In an ongoing debate with a friend from work and after much discussion on creation vs evolution, I finally asked my friend to please give me his best evidence for evolution. He took a deep breath and said............... "Archaeopteryx" I laughed only because this is the second time he has attempted to use this "unique bird" to prove his dying theory.
Enjoy the articles.
Article 1
However, in the article, Bird evolution flies out the window, the creationist anatomist Dr David Menton shows that Archaeopteryx is a true bird with flight feathers, not a transitional form—and certainly not a feathered dinosaur. And Dr Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself (see Feduccia v Creationists), says:
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”2
Both these expert scientists totally reject the charge of forgery. Dr Menton points out that the Archaeopteryx bones have tiny bumps where the feathers were attached to the bones by ligaments. This was unexpected, so impossible to attribute to a forgery. So it is simply wrong to say that the feathers are just imprints added to a dino skeleton.
Since that book, more recent evidence has even further devastated the hoax theory:
The skeletons had pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis. This indicates the presence of both a cervical and abdominal air sac, i.e. at least two of the five sacs present in modern birds. This in turn indicates that the unique avian lung design was already present in what most evolutionists claim is the earliest bird.4 An evolutionist trying to forge a dinosaur with feathers would not have thought to pneumatize allegedly reptilian bones. Rather, the evidence supports the creationist view that birds have always been birds.
Analysis of the skull with computer tomography (CT) scanning shows that Archaeopteryx had a brain like a modern bird’s, three times the size of that of a dinosaur of equivalent size (although smaller than that of living birds). Archaeopteryx even had large optic lobes to process the visual input needed for flying. Furthermore, even the inner ear had a cochlea length and semicircular canal propoprtions were in the range of a modern flying bird’s. This implies that Archaeopteryx could hear in a similar way, and also had the sense of balance required for coordinating flight.5 Pterosaurs likewise had similar brain structures for flight—the large optic lobes, semicircular canals for balance, and huge floccular lobes, probably for coordination of the head, eye and neck allowing gaze-stabilization while flying.6 Once more, a forger adding feathers to a dino would not have thought to make an avian braincase, while it is yet another problem for evolutionists.
Let’s take a close look at this remarkable ancient creature. The first specimen was found in Upper Jurassic limestone in Bavaria in 1861, missing only the right foot, the lower jaw and a few cervical vertebrae. The second specimen was found ten miles away in 1877. There have been two more finds since, very fragmentary, but all our knowledge is based on these first two.
Other such features are listed beiow and most may be visualised by a comparison diagram between Archaeopteryx and the modern pigeon. [Editor’s note: original publication had accompanying illustrations that could not be reproduced for the Web site.]
‘…we are not even authorized to consider the exceptional case of Archaeopteryx as a true link. By link, we mean a necessary stage of transition between classes such as reptiles and birds, or between smaller groups. An animal displaying characters belonging to two different groups cannot be treated as a true link as long as the intermediary stages have not been found, and as long as the mechanism of transition remains unknown.’
Furthermore, Archaeopteryx stands alone, uniquely himself with no fossil between himself and either birds or reptiles. The evolutionist Barbara Stahl, in her book ‘Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution’ (McGraw-Hill 1941) writes:
‘Since Archaeopteryx occupies an isolated position in the fossil record, it is impossible to tell whether the animal gave rise to more advanced fliers…’ (This section of her book was reviewed by Prof. Alfred Romer.)
The evolutionist A.J. Marshall writing in ‘Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds’ (Academic Press 1960 p.1) states that:
‘The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved.’
All of this is surely enough to establish that this bird is not a transitional form. Yet the above has been known for years, and still many evolutionists present it as a striking example of a transitional form. There has been a new discovery which surely demolishes the last hope in this direction. A bird which is unquestionabiy a true bird has been found which dates (by the evolutionists’ own methods) at some 60 million years older than Archaeopteryx. This was announced in ‘Science-News’ (Vol. 112, Sep. 1977 p.198) The find was assessed as above by Dr. James Jensen of Brighan Young University. The article also quotes Prof. John Ostrom of Yale:
‘…we must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much older than that in which Archaeopteryx lived.’ As Gish has said in another context, children cannot be older than their parents!
At home I also asked my 9 year old son to bring his science book home because I wanted to see what the book was teaching him. Sure enough amongst all of the "millions and millions" teaching was found a small section on Archaeopteryx. It said that Archaeopteryx was proof for evolution. I know that there are many other text books that show this as well. I found it rather perturbing that there would be something in my sons text book that has been disproved for years now. This is deliberately teaching a lie in the text book to our kids! This is extremely unacceptable. There are many other states who have laws that their text books will be "factual" and "up to date" on their teachings. But these lies in the text books will be discussed more in a future blog.
Archaeopteryx was nothing more than a bird.
Evolutionist Alan Feduccia stated: “Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that” (as quoted in Morell, 1993, 259:764
Archaeopteryx had all the brain features of a bird equipped for flight. And though it had claws on it's wings, so do 12 birds today. The Swan, Hoatzin and Ibis just to name a few. And though it had teeth in it's beak this doesn't make it proof it was a reptile at one point. A humming bird has teeth in it's beak as well. Some mammals/reptiles have teeth and some don't. Some fish have teeth and some don't. This doesn't prove Archaeopteryx was reptilian at any point. Birds and reptiles are very different in many many aspects. They have different lung systems, different reproductive systems, different body coverings, different circulatory systems, and different brain structures as well. There are hundreds and thousands of differences between birds and reptiles!
"The evolutionary origin of bird is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved." W. E. Swinton, British Museum of Natural History, London
Here are two articles I printed out and then underlined and highlighted many points and gave to my friend at work. He wrote a few things on it but for the most part, he didn't respond to it but left it alone. As Lee Strobel says "We have truth on our side, lets play that card!" I thank the Lord that creationists don't have to run around and spend most of their lives trying to prove so hard that creation happened. We don't have to go and pin peppered moth's to tree's and collect bones and fossils from miles apart of each other and say that it's a missing link. How poorly we would be portraying God to the world if we attempted to build a foundation on lies about creation? God left so much overwhelming evidence that he created it. Most evolutionist have to produce false, fake, poor and downright inaccurate data to desperately attempt to prove the evolutionary theory. This is a sad state of events in my opinion.
Enjoy the articles.
Article 1
Archaeopteryx (unlike Archaeoraptor) is NOT a hoax—it is a true bird, not a “missing link”
With all the publicity about the Archaeoraptor fiasco (see Archaeoraptor Hoax Update—National Geographic Recants!), some have recalled the 1986 claim by Sir Fred Hoyle and Dr Chandra Wickramasinghe that Archaeopteryx is a forgery.1 Archaeopteryx is one of the most famous of the alleged transitional forms promoted by evolutionists. This is probably why some anti-Darwinians are keen to dismiss it as a forgery.
However, in the article, Bird evolution flies out the window, the creationist anatomist Dr David Menton shows that Archaeopteryx is a true bird with flight feathers, not a transitional form—and certainly not a feathered dinosaur. And Dr Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself (see Feduccia v Creationists), says:
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”2
Both these expert scientists totally reject the charge of forgery. Dr Menton points out that the Archaeopteryx bones have tiny bumps where the feathers were attached to the bones by ligaments. This was unexpected, so impossible to attribute to a forgery. So it is simply wrong to say that the feathers are just imprints added to a dino skeleton.
Also, Alan Fedducia, in his encyclopedic The Origin and Evolution of Birds,3 cites a number of reasons why Fred Hoyle is completely wrong. For example, limestone often contains dendritic (tree-like) patterns formed by precipitating manganese dioxide, and they are unique as are snowflakes. Some of them are on both the slab and counterslab containing the Solnhofen Archaeopteryx fossil, including some on top of the feather imprints. Alan Charig et al. found that when he backwardly printed a negative photograph of the counterslab dendrite patterns, they match perfectly with the corresponding dendrites of the main slab. Therefore the dendrites must have formed on the bedding plane before the slab was split.
Since that book, more recent evidence has even further devastated the hoax theory:
The skeletons had pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis. This indicates the presence of both a cervical and abdominal air sac, i.e. at least two of the five sacs present in modern birds. This in turn indicates that the unique avian lung design was already present in what most evolutionists claim is the earliest bird.4 An evolutionist trying to forge a dinosaur with feathers would not have thought to pneumatize allegedly reptilian bones. Rather, the evidence supports the creationist view that birds have always been birds.
Analysis of the skull with computer tomography (CT) scanning shows that Archaeopteryx had a brain like a modern bird’s, three times the size of that of a dinosaur of equivalent size (although smaller than that of living birds). Archaeopteryx even had large optic lobes to process the visual input needed for flying. Furthermore, even the inner ear had a cochlea length and semicircular canal propoprtions were in the range of a modern flying bird’s. This implies that Archaeopteryx could hear in a similar way, and also had the sense of balance required for coordinating flight.5 Pterosaurs likewise had similar brain structures for flight—the large optic lobes, semicircular canals for balance, and huge floccular lobes, probably for coordination of the head, eye and neck allowing gaze-stabilization while flying.6 Once more, a forger adding feathers to a dino would not have thought to make an avian braincase, while it is yet another problem for evolutionists.
Answers in Genesis will not stock any books that promote the Archaeopteryx hoax idea, at least not without a disclaimer, because it is the truth which shall set you free (cf. John 8:32), not error.
Article 2
Archaeopteryx
Creation scientists and speakers have a wealth of documentation to support their claim that the general nature of the fossil record is hostile to evolution but supports the predictions of the creation model. All higher kinds of plants and animals appear abruptly and without transition. Are we misrepresenting evolution to insist on transitional forms? How many should we expect? If we examine the mutation/selection theory, which is the mechanism of evolution held by the overwhelming majority today, we see that each change is slow and gradual, involving the accumulation of a vast number of ‘micromutations’ or ‘point mutations’. We see then, that the number of transitional forms involved in the transformation of, say, fish to amphibian over hundreds of millions of years are incredibly vast—so much so that we would not expect to be able to recognize end forms and transitional forms separately—there would be an almost imperceptible ‘oozing’ of one kind into another. Furthermore, it is an integral part of the theory that each form is successful, that is, each ‘successive approximation’ has a survival or reproductive advantage over its predecessor, or else it would not become established and give rise to subsequent forms. Therefore there is no reason whatever for the ‘end forms’ to have more chance of fossilization than the ‘intermediates’. Sampling errors (which includes the ‘poverty of the record’ argument) are random, and while they could account for occasional or sporadic gaps, they may not be used as an excuse for systematic gaps.
What do most evolutionists offer in the place of the millions upon millions of transitional forms between higher kinds predicted by their model? The answer is usually ONE transitional form—Archaeopteryx. You see, by making the prediction of NO transitional forms versus BILLIONS of such forms, creationists are really ‘laying it on the line’. All the evolutionist has to do is produce one indisputable transitional form between the higher kinds to seriously challenge the creation model. Others are occasionally mentioned, such as Seymouria, but these are not seriously considered as links by informed evolutionists (although many still do) for the simple reason that their supposed descendants appear ‘earlier’ in the fossil record than these ‘transitional forms’! However, Archaeopteryx is usually proudly mentioned as a classical example of a transitional form (without of course mentioning that it is essentially the only example).
What do most evolutionists offer in the place of the millions upon millions of transitional forms between higher kinds predicted by their model? The answer is usually ONE transitional form—Archaeopteryx. You see, by making the prediction of NO transitional forms versus BILLIONS of such forms, creationists are really ‘laying it on the line’. All the evolutionist has to do is produce one indisputable transitional form between the higher kinds to seriously challenge the creation model. Others are occasionally mentioned, such as Seymouria, but these are not seriously considered as links by informed evolutionists (although many still do) for the simple reason that their supposed descendants appear ‘earlier’ in the fossil record than these ‘transitional forms’! However, Archaeopteryx is usually proudly mentioned as a classical example of a transitional form (without of course mentioning that it is essentially the only example).
Let’s take a close look at this remarkable ancient creature. The first specimen was found in Upper Jurassic limestone in Bavaria in 1861, missing only the right foot, the lower jaw and a few cervical vertebrae. The second specimen was found ten miles away in 1877. There have been two more finds since, very fragmentary, but all our knowledge is based on these first two.
Archaeopteryx had many features which caused most investigators to class it immediately as a bird, Aves. The feathers were identical in structure and arrangement to those of modern birds, a highly complex arrangement. It also had a birdlike posture, perching feet, a long sinuous neck holding its head high and a beaklike structure. However, it had many features not typical of modern birds and more typical of the class Reptilia. The most obvious two are the long, drooping tail and the teeth it possessed. Modern birds do not have teeth. However, extinct birds such as Icthyornis and Hesperornis, which were unquestionably 100% birds, also had teeth. Closer examination reveals many other features which Archaeopteryx shared in common with reptiles. For example, the skull has many ‘reptilian’ features including lack of the posterior domelike expansion typical of birds otherwise.
Other such features are listed beiow and most may be visualised by a comparison diagram between Archaeopteryx and the modern pigeon. [Editor’s note: original publication had accompanying illustrations that could not be reproduced for the Web site.]
The cervical vertebrae lacked the heterocoelaus centra peculiar to birds.- The trunk vertebrae were not fused together as in birds.
- The weight of most birds is supported by a solid synsacrum. Archaeopteryx had a tail which functioned to counterbalance his weight and the weight of his abdominal viscera was supported by a belly wall stiffened with gastralia, thin slivers of bone.
- The ribs were not connected by uncinate processes nor anchored into the sternum, as in birds.
- The pelvic bones were much smaller than most birds and did not extend nearly so far along the vertebral column. However, they had the avian backward twist of the pubes below the ischia.
- It had claws at the ends of the three digits. There are three living birds today which have claws in either the adult or juvenile form. Archaeopteryx seems to have been able to crawl agilely through the trees as well as making short flights. That it was not a powerful flier may be inferred from the small area of origin which it had for flight muscles.
- The hand and wrist were not in the form of an inflexible blade.
- It had 3 independent metatarsals, rather than one as birds do.
- The fibula was equal in length to the tibia, as in reptiles, but not birds.
In summary, it may be said that Archaeopteryx is truly unique, and appears to exhibit a mosaic of characters, sharing some in common with the class Aves and some with the class Reptilia. It seems to have been suited to a lifestyle of short flights and agile crawling in trees, and those features which make it unquestionably a bird for classification purposes are uniquely and completely present and perfect. The feathers are not halfway transition from scales to feathers, an assumed transformation of the most astounding complexity. If for no other reason, this would disqualify it as a transitional form. A bat is not a transitional form between bird and mammal, nor is a platypus transitional between duck and mammal, even though it exhibits some features of both.The evolutionist Lecomte du Mouy recognizes this. In the book ‘Human Destiny’ (N.Y. 1947) he writes:
‘…we are not even authorized to consider the exceptional case of Archaeopteryx as a true link. By link, we mean a necessary stage of transition between classes such as reptiles and birds, or between smaller groups. An animal displaying characters belonging to two different groups cannot be treated as a true link as long as the intermediary stages have not been found, and as long as the mechanism of transition remains unknown.’
Furthermore, Archaeopteryx stands alone, uniquely himself with no fossil between himself and either birds or reptiles. The evolutionist Barbara Stahl, in her book ‘Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution’ (McGraw-Hill 1941) writes:
‘Since Archaeopteryx occupies an isolated position in the fossil record, it is impossible to tell whether the animal gave rise to more advanced fliers…’ (This section of her book was reviewed by Prof. Alfred Romer.)
The evolutionist A.J. Marshall writing in ‘Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds’ (Academic Press 1960 p.1) states that:
‘The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved.’
All of this is surely enough to establish that this bird is not a transitional form. Yet the above has been known for years, and still many evolutionists present it as a striking example of a transitional form. There has been a new discovery which surely demolishes the last hope in this direction. A bird which is unquestionabiy a true bird has been found which dates (by the evolutionists’ own methods) at some 60 million years older than Archaeopteryx. This was announced in ‘Science-News’ (Vol. 112, Sep. 1977 p.198) The find was assessed as above by Dr. James Jensen of Brighan Young University. The article also quotes Prof. John Ostrom of Yale:
‘…we must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much older than that in which Archaeopteryx lived.’ As Gish has said in another context, children cannot be older than their parents!
I will restate simply the reasons why Archaeopteryx cannot be regarded as a transitional form.
- It has a ‘mosaic’ of characters in common with both groups but shows no true transitional structure such as a part-scale, part-feather.
- There are no fossil links between it and either reptiles or birds—it stands alone.
- True birds have been found which are assigned by evolutionists to an earlier time than Archaeopteryx.
16 comments:
Don't many (if not most) evolutionists disagree with Feduccia? Doesn't Feduccia believe that birds evolved from reptiles even though he does not believe they evolved from dinosaurs? Are grade school textbooks deliberately lying every time a widely accepted conclusion is subject to challenge?
I wouldn't say they are deliberately lying in the text books "at first" but once something is proven or if it is just a theory, it should state that fact (that at this time it is only a theory) In addition, they should make attempts to correct the text books (I know it cost extreme amounts of money to order/change text books. My suggestion is that there should be a committee assigned to insure only factual and up to date science is being taught. Or that a theory is labeled as such. I have no problems with theories, not even dumb ones like evolution, what I do have a problem is, my tax dollars going to the teacher to teach my child a lie. I have no doubt many people would be willing to go into the schools and help out with this, at no cost to the school at all. If your child came home with a text book that said 2+2=6 Would you not have a problem with it? I'm pretty sure parents would volunteer to bring their own scissors and cut that page out of the book or someone would cross it out and put the correct answer in.
I don't think widely accepted conclusions should incorporated in a text book until there is empirical proof of it. Remember Piltdown Man? This was taught as a missing link for 40 yrs before it was discovered as a fake. The parents should of had a right to rip that page out of the text book after that...
thanks for your comments
Joe
Isn't a scientific fact just a theory with so much data to support it that that we find it hard to imagine that it will be ever be disproved?
I cannot help but think that your science textbooks are going to be pretty thin and pretty dull. The most interesting areas of science are the ones where there are still unanswered questions and the theories are in dispute. They are often areas that are not easily subjected to laboratory experiments.
If you limit science classes to that which can be asserted with absolute certainty, I think you would find children viewing science as dull and lifeless rather than as exciting and worth pursuing.
"The most interesting areas of science are the ones where there are still unanswered questions and the theories are in dispute"
I agree, I would just like to see those "theories" in dispute labeled as such. Not labeled as fact because the ideas behind the theory have been repeated so much.
If you limit science classes to that which can be asserted with absolute certainty, I think you would find children viewing science as dull and lifeless rather than as exciting and worth pursuing.
I also agree with this. Again, I would like to see a fact called a fact and theory called a theory. Also it would seem by that statement that you are then open to kids learning about ID not just evolution?
thanks for your comments
Joe
Let's also keep things in perspective. At this time I am talking about Archaeopteryx. There are dozens of more examples I can use but thought to use this one since it's been coming up around me lately. This is now a deliberate lie being left in the text books. It's been disproved years ago. Why is it still in there? And I'm ok then that it's in there but then why is it not being told to the kids that "this has been disproved years ago" ???
thanks again,
Joe
I am still not quite sure what your basis is for labeling it a deliberate lie. I have not thoroughly researched the question, but the little I saw suggested that Professor Feduccia's may still be the minority position. Moreover, he seems to share the majority view that archaeopteryx evolved from reptiles, just not dinosaurs. It does not sound to me like students are being mislead regarding how and what scientists think about archaeopteryx.
I agree with vinny on this one "I am still not quite sure what your basis is for labeling it a deliberate lie".
Read any American History text book and you will find so many wrong facts that it will make your head spin. I highly doubt that the historian writing it was deliberate in their actions. ... maybe a little careless at times, but not deliberate.
Science is nothing but theories Joe... All true scientists know this and accept it readily.
As a matter of fact, most, if not all of science taught in k through 12th grade as well as in the first 3 years of college are just approximations to the truth. The true scale of this only really hit me in my senior year of engineering while I was taking some graduate level courses. The truth is far more complex than the simple formulas presented to students. E = MC^[squared] is not accurate. The "fact" that gravity has a "constant" force is not accurate. ... I can go on and on, but I will spare you. Real scientist know this and if asked will tell you this without hesitation. ... the same goes for any area of science. It is usually the press that overstate and twist the scientific views to make them seem more "fact" than "theory". It just makes for better news that way. Don’t blame the science, blame the press.
I also agree with vinny when he said "It does not sound to me like students are being mislead regarding how and what scientists think about archaeopteryx".
Why would you expect the government to teach childern anything other than science? It is not the government's responsibility. Its the parents responsibility and the church's responsibility to teach them God's views.
Trust me, you wouldn't want the government to teach your childern about God. That would be far worse than them teaching them about science. If you think they make mistakes in presenting science's views to childern, just think about what would happen if they presented God's views to them.
Schools are doing the right thing. Parents need to stop complaining. If anything its good for the childern to both understand the world's views and God's views. It make them better prepared for life. Life is full of contrudictions.
The planet Uranus was discovered in the 1781. Early in the 19th Century, scientists determined that its orbit did not fit the predictions of the theory of gravity. Some suggested that there must be another planet out there that was exerting a pull on Uranus. Unfortunately, it required very complex mathematics to determine the orbit, size and location of a planet that would exert the pull necessary to cause the variation between the predicted and observed orbits of Uranus. Once the likely location was calculated, it still took some time for telescopes to confirm the existence of Neptune in 1846.
What should we say of the theory of gravity during the twenty-five years it took to locate and verify the existence of Neptune? Was it false? Was it a lie? The fact is that much of science is devoted to investigating those cases where the observed data doesn’t seem to fit the dominant theory. However, scientists spend a lot of time trying to fit the data into the existing theories before they start looking for new ones. Eventually, it may happen that a new theory is required such as special relativity which eventually replaced Newtonian physics. However, for the new theory to win out it has to do more than just point out trouble spots in the old theory. It has to prove its superiority to the research scientists before it gets into the grade school textbooks.
I think we are arguing two different things here. I'm not opposed to theories being in the text books, I'm opposed to lies in the text books. That witch is disproved but still being taught, such as Haeckel's Embryos (though some have updated this information and corrected the drawings, other's have not and this is still in text books today) Same thing with Archaeopteryx, it's proved to be a bird, why is still being taught that it was a reptile? I can go on with the lies. Again, all I'm saying is label a fact as a fact (2+2=4) and a theory as a theory. And for the record I stand the same with History books as I do with all books.
Has it been proved that archaeopteryx is a bird rather than a transitional form between reptiles and birds? That is what is still not clear to me. One scientist’s rejection of the scientific community’s consensus should not be an adequate basis to label that consensus a lie and rewrite all the textbooks. If it was, no school district could afford to keep their textbooks up to date.
I would also suggest that a third grade science textbook cannot be expected to capture all the subtleties of the scientific debates that go on at the top research universities anymore than a third grade history book reflects all the debates among leading historians or a Sunday school class addresses all the theological subtleties dealt with at seminaries. When a Sunday school teacher holds up a Bible and tells the children that it is the inspired Word of God, no one would call her a liar if she failed to explain that the doctrine of “inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture,” and that “copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the originals.” (The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article X) We would accept that she is trying to teach the material at a level the children can understand.
Joe I agree with you that text books should be updated and teachers should learn the newest science knowledge. In an ideal world that would happen instantaniously once new science is proven. ... In reality, it does not happen because books take time to revise, new books cost money, and it takes time for teachers to learn new science. I think everyone should try their best, but their best will never been good enough. It does not make them liars. They are humans and only teaching what they know. You and I have a very different concept of what makes someone a liar... but we certainly won't get into that again.
About the fact that students should be taught that they are theories... yeah, in some cases they should. Being a student is a growing process. One things builds on another. Students are taught many things that are not completely accurate as part of a developmental process. If students where told that everything is theories and that very little is absolute, kids would have a meltdown by the 1st grade.
I feel I should recant anything I've said that made the impression that I feel that text books should be updated every single time a new scientific fact has come to light. This is not what I'm saying at all. I fully understand the chaos it would be to update a text book based on new findings etc.... We would be updating text books on a weekly basis. All I'm simply stating is this; when you come upon something in a text book that has been disproved, and for whatever reason it is still there, the teacher should tell the children that. It would go something like this "Children, on page so and so here you will find Archaeopteryx (or whatever) your text books would say this is the missing link connecting reptiles (dinosaurs) to modern day birds. However, this has been proven years ago that this is only a bird, please disregard your text books as stating that it's a fact" and as long as they are doing their best to bring these things to light, I'm ok with that. What I won't stand for is a teacher who knows something in the text book is false but teaches it anyway because he/she is for evolution or against creation. And that, with my tax dollars.
That's it, that's all it takes.
And Vinny yes it's been proven to be a bird, and not by one scientist alone.
and Pedro. Once again this is my definition of a Liar (as I was not calling any teachers in my comments liars) Layman's terms; God says in his word plainly how he did something, man says he did it another way, man makes god out to be a liar. this is biblical. this does not make it hard for someone to come to the lord when I say this to them. especially someone who says they follow scripture. Remember Jesus went through the temple and used a whip against the money changers who were dealing outside of God's house which was to be a "house of prayer". I doubt that made men want to come running to Jesus, but it was necessary. I feel it should be more strict with someone who claims to follow the word simply because of what Paul said "correctly handle the word of truth" Please see the post "Proven from scripture god doesn't use millions of years" and the video to show how scripture shows he didn't use evolution. this isn't a matter of interpretation because the text is to be taken literal. sorry, a little drawn out, but necessary I feel.
thanks guys for your comments
Which scientists?
Please read the articles under this post, there are at least two
expert scientists (one an evolutionists and the other a creationist I
believe) there are more obviously if you do the research.
thanks
Disagreements among scientists are common. It is irresponsible and uncivil to claim that one side has been proven wrong or that one side is lying when there is a good faith disagreement among the experts. The fact that one evolutionist and one creationist have reached a conclusion that you find persuasive is not sufficient basis to label those who have not been persuaded liars.
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