We keep looking for news about the lawsuit filed by Mark Armitage. Our most recent post about it was WorldNetDaily Supports Mark Armitage. The next few indented paragraphs provide background information, which most of you can skip:
Mark Armitage, described by his supporters as a “scientist,” is an electron microscopy technician who, according to California State University, Northridge (CSUN), was a temporary hire between 2010-2013. While on a fossil hunt in Montana, he found a large triceratops horn.
Back at CSUN, he examined his fossil and saw what he believed to be “soft tissue.” In July 2013 a peer-reviewed scientific journal, Acta Histochemica, published his article: Soft sheets of fibrillar bone from a fossil of the supraorbital horn of the dinosaur Triceratops horridus.
He subsequently lost his job is now suing CSUN. He claims he was fired because his discovery indicates that dinosaurs roamed the earth only thousands of years ago. It’s an old creationist issue. The TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims discusses the claim that dinosaur fossils with “red blood cells” have been found, and we’ve posted about the subject before — e.g., Dinosaur Fossils Found with Hot Red Meat?
Armitage’s lawyers are the Pacific Justice Institute, who have handled at least one other creationist case — Caldwell Litigation Against UC.
This is a copy of the complaint that was filed: Mark Armitage vs. Board of Trustees of the California State University, et al. (21-page pdf file). You can check the court docket here Los Angeles Superior Court to see what’s been filed. If you go there, click on “Access your case” and enter case number BC552314.
The initial batch of news reports about this lawsuit came almost entirely from religious websites, “reporting” that a “scientist” had made a discovery that “proved” creationism, and for that he was fired. They mindlessly accepted his claims, although it was obvious that the only available information at the start of the case was coming from Armitage and his lawyers. There have been no developments since then. The defendant university, CSUN, hasn’t made any statements and the complaint hasn’t been answered yet.
But we did find something this morning. It’s a press release that was issued by a creationist outfit called Creation Moments. It’s titled ‘We Have Evolutionists On the Run,’ Says Fired Creationist Mark Armitage. [One of our operatives just informed us of another copy of the press release from ChristianNewsWire.] Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:
After finding soft tissue in a Triceratops horn, showing that dinosaurs lived thousands and not millions of years ago, scientist Mark Armitage was fired from California State University. He recently shared his thoughts on his faith with Creation Moments, a biblical creation radio ministry, after listeners sent him hundreds of letters of support and encouragement.
What those godless evolutionists have done to Armitage is an outrage! Let’s see what he said to the creationist website:
I am deeply touched and blessed by the many wonderful comments supplied by your audience. Your comments tell me that there still are good, decent and Godly folks in our nation who pray and who seek to engage the culture for Jesus — Praise God!
Isn’t that inspiring? He goes on:
We need each other and we need to act decisively to seek and save the lost. Yes, God’s Word and the principles that founded our Nation are under severe attack. Time may be short, so I tell everyone I can about the joys of being in Christ and the danger of putting Him off.
The great man continues:
It also tells me that we have the evolutionists on the run … they are scrambling to explain the presence of these delicate and life-like cells and tissues that could in no way survive the ravages of deep time. In fact, it is astounding that they are there even after the thousands of years since the Great Flood of Noah. Even if we allow only 3,000 years since the Flood, these observations of soft tissues are stunning. [Ellipsis in the original.]
Stunning indeed! Here’s more:
So my message is this: Tell your unsaved friends that you have a friend (me) who has been going on dinosaur digs and is unearthing and publishing his findings of soft tissues.
[…]
Tell them he has predicted that soft dino tissues are the NORM and not the exception in the fossil layers and he is finding it everywhere. Tell them if soft tissues are the norm, then the Earth cannot possibly be old, and that suddenly Genesis is believable as actual history.
Verily, the evolutionists are on the run! Isn’t this exciting? We’ll be watching for further developments, dear reader, so stay tuned to this blog!
Copyright © 2014. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
An interesting study regarding the impact of these religiously idiotic claims:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/religion-quashes-innovation-patents
So, he thinks that he has found one (dubious) example, and he extrapolates to the many thousands of dinosaur fossils in which soft tissue has not been found? Even if he were correct about his own finding, it needs an extraordinary combination of arrogance and ignorance to make this claim.
@DavidK
Interesting, but I wish that the article would tell us where to find the original paper.
I have my running shoes on this morning because I just looked up Mark’s coauthor and did you know he was once the director of the Van Andel Creation Research Center in Chino Valley AZ? And he wrote this great paper?
What is a little scary is that we were actually at Kansas State University at the same time – small world. He managed to get two BSs, a MS, and a PhD without leaving home. His PhD was “Ruminal microbial and metabolic development of neonatal dairy calves.” I scanned through it, but could find no reference as to whether ruminates were a created kind…..
Doubtless he’s also finding fossils of Piltdown man, buried with little images of Dagon and Baal.
If Mark Armitage is finding soft tissue at dinosaur digs “everywhere,” it’s because he’s planting it.
Now there is nothing scientifically wrong about finding tissue in a dinosaur fossil. As there has been tissues found in mammal fossils. BUT all that would indicate is the possibility that a certain group of dinos lived longer than we thought. So all the dimwit has to do is search the other fossils found in the same area and find more tissue, because THERE CANNOT BE ONLY ONE!!! PLEASE!!! please!!! find more!! I would like to think that it is possible to go visit ACD’s Lost World.
@TomS
Click to access Religion%20December%201i_snd1.pdf
The MJ article referenced it as “recent paper.”
Here’s another little snippet from their paper:
Two things 1) avian and “reptilian” RBCs are oval not spherical and 2) much bigger than mammal RBCs. These are the shape and size of mammalian RBCs. Crocodiles, for instance, have RBCs of 17 x 10 micrometers whereas human’s are 6-8 in diameter (not that much different than the largest bacterial sizes).
@DavidK
Thanks for the reference.
It irritates me when I read a report on research which doesn’t tell me where to read the original. Oh, well.
I wonder whether it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
TomS says: “It irritates me when I read a report on research which doesn’t tell me where to read the original.”
Armitage’s soft tissue paper? I have a link in the background material of the post.
Armitage: “Tell them he has predicted that soft dino tissues are the NORM and not the exception in the fossil layers and he is finding it everywhere.“
Oops. Got distracted in a side conversation here and hit the “Post Comment” button prematurely.
I was going to say that if Armitage is finding soft dinosaur tissue everywhere, he sure has been getting around. How many dino digs has this guy been working on? And why is an electron microscopy technician out in the field digging up dinosaur fossils in the first place?
If he’s so confident about his “discovery” why isn’t he claiming that “Evolutionists, OECs and IDers are on the run”?
Our Curmudgeon refers to Armitage’s
Are you using a polite euphemism here for Armitage’s output?
I would remind all that Mr. Whipple may be watching–so please don’t squeeze the triceratops horn…
…But crikey, that sounds like an even worse euphemism, now that I see it written out.
I visited the National Museum of Natural History with my kiddo last week, and although the fossil exhibit is closed for renovation, the good people at the Smithsonian have put a triceratops on display. I examined it with my electron microscope to find soft tissue (it’s everywhere!) and then threw a saddle over top and rode it like I was a yokel at the Creation Museum.
Here’s the complaint filed by counsel for Armitage.
Armitage’s “findings” were indeed published in the professional literature. The problem is that they weren’t published in a journal within reasonable discipline pertaining to taphonomy; instead, they were published in Acta Histochemica, “a journal of structural biochemistry of cells and tissues.” Since nobody there is a taphonomy expert, they didn’t see that Schweitzer et al have explained such preservation. Not surprisingly, Armitage didn’t bother mentioning such explanation in his findings.
Here’s everything one needs to know about Mark Armitage:
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/03/453-mark-armitage.html
Too bad the HI twits at California State University Northridge didn’t read it before hiring him as a part-time microscopist.
Tell them if soft tissues are the norm, then the Earth cannot possibly be old, and that suddenly Genesis is believable as actual history.
Well sure that makes perfect sense, just like some other stuff would make perfect sense too, IF everything after “In the beginning….” were factually and actually real and historically accurate too. The God of the “Ifs” Argument?
Well. maybe most evolutionists can take up jogging and feed Armitage’s delusions. Let’s all gather up and run past his house and really give him a thrill.
If all dinosaurs died 4,300 years ago, none would be fossilized today, and we would be able to extract and SEQUENCE full genomes of all dinosaur species. We have sequenced full genomes of mammoths, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Why not even one dinosaur genome? Or even mastodons (which are older than mammoths.)
Note that no dinosaur DNA has ever been SEQUENCED. Schweitzer thinks it’s there because the fossils bind antibodies that bind DNA. Schweitzer did sequence small fragments of dinosaur protein– keratin– and showed the dino protein is similar to that of birds.
“Two things 1) avian and “reptilian” RBCs are oval not spherical and 2) much bigger than mammal RBCs. These are the shape and size of mammalian RBCs. ”
This is *really* interesting —- has there been any official comment on this? How does anyone know that what he got sections of was really a Triceratops? — sounds to me that he might have picked up a bison or something.