Science and Christianity - Who's Side is the Truth on?

University settles lawsuit with scientist fired after he found

soft tissue in dinosaur bones

By Chad Dou —

CSUN scientist Mark Armitage found soft tissue in a dinosaur bone, a discovery that throws significant doubt on evolution. Then, two weeks after publishing his findings, he was fired.

Now California State University at Northridge has paid Armitage a six-figure sum to settle his wrongful termination suit based on religious discrimination. While the university admits no wrongdoing, Armitage’s attorney said they feared losing a protracted lawsuit because of a “smoking gun” email that backed the plaintiff’s case.

The case of Armitage is the latest to show the mounting hostility Christians face in academics and other public arenas.

A Triceratops

“Soft tissue in dinosaur bones destroys ‘deep time.’ Dinosaur bones cannot be old if they’re full of soft tissue,” Armitage said in a YouTube video. “Deep time is the linchpin of evolution. If you don’t have deep time, you don’t have evolution. The whole discussion of evolution ends if you show that the earth is young. You can just erase evolution off the whiteboard because of soft tissue in dinosaur bones.”

Armitage was hired as a microscopist to manage CSUN’s electron and confocal microscope suite in 2010. He had published some 30 articles in scientific journals about his specialty.

A graduate of Liberty University, Armitage adheres to the “young earth” view,  against the majority of scientists who say our planet is 5 billion years old. He engaged students in his lab with Socratic dialogue over the issue of the earth’s age based on his and others’ research, he said.

In May 2012, Armitage went on a dinosaur dig at the famous fossil site of Hell Creek in Montana, where he unearthed the largest triceratops horn ever found there. Back at CSUN, he put the fossil under his microscope and made the startling discovery: unfossilized, undecayed tissue was present.

If the dinosaur were 65 million years old, the soft tissue could not have possibly remained, he says. His findings seconded groundbreaking discoveries by noted molecular paleontologist Mary Schweitzer, who triggered an earthquake in the world of paleontology when she published about soft tissue in dinosaur bones in 2005. (Schweitzer subsequently postulated that iron is responsible for preserving the soft tissue.)

Armitage’s February 2013 study was published in the peer-reviewed Acta Histochemica, a journal of cell and tissue research. Two week later, he found himself without a job.

A biology professor had come into his office and said, “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department.”

Armitage fought back. Professors and students alike had praised his work managing the microscope lab. His suit alleged he was excluded from a secret meetings of the microscopy committee. In a “smoking gun” email, university officials suggested they could ease Armitage out of his part-time position by making it full-time, Reinach said.

A colleague described the process as a “witch hunt,” according to Inside Higher Ed.

For two years, CSUN fought Armitage’s lawsuit. The university alleged his firing was simply a restructuring of their biology department and not a case of religious discrimination. But CSUN lost its bid to have the judge summarily throw the case out of court as groundless in July of last year.

So CSUN settled with Armitage for $399,500 in 2016, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Alan Reinach, Armitage’s attorney, hailed the settlement as precedent-setting.

“We are not aware of any other cases where a creationist received a favorable outcome,” said Reinach, executive director of the Church State Council, a nonprofit California public interest legal organization. “This was truly a historic case.”

CSUN has downplayed its decision to settle, saying in a statement that the university is committed to religious freedom and freedom of speech.

“The Superior Court did not rule on the merits of Mr. Armitage’s complaint, and this voluntary settlement is not an indication of wrong-doing,” according to a CSUN statement published in Retraction Watch. “The decision to settle was based on a desire to avoid the costs involved in a protracted legal battle, including manpower, time and state dollars.”

But Reinach countered: “They certainly would not have paid that kind of money if they did not recognize that we had them dead to rights. The state doesn’t put large, six-figure settlement money out unless they are really concerned they are going to lose.”

Prior to looking for soft tissue in dinosaur bones, Armitage studied diatoms, unicellular organisms that make up phytoplankton, which reveal a dizzying complexity and organization at the microscopic level.

According to Armitage, the beauty and complexity of diatoms lends credence to the idea they are a product of a Creator and not of spontaneous evolution.

“Evolution is structure supported by two pillars: one is chance, and the other is time. Chance is required because we obviously can’t say that a thinking force created life on earth. That is anathema for the materialists. If you kick out one of those two pillars the whole structure collapses,” Armitage noted. “If you kick out chance by showing incredible design, the structure of evolution starts to totter and it may crash. Because you cannot have design in a world that doesn’t have a Designer.

“The other pillar is time because you cannot get a man from a frog unless the princess kissed the frog. That’s a fairy tale. So in science you have to have deep time to get evolution.”

Subsequent to the controversy, Armitage has been on additional digs and found more soft tissue but is finding it difficult to get published. “I’m clearly being blackballed,” he said in The College Fix.

“Soft tissue in dinosaur bones destroys deep time.” Armitage said. “Dinosaur bones cannot be old if they’re full of soft tissue.”

Alberta Creationist Discovers Rare Fish Fossils in Basement

Are they 60 million years old as a paleontologist estimates, 

or are they more like 4,500 years as their discoverer estimates?

Fossilized fish found during excavation in Calgary suburb

An Alberta, Canada man who discovered a school of rare fossilized fish while digging up a Calgary basement believes the world was created by God a few thousand years ago.

It's for that reason Edgar Nernberg doesn't think the fossils could possibly be as old as paleontologists are estimating.

"I subscribe to the creationist position, and I believe they were laid down in Noah's flood, about 4,500 years ago. But we agree to disagree."

He's referring to Darla Zelenitsky, the University of Calgary paleontologist who was brought in to examine the five ancient fish.

She says they likely swam in waters about 60 million years ago, which is the age of the Paskapoo Formation, a sheet of rock that lies under the city.

"I would give it a 10 out of 10 for significance," said Zelenitsky.

Creationist Edgar Nernberg

"There's not very many complete fossils known in rocks of this age in Alberta," she said about the fish, which are each about the size of a wallet.

Nernberg helped build the Big Valley Creation Science Museum and said he's good friends with the owner.

According to the museum website, Nurnberg donated "one of the more favourite displays" for visitors — the Evidence from Genealogy exhibit — which features scrolls that trace the genealogy of England's King Henry VI back to Adam and Eve.

While Nernberg hasn't lobbied the Alberta government directly to include creationism in the province's school curriculum, he said he has written opinion letters about the topic and sent them to several newspapers.

Alberta homeschool convention offers creationist textbooks

Nernberg found the near-perfect fossils concealed in a block of sandstone while working at his day job, excavating the basement of a new home in northwest Calgary.

Zelenitsky said that because the fish lived in a time shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs, they could answer some questions about evolution.

The five fish fossils were encased in a block of sandstone in the Paskapoo Formation,
a 60-million-year-old rock formation that lies under Calgary. (Meghann Dionne/CBC)

"Plants and animals were actually recovering from the extinction at that time, so any fossils, particularly if they're complete, are going to help us reconstruct what was going in the environment after a major mass extinction."

Nernberg said he has come to "accept the fact that we all have different opinions."

The fossils are en route to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alta., to be studied by paleontologists.

"It's quite likely that these could be a new species," said Zelenitsky.

We have the five fishes, now if we just had three loaves we would really
have something to sink our teeth into

If that's the case, Nernberg said, he won't be offended if they're not named after him.

That will be the day, when paleontologists honor a creationist, or even acknowledge his existence. We've come a long way since the Scopes Monkey trial; whether it's all good or bad I will leave up to you.

Personally, I try not to take a firm position on this issue because I could quite adequately debate either side. I don't dismiss the science that makes a recent global flood unlikely; nor do I dismiss the Bible as a source of truth; and I certainly would never put God in a box and say, "this is impossible"! I believe He has some astounding surprises waiting to be revealed to us.

New Dinosaur is Weird, Really, Really Weird

A dinosaur mystery that has baffled palaeontologists for 50 years has finally been solved.

In the 1960s, researchers unearthed two gigantic dinosaur arms. For decades, scientists have speculated about what kind of beast they belonged to.

Now, the rest of the dinosaur's body has been unearthed, and researchers say that the creature is even more bizarre than they had thought.

Now before you read the rest of this article, I should explain the reason for my sarcastic comments. I don't doubt the science of paleontology, but I have grave concerns for the amount of imagination that is involved in creating creatures from a few bones. It began when I found out about Nebraska Man.

Nebraska Man - Amedee Forestier

Touted to  be the 'missing link', half-man - half-ape like creature; he was identified by a single badly-weathered tooth. While many scientists did not buy-in to Nebraska Man, he did make it into Science magazine. 5 years later they dug up some of the remaining bones only to discover the Nebraska Man was an extinct pig. Some women have used this as evidence that all men are pigs, but that's another story.

Then there was Piltdown Man. Discovered in 1912 by Charles Dawson was widely accepted by European scientists as legitimate, turned out to be the jawbone of an orangutan, the cranium of a human, and the filed-down teeth of a chimpanzee. It took 40 years for the hoax to be revealed. 

The real 'Nebraska Man'
Holy bacon, Batman!

 Archaeologist Miles Russell of Bournemouth University wrote: "Piltdown was not a 'one-off' hoax, more the culmination of a life's work." He had discovered that 38 previous archaeological discoveries by Charles Dawson, were fakes.


There are so many other examples of error, deliberate or otherwise, that I will have to do a piece just on that.

They say it was huge, with a beak, a humped back and giant, hoofed feet.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Lead researcher Yuong-Nam Lee, from South Korea's Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (Kigam), said: "It turned out to be one of the weirdest dinosaurs, it's weird beyond our imagination."

Slow mover

Reconstruction of
Deinocheirus mirificus

For half a century, all that was known about this dinosaur was that it had enormous forearms, measuring 2.4m-long (8ft) and tipped with three giant claws.

Its name Deinocheirus mirificus means unusual, horrible hands. In various reconstructions, it has been imagined as anything from a T. rex-type predator grasping at prey with its claws, to a giant, sloth-like climber, using its arms to dangle from trees.

But the discovery of two nearly complete skeletons in Mongolia have finally laid this speculation to rest.

The international research team says the beast was very large, measuring about 11m (36ft) long and weighing six tonnes.

It had an elongated head with a duck-like beak, and a large humped sail on its back.

Its legs were short and stumpy, but its feet were very large with hooves, which would have prevented it from sinking into the boggy wetlands where it lived. Boggy wetlands in Mongolia!?

The researchers think that the beast was probably a very slow mover. The contents of its stomach suggest that it ate plants and fish.

So what is the point of the long arms with claws? Neither are necessary, or even particularly useful for catching fish or eating plants. Is this an evolutionary aberration? 

Dr Yuong-Nam Lee said: "We did not know their function before, but the long forearms with giant claws may have been used for digging and gathering herbaceous plants in freshwater habitats."

Commenting on the research Prof John Hutchinson, a palaeontologist from the UK's Royal Veterinary College, said: "Many dinosaur fans have seen pictures of the 8ft-long arms and hands, and they really are amazing and wonderful. People were really wondering what the rest of this animal looked like.

"Now we know, and it's just so freaking weird - we never would have expected this animal to look so bizarre.

"It really is shocking to see how many weird features it has. It changes our view of what kind of forms dinosaurs can even take." 

Archaeology and paleontology are constantly re-writing history. Almost every significant find result in a re-write, meaning, they had it wrong every time, and there is no reason to believe they have it right this time.