Thread: Here be Dinosaurs??? Board: Dead Horses / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Clemency (# 16173) on :
 
Some wisdom please! A friend who is a Creationist (which I definitely am not) showed me a book comparing representations of dragons, from cultures all over the world, with modern reconstructions of dinosaurs - and some seemed awfully close to be just coincidence. Check out the saurians on Bishop Bell's 1421 brass in Carlisle Cathedral (plenty about them online) for instance. His take is that they were all created c 4000 BC and went to make Noah's Ark a Jurassic Park, then died out more recently (but maybe a few are still around...). I can't see that - but what is the explanation? Dreams that descend in our genes from the days when we were little furry things doing our best to avoid either being gobbled or trodden on? Medieval palaeontologists as skilled as those today? Ideas welcome....
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I've heard it said that depictions of dragons are surprisingly consistent across cultures separated by great distances. Chinese dragons, for instance, aren't very different in appearance from those in western art - so some would claim that they derive from depictions of actual creatures ...

I've even heard a rather fundie Orthodox Christian (a convert) claim that because icons don't contain anything that isn't true, then dragons must have existed because St George is shown killing one.



I don't know whether I've got any wisdom to share on this one. Save to say to your Young Earth Creationist friend, 'Don't be daft ...'

I don't think I've ever seen any medieval depictions of dragons that show anything that looks like a brontosaurus.

Have you?

They all look like veloceraptors on speed.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
hosting/

I have an idea. Pursuant to the Board Guidelines, let's send this to Dead Horses. Now.

/hosting
 

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Posted by Anglican't (# 15292) on :
 
Co-incidence?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Whoops ...

Just looked up the saurians on Bishop Bell's brass.

There are also Google images of what look like stegosaurs in medieval carving.

Goodness me. I repent. Come back YEC-ists. All is forgiven.
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
Here is something that purports to be a skeptics' debunking of the Bishops Bell claims. I'm not sure of all the science involved(eg. What exactly were the 3D artists reproducing, if they never even knew about the original artwork?)

The salient thing for a scientific illiterate like me is the comparison of the two photos.

[ 04. November 2016, 19:41: Message edited by: Stetson ]
 

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Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
Practically the same problem occurs with the YEC, unless they actually were in just pre-columbus Scottish lowlands!
So you get lots of European/Middle East/North Africa contact.

Also a pictures I found seemed to come back to the one website (which I'm not trusting with my PC), so there's just a little bit that makes me wonder.
 

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Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
Reconstructions of dinosaurs have a fair amount of artists' impression about them, and the representations of dragons were created by artists. Both were inspired by previous art but also by other known, natural creatures such as crocodiles and large birds of prey. A lot of art of St. George depicts something very crocodile-like. There's also some very horse-like features in dragon heads. Add in snakes and other reptiles and you've got enough motifs in the natural world that mean that imagined large lizards are going to end up not dissimilar to artists' impressions of real large lizards. The mistake is to thing that the common source material need be either dinosaurs or dragons.
 

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Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
[finishing the sentence]
So you get lots of European/Middle East/North Africa contact. Perhaps some Chinese/Indian Ocean/etc... but limited space for a lost world.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Hmm. The reason the dinosaurs are called terrible lizards is because the paleontologists thought they looked like lizards.

eg. scroll down on this daft page: dragonish lizard

Or this more sensible one: Texas Horned Lizard

Or this one: Green Basilisk LIzard

Just do an image search on lizards - the page is crawling with dragons.

[ 04. November 2016, 19:56: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
I expect that ancient peoples dug up and saw fossils on all continents where we find the fossils today. It's pretty easy to conjecture based on that. Though interestingly, in western Canada where there are many high quality skeleton fossils, there is no tradition parallel ideas such as the OP suggests. It would also be easy to consider that none of the Old World cultures developed their ideas independently. China was in contact with the Middle East in years B.C.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
That'll do for me, Stetson. If apparently saurian creatures were depicted on Bishop Bell's memorial brass then we'd expect to see images of them in far more places than a Creationist website.

Looks highly suspicious to me.3
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
A bit tangential, but...

A few years back, I read a newspaper article about a study in which monkeys who had never seen reptiles before reacted with fear when shown photos of snakes. The conclusion drawn was that higher mammals, at least, are hardwired by natural-selection to dislike the mere appearance of reptiles.

If true(usual science-reporting caveats apply), that would mean our culturally antagonistic relationship with reptiles has some pretty deep roots. Though one can observe that dragons in the Far East are often seen as friendly.
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 
Arethosemyfeet is very patient in demonstrating the utter unnecessity of the spectacular failure of reason that equates dragons with a race memory of dinosaurs from when were rats.
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
One word? Fossils.
 

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Posted by Clemency (# 16173) on :
 
Fossils as an explanation? - it took a long time to get to our current reconstructions of dinosaurs, as anyone who has seen the charming early Victorian versions in the Crystal Palace grounds will realise. Palaeontology just was not there in the 15th century - and most dinosaur remains come from the USA anyway. And there are plenty of images of Bishop Bell's saurians on line - I gather the Cathedral authorities are tired of YEC people coming to see them and have a heavy rug over the brass now. 4000 BC, medieval palaeontologists, race memory from when we were rats - no, we need something else, some out-of-the-box thinking...
 

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Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
I suppose if I had never seen an elephant, nor a picture of one, and someone told me to draw an elephant, and told me that they had heard from someone else that elephants had four legs like tree trunks and a tail and a long wavey thing at the front with a nose on the end of it (You mean a long neck and a smallish kind of head? Yeah, I suppose), then I might indeed come up with something that looked a bit like a brontosaurus.

Alternatively, it's Nessie.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
It looks like pareidolia to me. We interpret the image through our culture-bound glasses.

And don't forget the spaceman carved on a buttress of Salamanca cathedral (or the dragon eating an ice-cream cone).
 

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Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
I'm struggling to find many online, (though Bishop Bell died in 1496, so the date seems a bit ropey, which doesn't help searching). (Though think now found 3 separate potential image lines*).

In any case though there's enough Saurian 'Dragon' pictures to be worthy of debate.

So I guess the first thing to do, is make sure the separate possibilities stay separate. Don't let them have the advantages of shifting century for each point. To have their cake and eat it, either or a mixture is fine.

Are they claiming sustainable dinosaur populations were in 15th C Britain, while so keep the consequences of that in mind. Similarly for any other modern civilizations.

If claiming a cultural meme (for want of a better word) from a (proposed) earlier time of overlap. Then it would need some transmission, and you'd expect to see proportionate traces, depending on how specific the details are (or if the description would be sufficiently vague to overlap with a bad description of a giraffe or crocodile, then we can't tell which it's meant to be, and it's easy to imagine hearing about those).

If blending the two, you have the problems as well as the advantages.

If claiming divine inspiration, then what for?
If not shown on the ark or being hunted by suitable dressed people, then it's not showing anything with regards to dates. It's no more or less a miracle to show something from 5000 years as 65 million, but then again that doesn't have much purpose.


*one did have some of other pictures (including one identified as an Aardvark), and some others as more british animals (which don't really resemble them either)
hoping neither of the 2 I tested have done anything bad to PC.
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

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Originally posted by Clemency:
Fossils as an explanation? - it took a long time to get to our current reconstructions of dinosaurs, as anyone who has seen the charming early Victorian versions in the Crystal Palace grounds will realise. Palaeontology just was not there in the 15th century - and most dinosaur remains come from the USA anyway. And there are plenty of images of Bishop Bell's saurians on line - I gather the Cathedral authorities are tired of YEC people coming to see them and have a heavy rug over the brass now. 4000 BC, medieval palaeontologists, race memory from when we were rats - no, we need something else, some out-of-the-box thinking...

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No, we merely need thinking. There are fossils on every continent including Antarctica. (Though, strangely, no dragon legends from there! )
There are plenty of pics on line, but far fewer sources of those same images. In other words, multiple copies of the same manipulated image on multiple crackpot sites does not constitute a preponderance of evidence.
Our modern representations of saurians are more accurate, but it is not as if humans thought they looked like orangutans prior.
And, as mentioned, early descriptions of living animals ended with some pretty fantastical representations.
If dinosaurs coexisted with humans, we'd have many representations and they'd not be so sketchy.
 

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Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
<tangent for your amusement>

How Raven Accidentally Wiped Out The Dinosaurs

</tangent>
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I love medieval art. One of the most charming examples I've seen is the depiction on a fresco in the basilica on the Venetian island of Torcello which shows beasts at the Last Judgement vomiting up the bodies of people they'd devoured.

Alongside lions, wolves, bears and leopards are elephants and camels - which the artist clearly believed to be carnivorous.

Ok, that's got nothing to do with apparent saurians on Bishop Bell's tomb, but if there are brontosauruses there - why don't they appear anywhere else in medieval art? Much of which is standardised around particular motifs.
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 

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Originally posted by Clemency:
- no, we need something else, some out-of-the-box thinking...

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So, I am seriously curious as to what the out-of-the-box thinking is here.
 

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Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :
 
Come on, if there were dinosaurs battling each other openly during the Middle Ages, don't you think we'd have more evidence of it than one brass engraving? Hunting trophies, illuminations, tapestries, recent, not fossilized bones... something?
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I think I'm starting to get the point of this thread. Do you mean there really are people who think there were brontosauri et al wandering around in the middle ages?

Because that would be way cool if it were true. What an awesome idea. Pity it's not.

I did look up the Bishop stuff, but got conflicting sites. Are there really brontosaurus-shaped thingies on the brass, does anyone here know? Because it wouldn't prove a thing except that someone had an awesome imagination and a gift for coincidence, but it would still make me happy all week. Like the carnivorous camels.

[ 06. November 2016, 00:03: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 

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Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 

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Originally posted by Nicolemr:
Come on, if there were dinosaurs battling each other openly during the Middle Ages, don't you think we'd have more evidence of it than one brass engraving? Hunting trophies, illuminations, tapestries, recent, not fossilized bones... something?

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Originally posted by Cottontail:

Alternatively, it's Nessie.

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John Lambton does not catch anything until the church service finishes, at which point he fishes out a small eel- or lamprey-like creature with nine holes on each side of its salamander-like head. Depending on the version of the story, the worm is no bigger than a thumb, or about 3 feet long. In some renditions it has legs, while in others it is said to more closely resemble a snake.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Though interestingly, in western Canada where there are many high quality skeleton fossils, there is no tradition parallel ideas such as the OP suggests.

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Originally posted by Stetson:
Here is something that purports to be a skeptics' debunking of the Bishops Bell claims. I'm not sure of all the science involved(eg. What exactly were the 3D artists reproducing, if they never even knew about the original artwork?)

The salient thing for a scientific illiterate like me is the comparison of the two photos.

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Originally posted by Clemency:
Throwing another one into the mix, some YEC folk point to the Beowulf saga as having dinosaurs in it - Grendel, the first beast the hero kills, is a 'mouthslayer', walks on his hind legs, and is slain by having one of his small front legs ripped off.... so they say. Any Beowulf experts out there???.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Come on, evolution fans. We can do better than this.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Come on, evolution fans. We can do better than this.

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Eh, it is such a joke that it doesn't require any effort. The foolish that believe it will not be convinced in the face of any evidence.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Come on, evolution fans. We can do better than this.

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Eh, it is such a joke that it doesn't require any effort. The foolish that believe it will not be convinced in the face of any evidence.

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There are some who fall in the middle of your black and white binary.

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Originally posted by Clemency:
The evolution/ anti-evolution thing (which is what i was trying to steer clear of) is a war zone ,and in war zones you lose the truth pretty quickly on both sides.

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I am convinced there is good evidence for time, a lot of time, more than the 6000 years the YECs allow us -but I cannot help having a sneaking suspicion that generally-accepted evolutionary and geological history may have some major errors in it, and that some of the YEC arguments may have some validity (even if they do not quite point to their conclusions), if only people could quietly and dispassionately consider them. But as I said, it'#s a war zone....

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Originally posted by mousethief:
xpost -- this is to LB

People who find this an obvious joke, and people who will not be convinced in the face of any evidence.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Okay, well, I understand that. I suppose my question* then, given what I discovered while trying to find debunkings of the aforementioned brass saurids, is this:

Why do evolutionists who do attempt to debunk creationist nonsense do such a fucking crappy job of it?


_______________
*in general -- I'm not expecting you to answer this

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The evidence for evolution is pretty solid. The evidence for a 6K earth isn't. As I understand it, YEC wasn't even a big thing until the early 20th C.

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Bishop Bell's dinosaur image seems to appear almost exclusively on YEC pages, doesn't even get a reference on Wikipedia's page on the bishop.
Why should anyone be expected to refute something that they are not aware of?

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Did you read what I wrote? I'm not talking about people who aren't aware of it. I'm talking about people who ARE aware of it, and are intentionally setting out to disprove it. And they do a phenomenally bad job.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:


I'm not a YEC and I don't think dinosaurs walked in Cumbria in the Middle Ages, but I think many people's faith in the reliability of the scientific community (as opposed to science) is, if not misplaced, rather more uncritical than science itself would allow.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
a lot of palaeontology was developed long before the era of statistics etc.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'm not entirely clear what you are meaning here: a lot of palaeontology was developed long before the era of statistics etc.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
by continuing a dialogue with creationists, one lends them credibility. The science to refute such things exits, nothing further need be said.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
A large part of the issue comes down to how we teach science. Your radioactive dating example is a case in point. Because if the way you understood the method was open to the YEC criticism then something was not taught properly. For example, the teacher failed to communicate that the first thing that is done is select mineral grains where there is a high expectation that the initial ratio of A to B is known, and that there has been no leakage of A or B out of (or into) the grain. Basically, to say that scientists aren't stupid and know that these processes would invalidate a date and therefore put considerable effort into avoiding the problems these present. But, how to teach that when you have several different dating methods, each with their own particular quality control approaches depending on the elements concerned, and the curriculum allows you a single lesson to cover it? You can't expect every student to sit a university level geophysics course that takes several lectures to cover the basics of the methods, and in many cases students don't get into the depths of the methods until post-graduate level.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
A large part of the issue comes down to how we teach science. Your radioactive dating example is a case in point. Because if the way you understood the method was open to the YEC criticism then something was not taught properly. For example, the teacher failed to communicate that the first thing that is done is select mineral grains where there is a high expectation that the initial ratio of A to B is known, and that there has been no leakage of A or B out of (or into) the grain.

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Well, the obvious next step is to ask how the initial ratio could be known given that it is something that happened thousands of years ago.

Basically it comes down to trust. I do trust scientists to have thought about these things. But if for some reason trust is withheld, then dismissing YECcies as loonies isn't going to help establish it.
 

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
You simply have to observe for yourself the large sedimentary deposits and ask how that could have possibly happened in a short time period.

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
And then the creationist will point you to one of those fossils that cross several geological strata, and ask how that's possible.

(It is possible but it's not as simple as pointing to a rock and saying 'Explain that!')

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The history of creationism includes that fossils were taken as evidence of Noah's flood. Not that they were old.

There were 2 main camps: Castrophism which held that cataclysmic events had engulfed the earth like The Flood, and Uniformitarianism which held that processes were slow, progressive and incremental.

There were other theories closer to what we think todat, such as Leonardo da Vinci's. Though modern theories of catastrophism are also true, e.g., Harlen Bretz's.

Which seems to partly satisfy a Hegelian or Marxist dialectic. Have we yet to come to a synthesis? The science answer wants to have it that it is the conclusion; but it isn't is it given that both harbour truth.

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
by continuing a dialogue with creationists, one lends them credibility. The science to refute such things exits, nothing further need be said.

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Is that how it works, though? If I am pontificating on a thread, and you raise objections that seem to you reasonable, and I just ignore you, does that make me seem in your eyes a credible poster?

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As far as the general public is concerned, the debate on evolution is about trust more than evidence. Very few of us are actually in the position to watch Galápagos tortoises or mutate strands of DNA, but we take it on trust that scientists have correctly observed and interpreted these phenomena.

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Creationists are people who have lost, or never had, that trust.

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OK I will come clean and say I used to be a YEC (I'm not any more). So an example of what I'm talking about.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
One can look at images of Sicily, read multiple sources on Sicily, even take a virtual drive around the island.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
That'll do for me, Stetson. If apparently saurian creatures were depicted on Bishop Bell's memorial brass then we'd expect to see images of them in far more places than a Creationist website.

Looks highly suspicious to me.3

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Originally posted by Penny S:

One of the students was a YEC, and she told me that it was OK to answer the questions to get the marks, even if she didn't believe the answers sge gave - which is where my respect for her went down to below the Paleozoic basement.

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Originally posted by orfeo:
The whole premise of this thread seems to be based on a fundamental error, that scientists believe nothing resembling a dinosaur survived into historical times and so anything showing a dinosaur-like beast proves scientists wrong.

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Originally posted by Martin60:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
That'll do for me, Stetson. If apparently saurian creatures were depicted on Bishop Bell's memorial brass then we'd expect to see images of them in far more places than a Creationist website.

Looks highly suspicious to me.3

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There are ONLY creationist links no matter what one Googles. Even the Straight Dope links don't work ... Until we can get verified links to the Bell brass, APART from the main brass, I can't judge. If they're in the main brass, where? In the margin? No sign at all. Of any animal engravings.

[code]

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Originally posted by Penny S:

This site Image of print shows the brass without any comment. The wee beasties are in the very narrow border, and design must have been constrained by the space available. How anyone spotted the things, I don't know.

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The thing is a painting (watercolor, apparently) which may explain why I can't see the beasties clearly even when I blow it up.

Can I ask a doofus question? Can anyone here say of their own knowledge or from reliably non-doctored photos that the brass beasties exist?

Not for any YECist reasons, but because it would be way cool if someone did in fact make them.
But right now I'm still not sure whether they exist as described. (Hope so.)

[ 10. November 2016, 14:31: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
OK, let's say that they do exist and that they do have the animals as described.

What does that tell us? Have the brasses been undisturbed for centuries without any possibility of improvement or restoration?
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Looking in the Aberdeen bestiary, images not dissimilar to the Bell beasts can be found, and thought came to me about scale - mustelids have long thinnish necks and long thick tails, relatively speaking. I think the tiny drawing may have had the YECs stoatally confused since it wasn't as weaselly distinguished as a larger image would have been.

Bestiary - worth a hunt through just for fun.

[ 10. November 2016, 14:36: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :
 
It looks like this is the actual state of the brass today. Seems like rather a lot of interpretation is needed to see beasties.
 

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Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
Too bad there are no real animals that looked like dragons or long-necked dinosaurs.
Or just plain weird.

Ye, orfeo, I know, but my post has pictures.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
I recommend the newt in the bestiary.

And a couple of those lizards, I posted pages back.

That modern photo of the brass makes it even harder to understand how anyone spotted the beast.

You know, of course that the dinosaurs, and giant sloths, were about in Victorian times? Sarf Lun'on

And their kin lie buried under Central Park, NY. (Well, apart from the ones who voted.)

[ 10. November 2016, 14:47: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :
 

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Anyway, if this was made in the late 18 century, fossils were known then in Northern England.

Why couldn't the images be imaginative extrapolations of fossils such as this one?

edit: answering my own question, that's a painting based on an earlier brass.

But still, the images on the painting could have been exaggerations based on recent fossil finds.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
I disagree. There are no scientific attempts at dinosaur drawings before the mid C19th.

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Fossil animal. 18th-century journal page illustrating a large animal fossil as it appeared in the surrounding alum rock near Whitby, England, in January 1758. The fossil was incomplete, but was estimated to have been of a marine reptile around 4 metres in length. When first exposed by erosion ten years earlier, there had been fins present and more vertebrae. The report, by a Mr Wooller, was read out by Charles Morton. This page is from volume 50 (1757-8) of the journal 'Philosophical Transactions', published by the Royal Society of London.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It looks like this is the actual state of the brass today. Seems like rather a lot of interpretation is needed to see beasties.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
I disagree. There are no scientific attempts at dinosaur drawings before the mid C19th.

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The caption says:

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Fossil animal. 18th-century journal page illustrating a large animal fossil as it appeared in the surrounding alum rock near Whitby, England, in January 1758. The fossil was incomplete, but was estimated to have been of a marine reptile around 4 metres in length. When first exposed by erosion ten years earlier, there had been fins present and more vertebrae. The report, by a Mr Wooller, was read out by Charles Morton. This page is from volume 50 (1757-8) of the journal 'Philosophical Transactions', published by the Royal Society of London.

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Hence your statement is flat-out wrong.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Very nice scientific drawing. Nothing like a classic dinosaur.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Please point to me any living reptile that could be mistaken for a cartoon diplodocus.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Very nice scientific drawing. Nothing like a classic dinosaur.

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If you mean something other than what you type then maybe the problem is with you not me.

This particular example was nothing like a cartoon diplodocus, but it is clear that there are actually scientific attempts at dinosaur drawings before the 19th century.

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Originally posted by Clemency:
I started this so I suppose I had better do it - Just arranged with verger at Carlisle (it's only 40 miles away) to see the brass, heading off now on my mechanical steed... Will let you know tonight what I think

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Or the ones posted by Stetson earlier by an anti-YECer attempting to argue that one photo is an evil YEC-photoshopped version of the other whereas other sites offer ample evidence that they are two completely different images. Talk about trying to manipulate the evidence to fit your prejudices.

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Like I say, there is bad faith and dishonest reporting on both sides.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Presenting or representing in any way that both sides deserve equal respect, cynicism or attention is ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Presenting or representing in any way that both sides deserve equal respect, cynicism or attention is ridiculous.

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I never said anything about equal. It seems obvious to me that the line of argument and means of support on the site Stetson linked to is pathetic, though. It's always a mistake to assume all the stupidity is on the other side.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
IMO, the problem is that some object to ridiculing the people who believe in YEC.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
IMO, the problem is that some object to ridiculing the people who believe in YEC.

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Yes, that's probably where we part company on this.

I can't claim never to ridicule some views, or the people who hold them, but I always feel it's a poor way to win an argument. Ridicule is cheap, and even the truth can be ridiculed. Ridicule should not stand in the way of reasoned argument.

But I also recognise this insistence is one of my personal idiosyncrasies.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
IMO, the problem is that some object to ridiculing the people who believe in YEC.

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Yes, that's probably where we part company on this.

I can't claim never to ridicule some views, or the people who hold them, but I always feel it's a poor way to win an argument. Ridicule is cheap, and even the truth can be ridiculed. Ridicule should not stand in the way of reasoned argument.

But I also recognise this insistence is one of my personal idiosyncrasies.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
When I was trying to find non-biassed images, I noticed that the biblical word which kept coming up with the image was 'behemoth', which they assume means dinosaur, in the absence of Owens of the Natural History Museum to inform the authors of the name to be given in the 29th century.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There is no reasoned argument against YEC, because it is not a position of reason.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There is no reasoned argument against YEC, because it is not a position of reason.

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I can't see why one cannot reasonably explain why an argument is not reasonable. It may not convince the person, but in the long run it is a much more robust way of convincing onlookers than simply pointing and saying "ha! ha! ha!".

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
IME, the less reasoned the belief, the tightly it is grasped.
That is one reason Dead Horses exists.

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I suspect ridicule isn't the right tool to prise open that tight grasp...

But it is a way to vent frustration...
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
A major reason I come to DH, and indeed to the Ship in general, is to try and understand what other people think, and how, and to benchmark my own reasoning on a range of issues against theirs.

The Ship has been instrumental in shaping my thinking over the years, and that includes changing my stance on a number of DH issues (YEC not being one of them, I think it's always seemed suspect to me despite being pushed in the circles I grew up in).

If there's one thing that consistently stands in the way of this process for me, it's people who have nothing but scorn, ridicule or even hatred for other points of view. Sometimes such sentiments have almost made me change my mind back, despite compelling arguments.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
(In fact thinking about it, YECers' scorn, ridicule or even hatred for evolutionists was probably instrumental in me doubting the YEC stance from the outset).
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Meanwhile, back on topic, here are a couple of pics from Clemency: here and here

Kudos again for making the trip, Clemency!

The "diplodocus head" on the left looks a bit like the back end of a Chimera to me (especially because of which way the legs are facing).

[ 12. November 2016, 08:11: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Clemency (# 16173) on :
 
The 'head' on the left is interpreted by YEC as being a spiked tail or 'thagomiser' (google this one, it's fun) well known from the Stegosaurs but apparently recently found in brontosaur-type beasts as well (sorry but cannot lay my hands on the book at the moment, usual poltergeist problem). It's odd because one would have expected a symmetrical pair of identical animals, but the one on the r has a conventional tail.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
If that's a thagomizer, it's having a lot of fun.
 

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Posted by Goldfish Stew (# 5512) on :
 
Thanks Clemency... very interesting

That tail certainly looks like it has a head (and is on a more muscular/cat-like body than the second beastie.)

It's a shame the central engravings appear to have worn away. The feet are interesting on the right hand specimen - almost human-like feet at the front and perhaps hooves at the back.

What we have is 2 beasties, 1 which appears to share features with certain dinosaur species believed to be long extinct, and one which doesn't.

I wouldn't consider it compelling myself, but see how someone committed to a view that had dinosaurs present more recently might latch on to it.

The truth is we don't rightly know. We don't even have scale, just assumed scale.

If I were really investigating this further, I'd be looking at the other beasties on the brass and cataloguing them. Is there a theme - perhaps a list of animals that maps to a piece of literature etc.? Are all other animals shown there easily ascribable to known contemporary animals, or are there examples of mythic beasties present? What "margin of error" for the features of the creature is noted - how stylized are the images of presumed known creatures? Are they fatter/thinner etc.

And what other contemporary accounts are there of similar beasties?

How much more the answers to such questions actually tell us may be debatable, but it could provide interesting information.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

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Originally posted by Goldfish Stew:
perhaps hooves at the back.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Sometimes such sentiments have almost made me change my mind back, despite compelling arguments.

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Originally posted by Clemency:
'thagomiser' (google this one, it's fun)

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
(In fact thinking about it, YECers' scorn, ridicule or even hatred for evolutionists was probably instrumental in me doubting the YEC stance from the outset).

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Originally posted by Clemency:
Suggestion. Carlisle was a troubled Border city, in medieval years always under threat from the Scots, who were far more terrifying than the good bishop's menagerie of tame saurians (which thus escaped mention in documentary sources) and said beasts were eventually stolen during a raid, driven north, and disposed of in some loch or other.....

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Originally posted by Goldfish Stew:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
(In fact thinking about it, YECers' scorn, ridicule or even hatred for evolutionists was probably instrumental in me doubting the YEC stance from the outset).

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{digression - as one who has periodically been guilty of ridicule in the opposite direction, regrettably I note that this analysis cuts both ways...}

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I wonder what conclusions cryptozoologists might come to when they unearth Dr Seuss books in 500 years' time?

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Originally posted by Clemency:
One late comment. Have found my book - the brontosaur-type with a spiked tail is SHUNOSAURUS, only found in China. The spiked tail/thagomiser is shown a bit big on the Carlisle version, but, hey, quite recognisable..

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Thing is, I'm not quite sure what creationists are trying to prove here. That dinosaurs survived into the 15th century? How does that tally with their other ideas that the fossil record (where all the dinosaur remains are found) was laid down during the flood? Why are there no dinosaur bones in any archaeological remains? None in tarpits? Why did a late 15th century brass maker put images of a Chinese dinosaur on there?

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Originally posted by Goldfish Stew:
I would suggest that a brass ornamental etching in a cathedral may be considered a slightly different genre from a rhyming children's book designed to get children to read.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
To me it does rather look like another head. Like on a Chimaera.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by Goldfish Stew:
I would suggest that a brass ornamental etching in a cathedral may be considered a slightly different genre from a rhyming children's book designed to get children to read.

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I'm not sure. My comment was not intended as riducule. I'm no specialist, but it strikes me that stonemason in medieval cathedrals had quite a lot of fun that didn't necessarily represent something factual or serious. Thinking especially of Wells cathedral's toothache man.

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'It is not how they would draw me in my own world.'
'No,' said the pfifiltrigg. 'I do not mean it to be too like. Too like, and they will not believe it - those who are born after' (...)
it dawned upon Ransom that the odious figures were intended as an idealisation of humanity. Conversation languished for a while...

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