Creation Science Rebuttals

Institute for Creation Research

ICR's Chinese Dinosaur Flood Claim

ICR News, 8 April 2011

First Published 13 June 2011

No matter how many times errors are pointed out in young earth claims, they don't seem to change their story. They love repeating the same claims over and over again. This is the case again with an article by Brian Thomas of the Institute for Creation Research, titled "Chinese Dinosaurs Were Fossilized by Flood."¹

The article tells about a dinosaur find in China, where the 30 foot dinosaur was found fossilized in the Shandong quarry, which contains a large number of dinosaur fossils. Concerning this great collection of fossils, Thomas states, "whatever happened to it and the hordes of other dinosaurs found jumbled within the same rock formation must have happened quickly." Indeed, the researchers studying the find say the area was a large flood plain where dinosaur bodies were washed together. Thomas then suggests, "this creature was catastrophically overtaken by water."

It is true that there are many such localities around the world where dinosaurs are buried in what appears to be a mass gravesite for dinosaurs. To seal his argument, Thomas quotes the father of modern young earth creationism, Henry Morris: "Similar dinosaur graveyards are found on every continent, all over the world. Again the uniformitarian is challenged to point to any such phenomena occurring anywhere in the world today." Thomas concludes with, "Uniformitarian thinking insists that present slow processes explain all past phenomena. However, since present slow processes do not transport giant creatures in this manner or preserve them as fossils, then certainly catastrophic processes—not gradual ones—are the best explanation for the origin of many earth features."

Young earth creationists frequently contrast uniformitarianism, the belief that the earth's rocks built up from slow and gradual processes, with catastrophism, the view that earth's rocks are the result of catastrophic events...in other words, the Flood of Noah. However, such YEC claims that pit catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism in an either/or scenario (either the earth is young (catastrophic), or it is old (slow & gradual uniformitarianism), does not accurately portray a correct view of uniformitarianism.

Uniformitarianism assumes that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past, and apply everywhere in the universe. It is frequently summarized as "the present is the key to the past," because it holds that all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world.

In geology, uniformitarianism states that the processes we see forming rocks today are responsible for the rocks that we see in earth's past. Young earth creationists claim that uniformitarianism, with its slow and gradual method of rock formation that we see today, could not account for the earth's rocks.

Thomas and other YECs are ignoring one key fact. Today we observe catastrophic events, such as mass floods. Dead animals are washed downstream, and are deposited in the bends of rivers where the current slows. The dinosaur in ICR's article was deposited in a flood plain. Today, we see great floods on floodplains, as I discussed in another rebuttal to a Thomas claim from last year.

Since we see great floods today, these catastrophic flood processes are a vital part of uniformitarianism. Finding a bunch of dead dinosaurs from a flood event means that they were probably killed by a flood (or, that a flood gathered the already dead bodies together).

The geologic record is full of many examples of floods that occurred millions of years ago. Since we see floods today, these floods, which are characterized as catastrophic events, are a vital part of uniformitarianism. Despite my pointing this out on this website dozens of times, ICR and other YEC's refuse to dispose of this faulty argument. Why do they ignore simple logic? I believe Morton's Demon is at play here.

¹ Brian Thomas, Chinese Dinosaurs Were Fossilized by Flood, ICR website, 8 April 2011.

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