Dinosaurs and the Bible, Ham K, part 2

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Continued from part 1

Contents

Section 7: Where did Dinosaurs Come From?

"Evolutionists claim that dinosaurs evolved over millions of years. They imagine that one kind of animal slowly changed over long periods of time to become a different kind of animal."

Notice the word choice again. Scientists "imagine" and "claim." Again, compare these word choices with those he uses with regards to the creationists later.

"This would mean, of course, that there would have to have been millions of creatures during that time that would be "in between," as amphibians evolved into reptiles. Evidence of these "transitional forms" should be abundant."

And is. Check out TalkOrigins list of reptilian transition fossils if you don't believe me. He gives no reason to reject these as transitional, he simply asserts that there are not any, and gives us the following:

"However, many fossil experts admit that not one unquestionable transitional form between any group of creatures and another has been found anywhere."

No references to check on any of these supposed experts are given. Every one of the quotes that purport to show this that I've seen from creationists has proven to be:

  1. Taken out of context, really discussing something else.
  2. Out of date by over fifty years.
  3. Referring to the species/species problem nicely solved by allopatric speciation.
  4. Out and out falsehoods.
"In fact, if you go to a museum, you will see fossils of dinosaurs that are 100% dinosaur, not something in between. There are no 25%, 50%, 75% or even 99% dinosaurs--they are all 100% dinosaur!"

This is completely untrue. Thecodonts are exactly the sort of half-state between reptile and dinosaur he is pretending doesn't exist. In fact, nearly every single group of vertebrates shows such partial transitions. No evidence is given to reject these transitions, only the assertion that they don't exist. See TalkOrigins Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ for a large number of other transitional forms that creationists deny without reason.

Having ignored hundreds of thousands of fossils for no reason other than he doesn't like them, he goes on to claim that creationists expect exactly what they see. (Probably true, they've got blinders on that don't let them see anything they don't expect.) The section ends with:

"Evolutionists declare that no man ever lived alongside dinosaurs."

Note that "declare" implies that scientists are just making this stuff up. Again, none of the evidence for that declaration is discussed, only an assertion that it is wrong.

"The Bible, however, makes it plain that dinosaurs and people must have lived together. Actually, as we will soon see, there is a lot of evidence for this."

And that evidence is the biggest laugh in the whole book. Wait for §11.

We do get a nice cartoon of the six days of Genesis, though, complete with little anthropomorphic fish and birds and a very happy cave man.

Section 8: What Did the Dinosaurs Eat?

Apparently, God, in His infinite wisdom, gave the Velociraptor really long, sharp claws, vicious cutting teeth, and powerful running muscles so that it could chase down and kill wild bananas. It certainly wasn't for killing animals, since everything ate plants at the time of creation.

This claim has got to be one of the stupidest that creationists make, yet here it is, presented without a scrap of evidence to support it. The Bible says so (sort of) so it must be true.

These claims really leave creationism in a mess. If Velociraptors were originally created as herbivores, then either:

  • Lions were very, very badly designed herbivores, and it's a really good thing for them that Mankind fell, otherwise they would have starved to death, as their teeth were unable to easily consume plant matter and their digestive systems too short to properly digest it. All this makes God rather incompetent

or

  • Velociraptors were originally created as good herbivores, but micro-evolved into carnivores, requiring both beneficial changes (which creationists pretend cannot happen) and far more evolution than is found between humans and chimpanzees (which creationists pretend is a yawning, insurmountable abyss).

or

  • There was a second creation event that the Bible, sole source of inerrant information about the history of the world, utterly failed to mention.

Any of those options leaves creationism in serious trouble. Creationists could, of course, claim the first option above, along with omniscience, means God designed them to be carnivores knowing that humans would fall, but this makes God out to be a rather heartless bastard who knows Eve will steal the fruit, but nonetheless leaves it in reach so that humanity will suffer for eternity. I won't even get into the hash this makes of free will, and what it does to the supposed basis of Christian morality...

Section 9: Why Do We Find Dinosaur Fossils?

This chapter consists of nothing but the claim that Noah's flood explains the formation of fossils. Ham makes no attempt to address the large number of problems arrayed against this claim. No attempt to answer the question, "Why do we find the dinosaur fossils in layers that don't have any human fossils if they were living together?" is made. In fact, no attempt to justify the order of the fossil record is made at all. There is no explanation for how the flood sorted radioisotopes to allow for the "illusion" of radiometric dating. There is no explanation for how the layers became increasingly filled with modern types of plants and animals or why the lower layers have so little like modern species at all.

He does claim that other fossil layers have been laid down since the flood, but we are given no clue to how we tell pre-flood layers from post flood layers.

The chapter is nothing but an Argument By Assertion fallacy.

Section 10: Have Dinosaurs lived in Recent Times?

Well, since dinosaurs were on the ark, they must have lived in recent times, right? We are told that the Behemoth, from the book of Job, was a dinosaur. No non-biblical evidence is presented, simply more assertions without support.

Section 11: Are Dinosaurs Mentioned in Ancient Literature?

According to Ken Ham, yes. That is, if you pretend that all references to dragons are dinosaurs, then they are. Fire breathing Tyrannosaurus, anyone?

"Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for creationists), many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus."

This would indeed be a surprise, because there is nothing in the mythology of any people on the planet which could be mistaken for a Tyrannosaurus. Nor are there any dinosaurs that really resemble popular or historical images of dragons.

Consider some of the elements common to dragons: Wings (usually bat-like), fire-breathing (unknown in any species), elongated, highly muscled neck (unknown in any large, predatory species of dinosaur), largely quadrupedal (predatory dinosaurs were two-legged). Is there any strong connection between the most salient features of dragons and those found in dinosaurs at all?

Of course, Ham's ignorance doesn't just extend to dinosaurs or mythology, but also history. "Dragons" as we currently see them are a fairly modern construction. Going back through time to early Europe, we find that the dragons of ancient days were quite different from their modern incarnations. Like all folklore, dragons have evolved. Early European dragons seem to be based on traveler’s tales of large African snakes. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, describes dragons as coiling around elephants and killing them; clearly they are snakes. Indeed, the word Dragon may derive from a Greek epithet that meant snake.

Simply put, the ancient dragon myths that Ham wants to use to support creationism simply don't exist! He's using modern Hollywood dragons to demonstrate the existence of dinosaurs into human history.

We do get a picture of Saint George fighting a Baryonyx and an Elasmosaurus in Loch Ness. Evidence? There is no evidence. And yet, this is as close as Ham gets to supporting his claims without simply reciting "The Bible says it, so it's true!" This is as good as it gets, folks.

"Unfortunately, this evidence is not considered valid by evolutionists. Why? Only because their belief is that man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time."

Of course, Ham. It can't possibly be because the argument is ignorant and stupid; no it has to be because evolutionists are biased. Of course, the same argument he's using would mean that there really were vampires, werewolves, fairies, and all manner of what he'd call pagan gods. Since creationists expect us to believe in dragons based on this logic, I guess we have to accept that the evidence for Zeus and Odin is just as good. All hail Zeus, King of Gods! Oh, wait, we can't have that...

Section 12: What Happened to the Dinosaurs?

"Evolutionists use their imagination in a big way in answering this question."

Sure we do. Then we go out and look for evidence. This can be compared with the creationists who can't use their imagination and don't look for evidence.

"Because of their belief that dinosaurs 'ruled' the world for millions of years, and then disappeared millions of years before man allegedly evolved, they have to come up with all sorts of guesses to explain the 'mysterious' disappearance."

Gee, it's not because there are no fossils of humans and dinosaurs that we believe they didn't live together. Oh no, it's because we're all committed to our evolutionary paradigm. Again, pay attention to the word choice: scientists imagine and guess.

He then presents a "small list of theories" as to why evolutionists say dinosaurs died.

"Dinosaurs starved to death--or they died from overeating; they were poisoned; they became blind from cataracts and could not reproduce; mammals ate their eggs. Other causes include--volcanic dust, poisonous gases, comets, sunspots, meteorites, mass suicide, constipation, parasites, shrinking brain (and greater stupidity), slipped discs, changes in the composition of air, etc." (sic)

It's a fairly impressive list, though what really impresses one is how silly Ham's efforts to pad it are. Several of the items are redundant. Comet and meteor hits are both "extinction by impact" and mostly redundant, "starved to death" is an aspect of several of the other entries and not a hypothesis in and of itself, the "poisonous gases" come from the same source as the "volcanic dust", etc. Really, only four of the ideas have been seriously proposed by scientists (failure to compete with mammals, impact event, volcanoes, and parasites). The claim of "mass suicide" only shows how desperate Ham is to find something silly to put in the list. Why not suggest alien big game hunters? I saw that in "Fox Trot", which has more validity than mass suicide has.

"It is obvious that evolutionists don't know what happened and are grasping at straws."

Obvious until you read real scientific literature and look at real evidence. Today, nearly every paleontologist supports the impact event hypothesis, supported by a wide variety of evidence. The other ideas are all historical. Ham is trying to paint a picture of confusion that hasn't existed since the seventies and pretend it reflects the current state of science. And he accuses others of grasping at straws? He's grasping at straws that don't even exist anymore!

Ham goes on to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs from a creationist perspective:

"At the time of the Flood, many of the sea creatures died, but some survived."

How any of them managed to survive is not explained. Simply put, the oceans should have been nearly sterilized of multi-cellular life. At most, only a handful could have survived, not the teeming diversity we see today. Coral, as only one example, should have been totally wiped out by the Flood. No explanations for why it's still around have been forthcoming from creationists.

"In addition, all of the land creatures outside the Ark died, but the representatives of all the kinds that survived on the Ark lived in the new world after the Flood."

There are immense problems with this as well. No explanation is given for how plants survived. Indeed, Ham seems to realize that the plants should be dead:

"Those land animals (including dinosaurs) found the new world to be much different than the one before the Flood. Due to (1) competition for food that was no longer in abundance, ... "

Or, indeed, existent at all. Only the carnivores could have made it for even a little while, and then only by eating the other ark animals. The would, of course, then starve once they'd run out of victims. That's not even counting the problems that parasite survival poses to this preposterous nonsense.

" ... (2) other catastrophes, ... "

Remember above when Ham chided scientists for "using their imaginations in a big way"? See, scientists are bad bad BAD for using their imaginations for anything, but creationists are good good GOOD for suggesting that there may have been some other unknown catastrophes. Double standard sticking in your throat yet?

" ... (3) man killing for food (and perhaps for fun), and (4) the destruction of habitats, etc., many species of animals eventually died out."

But the question is, how did any survive? And what about plants?

Consider for a second the case of the poor Indian Pipe. Indian Pipe is a very unusual plant found in the south-eastern United States. It has no chlorophyll, and lives in a symbiotic relationship with a certain fungus. The fungus lives only on the roots of certain trees. In order to grow, the Indian Pipe seed has to fall on ground already permeated by the fungus, which has to have adult trees growing to live on. Indian Pipe seeds and fungal spores wouldn't have survived long enough for adult trees to regrow after the flood.

In short, Indian Pipe should be extinct. It's not. And this is only one of millions of similar examples that exist around the globe. Is it any wonder that creationists avoid the subject of plants like the plague?

Section 13: Will We Ever See a Live Dinosaur?

The first paragraph admits probably not and then claims that natives in many parts of the world have described dinosaurs. Of course, this isn't really true, natives describe all kinds of interesting creatures, but few that could be mistaken for dinosaurs. Worse, they also describe pagan gods and all kinds of fairy creatures, but apparently Ken Ham feels they are only trustworthy sources of monsters when it supports creationism.

The second paragraph in the section, however, is easily the funniest in the book. I present it in its entirety:

"Creationists, of course, would not be surprised if someone found a living dinosaur. However, evolutionists would then have to explain why they made dogmatic statements that man and dinosaur never lived at the same time. I suspect they would say something to the effect that this dinosaur somehow survived because it was trapped in a remote area that has not changed for millions of years. You see, no matter what is found, or how embarrassing it is to evolutionists' ideas, they will always be able to concoct an "answer" because evolution is a belief. It is not science--it is not fact!!"

Oh, yeah, it's the evolutionists who can concoct an answer to anything!

First, the paragraph is a blatant falsehood. Short of invoking time travel, evolution (really common descent, but by this point one shouldn't be surprised that a creationist can't use the terms correctly) would be unable to explain a human fossil in Precambrian rocks. So, it is possible to find something that an evolutionist cannot concoct an answer for. Indeed, there are numerous ways to falsify evolution.

Now, let's look at creationism. The current author (Suttkus) has asked again and again for a creationist to give us some hypothetical piece of evidence that would disprove creationism. Almost none has ever tried to do this. Those that have tried failed entirely. The simple fact is, absolutely anything can be accepted under creationism simply by invoking the panacea "God dunnit." Why does the world look 4.5 billion years old? God dunnit. Why do we see light from stars over 6000 light years away? God dunnit.

So, by Ken Ham's own claims, creationism is not a science and is not a fact. Thanks, Ken, but we knew that already.

The section ends with a graphic showing a scale. In one pan is a block that says "evolution." It's crumbling and very light. The other pan has a nice solid block that says "creationism," which clearly weighs more than the evolution block. I can only conclude that this is using the Egyptian belief that the heavier the soul, the more sinful and evil it was. Creationism has clearly fallen short of evolution in this graphic.

Section 14: What Lessons Can We Learn From The Dinosaurs?

Nothing. You can't learn moral lessons from nature, since nature is inherently amoral. This isn't good enough for Ham. Fundamentalists have to find lessons in everything (except, apparently, the lesson that the world is older than 6000 years). He has to find lessons about God in the dinosaurs. How does he do it? Well, actually, he doesn't. Only the first three paragraphs even mention dinosaurs. The remaining three pages of text completely forget about dinosaurs and start preaching about redemption and Jesus.

So, what was it doing in a chapter called "What Lessons Can We Learn From Dinosaurs?" Got me. Well, we can learn that Ken Ham isn't really interested in dinosaurs and all of his supposed science is an excuse to justify his religion. This is, I suppose, an important lesson.

Summary

What evidence does Ken Ham present for creationism? Well, the Bible, and, um, well, some Hollywood movies with dragons that could, maybe, sort of, be mistaken for ancient myths that could be mistaken, in turn, for being kind of like dinosaurs, and, well, the myths of a few tribes of natives. That's it.

What evidence does he present against evolution? Well, lies. That's it. He lies about the existence of transitional fossils. He also lies by omission by ignoring massive amounts of evidence with his "well, nobody saw them, did they?" nonsense. He lies about how scientists think dinosaurs died. He lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.

This would be the self-anointed defender of "God's Truth", but truth has little value to creationism.

Acknowledgements

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