Dinosaurs...

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inocente said:
I guess if I’m unworthy of your expertise then you could always make your claims on a specialist forum like biology-forums.com/ or biology-online.org/biology-forum/ and see how well you do.

We all no doubt learned that at school, I’m not that much of a non-specialist. 🙂

It doesn’t matter what authority figures believe, science is about evidence, not presumptions. The facts, the whole facts and nothing but the facts. I’d say the fact is that easily found non-specialist articles show that both amino and nucleic acids have been discovered intact which are orders of magnitude older than one million years, and therefore the belief that they necessarily degrade within one or two million years is falsified.

Which in turn would mean this area can’t be used to support the idea that humans and dinosaurs were ever contemporaries, and in fact weighs against it by adding to the evidence that life on Earth has been around far longer than humans.
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I suggest we move along to more general ways of measuring time in the geologic column. See if we can’t knock a few tens of millions of years off the age of some sediments and bring dinos and man closer together.
You go first, in the interests of fair play!
 
You said:
I suggest we move along to more general ways of measuring time in the geologic column. See if we can’t knock a few tens of millions of years off the age of some sediments and bring dinos and man closer together.
You go first, in the interests of fair play!
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As I understand it, the evidence from various fields is that non-birdlike dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, and that the first humans appeared 200,000 years ago.

So basically you would need humans to exist for around 33000% longer than the evidence says, explain how we survived the extinction event, explain what we were doing for those 65 million years when no remains have been found, and (if this is where you’re going), how the folk tales of Genesis managed to survive orally for all that time.

General techniques for hiding from the truth can be found on many conspiracy theory websites, creationist websites, UFO websites, and so on. Look for any website where a pointlessly weird belief has taken over souls and made them willing slaves to its defense.

So given the health and safety issue, perhaps you could start by saying why I should want dinosaurs and man to coexist in flat denial of the evidence.
 
Ok. Another example of time and process.

Way back in the Devonian Period, which lasted from 416 through to 359 million years ago, there existed a barrier reef in western Australia.
Geology says it started being built in the middle of the devonian period and it died during an extinction event at the end of the Devonian Period.
So this barrier reef grew to its final size over a period of 28.5 million years.
The Napier Reef was built by two tiny creatures on an area which at that time was on or near the equator. Structures within the reef display lamellae, which are taken to be annual growth lamellae.

28.5 million years from mid devonian to end devonian

napier reef built from mid to end devonian

lamellae 1mm apart, Reef 60 meters high = 60,000 years not 28.5 million years.

So this Reef which could grow to that size in perfect conditions on the equator in 60,000 years for some reason took 28.5 million years to grow. To put it another way; the reef forming bacteria did not grow or reproduce or build structures for 27.9 million years of their existence on the reef.

When sea levels later dropped the limestone reef they built began to erode and dissolve with rainwater. It dissolved gullies or gorges to a depth of 50 meters.
Limestone can dissolve at a rate of 10 centimeters per 1000 years.
So in 500,000 years the reef could have dissolved that much.
But limestone can also dissolve 5 times faster than that.
So the reef could have dissolved in 100,000 years.
But limestone can dissolve even faster than that again with sulpher dioxide in the water. Many of the largest caves in the world may have been carved in just a few thousand years, traces of sulpher dioxide have been found in them.

In any case, the total amount of time for both building and dissolving the reef is lets say 250,000 - 450,000 years but it could possibly be as low as 100,000 years.

So if the reef lived for 28.5 million years it could have grown to 475 times the size it did (it is about a 1000km long at present).

and, if the Devonian Period ended 359 million years ago the reef could have dissolved away 718 times over already. But it is still there, intact. but with deep erosion displayed in places.
 
You

Your post are too, too, too, too, too complex for the lay person.

If you could be so kind, what is the bottom line in your arguments?

Thanks!
 
You said:
So if the reef lived for 28.5 million years it could have grown to 475 times the size it did (it is about a 1000km long at present).

and, if the Devonian Period ended 359 million years ago the reef could have dissolved away 718 times over already. But it is still there, intact. but with deep erosion displayed in places.
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Unless perhaps it was built up and dissolved down a number of times and only today is the size it is.
 
vz71 said:
Unless perhaps it was built up and dissolved down a number of times and only today is the size it is.
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Thats a possibility and there are other possibilities also, including that I might be wrong. But its interesting to try and think about it.
 
Jim_Baur said:
You

Your post are too, too, too, too, too complex for the lay person.

If you could be so kind, what is the bottom line in your arguments?

Thanks!
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Ok.

I don’t think there is a bottom line except maybe that one should not fall in love with their models - no not that type of model.
 
It’s interesting that some people think only ‘fundamentalist’ Christians are promoting the modern man and dinosaurs had coexisted idea.

From the Catholic Answers Library:

"The Time Question

“Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.”

I think some people who say the Bible is not a science book are the same people who attempt to treat it as a science book.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago."
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Catholic doctrinal definition is no more relevant to cosmology than are Iroquois or Hindu or Islamic theological teaching.
I think some people who say the Bible is not a science book are the same people who attempt to treat it as a science book.
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No one should be treating the Bible, or the Qur’an, or the Popol Vuh, or the Bhagavad Gita as science books. They are faith statements, not science books.
 
You said:
Did humans live with dinosaurs?
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No. The two species are separated by millions of years. The first known dinosaurs were bipedal predators that were one to two metres long. Spondylosoma may or may not be a dinosaur; the fossils (all postcranial) are tentatively dated at 230-232 Million years old. Dinosaurs became extinct approximately 65.5 million years ago.

The term “human” in the context of human evolution refers to the genus Homo, but studies of human evolution usually include other hominids, such as the Australopithecines, from which the genus* Homo* diverged by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago in Africa. Scientists have estimated that humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5–7 million years ago.

Several species and subspecies of Homo evolved and are now extinct, introgressed or extant. Examples include* Homo erectus* (which inhabited Asia, Africa, and Europe) and* Neanderthals* (either* Homo neanderthalensis* or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) (which inhabited Europe and Asia). Archaic Homo sapiens, the forerunner of anatomically modern humans, evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. The first modern human civilisation is said to have emerged in ancient Sumer (the cradle of civilisation) 8000 years ago.
 
rossum said:
More mocking YEC I would think. YEC is eminently mockable. It is YEC that makes God appear to be a trickster.

rossum
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You have a very good point. Nonetheless, I see the fundamental error in
the #@*~+ “trickster” trick argument. So I went to the heart of the matter which is God and His creative powers.

By the way, God does giggle especially when I tell Him what I am thinking. 😃
 
rossum said:
More mocking YEC I would think. YEC is eminently mockable. It is YEC that makes God appear to be a trickster.

rossum
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Those that attempt to paint God as a trickster set themselves up for failure.

They have defined how something they never witnessed happened, and then claim God to be tricking everyone if the event did not unfold as they believed.

It is not a trick for God to work in ways beyond the understanding of man.

As to mocking. It really has no place in intelligent discussion.
If your case requires mocking the opposition, then your case is weak.
 
rossum said:
More mocking YEC I would think. YEC is eminently mockable. It is YEC that makes God appear to be a trickster.

rossum
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Rossum, I don’t interpret this as mocking YEC so much as pointing gentle fun at its foibles. True, it would be trickery for God to have planted fossils around the globe with the appearance of great age if the world is only a few thousand years old as the YECs argue. But we know that is not the case.
 
StAnastasia said:
Catholic doctrinal definition is no more relevant to cosmology than are Iroquois or Hindu or Islamic theological teaching.
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May I gently point out that Catholic doctrines pertain to the kingdom of God Who is Creator. The universe and all its material bits and pieces are the created. When the material world intersects with the spiritual world – Divine Revelation trumps!
 
grannymh said:
May I gently point out that Catholic doctrines pertain to the kingdom of God Who is Creator. The universe and all its material bits and pieces are the created. When the material world intersects with the spiritual world – Divine Revelation trumps!
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But Divine revelation presumably cannot teach error, so it must be our interpretation of that revelation that is in error.
 
StAnastasia said:
But Divine revelation presumably cannot teach error, so it must be our interpretation of that revelation that is in error.
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Yes, people, such as those who wish to change the Catholic Church, can interpret erroneously Divine Revelation to suit their agenda.
 
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