While creationists are known for their fundamental disagreements with evolutionists, adherents of Darwin's theory have their own sharp disagreements among each other.
One division that heating up is over whether or not placental mammals lived with dinosaurs, notes a report at Creation.com, a coalition of ministries across several countries that provides "real-world answers to the most-asked questions in the vital area of creation/evolution."
A report in Nature News by senior reporter Ewen Callaway was cited.
Creation.com said evolutionary researchers are now arguing, on the basis of new genetic evidence, that placental mammals originated much earlier than previously thought, meaning before the extinction of the dinosaurs.
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Writing for Creation.com, David Catchpoole said the evidence has stirred up a debate between "evolutionists who hold that fossils are 'the ultimate timekeeper of life's history,' versus the modern wave of evolutionists who contend they can glean more reliable dates and other 'evolutionary detail' from analyzing proteins and DNA."
The development comes as Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, prepares to debate Bill Nye, who made a career on television as the "Science Guy."
The debate, scheduled Feb. 4 at the 900-seat Legacy Hall at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., near Cincinnati, will be about the "battle of world views, secular humanism and the Christian world view," Ham told WND in an interview.
"I think it's all come together at this time … and is seen by a lot of people not just as evolution vs. creation, but really more a battle of secular philosophy vs. conservative Christianity."
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He said the battle is playing out in many ways today – in textbooks that promote evolution, in the banning of anything "Christian" in public Christmas displays, in what children can say in schools and in what local governments can allow on public land.
Much is at stake, Ham said.
"I don't look on it as just defending my position," he said. "It's more showing that Christians can be bold in standing up, saying there is a God, the Bible is God's word, morality comes from the Bible."
Catchpoole said there are discrepancies aplenty among evolutionists.
"It's notable that those who argue that fossils should take precedence over molecular data are particularly strident about the identity and the dating of those fossils, i.e., they say that there are no certain placental fossils pre-dating the demise of the dinosaurs," he wrote.
"However, their stridency on this matter is increasingly being exposed as unfounded, given the mounting evidence of mammalian fossils in 'dinosaur rock' – and one might reasonably expect at least a proportion of the total found to date to have been placental. Fossils of no less than 432 mammal species in Mesozoic rock have been identified by evolutionists, and this included nearly 100 complete mammal skeletons," said Catchpoole.
He noted even Nature News admits as much, stating, "Molecular data and the fossil record can give conflicting views of the evolutionary past."
Catchpoole reported that the disputes revolve around time and assumptions scientists make.
"While the paleontologists might well proclaim that fossils are the 'ultimate timekeeper,' the geneticists know, or should know, the problems that time poses for the evolutionary paradigm. Far from being the 'hero,' there hasn't been enough time, and adding more time does not make the impossible possible. In fact, the more time you have, the worse it gets for evolution."
Catchpoole said the "contradictions are not resolved when evolutionists seek to 'harmonize' their findings by re-dating evidence to suit."
That such interpretations of the evidence are contradictory is no surprise, however, he said.
"Christians who are familiar with the principle that the definitive timing of past events cannot be ascertained by scrutinizing evidence in the present, but rather depends upon knowing reliable eyewitness testimony," he said.
"We have a reliable testimony that says that placental mammals and dinosaurs were indeed on this planet at the same time (Genesis 1:20-31). In fact, placental mammals were already plying the air (bats) and the sea (dugongs, dolphins, whales) the day before the dinosaurs (along with man – Job 40:15) were created," wrote Catchpoole.