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University settles lawsuit with scientist fired after he found soft tissue in dinosaur bones

Lighthope

Administrator
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.

“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.”

 
The case of Armitage is the latest to show the mounting hostility Christians face in academics and other public arenas.
So what, all religions are facing higher scrutiny, not just Christians lol.

Discriminate against Muslim, Jews, but the moment a Christian faces injustice its just a all out cry like its never happened before.

People of all beliefs need to realize that the time of "faith" is sharply declining at a very alarming rate and nothing will change that.

This is the "new age" of the future era and none of it takes or uses religion.

Have you talked to any of the newer generation? None of em have stepped foot in a church unless its for their family let alone read any kind of scripture.

NOW I am a believer, but I also accept facts and reality and the fact of the matter is that Religion is fading fast and there is nothing we can do to get the new generations in. Sad but what is anyone really gonna do.
 
Soft tissue has been found in dinosaur bones before, and it is not proof of a 4,000 year-old planet.

Why some Christians seem so hell-bent on "proving" evolution is "wrong" when the existence of evolution in no way, shape, or form nullifies their religious beliefs, is beyond my scope of understanding.

Genesis and The Big Bang Theory both say the same thing: "First there was nothing; then there was something." The only difference between the two is causality.

Honestly, I think we have more important issues to deal with than who's right and who's wrong on evolution/creation. We're here now. What we do the for the future of humanity is much more important than arguing about the origins of humanity.
 
Why some Christians seem so hell-bent on "proving" evolution is "wrong" when the existence of evolution in no way, shape, or form nullifies their religious beliefs, is beyond my scope of understanding.
The very first chapter of the Bible states that God created everything.

Evolution says that there is no God and that everything happened by chance.

Evolution is an antithesis to God and calls him a liar.
 
Watch this commercial. It airs on live cable network on many channels, including Hulu:


This isn't a joke, this really does air on cable networks as just a normal commercial.

It first aired in 2019 and it has since than grown and now this commercial plays on everything, I see this ad all the time.
 
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Very interesting story, Christianity is on its way back, in Western Europe based on demographics it will only have about five decades left.
 
The very first chapter of the Bible states that God created everything.

Evolution says that there is no God and that everything happened by chance.

Evolution is an antithesis to God and calls him a liar.
Evolution does not say one way or the other about the existence of a divine being. It merely shows how natural selection works. There is no valid reason why evolution cannot be a creation of god, as long as Christians are willing to accept the possibility that the creation story as told in Genesis is an allegorical summary. Christians who believe the creation of everything literally took place in 6 consecutive 24-hour time periods as opposed to each "day" simply being a different period of time cannot have rational discussions on this topic.

The creation story even follows the same basic chronological order of the Big Bang Theory and evolution:

Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness over the surface of the deep.
BBT: In the beginning, a singularity exploded releasing all matter and energy that would exist. Stars and planets had not formed yet.

Genesis: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
BBT: Stars began to form from the matter released by the Big Bang, releasing light and heat into the darkness of space.

Genesis: And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it.
BBT: Development of early atmosphere on Earth, with liquid water below and water vapor above.

Genesis: And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.”
BBT: Formation of the continents and oceans.

Genesis: Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”
BBT: The beginning of complex life on earth started with plants.

Genesis: And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.
BBT: Formation of the moon and continuing birth of stars and formation of galaxies. (Slightly out of order with Genesis, but I can live with it.)

Genesis: And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.”
BBT: Complex animal life on Earth began in the oceans.

Genesis: And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.”
BBT: Complex animal life moved from the oceans and began developing on land.

Genesis: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
BBT: Development of modern homo sapiens occurred after all the other developments mentioned above.

Nowhere in the Theory of evolution does it say, "There is no god," and I challenge you to show me where it does. Evolution is not the enemy of religion. It could merely be a continuing part of the creation process put in place by the god of creation.
 
Evolution does not say one way or the other about the existence of a divine being. It merely shows how natural selection works.
No, evolution does not. But evolutionists do.

There is no valid reason why evolution cannot be a creation of god, as long as Christians are willing to accept the possibility that the creation story as told in Genesis is an allegorical summary.
Here's an article that talks about that.

Why Recent Creation?​

A recent creation is more than just a point of debate; it’s a barometer for where people place their trust. But what does recent creation really mean?

Recent creation refers to the biblical view of creation and earth history known as young-age creationism. The recent creation point of view accepts the historicity, authority, and inerrancy of the Bible. Recent creation also accepts the historical narratives of the Bible as describing real historical events and real people.

Many Christians have little interest in the controversy about the age of the earth. Some believers will say, “What matters to me is the Rock of Ages, not the ages of rocks.” This innocent sounding statement inadvertently opens the door to undermining the authority of Scripture. This statement about the “Rock of Ages” sounds reasonable in a sense because Christians would agree that the person and work of Jesus Christ is central in the Christian life. But accepting the scriptural time scale is an important part of the foundation of the Christian worldview—and the gospel.

Age and a Biblical Worldview

Recent creation is the view that God not only created the world, but He did so recently—approximately 6,000 years for the age of the Earth and the universe, which is based on the chronology given in the Bible. This runs counter to the billions of years claimed by secular scientists and those who accept their teachings. Genesis 1 describes how God created everything in the universe in six ordinary days. Thus, the Earth and universe did not require long processes to come to be.

Genesis 5 and 11 list genealogical data documenting the father-son line from Adam to Abraham. This chronological information, combined with other historical information in the Bible, can be used to estimate the age of the Earth. James Ussher, well known for his scholarly work dating creation and the Flood, arrived at a date for creation in 4004 BC. Other Bible scholars over the years have made determinations similar to Ussher’s as well. Taking Scripture at face value clearly points to a young age, even if there is no specific verse in the Bible that explicitly tells the age of the Earth.

There are many difficulties with interpreting the Bible in a way that allows for an old Earth and universe. Scripture emphasizes in Exodus 20:11 and other passages that God created all things in the Earth and the universe in a week by His word. It is simply impossible to fit “deep time” into the Bible without raising something else up to have more authority than God’s Word.

Indeed many scholars today do not believe that the Bible is historically accurate prior to the time of King David in ancient Israel, despite archeological evidence that confirms biblical information from the times of Abraham, Joseph, and the conquest of Canaan.1

Some Bible teachers do not believe that the entire Old Testament is historically accurate. The dates of various events in the Old Testament are often questioned by non-Christian scholars, and this way of thinking often creeps into the thinking of seminary professors and Christian pastors. Aside from the historical and chronological information in the Bible implying a young age, there is a philosophical conflict between Christianity and old-age beliefs. In the old-age view, the Creator is pushed far back in space and time—if he has any place at all. Contrast this with the view that the Bible puts the origin of the earth and the universe at the beginning of recorded history.

Why would an omnipotent and good God use millions of years of a violent, wasteful, inefficient process like evolution to create living things? God’s Word teaches that most things were spoken into existence immediately. The God of the Bible would not use a long process of death and struggle to create. The violence and struggle in nature is not normal from God’s perspective (it was introduced after the Fall of man) and is something God will eventually do away with in the future.

Continued...
 

The Nature of Truth​

God’s Word speaks to us on historical events just as authoritatively as it speaks to us on how we should behave and think about God. Thus, a problem arises if we first allow arguments saying the world is old and then try to make the Word of God fit.

Each of us must choose which we will vest with ultimate authority: God’s Word or incomplete human knowledge. Many will argue that science and religion are different realms that do not relate to each other. But this way of dividing or compartmentalizing truth contradicts Scripture. There is one God who created all of reality, and His Word is equally authoritative in all that it reveals to us. If we treat evolutionary ideas as authoritative about the history of the world, this leads us to a distorted view of truth and a distorted view of God’s Word.

The Bible gives us objective truth about the past and about the world. The subjective experience of every Christian is based on objective facts of history that Scripture records. Science and history confirm what Scripture says. From a scientific perspective, Scripture gives only an outline of historical events. Science can help add details to the outline, but not if the basic outline is thrown out.

The significance of the Genesis Flood account to geology is a good example. Genesis 6–8 gives an outline of the major events of the Flood as Noah experienced the event, but it does not explain all the physical or geological processes that were taking place. Uniformitarian geology rejects the entire concept of a worldwide Flood. This leads to incorrect answers, as geologists try to explain how the earth came to be the way it is today without accepting the true history of the world. However, creationist geologists have made great progress in explaining the earth’s rocks and fossils because they start with the assumption that the biblical account is true history.

When scientists say that events and processes happened in a different time scale than the Bible records, some deal with this by putting scientific arguments and biblical information in different categories. We categorize because we are taught in categories while being educated. Subjects are often not integrated in traditional education. In the minds of young people in school, science, because it is considered authoritative about the real world, is what is trusted about history and about nature. Thus, science will be treated as objectively true, while biblical concepts become thought of as subjectively true. When biblical concepts are treated as subjective, they can be easily dismissed as unimportant. Good education from a Christian perspective prevents this “disconnect.”

If the Bible is not true to the facts about the real world, there is no reason for us to trust it to explain our day-to-day human experience.2 Atheists often realize that many Christians contradict their own beliefs by questioning teachings in the Bible such as Genesis. Some use this to attack the Christian faith. If Christians doubt what at first appears to be insignificant details of Scripture, then others, and even Christians, may begin to look at the whole Bible differently, eventually doubting the central tenets of the Christian faith, namely the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the historicity of Scripture and its accuracy regarding time and events are quite important.

The Limitations of Experimental Science​

We benefit a great deal from experimental science, i.e., systematic scientific methods that are used to come to conclusions in matters like the design of automobiles or computers and in modern medicine. But what many people trained in the sciences do not realize is that the study of origins is very different from experimental science. You simply cannot do experiments in the past. Even if you set up an experiment today to simulate something that happened in the past, there is no way of knowing that what happens in the experiment accurately represents what happened in the past. This is true regardless of how careful your observations (made in the present) are.

Origins issues represent one-time unrepeatable events, and, so, normal scientific methods from experimental science just do not apply. This does not mean that scientists cannot or should not deal with origins. It means the process is different and scientists cannot speak as authoritatively about events of the past—unless they base their statements on the testimony of a reliable eyewitness. Many unprovable assumptions have to be made in developing theories about the events of the past.

Continued....
 
There is often deep disagreement between evolutionists and creationists, but the disagreement is rarely over actual facts or experimental science, but rather over the conclusions of origins science. Young-age creationists believe that there is a written source (the Bible) recording events of the past from the Creator Himself, who was obviously there. They use that to shape their conclusions from origins science research. Evolutionists use a different starting point—one that arbitrarily doesn’t allow supernatural revelation or interaction—to shape their origins science.

Age and the New Testament​

Jesus affirms the historicity of Genesis when commenting on divorce. He said that “at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (Mark 10:6). He quoted the teachings of Genesis 1, showing that He accepted that Adam and Eve were around “from the beginning”—not millions of years after the beginning.
Evolutionary science would say that human males and females didn’t exist until billions of years after the beginning. This would contradict Jesus because He said God made them male and female from the beginning.

This is just one example of how Scripture refers to creation as complete in the beginning; there was no long process of development of living things. This is emphasized in a number of places—such as in Psalm 33:6, 9: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made . . . . He spoke and it came to be.” These statements imply immediate action, not that things finally came about millions or billions of years later.

Good science does not conflict with Scripture; scientists biased against the God of the Bible do—those who refuse to accept their Creator or who do not regard His Word as it is written. We cannot, as Christians, give in to the pressure to accept an old age for the world. Because it is the written revelation of One who cannot lie, the biblical history is sound and is confirmed by strong scientific evidence—just as we would expect.

That said, we should exercise patience as we deal with others around us who take an old-age viewpoint. There is a need to make people aware of the evidence that confirms a young earth and that the Bible can be trusted wholly—but it must be done with grace and prayer.

Footnotes​

  1. Bryant G.Wood, “Discovery of the Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,” The Bible and Spade, Summer 1999, 12:2; Bryant G. Wood, “The Sons of Jacob: New Evidence for the Presence of the Israelites in Egypt,” The Bible and Spade Spring/Summer 1997, 10:2–3, pp. 53–65; Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (March/April 1990): pp. 44–58; Bryant G. Wood, “The Walls of Jericho,” The Bible and Spade, Spring 1999, 12:2
  2. Among some, there is a misconception that there is no scientific evidence supporting the biblical view of the history and age of the world, but in reality, there is much evidence that confirms that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.
 
We will simply have to disagree on this topic, with respect.
 
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