Mary Schweitzer’s research has been hijacked by “young earth” creationists, who insist that dinosaur soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive millions of years. They claim her discoveries support their belief, based on their interpretation of Genesis, that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
Yes, Perry. Science can be wrong. If particles of a dinosaur were able to hang around for 65 million years, maybe the textbooks were wrong about fossilization.
Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”
This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”
By definition, there is a lot that scientists don’t know, because the whole point of science is to explore the unknown. By being clear that scientists haven’t explained everything, Schweitzer leaves room for other explanations. “I think that we’re always wise to leave certain doors open,” she says.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html#ixzz2QopBxHnK "The data thus far seem to support the theory that these structures can be preserved over time," Schweitzer said of the find. "Hopefully these findings will give us greater insight into the processes of evolutionary change." This is the way science works. Lots of controversy over what it means, but the scientific community has to realize that some of what they thought was wrong. Thinking soft tissue cannot survive that long and then discovering some that did: That's a long way from moving dinosaurs up to less than 10,000 years ago. You can move the time charts to and fro for various new discoveries and theories, but it still doesn't get you under 50 million years. claims from both those supporting the idea that dinosaur tissue could have survived for millions of years, and those that think it’s nonsense, are likely to continue.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-06-evidence-dinosaur-soft-tissue.html#jCp claims from both those supporting the idea that dinosaur tissue could have survived for millions of years, and those that think it’s nonsense, are likely to continue.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-06-evidence-dinosaur-soft-tissue.html#jCp claims from both those supporting the idea that dinosaur tissue could have survived for millions of years, and those that think it’s nonsense, are likely to continue.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-06-evidence-dinosaur-soft-tissue.html#jCp
