It took me years to understand this dynamic, so of course I'd be interested in how the reasoning is wrong. But hn@ycombinator.com would be a better place to communicate that at this point.
Btw, if you're going to tell someone this, you should say why. Otherwise they can't learn and the comment is uninformative.
> I am so sad that he won't be able to enjoy this discovery as much as I do, because he'll be focused on debunking the scientific assertion that this fossil is 110 million years old.
In the whole scheme of things, I'm sure he enjoys plenty of things you don't. Just like any other 2 different people. That he doesn't enjoy this as much as you do is nothing to mourn about.
I once briefly dated a girl that believed in horoscopes and was dead set that it is a pre-determinator of a person's personality.
And I knew another girl that believed in the healing power of gem stones.
I released that irrational beliefs take many forms, not just religious (which creationism comes from), and it is a common human feature to explain things that you can't understand in ways that might make sense to you.
You must be kidding, the tissue escaped normal bacterial decay because it was away from normal conditions. And contrary to what the title indicates, what was discovered was fossilized remains (i.e., rock), not the original tissue of the monster.
Honestly, as far as explanations go for why you'd find a land animal so far out to sea, getting caught in a flood is not a bad thesis. Consider what must have happened to an immense number of fauna when glacial lake Missoula blew, for example!
But the fact that this is the only one of its type found so far in the area does not speak for a large one. Something as simple as dying while fording a river is another possibility.
Can you of yours? I agree with your beliefs I am guessing, but still this battle over who alone holds the authority of correctness is itself distressing.
It is difficult to imagine. A large part of it would have to be evidence of a elaborate conspiracy, and if I began to ever uncover such a thing I'd probably start by questioning my sanity. Imagine how difficult it would be for someone to try to convince you that not only did the Holocaust not happen, but neither did all of WWII- as a biologist I'd say YEC would be about as equally difficult to convince me of.
> It is difficult to imagine. A large part of it would have to be evidence of a elaborate conspiracy, and if I began to ever uncover such a thing I'd probably start by questioning my sanity.
Heh, you aren't the only one. I used to wonder how it could possibly happen that so many theists would be wrong about all these miracles and stuff.
I, and every other atheist I've encountered, would be happy to be proven wrong with reliable evidence. Something like the book Contact's (spoilers) message in the digits of pi, perhaps.
"Evidence is Satan's doing" means no amount of evidence can ever change your mind.
You immediately jumped to asserting your correctness, as if this is the only possible axis around which anything can rotate. I know you believe and your belief system has a definition of what counts and does not that is designed by the circumstances of its inception to make the assertion of any other symbol sets to analyze the world as invalid and undeserving of consideration. But I am not arguing about this, but rather the Right to Power derived from the nature of this argumentation is itself a tiresome way to engage about the world and what there is to find in it.
I, unfortunately, have had the entirely opposite experience. All the atheists I've talked with discount any evidence brought forward by scientists, or articles I have read in journals. The ones I have met are closed-minded.
I wrote a fairly long reply addressing each one of those sources, the kind of thing I didn't want to turn this comment section into, but I deleted it once I realized that there was no pm or email to send to.
Just to summarize my thoughts on it, and probably the thoughts of most people who you would show those to who would reject it, none of those links are actual scientific evidence for reasons that many thousands of books, blog posts, podcasts, videos, etc discussing the problems with young earth creationism have already addressed. We're not closed minded, we just have substantially different criteria for determining what is valid evidence and what is not than do young earth creationists, and we believe we have very good reasons for having those different criteria. I'm not looking for a debate and won't participate in one here, just giving you some insight on the probable reasons why other people you have shown this to have discounted it. If you would like to get a better idea of why we don't consider your sources to be valid evidence I would suggest that you take some time to read a few well-reviewed books on the topic from the perspective of scientists who don't believe in young earth creationism.
