Mokele-mbembe

[Jbuza]

gone

[Canuckster1127]

http://www.mokelembembe.com/



Google it for more info

Interesting.

1. A large area of unexplored land.
2. Claimed sightings by pygmy's in the region.
3. Several expeditions with no results.
4. Claimed footprints not matching any known species.

That pretty much sum it up?

[Jbuza]

gone

[Canuckster1127]

Interesting.

1. A large area of unexplored land.
2. Claimed sightings by pygmy's in the region.
3. Several expeditions with no results.
4. Claimed footprints not matching any known species.

That pretty much sum it up?

No I don't think so. Google returns 230,000 pages with the name of the creature, and I have read three, so I suspect it is rather more complex than that.

What's the point in you putting up this information if you don't know enough about it to state what you're attempting to say?

Let's assume this was a dinosaur. What would it prove in your mind?

[sandy_mcd]

Google it for more info

What point are you trying to get across? You are only listing unconfirmed oddities, not confirmed (such as coelacanth).
Even if all these creatures you reference truly exist, what would that show? As Canuckster as pointed out, it has no bearing on YEC/OEC.

[Jbuza]

gone

[godslanguage]

Thanks for your overwhelming kindness and pleasant tone, why I don't think that it would proove anything by itself, other than the apparent collaboration of many accounts that this animal appears to exist.

IT is one piece of evidence when taken with many others suggests that extinction of dinos 65 million yeas ago is part of a story with little basis in fact.

I would have to agree with Jbuza on this one. Apart from all the evidence Creationist can present to Evolutionists, they will never take it open mindedly, as will never OEC'er when they are presented with information that might not go hand-in-hand with what they believe or what threatens they're belief. If we ignored what the textbook said for 5 minutes, then perhaps we may lead to differant conclusions that the textbook does not include or has completely missed out on.

[Canuckster1127]

Thanks for your overwhelming kindness and pleasant tone, why I don't think that it would proove anything by itself, other than the apparent collaboration of many accounts that this animal appears to exist.

IT is one piece of evidence when taken with many others suggests that extinction of dinos 65 million yeas ago is part of a story with little basis in fact.

Tone is as much read in as taken out. I'm actually just attempting to cut to the chase.

As has been stated already, dinosaurs are not completely extinct. There are many so-called living fossils. This would certainly prove to be, if found, an amazing find and no doubt would give some credence to those claiming a young earth. I rather think that is the hope of many referencing it.

It would not however, prove anything beyond the survival of one particular dinosaur. Right now, based on what you've referenced, which I did read, I see little to argue for it beyond the other types of sightings of Yeti, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster et al.

There's no hard evidence.

[Canuckster1127]

Thanks for your overwhelming kindness and pleasant tone, why I don't think that it would proove anything by itself, other than the apparent collaboration of many accounts that this animal appears to exist.

IT is one piece of evidence when taken with many others suggests that extinction of dinos 65 million yeas ago is part of a story with little basis in fact.

I would have to agree with Jbuza on this one. Apart from all the evidence Creationist can present to Evolutionists, they will never take it open mindedly, as will never OEC'er when they are presented with information that might not go hand-in-hand with what they believe or what threatens they're belief. If we ignored what the textbook said for 5 minutes, then perhaps we may lead to differant conclusions that the textbook does not include or has completely missed out on.

OK.

Frankly, the existence or non-existence of this particular animal doesn't appear to me to prove or support YEC over OEC in either direction.

Assume a live specimen is found tomorrow and it is exactly as described.

What would that prove in your mind and why?

[Jbuza]

gone

[Canuckster1127]

Here's some links to sites dealing with some of the mythology issues from YEC camps arguing for them as proof of dinosaurs.

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/aig_ ... _henke.htm

http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/khr.html

Part 2 is an excerpt of Steven H. Schimmrich's paper on Ken Ham's booklet Dinosaurs and the Bible . The entire paper with many internal links is no longer available, as Mr. Schimmrich has discontinued his website. Parts 3 and 4 are SARF discussions on an Answers in Genesis pamphlet and YEC views on dinosaurs.


Part 2: Kenneth Ham and the Dinosaurs © Steven H. Schimmrich
On February 25, 1996, the well-known young-earth creationist Kenneth Ham gave a talk at Crossroads Campus Church in Urbana, Illinois. During the talk, a small pamphlet entitled Dinosaurs and the Bible was distributed. This pamphlet was published in 1993 by the Answers in Genesis organization and I believe that its many outrageous assertions are worthy of comment.

Ham's Revisionist Vertebrate Paleontology

In the section titled Is There Really a Mystery About Dinosaurs?, Ham writes [p. 1]...

The truth of the matter, however, is that there are no real mysteries at all, once you have key information that is not generally known and is withheld from the public.

Ham begins this booklet by blatantly slandering all scientists who study dinosaurs implying that they purposefully withhold information about them from the public. If there really was a conspiracy regarding dinosaurs, it must be all-encompassing given the very large number of books, articles, and television specials appearing each year about these popular creatures. Think about it for a minute, does it make sense to invite the public on dinosaur digs if there's a giant conspiracy going on?

In refuting the idea that dinosaurs are millions of years old, Ham writes [p. 4]...

However, scientists do not dig up anything labeled with those ages. They only uncover dead dinosaurs (i.e., their bones), and their bones to not have labels attached telling how old they are. The idea of millions of years of evolution is just the evolutionists' story about the past. No scientist was there to see the dinosaurs live through this supposed dinosaur age. In fact, there is no proof whatsoever that the world and its fossil layers are millions of years old.

Ham leaves out a couple of important facts here. First, that dinosaur bones are only found within certain strata -- those that date from the Mesozoic Era. Dinosaurs have never been found in the older Paleozoic Era rocks or the younger Cenozoic Era rocks. The Mesozoic is called the "Age of the Dinosaurs" for this very reason. They lived during this particular period of time - not before that and not after that.

How do we know how long ago the Mesozoic Era was and how long it lasted? By radiometric dating of igneous rocks and ash falls occurring within Mesozoic age rocks. The Mesozoic Era began about 225 million years ago and ended about 65 million years ago. Young-earth creationists don't like radiometric dating, because it always yields ages of many millions of years for all rocks, but they've never credibly disputed the techniques.

Why is the earth young? Ham writes [p. 6]...

As you add up all of the dates, and accepting that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to earth almost 2000 years ago, we come to the conclusion that the creation of the Earth and animals (including the dinosaurs) occurred only thousands of years ago (perhaps only six thousand years!), not millions of years. Thus, if the Bible is right (and it is!), dinosaurs must have lived within the past thousands of years.

Here's the real reason young-earth creationists support a young earth. It's not because of any "scientific" evidence, it's simply because their literal understanding of the Genesis demands it. That's why scientists consider the phrase "scientific creationism" to be an oxymoron. The creationists contend that one can obtain the age of the earth from the Bible and that such an interpretation is not open to questioning or testing. That's not science by anyone's definition!

What was the original creation like? Ham writes [p. 9]...

It was an unblemished world, with Adam and Eve and animals (including dinosaurs) living in perfect harmony, eating only plants.

Dinosaurs ate only plants? Ever see the tooth of a Tyrannosaurus rex or the claw of a Deinonychus. These weren't peaceful plant eaters. T. rex had teeth for rending flesh and Deinonychus had a stiletto-like claw to disembowel prey. There were many species of carniverous therapod dinosaurs. Does Ham believe we should simply ignore facts like these because they conflict with his own interpretation of Scripture? Once again, this isn't science.

Ham, in speaking about the land animals that didn't make it into Noah's ark during the flood, writes about what happens after they drown [p. 11-12]...

Because of this quick burial, many of the animals would have been preserved as fossils. If this happened, you would expect to find evidence of billions of dead things buried in rock layers (formed from this mud) all over the Earth. This is exactly what you do find. This is most emphatically not what we find! Look at the Grand Canyon. What types of rocks do we see exposed in its cliffs? We see, from the Precambrian/Paleozoic unconformity at the bottom up through the rocks at the upper rim, Tapeats sandstone, Bright Angel shale, Muav limestone, Temple Butte limestone, Redwall limestone, Supai shale and sandstone, Hermit shale, Coconino sandstone, Toroweap limestone, and Kaibab limestone. How exactly does one get alternating sequences of sandstones, limestones, and shales from a roiling flood? Each of these rock types represents different depositional environments from warm shallow seas with coral reefs to sandy seashores to muddy swamps to arid deserts.

What about the fossils? Why exactly does one find brachiopods, mollusks, corals, and crinoids in the Kaibab limestone, at the very top of this pile of strata? They're marine creatures that live on the floor of shallow seas. How did they survive being buried by the thousands of feet of so-called "flood deposits" below them? The Hermit shale has reptile tracks and land plant remains. Picture this... A raging flood deposits a couple of thousand feet of sediments, then small air-breathing reptiles take a stroll across the floor of this flood-formed sea, and then a couple of thousand more feet of sediment are thrown atop this to preserve the fossil tracks. Does this make sense?

Finally, in a raging global flood, we would predict that we would find fossils indiscriminately. Meaning a sauropod might be found next to an elephant since they exploited similar ecosystems. Or humans remains might be found with any of a million extinct creatures. But they're not. Always and everywhere, fossils are found in the same stratigraphic succession. The fossil record strongly supports the view that the earth is old and that organisms on the earth have changed with time.

Finally, Ham claims that dinosaurs lived contemporaneously with humans. He believes that the "behemoth" of Job 40:15-24 may have been a Brachiosaurus (the large plant-eating sauropods seen near the beginning of the movie Jurassic Park). Many Biblical scholars believe the "behemoth" was, in actuality, a reference to an African elephant. Ham also includes a drawing of an armored man mounted on a horse thrusting a spear toward what appears to be a dinosaur. The caption reads [p. 14]...

Legend of St. George and the dragon (a Baryonyx?).

The next page shows a drawing of the Loch Ness monster with the caption [p. 15]...

The Loch Ness Monster - an Elasmosaurus?

Let's ignore the fact that the most famous Loch Ness photograph has been shown to be a hoax and there's not a shred of hard evidence for anything larger than a salmon living there. Elasmosaurus was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile that was not, strictly-speaking, a dinosaur. Elasmosaurus is known from late Cretaceous age (80 to 75 million years ago) fossils in the Niobrara chalk in Kansas. The chalk and abundant marine fossils indicate an open sea existing during this time. In other words, it was a marine (salt-water) reptile, not one that lived in lakes.

Anyway, is this science? Going through picture books of dinosaurs and trying to match them up with drawings of mythical creatures? How about some hard evidence?

I could go on and on but you get the point...

Did dinosaurs and humans coexist?

Before we address this question, let's look at some other large land animals that are now extinct... Check out the time scale of the Cenozoic Era in this exhibit at the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley. During the Tertiary and Pleistocene, there lived many large terrestrial mammals which are now extinct. A few of the many examples include...Mammoths, Mastodons, Ground Sloths, Sabre-Toothed Cats, Titanotheres, et al., Indricotherium - The largest known land mammal.

If dinosaurs lived only a few thousand years ago, wouldn't we find their bones with the bones of some of these other large land mammals? I would think so. Do we? Absolutely not! We have evidence that man and mammoths lived together since we find mammoth bones at ancient human sites. Do we ever find dinosaur bones at ancient human sites? Never! All creationists would have to do is uncover one prehistoric human site with dinosaur bones. One site with dinosaur and Tertiary or Pleistocene mammal bones. Just one!

Finally, if humans and dinosaurs lived together, wouldn't you expect to have heard more about them? After all, dinosaurs weren't even recognized until the mid 19th century. Dinosaurs were fearsome and dangerous creatures. We would expect all sorts of stories and cave drawings and carvings if they lived the same time we did. Wouldn't there be stories of men eaten by T. rex? Carvings or cave drawings of huge sauropods? Legends of dinosaur hunts?

Why should I care?

If you're not a Christian, you should care because creationists are trying to get this type of garbage taught in public schools as "science." This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, science and teaching it as such is the equivalent of teaching astrology in astronomy classes or crystal healing in geology classes. If you care about the education of our children, then you should care about this issue.

If you are a Christian, you should care because this stuff is being taught in Christian schools (students from Judah Christian School in Champaign, Illinois were taken to the Answers in Genesis seminar). What happens when these children learn more about science and find out that they were lied to - that dinosaurs and man could never have coexisted, that there is abundant evidence for an old earth and no evidence whatsoever for a young one, and that the fossil record does not support a Biblical flood model? Will they conclude that they were lied to about other things as well? Lied to about Jesus Christ and the resurrection?

I think Christians should be scrupulously honest and above reproach when they are engaged in scholarly pursuits such as science. Instead they have a reputation for being a bunch of loons. It harms the cause of Christ.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-09/strange-world.html ica-stones

[Jbuza]

gone

[Canuckster1127]

Yes I have read some of those sites that line up with some of the attitudes seen here in response.

For me it is telling to attack the postion instead of come up with a coherent response to why there is an overwhelming agreement throughout time and across geological location that these creatures existed.

There is in fact a new area of science developing--that rather seems like art in the paleontology fashion to me--that uses many of these eyewitness accounts and the pictorial evidence in ancient cultures to learn things about dinos; weather it be from coins, sculpture, or some other source of information.

There's overwhelming support in this same vein for bigfoot, yeti's, The Loch Ness Monster et al.

Where's the hard evidence?

Why must you rely upon hearsay, carefully crafted and arranged to create the impression in hearers that what is being presented might be true. The same technique is often utilized to tell ghost stories at camp.

Where's the hard evidence?

[Jbuza]

gone

[Canuckster1127]

There's overwhelming support in this same vein for bigfoot, yeti's, The Loch Ness Monster et al.

Where's the hard evidence?

Ni I don't think there is the same level of stories about bigfoot or yeti throughout time and geological location. Which doesn't by itself prove they do not exist. The loch Ness monster is another giant lizard story.

What would be considered hard evidence for the recent the existence of these retiles that so many people have testified to? I would really like to know what hard evidence we can use to demonstrate that a particular creature existed in a particular time/place.

Perhaps soft tissue, dna, blood cells in "fossils" in "rock" might indicate the plausibility of these eye witness acounts.

Why must you rely upon hearsay, carefully crafted and arranged to create the impression in hearers that what is being presented might be true. The same technique is often utilized to tell ghost stories at camp.

IT appears from the above that you completley reject that any large lizards lived in the past several thousand years that have since died out.

Where's the hard evidence?[/quote]

Where is the hard evidence for their existence 100,000,000 years ago?[/quote]

No I don't reject the possibility. I simply am highly skeptical and I find the appeals to these type of "proofs: as highly suspect and created to form a particular conclusion which is meaningless in the absence of hard evidence.

I'll start a thread with a compendium of the evidence of the age of the earth from the main site as well as others.