Seagraves' Mistake
From EvoWiki
A rebuttal to a classic creationist book, The Great Dinosaur Mistake, which is a old creationist publication written by strict young earther, Kelly L. Seagraves and published by Beta Books in c1977.
This, what is shown in the book, is a mistake! Yet, this strict creationist is too clueless to realize this. In the mid to late 1970s', when young earthers began publishing young earth materials on dinosaurs, strict young earther, Kelly Seagraves wrote and published this c1977 book full of fantasies falsely branded as “Biblical Truth” known as The Great Dinosaur Mistake -- exactly what the book is all about! The Great Dinosaur Mistake brought on by young earth creationists who says dinosaurs once lived with man, and yet the fossil record have proved time and time again that they are all liars since no mixbags of dinosaurs and humans together are found anywhere in the fossil record.
Not only is there an original book version of Seagraves' book, but an online version of it as well. Much of what Seagraves says about dinosaurs has already been debunked, including the Piltdown Footprints -- poorly preserved dinosaur prints found in Glen Rose, Texas carved into human footprints by practical jokers, who did this only to attract tourists to the area for profit.
The first part shows the introduction to the book. It gives out some questions about the dinosaur and claims that all the questions can be answered especially by those who believe and accept “The Letter of the Law” -- a strict reading and believing of the Bible to be “The Word of God” and accept it as God's Authority on all matters. It won't be answered that way. Time and time again, the Bible has been used the wrong way. To lie, to kill, to destroy, and to achieve; even abuse absolute power. Seagraves here is using the Bible to lie and make people believe the lies him and other creationists tell for decades.
The next part is the so-called Biblical Framework section where Seagraves tells of the Great Flood that once covered the earth as told in Genesis 6:11-18 KJV. Here Seagraves mentioned 2 claims made by skeptics, who says there's no way can Noah fit all 90 million+ species of organisms past and present into the ark and there was no Worldwide Flood. Seagraves works his magic of lies and stupidity and gives an example of how big the ark is and how it is built to float free about 22 ½ feet above the mountains without lodging onto anything. But, that does not explain how (without invoking groundless miracles) did the ark deal with the violent waves bashing the sides of the ark if there was such a violent flood as told by creationists.
The Animals section deals with how many animals there are, while Seagraves slams Ernst Mayr, an evolutionary biologist who dealt with the study of birds and how animals are directly related to each other through speciation. Seagraves claims that Noah never bothered to take sea life on board since they all live in the water even though some did perished in the violent waters of the flood and become fossils. If that's the case, the worldwide flood would have destroyed ALL sea life, including coral, sharks, and all those that live in only saltwater and those that live in only freshwater since all forms of water will mixed together and make it totally unfit for any organism to live in. How would Seagraves explain that without invoking groundless miracles that don't explain one darn thing?
Since “all flesh died that moved upon the earth” according to Genesis 7:21, then Seagraves assumes Noah must have took up a total of 30,000 species of animals on board in the ark after he narrowed down the animals population after he separated the water creatures from the surface dwellers. This still doesn't explain how did Noah put all those animals into a 450x75x45 ark even if the animals were all baby size.
Seagraves, in The Insects section, gets stupid and claims that Noah took up even approximately 850,000 species of insects (Including ones that spread disease!) into the ark while being dumb-minded to the fact that insects do multiply rapidly and there could be more than just 2 of every kind of insects in the ark by the time the Flood is over that will overcrowd, get on the nerves of all the animals, Noah and his family on the first and second floor, stricken them with disease, and destroy all of the supplies on the third floor of the ark as well as eat up all the ark's structures.
Like all YECs Seagraves claim that dinosaurs were on the ark. Here, in The Dinosaurs section, he starts playing mind games, By using twisted logic Seagraves asks some doubt-casting questions to the reader in a attempt to manipulate the reader to rethink his views on dinosaurs as told in science.
Next, in the When? Section, Seagraves tells about men having dominion over even dinosaurs since God created man in His own image and gave him dominion over all animal life as told in Genesis 1:26. The only dinosaur man is able to rule over is birds and nothing more. Otherwise, Man never was able to tame and control dinosaurs since dinosaurs and man lived millions of years apart from each other. Seagraves never got that logic in his head. He then asks, “What do we do with the claim that the dinosaur lived 70 million years ago? How are we going to date the time of the dinosaur?” Answer: 1. Nothing. 2. Use accurate dating methods such as radiometric dating.
Seagraves then gives out an example of how clueless the fictional paleontologist are in Glen Rose, Texas by showing a conversational example of the following:
Person: Sir, this fossil I found, is it a dinosaur?
Paleontologist: Yes.
Person: Sir, how do you know it is a dinosaur?
Paleontologist: It looks like a dinosaur. (No paleontologist can be that stupid.)
Person: This particular dinosaur when did he live?
Paleontologist: The dinosaur lived some 70 million years ago. (Note: Dinosaurs actually lived 225 million years ago to 65 million years ago.)
Person: How do you know that? Did you use the newest dating method, potassium-argon, carbon 14, one of those radioactive methods to date the fossil so you could tell it was 70 million years old?
Paleontologist: No. (What a stupid lie! Paleontologists only used radiometric dating methods to date dinosaurs. Not all those other dating methods as mentioned above in the reader quote.)
Person: Then how do you know the dinosaur is 70 million years old?
Paleontologist: Elementary, I talked with the geologist and he told me the rock which contained the fossil is 70 million years old and so naturally anything I find inside is obviously the same age. (This, what Seagraves portrays, is NOT of paleontology! Paleontologists do no such thing as relying only on some logic coming from another scientist without displaying any valid evidence that supports such a thing.)
Person: You cannot fight logic like that! This is sedimentary rock and by definition sedimentary rock is rock deposited from water which has become solid; if this particular rock formation is 70 million years old, obviously anything you find buried inside was deposited before the sediment became solid and is at least 70 million years old or older.
Paleontologist: Dinosaurs are 70 million years old; most people accept this statement. It is printed as fact in scientific magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and textbooks. (Here, we see the fictional paleontologist doing exactly what young earthers do themselves. This is what Seagraves wants us to think what paleontologists are like, while they do and say no such thing in reality.)
Here, all along, Seagraves is portraying the paleontologist to be exactly what young earthers are – absolute witlesses who rely on other people's “logic” as “facts” to live by!
Seagraves, in the next section, does the exact same thing with the fictional geologist, whom Seagraves portrays as exactly what young earthers themselves are. The conversation between the person and the geologist starts out like this:
Person: Sir, I understand from talking to the paleontologist that you told him this sedimentary rock formation is 70 million years old. How did you know that? Did you use one of the radiometric dating methods -- potassium-argon, uranium to lead, carbon 14 -- to determine that the rock was 70 million years old?
Geologist: No. (Lie! Geologists DO use radiometric dating methods to determine how old the dinosaur fossil is.)
Person: Then how do you know the rock formation is 70 million years old?
Geologist: That is simple, the rock formation is 70 million years old because a dinosaur bone was found in it. (Another Lie! Geologists, just as mentioned before, used radiometric dating methods to determine the age of rocks as well as the age of the dinosaur bone.)
Both the Paleontologist and the Geologist here is portrayed as exactly what young earthers are -- So certain are their ways without paying attention to the evidence that proves them they're wrong.
The next section is The (sic) Answer! where Seagraves lies to the reader and states that scientists uses circular reasoning to date fossils and the rocks the fossils are found in. He even tried to make reference to Carl Owen Dunbar and the Encyclopedia Britannica to confirm his ideas about scientists using circular reasoning to date fossils, while scientists do no such thing in reality. Note how Seagraves made no references to where he got this falsehood from. You can bet this is entirely all made up by Seagraves just to slam scientists all because they don't bow to his views.
Seagraves lies again in Carbon 14 Dating section, claiming that scientists date dinosaurs by using carbon 14 dating to date them. Big, stupid lie in the third degree. There is no way can scientists use carbon 14 dating methods to date fossils that's millions of years old. Carbon 14 can only date artifacts up to 50,000 years and that's it. A few YE claims about Carbon-14 is purposed here such as, for instance, the claim about freshly killed seals being dated to about thousands years into the past – completely debunked right here.
The Dinosaur Monument section contains more stupidity. Here, Seagraves claims that one visiting the Dinosaur National Monument in Jenson, Utah, Not Vernal, will be told in Seagraves' own words, “...that the dinosaurs buried in the mountainside did not live in the area, but actually lived upstate someplace and were washed down by some type of local flood.” No, dinosaurs did live in that area. According to recent studies, dinosaurs must have been victims of a severe drought that overtaken the arid or semi-arid land at one year, drying up every bit of water, killing off many dinosaurs that were dying of thirst in large areas that was once a large complex of stream beds that served the dinosaurs as a watering hole to quenched their thirst. When the rains finally came, there was a huge, localized, flash flood that covered the bodies of dinosaurs with sediment, filling up every part of the bones, replacing the original material with rock material, and turning the bones into fossils over a period of millions of years. No Global Flood being responsible for the 150 million year old event.
In A Reptile That Grows section, Seagraves claimed that a dinosaur is nothing but a large reptile. In reality, a dinosaur in most cases is more like bird than reptile. Here, Seagraves states that if a reptile grows for 100 years, he can live for 100 years. Much different than the life span of a human, a reptile, in Seagraves' own words, “....the longer a reptile lives, the longer he has time to grow and the larger he becomes.” The secret according to Seagraves? Believe it or not, plants!
In this section Seagraves, who, like all YECs, advocate the no death before fall fallacy (rebuttal), thinks that animals and people lived longer before the flood because they ate vegetables that are much more nutritious than today's plants thanks to some trace minerals that are found in the soil. To Seagraves, it's because there was no rain to wash and erode all of the minerals that helps to make plants grow. Instead, mist would occur and water the ground. This is pathetically ironic. Mist is a form of rain. If there was no rain before the flood, what do you call mist then? Smoke? Rain, even mist, is not necessary needed to erode the ground since wind itself will do the exact same thing. Does Seagraves mentions this in his talk about creation? No, he doesn't. He just pretends and say it's all true, while all of it is just coming from in his head and nowhere else. In reality, there are certain species of plants such as the plants growing in the rain forest for example, that need much, much, more water in order to survive. Just misting them will never keep those plants alive.
Nowhere does the Bible say anything about man and animals growing larger and living long lives because they ate vegetables. However, the Bible does say that man at one time lived longer lives than normal before the flood. However, according to one resource, this may be based on the sexagesimal system of the base 60 which the Sumerians have invented, thousands of years ago.
The actual life spans of reptiles works much differently than what Seagraves assumes. Although reptiles do grow throughout their lives, they don't live a long time except for the tortoise. The tortoise can live to about 150 years or more, making it the longest lived creature on earth. On average, some species of lizards can live up to only 2-5 years, crocodiles can live up to 40 to 70-75 years, snakes can live up to 20-30 years depending on species and turtles can live up to 40-50+ years depending upon health and proper care.
Dinosaurs are far from being reptiles. Dinosaurs have been known to grow much, much faster than anyone can ever imagined. Sauropod dinosaurs, for example, take about 10-12 years for them to grow from hatchling to adult. Other dinosaurs took less than that. Although dinosaurs in some cases do live up to 100 years, other dinosaurs on the average can only live far less than that. According to recent studies, a Tyrannosaurus Rex can live only up to 30 years. Smaller dinosaur types lived much less than that.
Next in A Major Factor section, Seagraves barfs out the Vapor canopy myth that would have been Hell on earth if there was such a thing as what YECs suggest before most finally got it in their heads that the idea of a vapor canopy covering the earth would never work and abandoned preaching the fallacy altogether. Only the most strictest of YECs like Seagraves still preach this fallacy.
The next section, A Brontosaurus in the Ark, gives out the fallacy of dinosaurs dying out due to Noah's flood. It is not without major problems with it. Seagraves, just like all YECs, claims that man and dinosaurs lived at the same time and that God created man in His own image and gave him dominion over the dinosaurs. He only gave man dominion over just birds because birds are and will be the only dinosaurs man could ever control. All the rest are far too dangerous and too big for man to control. Seagraves thinks there's a speck of truth found in The Flintstones and Alley Oop science fiction shows and comics where they portrayed humans taming and riding sauropod, ceratopsians, and ornithomimosaur dinosaurs at one point in time. He's mistaken. Seagraves here relies on the Bible as evidence for this fallacy. But, unfortunately for him, that still doesn't explain how come there are no evidence of humans and dinosaurs together found in the fossil record.
Next, in A Comparison section, Seagraves churns out more fallacy. He claims that the so-called biblical explanation to why the dinosaurs become extinct is better than the evolutionists explanation. I begged to differ. Seagraves obviously never looked at any literature of Charles Darwin's at all. If he did, he would have known that the term “Survival of the Fittest” is not found in any of Darwin's literature. He doesn't know a doggone thing about Natural Selection either. He just states that Natural Selection is one of the reason why old beings die off and new beings came to take their place. Natural Selection does not work that way. Read this wikipedia article to know exactly what the term really means. Seagraves gives out his own definition of what evolution is all about. It just comes to show that Seagraves is clueless when it comes to evolution and that the word actually mean. He says,
“The evolutionary framework indicates in the fossil record, certain animals in certain periods of time died out giving rise to other animals which came into existence, which then died out giving rise to other animals, which ultimately gave rise to man.”
Simple, yet outdated. Misunderstood. Pure strawman. Evolution teaches nothing of these things. What it really teaches is that all life change in populated groups over a period of time. That's it! That's all of what evolution teaches. Seagraves thinks the Bible and evolution is not compatible because in his own words, “The evolutionist says by death came man. (Evolutionists says none of these things.) The Bible says that by man came death -- by his disobedience.” As mentioned, what Seagraves is teaching here is pure strawman. Seagraves, like all YECs, believed in the no-death-before-fall fallacy where there was no death or decay of any kind occurring before Adam ate the apple. This fallacy is entirely both unbiblical and illogical since when man and animals eat plants, plants do die. When they digest food, they are really causing the food to decay into waste that get deposited to the ground and decompose giving plants all the nutrients needed to grow healthy and strong. Plus, man only brought spiritual death when he ate the apple, not physical. Through his disobedience, man forced himself to be separated from God. That's why God has sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for all of our sins and take spiritual death away from us so we can go to Heaven and be with Him forever. If Christ died to take away physical death, and physical death is still among us, then He's not really such a good Savior after all.
Now we get to the Man and Dinosaurs section where Seagraves talks about the Paluxy Piltdown Prints. Footprints that are alleged human prints in Glen Rose, Texas that are really dinosaur prints that are poorly preserved carved into human prints by local people, who did this to attract the gullible into the area for profit. What Seagraves is talking about here is the stories he invented himself about how he met up with a man who claims to have spotted the human prints in 1911. Seagraves never gave out the name of the person and where he came from. He just says he met a man, who says he spotted the alleged prints in 1911. Seagraves also mentions another story, he possibly invented himself, involving himself being invited to join a research group (possibly Carl Baugh's group) in searching for the alleged prints in 1971. He claims to have found some alleged footprints made by humans. Chances are, they are carved not by “Indians” (Native Americans), but by hoaxers; especially YECs, who lived in that local area, who did all that just for personal gain.
In the Some opinions section, Seagraves claimed to have invited some scientists to the area to look at what they have found. Seagraves claimed that scientists should be fair and come up with valid conclusions. They are, unlike YECs, who do quite the opposite. Seagraves claimed that the scientists who look at them says that they definitely look like human prints. That's because the prints were carved, not genuine. None of these prints are strong evidence for man and dinosaurs being contemporaries for they are all carved, not naturally made.
Then in Other Evidence section, Seagraves made more alleged claims of Piltdown prints as well as alleged wall paintings of dinosaurs sighted in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe), a country located right near South Africa. What the drawings really depict are nothing more than drawing of either bad representations of animals or fantastic creatures of myth, not of real animals, not even of dinosaurs. Even if the drawings were of dinosaurs, this still doesn't explain how come no human and dinosaur remains mixed together were found in the fossil record.
