Snark and sarcasm are no replacement for a legitimate argument. If they were, though, you would have won your case by now.
Then explain [various links to pages about mythology] and then see if that explanation also works for Bell’s tomb.
No, for all the reasons I’ve already stated, you cannot just chalk this up to mythology.
And once you’ve done that , maybe you’ll finally get around to answering the question you’ve been avoiding for more than 200 posts: which of Vance Nelson’s dinosaur bone specimens was decontaminated, and how could you possibly know.
As I’ve already said, Nelson specifically states decontamination was performed in the book referencing this. So that’s the reason why I said that–because Nelson himself has said it in print.
He does not appear, unless I’ve missed it somehow, to cite a published source for which dino test he is talking about there in the book. That’s a mistake, I freely admit. I remember, way back in this thread, checking out the CRSQ article somebody posted. It seems to be talking about the same hadrosaur, because it dated to something like 25,000 ybp. I would guess that is the same test he’s referencing in Dire Dragons.
That’s hardly an “admission”, I’ve made it clear from the start that I don’t think it’s a depiction of a real animal. Looking at specific features and pointing out that they don’t match sauropods supports that.
You’re arguing that it’s a poor representation of an animal the artist really saw, while I’m arguing it’s completely made up. Which is more plausible given the weight of all the evidence? The latter of course. Seriously, just google image search for “medieval animal art” - it’s chock full of imaginary animals. There’s absolutely no reason to believe this is any different except being desperate to find evidence for YECism.
No, you are misrepresenting me. Nowhere did I ever say it was a poor representation. Especially for the time, I think it was a very good one. Good enough that nobody I’ve ever shown it to has ever had any problem identifying it as a sauropod after viewing it.
To me, a “good” piece of art would be one that accurately represents the creature.
I don’t think art is a game of Pictionary. You have an extremely low bar of what constitutes “good art” IMO. Besides, you’re once again ignoring the obvious option - that simplistic depictions of made-up animals can resemble real animals completely by chance. You’re not even willing to consider that, are you?
I consider it, and I reject it. In context, these animals are depicted right alongside other real animals, including a dog wearing a collar. So no, I don’t think it makes sense to suggest these are just supposed to be made-up creatures that just so happen to strongly resemble real creatures. You might as well say they drew an animal that just so happened to look like a dog wearing a collar, but in reality it’s supposed to be a mythological beast:
So any engraving of a creature next to engravings of real animals must therefore also be a real animal? That’s dangerous. Plenty of mythical creatures are depicted alongside real animals, that’s nothing special.
Let me answer your question with another question: can you provide me with any independent scientific evidence, in the form of, say, fossil specimens, that centaurs really existed? If you can, then I will consider the possibility that this depiction is based upon real experience.
One doesn’t need training in paleontology to realize that bones found in the ground were once living animals. Anyone who has ever butchered an animal for the meat (myself included) is aware that bones define the general structure of an animal. It’s much the same for digging up animal bones. OF COURSE ancient and medieval peoples made that connection between fossil bones and actual animals.
Your doubt of this simple fact amazes me.
Exactly. But medieval art produced lots of fanciful renderings of such imaginary creatures—and many well-intended but inaccurate renderings of sailor and merchant descriptions of the animals of faraway lands. The “beast” on the right looks a lot like medieval drawings of giraffes, so it is not surprising that some have even speculated that the artist was depicting what he had been told about African male giraffes fighting over a mate.
It is also worth mentioning that the most popular photos of the Bishop Bell brass engravings have often been described as manipulated. If you’ve ever compared the photos on YEC websites with photos from other sources, the differences are considerable.The engraving has suffered a great deal of wear over the years (which is why the cathedral staff have kept it covered by protective carpet most of the time) and those who see dinosaurs in the photos may be disappointed once they visit the cathedral and see the engraving as it actually is.
The animals depicted are not so out of proportion to medieval and ancient art depicting salamanders, newts, and Komodo dragons. (Also, keep in mind that medieval Europe was not isolated from the rest of the world. There was a lot of transfer of ideas, east and west.) I would also recommend a look at the great many bestiaries published by medieval artists. These imaginative “encyclopedias” of beasts (real and imagined) were very popular in western Europe and dozens of them have survived. The Aberdeen Bestiary is probably the best known.
To me the beast on the left of the engraving (in the non-manipulated photos) looks far more like a medieval-depicted panther than a sauropod. Of course, the idea of drawing a head on the tail of that lion is not at all out of character for the art of that period. (Meanwhile, fans of The Far Side cartoons may recognize the tail as the infamous “thagomizer.”)
It is also worth mentioning that medieval artists depicted infants and young children as miniature old men. The reasons go beyond the scope of this thread but I will simply summarize and say that they were NOT committed to realism (aka naturalism) in their art. (That would come with the Renaissance, when babies in paintings became cute and cherubic again.) Anachronistically seeing dinosaurs in a medieval brass engraving is akin to assuming that the medieval babies seen in the art of that era must have all been afflicted with progeria!
That’s an excellent example of the argumentum ad populum logic fallacy. Also, I recommend you read up on experiments investigating pareidolia.
I entirely agree with that.
And if I asked people at my church to identify the BEHEMOTH animal described in Job 40, hundreds would probably say “It’s a dinosaur.” Yet, if I had asked the same question in the 1950’s (before the rise of “creation science” al a Morris, Whitcomb, and Gish), nobody would have “seen” a dinosaur in the text. Your argumentum ad populum logic fallacy is not convincing.
Almost as laughable as the idea of Sauropods roaming medieval England is the idea that they wouldn’t be documented beyond a single engraving on the grave of a random bishop in Carlisle.
Where is your independent scientific evidence for non-avian dinosaurs existing in medieval England? Seems rather hypocritical to demand evidence you yourself can’t provide.
Do you admit ancient art works by themselves are not evidence the fantastic creatures depicted actually existed in that place and time frame?
I didn’t ask for evidence that Centaurs existed in a specific place. I asked for evidence they existed at all. In this case, we know sauropods like Shunosaurus did indeed exist because we have fossils of them. That’s why I consider this good evidence that people saw them. Because the depiction closely matches existing fossil evidence, and indeed it closely matches modern scientific reconstructions of the same animal.
You claim the animal depicted was actually alive and living in medieval England. Where is your independent scientific evidence for that claim? Again your demands are quite hypocritical.
Sorry, but that statement is intellectually dishonest. Nobody doubts that a person can look at a bone and say “wow, this must have been alive once.” The surprising and unbelievable thing would be that they would have sufficient knowledge of both paleontology and animal anatomy to correctly assemble a set of bones (and such fossil specimens are often highly incomplete and scattered), in such a way that it just so happens to match modern reconstructions, made with the benefit of now hundreds of years of research and collective knowledge. I’ll leave off my responses right there because I don’t think much more needs to be said. You’re being purposefully obtuse to ignore plain evidence.
Quote:
Back in the early 20th century, we didn’t have enough physical evidence or knowledge of the limits of certain types of joints, bones, and body structures to hypothesize what an ancient creature, unlike any on earth today, would look like. Today, with computer modeling, millions of fossils, and new knowledge of evolution and comparative anatomy, we can be far more accurate, and are likely fairly close to “accurate,” as far as knowing what creatures we’ve never seen (and, might I add, hopefully never will see) would look like.
If that was true in the 20th century, then how about the 15th?
A highly simplistic engraving of a pretty typical animal form except with a long neck and tail is deemed to be strong evidence of the artist seeing not just a sauropod, but specifically Shunosaurus.
Let’s just keep in mind this incredibly low standard of evidence for future conversations with Paul, shall we?
Actually what’s intellectually dishonest is taking some medieval artwork no competent paleontologist would ever think is an actual non-avian dinosaur and trying to spin that into all dino fossils are less than 6000 years old.
Explain the logic to us. Even if an amazing discovery of an isolate pocket of non-avian dinosaurs was found (i.e. mokele-mbembe in Africa) how would that negate the huge amount of evidence most dinosaurs lived from 252 MY to 66 MY ago?
Some claims are so ridiculous that it’s clear the person making them wouldn’t recognise let alone accept a legitimate argument. The idea that there were sauropods in C15 Carlisle is one such.
This is the same also guy arguing on the Evidence thread "most scientists, and most people in general, accept evolution primarily because “everybody else does”.
So if it’s the overwhelming scientific consensus based on evidence we should doubt the idea since we didn’t do the work ourselves. If a fellow Creationist makes an outlandish and undocumented claim it must be true.
For the moment, let’s say that there really were dinosaurs in recent times. How does that change the ages for the fossils we have found? There are mammals alive today, but that doesn’t cast doubt on the 80 million year old age for a mammal fossil.
You would need to establish that what you are testing is organic material and that it hasn’t been contaminated.
Interesting. Are you saying that you trust scientific consensus?
Just as modern mammals are different from much older fossil mammals, but both are still recognizable as mammals. It is the same reason that humans and giraffes are both mammals, because of the features we share.
The modern species of coelacanth is not found anywhere in the fossil record, but it does share features specific to other coelacanths. In fact, there are about 80 known fossil species of coelacanth with 2 living species.
