Evolutionary Creationism: A Christadelphian Perspective: No, the Bible does not mention dinosaurs

Saturday 28 November 2015

No, the Bible does not mention dinosaurs - fire-breathing or otherwise.

YEC assertions that dinosaurs and humans coexisted are of course nonsense. Over sixty million years separate the last non-avian dinosaur from the earliest members of the genus Homo. Claims that both the dragon myths and historical records, artwork, and engravings of other mythological beasts provide 'documented evidence' for human-dinosaur existence do not come from credible sources, and when critically examined not only provide no support for this assertion but merely show how the fundamentalist mind can find support for the most outlandish ideas from the most meagre of evidence.

Where the YEC assertion veers into outright crackpot nonsense comes when YECs claim that the references to fire-breathing dragons reflects historical reality, and appeal to Job 41:20-21 both as evidence for human-dinosaur coexistence, and for their fire-breathing ability. Incredibly, this claim was made in the April 2010 edition of The Bible Magazine which also appealed to a long-discredited claim by notorious YEC Duane Gish that the dinosaur Parasaurolophus could produce jets of fire from its nostrils. Even worse was the use of a risible illustration from a children's creationist book as evidence for this claim. This is not how we present a rational, credible, face of belief to the world. Rather, this is how we fulfill every negative stereotype of Christianity as credulous, foolish, and ignorant. Nonsense such as this causes incredible harm to the reputation of our community.

In The Bible & the Dinosaur Mystery, Ron Kidd attempted to justify his assertion that the "Bible claims that life appeared, and that all the animals were created on the sixth day of creation" and that the dinosaurs were part of the Genesis creation" with the usual appeals to YEC assertions such as the alleged unreliability of mainstream geological dating methods, 'fossilised' modern artifacts, the alleged existence of human and dinosaur footprints in the same strata, dragon mythology, and artwork depicting dinosaur-like beasts. All of these claims come from fringe YEC sources, and have long been debunked, attesting unfortunately to the poor nature of research from the fundamentalist wing of our community.

Kidd's article is the usual collection of YEC tropes that have long been refuted, such as the alleged failings of stratigraphic and radiometric dating, coexistence of human and dinosaur fossils, out of place artifacts, the usual profound ignorance of taphonomy as evidenced by claims that only a catastrophic flood could preserve fine details as seen in some fossils, not to mention the patronising, smug claim that fossils found in mass graves have been so thoroughly mixed up that identification would be impossible, implying that palaeoanthropologists are deceiving themselves and others when they claim to have found complete or near-complete fossils.

Yes, the geological column is real and exists in many places. Ditto for the fossil record

In every case, Kidd's assertions are flat-out wrong and betray both a profound ignorance of the rudiments of the subject, and an embarrassing uncritical reliance on long-debunked YEC arguments. With respect to the geological record, Kidd asserts:

What is not said too loudly is that there is no satisfactory evidence of gradual progression from simple to complex life in the rocks, neither is there a consistent progression, beginning from the bottom, from old to young rock; the geological column is upside down; there are areas where young rock is below the older rock strata.

Kidd's claims are false for many reasons. The first is his use of the term 'gradual progression'. The claim that the fossil record should show a 'gradual progression' from single to complex ignores the fact that while evolution is gradual, the fossil record - as Darwin himself pointed out - would not consist of such a gradual progression:

It has been asserted over and over again, by writers who believe in the immutability of species, that geology yields no linking forms. This assertion, as we shall see in the next chapter, is certainly erroneous. As Sir J. Lubbock has remarked, "Every species is a link between other allied forms." If we take a genus having a score of species, recent and extinct, and destroy four fifths of them, no one doubts that the remainder will stand much more distinct from each other. If the extreme forms in the genus happen to have been thus destroyed, the genus itself will stand more distinct from other allied genera. What geological research has not revealed, is the former existence of infinitely numerous gradations, as fine as existing varieties, connecting together nearly all existing and extinct species. But this ought not to be expected; yet this has been repeatedly advanced as a most serious objection against my views. ... we have no right to expect to find, in our geological formations, an infinite number of those fine transitional forms, which, on our theory, have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life. We ought only to look for a few links, and such assuredly we do find--some more distantly, some more closely, related to each other; and these links, let them be ever so close, if found in different stages of the same formation, would, by many palaeontologists, be ranked as distinct species. [1]

His claim about a gradual progression is also fundamentally flawed as it implies the long-falsified belief in evolution as a ladder, from 'monad to man'. Evolution is not a ladder, but a low bushy tree with single-celled life at its base, branching and leading on to many multicellular forms of life such as molluscs, vertebrates, arthropods, and annelids, to name but a few classes of life. Vertebrate palaeontologist Michael Benton, in a paper examining the quality of the vertebrate fossil record alludes to this point dismissing with extreme prejudice Kidd's assertion en passant:

Fossil vertebrates include a great diversity of animals of all sizes and shapes, ranging in age back to the Cambrian. The history of the vertebrates has been recounted many times (for example, Romer, 1966; Carroll, 1987; Benton, 1990a, 1997a) and the outlines of the story are well known. These broad outlines were worked out during the nineteenth century, and the sequence includes the armoured ostracoderms and placoderms of the Devonian, Carboniferous amphibians, Permian mammal-like reptiles, Mesozoic dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs, birds, Tertiary mammals, and Plio-Pleistocene hominids. This succession is usually recalled as a one-way progression from essentially toothed worm-like creatures of the early Palaeozoic to humans, even though such a vision is merely a didactic device, and does not properly depict the branching bushy pattern of vertebrate evolution. [2] (Emphasis mine)

Kidd's claim about an 'inverted' geological column is particularly embarrassing as mainstream geology long ago explained how thrust faulting explains this phenomenon. Furthermore, the entire geological column can be found in several places, contrary to YEC claims. Geophysicist Glenn Morton points out how the entire geological column is found in a North Dakota location, then points out that this is hardly isolated:

You just saw the whole column piled up in one place where one oil well can drill through it. Not only that, the entire geologic column is found in 25 other basins around the world, piled up in proper order. These basins are:

The Ghadames Basin in Libya

The Beni Mellal Basin in Morrocco

The Tunisian Basin in Tunisia

The Oman Interior Basin in Oman

The Western Desert Basin in Egypt

The Adana Basin in Turkey

The Iskenderun Basin in Turkey

The Moesian Platform in Bulgaria

The Carpathian Basin in Poland

The Baltic Basin in the USSR

The Yeniseiy-Khatanga Basin in the USSR

The Farah Basin in Afghanistan

The Helmand Basin in Afghanistan

The Yazd-Kerman-Tabas Basin in Iran

The Manhai-Subei Basin in China

The Jiuxi Basin China

The Tung t'in - Yuan Shui Basin China

The Tarim Basin China

The Szechwan Basin China

The Yukon-Porcupine Province Alaska

The Williston Basin in North Dakota

The Tampico Embayment Mexico

The Bogata Basin Colombia

The Bonaparte Basin, Australia

The Beaufort Sea Basin/McKenzie River Delta

(Sources: Robertson Group, 1989;A.F. Trendall et al , editors, Geol. Surv. West. Australia Memoir 3, 1990, pp 382, 396; N.E. Haimla et al, The Geology of North America, Vol. L, DNAG volumes, 1990, p. 517)

(Figure courtesy of Thomas Moore)

No, there are no human fossils, footprints, or artifacts in ancient rock

The previous paragraph, with its concentration of misrepresentation, inaccuracy, and long-debunked YEC arguments is enough to destroy the credibility of Kidd's article, particularly given that it was not an isolated point. He continues:

Moreover throughout the various layers evidence of human presence is clearly visible. For example in the Mesozoic Era footprints have been identified in Nevada and West Virginia, human skeletons in Utah, a metal hammer in Texas and metal artifacts in France. Earlier still in the Cambrian Era (over 500 million years ago) iron bands have been found in Scotland and a sandal and footprints in Utah. This is very embarrassing to the scientific world; this would suggest that human beings have either been around much longer than believed or, and more likely, the time periods given for the geological column are inaccurate. Certainly in the Mesozoic Era the evidence supports the view that dinosaurs were at one time contemporary with humans.

Every one of Kidd's claims are wrong. Kidd provides zero references for any of his claims, so it took some searching to come up with the sources for some of his arguments. Others however are so well-known (and long-debunked) that there are standard refutations of these claims at a number of sites.

Nevada footprint: "The 'Nevada shoe print' claims are not well supported by the available evidence. The footprint advocates have presumed that the missing portion of the object was very shoe-like in shape, whereas any number of other shapes are possible. They have not demonstrated that the supposed print was ever part of a striding sequence, or that it contains the detailed "stitching" features they assert. The present location of the object is unknown, impeding further study. Judging from the available photographs, the specimen is most likely a broken ironstone concretion, perhaps one that has suffered some erosion." [3]

Human skeleton in Utah: "The Moab Man/Malachite Man bones represent a number of intrusive burials in the Dakota Sandstone, and are not integral parts of the host formation. The bones evidently represent intentional or accidental entombments of native Americans in a mining environment. As reported by a number of conventional workers and even some creationist authors, the bones are largely unfossilized and of essentially modern appearance, except for the greenish stain. There is no foundation for the claims of a few creationists that the bones contradict mainstream geology or support dinosaur/human cohabitation." [4]

Texas Hammer: "The early American style of the hammer, and the largely undistorted and poorly mineralized condition of the handle, further suggests a relatively recent date. Well-preserved wood from Mesozoic or Paleozoic formations would not be expected to have such an appearance, nor to my knowledge have any similar wood specimens been documented in the nearby formation. Lines asserts on Baugh's web site that the hammer is partially "petrified" but I saw no evidence of this when I examined it in person, and other creationists have agreed that the wood in the handle looks relatively fresh, not much different from modern hardwood hammers (Helfinstine and Roth, 1994). In view of these considerations, It seems highly unlikely that the hammer was ever a natural part of the nearby Cretaceous beds, and more likely that it was dropped or discarded by a local miner or craftsman within the last few hundred years. It's also possible that the nodule was brought or washed into the area from some distance away, or from a higher stratum." [5]

Cretaceous metal tubes in France: "In 1968, the speleologists Y Druet and H Salfati claimed to have discovered a number of semi-ovoid metallic tubes they believed to be artificial in Cretaceous (Aptian) chalk at a quarry in St-Jean de Livet (Calvados, France), which they announced in a letter to the editors of Planète, a French magazine devoted to unsolved mysteries. The tubes were shaped identically, but their sizes varied between 30 and 90 mm in length, and 10 and 40 mm in width (Druet & Salfati 1969, 22). According to the authors of the letter (dated 30 September 1968), the objects were currently being studied by the Geomorphology Laboratory of the Université de Caen, but nothing further seems to be known about them. Several requests by the author for further information from the Department have failed to produce a response; Cremo and Thompson, in Forbidden Archeology state that they have had a similar lack of answer. Perhaps the Department has no records; perhaps staff are fed up with requests for information on something they either never dealt with or dealt with so long ago that none of the present staff has any knowledge about." [6]

Cambrian iron bands in Scotland: The reliability of this claim is compromised badly by the fact that the first hits one receives come from fringe YEC sources which refer to Cambrian iron bands in 'Lochmaree', rather than Loch Maree. That is typical of YEC 'research' which invariably involves copying other YEC sites without any basic research. After some searching, I was able to find the source of this YEC claim. These formations were first noted in 1880 by a Walter Carruthers, a reporter for the Inverness Courier:

Near Loch Maree Hotel, the stream that forms the Victoria Falls runs over Torridon sandstone. A short distance above the bridge which carries the Gairloch highway over its waters, about three or four hundred yards above the falls, and just beside the last of a succession of lesser falls, on the left bank of the stream, there exists a flat bed of sandstone, some sixteen feet square, on which occur certain remarkable impressions which deserve attention. These were first noticed by the late Mr Walter Carruthers of the Inverness Courier who directed my attention to them, and published some account of them, along with observations made by me regarding them (July i, 1880), of which the following is a summary:—

The most distinct of the impressions consists of two continuous flat bands side by side, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inch broad and about a quarter of an inch deep, running quite straight across the flat layers of sandstone in stilly and perfectly distinct for sixteen feet, disappearing on the west side under the superincumbent rock, and broken only where portions of the sandstone have been weathered out. In some places, a third line runs alongside, but this is much less distinct and persistent. The double band resembles nothing more nearly than the hollow impression that would be left by double bars of iron neatly inserted in the rock for clasping some structure on it, if the iron were subsequently removed. The bands, when narrowly looked into, consist of very fine, close, hair-lines, continuous and parallel to their sides, resembling very minute striae left by glaciation, and they look as if caused by some object drawn along the original red sand, before it became the present indurated rock.

A similar double line runs parallel to this one, about two feet lower down, seven feet long; and a third parallel double line occurs on the upper side, three feet long,—both of the same breadth as the first. Besides those pointed out by Mr Carruthers, which occur on the same flat of sandstone, other lines exist farther down, on the other side of the pool below this rocky flat, on a similar bed of sandstone, part of the same layer,—one three feet in length, another six feet, running more or less parallel to those above. Indications of others may also be seen, and, no doubt, several more may be discovered on more careful examination.

What they are I can scarcely even surmise, having seen nothing of the same kind elsewhere. They do suggest the possibility of their being the indentations of the caudal appendage of some huge creature, similar to the hollow tail lines between the footprints on the sandstone at Tarbatness and along the shores of Morayshire,—a suggestion strengthened by the fact of the existence, on both sides of the line, of numerous rounded hollow marks, very like the footprints on these reptiliferous rocks, occuring, as in them, at intervals. But the continuous even breadth and square section of the lines would seem to render this impossible. They might be the depressions left on the soft sand by the hinder portions of the shell of some huge crustacean,—a more likely cause, rendered more probable by the existence of very good ripple marks on the same sandstone, in the same and neighbouring layers. The striae-like lines of which the grooves consist would seem to point to some moving agent, organic or physical. They may, however, be the casts or impressions of some great land reed or sea fucoid, the hair-lines being the marks of the fine flutings on its stem or the parallel veins of its leaves. It would be desirable to have the superincumbent layer of rock carefully removed where the bands in question disappear under the upper rock, in order to shed more light on the nature of the strange marks. Whatever they are, they certainly deserve the careful attention of geologists. Dr Heddle, who has examined them since 1880, is of opinion that they are not in any way connected with organisms, but are due to mineralogical and structural causes, but he has not yet published his views. [7]

Far from being 'iron bands', they were two flat bands resembling the impression that one would get if two bars of iron had been set in the rock. The source for the creationist claims would appear to be a book by a YEC conspiracy theorist J.R. Jochmans [8] in a 1979 book Strange Relics From the Depths of the Earth who embellishes the Loch Maree findings considerably:

What purpose these iron bands served, we can only guess. What we do know, however, is that all the bands were very uniform in width and thickness, with squared edges, and the grain marks they left indicate they were rolled and cut - all of which points to precision manufacturing by machine production.

Jochmans of course provides no evidence for his claim other than his interpretation of secondary sources. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and again, yet another YEC assertion fails.

Human footprint in Cambrian rock in Utah: The 'Meister Footprint' is is perhaps one of the more notorious YEC claims, and one that has been debunked for quite some time, making Kidd's citation of it particularly embarrassing:

The supposed "heel" demarcation is actually a crack that runs beyond the boundary of the supposed print. It is best seen on the far left side as one views the print in the photograph herein. The slight relief difference at this point is due to slight movement along the crack line (Conrad, 1981 ; Stokes, 1986).

Similar concretionary shapes and spall patterns are abundant in the Wheeler formation, as are slabs showing concentric oval shapes of varying color, sometimes with stair-step like relief. Several other of these oblong features have also been interpreted as possible human prints (Cook, 1970), but are even less convincing than the Meister specimen (Conrad, 1981). None occur in striding trails or otherwise meet the scientific criteria by which genuine human prints are reliably identified. The geochemical processes such as solution penetrations, spalling, and weathering which form such features in fissile rocks of the Wheeler formation was discussed in considerable detail by Stokes (1986).

Several such "pseudo-prints" from Antelope Springs were sent to me in the early 1980's by creationist biologist Ernest Booth. One showed both an ovoid spall pattern similar to the Meister print, and another a color-distinct ovoid pattern without topographic relief. Booth expressed dismay that fellow creationists had not explained that such superficially print-like features were abundant at the site, and were products of geological phenomena and not real prints (Booth, 1982).

Some creationists have noted that the find was "confirmed" by "Dr. Cook." However, Dr. Cook was a metallurgist with little paleontological experience or knowledge. In his own report on the find Cook states, "...I am by no means an authority on fossils and footprints." He adds that the print seems to "speak for itself". However, upon careful inspection the evidence does not support Cook's conclusions.

In short, the trilobites in the specimen are real enough, but the "print" itself appears to be due solely to inorganic, geologic phenomena. After mainstream rebuttals of this find were published in the 1980's (Conrad, 1981; Stokes, 1986; Strahler, 1987), only a few creationists continued to suggest this was a real print, while most fromer advocates of the specimen have quietly abandoned the case. [9]

Kidd claims that "this is very embarrassing to the scientific world". It is Kidd's claims however that are very embarrassing to our community given that all of them are false, and if he had done even a modest amount of research would have realised that and not made these demonstrably false claims.

Palaeontologists are more than capable of differentiating between lions, wolves, and hyaenas

One characteristic of attacks on mainstream science made by YEC laypeople is their complete failure to appreciate that geologists, palaeontologists, and evolutionary biologists, like all other professionals are highly knowledgeable, well-informed professionals. What a YEC layperson regards as an insoluble problem is anything but that for someone who unlike them actually knows what they are talking about. Therefore, assertions such as this one by Kidd come across as simultaneously patronising and amateurish:

The comment has been made that the assembling of dinosaur skeletons is not a simple procedure; in the majority of cases the skeletons are normally incomplete. One writer stated that it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing and others damaged. Also the parts of different creatures are often found mixed together in the same graveyard...Now imagine finding a number of skeletons all mixed up, how easy would it be to determine which one went where and what the identification of each skeleton might be? For example how would you identify the skeletons in the illustration if they were all jumbled together? Which one would you identify as the wolf, and what would be the identification of the others? The images found in books, while bearing a reasonable resemblance, are all artistic, produced from jumbled bones. (Emphasis mine)

Ignoring the fact that many fossils are found in isolation, Kidd forgets that what may be a problem to a scientifically untrained YEC is hardly a problem to a trained palaeontologist who possesses expert understanding of comparative anatomy, and is more than capable of differentiating between the bones of different species.

Mind you, the difference between the skulls of - say - lions, hyaenas, and wolves should be readily apparent, even to a layperson.

Lion Skull

Wolf Skull

What may be a problem for a layperson is hardly likely to be an issue for a trained expert who is able to tell the difference between a wolf femur and a hyaena femur. Misrepresenting the reality of day to day palaeontology may make for a quick rhetorical point, but it hardly does anything for the credibility of the argument being made.

Job 40 is not referring to a fire-breathing dinosaur

By far the most embarrassing part of Kidd's article is not his assertion that Job 40 is an eyewitness account of dinosaurs, but evidence for them breathing fire. He argues:

There is however one unique detail, “his breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth” (verse 21) and this certainly does not fit the crocodile. Here is an animal that breathes fire which does not fit the description of any animal today. Of course it is impossible to identify accurately from bones a dinosaur that this may refer to, but there are two possibilities. In Psalm 104 the leviathan is described as associated with the sea (verses 25-26), as it is also in Isaiah 27:1; this description could correspond to the kronosaurus, a creature over 10 meters in length with large teeth. But a more likely suggestion is that leviathan refers to the Parasaurolophus, a dinosaur with a unique snout bone extending beyond its head. A variety of suggestions have been made regarding the unusual crest ranging from an underwater breathing snorkel to a communication horn. However there is one suggestion that aligns with the description in the book of Job; there is no air hole in the apex of the crest for snorkelling and this indicates that it could have been an elaborate combustion chamber which housed chemical glands for producing jets of fire. This is not as farfetched as it may appear; there is a similar arrangement in the body of the modern-day bombardier beetle.

Well, actually it is far fetched. Nothing in Kidd's assertion is remotely credible. Ignoring the fact that there are no dinosaur bones - let alone fossils - that are reliably dated to within the last two hundred thousand years (the earliest appearance of anatomically modern human beings), the main problem with taking references to leviathan and behemoth literally (rather than as references to mythological creatures or highly stylised references to large animals such as the crocodile or hippopotamus) is the lack of clear references in the Bible to all of the extinct animals, a point that Glenn Kuban makes with devastating effect:

One might also ask more generally, if dinosaurs or (as YECs maintain) all prehistoric animals existed alongside humans only a few thousand years ago, why there are no unambiguous descriptions in the Bible or other ancient literature of any of the thousands of remarkable prehistoric animals, including scores of dinosaurs such as ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, stegosaurs, as well as countless impressive non-dinosaurian prehistoric creatures such as pterosaurs, pelycosayrs, plesiosaurs, titanotheres, etc. [10]

Kidd's claim that leviathan was a fire-breathing dinosaur is of course risible. No animal is able to breathe fire for what should be painfully obvious anatomical and physiological reasons. Interestingly, Kidd's attempt to appeal to the bombardier beetle for support shows how fundamentalists abandon literalism in order to preserve human dogma. The bombardier beetle does not produce jets of fire. Rather, it produces its defence mechanism by mixing hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, which when catalysed produces a hot mix of water and 1,4-benzoquinone. Appealing to the bombardier beetle does not even begin to lend plausibility to the claims that Parasaurolophus could breathe fire.

This assertion, like all those which Kidd makes in his article, comes yet again from the extremist fringe of the YEC movement. Kidd illustrates his article with this laughably embarrassing image:

Kidd neglects to inform his readers as to the source of his image of 'Parasaurolophus in action'. Most certainly, it was not from a credible, mainstream palaeontological journal. Rather, it comes from a children's book on dinosaurs by the notorious YEC biochemist Duane Gish. Science historian Michael Barton notes:

In my local Salvation Army thrift store, looking through the children’s books to find stuff for my son, I came across this book from 1992:

For a quarter, why not? The usual: anti-evolution, evolution is a fairy tale, pro-Noah’s flood and theropod dinosaurs were herbivores before the fall. But this image of a Parasaurolophus spewing fire at a theropod (Ceratosaurus?) struck me like a slap on the forehead:

The text above reads:

God has given many animals living today very specialized and effective defence capabilities that have nothing to do with teeth or claws. If the fossil skeletons of a skunk, porcupine, or electric eel were dug up by a scientist who had never seen a living animal, would he have any idea that these animals had unique defense mechanisms?

So, lack of fossil evidence for unique defense mechanisms = fire-breathing Parasaurolophus! (Emphasis in original)

Needless to say, a children's book by a YEC crackpot does not suffice as evidence for an extraordinary claim that fire-breathing dinosaurs existed. As to what function the crest of Parasaurolophus served, a detailed monograph on the subject argued that:

One author (RMS) suggests that the crest functioned, at least in part, as an interspecific display structure while the other author (TEW) suggests that the crest functioned for both visual and acoustic display, especially for intraspecific recognition. [11]

Conspicuously absent was any reference to it being of assistance in producing a jet of fire to scare off enemies. Tom Williamson, one of the authors of the monograph cited above has in fact been specifically asked the question about whether Parasaurolophus could ever breathe fire, and has pointed out that (1) there is no living analog that shoots out fire from its nose (2) the crest walls are thin and have no evidence of any structures capable of producing liquid fire and (3) the crest was part of its respiratory system.

Conclusion

While the Bible Magazine may have influence only in the more conservative parts of our community, the fact that such embarrassingly bad YEC arguments - all of which betray a lack of understanding of even the rudiments of geology and palaeontoogy and which have been long debunked - are freely available is nonetheless deeply disappointing as they paint our community in a narrow, unflattering, fundamentalist light. Such articles need to become a thing of the past sooner rather than later.

References

1. Darwin C "On the imperfection of the geological record," The Origin of Species (1872. 6th Edition) p. 428. (Originally cited by Douglas Theobald in this article here).