A simple Example of Evolutionism's fiction

[BobRyan]

By way of context. It is fully expected that the junk-science methods and bias of evolutionists will result in imaginative “Stories” and lots of arm waiving – but little by way of actual “fact”. That is why each time they claim to find “actual sequences” in the fossil record that SHOW smooth stepwise evolution – they have cause to highlight these as “Shining examples” of their fairytales having substance in “real life” in real empirical science!

Bible believing – Genesis-believing Christians are always amazed when an evolutionist claims to have found such a compelling sequence IN the fossil record. But as this small sample shows – the “truth is” that evolutionist speculation only survives in a factless void. Once a reasonable amount of data is available on the subject – they must confess their fraudulent practices.

The Horse series is no exception to the rule.

The WILD, Classic, Traditional (Darwinian) claim for Horse evolution:

Moving up the stratigraphic column, fossils reveal a main line of evolution progressing continuously from Eohippus [hyracotherium] to Equus

The line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution."
G.G. Simpson, Horses, 1951, pg 215.

Sound familiar? It should -- How “LIKE” their efforts with Archaeopteryx and Bird evolution!!

But are those discredited positions of evolutionism – still part of the faith and practice of some devotees of evolutionism today??

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2900/4.html#000051

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by UTEOTW:
"Moving up the stratigraphic column, fossils reveal a main line of evolution progressing continuously from Eohippus [hyracotherium] to Equus "

UTEOTW said: Yes, a good quote. What is the problem with this. I think you just admitted defeat.

"The line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution."
G.G. Simpson, Horses, 1951, pg 215. "

UTEOTW said: Yes, a good quote. What is the problem with this. I think you just admitted defeat.

</font>[/QUOTE]No basis for such wild evolutionist SEQUENCES:

"This is true of all the thirty-two orders of mammals . . The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed."—*G.G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), p. 105.

[/quote]

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. ... Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."
D. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology", Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 50, pg 24, 1979.

In time, fact replace evolutionism’s fiction:

From these quotes we discover that EVEN among evolutionism’s faithful the certainty of grandiose claims for change – becomes LESS true over time as Real science confronts junk-science speculation with “details” replacing guesswork with some “fact”.

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.

"By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information. What appeared to be a nice, simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem [with the fossil record] has not been alleviated."—*David M. Raup, in Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin 50 (1979), p. 29.

The above statement is a classic confession that data is never the friend of evolutionists – it merely unravels the twisted layers of guesswork and speculation built around skimpy data, wild guesses and evolutionist religious fervor.

Gould sees the same thing in the discrediting of the horse series sequence published by Simpson.

The enormous increase in fossil evidence since Simpson's time has allowed paleontologists .... to falsify this view. In other words, bushiness now pervades the entire phylogeny of horses.
S. J. Gould, Full House 1997, pg 67-69.

Result: Atheist Evolutionists disparage the horse series fraud

The enormous increase in fossil evidence since Simpson's time has allowed paleontologists .... to falsify this view. In other words, bushiness now pervades the entire phylogeny of horses.
S. J. Gould, Full House 1997, pg 67-69.

The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed fox-sized creatures living nearly 50 million years ago to today’s much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown.
B. Rensberger, Houston Chronicle, Nov 5, 1980, sec. 4 pg 15.

"Throughout the history of horses, the species are well-marked and static over millions of years."
S. Gould, Full House, p. 69.

"High school textbooks propose that, ..., the rabbit sized Eohippus commenced his move up through the evolutionary ranks, one incremental step after another. ... The high school progression is an artifact; .... The facts are discrete. There is no hint of gradual change, no hint either of selective advantages accumulating."
D. Berlinski, review of Full House, O&D 18(1), pg 30.

"I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary stories] has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true.[/b] For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs [in the American Museum of Natural History] is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable ..."
Niles Eldredge, as quoted in Luther D Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th ed. 1988, pg 78.

"The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature."— *G.G. Simpson, Life of the Past (1953), p. 119.

Additional points to keep in mind:
a) There is no site in the world where the evolutionary succession of the horse can be seen. Rather, the fossil fragments have been gathered from several continents on the assumption of evolutionary progress.

b) Bones of the supposed earliest horses have been found at or near the surface. Sometimes they are found right next to modern horse fossils.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Summary “problem” for this fraudulent Horse series presentation by Simpson and others.

Here is the really sad part for objective clear thinkers.

The erroneous data was foisted onto the public "as through true" from the priestly temples of evolutionism – they did NOT simply argue from some artist's drawings that "HERE is how we THINK fossils will be found some day showing how the horse evolved". (As UTEOTW seems to HOPE they were saying).

Rather they get real fossils with real feet and “show them lined up” as if found that way - and then they “claim” this is the fossil evidence “showing” horse evolution as it exists IN the fossil record, real animals, real feet, real bones, real sequences. (You can’t get rid of the feet without getting rid the animal and confessing that the sequence was not actually FOUND that way in the fossil record)

Yet they present those animal fossils AS IF it is a factual find – a sequence observed IN the fossil record. Fact – not simply speculation propping up the myths of evolutionism.

The line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution."
G.G. Simpson, Horses, 1951, pg 215.

Yet even Simpson admits that presenting such sequences as fact is intellectually dishonest.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />"This is true of all the thirty-two orders of mammals . . The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed."—*G.G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), p. 105.

</font>[/QUOTE]

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. ... Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."
D. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology", Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 50, pg 24, 1979.

Now see UTEOTW use weasel words and misdirection to try and doge the obvious problem.

UTEOTW
Simpson was actually talking about orthogenesis, the idea that evolution happens in a simple, stepwise, gradual, steady progression of A to B

Simpson was presenting fossil sequence as FACT - as related - as ancestors WITH FEET.

There is no change to declare that as FALSE without taking the ANIMALS that the feet come with - with you.

And then what is the horrible implication about the "faith" of the devotees that initially presented the fraudulent sequence and those that today still try to defend it??

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Efforts to recover credibility among Evolutionists

Gould argues for a jumbled fossil assortment in the geologic column instead of sequences.

"...first we note a primary signal of branching, branching, and more branching. Where, in this forest, could anyone identify a main trunk? The bush has many tips, though all but one are extinct. Each tip can be connected to a last common ancestor by a labyrinthine route, but no paths are straight, and all lead back by sidestepping from one event of branching speciation to another, and not by descent down a ladder of continuous change.
S. Gould, Full House, pg 67

Gould argues that real data – allows some of the junk-science speculations (such as the discredited horse series) to be thrown out the window. (Discarded – as Raup notes)

The enormous increase in fossil evidence since Simpson's time has allowed paleontologists .... to falsify this view. In other words, bushiness now pervades the entire phylogeny of horses.
S. J. Gould, Full House 1997, pg 67-69.

Since some would argue for taking larger chunks of Simpson’s position and dissecting them – here is one.

The evolution of the horse family included, indeed, certain trends, but none of these was undeviating or orthogenetic. The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature. Increases in size, for instance, did not occur at all during the first third of the whole history of the family. Then it occurred quite irregularly, at different rates and to different degrees in a number of different lines of descent. Even after a trend toward larger size had started it was reversed in several groups of horses which became smaller instead of larger. As already briefly noted, the famous “gradual reduction of the side toes” also is something that never happened. There was no reduction for the 15 or 20 million years of the history. There was relatively rapid reduction from four front toes to three (the hind foot already had only three toes). Many horses simply retained the new sort of foot without further change. In one group there was later another relatively rapid change of foot mechanism involving some reduction in size of the side toes, which, however, remained functional. Thereafter most horses retained this type of foot without essential change. In just one group, again, another relatively rapid change eliminated functional side toes, after which their descendants simply retained the new sort of foot. (Fig. 39)

In the history of the horse family there is no known trend that affected the whole family. Moreover, in any one of the numerous different lines of descent there is no known trend that continued uniformly in the same direction and at the same rate throughout. Trends do not really have to act that way: there are not really orthogenetic.

(The evolution of the horse family, Equidae, is now no better known than that of numerous other groups of organisms, but it is still a classic example of evolution in action, and a very instructive example when correctly presented…)

#1. We have to agree that it IS a classic example of evolutionism promoting its beliefs.
#2. The uniform transition sequence of animal to animal, species to species, fossil to fossil – never happened as it was presented. It was a contrived sequence using REAL fossils and simply MAKING stuff up as it pleased the priests of evolutionism at the time.

By contrast – we would have “expected” them to present QUESSWORK as a series of artists drawings and pictures of unknown – mythical models that they HOPED would be found in the fossil record one day. INSTEAD they present actual finds of actual fossils and show an actual sequence. Then later admit that they are simply overstating the case and can not actually prove any of what they have said as a real SEQUENCE in the fossil record.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />"This is true of all the thirty-two orders of mammals . . The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed."—*G.G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), p. 105.

</font>[/QUOTE]Hopefully these EXACT quotes will be helpful to those who actually have an interest in the facts of the case.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

And to think some of evolutionism's more devout members still hold up the non-facts of the horse series as "The best example" of evolutionism in action - and there I must agree.

This is "the best".

In Christ,

Bob

 

[UTEOTW]

Oh boy. More bad quoting. Do you have any other tactic that to tell half truths about what good men have said.

First you 1944 quote from Simpson. For the billionth time, this is a quote about puncutated equilibrium. The fossil record is much busier and jerky thanwas expects, oh, a hundred years ago. Do you think that this has any bearing on the horse series as you claim? Remember, this is the man who said of the horse "The line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution." and "The evolution of the horse family, Equidae...is still a classic example of evolution in action."

Then you have Raup. This is a quote about how the simple fossil progression of the horse had to be modified as the details were filled in with an increasing number of specimens and the actual series was found to be jerky and bushy. There is nothing bad about the horse series in here.

Then you have Gould talking about the bushiness of the horse series and not Gould saying there are any problems with it. See the pattern? As more dat comes in the picture becomes better.

Rensberger is a journalist. He also said in the same article you quote from that "Recent discoveries have only strengthened Darwin's epochal conclusion that all forms of life evolved from a common ancestor. Genetic analysis, for example, has shown that every organism is governed by the same genetic code controlling the same biochemical processes."

Then a Gould quote on puncuated equilibrium. What is supposed to be the problem there?

Then you have a false quote from Berlinski. Unusual fr you is that Berlinski is the one lying in this case. But he is nt an evolutionary biologists either. He has no standing to comment.

Then you have Eldredge. What he found "lamentable" was that the museum still had the old simple pression of the horse sequence when the full sequence that was known by that time should have been on display in his opinion.

Then you have your infamous Simpson quote again. Simpson was arguing that you do not generally find simple, steady progressions of A to B to C in nature. You find bushy and jerky series. The rest of the quote, which you predicably edit out to make it say something different, goes on to describe trends in the evolution of the horse and to call the horse " a classic example of evolution in action."

"There is no site in the world where the evolutionary succession of the horse can be seen. Rather, the fossil fragments have been gathered from several continents on the assumption of evolutionary progress."

Nope. All found in North America except for some of the side branches.

" Bones of the supposed earliest horses have been found at or near the surface. Sometimes they are found right next to modern horse fossils. "

Nope. Really Bob, I have asked you to support this claim, also. Is this going to become a parallel of the "true bird" claims? There is overlap between many of the individual genera. Of which there are something like 50. But you cannot support the assertion that the earlist genera are found alongside the latest.

"Now see UTEOTW use weasel words and misdirection to try and doge the obvious problem."

It is "weasel words" to pull out the full quote and show that the author was talking about something different than what you claimed? You have funny definitions!

 

[UTEOTW]

How about some examples of YE fiction since the only fiction you presented was, well, what you presented. When looked at fully, we find that you are the one distorting statements and twisting words.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v21n3_date-dilemma.asp

Now the good Dr. Snelling claims that he found a piece of wood in a Triassic era sandstone and had it dated. The Triassic was roughly 200 million years ago. But it C14 dated to about 33000 years old. Obviously this means C14 dating is flawed, right?

Nope. What it means is that Snelling took an iron concretion and presented it for dating. Sandstones tend to be porous and water can flow through them and deposit minerals in the sandstone. Iron concretions are one type of deposit that can be formed and they are known to geologists to give incorrect dates because they are not organic in nature and due to the flowing water are likely contaminated.

The head of the C14 dating group at Geochron Labs, where Snelling had the sample sent for analysis, told Snelling that the sample was not wood but likely an iron concretion. Snelling said to date it anyway. He also still reported the sample as wood and claims that this shows that dating is flawed. He will not submit his work to peer review nor will he allow others to inspect the sample.

 

[UTEOTW]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4232cen_s1997.asp

AIG claims that actual red blood cells were found of a dinosaur. And since a blood cell cannot survive long, this must mean a young earth. But not so fast, my friend.

Now what was actually found was this. A very well preserved dinosaur was found. So well preserved that the fossils of the individual cells could be observed. (There are other interpretations, even less kind to the YECers.) Within these cells were a few organic molecules. They removed these molecules and had them tested. On the basis of a number of tests, they found that the compounds contained heme (the oxygen carrying group in blood cells) and concluded that the molecules were from the dinosaur tissue. The abstract reference is given below. So, a scientist reports then they found a well preserved fossil that contained fragments of heme and AIG reports that actual blood cells were found. Junk science.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/12/6291

 

[UTEOTW]

The RATE group has proposed that C14 dating was inaccurate because they were able to obtain a young date from a diamond in a supposedly hundreds of millions of years old formation.

A little digging reveals that the age they got was about 57000 years. This is significant. Why? Because this is beyond the range of accurate ages possible for C14 dating. For a perfectly preserved sample, about 50000 years ids the limit. Beyond that, it becomes impossible to separate the C14 signal from the background radiation no matter how well shieled the lab. So a date older than 50000 years only means that it is older than 50000 years. No way to tell how much older.

The RATE people were clear to point out that the C14 found could not have been from contamination because it was locked inside a diamond. Whay they did not tell you was that background radiation will for small amounts of C14 even in a diamond.

So if you were to ask a geologists what date to expect if you were to carbon date a diamond (after he picked himself up off the floor from his laughing fit) I would expect him to predict that you would get the meaningless age of about 50000 years. When RATE gets this predicable answer, they turn around and claim that it means that dating does not work. Me thinks they are hiding something.

 

[UTEOTW]

Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 146-147.

Morris based this on a legitimate paper [Funkhouser, J. G. and J. J. Naughton, 1968. Radiogenic helium and argon in ultramafic inclusions from Hawaii. Journal of Geophysical Research 73(14): 4601-4607. ] thatwas fdoing testing on some rocks from a recent lava flow in Hawaii.

Now, when rocks are heated to a sufficiently high temperature and are melted, the argon in the rocks escape. When the lava hardens into rock, the potassium-40 begins decaying into Ar-39. By measuring the ratios, a date can be determined. Now if the rocks are not heated sufficiently, the argon does not escape and the rocks will date older than they really are.

Funkhouser and Naughton were purposely removing xenoliths from the rocks that did not melt to see how much older they would date. Of course they dated as old because they had not been reset by melting. They also tested the bulk rocks and found that the ages were zero, as expected.

So Morris takes the data that measured too old, ignores the known reason that it dated too old, and then claims that radiometric dating does not work. If he actually read the paper, he should know better. It was easy to see and was even the purpose of the work. Just more YEC "junk."

 

[UTEOTW]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/refuting-sg.PDF

Quote "Human lysozyme is closer to chicken lysozyme than to that of any other mammal."

Would be interesting if true.

Actually human is identical to chimpanzee lysozyme. Harder to be closer than identical.

 

[UTEOTW]

Dr. "Dino" Hovind himself said "Well, now, hold it. If you want to just pick one item and that's supposed to prove relationship, did you know that human Cytochrom [sic] C is closest to a sunflower? So really the sunflowers are our closest relative folks."

Now since humans and chimps have identical cyctochrome C, how can the sunflower be closer?

Here are the codes, BTW, for each.

Human:
mgdvekgkki fimkcsqcht vekggkhktg pnlhglfgrk tgqapgysyt aanknkgiiw gedtlmeyle npkkyipgtk mifvgikkke eradliaylk katne

Chimp:
mgdvekgkki fimkcsqcht vekggkhktg pnlhglfgrk tgqapgysyt aanknkgiiw gedtlmeyle npkkyipgtk mifvgikkke eradliaylk katne

Sunflower:
asfaeapagd pttgakifkt kcaqchtvek gaghkqgpnl nglfgrqsgt tagysysaan knmaviween tlydyllnpk kyipgtkmvf pglkkpqera dliaylktst a

 

[UTEOTW]

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-224.htm

"The observation that obviously recent lava flows from the north rim of Grand Canyon give ages even older than the deeply buried lava flows, challenges the basic assumptions upon which the isochron dating method is based. The discovery of an "old age" in an obviously "young" series of lava flows has encouraged further research at ICR."

Basically what Austin is claiming is that isochron dating does not work because it yielded a date for a lava flow older than a lava flow that was underneath it. But there are some things that he is not telling the reader.

When selecting samples for isochron dating, they must be cogenetic, that is they must have been isotopically homogeneous. Austin selected samples that did not meet this requirement. Instead they came from four different flows and a phenocryst, a grain that was not melted when the lava flowed but that likely solidified in the magma chamber from which the flows came.

Even better is that geologists will sometimes deliberately choose non-cogenetic samples. Why? Because they can be used to determine the age of the common source material for the different flows. Austin is aware of this possiblity because he cites an article on this very thing. ( http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-178.htm , C. Brooks, D.E. James, and S.R. Hart, "Ancient Lithosphere: Its Role in Young Continental Volcanism," Science, 193 (17 Sept. 1976): 1086-1094.)

So what this means is that he was dating the lithosphere under the older flow. This was already known to be older than the other flow (it is underneath for the obvious one).

Austin incorrectly carried out an isochron dating, knew what his mistakes were, knew what he was actually dating, and still submits this as evidence that isochron dating does not work.

 

[UTEOTW]

More stuff from Baumgardner and the RATE group.

http://www.icr.org/newsletters/impact/impactoct03.html

"In view of the profound significance of these AMS 14C measurements, the ICR Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) team has undertaken its own AMS 14C analyses of such fossil material.2 The first set of samples consisted of ten coals obtained from the U. S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank maintained at the Pennsylvania State University. The ten samples include three coals from the Eocene part of the geological record, three from the Cretaceous, and four from the Pennsylvanian. These samples were analyzed by one of the foremost AMS laboratories in the world. Figure 1 below shows in histogram form the results of these analyses...Applying the uniformitarian approach of extrapolating 14C decay into the indefinite past translates the measured 14C/12C ratios into ages that are on the order of 50,000 years."

Now, remember what we learned earlier when the RATE group tried to C14 date a diamond. Same thing applies here except that you have to add the coal is much more porous than the diamond and has the additional possibility of contamination. And a trace amount of contamination is sufficient to give ages on the order of the 50,000 years they report. Background radiation will also convert some of the carbon in the coal to C14 on a continuous basis. This may be even more likely for coal than for a diamond because the coal ash itself can contain trace amounts of radiactive oxides. Plus, 50,000 years old is right at the detectable limit for C14 in a sample.

In other words, once again these guys used C14 in an inappropriate manner, got an age that merely indicates that the sample is at least 50,000 years old (possibly much older, it is impossible to tell), and yet will report this as a problem for C14 dating.

 

[UTEOTW]

Here is another good one...

I will be quoting Walt Brown from this page.

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FrozenMammoths8.html

You can also see Kent Hovind ("Dr. Dino") repeat the claims here.

http://www.drdino.com/QandA/index.jsp?varFolder=CreationEvolution&varPage=CarbonPotassiumargondating.jsp

"This probably explains why different parts of the first Vollosovitch mammoth had widely varying radiocarbon ages—29,500 and 44,000 RCY. One part of Dima was 40,000 RCY, another was 26,000 RCY, and “wood found immediately around the carcass” was 9,000 –10,000 RCY. The lower leg of the Fairbanks Creek mammoth had a radiocarbon age of 15,380 RCY, while its skin and flesh were 21,300 RCY.147 The two Colorado Creek mammoths had radiocarbon ages of 22,850 +/- 670 and 16,150 +/- 230 years, respectively."

Obviously C14 dating cannot work because different parts of the same animals are dating to widely different ages. Not so fast, my friend. Let's check the references.

The source cited for the first claim is

Troy L. Pewe: “Quaternary Stratigraphic nomenclature in unglaciated Central Alaska” Geological survey professional paper #862 US GOV printing office 1975, pg. 30.

Now, no where in this can anyone seem to find any mammoths at all dated to 29500 or 44000 years old, so it is unclear where these dates came from.

If you will go to the reference material for the Dima mammoth claim

Ukraintseva, V. V., 1993. Vegetation Cover and Environment of the "Mammoth Epoch" in Siberia. Hot Springs, SD: Mammoth Site of Hot Springs of South Dakota.

you will find that there really was not two different ages found for the mammoth with a third for the surrounding plant material. In fact, the dates for the mammoth and for the surrounding deposits are all consistent.

And if you look at the first source, you will soon discove the problem with the claims on the Fairbanks Creek mammoth. The 15380 years old date was from a mammoth found under about 80 ft of silt in 1940 by Osborn. The 21300 year old date was a baby mammoth found in 1948 by Geist in a beaver dam. These are not the same animal nor were they even close.

It is more YEC "junk" of the lowest caliber to claim that two different mammoths found 8 years apart in completely different circumstances were the same animal. And then to try and use this as evidence against the validity of C14 dating...

 

[UTEOTW]

One of the common arguments you run across is that the earth cannot be old based on the rate at which various salts run into the ocean. This line originated with Henry Morris (Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 153-155.) and is still used by young earthers today. For an example see ICR.

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-017.htm

The origin is work published in 1965 (Riley, J. P. and G. Skirrow, (editors). 1965. Chemical Oceanography (Volume I) Academic Press, New York.) where the residence times of various metals in the ocean were listed. Now the first mistake is that these are residence times which is how long, on average, the metal stays in the ocean before being removed. But Morris calls it the time "to accumulate in ocean from river inflow." This is a major difference and error.*

Now the range of residence times is from 100 years for aluminum to 260 million years for sodium. Usually YECers will just quote the few in the middle that come out to be in the 6 - 10 thousand range. (Props to ICR here for at least including all the values even if they did not tell the truth about what is meant by the data.)

The other thing that they fail to tell you is that these elements are known to be at or very close to equlibrium, that is that the rate in is equal to the rate out. There is no net accumulation. This means that even if the residence time of nickel is 9000 years that this cannot be used to determine an age because you have no way of knowing how long it has been at equilibrium.

SO now we have exposed two flaws in how ICR presents the data. Flaws that they should have been aware of. So either they are talking about things they do not understand and pretending that they do. Or they are purposefully leaving things out in order to misrepresent the data.

But, they have been called on this enough times that some YEC organizations ae trying to address the problems. See the following for example.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3910.asp

In this, Sarfati tries to demonstrate that only 27% of the sodium that comes into the oceans each year is removed. He believes that he is showing that the ocean is not at equilibrium with respect to sodium. But he makes two major mistakes. The first is very serious. They miss the amount of sodium removed by the alteration of basalt by hydrothermal activity by a factor of 35. If you go back to the original by Austin and Humphreys, you will find that one of their references is a book (Holland, H. D., 1978. The Chemistry of the Atmophere and the Oceans, New York: John Wiley and Sons.) that gives the correct value. So why did they put in such a bad value? The other bad claim is that there is not any removal of sodium by biological activity. Another reference of theirs (Holland, H.D., 1984. The Chemical Evolution of the Atmosphere and the Oceans, Princeton: Princeton University Press.) tells of biological removal, so there is no excuse for this either. It is a misrepresentation, but it is of much less consequence because of the smaller amounts involved.

Once the corrections are made, instead of only 27% being removed, you come up with 7% too much being removed. This is well with the range of experimental error and is consistent with the oceans being in equilibrium with reference to sodium.

And you see these kinds of mistakes made often. Bob will often get stirred up and post for pages on uranium instead of sodium. What he always fails to tell you is that the difference in measured removal rates from the input rates is less than the experimental error in measuring the rates. This means that equilibrium is within the experimental error. So from the data we have, you cannot say that uranium is not at equilibrium.

------------------------

*Let's explain the difference. Say that you have a 100 gallon tank and it has a valve at the bottom that will allow exactly 10 gallons per minute to run out by the force of the head of water when the tank is completely full. Now the residence time would be (100/10=) 10 minutes. The time to accumulate 100 gallons from an empty tank, however, would be much more than 10 minutes because as soon as you started adding water, some would begin to leave through the valve. Less water would leave than was entering until the tank was full and the situation reached equilibrium. That is also the case here. The residence times are listed but the time to accumulate would be much greater. And since they are at equilibrium, you cannot tell how long they have been at equilibrium so you cannot use them to date.

 

[UTEOTW]

http://www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf

In this Humphreys, Austin, Snelling, and Peczkis... I mean ... and Baumgardner claimed that helium diffusion rates in zircons indicated a young earth. I'll just reproduce the abstract here.

Two decades ago, Robert Gentry and his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory reported surprisingly high amounts of nuclear-decay-generated helium in tiny radioactive zircons recovered from Precambrian crystalline rock, the Jemez Granodiorite on the west flank of the volcanic Valles Caldera near Los Alamos, New Mexico [9]. Up to 58% of the helium (that radioactivity would have generated during the alleged 1.5 billion year age of the granodiorite) was still in the zircons. Yet the zircons were so small that they should not have retained the helium for even a tiny fraction of that time. The high helium retention levels suggested to us and many other creationists that the helium simply had not had enough time to diffuse out of the zircons, and that recent accelerated nuclear decay had produced over a billion years worth of helium within only the last few thousand years, during Creation and/or the Flood. Such acceleration would reduce the radioisotopic time scale from megayears down to months.

Now let's begin to look at the claims in detail.

The first problem is this. The base their claims on the assumption of how much helium would be produced by old earth assumptions of the age of the earth. If the earth really is 6000 years old, just why is there an appreciable amount of helium in the rocks to begin with? Their answer? Accelerated decay. They suppose that billions of years worth of decay happened in a very short time. Now, two problems. There is no known way to explain how the decay would have been accelerated. Second, such accelerated decay causes major problems in removing the accompanying heat release. But reality has never been an obstacle to the RATE group as shown in earlier posts. Not only that, but how was the formation of all these layers times just so making the apparent seem to show formation over long periods of time. Just how did those layers get sorted according to their ratios of radioactive isotopes?

Here is the next problem, and the biggie. What they are saying is that the zircons should not contain so much helium because it should have leaked out by now through diffusion. So they need to measure the diffusion rates. The temperatures of their samples were 105, 151, 197, 239, 277, and 313 Celcius. But at these low temperatures, the diffusion rate is too low to accurately measure. Diffusion rates increase with temperature. So they had the zircons tested at 300 - 500 C to see what the diffusion rates were there.

Now look closely what they do. As stated, diffusion rates increase with temperature. The higher the rate, the more easy it is to measure accurately. Now, they decide to only use the diffusion data from 300 - 440 C when extrapolating down to the lower temperatures. This is because if you include the higher temperatures, the ones that should be more accurate, you get ages that are much less favorable to their position.

But there is a related problem. The more of a substance that you have, the easier it is to measure it. In the case of their zircons, the samples at 239, 277, and 313 C were at or close to the detection limits for the lab and therefore have a very large potential error associated with them. In contrast the samples at 105, 151, and 197 C had high levels of He which would be easily measured and therefore more accurate. In fact, the highest two temperature zircons had only estimated given without even error ranges associated. The RATE group at least dropped the highest of these, the 313 C sample. Is this because they were trying to be honest with the data or was it was because the "age" they would then measure would be so young as to expose the problems of their method?

So for the remaining 5 samples, if you use their methodology to calculate ages, first with their limited diffusion data set and then with the whole range of the diffusion measurmentsm you get the following table.

Temp (C)....Age (all temp)......Age (440-300 C)
105........46,800,000..........3,400,000
151........1,350,000...........195,000
197........132,000.............11,000
239........16,600..............6,750
277 ........8,700..............4,850

So, even with their cherrypicking of data favorable to them, the ages range from 4800 years to 3.4 million. Which do you think they choose? With the better diffusion data added back in, the age estimates go up to 47 million years. And notice that the young ages are only with the smaples in which the level of He was the most difficult to measure and which had the largest potential error. The more reliable measurements yield much older ages. And these old ages are for the less deep and therefore younger rocks.

Besides the problem with their handling of the data, there are other potential pitfalls. One of the most important is that the area in which the samples were taken is known for having high enough levels of helium in the ground that it can be "mined." If these samples had abnormally high levels of helium around them, then the driving force for the diffusion is removed and in fact, the rocks could have helium diffusion into the rocks. In addition, radiocative decay proceeds through a number of intermediate steps. When the decay starts, it takes about 10 half-lives for the longest half-life intermediates to come to equilibrium. If the decay rates had been changed in the past, the isotopes in the rocks should not yet be back in equlibrium. This should be easy to test. Has it been done?

I used the following as a source for the result of calculations and as a general guide.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22The+basic+science+involved+is+that+fact+that%22+group:talk.origins&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=talk.origins&selm=e4204a90.0404120335.61b0a055%40po sting.google.com&rnum=1

 

[UTEOTW]

Let's do an example of quote mining. YECers love to quote scientists out of context. The way they are quoted can always seem so convincing. But once you have seen a few examples of how YECers quote, it becomes apparent why you should never trust one of their quotes without the surrounding sentences for context.

This is a good one.

"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." (Ridley, Mark, "Who doubts evolution?" "New Scientist", vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831)

USed many places including
http://www.evolutionisdead.com/quotes.php?QID=313&cr=29
http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/link/link.htm
http://www.linda.net/creation.html

You will also find that the presentation of this quote in this form originated with Snelling according to the citations. Good old Snelling.

Well, lets give a fuller quote.

"Someone is getting it wrong, and it isn't Darwin; it is the creationists and the media." (page 830)

"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of evolution as opposed to special creation. The does not mean that the theory of evolution is unproven."

"So what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the "fossil evidence", that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy." (page 831)

"These three are the clearest arguments for the mutability of species. Other defences of the theory of evolution could be made, not the least of which is the absence of a coherent alternative. Darwin's theory is also uniquely able to account for both the presence of design, and the absence of design (vestigial organs), in nature." (page 832)

So you see that what he is saying is not that the fossil record is not any use for proving evolution. He is saying that he knows of three better methods. And since he is a zoologists, is it surprising that he finds three subjects from his field to be the best at proving evolution is true?

Such "junk" presented in the name of God. God does not need people to lie for him.

 

[UTEOTW]

Let's give one more example.

http://www.unmaskingevolution.com/pdf_dl/book/resource.PDF

5) Reports to the Fourth Lunar Science Conference included information that the moon has relatively abundant amounts of the short-lived radioisotopes Uranium-236 and Thorium-230. If the moon was billions of years old, as evolution demands, these isotopes would have long since decayed and disappeared. Their presence today indicates a young age for the moon. R.L. Wysong, "The Creation-Evolution
Controversy", Inquiry Press: Midlands (Mississippi), 1976 p: p:177-178

Thorium-230 is part of the decay series of uranium-238 and will be continuously created as long as U238 is there. And U-238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years, so it will take a while for it to run out.

"U-236 is rare but is produced by nuclear reactions in some uranium ores where sufficient slow neutrons are available." Dalrymple, G. Brent. 1991. The Age of the Earth Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 474 pages

Should they have been aware of these things before they made such a claim?

 

[UTEOTW]

And then there is the whole issue of quote mining. Maybe an example is in order.

From http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/phylo/phylo.htm

"Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all." (Futuyma, D., Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution, 1983, p. 190-191)

Sounds bad, doesn't it. But let's give the full quote.

Contrary to Creationist claims, the transitions among vertebrate species are almost all documented to a greater or lesser extent. Archeopteryx is an exquisite link between reptiles and birds; the therapsids provide an abundance of evidence for the transition from reptiles to mammals. Moreover, there are exquisite fossil links between the crossopterygian fishes and the amphibians (the icthyostegids). Of course, many other ancestor-descendent series also exist in the fossil record. I have mentioned (Chapter 4) the bactritid-ammonoid transition, the derivation of several mammalian orders from condylarthlike mammals, the evolution of horses, and of course the hominids. Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all. But in view of the rapid pace evolution can take, and the extreme incompleteness of fossil deposits, we are fortunate to have as many transitions as we do. The creationist argument that if evolution were true we should have an abundance of intermediate fossils is built by denying the richness of paleontological collections, by denying the transitional series that exist, and by distorting, or misunderstanding, the genetical theory of evolution.

Changes the meaning a bit, doesn't it?

 

[UTEOTW]

How about another?

http://www.evolutionisdead.com/quotes.php?QID=297&cr=58

"Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 95)

Oh no. It sounds like there might not be the plethora of transitionals as we were led to believe. Maybe solace will be found in the full quote.

Superb fossil data have recently been gathered from deposits of early Cenozoic Age in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming. These deposits represent the first part of the Eocene Epoch, a critical interval when many types of modern mammals came into being. The Bighorn Basin, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, received large volumes of sediment from the Rockies when they were being uplifted, early in the Age of Mammals. In its remarkable degree of completeness, the fossil record here for the Early Eocene is unmatched by contemporary deposits exposed elsewhere in the world. The deposits of the Bighorn Basin provide a nearly continuous local depositional record for this interval, which lasted some five million years. It used to be assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked together in such a way as to illustrate continuous evolution. Careful collecting has now shown otherwise. Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another. Furthermore, species lasted for astoundingly long periods of time. David M. Schankler has recently gathered data for about eighty mammal species that are known from more than two stratigraphic levels in the Bighorn Basin. Very few of these species existed for less than half a million years, and their average duration was greater than a million years.

Oh, so the author was talking about a specific geographic location, and not the fossil record in general. Not exactly an honest treatment of the original!