Taz Walker's pruning of the dino family tree into firewood
From EvoWiki
In December of 2004, YEC Tas Walker wrote and published an article for the Creation ex nihilo magazine entitled, Dinosaur fairy tales: Remove the hype and discover a different story about the dinosaur family tree, where he nitpicks at Chinese Dinosaurs, a traveling museum tour that toured through Japan, New Zealand, and Australia and distorts a family tree model he saw while attending the exhibition. All the usual crap, Walker makes claims of people interpreting the fossil to fit their beliefs. Walker states, “It is clear that the organizers believe that life evolved on Earth over millions of years because they provide copious signs, labels, lectures, videos and books to encourage visitors to interpret the fossils this way.” Which is exactly what YECs themselves do while accusing 'evolutionists' of the exact same thing.
In the article, Walker shows a simple diagram of a dinosaur family tree and plasters it as an 'evolutionists' view. He adds a hypocritical caption to it claiming that dinosaurs are the latest showpiece in evolutionary spin doctoring, while it's really the other way around. Ever since the 1970's, dinosaurs have been used by creationists like Ken Ham and Henry Morris as one of their latest showpieces in their young earth spin doctoring to lure even children into their web of lies and say to the gullible that 'evolutionists' did it in an effort to deceive them into believing in a billion year old Earth. All a part of the young earther's mud slinging game.
Walker claims “A traveling exhibit of the Chinese fossils features a ‘dinosaur family tree’, portrayed as a fact, which it is. But stripped of the factual story-telling, the evidence that don't exist better fits the Bible’s mythical account of history (emphases in bold.).” That's what He wants to do. Strip the facts, get with the lies and ignorance based on one made up Bible History that doesn't exist with this chart he made up based on the actual chart being displayed on the walls of the exhibition.
He gives out a example by pointing out that the Ceratopsians, shown at the top of the diagram, is being directly related to Pachycephalosaurs. He claims that the 2 dinosaurs were separated from a common ancestor that lived about 140 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Period. He then adds, “Furthermore, both of these groups of dinosaurs are supposedly related to the next group, called the ornithopods. They “allegedly” (parentheses added mine) in the separated from their common ancestor about 200 million years ago (during the early Jurassic period).” They are of the ornithopod group. Both dinosaurs share a common ancestor with Heterodontosaurids, dinosaurs with 3 sets of teeth that lived around 200 million years ago in the Early Jurassic Period. Both Pachycephalosaurids and Ceratopsians are a member of a ornithschian dinosaur group known as marginocephalia (fringed heads). These are ornithschian dinosaurs that bore armored heads that serve both as protection from predators like T.rex and as displays to help communicate with the members of their own kind.
Then, Walker lies and says, “Most people would not realize that this dinosaur family tree does not present observed scientific fact. Rather, it presents assumptions, hypotheses and beliefs as if they are observed facts.” Walker is lying. The dinosaur family tree does present observed scientific facts based on mountains of evidence (including dating methods that points to the concept of millions of years to be true, the absence of a mixed bag of human, dinosaur, and living and extinct fossils in the fossil record, young top rock layers and old bottom rock layers, etc.) that points to such a case.
Then, Walker states that Jonathan Wells, you know the guy behind the The Icons for Evolution book, who is also a member of the Discovery Institute, a organization that advocates a form of creationism known as Intelligent Design, says that such diagrams misrepresent the truth, which is a blatant lie, and calls them 'icons' (not computer icons mind you), which (to Walker and Wells) are symbols of an idea, not factual evidence. Which exactly is, in reality, what dino-dragons (including Baryonyx-dragons), Behemoth, the sauropod, Leviathan, the fire breathing dinosaur, evil-causing evolution, global flood, box like ark, 6,000 year old earth, veggie eating T.rex, and Adam, Eve, the legged snake, and the purple raspberry really are - The Icons of Young Earth Creationism.
Walker thinks he knows why Wells says this. Walker in the next section denies the existence of the common ancestry of dinosaurs which as a blatant lie. There are a number of fossil species that could fit the bill for a particular node in a cladogram, such as what is shown here. It just isn't possible to say with certainty which exact fossil species represents the common ancestor, however. Still there are those who are candidates for common ancestry, such as Marasuchus (formerly Lagosuchus) for instance.
Walker lies again and claims that the dates on the diagram are not scientifically measured facts while denying the usage of dating methods used in the most accurate way to determined the true age of the earth. He thinks, just like all YECs, that every time paleontologists digs up a bone, they do not find any labels on them, which is a blatant lie. Radiometric dates are very robust and have been tested in the modern and have been shown to be accurate over and over again. Index fossils are often co-correlated with paleomagnetism, radiometric dates, isochrons, etc. None are based on conjectures made up to fit in with the 'evolutionary beliefs'.
Then, Walker says, “So, to present the actual scientific evidence (rather than evolutionary beliefs) on the diagram, we would remove all the hypothetical common ancestors and the imaginary family links. We would also remove the ages of millions of years. Instead of ‘millions of years ago’, we would write something like ‘relative depth’. At the ‘245-million-year’ end we would put ‘deep’ and at the ‘65-million-year’ end we would put ‘shallow’.” Here we go! Doing all of the distortions and falsehoods in God's name by banishing out the facts, get with the ignorance, and promote the fallacy of fossils being sorted by how deep the flood was and how the animals in the fossil record are sorted by hydrodynamic sorting. A falsehood that has been debunked so many times. Then he added, “Thus, if we amended the diagram to represent the evidence based on the facts, it would no longer look like a family tree.”
Nope, it will instead look like a nice pile of firewood lying on the ground waiting to be burned up in a fireplace one cold blustery evening, just like what Ham, in his book, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved! (pg. 114), mockingly thinks of the family tree chart found in Paleontologist David Norman's classic dinosaur book, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and David Lambert's A Field Guide to Dinosaurs.
Walker shows his own version of the 'family tree' which is more of just sticks of many different sizes arranged all in a row like fire logs. This he plasters as 'creationists' view'. This, what he shows, is an example of a fallacy of fossils being sorted by the process of hydrodynamic sorting, which is a fallacy that tells of heavy, slow moving animals not being able to escape the flood waters and wound up being buried in the deepest part of the rock layers first, while lighter animals such as birds wound up being buried in the top shallow of the rock layers last. Plenty of flaws abound in this already debunked fallacy, including YECs' inability to explain how come there are certain animals found exclusively in certain rock layers such as whale fossils found in the top of the rock layer (in the Cenozoic strata) and how come there are fast moving animals found at the bottom of the fossil record and slow moving ones at the top.
In comparison with the other image, Walker had the root parts of the family tree removed and have the time line eliminated and replaced with the shallow part on the right and deep part on the left. Walker did this on purpose to indoctrinate the gullible into believing the fallacy of hydrodynamic sorting, which is one of the young earth clap-traps YECs dredged up in an attempt to squeeze the fossil record into their faulty 6,000 year time line they made up from their heads based on their made-up strict following of “The Letter of the Law” (Genesis 1-11, the young earther's own Bible).
In this fallacy, while in denial of the existence of transitional forms and lying to the reader by claiming that they just appear out of nowhere as if God is a magician who makes things appear instantly with a snap of His fingers (Which is not at all His style of making miracles happen, I think.) and have them reproduce after their own kind in the form of cloning machines, Walker wants everyone to believe this lie he tells by distorting the family tree chart into a “nice pile of firewood” and imply to the reader that the dinosaurs found in different strata are the result of failed attempts to escape the flood. Each dinosaur climbed up the mountain only for each of them to be buried rapidly on the spot in a different rock strata exactly where they were found at when scientists unearthed them years later. The old fossil sorted by escape fallacy is also debunked by the fact that this does not explain how come there are no certain species of plant and animal found anywhere other than exclusively in the strata where they were unearthed from and how come there no traces of whales fossils found alongside of Dunkleosteus; no deer fossils found alongside of Petrolacosaurus; no cat fossils found alongside of Coelophysis; etc.
In the end, Walker concludes that the fossil record is all the result of dinosaurs being buried by Noah's Flood 4,500 years while ignoring the factual stories and evidence too, of the ancient Egyptians and their epic quest to build one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the pyramids (Note Walker's denial of hair like fibers, as shown in the caption right next to the images of the dinosaur at the bottom of the screen, on Sinosauropteryx being feathers very similar to the feathers of a kiwi bird.)
