Happy news from Kentucky


It’s sad to be leaving Skepticon, one of the best conferences around, especially since my time in Springfield had to be so brief this time around. Also, I think I broke some of the audience with my talk this year (comments afterwards: “You made my brain hurt.” “I didn’t understand anything you said, but I enjoyed it anyway.” “Rebecca Watson’s talk had more sex in it.”) But I do have happy news to report.

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., created quite an uproar in 2007 when it opened with exhibits showing early humans co-existing with dinosaurs. Five years later, the public fascination with that take on paleoanthropology seems to be fading.

This week, the museum told CityBeat that attendance for the year ended June 30 came to 254,074. That amounts to a 10 percent drop from last year’s 282,000 and is the museum’s fourth straight year of declining attendance and its lowest annual attendance yet. The $27 million museum drew 404,000 in its first year and just over 300,000 each of the next two.

Also, Answers in Genesis reported a net loss in 2011! I’ve mentioned before that their fund-raising to build the Ark Park is also stalling out. I don’t expect them to completely collapse and fold up, but I think they will follow the trajectory of most of the creation “museums” I’ve seen: they go static and dead and dusty, repeating the same stories over and over again, and the likelihood of repeat visits begins to fade away. The lack of substance tells; they lack the dynamism of real working museums and can’t bring up new data or substantively new exhibits.

They say the Creation “Museum” is still operating at a profit, but that profit is declining year by year. And if AiG itself is losing money, think about the consequences when their great big expensive-to-maintain-and-operate facility stops being a cash cow and becomes the dinosaur they’ve been saddled with — it could get interesting.

It may not be possible to underestimate the intelligence of the American public, but it’s still possible to bore them.

Comments

  1. FossilFishy (Νεοπτόλεμος's spellchecker) says

    Their god can create the entire universe but he can’t keep one lousy “museum” in financial growth? Why, next you’ll be telling me he can’t stop iron chariots!

  2. tbp1 says

    Wow, admission to this travesty is almost thirty bucks! By way of contrast the American Museum of Natural History costs $19 for general admission (more to add the planetarium). The Metropolitan Museum and MOMA are $25 each (and you can do the Met and the Cloisters both on one ticket).

    I live in the vicinity and had actually considered going, basically for amusement and mockery purposes, but I simply won’t shell out that kind of dough.

  3. Matt Penfold says

    The Natural History Museum in London has free entry, which I think is totally awesome.

    Under the last Conservative government they did start charging, but common sense and decency prevailed and it is now free again.

  4. Christoph Burschka says

    Hope that once this “museum” becomes entirely unprofitable, it won’t be propped up with public funds…

  5. sabazinus says

    Alas the poor Creation Museum. It cannot evolve and therefore it cannot survive. Fitting, really.

  6. tbp1 says

    @Matt #5. Isn’t the entry hall absolutely splendid?

    All the state owned museums in the UK are free (donations accepted). One of the great perks of this is you can go in for just a while to see a favorite exhibit or two. You don’t have to spend a whole day to justify the entry fee if you don’t feel like it. To do that in the US, you have to have a membership.

    I know taxes in the UK are high, but they actually do get some valuable return on them.

  7. Ogvorbis: broken and cynical says

    Hope that once this “museum” becomes entirely unprofitable, it won’t be propped up with public funds…

    Coming soon. A bill to make it a national park.

    And part of me would love to work there. Especially with the NPS’ support of reality.

  8. Matt Penfold says

    @Matt #5. Isn’t the entry hall absolutely splendid?

    I love it. What I did not know until I saw a TV program on the building was the level of detail in the decoration.

    All the state owned museums in the UK are free (donations accepted). One of the great perks of this is you can go in for just a while to see a favorite exhibit or two. You don’t have to spend a whole day to justify the entry fee if you don’t feel like it. To do that in the US, you have to have a membership.

    Although it is very easy to spend a whole day there.

    I know taxes in the UK are high, but they actually do get some valuable return on them.

    What is not so well known is the serious academic research that the National museums carry out. World class stuff in many cases and done not in the hope of financial return, but because of belief in the importance of knowledge.

  9. judithsanders says

    Ooh, goodie, I do hope we can look forward to an exciting ruin like the Heritage USA complex. Wonder what a dinosaur model will go for?

  10. slowdjinn says

    Ogvorbis – it could be renamed The Museum of Creationism, with actual scientific interpretation boards debunking the current labels, and be maintained as a terrible warning.

  11. Rodney Nelson says

    Many tourist attractions in the US are seeing falling revenues. Between the cost of travel to the attraction and the cost of admittance, people are not going to museums as frequently as they were a few years ago.

  12. stephencumberworth says

    I still see plenty of people wearing t-shirts and such from the Creation “Museum” in parts of Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, but I’ll continue to hope that these are merely stubborn fringe elements who will lose their tenuous grip before too long.

  13. Randomfactor says

    If atheists stopped going there to laugh they would lose another tenth of their business at least.

  14. McC2lhu doesn't want to know what you did there. says

    In the secessionist states, the correct term for the one you used at the end of the OP was ‘misunderestimated.’

    Now watch me hit this drive…

  15. dianne says

    By way of contrast the American Museum of Natural History costs $19 for general admission (more to add the planetarium). The Metropolitan Museum and MOMA are $25 each (and you can do the Met and the Cloisters both on one ticket).

    Secret insider trick for the publicly funded NYC museums, including the AMNH: The $19 is the SUGGESTED donation for admission. You don’t have to pay the full recommended price. You can pay 25 cents and get in, though I think you have to pay full recommended price to get into the rotating exhibits and the planetarium. Also, the gift shops that appear mysteriously at the end of each exhibit are major money makers, so spend money there if you want to make an extra contribution (and avoid them if you don’t want to be overcharged…)

  16. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    The Natural History Museum in London has free entry, which I think is totally awesome. – Matt Penfold

    I visited recently with my son. Lots of good stuff, but the dinosaur exhibition is particularly good – spectacular fossils and plenty of real science.

  17. dianne says

    Wasn’t there just a small earthquake in Kentucky? Probably god showing his anger at Kentucky’s going for Romney in the latest election.

  18. carlie says

    it could be renamed The Museum of Creationism, with actual scientific interpretation boards debunking the current labels, and be maintained as a terrible warning.

    I like that idea.

  19. slatham says

    Don’t worry too much about hurting people’s brains — you mentioned previously that you’re going to repeat some of these talks, so you’ll get another chance and so will they. Much better than giving an unchallenging presentation.

  20. keri says

    @Rodney #13> I was wondering if that was the case, but I only have examples from my town to use. The art museum where I work has really seen attendance drop off from last year, also too revenue from the gift shop, though we’re actually getting a slight uptick in grants and high-level donation/support, and we’re starting to get national recognition for quality exhibitions.

    It sounds like the other museums in town are tightening their belts and trying to get creative to maintain or increase attendance numbers, and even Disney World a couple hours away has reported mostly stagnant or dropping attendance recently (yet increased revenue, because they hiked their prices again, of course). But other than these data points, I wasn’t sure if it was a common trend, or local to Florida, or even to do with the type of exhibitions we’ve had this year.

    So I saw this report about the Creation Museum, exulted briefly that they’re likely not going to last very much longer, then stopped to wonder if it’s the Creation Museum or museum attendance in general that’s the problem here.

  21. Sastra says

    The lack of substance tells; they lack the dynamism of real working museums and can’t bring up new data or substantively new exhibits.

    I haven’t been, but I’m going to guess this is false. The high point of the “museum” is undoubtedly the “Fruits of Evolution Hall” at the end (or whatever they call it.) This is where they list all of the evils that believing in evolution will lead to.

    I’m afraid I just have a hard time believing that a “museum” of this caliber would miss the opportunity to keep up-to-date with an ever-evolving exciting new list of discoveries regarding human degradation and turpitude — rock music and videos, popular books and movies, political candidates and policies, and so forth. Surely there’s more dynamic impact in seeing a current example of shocking evil, as opposed to shocking evils of years past (really, who is still going to work up an indignant sweat over contemplating how the agitating clothes-washing-tub is contributing to the ruination of the character of our women-folk?)

  22. tbp1 says

    @17, You’re right, of course, that admission at many museums is a suggested amount, not mandatory. This is a big help to lots of people. Now that I can afford full price I feel a little guilty about paying less, even if I only want to go in for a short time. When I was young and poor, though, I took advantage of the policy and really appreciated it. I don’t get to NYC or other big museum towns often enough to make membership worthwhile, but that is a great option for locals or frequent visitors.

    Still, I wish it were feasible to make the great museums free for all.

  23. dianne says

    tbp: If you go in for a short time paying less than full price, you make more money for the museum than if you don’t go in at all. Though I tend to agree that all else being equal people who can pay full price should. That helps subsidize the museum for people who can’t pay full price.

  24. Dick the Damned says

    Sastra, i’m an atheist who thinks that rock ‘music’ is a great evil, though not because of any perceived moral deficit in its promoters, (other than the selfish desire to inflict it on those who hear it as irritating noise).

    But what of ‘christian rock’? How do they account for that? Or is that a looming schism, to go with all the others that their revelation/interpretation, superstitious world-view inevitably yields?

  25. says

    I remember going to EPCOT Center on my family’s visits to Disney World. Visits, plural. The first time, EPCOT was a fantasy land showing me how cool the future was going to be, showing all this high tech stuff. This one arcade that had a 3D(!) multiplayer on multiple screens(!) racing game that looked pretty impressive for its time. The second time I went, years later, I was disappointed since there really wasn’t anything new. Even that same racing game was still there. Kind of ruins that whole “Experimental Planned Community of Tomorrow” vibe if it doesn’t keep pace.

    Museums, on the other hand, er, real museums, are wonderful because they’ve got a lot to cycle through with more discoveries coming in as scientists keep pressing on the frontiers. They can advertise exhibits of things you haven’t seen, yet.

    The idea of a Creationist museum strikes me as similar to the various kitch tourist trap museums that are more or less shrines to one local topic or singular event. They aren’t going to find anything new to merit changing the displays, and when they do change, it’s more likely just shuffling around what they already have, hoping to clear out the metaphorical cobwebs along with the literal ones.

  26. yesyouneedjesus says

    Now that Mary Schweitzer has discovered DNA in dinosaur soft tissue, I wonder if PZ will be offering a public apology to all the creationists he has made fun of over the years for insisting it was original biological material?

  27. alanbagain says

    The NHM London used to be 3 museums: NHM itself, the Science Museum and the Geological Museum. They are interlinked and all free. I used to spend large parts of my school holidays going round them all (along with the close-by Aeronautical Museum, the Victoria and Albert (V&A) and the Commonwealth Institute). The British Museum (Egyptian mummies, Assyrian winged bulls, Magna Carta, Biblical and other rare books etc. etc.) is a short journey by bus or tube. Almost certainly walkable although I never wanted to waste the time doing it.

    The only charge now at the NHM is for temporary exhibitions such as a wonderful collection of feathered dinosaurs (originals not casts). Even these are half price for Senior Citizens and Students.

    Most of the NHM galleries never changed back in the glorious past. They were the classical glass-topped display cases with seemingly dozens of drawers underneath with so many hidden treats waiting to be discovered. Many of the galleries looked the same with ranks of these cases and with larger displays around the walls but the wonders to explore …And the dinosaurs, plesiosuars, ichthiosaurs, giant sloths, the blue whale and so much more for a boy to look at and to wonder what it must have been like for a little girl like Mary Anning (“She sells sea shells on the sea shore”) to find unimaginable giants, never seen for 100 million or more years.

    I can claim to have known most of the galleries but the hidden secrets could never be fathomed. Finally, all the No Entry doors that opened rarely and through which one could pass unknown fossils for identification. What wonders were hidden from a mere young lad.

  28. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Now that Mary Schweitzer has discovered DNA in dinosaur soft tissue, I wonder if PZ will be offering a public apology to all the creationists he has made fun of over the years for insisting it was original biological material?

    How old do you claim the biological material is? What evidence do you have for that age? Hint, you won’t find that in your book of mythology/fiction, and your deity is imaginary until you provide conclusive physical evidence for it. So far, silence and no real evidence.

  29. yesyouneedjesus says

    Nerd, how long do you think until PZ stops fighting the reality that it’s indeed original biological material?

    I’m not sure how old the dino soft tissue and DNA is, so let’s use science to figure it out. We can start with carbon dating. Agreed?

  30. Sastra says

    Dick the Damned #27 wrote:

    But what of ‘christian rock’? How do they account for that?

    As I understand it, it is indeed a schism. Some fundamentalist Christians think it is of the Devil; some fundamentalist Christians think it is of the Lord; and some fundamentalist Christians think it depends on the group. Or the song.

    My guess is that virtually nobody who visits a Creation Museum non-ironically would consider Christian rock “evil” only because it violates their aesthetic sense of taste.

  31. changerofbits says

    They could create an exhibit showing those “evil” same sex, pot smoking couples that the recent election “intelligently designed”.

  32. says

    @”yesyouneedjesus”:

    You Fail Biology Forever.

    What Schweitzer found inside the bones is not the original soft tissue. Almost all of the material has decayed and been removed by groundwater, which also left minerals behind – that’s how fossilization works. But a few very durable and insoluble fragments of collagen proteins stayed behind. I give references: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110760/ . This is a very cool result, but not surprising, since a few other biological chemicals are preserved over hundreds of millions of years – notably, some interesting traces in petroleum deposits.

    No intact dinosaur DNA has been found. There have been claims of that, but none of them have been substantiated. Even if dinosaur DNA had been preserved, it would do nothing to assign any validity to any of the Creation “Museum”‘s claims.

    And, you can’t do carbon dating on the collagen. There’s very little of the original chemical left and it is so old that it has no radiocarbon left in it. The potassium-argon series works well, perhaps supported with the uranium-235 series, and so we know that the fossil Schweitzer was working with is 68 million years old.

  33. kreativekaos says

    All the state owned museums in the UK are free (donations accepted). One of the great perks of this is you can go in for just a while to see a favorite exhibit or two. You don’t have to spend a whole day to justify the entry fee if you don’t feel like it. To do that in the US, you have to have a membership.

    I know taxes in the UK are high, but they actually do get some valuable return on them.—–tbp1@ 8

    We here in our Oakland/Macomb/Wayne, Tri-County Southeast Michigan area passed a modest tax this past summer to keep our Detroit Institute of Arts funded, and as a result, all Tri-County area residents can attend for free, virtually anytime, keeping the Arts (at least) available for many. (Unfortunately, our Detroit Science Center was shut down last year due to lack of funding. Hopefully there will be a way seen to refund it and bring it back to life.)

  34. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    We can start with carbon dating. Agreed?

    Spoken like a true fuckwitted idjit. Carbon dating, which is only good for 50,000 years, was done to check for recent infestation of recent biological materials. And note, if 50,000 years old destroys your 6,000 year old claims. And due to neutron absorption by carbon-13, carbon-14 is almost invariably present in carbon containing molecules, allowing for ages of 50,000-80,000 years to be recorded. So carbon dating is meaningless for a 68,000,000 year old specimen. So no, carbon dating is red herring compared to potassium-argon dating for that age. That’s what real science says. There is no creation science. There is creation bullshit and presupposition pretending to be science. As you prove.

  35. carlie says

    I’m not sure how old the dino soft tissue and DNA is, so let’s use science to figure it out. We can start with carbon dating. Agreed?

    Um, no. Carbon dating is valid for only a very, very short period of time. Nothing on the scale of the age of dinosaur material. And original macromolecules, while rare, aren’t all that rare, and don’t cause any discrepancies with determining the age of fossils. For instance, the Miocene Clarkia locality in Idaho is well-known for the preservation of some of its specimens, and, to a lesser extent, the Eocene Messel Shale in Germany has some unaltered material.

  36. Amphiox says

    I’m not sure how old the dino soft tissue

    YOU might not be, but science is.

    and DNA is

    Not DNA.

    so let’s use science to figure it out.

    Science already has figured it out. It’s 68 MILLION years old.

    We can start with carbon dating. Agreed?

    If you try to carbon date anything substantially older than 60,000 years, you will get a date of about 60,000 years no matter how much older than 60,000 years it actually is.

    You are either an ignorant idiot who chose not to inform himself of this simple fact (and ANYONE who wants to credibly discuss ancient soft-tissue preservation should know this), or you are a deliberately dishonest liar who wants to dishonestly introduce an erroneously young carbon date into the discussion.

    Since you’ve been around infesting this blog before on earlier threads discussing this very subject, it’s pretty clear that its the second.

  37. unclefrogy says

    I think the main problem with the creation museum unlike other museums it is not really interested in the subject it self and displaying the collections of there subjects nor real scholarship into the subject, they are primarily interested in evangelism. Once you hear the sermon all the way through you do not need to hear it over and over again even given the reduced attendance at museums generally they will have falling attendance. It is a one note melody.

    Looking at the map/satellite it does appear that the property is not that far away from well developed areas. I would bet that unless things change a lot about how we grow and expand cities the museum will sooner or later be a housing subdivision. That is not to suggest the “owners” still can’t go broke anyway.

    uncle frogy

  38. Menyambal --- Sambal's Little Helper says

    Oh, noes. How will the Creation Museum continue to fund their fossil-hunting expeditions, their archeological work and their scientific laboratories?

    I know they have people doing research, because every Creationist video shows people in white lab coats using fancy computers. That can’t just be a fake set-up intended to fool people, can it? They aren’t just misleading people like yesyouneedjesus, are they? That would lead to delusions and defenses and donations, wouldn’t it?

  39. raven says

    jesus kook:

    Now that Mary Schweitzer has discovered DNA in dinosaur soft tissue, I wonder if PZ will be offering a public apology…

    The biological tissue wasn’t DNA.

    You have no idea what you are talking about.

    When are you going to apologize for your lies and ignorance? The earth isn’t 6,000 years old and jesus might not have even existed.

  40. raven says

    SBC membership drops below 16 million – Associated Baptist Press
    abpnews. com/…/ item/7520-sbc-membership-drops-below-16-million

    12 Jun 2012 – Membership in Southern Baptist churches declined for the fifth …

    Membership in the Southern Baptist Convention declined for the fifth straight year in 2011, falling … 0.7 percent in 2011 after declining 5 percent the year before.

    Thanks to people like youneedjesus and Ken Ham, US xianity is dying.

    The signs are everywhere, a huge amount of data. One data point is the SBC which has been losing members for 5 years now. Another one is Ken Ham’s Fake Museum and monument to the power of plastic that isn’t doing so well.

    I’m starting to sense a bit of desperation as the truth slowly sinks into the heads of xians. I’m also starting to see signs of it around where I live. The churches aren’t closing and converting into condos or whatever but a lot of them seem to be fighting declining membership.

    The only one I know well is my parents. It’s a wealthy medium size church. I was shocked at how old the congregation is and how few there are now. They have a sunday school. Most days, the number of children in it is…zero.

  41. says

    (Unfortunately, our Detroit Science Center was shut down last year due to lack of funding. Hopefully there will be a way seen to refund it and bring it back to life.)

    Here in Portland, we have OMSI (The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). It costs only $12 admission (Less than half what the Creation Museum charges) plus extra if you want to see a planetarium show or the like, although that is fixed, not a donation. OMSI is unfortunately not publicly funded at all, although I wish it would be. Attendance is doing just fine, though. I volunteer there twice a month, and I’m pretty sure I’d have heard if there was a significant drop lately.

  42. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Will you be issuing a public apology to Mary Schweitzer for misusing her discovery and work, yesineedabrain?

  43. says

    I hate to be the party-pooper, but those attendance figures are perfectly consistent with any new attraction. It’s no longer getting free publicity in the media. People who have gone out their way to see it once, probably aren’t going to do so again.

  44. Menyambal --- Sambal's Little Helper says

    Sing it with me:

    Yes, you need Jesus,
    yes, you need Jesus,
    yes, you-ou neeed Jeees-us,
    like a fucking hole in the head.

  45. says

    Um, no. Carbon dating is valid for only a very, very short period of time.

    Carbon dating it would still be a pretty good idea, since that would eliminate the absurd theory some have put forward that a researcher dropped some of his chicken sandwich in the sample, or something like that. If it came back as 60k+ that would tell us that there wasn’t stuff living and growing in the cavity (or dropping chicken mcnuggets) recently. It wouldn’t prove it was from a dinosaur but it would prove it wasn’t new contamination.

  46. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Marcus Ranum, security guards will be watching your every actions if you do that. Read up about the interactions with the guards when PZ and the gang were there.

  47. yesyouneedjesus says

    Michaelbusch, you are a bit out of date on your science. The DNA is a recent discovery and I don’t think it’s published yet. Check out DinosaurSoftTissue.com for the most up-to-date information on the greatest scientific find of the 20th century that evolutionists like to downplay.

  48. yesyouneedjesus says

    Nerd, you assume way too much. Science shouldn’t assume. Biofilm has been ruled out. Neutron capture has been ruled out. Soft tissue deniers like yourself are the only ones denying the obvious facts. And now we have DNA. How far will your denial go?

  49. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Gee, what a fuckwit liar for jebus is. His link isn’t to a scientific web site, but to a CREOBOT FUCKWITTED IDJIT. That isn’t where science is found. It is found here, and in science libraries at institutions of higher learning world-wide. Funny how creobots never, ever go there for real scientific evidence. Which is the only thing that refutes science. Must be a character/intelligence flaw.

  50. yesyouneedjesus says

    DSG, I went further by referencing the largest collection of refereed journals on the topic.

  51. peterh says

    The Smithsonian’s 19 branches & the National Zoo, all in the DC area, are free as is the American Indian Museum in NYC – just for openers (hem).

    @#43:

    Yous said, “…The earth isn’t 6,000 years old…” when indeed it is, it’s just not just 6,000 years old. Small slips in word choice can provide these IDjits with accidental ammo.

    And I vote for the C-14 testing; if it simply gives 60K+ it will tell us little about the sample other than it’s a bona fide indication Bishop Ussher’s numbers are literally cooked and now in the garbage.

  52. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I went further by referencing the largest collection of refereed journals on the topic.

    Refereed by presuppositional fuckwits like yourself, who don’t and won’t understand how science is done. Why don’t we believe a word you say? Maybe if you started with the hard stuff and show conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity, and conclusive evidence from the scientific literature that your book of mythology/fiction is really inerrant. But then, we all know better. Hang on to your delusional and fallacious presuppositions. It is all you have.

  53. yesyouneedjesus says

    Nerd, the site is the largest single source of information on the topic. You should familiarize yourself with the peer-reviewed science on the topic as you’re clearly out of date on the science. Your comments prove that.

  54. peterh says

    @#56:

    “Refereed journals” sounds so very impressive – but who are the referees? Did their degrees come from accredited institutions or from Craig’s List?

  55. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Neutron capture has been ruled out.

    Citation needed. Or show how the sample was sealed from cosmic rays and earthly radiation (that pesky thorium, uranium, and other naturally occurring radioactive elements in the earth) for the last 68M years. Until then, it hasn’t been ruled out, and is the null hypothesis.

  56. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    the site is the largest single source of information on the topic.

    Nope, the science library I linked to is. You cite is presuppositional fuckwittery. Show otherwise with citations to the real scientific literature. Here’s a couple to get peoples attention: Science and Nature. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding a citation to either one…

  57. eschaton2012 says

    That’s why everyone should come to Ottawa for Eschaton2012 – see a talk by PZ in a *real* museum, with exclusive access to the Fossil and Earth galleries.

  58. Rey Fox says

    I have to say, I’ve never heard of scientists going out and registering a domain name when they find something. Seems fishy and faintly desperate to me.

  59. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The “link” fuckwitforJebus gave was to Bob Enyart, professional liar and bullshitter for imaginary deities.

  60. yesyouneedjesus says

    Nerd, feel free to read the site, which sources all the secular journals like Nature, Science, PNAS, etc. All your questions will be answered. I don’t know why thus discovery freaks you out so much. I can’t wait to hear your obfuscation when the news comes out that they discovered DNA now.

  61. yesyouneedjesus says

    Rey fox and carlie, the site is a one-stop shop for all the peer-reviewed science on dinosaur soft tissue. The papers are running 10-to-1 that it’s indeed biological materia. The recent DNA discovery should encourage PZ to publicly apologize.

  62. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    feel free to read the site,

    Why would I read presupposition and fuckwittery? There is nothing scientific there. Once your imaginary deity and mythical/fictional holy book is invoked, sanity and reason go out the window. As shown by your posts with special pleading, and not one link like this to the real literature (a .pdf file of M. Schweitzer in Science). You need to do the same. Your unevidenced claims are *POOF* dismissed as fuckwittery.

  63. says

    How far will your denial go?

    Hey yesyouneedmystupidity, tell us why dinosaur soft tissue, or any remains of non-avian dinosaurs, isn’t found in situ above the “iridium layer” dated 66 million years ago, or so.

    Oh right, you’re a lying moron who doesn’t give a damn about coming up with honest answers, only stupidly attacking those who do care about honesty. Wasn’t honesty once a part of Xianity? Well, clearly it has nothing to do with yours.

    Glen Davidson

  64. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The recent DNA discovery should encourage PZ to publicly apologize.

    Why? Where is your citation to the DNA work? Citation, or it doesn’t exist. That is science.

  65. says

    Yesyoureanidiot
    Your assignment for today’s class is to learn the difference between proteins(which the national geographic articles Enyart cites are talking about) and DNA. When you can adequately explain this difference, you can come back to the grown up table and continue this discussion.

  66. yesyouneedjesus says

    Nerd, true or false? The site sources and quotes from every refereed paper on the subject.

  67. chigau (棒や石) says

    I don’t think I can handle another discussion of what “peer-review” really means.

  68. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Liar for jebus, you make the claims, you either cite the primary evidence (not just something like a collection of idiocy) from the peer reviewed scientific literature. Or, you claim is dismissed per the Christopher Hitchens quote. So far from you, nothing.

  69. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The site sources and quotes from every refereed paper on the subject.

    How do I know, as you haven’t linked to the “peer” reviewed paper. Until you do, it doesn’t exist. And if it is a creationist site, it isn’t science.

  70. yesyouneedjesus says

    Since the DNA paper has not been published yet, what saith all the soft tissue deniers if indeed dinosaur DNA has been discovered.

  71. stewartt1982 says

    yesyouneedjesus:

    You came here making a very precise claim about DNA in dinosaur fossils. Then you claim that the research exists but is not published yet. How do you know about it? Is there a preprint available? Why not share how you know the results? How can anyone evaluate your claims if we cannot see the data?

    As for the website you sent, it seems a bit of a Gish Gallop. It makes page after page of claims, and links to papers. Do you expect everyone here to read every single paper linked and evaluate the claims made by the website?

    If the evidence is so clear in so many different papers, then please pick them one outstanding example for everyone to evaluate.

  72. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Since the DNA paper has not been published yet, what saith all the soft tissue deniers if indeed dinosaur DNA has been discovered.

    Until it is published, or presented at a scientific meeting, it is “vaporware”. As every real scientist knows.

  73. carlie says

    Membership in the Southern Baptist Convention declined for the fifth straight year in 2011, falling … 0.7 percent in 2011 after declining 5 percent the year before.

    It’s going to be a lot more than that. An awful lot of churches don’t take a person’s name off of the membership rolls unless the person specifically asks, usually if they’re switching to another church.

  74. stewartt1982 says

    If the evidence is so clear in so many different papers, then please pick them one outstanding example for everyone to evaluate.

    Darn auto-correct, please forgive the “them” in the last sentence.

  75. carlie says

    First, there is no such website as “DinosaurSoftTissue.com”. It redirects to kgov.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue. So already I can see you don’t pay much attention to detail. Doing a search for “dinosaur dna” within its own search engine gave no results talking about DNA found in dinosaurs.

    So, your point is…. what, again?

  76. carlie says

    Since the DNA paper has not been published yet, what saith all the soft tissue deniers if indeed dinosaur DNA has been discovered.

    Yes, where do you have your secret awesome information from? Because it doesn’t seem to be anywhere discoverable by anyone else.

    But if there is, so what? That’s pretty neat, but it’s not unprecedented. Again, Miocene chloroplast DNA is old news. This would be a very interesting find from a lot of standpoints, but it would still give no credence at all to the idea that it’s only 6000 years old.

  77. yesyouneedjesus says

    Since it doesn’t exist until published (as Nerd says), let’s pretend it doesn’t exist. What will everyone say if dinosaur DNA is discovered in the dinosaur soft tissue that everyone denies is original biological material?

  78. Amphiox says

    Notice how the creobot liar dissembles between posts, sometimes talking about “biological material” and sometimes talking about “DNA” as if the two were the same thing?

    Utterly pathetic intellectual dishonesty all the way down.

    (Personally, I am of the opinion that the dinosaur material is indeed original dinosaur protein. And if it turns out there are a few fragments of original dinosaur DNA in it that would not be a surprise either.)

  79. stewartt1982 says

    yesyouneedjesus:
    You are the chap that brought the “evidence” of dinosaur DNA up and asked PZ to apologise. Now you want to talk about hypothetical situations because you don’t have the evidence to back your claims up?

  80. Amphiox says

    The Miocene dates back to 20 million years. Since we already have DNA confirmed from that far back, DNA at 68 million years is no great stretch.

    Also, we would be talking about a few fragments of a handful of base pairs out of original chains constituting millions of base pairs.

  81. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    What will everyone say if dinosaur DNA is discovered in the dinosaur soft tissue that everyone denies is original biological material?

    Hypotheticals are for evidenceless losers. So liar for jebus, you are a evidenceless loser, as you just admitted to the world.

  82. stewartt1982 says

    If DNA was found, I think I’d act like any good scientist… I go “hmmm, interesting” and ponder how it came to be preserved, and under what conditions.

    Jumping to the conclusion of dinosaurs living in the near past along side humans does not seem to be the most logical conclusion.

  83. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Jumping to the conclusion of dinosaurs living in the near past along side humans does not seem to be the most logical conclusion.

    Definitely, The Flintstones was not a documentary, although creobots pretend that it is…

  84. Amphiox says

    By the way, the dinosaur biological material yesineedtolieforjesus is harping about was sequenced, and that collagen sequence demonstrated a close evolutionary relationship to modern birds. Even if the liar’s so transparent attempt to spin the data to cast doubt on the evidence for the deep antiquity of the fossils (which it would not even if completely confirmed), the very existence of that dinosaur collagen would prove the correctness of evolutionary theory concerning dinosaurs and birds.

    You can’t cherry pick scientific findings and only accept the part that seems to favor your preferred worldview while ignoring the other part of the SAME finding that blows your worldview completely out of the water.

  85. yesyouneedjesus says

    Guys, PZ still denies that all the soft tissue finds are original biological material. Maybe you can help me convince him to finally admit it. And then we all can discuss the absurdity that original biological material, with left-handed amino acids, significant amounts of 14C, etc. is really more than thousands of years old.

  86. carlie says

    Guys, PZ still denies that all the soft tissue finds are original biological material.

    Where does he do that? Remember, DNA is not the same as other macromolecules.

    And then we all can discuss the absurdity that original biological material, with left-handed amino acids, significant amounts of 14C, etc. is really more than thousands of years old.

    Upon what basis do you claim that it’s absurd? What is your analysis of the paper discussing Miocene chloroplast DNA? I assume you’re intimately familiar with that paper, otherwise you wouldn’t act as though you know what you’re talking about.

  87. says

    All good grifts come to an end.

    One huge problem with letting religion be tax free is that it becomes a honey pot for every con man who wants to make a killing. The government gave these guys tons of cash, I’m sure Christians did too.

    No doubt if the creation museum goes out of business, it will be up to the taxpayers to clean the site up. Tax money that these guys never have to pay.

  88. Amphiox says

    Peripherally related, forget C14 dating, dendrochronology and ice cores both reliably date past 10,000 years. Both these techniques measure time BY COUNTING. The idea of a young earth is soundly falsified BY COUNTING. To deny an earth significantly older than 6000 years is to deny that 1+1=2.

  89. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Maybe you can help me convince him to finally admit it.

    Why? Why should we help a confirmed liar and bullshitter for any reason? Why? You have nothing.

  90. stewartt1982 says

    I’m a physicist not a biologist or paleontologist, so I’ve a question for those more of in the know.

    In specimens on the order of 10k years old, how much DNA is typically found? I find myself wondering why, if dinosaurs lived recently, finding DNA is so hard when we can find DNA in other types of specimens of a similar age?

  91. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    It seems that yesineedabrain is somehow under the idea that if PZ apologizes that it would strike a blow for the rigorousness and righteousness of the creationist cause.

    It does not work this way.

    But please continue, it is rather amusing.

  92. carlie says

    dendrochronology and ice cores both reliably date past 10,000 years. Both these techniques measure time BY COUNTING. The idea of a young earth is soundly falsified BY COUNTING. To deny an earth significantly older than 6000 years is to deny that 1+1=2.

    Oh yeah. Gotta love the ice cores. EVEN IF you are ridiculous enough that you don’t agree with dendrochronology overlapping between trees of various ages to extend their counting limit, there are, what, over a dozen places now that have continuous ice cores back to over 12kya?

  93. Amphiox says

    PZ, incidentally, has NEVER denied that ALL the soft tissue finds constitute original material. All the he’s ever done is express some skepticism about SOME of those claims.

    But yesineedtolieforjesus has now repeated the falsehood multiple times. There’s a term for this. It’s in the bible. Yeah, it’s called BEARING FALSE WITNESS AGAINST YOUR NEIGHBOR.

    Not that this sort of dishonest hypocrisy is any surprise.

  94. Amphiox says

    I wonder if yesineedtolieforjesus realizes that every time it or anyone else uses a GPS navigator and gets to where it wants to go rather than being directed off the nearest cliff, it demonstrates the validity of the scientific theories underpinning the working of the atomic clocks that calibrate the GPS satellites, which is the SAME theory underpinning radiometric dating, which therefore demonstrates that the older than 65 million years dating of late Cretaceous fossils must be correct.

    So no matter how surprising it might at first glance seem for biological material to endure for millions of years, one need only turn on one’s cell phone to obtain an undeniable demonstration that it, nevertheless, is true.

  95. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I find myself wondering why, if dinosaurs lived recently, finding DNA is so hard when we can find DNA in other types of specimens of a similar age?

    DNA, with its phosphate bonds, is hydrolytically unstable (it falls apart in the presence of water). So the original sample has to desiccate ( dry out or mummify) quickly, then be protected from water for X million of years. A not very likely occurrence.

  96. says

    @#105
    I think that was aimed at lyingforjesus.stewartt1982 was saying that we do have DNA from many species that existed 10,000 years ago. If, as lyingforjesus claims, dinosaur fossils are also no more than 10000 years old also, then there should be an equal amount of DNA samples from them, but there aren’t. stewartt1982, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

  97. Charlie Foxtrot says

    What will everyone say if dinosaur DNA is discovered in the dinosaur soft tissue that everyone denies is original biological material?

    Probably something along the lines of “Amazing, considering the rock surrounding the fossil was certainly 68 million years old.”

    Paleontology is a lot like real estate – location, location, location!

  98. alanbagain says

    #94

    Hi yesyouneedjesus

    This is called changing the subject. Forget L-amino acids and “significant amounts of c-14”. You are talking about DNA from dinosaurs. If you want anyone here to change their minds there is one key factor you need:

    EVIDENCE

    So far, you have said there is some work that has been done that proves your point i.e. that dinosaur DNA has been found. You have been asked (surprisingly politely for this site) to provide a reference to a peer reviewed scientific paper such as Science or Nature. You have been unable to provide it because it does not exist (according to you).

    The essence of science, however, is not just to provide a scientific paper. That is only the first step (and you have failed to take even that first step). Science requires that the published paper is assessed by other individuals in the field, any issues discussed, the results replicated and the replication written up. You may not like it to go so slow but you are here amongst those who use the scientific method. Rushing results in the nonsense of National Geographic (NOT a science journal) producing nonsense about a fossil that was fabricated. That was assessed (by scientists, not YE creationists) who demonstrated the original study was indeed nonsense.

    Until you can take the first step you have nothing except an idea which may or may not be correct. Come back when you have evidence. I am not going to try to convince Dr Myers with no evidence – I would be laughed at and while I wouldn’t like it, I would have to admit I fully deserved it.

    If you really want to discuss something, how about this:

    Assuming you are a YEC (you have been singularly reticent in talking about this) how about explaining why a large braided river system existed in the middle of the flood which flowed through a desert landscape with barkhan dunes, produced point bars and deltas and eventually dried out contributing to major rock salt desposits. I am referring to the River Budleighensis that flowed from the Variscan belt of mountains in North France, across land which has been removed (recently) by erosion in forming the English Channel and ended up on the Cheshire Plains of NW England.

    Timescale? Permotriassic with the entirety of the Jurrasic and Cretaceous to come (during which your dinosaur lived died and was buried in hundreds of metres of deposit). And all the Tertiary (including the Miocene). Oh yes, and hundreds of metres of Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Carboniferous rocks beneath it.

    I live in Worcestershire, within easy driving distance of Droitwich which gained its wealth from the Triassic salt deposits.

    Nice little sandwich for you to explain.

  99. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Or are you Alan B?

    By Georgette, I think you are right. The nym change with the login for new web site.

    Welcome Alan B. Always a pleasure.

  100. yesyouneedjesus says

    Dendrochronology and ice cores assume one per year, which is demonstrably false. That’s the problem with evolutionists. They assume, assume, assume. If a dinosaur fossil contains soft tissue, they immediately assume it’s biofilm. When the specimen contains 14C, they assume it’s neutron capture. And all this because they assume the specimen itself is tens of millions of years old. And I can’t wait to hear the assumptions once the DNA discovery is published. The idea that these sift tissue finds are millions of years old is just absurd.

  101. Ogvorbis: broken and cynical says

    Dendrochronology and ice cores assume one per year, which is demonstrably false.

    Citation from a peer-reviewed publication, please.

  102. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    which is demonstrably false.

    Citation needed, or unevidenced claim “POOF* dismissed as fuckwittery. Like everything you say.

    When the specimen contains 14C, they assume it’s neutron capture.

    Citation needed that it isn’t, or *POOF*, claim dismissed as unevidenced fuckwittery. Where is your evidence liar for jebus. Your word isn’t evidence. It is lies and bullshit. Either take it to third parties, or shut the fuck up like an abject loser should do in the presense of its betters.

  103. echidna says

    yesyouareatwit,

    That’s the problem with evolutionists. They assume, assume, assume.

    Not quite. The whole point of science is to *not* assume, but to base our understanding on evidence, and not opinion, even if that opinion was Aristotle’s, or mysticism, even if that came from a holy book.

    Why do you think evolutionists are responsible for counting ice rings? You don’t seem to realise that the scientists who established dating techniques were not biologists, let alone evolutionary biologists.

  104. raven says

    youneed jesus lying:

    Since the DNA paper has not been published yet,..

    The kook is lying. There is no DNA paper.

    New evidence backs up claim of dinosaur soft tissue find
    phys. org/ news/2011-06-evidence-dinosaur-soft-tissue.html

    15 Jun 2011 – New evidence backs up claim of dinosaur soft tissue find … San Antonio and colleagues offer evidence to support the claims by Mary Higby Schweitzer back in 2005, ….

    But, so far, they haven’t discovered any Dinosaur DNA.

    wikipedia Schweitzer:

    The successful extraction of ancient DNA from dinosaur fossils has been reported on two separate occasions, but, upon further inspection and peer review, neither of these reports could be confirmed.

  105. says

    @yesyouneedjesus:

    No. There is no such thing as “evolutionists”. There are simply scientists.

    And we (I include myself here although I am primarily an astronomer) do not assume that the fossil is 68 million years old, or the age of any other particular fossil. We count the different amounts of different radioisotopes, each of which provides an age measurement. Then we compare them against each other. That’s how we know that the dinosaur bones with recoverable protein fragments are 68 Myr old, and how we know that many ice cores have once-per-year annual bands going back hundreds of thousands of years. Radiometric dating works using the same physics that explains how your computer works.

    Re. C14: as others have repeatedly explained, after a certain point there is so little C14 in the sample that its age cannot be measured. There will always be some present, because of neutron capture onto C13 and a few other reactions. We know how those reactions work and how efficient they are – they have been repeatedly measured in the lab.

    Also, you are either unable to understand what I wrote or being deliberately dense. I said that DNA has been claimed to be present in some fossils, but that those claims have not been confirmed. All of your ranting on this point has merely illustrated that. You have not provided links to any such confirmation because none currently exists.

    And, again, “soft tissue” finds are not the original recently-deceased tissue. Almost all of the material has been replaced by minerals, less a few surviving trace molecules, although enough of the structure has been preserved to see blood vessels and in some cases individual cells. And even those molecules that have survived have been greatly degraded. Protein fragments have been confirmed. DNA fragments have not.

    I conclude that you are ignorant of quantitative science and/or being willfully dense. If the former, please go and actually learn science. You can start with Wikipedia.

  106. raven says

    Dinosaur Peptides Suggest Mechanisms of Protein Survival
    James D. San Antonio,1,* Mary H. Schweitzer,2,3,4 Shane T. Jensen,5 Raghu Kalluri,6,7 Michael Buckley,8,9 and Joseph P. R. O. Orgel10,*

    Hendrik W. van Veen, EditorReceived February 2, 2011; Accepted May 1, 2011.
    Copyright San Antonio et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
    Go to:Abstract.Eleven collagen peptide sequences recovered from chemical extracts of dinosaur bones were mapped onto molecular models of the vertebrate collagen fibril derived from extant taxa.

    The dinosaur peptides localized to fibril regions protected by the close packing of collagen molecules, and contained few acidic amino acids. Four peptides mapped to collagen regions crucial for cell-collagen interactions and tissue development.

    Dinosaur peptides were not represented in more exposed parts of the collagen fibril or regions mediating intermolecular cross-linking. Thus functionally significant regions of collagen fibrils that are physically shielded within the fibril may be preferentially preserved in fossils.

    These results show empirically that structure-function relationships at the molecular level could contribute to selective preservation in fossilized vertebrate remains across geological time, suggest a ‘preservation motif’, and bolster current concepts linking collagen structure to biological function.

    This non-random distribution supports the hypothesis that the peptides are produced by the extinct organisms and suggests a chemical mechanism for survival.

    What Mary Schweitzer found was a few peptides of collagen, the most common protein in bone. The collagen itself was partially degraded and much of it had completely disappeared. Only protected regions survived 65 million years.

    The collagen was also not from bone. It was inside bone turned to stone, fossilized dinosaur bone.

    It doesn’t prove the earth is 6,000 years old. It proves that protein peptides can survive for over 65 million years in rare cases.

  107. Anri says

    yesyouneedjesus:

    Since it doesn’t exist until published (as Nerd says), let’s pretend it doesn’t exist. What will everyone say if dinosaur DNA is discovered in the dinosaur soft tissue that everyone denies is original biological material?

    I would ask Princess Celestia if it’s true or not.

    What? My hypothetical is just as sound as yours!

    Dendrochronology and ice cores assume one per year, which is demonstrably false

    Demonstrate away!
    Links, please – it should be easy to link to the generally accepted disproof of something ‘demonstrably false’, right?

    You do have links and references, right?

    …right?

  108. carlie says

    Alan B!!!!!!!! Pint of ale? Cookie? Piece of cheesecake? Comfy chair? Please, snuggle in and stay awhile!!!

    Dendrochronology and ice cores assume one per year, which is demonstrably false. That’s the problem with evolutionists. They assume, assume, assume.

    Actually, they don’t. They know how much accumulates in different types of weather and climate because they’ve studied it. How much do you know about the subject beyond platitudes, anyway? Please, enlighten us on the latest methodologies. You can’t say they’re full of shit if you don’t know exactly what they are to begin with.

  109. raven says

    What will everyone say if dinosaur DNA is discovered in the dinosaur soft tissue that everyone denies is original biological material?

    Another lie.

    We all just read the scientific literature and accept confirmed results until proven otherwise. Unlike the creationists who are all Presuppositionalists and ignore virtually all modern science.

    I just posted an abstract of one of Mary Schweitzers papers.

    BTW, it isn’t soft tissue. It is peptides from degraded collagen. You don’t seem to know the difference between soft tissue, proteins, peptides, or DNA.

    It isn’t unusual for biological molecules to survive for millions or billions of years, sometimes altered. We’ve seen chiton survive, melanin pigments in dinosaur feathers, and many shell fossils contain the original shell.

    In fact, our entire civilization is based on this. Crude oil is tens to hundreds of millions of years old and is the remains, altered, of ancient life. This is why we call it a fossil fuel.

  110. raven says

    Dendrochronology and ice cores assume one per year, which is demonstrably false.

    Another lie.

    Youneedjesus should apologize for being a pathological liar and wasting our time demonstrating his ignorance. But he won’t.

    If their religion was true, they wouldn’t have to lie all the time.

    No lies = No creationists = No fundie xianity.

    It was creationists like youneedjesus that got me started out of xianity. Any religion based on obvious lies was unlikely to be true.

  111. Amphiox says

    Dendrochronology and ice cores assume one per year, which is demonstrably false.

    Assume? No.

    Dendrochronology and ice cores are in fact calibrated WITH RECORDED HISTORY.

    Yesineedtolieforjesusoverandoveragain wants to gloss over the fact that the most recent half to a quarter of dendrochronology and ice core dating includes RECORDED HISTORICAL YEARS AND RECORDED HISTORICAL CLIMACTIC EVENTS.

    The tree ring and ice core layers extend right to through the RECENT PAST up to the PRESENT DAY.

    That’s the problem with evolutionists. They assume, assume, assume.

    The projection here is amusing.

  112. raven says

    Dinosaur Soft Tissue is Original Biological Material | Bob Enyart Live
    kgov. com/dinosaur-soft-tissue

    Dinosaur Soft Tissue Contains Short-Lived Carbon 14: Leading scientific journals …. in 1954, when Abelson successfully recovered ancient amino acids from fish dating ….. Life uses 100% left-handed amino acids to build proteins (and purely …

    BTW, youneedjesus is just channeling creationist sources.

    A lot of this seems to come from Bob Enyart, a serial liar and one of the most warped fundies on the planet. YYNJ may well be Bob Enyart.

    They don’t understand grade school level biology either so it all comes out as gibberish to anyone who made it past the 6th grade.

  113. carlie says

    And the amount of hubris is staggering, as well. Thousands of scientists who have studied a subject very, very carefully, ripping each other apart any time there is an incorrect conclusion or extraneous assumption, all of the tests that have supported the hypotheses, that is all simply people being silly and making things up out of their head and leaping to conclusions on assumptions, whereas jesus lover up there knows for sure what the physical record really says, and can easily deflate the entire thing.

    I swear, it’s like they all have some kind of complex of thinking they are the boy who cried wolf and revealed the truth to the whole town, when in reality they’re the emperor who doesn’t realize he’s naked.

  114. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    YYNJ may well be Bob Enyart.

    Given the promotion of the link to that web site, I wouldn’t be surprised by a dishonest sockpuppet. Enyart has no honesty and integrity, and does nothing but lie and delude himself.

  115. carlie says

    YYNJ may well be Bob Enyart.

    Then it’s even more pathetic that they didn’t get the url of the website correct.

  116. says

    Wasn’t there some person that worked with Enyart, a producer or something, commenting here a while back? Does anyone know what name they went by or if I am just completely misremembering this?

  117. Amphiox says

    Tree rings and ice cores contain records correlating to historical events like the Little Ice Age, the eruptions of Krakatoa, Tambora, and Vesuvius, and the Industrial Revolution.

    AND WE KNOW EXACTLY WHEN THESE EVENTS OCCURRED, down to the day and sometimes the minute.

    So we can MATCH the dating provided by the ice cores and tree rings with the ACTUAL REAL DATES of these events which, again we know thanks to historical records, exactly.

    That is how we know that the dates provided by dendrochronology and ice cores are accurate.

  118. Ogvorbis: broken and cynical says

    Enyart has no honesty and integrity, and does nothing but lie and delude himself.

    Even worse. He lies and deludes others. If he were just deluding himself, that would be no big deal. But there are millions, worldwide, who think that he actually is the only one who can draw the correct conclusions from the evidence and act accordingly. Especially when they vote for the local school board.

  119. raven says

    RECORDED HISTORICAL YEARS AND RECORDED HISTORICAL CLIMACTIC EVENTS.

    Don’t mention history. It really confuses them.

    4500 BP The Egyptian third dynasty starts building pyramids.

    4400 BP God Floods the world killing all but 8 people.

    4300 BP The Egyptian third dynasty is still building pyramids, not realizing there was a worldwide flood and that they were, in fact, dead.

    The Sumerians invented beer and glue thousands of years before the fundie god created the universe.

  120. chigau (棒や石) says

    4300 BP The Egyptian third dynasty is still building pyramids, not realizing there was a worldwide flood and that they were, in fact, dead.

    This has always been my favorite part of the Biblical chronology :) :) :)
    —-
    Wait.
    Do you have ice-cores to support that date?

  121. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Do you have ice-cores to support that date?

    According to the Wiki article, Greenland back to 123,000 years, south pole to 800,000+ years. Creobots lose again, never in the game.

  122. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I was asking for ice-cores in Egypt.

    Ah, being difficult. But there one can count the yearly flood deposit in the delta.

  123. PatrickG says

    I, for one, would like to thank Yesyouneedjebus.

    I discovered this site after the creationist trolls had apparently given up on it, and this discussion thread has been immensely informative, with links to all sorts of sources I will very much enjoy using to procrastinate while learning!

    Yes, yes, I could have gone and read the archived threads, but this is just so much more convenient. ;)

    Thank you Jebus!

  124. Rey Fox says

    According to the Wiki article, Greenland back to 123,000 years, south pole to 800,000+ years.

    Well now, stop assuming. There could have been a deposition of 133 rings per year in Antarctica. *sage nod*

  125. chigau (棒や石) says

    Nerd
    Doesn’t the yearly Nile flood melt the ice?
    And would not the extra water from said melted ice ruin the Nile flood stratigraphy?
    Therefore BibleGod!

  126. Amphiox says

    And another thing about dendrochronology:

    We humans have invented this little thing called, you know, agriculture, part of which involved the growing and tending of trees.

    So we’ve learned by observing in real-time EXACTLY how trees grow and add rings over time.

    We humans have also invented this minor activity called carpentry (which as I understand is a somewhat important if peripheral factoid in a certain book of note), in which the patterning of the rings in trees have real and important effects on the qualities of different types of wood and what can and cannot be done with them. Things like what kinds of wood are best used to make sturdy ships to take explorers across the Atlantic Ocean to discover the country that would one day be called the United States of America, or to build more powerful warships resistant to enemy fire that helped protect that country called the United States of America during the War of 1812.

    So, just as the working of the GPS program in my cell-phone provides powerful evidence in support of the ancient age of the earth as demonstrated by radiometric dating, the carton of apple juice in my fridge, and the very existence of the United States of America in its current form are each in its own way powerful evidence in favor of an ancient earth as demonstrated by dendrochronology, as if the dendrochronological dates were in fact wrong, if the scientific theories describing the growth of trees and the properties of wood such growth bestows were in fact wrong, then neither the agricultural husbandry of apple trees or the colonization and early defence of the United States of America could have possibly existed in the manner in which they actually did exist, and neither would have ended up being the way they are observed to be now.

    Science is all interconnected. When yesyesyesineedtolieforjesus tries to deny evolutionary theory and the evidence backing it up, it basically, unwittingly, denies the entirety of observed modern reality.

  127. Amphiox says

    Well now, stop assuming. There could have been a deposition of 133 rings per year in Antarctica. *sage nod*

    Which would, of course, require there to be 133 separate winters, summers, springs, and falls, per year, in Antarctica.

    (So THAT’S what happened to poor Scott….)

  128. chigau (棒や石) says

    Rey Fox #139
    But the “133 rings per year in Antarctica” may have been composed of particulate matter from unicorn farts*.

    *peerreviewedrefereed paper pending

  129. Amphiox says

    But there one can count the yearly flood deposit in the delta.

    And match them with the yearly written records of flooding kept by the Ancient Egyptians.

  130. carlie says

    I’m sorry, is creation.com a part of the peer-reviewed literature? Also, you don’t get away with providing links (although I’m glad you seem to have mostly figured out how to hotlink your urls). You have to be able to explain it in your own words. You know, not plagiarize.

  131. chigau (棒や石) says

    Y’all should go to yesyouneedjesus #145 link.
    Don’t bother with the article but click on the author link.
    Dr. Don Batten can publish plenty of proper scientific articles about roots and lychee nuts.
    But then he [self]publishes “booklets” about other stuff…
    go look

  132. says

    You know, even if that link was to a peer reviewed journal I would still be a bit unsatisfied with it. One thing that cranks of all sorts do is throw links at people rather than make an argument, possibly including links that can be used as references justifying their position. Often links by themselves do not actually say what the person thinks it says, or it leaves ambiguity as to what their argument really is. I find disembodied links to be rather tiresome.

  133. Rey Fox says

    http://creation.com/tree-ring-dating-dendrochronology

    So, 133 rings per year, huh?

    However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault.

    There you go with those assumptions. And from such a moldy old book of stories too. Why, there isn’t a single word about tree rings or ice cores in there.

    Considering that the immediate post-Flood world would have been wetter with less contrasting seasons until the Ice Age waned

    Assumption.

    The closer one gets back to the Flood the more inaccurate the linear extrapolation of the carbon ‘clock’ would become, perhaps radically so.

    Assumption. There’s just gotta be a flud!

  134. Koshka says

    From the link referred to in #145

    However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault.

    I am not a scientist, but I cannot imagine this is a very scientific statement.

  135. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Micheal Oard

    Michael has published eight papers or technical monographs in the secular technical literature of the American Meteorological Association and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Since becoming a creationist, he has published about 200 articles in the creationist technical literature and has authored, coauthored, or been editor of fourteen published creationist books for different ages on the Flood, the Ice Age, weather, geology, and National park guides. He is on the board of the Creation Research Society.

    Isn’t that special, his creationist works far out number his real work.

  136. bargearse says

    Yesyou’reaclown

    However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault

    Not that it was necessary but this sentence from your dendrochronology link tells me everything I need to know about your approach to science.

  137. carlie says

    Since becoming a creationist, he has published about 200 articles in the creationist technical literature and has authored, coauthored, or been editor of fourteen published creationist books

    Wow, you can write a lot of things really fast when you don’t have to do actual research on any of it.

  138. says

    Considering that the immediate post-Flood world would have been wetter with less contrasting seasons until the Ice Age waned…

    Ok, I’m considering it. This option means that you would get less distinct rings or layers. This means that if any errors are made in counting, they will tend to extra merging, not extra splitting. So counting will UNDER-estimate the age.

    Creationists. How DO they manage to aim those guns at their feet with such precision?

  139. chigau (棒や石) says

    Not that I usually actually go to youtube links but “slaves4christ” isn’t even slightly tempting.
    [har. I see what I did there.]

  140. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Ing, there is nothing inherently wrong with slavery, what was wrong was how it was conducted in the US.

    But the loving hands of god made it alright in the end; Africans who never heard the good news were able to get saved before they died and god ended slavery through the use of a righteous war.

  141. says

    Wait, they bill themselves as “slaves4christ”? I thought it was just a bad joke, someone making fun of them and aggregating creationist videos.

  142. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Creation.com is an antiscientific progergander site for fuckwitted losers who believe in imaginary deities, and a book of mythology/fiction they presuppose is inerrant. They can’t even prove their world-wide-one-time-all-continent-total-eradication-life-except for one unusable ark occurred. They just can’t get the timing right, and keep pointing to local floods occurring over a large amount of time. Show otherwise by citing the peer-reviewed scientific literature found at institutions of higher learning world-wide. Where people actually learn what crock of shit religion is.

  143. Koshka says

    The ice core link # 152 has a graph showing the scientist model versus the creationist model.

    The scientist model shows a spiky line with a trend that is indicative of actual measured data. The creationist is a smooth curve.

    It almost looks like the data is made up to fit the belief!

  144. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    It almost looks like the data is made up to fit the belief!

    That’s exactly what creationists do. They and the truth are strangers.

  145. godlesspanther says

    Ken Ham has been so hostile over the years. His hostility has even been directed toward other creationists.He was disinvited to a homeschooling conference one year because he was being such an asshole to one of the other speakers. He absolutely disposes everyone who is not a members of his cult, and evidently doesn’t think much of his own followers either.

    The only way that someone like that can go is down.

    He’s tying his own noose. The best thing we can do is let him continue.

  146. Amphiox says

    Ok, I’m considering it. This option means that you would get less distinct rings or layers. This means that if any errors are made in counting, they will tend to extra merging, not extra splitting. So counting will UNDER-estimate the age.

    And don’t forget, the Flud should have killed ALL the trees. And new trees (all of the trees) would have had to grow from seedlings in the post-flud world.

    That means, that when we daisy-chain the tree ring data backwards, there should have been a discontinuity. A clean break with no overlap. This should have been there NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT HOW MANY RINGS THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN PER YEAR.

    But there is NO DISCONTINUITY. The record is continuous all the way back.

    *Poof*. The flud “hypothesis” falsified.

  147. kemist, Dark Lord of the Sith says

    Assumption.

    Assumption (noun) : the act of making an ass of oneself.

    Ex.: Let’s start with the assumption that the biblical genesis story is true. Because the babble is true because it’s inerrant and it’s inerrant because it’s true (circular logic is circular).

    Wow, you can write a lot of things really fast when you don’t have to do actual research on any of it.

    Or any of that “logical thinking” stuff everyone always talks about.

    I mean it’s not it’s not as if you needed to think at all to make nice Powerpoint presentation. Making shit up up works just as fine when your public entirely made up of proud ignoramuses-for-christ.

  148. chigau (棒や石) says

    Amphiox
    Trees and other plants may not actually be ‘alive’.
    So the flud did not harm them.
    They just sorta … um … waited until the Waters™ … um went away.
    No disruption in ring formation except that one really wet year.

  149. Amphiox says

    http://fayfreethinkers.com/tracts/ageoftheearth.shtml

    20 separate and completely independent indicators that the earth and the universe are old. And this is just a sampling of the multiple lines of evidence that we have for an old earth.

    To make all this fit with a young earth, each and every one of these indicators would have to be systematically skewed, each one in its own precisely unique way, in order for them all to converge on an age in the range of 6000 years.

    Creationists love the make hay about how there are 20 universal constants that have to be “just right” to make life possible. Well here are 20 separate observations that all have to be individually skewed in just the right way to be consistent with a young earth.

    Creationists never make a peep about this.

  150. Tony–Queer Duck Overlord of The Bronze– says

    Teacher, I have a question.

    Why do I (or anyone else for that matter) need Jesus?

  151. Menyambal --- Sambal's Little Helper says

    You need Jesus to make all the creationist stuff make sense.

    I once had a guy tell me in detail how none of it made sense until he looked at it through the eyes of Jesus.

    It was the creepiest account of going insane that I ever encountered.

  152. says

    I just noticed that yesyouneedjesus just accused me of not knowing about “the greatest scientific find of the 20th century”.

    Disregarding the total nonsense that the claimed detection of remaining DNA fragments had been confirmed, note the specifier: 20th century.

    Somebody is almost 14 years behind on the calendar and entirely unaware of the facts of Schweitzer’s work. The T. rex bones Schweitzer used for the first dinosaur-protein-fragment work were excavated in 2000 and studied starting in 2003, and the results were only confirmed c. 2010. And Schweitzer et al.’s separate project on collagen fragments from a 80-Myr-old hadrosaur fossil was confirmed in 2011.

  153. chigau (棒や石) says

    michaelbusch
    Well.
    The year 2000 was the last year of the 20th century.
    otherwise, yup.

  154. Amphiox says

    Disregarding the total nonsense that the claimed detection of remaining DNA fragments had been confirmed, note the specifier: 20th century.

    Well, what did you expect?

    Yesineedtolieandlieagainforjesus has already demonstrated amply that the it does not comprehend the concept of counting years.

  155. gravityisjustatheory says

    stewartt1982
    11 November 2012 at 5:56 pm

    If DNA was found, I think I’d act like any good scientist… I go “hmmm, interesting” and ponder how it came to be preserved, and under what conditions.

    And then clone it. Don’t forget the cloning.

    raven
    11 November 2012 at 8:59 pm

    4400 BP God Floods the world killing all but 8 people.

    4300 BP The Egyptian third dynasty is still building pyramids, not realizing there was a worldwide flood and that they were, in fact, dead.

    Maybe the pyramids were flood refuges?

  156. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    The idea that these sift tissue finds are millions of years old is just absurd. – YesIlieforjesus

    Why? The argument from personal incredulity is invalid. Given the abundant evidence that the fossils in question are indeed millions of years old, you need to provide a sound argument that what has been found (which of course is remnant chemicals from soft tissue, not bits of flesh as the term “soft tissue finds” suggests) could not have survived. That’s going to be tricky, since it would have to cover all the possible factors involved. The same would apply if DNA from dinosaur fossils was found – particularly as we already have DNA from Miocene plants, as already referenced.

    BTW, if PZ denied that these remnants are original biological material, then he appears to have been wrong. So what? He’s not infallible, nor is being wrong something a scientist has to apologise for. Even if it were, the apology would be due to the paleontologists who have done the work, not to lazy creationist liars who claim, falsely and dishonestly, that the fossils concerned are only a few thousand years old.

  157. alanbagain says

    #110, #111

    Yes. It is Me.

    There was a possible clue in the name:

    “Alan B” and ” Alan B again”. Just recognising that I have been off the commenting for a while but I am back again!

    Pharyngula ROCKS!

  158. alanbagain says

    I note that our friend has ignored my comments about EVIDENCE and obviously finds it beyond him* to use Google to find out about the geology of a country (UK) where Geology became a science because of the work of students of natural history.

    Many of these students were, of course, Christian ministers. One reason was that They had the time to look at nature as they visited their flock. Walking for several miles each day in all directions soon brought them into contact with real rocks and they became local experts. It was these men (and a few women) who were able to piece together the individual observations.

    Men such as Adam Sedgwick (third son of a vicar) who proposed the Devonian and did extensive work from nothing on the Cambrian rocks of Wales (and rocks which later became part of the Ordovician). Another man whose Christian/forenames I just love was Roderick Impey Murchison but there were so many, primarily in England and Scotland that could be mentioned.

    These 2 men, along with Professor Lapworth of Birmingham University, defined:

    the Cambrian (from the Latin name for Wales
    the Ordovician and Silurian (named after tribes on the English Welsh borders – the Welsh Marches) and
    the Devonian (after the county of Devon in the SW of England).

    Murchison went on to work in Russia at the request of the Czar and developed the Permian (after the ancient kingdom of Permia).

    Work had already been done on the Carboniferous because of its importance as the primary source of coal and many industrial minerals. William “Strata” Smith, virtually on his own, had already prepared the first nationwide (England and Wales) geology map with particular interest in the Carboniferous.

    Hence, the UK, starting with deeply Christian men, developed the Palaeozoic Era from nothing.

    The geology of Great Britain is hugely varied.

    I challenge our friend to learn more about geology than just the Grand Canyon – its a big world out here!***

    * I use “HE” as in English Law where male includes female and the singular includes the plural.

    ** He can always show me that he can do original research on the internet by finding out more about UK geology. There’s lots of it!

    *** Again, I assume that he is American although that could be a calumny for which I apologise, if necessary!

  159. Ex Patriot says

    First let ma say that the farce called the creation whatever because it certainly is not a museum needs to die a slow and painful death for all the lies it has been spreading, especially among the brain dead that go there and actually believe all the hogwash they are told. Second the idiot called (yesuneedjebus) is nothing more than brain dead troll and doesn’t derserve to be answered, it would be good if he would just go away and read his book of mythology if he can actually read.

  160. peterh says

    And yesyouneedacitation can only provide links to creationist screeds? S/he needs to learn about circular reasoning, begging the question, preaching to the (in this case non-existent) choir, falsification/denial of data, wishful thinking, eisegetical interpretations and a host of other intellectual dishonesties.

  161. alanbagain says

    #188

    Don’t be unfair, Ex Patriot. Clearly he can read. He doesn’t understand but he can read.

    Time he read the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent from the Book of Common Prayer:

    “…read, mark, learn and inwardly digest …”

    but he shouldn’t restrict that to “his book of mythology”.

    (Incidentally, when did you cease to be a SAM?)

  162. Blattafrax says

    Well, the evidence for DNA in fossilised dinosaur tissue is published:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S875632821201318X
    (It’s antibody detection of DNA presence in osteoclasts.)

    But I cannot see why PZ has to apologise for this. I know he was very sceptical of the original claims for collagen presence in the first T. rex specimen, maybe he still is. But people challenging controversial findings such as this is what makes science work. It doesn’t matter how wrong I think he is – if the supporters of this work can’t answer the criticism, then the findings fail.

    So (for example) some organic molecules can survive fossilisation* and (for example) there are no known arsenic-based life forms on Earth.

    But, the mind-blowingly bizarre idea that DNA lasts 68 million years: therefore Jesus. I have no concept of how twisted and ignorant someone has to make themselves to get to that point, but suspect a lobotomy helps.
    ..

    * OK – my opinion based on the evidence of a handful of experiments that look plausible to me. But I acknowledge, it’s still disputed.

  163. peterh says

    “… find out about the geology of a country (UK) where Geology became a science because of the work of students of natural history.”

    In which, because of these studies of geologic matters, the concept of an ancient and changing Earth was verified. C.f. in particular Theory of the Earth, 4 vols., James Hutton, 1795 and Voyages dan les Alpes, 4 vols., Horace Saussure, 1779-96. Note that these works, which helped develop an understanding of evolution as the tendency for all Earth’s systems to undergo change, were written before Charles Darwin was born.

  164. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    but I think they will follow the trajectory of most of the creation “museums” I’ve seen: they go static and dead and dusty, repeating the same stories over and over again,

    But isn’t this their mission statement and not a result of lowered attendance?

  165. McC2lhu doesn't want to know what you did there. says

    As a complete aside to the thread, but in keeping with the argument that occurred mid-thread, I submit a question.

    I’m not a biologist. I have the grave embarrassment of having never taken a biology course post-9th grade in school. However, a book on the human body that I purchased for my little girl had a sentence in it stating that cells were the basic building blocks of living things. I was under the impression that protein molecules were the basic building blocks of living things. Can someone verify/debunk that for me so I don’t dumbify my daughter with my own lack of relevant education, por favor?

  166. Owlmirror says

    It’s sadly amusing how creobots point to pages written by other creobots, and never say, yanno, Schweitzer, et al..

    Can creobots explain why Schweitzer, et al. do not claim their findings are in any way a problem for dating the Mesozoic?

    Can creobots explain why Schweitzer, et al. do strive to explain their findings as an example of unusual chemical preservation that dates to the Mesozoic, and specifically to about 68Mya?

    Can creobots explain why Schweitzer, et al. cite works on bone histology, and biochemistry, and not the bible?

    Can creobots explain why Schweitzer, et al. are not YECs, and do not claim that their work supports YEC?

  167. kemist, Dark Lord of the Sith says

    However, a book on the human body that I purchased for my little girl had a sentence in it stating that cells were the basic building blocks of living things.

    They are.

    To define something as “life” you need cells.

    However the line is actually a bit more blurry than that and some people think things like viruses might be considered “life”, even if they do not have cells – they have genetic material and a wrapping for it, but they don’t have cells with organelles.

    I was under the impression that protein molecules were the basic building blocks of living things.

    Proteins are necessary but not sufficient for life.

    For instance, these are not alive, but do contain proteins.

    Ultimately, the basic building blocks for all matter, including us, are atoms, but for life you need cells.

  168. alanbagain says

    #192

    Very true. Huge contributions were made in the late 18th and in the whole of the 19th century in Great Britain. It has been argued that much of Hutton’s work was derived from the work of others. Perhaps his main role was to put everything together and then ensure that it waspublished and accepted.

    Lord Kelvin’s contribution is often misunderstood. He was the first UK scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. Again, he was a devout Christian (Catholic) all his life and in no way a flood geologist. His contribution to the age of the Earth was to calculate how quickly the Earth would have cooled to have reached the current state. He eventually concluded that it was in the range of 20-40 Ma. This is way above the 6,000-10,000 years required by flood geology but far short of our current understanding. He lived to see his estimate vastly extended because of heating of the Earth by radioactive decay.

    Incidentally, one of Adam Sedgwick’s assistants in his work on the Cambrian in Wales was Charles Darwin. The training helped him with his work on HMS Beagle although the geological side tends to be ignored compared with other aspects of Natural History.

    Darwin took Sedgwick’s geology course at Cambridge where he was being educated to go into the Anglian ministry. Another Christian natural historian …

  169. alanbagain says

    Re; 68 Ma age of the dinosaur.

    I will admit not to have studied the Schweitzer et al. papers but the age of 68Ma is interesting.

    Arguably the best fixed date in geology is the K/T (or more recently, K/Pg boundary). Currently the accepted figure is 65.95 million years, give or take 40,000 years.

    As a fixed point it is superb because of the presence of the Iridium spike. Thus, anything below the spike is going to be older than 66 Ma and anything above it is going to be younger.

    For anything close to the K/Pg boundary (as was the T Rex), a figure of 68 Ma is going to be pretty close and supported by many measurements.

  170. peterh says

    “… [creationist exhibits] go static and dead and dusty, repeating the same stories over and over again…”

    But accredited, reputable museums repeat the same themes over and over again, yet they remain fresh and viable. Methinks a lesson is contained therein.

  171. carlie says

    However, a book on the human body that I purchased for my little girl had a sentence in it stating that cells were the basic building blocks of living things. I was under the impression that protein molecules were the basic building blocks of living things. Can someone verify/debunk that for me so I don’t dumbify my daughter with my own lack of relevant education, por favor?

    Both, depends on what level you’re looking at. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, etc. It’s turtles all the way down.

  172. raven says

    Well, the evidence for DNA in fossilised dinosaur tissue is published:

    And recently, October 2012.

    sciencedaily Oct 22, 2012

    Schweitzer and her colleagues have continued to amass support and the latest evidence comes from a molecular analysis of osteocytes from T. rex and Brachylophosaurus canadensis. The cells were isolated and when exposed to an antibody that targets a protein, the cells reacted as expected.

    And when the dinosaur cells were subjected to more tests involving other antibodies that target DNA, the antibodies bound to material in small, specific regions inside the apparent cell membrane.

    and

    A: T.rex; D, B. canadensis; G: Ostrich cells showing small localized region of binding of anti-DNA antibodies interior to the cell membrane. Reactivity of antibodies to ostrich cells is enhanced, consistent with the presence of a greater quantity of immunoreactive material in these extant cells. B: Trex; E: B. canadensis; and H, ostrich osteocytes showing positive response to propidium iodide (PI), a DNA intercalating dye, to a similar small region of material internal to cell. C: T.rex; F: B. canadensis; and I, ostrich cellular response to 4′,6′-diamidino-2-phenylindole dihydrochloride (DAPI), another DNA-specific stain.

    1. They used anti-DNA antibodies and DNA specific stains, propidium iodide and DAPI and microscopic observation of demineralized matrix.

    2. The paper is behind a paywall so it is hard to actually analyze in any detail.

    I would say this is suggestive but not conclusive data. Among other possibilities, it could be contamination from either old or new bacteria. Microbes are everywhere and can live on rocks. True rock eaters are uncommon, in most cases they are living on traces of reduced carbon present in sedimentary and/or fossil materials and there is such in Scheitzer’s samples.

    Or it could be degraded down to very short lengths, 5 bases long or less, which would still react with the dyes.

    When the data isn’t conclusive, you have one good choice. Wait for more data. I’d like to see some in situ hybidization with oligomer probes. There are more predictions if the data holds up. We should be able to sequence it using the techniques used on Neanderthals and Denisovians.

  173. raven says

    But, the mind-blowingly bizarre idea that DNA lasts 68 million years: therefore Jesus. I have no concept of how twisted and ignorant someone has to make themselves to get to that point.

    YYNJ problems is more severe than that.

    According to his delusional mythology, the universe is 6,000 years old.

    Of course it is 13.7 billion years old.

    So the creationists have to lie a whole lot and twist what scraps of data they can to support something just wrong.

    In this case, it would be that DNA can’t last 68 million years, therefore those dinosaurs died in the Flood 4500 years, about the time of the Egyptian third dynasty.

    As bizarre as that seems, tens of millions of people believe that in the USA. Not surprising, 20% of the US population are Geocentrists and Flat Earthers are still around.

  174. Owlmirror says

    Among other possibilities, it could be contamination from either old or new bacteria.

    They actually thought of that and addressed it:

    That this is eukaryotic DNA is supported by recovery of histone H4 sequence (Table 1 and Supplemental Fig. S3D–H), and the binding of antibodies to histone H4 in the same pattern as DNA antibodies and histochemical stains (Supplemental Fig. S5). This DNA-binding protein is not found in microbes, thus a microbial source for these microstructures is not supported. It is highly doubtful that contaminant DNA from exogenous sources would localize to a single point inside these cell-like microstructures, and not in other regions.

    [===]

    Or it could be degraded down to very short lengths, 5 bases long or less, which would still react with the dyes.

    And immediately following the above, they concede that this is quite possible:

    These data are not sufficient to support the claim that DNA visualized in these cells is dinosaurian in origin; only sequence data can testify to its source. However, these data suggest that affinity purification using antibodies may provide a means of recovering and concentrating sufficient amounts of DNA to be useful for next generation genomic sequencing. Because only about 15%–20% of cells from the dinosaurs reacted positively, and because reactivity that was observed was minimal relative to extant cells, there may be insufficient DNA present to validate its origin by current sequencing technology.

  175. stewartt1982 says

    @194

    The central dogma of molecular biology describes how genetic of information (DNA) makes RNA which in turn makes protein.

    So as @196 said:

    Proteins are necessary but not sufficient for life

    In some sense DNA is at the core of life, but like proteins it is not itself alive. Once it is in the cell with the machinery to convert it to protein (and a bunch of other bits) then it becomes life.

  176. Blattafrax says

    Among other possibilities, it could be contamination from either old or new bacteria.

    Oh, but isn’t science wonderful. The biofilm criticisms of the data are real and needed to be addressed. Fortunately the question allows a hypothesis to be formed – the organic structures should only contain eukaryotic protein sequences. So they looked for tubulin, actin and Histone H4. They were there, so the biofilm option is a bit less likely.

  177. Amphiox says

    However, a book on the human body that I purchased for my little girl had a sentence in it stating that cells were the basic building blocks of living things. I was under the impression that protein molecules were the basic building blocks of living things. Can someone verify/debunk that for me so I don’t dumbify my daughter with my own lack of relevant education, por favor?

    It all boils down to what you mean by “basic building block”, which itself is a simplification.

    Consider the analogous statement that “atoms are the building blocks of matter”. What this usually means is that the atom is the smallest subdivision of an element that still retains the properties of that element. You can of course divide the atom further, into protons, neutrons, electrons, etc, but these components no longer possess the same properties of the element. (In the case of compounds it would be the molecule and not the atom).

    Similarly, if you take a living thing and divide it into pieces, the smallest possible piece you can get that is still alive is a cell. And living things are made up of either single cells or groups of cells assembled together in defined patterns. Hence the cell is “the basic building block of life”.

    But of course cells themselves are made up of their own building blocks, and it turns out that the majority of the stuff that makes up the solid (non-water) portion of the cell, is protein. Furthermore, it is the proteins and their specific arrangements that impart on any individual cell its uniqueness, compared to other cells. The shape and activity and so forth of the cell is determined by the proteins that make it up. Hence the simplification that proteins are the “building blocks of the cell”, while the other components of the cell such as the lipid membranes (which are non-specific, or given specificity by the proteins embedded within them), or the DNA/RNA (which, although responsible for storing and processing the information used to make the proteins, constitute by themselves only a minor proportion of the total material in the cell, and do not possess a major structural role), generally are not referred to as “basic building blocks”.

    Or if you want to use a construction metaphor, the DNA are the master blueprints, the RNA are the copies of pages of the blueprints used locally, and the lipids are the paint and curtains, but the proteins make up the bricks, mortar, and the construction workers.

  178. Amphiox says

    Because only about 15%–20% of cells from the dinosaurs reacted positively, and because reactivity that was observed was minimal relative to extant cells, there may be insufficient DNA present to validate its origin by current sequencing technology.

    And of course this shows that the suspected ancient DNA is in fact very rare and very scarce, which is perfectly consistent with it being either very very old or a minor contaminant, but NOT consistent with it being only a few thousand years old, in which case there should have been much more DNA to be found.

  179. says

    @Blattafrax and others:

    I had not yet seen this paper, although I had heard some rumors that Schweitzer et al. had claimed to have found DNA fragments in dinosaur fossils. Once again, the result is very cool, but it awaits confirmation – and I am sure a number of geochemists/geobiologists are very interested in working on trying to replicate the results.

  180. qwerty says

    Yesterday, November 11th, I could have attended the creation museum for free as a veteran. We can get in free on Veterans’ Day, Memorial Day, and the 4th of July.

  181. raven says

    sci am Katie Wong blog:

    *Update, Oct. 20, 2012, 11:24 a.m.: Mary Schweitzer emailed me to clarify a point that did not come across in her talk. “PHEX is actually found in many taxa. However proteins have thousands of antibody binding sites on them. Some antibodies that bind to epitopes shared among groups are broadly cross reactive. Ours, OB 7.3 was selected for only one epitope out of thousands, and that epitope is, so far as it has been tested by the primary researchers, only reactive to osteoctyes from birds. It has been tested against bird osteoblasts, cells on the same lineage as osteocytes, and does not react, and it does not react with osteocytes from non avian taxa tested. So it is the selective specificity of the antibody for bird osteocytes that is important. We are not saying birds and dinos are the only ones that have the protein, but because the sequence is inherited, it has different ‘shapes’ in each group and the ‘shape’ this antibody binds seems to be unique to bird osteocytes in living taxa.”

    FYI.

    This is pretty cool.

    Schweitzer used an antibody specific for only avian osteocyte PHEX protein, which reacted.

    Which implies that birds are avian dinosaurs, evolved from theropods. Which we already know anyway from multiple lines of evidence.

    Creationists of course, would deny that because every species was poofed out of nothing 6,000 years ago by a Sky Fairy and evolution can’t happen.

    Once again, the result is very cool, but it awaits confirmation

    1. Which might well happen.

    2. Schweitzer is making an extraordinary claim which will require a lot of proof. Which they are acquiring.

    3. The whole field of ancient DNA is filled with reports that were not replicated and/or just wrong, including previous reports of dinosaur DNA. After hearing “wolf” too many times, people have gotten a lot more cautious about the work.

    But it is for sure that ancient DNA exists and now the question is how far back can we go. We may yet get to build a Jurassic or Cretaceous park.

  182. Amphiox says

    Schweitzer used an antibody specific for only avian osteocyte PHEX protein, which reacted.

    Which implies that birds are avian dinosaurs, evolved from theropods. Which we already know anyway from multiple lines of evidence.

    Creationists of course, would deny that because every species was poofed out of nothing 6,000 years ago by a Sky Fairy and evolution can’t happen.

    Even their favorite “it’s only microevolution after the flud” canard can’t save them here.

    Because Genesis explicitly has the birds and the reptiles being created on separate days (with the birds made first).

    AND because in their own literature they have already identified the dinosaurs and existing BEFORE the flud, and as a baramin separate from the birds.

    Hence how they’ve tried so desperately to glom on to Feduccia and the rest of the BAND crowd’s coattails.

    So even as they spin and spin and spin some more this ancient soft tissue stuff, they fail to realize that the very existence of this ancient tissue directly falsifies their entire young-earth creationism edifice.

    At this point, they really should be hoping it turns out to be just bacteria contamination.

  183. Owlmirror says

    @ Alan B:

    Lord Kelvin’s contribution is often misunderstood. He was the first UK scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords. Again, he was a devout Christian (Catholic) all his life and in no way a flood geologist. His contribution to the age of the Earth was to calculate how quickly the Earth would have cooled to have reached the current state. He eventually concluded that it was in the range of 20-40 Ma. This is way above the 6,000-10,000 years required by flood geology but far short of our current understanding. He lived to see his estimate vastly extended because of heating of the Earth by radioactive decay.

    [copying and editing slightly from here ]

    In addition to lacking knowledge of radiation as a source of heat, Lord Kelvin ignored that his model of the Earth’s cooling was a little too simple. If the model is changed to a better one, with convective cooling rather than conductive cooling, the observed temperature gradients measured in the Earth’s crust are consistent with an Earth that is in fact billions of years old (and, as a side effect, you get a model that allows for plate tectonics for free). And the convective cooling model was pointed out by John Perry in 1895, while Lord Kelvin was still alive. But Kelvin ignored it.

    References:
    England, Phillip et al. Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth. American Scientist. 2007. July-August, pp. 342-349. PDF
    England, Phillip et al. John Perry’s neglected critique of Kelvin’s age for the Earth: A missed opportunity in geodynamics. GSA Today. 2007. v 17, n 1, pp. 4-9. PDF

  184. Owlmirror says

    At this point, they really should be hoping it turns out to be just bacteria contamination.

    You mean, turkey/chicken meat contamination.

    No, wait, make that: turkey/chicken marrow surprise contamination.

  185. says

    turkey/chicken marrow surprise contamination

    C’mon, man. I’m feeling homesick enough about not being able to get to my mom’s for thanksgiving this year. No need to bring her home cooking into it.

  186. Menyambal --- Sambal's Little Helper says

    yesyouhavenobananas seems to be imagining that perfect and complete strands of DNA are in there, just waiting for the guys from Jurassic Park. And that would be very unlikely, indeed.

    But “DNA” could be used if there are just a few nucleotides, or even less. What’s the very minimum amount of DNA-type material that still can be called DNA, anyhow? By whose standards?

    As for there being a few original atoms still arranged as something that could generously be called “DNA”, well, why not? A dino dies in dry climate, and the bone marrow is protected by bone, which later gets washed into a stream, encased in clay and partially fossilized before the bone gets completely soggy. What’s going to destroy the molecules that are encased in stone and bone?

    It’s unlikely, but it isn’t impossible.

  187. Blattafrax says

    turkey/chicken marrow surprise contamination

    Ostrich is closer if Schweitzer is correct.

    But “DNA” could be used if there are just a few nucleotides

    The DNA there is has got to react with the DAPI and propidium iodide stains – barest minimum is 2 nucleotides. 4’s going to work better, but there’s no need for intact bases. Similar numbers for the antibody I’d guess. I think the antibodies tend to bind the phosphate backbone, again, no need for intact bases. So it might not be recognisable as DNA from the point of view of reading sequence. That’d make sense from the state of the collagen amino acids extracted from the first T. rex – only just recognisable from the degradation products.

    I’m not hopeful for DNA sequence any time soon or even long term. But it would be really cool to try staining the putative fossil DNA with labelled oligonucleotides. I wonder why that’s not reported – also why no mass spectroscopy data on the DNA?

    Always questions to be asked. Science is as far from religion as right is from wrong.

  188. Owlmirror says

    But it would be really cool to try staining the putative fossil DNA with labelled oligonucleotides. I wonder why that’s not reported – also why no mass spectroscopy data on the DNA?

    If I had to guess, I’d suggest that Schweitzer et al. are proceeding as cautiously and with as much diligence as possible.

    One step at a time. First work on osteocytes; then work on osteocyte DNA.

  189. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    So yesyouneedjesus has given up?

    Of course, we don’t accept its testament as anything other than the lies and bullshit it is. How can it fool us if we won’t be foolish…

  190. chigau (棒や石) says

    If yesyouneedjesus was truly fighting for xis LordandSavior® then Jesus must be very disappointed.

  191. Amphiox says

    So yesyouneedjesus has given up?
    tsk

    Well, what choice did he have?

    He needed jesus to help him stay, and when he looked over his shoulder for jesus, jesus wasn’t there.

  192. chigau (棒や石) says

    I should add that if I had that conversation with a corporeal god, I would kick him in the ‘nads.

  193. chigau (棒や石) says

    OK.
    “That’s when I carried you.”
    merits a beating.
    —-
    and getting kicked in the crotch is no fun for a female

  194. Amphiox says

    OK.
    “That’s when I carried you.”
    merits a beating.

    When that’s ALL he did for you, and you already know he can walk on water, then that is what I would call a “rip-off”.

  195. alanbagain says

    #212

    Fair enough but it was an evolving area of science. The main point I wanted to make to our YEC(?) friend was that a life-long Christian was more than happy to accept an age 2,500 times the standard 8000 years ( +/- 25% ).