The s8intcom Blogger

By Chris Parker, s8int.com Copyright 2011
Slide/Movie Transcript: This article is the Transcript to the 15 minute video below. If you want to see all four of the “dinosaurs” we discuss (Ancient Central American), plus the comparisons with modern depictions, then you need to either view the video or the Slide Presentation

Romans 1 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

If Science is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world, as defined by Wikipedia, then Christianity, if true has nothing to fear from science. Question: does science as currently pursued have anything to fear from God?

And how have the advances in modern science impacted the veracity of the Genesis account?

The Universe cannot have been eternal and cannot be eternal because entropy exists. The universe is winding down. At some point then, the universe was created or came into being. The first law of physics; conservation of matter and energy tells us that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Thus this universe exists outside of natural law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE_P-Jy0TmsT

Watch at Youtube

The cells of everything alive contain a complex language known as DNA that directs all activity of the cell and provides the building blocks for life itself. The information in a single cell of bacteria is staggering; enough to fill every book in your local library several times over. Your body has trillions of cells.

Our experience tells us that language is the product of intelligence.

Significant areas of disagreement between Genesis and science include the origin of life and the age of the earth. Science has not discovered how life began; in fact there are literally hundreds of competing and mutually exclusive “scientific” theories concerning life’s origin. Science insists that whatever the process life had to have begun billions of years ago. Genesis tells us that God created all life-in six days.

It would seem then that the age of the universe is important in the contest between science and Genesis. Some Christians have attempted to integrate their Bible beliefs along with the extreme ages given by science. Yet, there is scientific evidence that the universe is young. Robert Gentry PhD has found Polonium Halos in granite rock around the world. Yet polonium has a half life of only about three minutes. If the magna had been cooling over millions of years as science claims these “halos” should have been destroyed.

The moon’s orbit averages a distance of 238,855 miles away from the earth. The moon moves away from the earth every year by 1.5 inches. If the universe is truly 4.5 billion years old, then the moon should have moved an additional 106,500 miles away.

One of the most pervasive challenges to Genesis it seems is the age of the dinosaurs. The Genesis account would testify that dinosaurs were created at the same time as the other creatures. Yet, dinosaurs do not currently exist.

Is science correct when it claims that dinosaurs died out more than 65 million years ago despite the fact that nearly all ancient cultures had memories of large reptiles known as dragons? The dinosaur problem is one that seems to support an old earth age and at the very least convert the Genesis account into a non-literal creation story-or so it would seem to some.

No creature is more thoroughly described in scripture than the dinosaurs behemoth and leviathan at the end of the book of Job. However, even some Christians assert that the scripture there is only describing a hippo.

But something is amiss; for example; Argentinosaurus, a titanosaurus whose fossil remains were found in Argentina, was estimated to weigh up to 100 tons and to have a length of between 90 and 115 feet. The hippopotamus stands at 4.5 to 5 feet tall and 13 feet long. These creatures are shown to scale here. If one believes that God created all creatures then behemoth had to be a dinosaur!

Fortunately, this is something that we can investigate ourselves. Did our ancient ancestors, unfettered by Darwinism, make images of dinosaurs in such a way as to prove that they lived among them? If not, how would Christians reconcile this lack of evidence with a young earth and special creation?

Ancient Central America

Ancient Central America was the land of the Corobici, Cariari, Chorotega, Diquis, BriBri, Chibcha, Chiriqui, Caribe, Nicoya, Guayabo, Talamanca, and among others! The ancient American pre Hispanic civilizations spanned the time period of between 2000 B.C. and 1600 A.D. and because of advanced farming techniques their cities preceded the cities and civilizations of Europe.

They left a testimony in the form of magnificent art, artifacts and stone monuments. The creatures that they memorialized in their art were expressive, intricate and at times very realistic.

Diquis Culture, Reptile Pendant
The Diquis culture of Costa Rica is best known for the giant stone balls that have been found there. This story is about a gold pendant created by the Diquis culture.

Plesiosaurs have been traditionally divided into two major sub-groups; the long-necked, small headed “elasmosaurs” and the short-necked, larger headed “pliosaurids. These sub groups are somewhat arbitrary.

Dolichorhynchops (top, left of this post) was one of those short necked, large headed pliosaurs. Dolichorhynchops (dolly) is thought to have grown up to 18 feet long and to have dined on squid and other soft fishes. The remains of this animal were found in North America. According to current scientific belief, this creature became extinct about 65 million years ago.

Here is a soft plush toy version of Dolichorhynchops from Everything Dinosaur.

Here .is a “Reptile Pendant” from the Diquis culture, made of gold from Costa Rica, circa AD 500-1550. The source is the Robert Dowling gallery. “All works of art are guaranteed to be authentic and as described, unconditionally, for as long as you own them.”

A closer look at this “reptile pendant” reveals that it is in fact a depiction of one of the short necked plesiosaurs, known as pliosauridae.

Here it is compared to Dolichorhynchops and to pliosaur, another possibility. In any case, the depiction is clear. Here is an animal declared by science to be extinct for 65 million years accurately depicted in gold by a civilization less than 2000 years old.

Science appears to be off by about 65 million years. Score one for Genesis.

Alligator Ware

W. H. Holmes in his 19th century book the “Ancient Art of the Province of Chiriquí”, defined a class of clay objects as alligator ware. These objects were said to feature an alligator (reptile) motif. “The designs range from the rather realistic to the most highly conventionalized representations of the animal. A small number of these vessels are modeled to resemble in form this same reptile.” …C. V. HARTMAN

Even as early as the late 1800’s Darwinism had caused scientists to be circumspect about “reptiles” and attributed many reptile or dragon depictions as depictions of the alligator. In fact, some of the depictions really were representations of the alligator.
Here are a few examples of the “alligator” motive from the 1888 book by W.H. Holmes. Some may see the alligator in these depictions but it seems that the ancient Costa Ricans might have been familiar with the dinosaur. These however are not the object of specific interest here.

The Chiriquí culture was an ancient Central American culture that flourished between 800 and 1200 A.D. Chiriquí means valley of the moon.

The American Anthropologist, Volume 9 of the American Anthropological Association, 1907, published a picture of Chiriquí alligator ware which had been excavated from a gravesite near San Jose, Costa Rica. The piece in question was obtained for the Carnegie Museum from Dr George Grant MacCurdy, of the Yale University Museum and is furthered described as a tripod vase.

According to Wikipedia, “Ceratosaurus was a fairly typical theropod, with a large head, short forelimbs, robust hind legs, and a long tail.” The name means “horned lizard”, in reference to the horn on its nose. It was characterized by large jaws with blade-like teeth, a large, blade-like horn on the snout and a pair of hornlets over the eyes.

Uniquely among theropods, Ceratosaurus possessed dermal armor, in the form of small osteoderms running down the middle of its back. The tail of Ceratosaurus comprised about half of the body’s total length. Of course, ceratosaurus and his bi-pedal dinosaur brethren supposedly went extinct 65 million years ago.

But did they? Let’s look more closely at this alligator ware from the Chiriquí culture and remember the description of ceratosaurus; bi-pedal, snout and eyelet horns, dermal armor in the form of osteoderms running down his back. Osteoderms are bony deposits forming scales, plates or other structures in the dermal layers of the skin.

It doesn’t appear to represent an alligator at all. Instead it looks much more like a theropod dinosaur and several are shown here for comparison. In fact, the horns and the dermal armor make it appear to be a specific type of theropod, the meat eating and ferocious ceratosaurus—or a close cousin.

Science appears to be off on its extinction by about 65 million years.

What do you think? Alligator or dinosaur?

South American Idol

In March of 2011, Paleontologists announced the discovery of a flat headed dinosaur dubbed O. quilombensis in Brazil. The dinosaur was thought to be related to the spinosaurids. “Spinosaurid heads in general resemble [those of] alligators—that’s a common feature,” Kellner a paleontologist stated.

A more well known and possibly related flat headed dinosaur was Suchomimus (“crocodile mimic”) which also had a flat, alligator like head. And yes, flat-headed and alligator like dinosaurs are thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago.
These alligator headed and flat headed dinosaurs put me in mind of something I had seen in an old book.

Ometepe is an island formed by two volcanoes rising from Lake Nicaragua in the Republic of Nicaragua . The peoples there inhabited the island it is thought beginning from 2000 to 500 B.C.

In the book; The Native Races, Volume 4, By Hubert Howe Bancroft, published in 1886, on page 39 of the section; Nicaraguan Antiquities, we find the following quote and drawing.

“Ometepec, rich in pottery and other relics, and reported also to contain idols, has yielded to actual observation only the small animal couchant (couchant means in a lying position) represented in the cut.

It was secretly worshipped by the natives for many years, even in modern times, until this unorthodox practice was discovered and checked by zealous priests. This animal idol was about fourteen inches long and eight inches in height.”

The creature identified as an “idol” appears to be some type of reptile. Its length of legs and other features suggests that it is not an alligator or a crocodile. In fact, it appears to resemble very closely that group of dinosaurs that we now call alligator like or alligator mimics. Could this be another example of a creature out of time? Out of Darwin time, that is.

The Full Armor of God? Or Darwin?

According to Wikipedia, Ankylosaurs, a group of armored dinosaurs were among the last group of dinosaurs standing going extinct 65 million years ago, wiped out by the “KT extinction”. These armored dinosaurs are said by Darwinists to have evolved their armored defense over millions of years, beginning millions of years ago.

Genesis on the other hand claims that these creatures were created as is with their armor in place—not that long ago. A related group; in fact it may be the same group differentiated by sex or the Nodosaurs which are basically the ankylosaurs without the club tails.

It would serve here to simply look at a number of Nodosaurs.

The Museo De Jade is located in San Jose, Costa Rica and is located on the 11th floor of the Institute for National Security (INS). The building is easy to locate but the museum entrance is off to the left side as you approach the main entrance. The exhibit is the largest American jade collection in the world (over 6,000 works of pre-Columbian art and jewelry). All of their exhibits are not jade and their collection comes from all over the Americas, including ancient North America.

As you can see this ancient South American depiction looks quite a bit like a nodosaurine armored dinosaur. Its very difficult to claim that it represents anything else-though I’m sure that Darwinists will so claim. Don’t worry about the lack of clubbed tail; plenty of armored dinosaurs did not have one.

There were a number of closely related types of nodosaurs so we won’t try to identify the exact type.

What do you think? Who is responsible for the armor on these creatures and did they become extinct 65 million years ago?

Tags: dinosaur human interaction, Dinosaurs in Literature, pre columbian dinosaurs
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