How Much do the Scientists Really Know?

From anchorstone.com/newsletter-05-october-1993-2/

Newsletter 05: October 1993

How Much do the Scientists Really Know?   Have you ever heard of the “Piltdown Man”? Back in 1912, two men announced that they had found the so-called missing link between ape and man. Their evidence was a few pieces from a skull, a piece of a jaw, some teeth and a few other fragments.

It wasn’t until 1953 that the whole affair was exposed for the elaborate hoax it really was. The fragments turned out to be parts of a human brain case, a piece of the mandible of some sort of ape, fragments of hippopotamus, deer and beaver teeth, and other fragments of elephant, mastodon and rhinoceros. It’s a long story, but its now common knowledge and well documented that it was a hoax.
And it may seem harmless to you now that its been exposed. But, did you know that over 500 people obtained their PhD by writing their thesis on “the Piltdown Man”? I dare say, no one took back those PhDs after it was exposed, and those people taught hundreds of thousands of people.

Then there’s the dinosaur evidence. I’ll bet most of you think that entire skeletons have been found of all the dinosaurs- after all, that’s what you see in the museums and in the science books. But that’s not exactly the case: “Many dinosaurs are so poorly known, they have been identified by only a few shed teeth, a tradition fraught with scientific problems. From just a few pointy teeth Troodon formosus…was one of the first dinosaurs named, more than a century ago….But for a century not much more of Troodon than its teeth were known.

You would be very surprised and probably shocked if you knew just how little evidence some of these dinosaurs are based on. You can gain a little insight into some of the problems by reading about the early dinosaur hunters. Two of the most prominent of these were Cope and Marsh who searched for the giant fossils in the 1800’s. As two of the original “founding fathers” of this new science, they were vicious competitors. They found and named no telling how many new species of dinosaurs, but there were just a few problems with their research.

For one, they were so fiercely competitive that they would secretly plant bones in each other’s dig sites. If this doesn’t seem like such a big deal, you must understand that these dinosaur skeletons don’t come “assembled” except in very rare cases, and then its only portions of the skeleton that are connected. No, dinosaurs are reconstructed from bones found together in an area. Therefore, there’s a very good chance that many of the “specimens” these men came up with are just not valid. Here’s evidence:

“When in 1877 O.C. Marsh found the type specimen of Brontosaurus, now in the Carnegie Museum, the original lacked the skull. Marsh assumed that the skull was short and round, like that of the similar but smaller Camarasaurus. For a century, incomplete Brontosaurus skeletons and statues and pictures of the animals as they presumably appeared in life…were given these bullet heads. Then, it transpired that Brontosaurus actually had a long, narrow skull like that of Diplodicus. It will take years to correct this error everywhere.”

Here’s even more evidence that Cope and Marsh really hoodwinked the public with some of their “discoveries”:

“The rivalry was heated. Prospectors fought off Indians, fired at each other, hid their finds, and appropriated their rivals’ discoveries….Nearly every find was dubbed a new species. Many of the 136 dinosaur species Cope and Marsh named over the next two decades have since been invalidated.”

Or, how about this?-

“Another time, Marsh’s men, knowing that Cope was spying on them, deliberately mixed the skull of one creature with teeth from another and left them for Cope to find and describe as a new species.”

It should be quite obvious by now that our “knowledge” of dinosaurs isn’t based on the most solid evidence. Most bones are found in jumbled piles, with many, many different animals being represented. As we said earlier, nearly complete specimens are extremely rare, which leaves us at the complete mercy of the person “reconstructing” the skeleton.

For example, when Gideon Mantell drew his reconstruction of the skeleton of the Iguanodon, he placed the “spike-like” object on the nose, similar to the rhinoceros horn. Later, this was proved to be wrong, but the misconception persisted for many years. They have since placed this “spike” as the thumb, but who knows- this could one day change, too.

But this problem of over-active imaginations didn’t end with the old dinosaur-hunters.
Take the example of Jim Jensen who only retired in 1985:

“But there were other problems with Jensen’s naming of his giants. Though based on prepossessing fossils, those fossils are but fragments from a jumbled quarry. And they could only be contrasted with other fragments of already named but still only partially known dinosaurs.”

Today, everyone loves dinosaurs. But what we see in the museums and science books are not reality. Years ago, Ron remembers seeing a Life Magazine cover which featured a man holding a fossil tooth- the caption went something like this:

“From this single tooth, I can reconstruct an entire dinosaur…”

And that’s closer to the truth than scientists would like to admit. When you go to the museum and view a “Triceratops” skeleton, it’s only natural to believe that the skeleton is real, or at least a copy of a real skeleton, right?
Think again, as we read this quote about them:

“And they are principally known from their skulls. Unlike the pattern for most dinosaurs, for ceratopsids skulls are relatively abundant, their postcranial remains are rare. Not one complete skeleton of the familiar Triceratops is known.”

The bottom line is simply this- “dinosaurs” existed alongside all the other pre-flood animals, most of which were also giants (when they were full grown) compared to the animals of today. But, the fossil bones of the dinosaurs prove that they were animals of the same genuses we have today. Many may be species that no longer survive. But, the only real knowledge we have of them is scant.
Most of what you read as “fact” is actually the conjecture of those with vivid imaginations, always seeking to come up with something new and exciting. Yet, these are the very ones who scream the loudest that the Biblical account is the real theory. The real facts- the only ones we can depend on- are that these dinosaur bones are the fossil remains of animals of tremendous size; many of them reptiles which lived in an environment that allowed them to live hundreds of years, continuing to grow in size until their death. The presence of their fossilized bones in the water-laid strata bears the most incredible testimony to their utter destruction at the Hands of their Creator during the great flood.

Footnotes
1.,2. Man, Time and Fossils, by Ruth Moore, p. 114.
3. The New Larned History, Vol 1, p. 119.
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984, Vol. 15, p. 279.
5. Creation Ex-Nihilo, Vol. 14, No. 2.
6. The Bible-Key to Understanding the Early Earth, by McLean, Oakland and McLean, p. 59 & 60.
7. Two New Sciences, by Galileo Galilei; translated by Stillman Drake, p. 127-128.
8. The Dinosaur Heresies, by Robert T. Bakker, p. 350.
9. Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, p. 80 & 157; quoted from A Scientific Analysis of Genesis, by Edward F. Blick.
10. Dinosaurs Rediscovered, by Don Lessem, p. 29.
11. The Day of the Dinosaur, by de Camp and de Camp, p. 121.
12. Dinosaurs Rediscovered, p. 38.
13. The Day of the Dinosaur, p. 223.
14. Dinosaurs Rediscovered, p. 174. 15. Ibid., p. 277.
Questions & Answers on Noah’s Ark NOAH’S ARK Last year, an article appeared in the Australian creationist magazine, “Ex-Nihilo”, in which the authors attempted to discredit the ark. I wrote a rebuttal, providing certain documents as evidence that the writers of this article did not check out the facts. Thus far, we have only given this rebuttal to a couple of people- those who asked for it — and one of those “inquiring minds” was Andrew Jones. We have spoken to Andrew on numerous occasions, and he is checking these things out as thoroughly as anyone we have met to date — and he is, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong, Andrew) 16 or 17 years old. Anyhow, Andrew sent a copy of our rebuttal to David Fasold, who called us and asked if he could reproduce it in his newsletter. Of course, that was fine with us — and so we felt that we should include an edited version in ours — we are, however, unable to include the 20 pages of accompanying documentation, and have to limit it severely.

**  anchorstone.com/newsletter-05-october-1993-2/