Chris has an excellent post called More On Ham’s Creation Museum, Tyrannosaur Teeth And The Scientific Process that totally shreds the T-Rex coconut eater myth Ham is foisting off on unsuspecting visitors to his fantasyland. One wonders what some of the T-Rex specialists such as Erickson or Holtz would make of Ham’s argument. I haven’t checked yet, but I am sure there is an abundant literature on the morphology and function of T-Rex teeth.
Filed under: Creationism, Paleontology, Zooarchaeology |
Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution, and Science 
Many thanks for the link! Totally shreds is an understatement: By explaining what he did (and how he did it) in an attempt to verify the claims, make predictions based on the claims, and then try to falsify those predictions and claims, Chris nicely shows the difference between reasoning and cretinism.
One point Chris didn’t really bring out is the books etc. he consulted differ from the bible (another book). Chris does mention the bible’s tortured history, but doesn’t really discuss the origins or history of the books he consulted. More to the point, the books he consulted were (presumably) written after a similar research process, albeit with the notable difference the authour(s) had first-hand access to the materials (teeth, etc.) they were describing. And not only are those same materials–quite possibly even the same samples–available to others to inspect, so are other samples; i.e., the books Chris consulted are describing, in detail, a class (collection). There is sufficient detail that non-trivial predictions can be made, and then tested, both using the samples and (as Chris is right to emphasise) other lines of enquiry.
(I tried to post a comment similar to this on Chris’ blog but had problems with the type-what-you-see anti-spam checks: No image was shown!)
BTF – an excellent point! However, for the sake of brevity I tried to keep to the creationist viewpoint that current observations of teeth could not be an indication of past conditions, predominantly because that would refute Ken Ham’s interpretation of a single bible reference. I think we need to make many of our arguments much simpler, aconcentrating on one or two points; although you, I, Afarensis and others understand the minutae of the arguments, most in the creationist audience can’t communicate on that level (and I’m talking about those who would be willing to accept counter arguments IF they understood them better). I think we need to at least explain ourselves better by focusing on individual segments of the arguments.
Don’t know what was going on with the blog comment section…feel free to email me if necessary.
And of course, thanks to Afarensis for giving me some more “blog time”!
Chris – No problem! That was an excellent take down of Ham.