"Have you ever seen a dinosaur skull?"

Argument from credulity that misses the point, which, concisely, is that you are positing such discoveries across the globe, independantly but simultaneously.   Its an attempt to evade the face value of the accounts by creating an imaginative scenario.  This imaginative scenario you take to be 'fact,' even though it rests on at least as much evidence as my scenario.

It was a simple question.  To the extent that our forebearers came across dinosaur fossils, they would surely have tried to explain them.  Dragon stories could easily have come from that source.  You know this.  I know this.  We see the evidence in natural history museums.  You ought to visit one.  It wouldn't hurt to get out more.  

"but you must realize how silly you are being in offering the alternative hypothesis that dinosaurs existed for 65 million years and left no fossil record whatsoever."

And neither did the coelecanth.

But there is at least a plausible explanation for the dissappearance of that fish fossil.  The shallow water versions did die out.  Deep water fossils tend not to make it to surface exposure.  Dinosaurs, being land animals, left plenty of fossils.

"Well, maybe you don't. It's possible that you have no intuitive grasp of how long 1 million years is."

I always think its funny how evolutionists talk about how hard it is to grasp a million years, when in fact, they think that THEY grasp it.   This is neither here nor there, so moving on.

It is easy to grasp metaphorically.  There are 950,400 seconds in the span of 11 days.  Imagine yourself counting each and every second for just over 11 days.  So, if a year were a second, then dinosaur fossils disappeared roughly 70 days ago.  You are counting every second for well over 2 months.  If humans appeared 200,000 years ago, then that would be roughly equivalent to what?  Roughly 2-3 days of counting.

"I suspect that I'm being arrogant and gauche, but I do sometimes think that our ancestors were prone to ignorance and naivete about what they observed in nature. I have to admit my biased belief that modern-day scientists and scholars may be more knowledgable."

Yes, that sums it up well, I think.  The difference, however, is that this is not about knowledge, but intelligence.  We may very well have more knowledge today, but that doesn't mean we have more intelligence.  Furthermore, any and all knowledge that we possess today is based on the inheritance from previous generations.  You know multiple languages- but languages themselves would have needed to be invented.  Which takes more intelligence?  Who is 'smarter,' the one who learns calculus or the one that invents it?

Languages were never invented.  They evolved by instinct in humans, and every normal, healthy child, no matter how lacking in intelligence, becomes fluent in its native language.  I don't know whether one could say that we are more intelligent today than our ancestors were, but we certainly know more about what causes things to happen in nature.  I like Michael Shermer's point about intelligence--that intelligent people are exceptionally good at defending bad ideas.  And I have never accused you of being stupid, sntjohnny.    And the best stories are invented by those with the cleverest imaginations.

"Well, those animals are known to have coexisted with humans, because there are cave paintings and other archeological sources to attest to that fact. So you raise an intersting question. Why do we lack myths depicting those creatures in more detail than dragons? Here's my educated guess..... Dragons, on the other hand, would have been inspired by fossils that were present throughout recorded history. So those stories would have been based on memories that were fairly recent in time."

Well, I do appreciate the fact that you seriously considered my question.  I disagree with your analysis on some points.  However, you have moved from invoking singular, independant, yet global encounters with dinosaur bones (all at the same time, mind you) now to finding them 'throughout recorded history.'  You ask me "so where are the bones?"  Surely, now that you have invoked continuous discovery of dinosaur bones to prompt the dragon stories, the absense of these 'bones' hurts your hypothesis more than it does mine.  Also, I feel fairly confident that wooly mammoth bones were also available 'throughout recorded history,' and they have the additional benefit of being closer to the surface and more likely to mysteriously avail themselves to discovery.  But no great mythology.

What makes you think that mammoth bones never inspired fairy tales?  I don't know enough about Siberian folk tales, but I wouldn't be surprised if such things contributed to monster tales in local folklore.  What inspired the tales of giants in Norse mythology?  Neanderthal remains?  Who knows?  And who said anything about "continuous discovery"?  Dinosaur fossils aren't all that common.  They're just common enough to have inspired legends of dragons, however.  BTW, fossils are not really bones, just mineralized impressions of bones.   That, in itself, would have been scary to the primitive intellect.

"OK. Just to summarize this and make our positions clear, you maintain that legends of dragons were based on stories of human coexistence with real dinosaurs, even though the fossil record suggests that they became extinct 65 million years ago and modern humans did not come into existence until roughly 200,000 years ago."

No, that's not my position.   Close, but no cigar.

Since you failed to explain how it differs from your position, it's close enough for our purposes.  And I don't smoke, so you can keep your cigars.  

"I guess I'll just have to leave it up to readers to try to decide between these two possibilities."

You do that.  Because I have provided positive evidence, which you have continued to ignore, of an example of an organism that left no fossil record for the exact same amount of time that dinosaurs have been absent from the fossil record.

Which I have given a plausible explanation to.  Deep water vs. shallow water fossils.  That applies to fish, not dinosaurs.

Interestingly, my proposed scenario should not be in the least objectionable.  How could it be a serious challenge to evolutionary theory to suggest the possibility that there were a handful of dinosaurs left some thousands of years ago in remote parts that were hunted to extinction?  One could simply do as I've done and show how this is not wholly incompatible with evolutionary theory, as illustrated by the coelecanth or other 'living fossils.'

One does need some explanation for why dinosaur fossils disappeared.  We have at least some explanation for the disappearance of coelacanth fossils.

So why the venom?  Why the stark denunciations?  Why is it imperative to insist that dinosaurs were ABSOLUTELY extinct?  Two reasons.

1.  Admitting the possibility that humans may have co-existed with dinosaurs, and remaining consistent with the atheistic, materialistic, evolutionist worldview, nonetheless would provide those d*mn creationists with the tiniest of concessions.  Despite the fact that such stories are perfectly compatible with orthodox evolutionary theories, they are also compatible with orthodox YEC theories, too and d*mn it we can't have that.

The only venom I see is on your side, but I think that we should both focus on the issues rather than the motives of people debating the issues.  I have given you a more plausible explanation of dragon stories than that they somehow survived 65 million years without leaving fossils.  The dead fish example does not make your explanation of dragon tales smell any better.  

2.  In order to make the case in #1, it will require using examples from cryptozoology, for example the coelecanth, which as is indisputable (you haven't tried to dispute it- you've ignored it- wisely) as it is, allows that a mere absence from the fossil record does not observationally require the supposition that the organism actually has gone extinct.  But you need that assumption in order to justify your other extrapolations.  Instead of being willing to explore other possible explanations or interpretations of the fossil record, its easier to ignore 'living fossils' and flatly denounce even the theoretical possibility that homo sapiens 2,500-5,000 years ago- with the same EQ as us, mind you- may have been able to tell the difference between bones and a living organism...

I explained the coelacanth fossils in my last post.  You not only avoided mention of that here, but you falsely said that I made no response to your fish story.

Yes, I agree.  Let's just leave it to the reader to decide.

We agree on something, at least.  We hereby grant readers the right to make up their own minds.  By golly, we are generous, aren't we?  

"If YEC were true, then one would also expect to find human and dinosaur fossils coexisting."

lol, no you wouldn't.

Why not?  We find the coexisting with traces of other extinct animals.

"Yet, that has never been discovered ever. No dinosaur fossil younger than 65 million years has ever been discovered, and no modern human fossil/remains older than 200,000 years has ever been discovered. The gap in time scales makes your idea utterly fantastic."

rofl.  You do realize that if YEC were true, then these 'dates' must be re-cast?  How can you have a YEC pov while simultaneously embracing an old earth?  You do know what 'young earth' means?

lol

Sadly for your case, while the discovery of dinosaur fossils contemporaneous with human fossils would throw scientists into a tizzy, they would not negate the scientific findings based on radiological and other data.  They would have no bearing whatsoever on our methods for dating the age of the earth, the solar system, and the universe.  Scientific theories are rooted in corroborating evidence, which renders them harder to overturn than you imagine.  Movie makers would go wild, though.  

"So, why paintings of mammoths in caves and no dinosaurs? Oh, well, I'm sure that there's some good explanation."

You think it would make any difference?  I don't.  You would simply say that they had inferred the designs from the bones.  The fact that there are dinosaur stories but no mammoth stories raises the same problem for you.  The problem is that for you, mammoths would have actually been the largest creatures that they were directly familiar with.  'Dinosaurs' would have been mere creatures of the imagination.  Mammoths would have been their reality.  No great mythology about them, though.

Two things are worth noting in your response.  First you falsely accuse me of pooh-poohing such evidence before it happens.  Second, you offer no plausible explanation of how dinosaurs could inspire widespread tales of dragons but fail to make an appearance on the walls of caves inhabited by our ancestors.  Not even an attempt at an explanation.

"Of course not. So what could explain that huge gap? If you look at the current Wikipedia page on coelacanths, you'll find that scientists have come up with a plausible reason."

heh  "a plausible reason."  And that my friends is called begging the question.

It's called hypothesis formation by scientists.  It's a reasonable explanation for what we observe in nature--deep water coelacanths.  We have none for the lack of dinosaur fossils.

"It appears that most of the fossils were shallow water fish, and those shallow-water species became extinct."

Or they simply haven't been found yet.

Possibly.  We need deep water strata to test the hypothesis.  Most rock strata that we see were formed in shallow waters.

The crux of your explanation is that the process of fossilization cannot be treated as uniform, and you really need it to be uniform, or else it begins to strain credibility.  What about other 'living fossils' ?  You realize that there are many such examples, now?  I only used the coelecanth because it was said to have gone extinct AT THE SAME TIME as the dinosaurs.  Funny how this deep-sea/shallow-sea distinction didn't apply 65mya, but came to apply later.  (*cough* ad hoc post hoc *cough cough*)

Actually, the disappearance of coelacanth fossils was hundreds of millions of years earlier, not that it makes a difference here.  The deep/shallow explanation applies to all eras, including 65 million years ago.  Dinosaurs did not live in deep water, as far as we know.

"Right, and for the reasons that I gave above."

Let's not confuse an 'educated opinion' with a 'reason.'

You have exactly the same evidential basis that I do.  Furthermore, there is no reason, even given your dearly held assumptions, that legit encounters with dragons is precluded.  And yet its important for you to preclude it.  *shrug*

That's not my argument.  I do not absolutely preclude that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.  My argument is that the discovery of dinosaur fossils alone is enough to explain dragon tales.  We don't need to explain the 65 million-year gap in the fossil record.  What makes your claim absurd is that you do, even though you claim that your story has "exactly the same evidential basis".

"Then I can only recommend that you visit a natural history museum."

Oh, the natural history museum documents how the ancients created stories from dragons and provides actual evidence for this?  Yes, I'm on my way.

Don't let the door hit you in the rump on the way out.  

"The part where you seemed to think that the cross-cultural tales of dragons were significant. If the occurrence of dinosaurs was limited, one would expect the tales to be similarly limited. Of course, dinosaur fossils are not limited. They exist everywhere in the world."

http://www.paleodirect.com/woolymammoth1.htm

Quote

The oldest mammoth remains have placed the beginnings of the beasts in Africa but eventually, they migrated to Europe and Asia.  Around 1.7 million years ago, the Ancestral mammoth began reaching North America

Looks like mammoth fossils also existed everywhere in the world.  Too bad.  I was actually starting to think maybe you allowed facts to dictate the rationality of your 'reasons.'

Huh?    That web page is entirely consistent with what I have been saying, and it leaves you with a real puzzle:  Why no paintings of dinosaurs?  Here is a quote from that same web page:

In the latter years of the last Ice Age, the Woolly mammoth co-existed with humans such as the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon people.  Prehistoric cave paintings in France and Spain have been found with images of the Woolly mammoth including hunting scenes.  Throughout world regions where Woolly mammoths existed at the same times as humans, kill sites have been discovered where mammoth carcasses had been butchered.  At these sites, scientists have found both stone tools and mammoth bones displaying gashes and cuts,  evidence of cutting and scraping by humans using these stone tools.

I repeat:  We have clear evidence that humans and extinct animals coexisted.  Where is the evidence that humnans and dinosaurs coexisted?

"True. In this case, though, the legends were more likely based on bones."

So where are these bones?  You demand I provide them to substantiate the rationality of possibly actually seeing LIVING creatures, but your explanation posits that fossilized dinos were constantly found, independantly, across the globe, re-constructed without the aid of Stephen Jay Gould, over and over again.

No, my position is that fossils were common enough to have spawned widespread tall tales, not that they were "constantly found".

You're positing the existence of quite a few bones.

Dinosaur fossils are actually mineralized bones.  I have not posited the existence of "quite a few bones".  There are records of ancient discoveries that might well have been dinosaur fossils.  See the book that I mentioned earlier in the "Your Turn" thread.

One thing that occurs to me... knowing people the way that I know them... if they were going to create a fish story like this about seeing a great dragon, inspired, perhaps by finding these bones, by golly, part of my story is that I felled that beast!  And here are the bones to prove it....

I doubt that, but would that evidence be passed on to everyone who repeated the story?  You're really clutching at straws, sntjohnny.  Are you sure that you want to keep making this ridiculous claim about dragon tales?  It isn't necessary to believe that living dinosaurs actually inspired such tales.  Surely you must realize that, no matter how hard you try to inflate an argument that went flat long ago.

Are there Great White Hunter of Dragon myths to go along with the mere sighting and encounter of these dragons?  Or is it, in the main, just the encounters?  I believe its the latter, but its been a long time since I studied the matter.

At anyrate, where are the bones?  They form a much more substantial part of your explanation than they do mine.  If you demand them from me, the demand should substantially apply to you even more so?

Read the book.

Of course, all this is rhetorical, since as a man of your word, you won't be replying to this.

Keeping my word, I did not reply to it in the "Shoot the Bull" forum, where you hoped to bury it.  If you are so convinced that you have a case, let your argument be exposed where more people can see it.

I fully expect that this will be dismissed (because the bias is that this CAN'T exist), however it does provide the evidence you are seeking ... cave drawings in different parts of the world.  The cave drawings are on the second page, so be sure to click next at the bottom of the page.http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/history/history.htm

I haven't posted it earlier because I haven't had time to personally track down the sources carefully listed throughout.

iow, they won't bother to check the original sources - they'll just discount it right from the beginning - there's intellectual honesty if I ever heard it!

Yes, but you can be certain that as I work my way down the list I will be reading both arguments for the veracity of the evidence and arguments against it.  I have NO doubt that there are arguments against it because it just can't be true.  Like I said before, though, I don't see what the big deal is - it being true does not disprove macroE.

rofl.

In any case, although this has been an interesting sidebar, the historical evidence for the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs is not the main reason I believe in YEC - it is merely supportive of that belief.

I look at it from a different angle.  I think that your YEC belief causes you to ignore a perfectly good explanation for dragon stories that does not fly in the face of scientific observations.  This same presupposition causes you to ignore the fact that dinosaur fossils never occur in rock strata that contain human or even hominid fossils.  It also causes you ignore or discount factual evidence from radiometric dating (see Radiometric Dating.  A Christian Perspective).  You would rather believe that dragon stories are evidence that humans coexisted with dinosaurs, because you think that it supports your faith in a myth.

I've read different evolutionists saying that if humans did coexist with dinos it would devestate the evolutionary theory.  I really don't think so.  I don't think there is any discovery that could be conceived to falsify the TOE.  The bias behind it says it is the only possibility; therefore, whatever new information comes to light will not require a rethinking of the TOE itself, but only an adjusting to work around the new info.

If dinosaurs did coexist with humans, that would destroy not only the foundation of the science of biology (which is evolution), but it would also destroy that of geology (which paints an elaborate picture of the history of the earth).  Both evolution and geology only make sense if the earth has existed for roughly 4.5 billion years.  The YEC claim that it existed for only a few thousand years flies in the face of all scientific knowledge of the earth and its biosphere.  Since that is a hard pill to swallow, YECers like sntjohnny often spin elaborate tales about how the scientists could have got it wrong just so that the faithful can cling to their very misguided interpretation of the reality that we find ourselves in.