"We have been looking at the fossil record as a general test of the notion that life has evolved: to falsify that general idea, we would have to show that forms of life we considered more advanced appear earlier than the simpler forms." (Monkey Business, p.46, 1982)
Such nonsense. "advanced" vs "simpler"? That reveals such a gross misunderstanding of evolution and of the fossil record and what we would expect from the fossil record in the light of evolution.
The "Ladder of Life" (depicted as an escalator in Jonathan Miller's brilliant cartoon book,
Darwin for Beginners (also 1982, so by then we already knew better than your unnamed creationist simpleton)) is an old
Lamarckian idea (or at least tied to Lamarckism) that evolution was a chain for gradation from the simplest types to the most complex. The Darwinian view that is held by evolution is that of a branching bush. So instead of seeing simple-to-complex, we would see transitions from an earlier form to a later form with the earlier form termed "primitive" because its modern characteristics are not yet fully developed.
Your quote displays great ignorance, as do you by presenting it.
BTW, I really do recommend to you
Darwin for Beginners by Jonathan Miller and Borin van Loon --
http://www.amazon.com/...han-Miller/dp/0375714588/ref=sr_1_1 at amazon.com for the 2003 reprint. Entertaining and yet it will help you to finally start to learn something about evolution, a subject that you have demonstrated you are woefully ignorant of.
FIGURE 1. These are photos from the AD 2004 fossil dinosaur and human footprint excavation. About 100 pristine fossil human footprints with hundreds of dinosaur fossil human footprints have been excavated together since 1982 and witnessed by 100's of scientists, teachers and other volunteers. This ledge is about eight feet above the Paluxy River TX. in ancient Cretaceous limestone rock, formerly limy mud. This is one of many excavations since 1982.
The above four photos were taken at the excavation On the Cretaceous Rock ledges along the Paluxy River, five miles S.W. of Glen Rose Texas along Rt. 202. It is 2 miles S.W. of the bridge spanning the Paluxy River & the Creation Evidences Museum. The city of Glen Rose is 65 miles S.W. of Dallas - Ft. Worth Metro area on Rt. 67. The above photos were taken during the annual five day early July 2004 excavation; in recent years a team of four or five men prepare the chosen site every year generally by removing the top rock by back hoe before the volunteers arrive. In 1982 when the first discoveries were made the rocks were generally removed by pneumatic drills, crow-bars and car jacks.
FIGURE 2. This 11 inch long fossil human footprint impression shown above was excavated on July 6, 1983 by Dr. Carl Baugh who then lived in Missouri. Hugh Miller and sons Kevin, Brian and Matt Miller along with Jeff Green drove from Columbus Ohio to participate from July 4 to July 6. Jeff is a nephew of Flavil Miller who in 1983 lived in Byesville OH and was the founder and president of the Creation Research Science Education Foundation that sponsored this expedition in 1983. This footprint is the third ichnite in a trail of five excavated from 1983 and 1988. It was the best of the five showing distinct toe tips, distinct heel prints, and aspect ratios characteristic of the human foot.
After my initial study of "creation science" starting in 1981, I first started to engage in on-line discussion in the mid-1980's on CompuServe. We had one creationist there, Paul Ekdahl, who was near-legendary in that he never ever posted anything that he himself had written, but rather he would retype verbatim long passages from creationist books, such as one by ICR lawyer Wendell Bird. And his verbatim transcription of those books was so slavish that he even included references to footnotes, even though he never included the footnotes themselves. That showed us that he wasn't even applying any thought to what he was transcribing.
Your post there, referring to figures that you did not even post, reminded me so much of Paul Ekdahl. Though he did finally post a couple message of his own, which were nothing be attempts to convert us. Such sad, pathetic creatures these creationists are.
Also, the Paluxy tracks have been known for decades to be bogus. Not the dinosaur tracks themselves, which are real, but rather the so-called "man tracks". Even most creationists no longer try to use them, which shows how discredited they are.
As a start, read through Glen Kuban's site,
The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy. He has spent many years on the site doing his research. He is a good source for you to finally get the truth about those claims.
That area has been well known for dinosaur tracks for the better part of the last century. In the 1930's, one of the local industries was to carve footprints and sell them to tourists. One such carving is one that was referred to by one of your links in the "giants" "discussion", the so-called
Burdick Print, with the locals recognizing the carving technique of one George Adams from the 1930's. In his article, Kuban goes extensively through the carving's history and microscopic examination.
Part of my introduction to "creation science" was the single one-hour PBS program,
Creation vs Evolution: Battle in the
Classroom (KPBS-TV, aired 7 July 1982 -- because cable on base went out until the last few minutes of the broadcast, I ordered the transcript) -- besides covering the Arkansas trial of 1981 and Ray Baird's disasterous "balanced-treatment" class in Livermore, Calif (1981), that resulted in some of his elementary-grade students obeying the creationist instructional materials and deciding to become atheists, this was the program where ICR's Duane Gish made his infamous and deliberately bogus
BullFrog Protein claim. The program also interviewed a paleontologist who has worked the Paluxy riverbed for dinosaur footprints -- I would need to locate that transcript buried away in a box somewhere to get his name. He recounted how some creationists had found a "man print" and brought him over to verify it. When he saw it, he had to admit that that bean-shaped depression did look suggestive, but it was obviously nothing more than an erosional mark. Of course, the creationists were disappointed. But then a short time later he was on a field trip with some students, so he decided to show them one of those "man tracks" that they kept hearing the creationists crowing about. They got there and found that since he had last seen it, it had sprouted five human toes. Clearly, the local art of carving human footprints had not died out.
Let's face it, Scotty, that part of Texas is long known for carving fake prints in order to swindle the rubes. And that tradition for swindling rubes is still alive and well, with you being part of the newest generation of rubes. Of course, it doesn't help that one group of rubes (the creationists) is in turn swindling other groups of rubes (new creationists).
Not that all the creationist "man track" fakery there has been done by carving. There was a famous/infamous creationist film,
Footprints in Stone, about the Paluxy tracks. In 1981, a review of the film reported this ("
An Analysis of the Creationist Film, Footprints in Stone" by Laurie R. Godfrey,
Creation/Evolution Journal, Fall 1981, Vol.2, No.4, pp 23-30):
quote:
Early this year I rented a copy of the film and showed it at a special colloquium to an audience of approximately one hundred persons, including college undergraduates, graduate students, and several faculty (geologists, biologists, and anthropologists) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It became quickly apparent that no one was impressed. One physical anthropologist left halfway through the film; he later remarked that he found the movie to be terribly uninteresting and unconvincing. "If that's the best those creationists can do," he grumbled, "we needn't worry about their proselytizing efforts at all." Several of the students could not contain themselves from laughing derisively at the movie. One commented, "Why, even the filming techniques were amateurish." There was even a creationist in the audience who was left with the same doubtful opinion of the Paluxy "human" footprints. She even advised creationist Al Beeber to remove from the lecture-slide show on "scientific creationism," which he presented to our campus a month later, the slides on the Paluxy River "dinomen" on the grounds that the evidence was "no good."
. . .
Why, then, the dramatically negative response to Footprints in Stone?
Perhaps it was the fact that every time the film showed an alleged human footprint I stopped its motion, thus allowing the audience to examine the "man print." The "man prints" had been darkened, with either shellac or oil, making them look far more humanlike than they would have otherwise. Indeed, the "man prints" all but disappeared when we viewed the stopped close-ups, ignoring the superimposed outlines. In some cases we could see that the "man print" was only a portion of a larger impression, probably a print made by a dinosaur. In other cases the shellac seemed to connect erosional depressions. We could further imagine how easy it might be to find impressions on such a rough surface which could be painted in such a way as to reveal the outline of a "human" foot.
That review is a very good read, because it also gets into how actual footprints will often become distorted by the ground that they are made in, especially if it's marshy or muddy. One such case came up with some "man tracks" that turned out to be tridactyl (that means "three-toed"; from what I've seen of your posts so far, I know I cannot assume any knowledge on your part) dinosaur footprints that had been partially filled back in with mud, such that the three toes and their claws were obscured ... at first. But then after those prints had been exposed to the air and material in that print boundary had started to oxidize, the original outline of the tridactyl dinosaur print reappeared.
And several other lines of evidence, including the stride lengths of the "man tracks", all show that they are not human.
Yet again, you post nonsense "evidences" that are not only totally bogus, but
we have all known them to be bogus for at least three decades! You have a lot of catching-up to do.
When you visit Glen Kuban's site, you will find some links that examine "giant men" claims, such as Ed Babinski's research into a claim by Carl Baugh, based on a "photograph" that is an obvious drawing and not even a good one (an artist upon seeing it immediately remarked how all the light sources were completely wrong). The story is at
Men Over Ten Feet Tall. The really interesting part of the story to me was how the creationists who stood to gain the most from Babinski's attempts to verify their claims were more than totally disinterested. As if they already knew that he would never find anything, because they already knew that their claims were completely bogus.
Oh, and also on Glen Kuban's site is an article on that "human hand impression" you mentioned,
Alleged Human Hand Print in Cretaceous Rock. Yet another carving, rube.
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