago” comfortably removes this problem from present time and
puts it in the far distant past, where they assume an imaginary process existed
long ago by which these creatures evolved.
Most people
have heard of the carbon 14 method for determining the age of a fossil and are
led to believe that somehow through this technique we can determine the age of
any fossil, but this is not the case at all. Dinosaurs are believed by
evolutionists to have lived millions of years ago, while carbon 14 is useless
for determining the age of any fossil older than one hundred thousand years old,
which is a mere one tenth of one million years!
The other method for dating
that most people have heard of is potassium argon, however potassium argon is
used to date volcanic rocks, which are rocks produced from the hot magma of the
earth through volcanic processes, but these rocks do not contain any dinosaur
fossils.
Dinosaur
fossils are found almost universally in sedimentary rocks, which are produced
primarily through swift and powerful hydraulic action. There are other methods
for the formation of sedimentary rocks besides hydraulic action, however these
methods would have generally been too slow and too localised to have led to the
sudden, catastrophic events that produced the huge dinosaur graveyards that are
found around the world.
Most rocks dated using the potassium argon method
are supposedly billions of years older than when the dinosaurs lived on the
earth, according to evolutionists.
Alan
Charig, former head of the British Museum of Natural History’s Paleontology
department, wrote:
"As yet we have no radiometric method (that is, one based
on radioactivity) for the direct absolute dating of dinosaurs." [13]
Hotton
reported: “The bones of mice and lizards deposited in caves no more than a few
hundred years ago may be more heavily mineralized than those of dinosaurs
deposited in sandstones a hundred million years ago.” (Hotton, pp. 49, The
Evidence of Evolution)
It is uncommon but not
unknown to find fossils of mammals buried along with the fossils of
dinosaurs, and so evolutionists claim that this proves that dinosaurs and
mammals did not live at the same time, nor did they both perish in large numbers
at the same time by some great catastrophe.
There are some problems with
this type of reasoning though. According to evolutionists themselves, the
creatures that they claim mammals descended from- the so-called "mammal-like"
reptiles, the therapsids - lived millions of evolutionary years before many of
the dinosaurs were supposed to have even existed in the first place. Then, by
some mysterious process, the therapsids, along with practically any other
trace of any mammals, disappeared from the fossil record for one hundred million
years, until at about 65 million years ago, when the true mammals show up out of
nowhere.
Probably
one of the best sites on the internet to view depictions of dinosaurs and find
out more about them would be T. Michael Keesey's Dinosauricon. Keesey is not a creationist
by any means and the tilt towards evolutionary explanations for the origin of
the dinosaurs is evident, nevertheless it is a beautifully designed masterpiece
of artwork and scholarship, and one where a viewer can find a wealth of
information on these grand beasts that once roamed the earth, providing one
keeps a watchful eye out for evolutionist bias.
By
the evolutionists own reasoning, mammals and dinosaurs must have lived together
at the same time for millions of years. So the argument that since
dinosaurs and mammals are not normally found buried together proves that they
did not live at the same time is invalidated by the evolutionist's own scheme of
things.
More bad
news for the reptile-to-mammal transition: The "mammal-like" reptiles that
evolutionists claim evolved from reptiles to mammals never actually existed as
such. The therapsids were not reptiles at all; they were as different from
reptiles as any class of animals are from another. And the fact that they
supposedly went extinct millions of years before true mammals showed up on the
scene should cause some to at least doubt the veracity of evolutionist
speculations. The so-called time-lines for the transition from therapsid to
mammal, along with all of the supposed transitional "links", are more from the
imagination of over-zealous evolutionists stumping for their cause as much as
anything else. They have been "splitting" varieties of what is probably the same
species into numerous species, and they have been grouping what are probably
different species, sometimes found on entirely different continents and in
totally unrelated strata, into a supposed phylogenic lineage. (See Chapter 6)
It's quite
a bit of smoke and mirrors, but it enthralls their audience and masks the truly
deficient evidence for their speculations.
In
addition, although it is true that dinosaurs are not usually found buried with
mammals, it is also true that dinosaurs of one species are not usually found
buried along with dinosaurs of a different species either.
Dinosaur
graveyards, in many cases, are species specific, even among dinosaurs.
Thus to
make the argument that since mammals are not buried in the same places as
dinosaurs are buried they did not live at the same time, one would also have to
believe that for nearly all of the species of dinosaurs that we find buried,
none of them lived contemporaneously either. As one person pointed out, there
has never been a case of fossiled chicken tracks found alongside fossilised
human tracks either, thus the case could be made that humans and chickens never
co-existed, by evolutionist logic that is.
It
is true that evolutionists believe that some dinosaur species did live millions
of years apart, but not all of them. Many dinosaurs of diverse species were
supposed to have lived at the same time as well, however we find them buried in
large numbers separated by species, according to their kind, and not all mixed
together.
What might
be the reason for this? Well, whenever there is a large scale catastrophe, such
as a flood or a great fire, many animals out of fear will resort to their
instinct for herding, where they will bunch up together for protection from
danger, and even stampede together in a mad rush for safety. This would make
sense, we see it in nature today, and could have and probably would have
happened in the early days of the Flood.
Not only is the evidence that
dinosaurs died out millions of years ago largely guesswork, there are a number
of instances where evidence has been found that sharply contradicts this
evolutionary scenario. Recently scientists have extracted bone marrow from
dinosaurs that have supposedly been extinct for 65 million years![14]
Mary H.
Schweitzer of Montana State University and co-workers extracted the proteins
from remains of Tyrannosaurus rex near Bozeman, Montana. Complex molecular
compounds in living systems begin to disintegrate soon after death, and even in
fossilized form it has stretched the credibility of other scientists to suppose
that any type of organic material could have survived intact for such an
incredibly long period of time. Of course, the obvious implication is that
dinosaurs did not live and die off millions of years ago
Because
this has been such an embarassment to the evolutionists involved in this they
have recently done a bit of desperate back peddling on their original claim, and
even "Mr. Dinosaur" himself, Jack Horner has jumped into the fray in an attempt
to defend the evolutionist position of dinosaurs living millions of years in the
past.
Horner's
reported response to a fellow evolutionist after the story broke was: "‘What we
found was heme, a form of iron that has a biological origin, but of course, not
any soft tissue or any other component of a cell. It’s preserved because it’s
iron.’ (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0325RBCs.asp)
This is a
far cry from what was originally reported by his co-worker, Dr. Schweitzer:
"‘The lab filled with murmurs of amazement, for I had focused on something
inside the vessels that none of us had ever noticed before: tiny round objects,
translucent red with a dark center. Then a colleague took one look at them and
shouted, ‘You’ve got red blood cells. You’ve got red blood cells!’"
(M.
Schweitzer and I. Staedter, ‘The Real Jurassic Park’, Earth, June 1997
pp. 55–57.)
(The Word of God says that the wisdom of this world is made
foolishness by God. May the Lord forgive me, but I feel like saying "Those
idiots. Those stupid, blind idiots. They can't see the truth, even when it is
presented right before their very eyes.")
Dinosaur
Jack is obviously attempting to cover his tracks with this explanation, since
Schweitzer originally challenged him as to how they could really be red blood
cells after so many millions of years. Horner told her to prove that they
weren't red blood cells, but she reported "So far, we haven’t been able to." (M.
Schweitzer, Ibid)
The
evidence that it was actually hemoglobin that was found in the dinosaur bones
was documented by Dr. Carl Wieland as follows:
- "The tissue was coloured reddish brown, the colour of hemoglobin, as was
liquid extracted from the dinosaur tissue.
- Hemoglobin contains heme units. Chemical signatures unique to heme were
found in the specimens when certain wavelengths of laser light were applied.
- Because it contains iron, heme reacts to magnetic fields differently from
other proteins extracts from this specimen reacted in the same way as modem
heme compounds.
- To ensure that the samples had not been contaminated with certain bacteria
which have heme (but never the protein hemoglobin), extracts of the dinosaur
fossil were injected over several weeks into rats. If there was even a minute
amount of hemoglobin present in the T. Rex sample, the rats’ immune system
should build up detectable antibodies against this compound. This is exactly
what happened in carefully controlled experiments."
Still, Dinosaur Jack and
his following of evolutionists have steadfastly refused to acknowledge the
evidence uncovered before their very eyes and have been busy revising their
story as well as revising science, even going to the extreme of attempting to
say that now amino acids and heme could survive over a period of 60 million
years. What else could they say? They had no choice, otherwise they would have
had to admit that the bones were not millions of years old, which would have
thrown their entire evolutionary world view in chaos! They also claim that the
immune response mentioned above was consistent with a few small amino acids
attached to a heme molecule. This is impossible. The response was to hemoglobin,
not heme, and that had to have been made up of many more amino acids than three
or four, and for these to have survived for millions of years is more in the
realm of science fiction than science fact. In fact, chemically, there is no way
the proteins could have survived that long.
Moving on: In Discovery Magazine,
August, 1995, Paleontologist Ken Stadtman of Brigham Young University had found
forty
square feet of dinosaur skin in perfect condition. This was the
evolutionist explanation as to how the fossilized remains of dinosaur skin
survived intact for 65
million years: “It seems to have escaped the scavengers by being
rapidly
buried in the bed of a slow
moving river-in sediment so fine that the skin impression was
preserved in detail. ‘The perfect preservation of the texture is really
remarkable,’ said Stadtman.” [15]
Some people
who have a hard time believing that a fish as large as a whale could swallow
Jonah will swallow this kind of explanation from the evolutionists quite
readily.
Although we are told by
evolutionists that men and dinosaurs did not live at the same time on the earth,
it is probable that the flood of Noah was co-incident with the eventual
extinction of the dinosaurs, and that men and dinosaurs lived together before
the flood.
During the
so-called "Age of Reptiles" mammals probably co-existed all along with
dinosaurs. In fact the "mammal-like" reptiles that evolutionists theorise
mammals evolved from existed long before the Jurassic period and long before
most of the larger dinosaurs ever existed. A genuine transitional form between
reptiles and mammals has never been found: Reptiles have scales while mammals
have fur and hair; mammals have mammary glands while reptiles have none; the
differences in the jaw, ear ossicles, etc. would have to be bridged over by a
vast number of intermediate forms, none of which have ever been found.
Over the
past few years good evidence that dinosaurs lived until comparatively recent
geologic times has cropped up in at least two parts of the globe. Bones that
were discovered in Alaska (1985) in association with mammoth bones had been
thought to have been elephant bones because of evolutionary time scales, but
have proven to be dinosaur bones. Some of these bones were subjected to carbon
14 testing, and the dinosaur bones which were supposedly many millions of years
old and thus shouldn't have given any carbon 14 readings at all actually yielded
dates of a mere 25,000 years old! [16]
The time
scales that are thrown around to bolster the idea that the dinosaurs lived
millions of years ago are merely conjecture, much like the situation that we saw
with the coelacanth.[17]
The expedition televised on Terra X was actually setting
traps for these dinosaurs! I also have in my possession a picture from National
Geographic of an ancient cave drawing in Central America of a creature that
could only be described as something quite similar to a Tyrannosaurus, or one of
the smaller dinosaurs of comparable anatomy. There is no other known creature on
the face of the earth that would resemble it in any respect.
Among some
of the various thesis evolutionary scientists have advanced for the causes of
the dinosaurs extinction, the following are just a sample: Raids by flying
saucers; exterminated by cave-men (even though evolutionists don’t believe that
men and dinosaurs lived at the same time); the moon being formed out of the
pacific ocean; mass suicide; world wide parasites; cosmic radiation; starvation;
they became too large (should have gone on a diet); dwindling brain (sharks are
still around and they are not known for their great mental capacities);
egg-eating mammals; stress; and senility. [18]
British
paleontologist Anthony Hallum has come up with the interesting suggestion that
constipation might have done in the dinosaurs!
None of
these reasons explain how the mammals that lived right alongside the dinosaurs
through their extinction managed to survive these catastrophic events. Not all
of the dinosaurs were large either, some were roughly the size of modern
mammals, and many of the ancient mammals were much larger than their modern
counterparts. Scientists really don’t have any good reason why they should have
died apart from the Biblical flood.
With the
latest data on dinosaurs confirming that their extinction was sudden, and that
it was a world-wide catastrophe that killed them off, few scientists now are
debating any more on whether there was a world-wide catastrophe, they are
wondering what kind of catastrophe it was, a comet, a nearby solar flare, an
asteroid, or volcanic eruptions. Recent studies have been done on the worldwide
"iridium layer" left by the debris of an asteroid that is suspected of having
smacked into earth and killed off the dinosaurs.
In
the National Geographic article Dinosaurs,
January 1993, paleontologist Rick Gore wrote of at least 10,000 fossil maiasaurs
along with a nesting ground of fossilized hadrosaur eggs two miles long and a
quarter of a mile wide that were found near Egg Mountain Montana. Many of the
eggs were perfectly intact with the shells uncrushed and had partially developed
embryos inside of them. What could have killed these vast herds of dinosaurs and
yet preserved the eggs intact? They suggested “a tremendous volcanic explosion
might have triggered their death.” [19]
In
the debate on whether a gradual process or a sudden catastrophe caused the
extinction of the dinosaurs, Steven Jay Gould of Harvard wrote: “Yet I think
that few geologists would deem it inherently impossible, or even unlikely, that
the earth might have suffered grievous cosmic insults at infrequent intervals
during its vast history . . . The primary fact of dinosaur extinction is its
timing as part of a global mass dying . . . In any case, geologic evidence
constrains us to look for a contributing cause thatis worldwide in effect, able
to exterminate groups in all major habitats, andgeologically sudden for at least
some of its results.”[20]
This all
means one thing: Lyell's theory ofUniformitarianism hasn't worked, and
scientists are being forced to admit, many of them against their will, that at
least one great catastrophe has occurred on the face of the Earth causing the
sudden deaths of multiplied millions of creatures along with an enormous
climatic change, but they still won't dare mention the possibility of a world
wide flood, because this is mentioned in the Bible (whoops!) and what self
respecting modern scientist would want any of his ideas to be mixed up with a
lot of old superstition and dogma?
Although present day evolutionary
scientists are finally coming back to the concept that the earth might
have suffered drastic changes to it’s environment over the millennia, even the
sudden reversal of it’s magnetic fields, scientists of Christian faith had come
to this conclusion centuries ago.
In
The Deluge Story in Stone, Byron C. Nelson wrote of Professor William Whiston of
Cambridge, who wrote A New Theory of The Earth in 1696. Whiston was an advocate
of the Biblical flood and his idea as to how the flood was brought 
about is quite fascinating, especially
considering what scientists are just now finally beginning to admit might have
brought about the demise of the dinosaurs.
Nelson
wrote: "Especially characteristic of Whiston is the suggestion he offered as to
the manner in which the Deluge was brought on. This, he thought, might have been
by means of a great comet which, passing near the earth at the propitious
moment, so affected the earth by its powers of attraction that it set the earth
to wobbling and so caused the waters in the seas and in the earths interior to
flow upon the land." [21]
Another
giant in Geology was John William Dawson, knighted for his achievments as Sir
William Dawson. Dawson was a creationist geologist in the 19nth century who
believed in the Flood of Noah. He stated "Patient observation and thought may
enable us in time better to comprehend these mysteries; and I think we may be
much aided in this by cultivating an acquaintance with the Maker and Ruler of
the machine as well as with His work." Dawson, J.W., Acadian Geology. The
Geological Structure, Organic Remains, and Mineral Resources of Nova Scotia, New
Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, 1868. 2nd edition. MacMillan and Co.:
London, 694pp.)
According
to Susan Sheets-Pyenson, writing for the Geological Society of America in 1998,
Dawson "attracted both vehement critics and adoring acolytes for his outspoken
denunciation of Darwinian evolution." (GSA Today [Geological Society of America
], September 1998)
Near the
end of his long and fruitful career as a geologist, Dawson had this to say on
the topic of Noah's Flood: "Further, we know now that the Deluge of Noah is not
mere myth or fancy of primitive man or solely a doctrine of the Hebrew
Scriptures. The record of the catastrophe is preserved in some of the oldest
historical documents of several distinct races of men, and is indirectly
corroborated by the whole tenor of the early history of most of the civilized
races."
"As to the
actual occurrence of the Deluge as a wide-spread catastrophe affecting, with a
few stated exceptions, the whole human race, we have thus a concurrence of the
testimony of ancient history and tradition,and of geological and archaeological
evidence, as well as of the inspired records of the Hebrew and Christian
revelation. Thus no historical event, ancient or modern, can be more firmly
established as matter of fact than this." (1895, pp. 4ff.).Dawson, John William
(1895), The Historical Deluge in Relation to Scientific Discovery (Chicago, IL:
Revell).
This statement should make it very clear that Dawson came to
believe that the Flood was a universal catastrophe, not merely a local one.
Michael
Rogers wrote in Newsweek in 1998: “What killed the dinosaurs? Eight years ago
University of California scientists made the astonishing suggestion that the
once mighty reptiles perished after a giant asteroid, several miles in diameter,
struck Earth. The collision tossed so much dust and smoke into the atmosphere
that the climate cooled, vegetation withered and the dinosaurs starved. . .
Other researchers soon offered a counter theory, arguing that the extinction
could have been caused by gigantic volcanic eruptions. Ash from these eruptions
could have cooled the climate and pulled up the telltale iridium from deep
within the earth . . .Both camps may be right. Last week University of Rochester
geologist Asish Basu blended asteroids and volcanoes to describe a violent yet
lingering end for the dinosaurs. At the American Geophysical Union meeting in
San Francisco, Basu suggested that 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid did
smash into Earth near present-day India, triggering massive volcanic eruptions
that went on for hundreds of thousands of years. Basu’s proof for this one-two
punch is his discovery in India of quartz that, under high magnification, shows
evidence of tremendous physical impact. Such a shock, says Basu, could only be
caused by an asteroid strike. The battered quartz lies beneath a giant lava
flow, which some scientists believe began approximately when the dinosaurs
started to disappear . . .But critics charge that Basu’s impacted quartz could
have been created by the ancient volcano itself. And others question the precise
dating of his samples . . . the exact culprit remains a mystery, the idea that
global catastrophes may cause sudden extinction has profound implications for
the study of evolution.” ( The Death of the Dinosaur: Newsweek, December 19,
1988)
There is no
reason why the fact of Noah's Flood should conflict with the meteor or volcano
theory that modern scientists are proposing. The impact of a great asteroid
could have initiated the tectonic and volcanic activity that produced the flood,
and the resulting dust and ash ascending into the stratosphere would have mixed
with the vapor canopy and condensed it into rain. However there is one very
important point to be considered when investigating these theories.
Whether or
not a comet or an asteroid collision might have been responsible for the Flood
of Noah, God was the chief agent behind everything in the first place. The Bible
clearly states that the Flood was brought about with the foreknowledge of God as
a judgment upon a wicked race, and that it was God Himself who brought the
events to pass. This was no mere naturalistic occurrence. When we attempt to
establish a purely naturalistic explanation for something that the Bible says
was of supernatural and divine origin, we are treading on the same ground that
the evolutionists are in their treatment of the history of life on earth. I do
not wish to go down that slippery slope. God established the rainbow in the
clouds to confirm His covenant that He would never again bring a flood to
destroy the earth. Let us remember this amid all of our human speculations.
Now, as to the evidence for the
Flood: Byron Nelson mentioned Benjamin Silliman, head of the Geology Department
of Yale University. Silliman said in 1829: “Respecting the Deluge, there can be
but one opinion: geology fully confirms the Scriptural history of the event . .
.Whales, sharks, and other fishes, crocodiles andamphibians,the mammoth and the
extinct (species of)elephant, and rhinoceros,the hippopotamus, hyenas, tigers,
deer, horses, the various species of the bovine family and a multitude more, are
found buried in diluvium(sedimentary strata formed by great tidal action) at a
greater or less depth: and in most instances under circumstances indicating that
they were buried by the same catastrophe which destroyed them: namely a sudden
and violent deluge . . . a skeleton of a whale lay on top of the mountain
Sanhorn on the coast of the northern sea..[ 22]
As
mentioned, 99.9% of all fossils that have ever been found, except those of
insects in tree sap and animals trapped in tar pits, (and why would one animal
after another from a great variety of species run into a tar pit except to
escape something quite frightening, perhaps a one-hundred foot tidal wave?) has
been in sedimentary rock, i.e. rock formed by compressed layers of silt,
mud, and other materials deposited by hydraulic action of swift moving water.
The Bible
declares that when the flood of Noah occurred "all of the fountains of the great
deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon
the earth forty days and forty nights." Notice it does not only say in Sacred
Scripture that it merely rained for forty days and nights, but that there was
clearly some kind of tremendous upheaval of the ocean floors, along with great
earthquake and tectonic activity that violently changed the surface of the
earth.
The Genesis
flood itself lasted for nearly a year, during which time the entire surface of
the earth was changed. The "fountains of the great deep" burst forth as Earth's
crust was fractured. Continents sank. Oceans were displaced. Vast amounts of
plants and animals were buried in sediments; wave after wave of tremendous tidal
currents created fossil layers of different species, then as the waters receded
from off of the face of the earth in the later part of the flood the present
mountains that we see today were uplifted while the new ocean floors sank back
down.
The study
of the process of mountain building, known as the science of orogeny, describes
four different types of mountains: Volcanic mountains, Fold mountains, Fault
block mountains, and Upwarped mountains. The above types of mountains are good
evidence that the process was not a slow and gradual process, but the result of
some sudden continental upheaval and cataclysmic and violent action that
occurred over a relatively short period of time.
The authors
of An Introduction to Physical Science write: “The fundamental process of
mountain building remains such a mystery that the enormous mass of data
collected by scientists in the past decade serves as much to perplex as to
enlighten.” [23].
It
takes tremendous amounts of energy for a mountain range to form, and scientists
are still uncertain just how this process takes place, however the old
uniformitarian theories postulated that it took millions of years for this to
occur. With the normal amounts of sedimentation and erosion this time scale is
actually impossible. Various theories of how today’s mountains were formed
involve shifting of continental plates, mantle boiling, convection, and
contraction of the crust of the earth by thermal energy.
The annual
amount of estimated sedimentary run-off that does occur naturally flowing off
the continents of the world into the ocean has been estimated at 10 billion
metric tons per year, which would have leveled off the mountains and continents
to sea level at least 20 times if the creation of the great mountain ranges was
by the supposed evolutionary uniformitarian standards.
The present
mountains would have to have been raised during and within a few years or
centuries after the flood, thus being only thousands instead of millions of
years old. In Physical Anthropology, Stein and Rowe inform us: "In the
fifteenth century Leonardo da Vinci wrote, 'The mountains where there are shells
were formerly shores beaten by waves, and since then they have been elevated to
the heights we see today.'"
According
to the evolutionary scheme, fossils should be arranged with the oldest near the
bottom and the youngest near the top. But what of the sea shells found at the
top of the Alpine mountains?
And what of
the dinosaur bones found nearly jutting out of the surface by Serreno in Saharan
Africa and in Egypt?
Evolutionists
have invoked a host of geologic processes to explain this, such as overthrusts,
intrusions, faults, folds, and paraconformities (more on this later), and
although these processes have occured, they are more in line with a catastrophic
explanation for the history of the earth, not a slow, uniformitarian one, and
even with these events, if this was a process that had taken place over millions
of years, the dinosaur remains would have been reduced to rubble. The evidence
for their deposition points more towards sudden burial under sediment by a
great, hydraulic catastophe within the past five to ten thousand years.
It
is known that the Sahara desert had a lush, tropical eco-system only a few
thousand years ago, which would have further led to the deterioration of these
fossil remains, thus fossils found near the surface of the earth, as Serreno and
his little group of fossil hunters have discovered lately near the Sahara in
immense numbers, could not have existed for millions or even hundreds of
thousands of years so close to the surface; the chemical action in ground soil,
even in sand at such a shallow depth, would have obliterated these fossils
within a few thousand years. (See also Darwin quote above concerning ground
percolation that would destroy fossils buried in the earth after a few thousand
years)
Hotton
wrote: “In upland areas the rapidity of weathering and predominance of erosion
drastically reduce the upland dwellers’ chances for preservation. More often
than not, their skeletal remains are either completely destroyed by weathering
or are battered to pieces by fast-running water. Burial in local upland deposits
improves their chances only slightly, for the life expectancy of these deposits
is short. Sooner or later they too are torn up by erosion, their contents
scattered and destroyed.” (Hotton, pp. 49, ibid.)
Contrary to
popular opinion, the Grand Canyon does not have every layer of the geologic
column and the fossils that are found there are not arranged from simple
organisms at the bottom to more complex ones at the top.
Evolutionists
have claimed that they have actually found the entire geologic column in part of
North Dakota. Creationists do acknowledge that there are isolated places on the
earth where all ten systems of the Phanerozoic column do exist, but they do not
exist with the amount of soil that would suggest that each period is as old as
evolutionists suggest, and they do not cover anywhere near the great expanses of
geographic area over the surface of the earth necessary to establish it as a
universal fact.
The
geologic column is supposed to consist of successive layers of strata that each
represent millions of years of time throughout the entire earth, yet there is
less than 1% of the earths surface where they have found the entire column in
the proper order, and even in those very rare places millions of years from many
of the epochs are simply missing. If each period represented millions of years,
and the entire Phanerozoic (where life once existed) column is at least 3,500
million years old and encompassed the entire planet, then why is it found in
only less than a handful of places on earth?
The
geologic column itself was worked out by men in the early part of the nineteenth
century, years before any type of radiometric dating was available, and in fact
was developed by men who were creationists and who accepted the Biblical account
of the deluge. It is very rare to find any place on earth where even half of the
layers are found anywhere in the right order, fossils of every major phyla of
living creatures are found in the lowest layers of Cambrian rock, and there
are so many places where the layers are out of place that geologists have had to
use a number of terms to explain away these discrepancies, such as
non-conformities, overthrusts, intrusions, thrust faults, folds,
paraconformities, etc. etc.[24]
This does
not mean that thrust faults and overthrusts do not actually occur. They do, and
they are not always associated with fossils. Catastrophism would definitely
predict that thrusts, overthrust, intrusions and folds would exist, even with
the Flood of Noah. After all, Scripture states that “All the fountains of the
great deep were broken up”, definitely implying that there was tremendous
tectonic and volcanic activity concurrent with the Flood, and that afterward
there were mountain building processes that would have produced folds, thrusts,
faults, etc.
There are
many mountain ranges throughout the world where the entire geologic column is
reversed, where the upper strata, consisting of billions and billions of tons of
rock, was moved (according to the evolutionary explanation) gradually over a
period of millions of years, into horizontal position where it rests on a fairly
even layer over rock that is supposedly hundreds of millions of years
youngerthat now lies underneath it, despite the fact that there is no known
force in existence that could accomplish this feat without wearing away the
entire mountain in the process, (except tremendous hydraulic activity associated
with a cataclysmic flood that would have deposited the material in layers while
it was still in a state of solvency, followed within a few months or years by a
sudden uplift).
In
many cases the fault planes between the different layers of rock run smoothly
for many miles in a continuous, horizontal line, exhibiting no signs of the
broken stubble and breccia that should be scattered throughout the area in
profuse amounts had the older rock on top been moved over the younger rock by
the slow geologic processes that evolutionists claim occurred over millions of
years. Their formation, with one geologic layer laid almost perfectly in
horizontal fashion over the other, often with the younger deposits underneath
the older rock, could only be explained by the successive tidal currents of a
global flood depositing the sediment in place by specific gravity beyond the
scope of anything that we see occurring today, and then afterward tremendous
tectonic activity raising these mountains above the surrounding landscape. There
is no other reasonable answer.
There are
small-scale thrusts that show sings of breccia in isolated areas, and certain
instances of folding (which would be expected even with Flood geology), probably
caused by the normal processes of faulting, but nothing of the amount required
to explain the giant formations of the size of the Heart Mountain and South Fork
thrusts, and the Swiss Alps, in addition to the other mountain ranges throughout
the world, where we do not find the vast geologic deformity, the broken and
twisted rubble, and the uneven, fractured rock between the various layers should
this have been due to a long, gradual process without the action of vast
hydraulic and catastrophic tectonic forces associated with the Noahdic flood.
The great Matterhorn mountain
in the Alpine ranges has its layers of rock completely inverted to the
traditional time scale, a feat that should be impossible by normal
uniformitarian means. It has an Eocene layer of rock, supposedly only 60 million
years old, lying underneath the Triassic layer, supposedly 200 million years
old, the Jurassic layer, supposedly 150 million years old, and the Cretaceous
layer, dated at 70-100 million years ago.
Evolutionary
geologists have presented us with the amazing story that this entire mountain
was moved virtually intact over the course of millions of years from the African
continent to the European continent! Whatever physical reason for the cause of
the flood we know from Scripture that there was volcanic and tectonic
activity of an immense scale, and of course direct Divine interaction as to the
cause of the flood is possible as well.
The Flood
was divinely known and foretold, but that should not prevent us from certain
conjectures as to how it may have occurred, especially when these
conjectures have a sound basis in scientific evidence and do not conflict
with Scripture. Should I find that any conjecture should conflict with
Scripture, I would not hesitate to throw out the conjecture and adhere to
Scripture.
Skeptics
question how Noah would have been able to fit two of every kind of animal
onboard the Ark, and seven of every clean beast. After all, there are literally
millions of different species of plants and animals alive today. How did Noah do
it?
First of
all Noah would not have needed to take every variety of species living today. Of
the five Kingdoms of living species, he would not have needed to take along the
Monera, Protista, Fungi or Plantae (except for food). Many of these are aquatic
and had no problem surviving the Flood, while the others would have survived on
debris floating on the Flood, some possibly in seed form.
Of
the remaining Kingdom, Animalia, Noah would not have needed to take along any
dolphins, whales, fish, or any of the creatures that lived in the sea. In fact,
he would only have needed to take along representatives of the birds, reptiles,
and mammals.
And even
this might not have been as much as would be imagined if the Biblical concept of
“kind” was closer to the genus concept than the species concept, and in some
cases even encompassed the family level. This might be the case, or what is more
probable, the species concept that we use today in taxonomy to classify animals
might actually be broader than what we think it is. The different genus and
species of cats alive today, for instance, might really be different varieties,
or breeds from one “super-species” making up the entire cat family, and this
could be true for other varieties of the same species that are classified as separate species by some
taxonomists. They might simply be varieties of the same species, like the
different varieties that we find among dogs. Thus it is possible that he only
needed to take one pair of cat ancestors that gave birth to the many different
species or varieties of cats alive today. Most cats are inter-fertile, and this
is used by evolutionists themselves, at times, as a definition of species.
Thus a
common ancestor of all the different types of parrots, parakeets, conyers and
other similar birds could have been taken along. A common ancestor for the
hawks, falcons, eagles and certain other birds of prey might have been taken
along. These would all have been within the Biblical concept of “kind”.
Amphibians might have lived on floating debris, which could have been extensive,
forming huge floating islands of vegetable material.
The largest
group of animals is the Class Insecta. Many of the insects would have survived
in larval form on debris, and some winged species undoubtedly followed the Ark
as it floated over the seas. Many of the different species of ants might have
been represented by just a few colonies that survived on the wood of the Ark or
on floating debris, and then after the Flood they migrated and developed into
the various types of ants alive today. Also, it says in the Scripture that only
those animals in whose nostrils was the breath of life would be destroyed.
Insects breath through their skin by a system of tracheal tubes, not through
their nostrils as other animals do.
Noah would
only have needed to take one common pair of bear ancestors (creationism does
acknowledge common ancestors within the species level, and perhaps within the
genus level) that would have given birth over time after the Flood to the
grizzly, polar, black and brown bears. This would be true for many other species
of life as well.
If
it is possible that the Biblical word “kinds” had a broader range than the
narrow species concept used with certain animals alive today, and is closer to
the genus level, or if the species concept is really much broader than we think
it is for many animals, then many of the dinosaur species that paleontologists
classify purely on the basis of size and certain anatomical novelties might only
be different varieties or breeds of the same species, and when Noah took
dinosaurs aboard the Ark with him, he would not have taken full grown dinosaurs,
but baby ones, perhaps he would even have taken eggs of certain species and
incubated them, so the size problem so often brought up by doubters is easily
taken care of.
Thus a
common objection of the skeptics of Scripture has no basis after a careful
examination of the facts. These objections have been the common fodder for the
"village atheist" for hundreds of years and can be easily answered- in fact, the
presumptions behind these objections are highly illogical on the face of it.
Another
common question besides the one of how did Noah get all the animals on the Ark
is where did Noah get all the animals to put on the Ark. This type of question
belies at least a couple of assumptions: That before the Flood all animals were
distributed geographically over the face of the earth in the same manner that
they are today; That Noah only had a very limited time to obtain the animals,
and that there was very little planning and preparation made by Noah before he
embarked on his historic voyage.
First of
all, it was probable that Noah did not have to go to the ends of the earth to
find representatives of the major Families of animals that he brought on the
Ark. Fossils of many different types of plants and animals have been found in
various locations on the face of the earth that have no correspondence to their
current location. The fossils of tropical plants have been found in the
antarctic and arctic regions. Fossils of camels have been found in the eastern
parts of the United States. Fossils of extinct horses have been found in North
and South America. Rhino fossils have been found in Europe. Fossils of species
of various marsupials that only exist in Australia have been found in South
America. Mammoths and mastodons, which are extinct relatives of the elephant
have been found in Siberia and Alaska.
This
indicates that at one time various types of animals probably shared universal
habitats and were only isolated and widely dispersed over the face of the earth
after the Flood, when seasons and climatic changes were much more severe, which
led to geographic isolation and variations within species.
In
addition, the continents were possibly not in the same position as they were
before the break-up of the "fountains of the great deep". It says in Scripture
that the mountains rose and the oceans sank into their present depths after the
Flood. Before this all land surfaces on the face of the earth might have been
connected and animals, although separated by various ecological zones, were not
prohibited from traversing from one end of the available existing land mass of
the original "supercontinent" to the other end.
Then there
is the question of how was Noah able to collect such an enormous variety of
animals. The Bible says that God brought to Noah two of every kind of animal and
seven of every kind of "clean" animal. Wouldn't this have been an enormous task?
Only if you
assume that Noah only had a week or two to accomplish this and that animals were
much less numerous than they might have been before the Flood, and that animals
hid from mankind as they do today.
This was
probably not the case. The Bible says that it was only after the Flood that
animals were in fear of man and the hostility between wild animals and man
existed. This would imply that before the Flood man lived in a grand sort of
huge beastiary with animals of all species browsing nearby him, possibly as we
keep certain domesticated animals as pets today. Noah might merely have had to
set some food out to attract animals of various species and then tended to these
animals as a zookeeper does to his beasts. He might have spent years to corral
the animals and could have created an enormous "Zoo" and then brought the young
of the animals of this Zoo onto the Ark as the time came for the Flood to
approach.
It
is speculated by some theologians that Noah might have been warned about the
Flood as early as one hundred and twenty years before the time of the actual
Flood itself, so he had plenty of time to prepare. He could have even employed
laborers to help him and his family in this task.
In
addition, the Ark was roughly four hundred and fifty feet long, and held as much
storage space as over five hundred railroad boxcars, and thus could easily have
accommodated all of the major categories of terrestrial animal species, and
again, many species that are nearly identical today anatomically and
genetically, dogs and wolves and foxes for instance, or horses and zebras, would
only have needed to have been represented by one set of parents.
Thus, as in
other typical objections of skeptics and agnostics universal, there is a quite
logical and simple explanation to these so-called discrepancies to the Biblical
account of the Flood.
Another
objection is how the many kinds of races could have come from Noah and his three
sons. This is easily dealt with as well. It is nowhere stated just what
nationality or race Noah was, or what ethnicity Noah's wife was. After all,
Noah's grandparents and great grandparents could have been a mixture of four or
more ethnic divisions. Noah's wife could have been of a quite diverse ethnic
stock than Noah was. Then there were the wives of Noah's sons who came aboard
the Ark as well. These women could each have been of quite diverse racial
background, thus Noah's grandchildren from each of his three sons could have had
ample opportunity to have been of varied genetic stock.
In
tracing the table of nations listed in Genesis we find much from ancient history
that corroborates the names and divisions of nations that testifies that what
the Bible states concerning the origin of the races and nations of the ancient
world has much to lend it historical veracity.
There have
been disputes over how much sedimentary rock was already in existence before the
Flood of Noah. So-called former young earth creationist Glenn Morton (he makes
the claim of having been a young earth creationist at one time, but at least one
former colleague has cast doubt on the geniuneness of this dubious claim) makes
the interesting statement that "The YEC [Young Earth Creationist] paradigm
requires that there be very little sedimentary rock prior to the flood. This is
because none would have been made at creation (it would be a deception to make
rocks appear sedimentary which were in fact not sedimentary). Thus we can
calculate how much igneous rock must have been eroded to form the presently
observed volcanic rocks."
Morton's
basic contention is that a world-wide flood would have released toxic amounts of
mercury from the basaltic and granitic rock that would have poisoned any life on
earth that survived outside of the Ark, such as fish, vegetation floating on the
surface on mats, etc.
Morton's
reasoning is seriously flawed on a couple of counts.
First, he
makes the presumption that creationists claim that all sedimentary rocks were
created during the Flood of Noah. While creationists believe that most
fossiliferous rocks were formed during the Flood, all sedimentary rocks were not
necessarily fossiliferous before the Flood.
Morton has
either misread Genesis where it states that prior to the Flood, during the Third
Day of the creation week God separated the land from the waters, and this could
surely have created sedimentary rocks from the tremendous tectonic processes
taking place along with the hydraulic action, or alse he has somehow assumed
that Young Earth Creationism demands that God separated the land from the waters
in an instant of time on the Third Day and that there were no geologic and
hydraulic processes going on in the earth during this process.
