Confronting Dinosaurs - Part 2

This post is a continuation of the previous one entitled Confronting Dinosaurs.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

And it's not as though there was only one period of prehistoric creatures. The fossil record shows beyond doubt that there were numerous distinct periods. The therapsids lived before the dinosaurs; the dinosaurs lived before the mammoths. And even among dinosaurs, different layers of rock reveal distinct eras. Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Allosaurus are never found in the same layers of rock as Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and Velociraptor. The conclusion is that each existed in a different period; the former lived in a period which has been termed the Jurassic, while the latter lived in the Cretaceous period. This is not part of some evil conspiracy by scientists, nor the result of mistakes on their part. Any paleontologist could win instant fame by finding a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil in Jurassic rocks - but nobody has ever done so, which shows that T-Rex lived much later, in the Cretaceous.

Unfortunately, it shows no such thing. Anytime supposedly later fossils are found in supposedly earlier beds or vice versa, evolutionists simply cut up the beds to conform to the dictates of the theory. If Rabbi Slifkin actually bothered to study evolutionary geology, he would know this. The fact is, geologists already knew – over one hundred years ago! – that supposedly earlier strata are regularly interbedded among later strata. And not merely in one isolated instance. This phenomenon occurs frequently all over the globe!

Furthermore, the fossil record Rabbi Slifkin puts so much faith in (The fossil record shows beyond doubt that there were numerous distinct periods) is entirely bogus. Sometimes Jurassic is found before Cretaceous, sometimes after. This disparity is so frequent that in order for evolutionary geologists to account for it they have been forced to come up with a fantastic mechanical explanation called “overthrusting”. They don’t know how it works; they only know that it works. Why? Because they need it to work! When challenged with the idea that such incredible movements of the strata are invoked by evolutionary geologists solely due to the fact that fossiliferous strata happen to be found in an order that contradicts their theories, one writer (a famous Swiss evolutionary geologist) responded as follows: 

the most incredible mechanical explanation is more probable than that the evolution or organic nature should have been inverted in one country, as compared with another

It is upon such nonsense that Rabbi Slifkin puts all his trust, allowing himself to be duped while simultaneously duping others. The above has been discussed numerous times on this blog wherein the scientific literature has been delineated, chapter and verse. Don’t believe the hype! There is absolutely nothing about the existence of dinosaur fossils or the order of the beds they are found in that contradicts the timeline of our mesora in any way.

Confronting Dinosaurs

In a recent post, Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

How do you evaluate whether a professed expert on Torah and science is worth his salt? One step (of many) is to see whether he is ready to confront dinosaurs… whether he is ready (and has already thought about) some very basic questions. Like, when the dinosaurs live? Did they live at the same time as people? Did they all live at the same time as each other? And if so, why are their fossils consistently found in different layers of rock?

Ahhh… dinosaurs. Again. Evolutionary scientists claim that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. Combined with their remarkable structure and categorical absence in today’s zoological landscape, dinosaurs have become the very image of the purported Torah-Science loggerhead. Indeed, Rabbi Slifkin’s primary Torah-Science book has a picture of T-Rex prominently featured on the cover.

But here’s the thing. Dinosaurs are actually the easiest thing to answer! The truth is, the dino problem is nothing more than evolutionary dogma combined with media hype. Dinosaurs went extinct some time in the past just as countless other life-forms. Extinction is an ongoing reality which most-likely attended the biological condition from its very inception. So what? Extinction has nothing to do with age. There are over 750 documented species that went extinct in the past 500 years alone. Dino fossils don’t come with an “age” stamp. Fossilization occurs rapidly and there’s no way to know how old a fossil actually is.   

Rabbi Slifkin misleads his readers (or perhaps himself) by asking:  

Did they all live at the same time as each other? And if so, why are their fossils consistently found in different layers of rock?

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Dinosaur fossils are consistently found in identical rock layers. All one has to do is study the material. But rather than conducting a proper scientific investigation of the material at hand, Rabbi Slifkin chooses to base his conclusions on sensationalist stories in low level media outlets. This blog has already demonstrated on numerous occasions that dino fossils are often found in identical layers and it is merely evolutionary dogma which dupes the public into thinking otherwise. Rabbi Slifkin has no business writing the things that he does. His blog is supposed to be an explication of the “rationalist” approach to Judaism. Rationalists form their opinions based on empirical observation, not subjective belief.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

Interestingly, the Christian Young Earth Creationists (YECs) are eager to confront dinosaurs… Yet there is no parallel to this amongst Orthodox Jewish YECs. Whether they ultimately claim that dinosaur bones are an incredible work of art created by God, or that they lived before the Flood, one finds that Orthodox YECs simply do not want to discuss the topic at all.

Actually, I find this comment insulting. I am an Orthodox Jewish YEC and I have spent countless hours, days, weeks, months, and even years discussing dinosaurs. I personally have penned several dozen posts on this blog dealing with this issue and in fact have discussed it directly with Rabbi Slifkin in online debates and even discussed it with him in person when he came to Toronto. My Rebbi, Rav Avigdor Miller, spent sixty years discussing the issue of dinosaurs. His books are readily available. Rabbi Slifkin’s comment is simply false.

Here’s some more from the good Rabbi:

Forget abstract jargon about radioactive decay and cesium atoms. Think about something tangible and familiar, such as animal life. The fossil evidence clearly shows that there were dinosaurs and all kinds of other creatures which lived before people (since no fossils of contemporary creatures are found in the same strata).

Once again, this claim is simply false. Here's something "tangible and familiar". Dino fossils were recently found on the North Slope of Alaska in the exact same location that old cow bones would be expected to be found.  

Dinosaurs pose no problem to our mesorah. The Torah states that Hashem Created all life forms recently over a period of six days. Science provides no evidence to the contrary and in fact all the available evidence points to rapid creation.  

Whale Evolution and Skepticism

"But has Rabbi Shafran applied his professed "critical thinking" to the alternate understanding of life's development that is taught in his circles? Does he really think that the available physical evidence better supports the notion that whales were created independently, with striking internal similarities to terrestrial mammals, and an inability to breathe underwater like fish, and following a whole chain of extinct creatures that were progressively less terrestrial, rather than indicating that they are actually descended from terrestrial mammals?" 

[R. Slifkin, July 21, 2015]

What does it take, in an engineering sense, to transform a car into a submarine? Quite a bit. And quite a bit of intelligence.

The same is true of transforming a land based mammal like a cow into a whale. There is very little (if any) hard scientific evidence for whale evolution. At least not through apparently unguided processes such as random mutation and natural selection.

Does R. Slifkin really have actual evidence that that whales evolved from a land animal in a few million years? Other than fanciful drawings with only a few so-called "transitional" fossils?

(see pdf for enlarged view)

In the drawing, on the left, is the supposed sequence of transitional fossils from a fully terrestrial animal (like a cow) at the bottom -- to a fully aquatic whale at the top -- in about 10 million years on the evolutionary time scale.

On the right -- is a recent fossil find showing a fully aquatic whale in just the wrong place in the sequence.

Argentine paleontologist Marcelo Reguero, who led a joint Argentine-Swedish team, said the fossilized archaeocete jawbone found in February dates back 49 million years. In evolutionary terms, that's not far off from the fossils of even older proto-whales from 53 million years ago that have been found in South Asia and other warmer latitudes. 

Those earlier proto-whales were amphibians, able to live on land as well as sea. This jawbone, in contrast, belongs to the Basilosauridae group of fully aquatic whales, said Reguero, who leads research for the Argentine Antarctic Institute. 

"The relevance of this discovery is that it's the oldest known completely aquatic whale found yet," said Reguero, who shared the discovery with Argentine paleontologist Claudia Tambussi and Swedish paleontologists Thomas Mors and Jonas Hagstrom of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm.

[Oct. 2011, www.nbcnews.com. The handout drawing on the right is released by the Argentine Direccion Nacional del Antartico shows an artist`s rendition of an Antartic Archaeocetes, after fossils of the creature were found at the La Meseta formation, near the Marambio Base in the Argentine-run area of the Antarctica.]

Until now, the whale series went something like this:

Pakicetids (fully terrestrial): ~50 mya
Ambulocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Remingtonocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Rodhocetus (a Protocetid, semi-aquatic): 47 mya
Basilosaurids (fully aquatic): 40 mya

Now the timeline looks something like this:

Pakicetids (fully terrestrial): ~50 mya
New Fossil Jawbone (fully aquatic whale): 49 mya
Ambulocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Remingtonocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya
Rodhocetus (a Protocetid, semi-aquatic): 47 mya
Basilosaurids (fully aquatic): 40 mya

The fossil record now might jump from fully terrestrial Pakicetids to fully aquatic whales in just a couple million years -- maybe much less than 5 million years [at least according to the shaky dating systems of evolutionists]. In fact, if this find has been correctly identified, then fully aquatic whales might have existed before many of their alleged semi-aquatic evolutionary precursors.[1]

Now I think it is pretty amazing that evolutionists can reconstruct a whole whale from a jaw-bone. But they do this kind of thing all the time. Below is a reconstruction of an important "transitional fossil"  in R. Slifkin's fossil sequence.

(see pdf for enlarged view)

From a few fossils like a skull and a pelvis, Wikipedia shows a fanciful reconstruction of Rodhocetus. Rodhocetus is claimed to be a semi-aquatic mammal developing flippers and a whale-like tail. However there is no fossil evidence for these whale-like properties. I have superimposed red stars on the critical parts that are missing from the actual fossil evidence.  

As Richard Sternberg and others have argued, there are quite a few changes that have to appear in just a few million years in going from a land mammal to a whale [2]:

• Counter-current heat exchanger for intra-abdominal testes
• Ball vertebra
• Tail flukes and musculature
• Blubber for temperature insulation
• Ability to drink sea water (reorganization of kidney tissues)
• Reverse orientation of fetus in the uterus
• Nurse young underwater (modified mammal)
• Forelimbs transformed into flippers
• Reduction of hind limbs
• Reduction/loss of pelvis and sacral vertebrae
• Reorganization of the musculature for the reproductive organs
• Hydrodynamic properties of the skin
• Special lung surfactants
• Novel muscle systems for the blowhole
• Modification of the teeth
• Modification of the eye for underwater vision
• Emergence of expansion of the mandibular fat bad with complex lipid distribution (the fat pad has acoustic properties)
• Reorganization of skull bone
• Modification of the ear bones
• Decoupling of esophagus and trachea
• Synthesis and metabolism of isovaleric acid (toxic to terrestrial mammals)
• Emergence of blowhole musculature and their neurological control

New genes and proteins would have to be adapted or "invented" along the way. To form even a few proteins is well beyond the probabilistic resources of life on earth or the even the universe, even at billions of years proposed in evolutionary time scales. All the changes would have to be co-ordinated to develop a new body plan.

In fact, evolutionist do not even have a single detailed Darwinian pathway that could account for even one of the significant morphological changes needed to convert this speculation of whale evolution into serious science.

Here is a video of the  incorrigible Dr. Berlinksi that evolutionist love to hate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iFnyCjcodY

[1] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/discovery_of_oldest_fully_aqua052021.html 

[2] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/discovery_of_oldest_fully_aqua052021.html