I do not believe in the claims of creation “scientists”, but some human footprints and artifacts found in http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/megaraptor/human_footprints_and_dinosaur_tr.htm and http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/megaraptor/forbidden_archaeology.htm trouble me ince I haven’t seen any refutation of them. How does science explain the tracks and artifacts?
-Gerhard
As usual with such matters, talk.origins is a good insight. Particularly, these pages.
[I’ve been to the Paluxy site and I recommend visiting the park, but you won’t find any human tracks.]
But what about the Permian tracks? They look pretty real to me. And the Carboniferous footprints? Although they do look like cartoons, had any paleontologist invetigated them. If so, did they determine which animal made them? And what about artifacts like the Cretaceous Hammer and the silver object in an ancient, 600 million year old rock?
Also, note that the author of the webpage does not believe in the Paluxy tracks.
The Cretaceous Hammer at talk.origins.
Er, no. They begin by being sort of cautious:
However, they immediately go to claim that it “cannot be true” that one of the Paluxy prints was carved and suggest it may have been made by “a Yeti or Bigfoot”.
This “Burdick Print” is duly discussed on the TO site, as already linked to.
These anomalous artifacts are nearly always presented completely devoid of context (i.e. as 'here’s a piece of rock with a human footprint that is the same age as the dinosaurs, honest! No, I can’t tell you where I found it…"); those that are presented in context are always transparent fakes or wilful misinterpretation of the evidence. I know of no exceptions to this.
Another cite for it being a hoax:
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/showquestion.asp?faq=4&fldAuto=49
It is my opinion that many of the people making these claims today are not believers but are using deliberate disinformation to trick the credulous. As Mangetout says, it is all fake. There is not one single scientific claim to be made in favor of creationism.
The #1 fallacy of all the “creation science” BS is the idea that if only they can somehow poke a hole in evolutionary theory that this will somehow prove biblical creation as the only viable alternative theory. This is nothing less than an utter and complete failure to understand what science even is and how it works.
So what if there *was *a real, bona fide fossil find which linked humans and dinosaurs in the same time? (There isn’t, of course, as well debunked elsewhere in this thread.) It would certainly send a lot of paleontologists into a tizzy to try to figure it out – not sure what they might come up with, but I guarantee they wouldn’t suddenly decide that genesis was litereally true. *Way *too much other contradicting evidence.
real science = the evidence doesn’t match your theory, so you go back and adjust your theory until it is consistent with the evidence.
creation “science” = the evidence doesn’t match your theory, so you you keep trying to refute, deny or change the evidence. And pretend that disproving another theory is all that’s required to prove yours.
You’ll notice that not a single one of these so-called fossil finds is discussed in a valid, peer-reviewed scienctific publication. The bs-ers always claim that the evidence is being supressed or something. But come on … if any one of these “fossils” was legitimate, there would be tremendous scientific stir and discussion. For example, the idea that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteor strike was widely scoffed at until Alvarez found the enriched iridium layer at the K/T boudary, worldwide. The Big Bang was a second-tier hypothesis until Penzias & Wilson accidently stumbled onto the cosmic background raditation. Dramatic, theory-changing evidence doesn’t get supressed. It gets discussed publicly and at great length.
Heck there’s even “cold fusion” — turned out to be bogus because no one else could reproduce the results, but it sure as hell got press & plenty of attention from the scientific community.
Bogus “science” gets rejected and ignored precisely because it is bogus.
These “footprints” give us hope and proof that we will indeed eventually master the art of time travel! Just imagine having the chance to go back in time to cavort with the fabulous beasties of the Mesozoic!
Just kidding, of course!
Twoflower, while I can sympathize with your passion, there is a specific question in the OP with a factual answer. Editorial comments (particularly those that do not even mention the OP in passing) should be left in the other discussion fora, not dragged into GQ. Thanks.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
Sorry about that. My intent was to answer the “it bothers me” part of the **OP **with reasons not to be bothered.
Does kinda look like I gota bit carried away for GQ…
::tucks tail between legs, slinks out …::