Creationism and dinosaurs

I had read in the local paper a blurb about the fact that the Creation Museum had dinosaurs in it and that they even put dinosaurs on Noah's ark. So of course I had to go check out the Creation Museum's website to see if this was true and in fact they do have dinosaurs. According to their website (which I will not link to as I believe the creation museum is just bad science), Come face-to-face with a sauropod, a dinosaur of incredible dimensions. His monstrous frame moves through the low-lying thicket as he grazes on plants. Introduce yourself to our chameleons. Examine bones, a clutch of eggs from a dinosaur, an exceptional fossil collection, and a mineral collection. This intrigued me even more, how did they explain that they had dinosaurs when fossil evidence shows that dinosaurs lived long before man did? This is the answer they give in their FAQ section (I am transposing it exactly because, one, it makes me laugh and two, there are some direct statements that I have to comment on).

According to evolutionists, the dinosaurs ‘ruled the Earth’ for 140 million years, dying out about 65 million years ago. However, scientists do not dig up anything labeled with those ages. They only uncover dead dinosaurs (i.e., their bones), and their bones do not have labels attached telling how old they are. The idea of millions of years of evolution is just the evolutionists’ story about the past. No scientist was there to see the dinosaurs live through this supposed dinosaur age. In fact, there is no proof whatsoever that the world and its fossil layers are millions of years old. No scientist observed dinosaurs die. Scientists only find the bones in the here and now, and because many of them are evolutionists, they try to fit the story of the dinosaurs into their view.

The museum then explains that we find fossils because when God had the great flood upon which Noah built his ark (and yes there were dinosaurs on the ark) those that were not on the ark drowned and gave us this fossil layer.

Now lets go back a bit to the museums explanation of evolutionists and how they are wrong about dinosaurs. First, they argue that there were no scientists around when the dinosaurs died and so they did not witness it, so they cannot know when dinosaurs existed. Hmmmmmmm...yeah well if you are saying that dinosaurs existed alongside man in the Garden of Eden and even were on Noah's ark then wouldn't it stand that people would have been around and could have documented when dinosaurs became extinct. Secondly, they argue that evolutionary scientists are guessing at the age of the fossils as they do not have labels on them. Hmmmmm...so I am guessing then that the creationists wants the bones to come out of the ground with a little paper label tied or stuck onto the bones to tell them what year they were buried. Now I am just guessing here, but when an animal dies there is not really anyone to label their grave. For instance when a squirrel dies out in the wild, the other squirrels do not have a big funeral, buy a casket and then engrave on it the years of the life for the squirrel. I am sorry, but in nature that just does not happen, so no there are no labels.

So, I know what you are thinking no labels proves the creationists are right, without labels we cannot accurately tell when an animal has died. Nope sorry that is wrong, there is a way of knowing the age of a bone, it is called carbon dating. I am no scientists and so even after reading the entry on Wikipedia among a few other sites, I am not sure I totally understand carbon dating better than what I remember from high school and my freshman year of college, so anyone please correct me if I am explaining this wrong. As I understand it, carbon is given off by all living things and as the living thing decays the carbon changes from carbon-12 to carbon-14 at a predictable rate. So by measuring the amount of carbon-12 to carbon-14 we are able to have a good idea of when a fossil was buried. So, using this method we are able to determine that the dinosaurs lived over 65 million years ago, not the 6000 years or less ago the creationists suspect.

Finally, as this post has gotten kind of long, there is a question that says asks, could we see a dinosaur now? Their answer is that it is highly unlikely, but that some people suspect that there are dinosaurs hiding in remote places. I am guessing they are thinking of the Loch Ness monster or something like that. I have to end with a great song by Roy Zimmerman.