Pericles,
On revisiting some of the posts above, I should have addressed your question of why one would think blood cells, hemoglobin and other soft tissue are unlikely to survive intact for 68 million years.

I'd agree that we can't be definitive. Yet neither is it conjecture to say that in our experience such cells and molecular structures usually degrade long before such time. Dr Schweitzer herself expressed surprise. "If you take a blood sample, and you stick it on a shelf, you have nothing recognizable in about a week,"

So various people have theorised how these unusual findings could have survived over the years or centuries. Even millennia would be stretching our capacities to explain the continuence of the various proteins according to our normal understanding of chemistry.

Dr Schweitzer said, "It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But of course, I couldn’t believe it. I said to the lab technician: “The bones are, after all, 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?" Perhaps rather she (& we) should be questioning the long age beliefs.

And to add to what you said about the Bible, Genesis is not a book chosen arbitrarily. As I said earlier, it's a foundational book for understanding the Christian worldview, covering the important elements of so many of the basic Christian doctrines. It's the most quoted or referenced book in the New Testament.

WmTrevor,
Firstly, for your suggestion - "that the emphasis is firstly all the investigation (except for all religious texts) and lastly the comparison of your results with, in your case, Genesis,"

To deliberately ignore the religious texts, or to ignore anything else that might be relevant within an investigation, is to demonstrate a personal or philosophical bias. It's unavoidable that we hold biases and presuppositions. It's also good that we acknowledge or declare them.

Concerning the idea of falsification, I suggested one could forward a falsifiable hypothesis and then attempt to test it. However, as I also said, historical propositions are ultimately impossible to falsify. (As with the 'fresh' looking dinosaur bone, how could we ultimately disprove it's not millions of years old, even if it doesn't appear so.)

I'm also wondering how you define the word 'fact' (whether or not they are 'knock up' or 'knock down'). Perhaps we could define a fact as an undisputed observation. In which case, how many facts would you see in this paragraph taken from the Creation Answers Book?

"[Genesis] speaks of a cataclysmic global Flood around 4,500 years ago—such was its impact that Noah and his family and animal/bird ‘cargo’ remained on board for over a year. Multiple layers of water-borne sediments, now hardened into rock, right around the world, are powerful evidence of the geography-rearranging forces at work during that Flood. These sedimentary rock layers contain billions of fossils, with many of them so well preserved that those creatures must have been buried quickly under loads of sediment—neither scavengers nor the ravages of oxygen-facilitated decay have left their mark. Among those billions of fossils, researchers have found and documented many dinosaur fossils."

The Answers book goes on to suggest that it is a fact that dinosaur fossil ‘graveyards’ have been found at many places around the world. They use this to support their hypothesis that the dinosaurs were buried quickly as if in a major cataclysm, similar to what one might expect to find if the Genesis account was true.

This sounds like you're uninterested in any tests of faith, Dan S de Merengue...

"To deliberately ignore the religious texts, or to ignore anything else that might be relevant within an investigation, is to demonstrate a personal or philosophical bias."

Doesn't invalidate the point I was making – that the truth is independent of personal or philosophical biases and will survive all manner of the most rigourous testing possible, including that of setting aside presuppositions where it can be done.

"Perhaps we could define a fact as an undisputed observation."

We can try, though it is more than likely we'll disagree about what an observation is before we dispute it.

To answer, "how many facts would you see in this paragraph taken from the Creation Answers Book?"

One: "Among those billions of fossils, researchers have found and documented many dinosaur fossils."

Continuing the theme of undisputed observation as fact… My observation is that Genesis does not claim to be the inspired Word of God, nor does it claim to be factual history.

Only one of many outstanding questions, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Pericles, On revisiting some of the posts above, I should have addressed your question of why one would think blood cells, hemoglobin and other soft tissue are unlikely to survive intact for 68 million years.<<

Ok. What's do you have for us this time.

>>Dr Schweitzer herself expressed surprise. "If you take a blood sample, and you stick it on a shelf, you have nothing recognizable in about a week,"<<

You are not suggesting, I hope, that it is impossible to detect blood residue after a week? That remark has no scientific value whatsoever, as any student of forensics - or an episode of CSI - could tell you. Let's move on...

>>Even millennia would be stretching our capacities to explain the continuence of the various proteins according to our normal understanding of chemistry.<<

What might our "normal understanding of chemistry" be, do you think? Scientists are forever breaking new ground that modifies their prior understanding. It is one of the defining characteristics of science, that it welcomes new information.

To quote:

"Schweitzer’s work is 'showing us we really don’t understand decay,' [paleontologist Thomas] Holtz says. 'There’s a lot of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.'"

What is absolutely clear, as with the volcanic activity on the moon etc., is that none of this supports the concept of a six thousand year-old earth. All it does in reality is to open new - and extremely interesting - lines of enquiry.

>>Genesis is not a book chosen arbitrarily.<<

You cannot hide behind the passive voice, I'm afraid. Let me try again.

You clearly accept Genesis as stating facts. My question was whether you felt the same way about the entire Bible. Revelations, Leviticus and all.

(Sorry for the delay if you were expecting a quicker response. I’ve been doing a lot of travelling.)

WmTrevor,
I agree with you that truth will stand up to the most rigorous of testing.

But I don’t understand what you mean by a ‘test of faith’. Perhaps you are referring to the setting aside of presuppositions? This won’t happen if one isn’t willing or capable of acknowledging their assumed presuppositions.

To try and get your understanding of what is an ‘observation’, I asked you how many observations you thought there were in that particular paragraph. I was surprised to find myself pretty much in agreement. I agree with you about this one clear observation, “Among those billions of fossils, researchers have found and documented many dinosaur fossils.” We all agree that we can observe the fossils. We agree about their existence and classification. The rest of the paragraph is explanation and interpretation of the evidence.

I might wish to add that the first proposition is evident from a literary point of view. Genesis does speak of a cataclysmic global flood in chapters 6 to 9. I would contend that that is a plain fact that anyone can read and thus is a clear literary observation.

You say Genesis does not claim to be the inspired Word of God, nor factual history. Of course, the view that Genesis is God’s Word is part of Christian theology. The writings of Moses (including Genesis) are considered authoritative by Christians because of the way they were revered by no less than Jesus himself, as well as the New Testament authors, the church fathers, and early church councils. All of these interpreted Moses writings as factual history, as the grammar of the document and also its context within the whole Bible would plainly suggest.

Pericles,
To answer your question, our normal understanding of chemistry is that which we observe under repeated experiment. We observe that biological compounds usually break down quickly once an organism dies. The natural conclusion would be to think that the blood, tissue and bones, not having been mineralised, are quite young.

That can only be a good thing, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Sorry for the delay if you were expecting a quicker response. I’ve been doing a lot of travelling<<

After all, they do say that travel broadens the mind.

Although...

>>The natural conclusion would be to think that the blood, tissue and bones, not having been mineralised, are quite young.<<

That's somewhat narrow thinking, though, is it not.

If you insist that the evidence can only point in one direction, then nothing that you observe will ever allow you to change your view. To me, for example, it is equally possible that this new evidence may allow us to determine that our methodology is in error. Or at the very least, require some further investigation.

But you are still avoiding a key point, just as you were when confronted by "young" craters on the moon. How do these new findings indicate a universe that is a mere six thousand years old? Just saying "quite young" is hardly convincing, even by your own standards.

Part of me still believes that you are taking a contrary view just for the fun of it, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to take anything you write at all seriously. Which is a shame, as I was genuinely hoping that you would be able to point us towards more robust evidence, and hence generate more persuasive arguments.