Creationists/fossil disputers - what do you say fossils are?

[PennyKay]

Hi all,

This is a question aimed at people who aren't convinced by the Theory of Evolution, particularly in regards to the fossil record.

I noticed in another thread a dispute about whether the fossil record is or is not evidence for evolution. Of course, everybody is entitled to their opinion, but if you don't regard fossils as evidence, what do you think fossils are?

If you don't think they are evidence for evolution, then surely you don't think they are what remains of extinct species? If this is the case then what do you propose they are, when they clearly are not fossils of any animal alive today? What purpose do they serve? Did God plant them there to confuse us???

It's all very well disagreeing with evolution and whether the fossil record is evidence for it, but you cannot deny that fossils exist. So if you're going to try and dispute fossils, please try and give another suggestion as to what they are.

 

[tumbleweed41]

I imagine you will get the "the were left by the global flood" argument.

But that only reveals a complete ignorance of sedimentary geology and paleontology.

 

[camanintx]

They'll tell you that fossils are evidence of creation. Creationists don't argue that species haven't gone extinct, they just believe that existing species were created to replace those that went extinct.

 

[Man of Faith]

I haven't heard any creationists say that fossils don't exist. The fossil record is clear, lots of animals that are alive today are found in the fossil record with no homology changes found from supposed millions of years of time. It is a scientific fact that no fossil can be shown to have any ancestry or descendent relationship with any other fossil. It is also a fact that evolutionists take one fossilized bone and build a whole creature from imagination and say “look at this intermediate species”. It is also a fact that evolutionists falsify data from fossils and own up to it later.

Here is how the game works. Assume evolution happened then take fossils that show a mosaic of features to other fossils and line them up in a tree format and Walla, there we have it indisputable evidence of evolution. People please educate yourselves. The non-scientific blind allegiance to evolution is maddening.

 

[Revoltingest]

A fundie friend says that fossils form in mere decades.
(He's a real estate broker...not a science guy.)

 

[Man of Faith]

A fundie friend says that fossils form in mere decades.
(He's a real estate broker...not a science guy.)

Most fossils are formed by a quick burial after death or during death. Maybe like a global catastrophe?

 

[Revoltingest]

Most fossils are formed by a quick burial after death or during death. Maybe like a global catastrophe?

The process continues long after entombment. The flesh disappears quickly, but for the bones to
dissolve & be replaced by stone takes a long long time. How long? I don't know & ain't looked it up.

 

[tumbleweed41]

I imagine you will get the "the were left by the global flood" argument.

But that only reveals a complete ignorance of sedimentary geology and paleontology.

Did I call this or not?

Most fossils are formed by a quick burial after death or during death. Maybe like a global catastrophe?

 

[johnhanks]

... It is also a fact that evolutionists take one fossilized bone and build a whole creature from imagination and say “look at this intermediate species”.

Can you cite an instance of this "fact" for us, please? An intermediate species reconstructed literally from a single bone? I for one would love to read about it.

 

[rusra02]

Hi all,

This is a question aimed at people who aren't convinced by the Theory of Evolution, particularly in regards to the fossil record.

I noticed in another thread a dispute about whether the fossil record is or is not evidence for evolution. Of course, everybody is entitled to their opinion, but if you don't regard fossils as evidence, what do you think fossils are?

If you don't think they are evidence for evolution, then surely you don't think they are what remains of extinct species? If this is the case then what do you propose they are, when they clearly are not fossils of any animal alive today? What purpose do they serve? Did God plant them there to confuse us???

It's all very well disagreeing with evolution and whether the fossil record is evidence for it, but you cannot deny that fossils exist. So if you're going to try and dispute fossils, please try and give another suggestion as to what they are.

Of course fossils exist. What they prove is open to debate. And of course, many fossils are remains of extinct species. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

 

[outhouse]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

she is looking for creationist explanation of how millions of years worth of fossils showing evolution of some species exist.

She wants to know how you rewrite mythology to fit the facts at hand regarding fossils

 

[outhouse]

I haven't heard any creationists say that fossils don't exist. The fossil record is clear, lots of animals that are alive today are found in the fossil record with no homology changes found from supposed millions of years of time. It is a scientific fact that no fossil can be shown to have any ancestry or descendent relationship with any other fossil. It is also a fact that evolutionists take one fossilized bone and build a whole creature from imagination and say “look at this intermediate species”. It is also a fact that evolutionists falsify data from fossils and own up to it later.

Here is how the game works. Assume evolution happened then take fossils that show a mosaic of features to other fossils and line them up in a tree format and Walla, there we have it indisputable evidence of evolution. People please educate yourselves. The non-scientific blind allegiance to evolution is maddening.

outright facrication

you have been shown the facts here before, and this is beyond severe ignorance

 

[Iti oj]

i do not know a species based of the finds in a single specimen let alone a single fossi

 

[shawn001]

I haven't heard any creationists say that fossils don't exist. The fossil record is clear, lots of animals that are alive today are found in the fossil record with no homology changes found from supposed millions of years of time. It is a scientific fact that no fossil can be shown to have any ancestry or descendent relationship with any other fossil. It is also a fact that evolutionists take one fossilized bone and build a whole creature from imagination and say “look at this intermediate species”. It is also a fact that evolutionists falsify data from fossils and own up to it later.

Here is how the game works. Assume evolution happened then take fossils that show a mosaic of features to other fossils and line them up in a tree format and Walla, there we have it indisputable evidence of evolution. People please educate yourselves. The non-scientific blind allegiance to evolution is maddening.

wow

"I haven't heard any creationists say that fossils don't exist. The fossil record is clear, lots of animals that are alive today are found in the fossil record with no homology changes found from supposed millions of years of time. It is a scientific fact that no fossil can be shown to have any ancestry or descendent relationship with any other fossil. It is also a fact that evolutionists take one fossilized bone and build a whole creature from imagination and say “look at this intermediate species”. It is also a fact that evolutionists falsify data from fossils and own up to it later."

This is a total lie. Its so bad you should be ashamed you posted it and are that ignorant of science on these matters. There are 1000's of transional fossils. There is total proof of evolution over billion of years from every branch of science.
Big Five mass extinction events

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events/Ordovician–Silurian_extinction_event Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction
The third largest extinction in Earth's history, the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction had two peak dying times separated by hundreds of thousands of years. During the Ordovician, most life was in the sea, so it was sea creatures such as trilobites, brachiopods and graptolites that were drastically reduced in number.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events/Late_Devonian_extinction Late Devonian mass extinction
Three quarters of all species on Earth died out in the Late Devonian mass extinction, though it may have been a series of extinctions over several million years, rather than a single event. Life in the shallow seas were the worst affected, and reefs took a hammering, not returning to their former glory until new types of coral evolved over 100 million years later.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event Permian mass extinction
The Permian mass extinction has been nicknamed The Great Dying, since a staggering 96% of species died out. All life on Earth today is descended from the 4% of species that survived.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events/Triassic–Jurassic_extinction_event Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction
During the final 18 million years of the Triassic period, there were two or three phases of extinction whose combined effects created the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event. Climate change, flood basalt eruptions and an asteroid impact have all been blamed for this loss of life.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/extinction_events/Cretaceous–Tertiary_extinction_event Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction
The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs.

BBC Nature - Big Five mass extinction events

 

[shawn001]

There is also animals trapped in Amber and they are not fossilized and go back millions of years. We have found ancient forests buried in ash from Volcanic eruptions going back 300 million years.

There are the remains of an ancient salt water sea UNDER the great Lakes. There is also one at 22 thousand feet in the Himalayas. There is also one in the Sahara and one in Eygpt.

The Valley of the Whales in Eygpt.

"There is another even more ancient Egypt that is known to very few people. The Fayoum area contains some of the best preserved paleontological sites in the world one of which is Wadi Hitan or the Valley of Whales. This is a remote valley in the Western Desert of Egypt. At 150 kilometers southwest of Cairo, the valley is located near the Al-Katrani mountain range, a well known and valuable geological site for its rare vertebrate fossils and mega-fossils."

The Valley of the Whales

There is also the facts below.

The atmophere we have today is not the atmophere we had 4.57 billion years ago.

In fact biological evolution gave us the oxygen atmophere we have today.

Scientific American
The Origin of Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere

The breathable air we enjoy today originated from tiny organisms, although the details remain lost in geologic time.

"So how did Earth end up with an atmosphere made up of roughly 21 percent of the stuff?

The answer is tiny organisms known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These microbes conduct photosynthesis: using sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates and, yes, oxygen. In fact, all the plants on Earth incorporate symbiotic cyanobacteria (known as chloroplasts) to do their photosynthesis for them down to this day.

For some untold eons prior to the evolution of these cyanobacteria, during the Archean eon, more primitive microbes lived the real old-fashioned way: anaerobically. These ancient organisms—and their "extremophile" descendants today—thrived in the absence of oxygen, relying on sulfate for their energy needs.
The Origin of Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere: Scientific American
Introduction to the Cyanobacteria

The Origin of Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere: Scientific American

Architects of earth's atmosphere
Cyanobacteria are aquatic and photosynthetic, that is, they live in the water, and can manufacture their own food. Because they are bacteria, they are quite small and usually unicellular, though they often grow in colonies large enough to see. They have the distinction of being the oldest known fossils, more than 3.5 billion years old, in fact! It may surprise you then to know that the cyanobacteria are still around; they are one of the largest and most important groups of bacteria on earth.
Introduction to the Cyanobacteria

Introduction to the Cyanobacteria

Early 'see-sawing' Earth experienced hazy shades of life
" Earth's early atmosphere fluctuated between 'organic haze' and a 'haze-free' environment similar to that of Saturn's moon, Titan, a new study has revealed.
And this switch over 2.5 billion years ago was the result of intense microbial activity and would have had a profound effect on the climate of the Earth system.
Research, led by experts at Newcastle University, UK, revealed that the Earth's early atmosphere periodically flipped from a hydrocarbon-free state into a hydrocarbon-rich state."

Hazy shades of life on early Earth

Fossil raindrops reveal early atmosphere
Fossil raindrops reveal early atmosphere › News in Science (ABC Science)
Can you breath Methane, or primarily natural gas?

Fossil raindrops reveal early atmosphere › News in Science (ABC Science)

Your breathing Oxygen right now because the bacteria called cynobacteria evolved photosynthesis and changed the earth atmophere. Our atmophere today is a direct result of evolution. Look it up.

 

[shawn001]

Dino Death Pit!

Nearly 100 million years before giant dinos like Tyrannosaurus rex ruled the world, a volcano rumbled in an ancient, marshy land. Fiery lava belched out of the crater, and ash snowed down on what is now part of the Gobi desert in China.

As it fell onto the moist earth, the ash combined with water to create a gooey mud trap, like superthick quicksand. Before long, a small dinosaur called a ceratosaur wandered into the muck on its hind legs and couldn't break free. Another meat-eating dino spied easy prey and ran toward the helpless animal. But this was no free lunch! Both predator and prey sank to their doom in the "quickmud."

This scene may have played out again and again as at least 14 dinosaurs tumbled into three different mud traps. Now, more than 160 million years later, scientists have unearthed this dino graveyard—including fossils of the oldest known member of the tyrannosaur family. And the discovery is revealing ancient secrets from the age of the dinosaurs.



Lost in Time

Fossils have shown that the earliest dinosaurs lived about 230 million years ago and were only about the size of today’s German shepherds. About 145 million years ago, massive dinos such as the four-story-tall Brachiosaurus began to stomp the Earth. But what did dinosaurs look like in between?

"The mud pits are a real discovery," says dino expert James Clark, who participated in the dig. "There are very few dinosaur fossils from this time in the middle, when the animals started transitioning into giants."



Dinosaur Pancakes

As scientists chipped away at the remains of the mud pits—now giant blocks of rock they found one unusual creature after another. "They were stacked up like pancakes," Clark says.

Among other fossils, they uncovered a bizarre toothless meat-eater called a ceratosaur; an ancestor of the horned dinosaurs—such as Triceratops—named Yinlong; as well as ancient turtles, mammals, and crocodiles.

But the most incredible discovery of all is a new two-legged predator with a Mohawk-like crest on its head. Named Guanlong, Chinese for "crested dragon," it weighed just 165 pounds (74.8 kilograms). But parts of the animal's skull and a telltale ridge in its hip bone look strikingly similar to gigantic tyrannosaurs that lived about 100 million years later—including the 15,000-pound (6803.8-kilogram) Tyrannosaurus rex.



Digging Up Answers

Now these discoveries are helping to solve many dinosaur mysteries. You probably know that Tyrannosaurus rex had surprisingly wimpy arms and used its terrifying teeth to grab prey. But did its ancestors have more powerful arms? Yes. Guanlong's muscular limbs show that early tyrannosaurs probably snatched prey with their arms.

Ferocious Triceratops fought off enemies with its three dangerous horns and a bony frill around its neck. Did the beast's smaller ancestors have horns, too? No. "Yinlong may not have needed big horns because it was smaller and could probably flee from predators more easily," says National Geographic's dino expert Josh Smith.

And these finds are just the beginning. As the dig continues, the strange creatures of the Gobi death pits could help scientists rewrite the history of dinosaurs.

Text by Elisabeth Deffner

Dino Death Pit -- National Geographic Kids

 

[Man of Faith]

Can you cite an instance of this "fact" for us, please? An intermediate species reconstructed literally from a single bone? I for one would love to read about it.

Really? This is exactly what I am talking about, someone that accepts evolution and doesn't know what the professionals are doing behind the scenes to perpetuate the evolution hoax. Nebraska man was reconstructed from one tooth and said to be a transitional species of man. Also, a single "365M year old", arm bone was used to make a drawing of a creature said to be a transitional from water to land.

That's all for tonight. I'm sure there are more like that but it would take some research and it is getting late. I have to get up early tomorrow to go to church and worship the God and creator that created everything in 6 normal days.

 

[Skwim]

Really? This is exactly what I am talking about, someone that accepts evolution and doesn't know what the professionals are doing behind the scenes to perpetuate the evolution hoax. Nebraska man was reconstructed from one tooth and said to be a transitional species of man.

And was later admitted to be a rash rush to judgment. In effect, a mistake. Science has long since dropped the Nebraska Man as any kind of member of human evolution.

Also, a single "365M year old", arm bone was used to make a drawing of a creature said to be a transitional from water to land.

All the sources I found went to pains to say something like:

"The fossilized bone is shown with a drawing of what the creature may have looked like."
Source:Scripps Howard News Service
(Emphasis mine)

​

What next, you'll resurrect the Piltdown man?

I'm sure there are more like that but it would take some research and it is getting late. I have to get up early tomorrow to go to church and worship the God and creator that created everything in 6 normal days.

Whatever butters your communion wafer.

 

[johnhanks]

Nebraska man was reconstructed from one tooth and said to be a transitional species of man.

Thank you. Will you now cite for me a single contemporary evolution text that uses Nebraska man as an exemplar?

Also, a single "365M year old", arm bone was used to make a drawing of a creature said to be a transitional from water to land.

To make a drawing. An artist's reconstruction for the benefit of lay people. Where is this entire species conjured from a single bone and used by 'evolutionists' as an archetypal transitional?

That's all for tonight. I'm sure there are more like that but it would take some research...

... and perish the thought that you should have to back up your accusations by doing some research.

 

[idea]

I think fossils support the ideology that most major animal phyla appeared rapidly during the Cambrian explosion... and also think fossils support punctuated equilibrium over gradualism.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylum