When Baptists ignore science

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by Pastor Larry:
But what you failed to say was that all men are "blinded" (to use your word) by their religious views. That is why your point falls apart on close examination.

Science has found that it is possible to be objective and discover some kinds of truth by ignoring authority based proclamations and depending only on the evidence. Authorities of all kinds are dismayed by the results when their authority is apparantly underminded by the truth. Such is life.

But I would be delighted to hear what you consider to personally be the most telling points against the evidence science has accumulated for an earth about 4.5 billion years of age . . ? You have been around long enough. You are no more interested in hearing them now than you ever have been. I think we can at least agree on that.

But I am interested. I didn't say I expect to be convinced, only that I am interested.

 

[Helen]

Some points:

1. It seems that anyone with any convictions about where the truth lies is not to be trusted. I guess that would go for those who put their faith in men, too, right?

2. ALL old age interpretations are based upon presuppositions which have been shown not to be true.

3. Paul, you have been saying the same things about Barry's work for, literally, years now and have paid no attention whatsoever to the replies he has taken the time to write you.

4. UTE, you still seem to be lacking some basic understanding of what he is saying. Perhaps you are blinded by your own presuppositions and prejudices?

5. There are a multitude of scientists with real honest-to-goodness degrees in fields related to the evolution/creation matters who have taken a look at the evidence and switched not only to creation, but to a young creation. We hear from them rather frequently.

6. Larry, thank you. Bingo. "Is it the truth?" is the question of the day, not "who believes this?" or "you must be religious, right?"


Please note, you long-agers, that if there WERE any secular (non-religious) scientists who thought the young earth scenario to be correct they would be rootless in their presumptions and unable to continue at all. One must have some basis to make conclusions upon. If they thought the young creation was true, that invalidates all evolution scenarios. That, for any secular scientist who would hold those views, would remove funding, peer respect, publishing rights, teaching rights, etc. etc. The cost is too high for anyone who does not have faith that God will protect them and their families from the upshot.

We are aware, personally, of some who have not only converted from evolution to creation and then to young creation, but each of these men has found they also had to wrestle with God and that their final belief system was biblical Christian -- their lives were entirely changed.

This, according to UTE and Paul and others here evidently then invalidates all their knowledge in their field, their ability to think, and the validity of any conclusions they might draw.

Pretty sad way of looking at people who disagree with you!

 

[UTEOTW]

This, according to UTE and Paul and others here evidently then invalidates all their knowledge in their field, their ability to think, and the validity of any conclusions they might draw.

Not at all. People of all walks of life can do good, scientific investigations. As it turns out, Christians, Jews, agnostics, Hindus, atheists, and others all are represented in those who accept an old earth. It seems that those who look at the evidence and see that it confirms a young earth are limited to those where their interpretation of Scripture is what leads them to their conclusions on origins with no thought that they could be interpreting Scripture incorrectly. Hence the reason to look for indepenent confirmation.

Please note, you long-agers, that if there WERE any secular (non-religious) scientists who thought the young earth scenario to be correct they would be rootless in their presumptions and unable to continue at all. One must have some basis to make conclusions upon.

Then what about Hutton and Lyell and Lamarck and Darwin? They brought new ideas to the table that radically altered the thinking of the time. Where were their assumptions? What was thier basis? Paradigm shifts happen. The truth is that if someone could conclusively disprove evolution, for example, fame and fortune would come his way. Not scorn.

UTE, you still seem to be lacking some basic understanding of what he is saying.

Then let's try again. Barry's idea predicts that there would be a slowing of time effect to an observer due to the slowing of the speed of light. Everyone agrees. I ask where is the evidence from nearby objects of these effects. You say that the last quantum jump in speed was at a time such that "The redshift curve on which the changing speed of light is based is very flat for light coming from objects as close as the Magellanic Clouds." I then ask, but if the light got here in less than a few thousand years from, let's say, 150,000 light years away, then how could the curve be flat. And that you throw a chart up showing the curve to not be flat even in the last few hundred years. Now, what am I missing? Even from objects as close as the LMC, the light would have been required to start out orders of magnitude faster than the current speed of light to get it here by now. Wich means we should observe orders of magnitude of slowdown. Whatever I am missing, please explain it to me, like a child if necessary, because I have asked this question for a long time and never got an answer. Let me put it this way. On the day that the first light from SN1987A was sent towards earth, what was the initial velocity in m/s and at what rate was the velocity changing in m/s^2?

Perhaps you are blinded by your own presuppositions and prejudices?

I once shared your presuppositions. I changed my mind, in a difficult process, when the data was examined. I still share faith in God, but in this matter, the more I see the more I am convinced of the certainty of an old earth.

ALL old age interpretations are based upon presuppositions which have been shown not to be true.

Go ahead, pick a few and show us where they have been shown not to be true.

It seems that anyone with any convictions about where the truth lies is not to be trusted. I guess that would go for those who put their faith in men, too, right?

Not at all. But if you are going to disagree with thousands (millions?) of researchers over the past century or two, you better have some good evidence. My faith is in God not man, but I do not see how science is a matter of faith.

There are a multitude of scientists with real honest-to-goodness degrees in fields related to the evolution/creation matters who have taken a look at the evidence and switched not only to creation, but to a young creation.

The numbers are miniscule compared to the number of trained people who look at the evidence and decide it means an old earth.

 

[UTEOTW]

Wish you could edit posts a little longer.

Thought of a better example of people changing paradigms while walking the dog through the woods. May be a little closer to home, also.

Magueijo has proposed to replace inflation with a rapid change in the speed of light in the early universe. One would think, given how tied people are to their theories with the above statements, that someone who both wanted to throw out inflation, one of the bedrocks of cosmology, and who threatened Einstein himself by proposing that the speed of light was variable would be laughed out of town and never see another penny of funding. Instead, he seems to be doing fairly well. Maybe scientists are not so opposed to new ideas as some would think.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Hi Helen! Starting to post again a little more frequently, I see. May God grant you new insights into His everlasting truth.

You posted a number of points . . . you must be a fast thinker!

1. It seems that anyone with any convictions about where the truth lies is not to be trusted. I guess that would go for those who put their faith in men, too, right?

Its not that people with convictions can't be trusted but rather are they reasoning from their convictions or reasoning from the evidence. Convictions aren't evidence. Previously written convictions aren't evidence, even though written.

2. ALL old age interpretations are based upon presuppositions which have been shown not to be true.

I cannot agree. The presuppositions of modern science may be denied, but they have NOT been shown to be false.

3. Paul, you have been saying the same things about Barry's work for, literally, years now and have paid no attention whatsoever to the replies he has taken the time to write you.

Readers, please note that Barry has not written me any private communication; all the replies Helen is talking about have been in public forums such as this and mostly by means of Helen as an intermediary. In other words, you might have seen them yourself; certainly some others did. If you browse the archived evolution forum for this board, you won't miss anything of substance.

Helen, don't confuse disagreement with ignoring. I have searched Barry's replies for meaning and find at least some very basic misunderstanding of science - as when, for example, he asserted that some forms of atomic particle energy are not manifested as macroscopic mass. I have repeatedly pushed for a response on the issue of unobserved slowing at astronomically distant locations, a phenomenon his theory predicts but is completely unobserved.

You sometimes have referred to Barry's web site saying the answer would be found there but when I follow your links, frankly, I find vagueness and hand waving, with no direct response to the issues I have raised. The evolution forum remains in archive and the last post there is a question from me. Any progress on finding an answer?

We are aware, personally, of some who have not only converted from evolution to creation and then to young creation, but each of these men has found they also had to wrestle with God and that their final belief system was biblical Christian -- their lives were entirely changed.

This, according to UTE and Paul and others here evidently then invalidates all their knowledge in their field, their ability to think, and the validity of any conclusions they might draw.

The validating and invalidating of ideas and theories in science is based on evidence, not personal testimonies.

 

[UTEOTW]

Helen

You always seem to think that I am crazy when I ask the above question. You have argued for a long time that the curve is rather flat, at least out past the LMC, that we should not not see time slowing effects in that area. Maybe it would help to go through a simplified math version of my mental process.

Since we are talking about the LMC, let's make up some numbers in the general range that make the math easy. First let's consider an object 150,000 light years away. Second, since you have 6000 years to work with, let's say the light got here in 5000 years. If you integrate the velocity with time you get the distance traveled.

Stupid first case. The speed of light was constant the whole time at just the right speed to get the light here now and just this instant dropped to the accepted value. So 150000 / 5000. Then the speed of light was 30c when it was released. Things should show a slowdown of 30 fold now that the speed is normal. But the speed listed on your chart for 1874.8 would be 8,993,775 kms/s instead of 299,990 km/s. The change in velocity over 10 years is zero. Not good.

So let's try a linear decay. Still stupid. Initial velocity is now 60c. The speed when the light was released was 60c and the slowdown is 60 fold. The speed of light in 1874.8 is now 460,481 km/s instead of 299,990 km/s. The change in velocity over the first 10 years is now 0.12c or 0.2%. The calculated values of recent history are nearly twice your measured values. Both the slowdown effect and the change of the slowdown should be easily detectable and used as evidence. Not good but also still not a curve anything like what you use.

But we need a steeper curve to get those recent values closer to your measured values. So we try an approximation that should be closer to your actual curve. An exponential decay. Let's use the form y=e^bx where y is the velocity at a time x years in the past. b is a factor to make the curve fit the data. as it turns out y = e^0.001x fits well.

Here we go again. This time the light is released at a speed of 148.4c meaning everything should be slowed down by a factor of nearly 150 fold. The calculated value for the year 1874.8 is now 340,730 km/s rather than 299,990 km/s. Still way off. The change in light speed over the first 10 years is now 1.45c or 1%. Things should now be very, very easily detectable and you should have hundreds of cases to support your idea.

But since the recent values are so far off, the curve still needs to be much steeper at the beginning. Which means a greater amount of time slowdown and which also means a more rapid rate of change for the speed of light which should show up as periodic occurrences becoming shorter in period between occurrences. For example, eclipsing binaries, a purely gavitational system and operating according to "orbital time", should be seen to be orbiting each other a bit more quickly from year to year and in a predictable manner according to whatever your curve accually is. We can measure changes in the incredibly short periods (milliseconds) of pulsars (Which by your time slowing effect are actually turning much more quickly than we think!) then we should be able to measure changes in the periods of eclipsing binaries.

Is there any evidence where such changes in a manner that would be predicted by your curve have been documented?

 

[Anthro]

I am an old-earther. I believe there was at least one pre-Adamic creation before the present one. Young-earthers mar the ability of many serious Christians to also be serious scientists, and give cause to some who want to be the later to reject the former.

The lead post mentions how the Judeo-Christian worldview has shortcomings. I would say that the shortcomings lie in the person's particular take on that worldview, and his mixing it up with a SBC version of a Christian worldview. Including Young-Earthism.

 

[doug_mmm]

Brett,

Spot on.

All

Many have almost lost their faith due to young earth creationism.

I almost lost mine because of it. The Universe is not 6-10K years old , there is every evidence to the contrary.
Helen I've had people doubting my Christianity, suggesting I'm apostate because I ( and others didnt belief in YEC'ism.

See -

web page Glenn R Morton's Home Page
Also

Glenn R. Morton a practicing petroleum geologist and a former young-earth creationist and writer of young-earth creationist articles (27 articles and notes published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly). Even though creation science ended up driving him to verge of becoming an atheist, he is a Christian whose attempts at a scientifically accurate harmonization are described on his web site, DMD Publishing Co.

Read his story

Glenn Morton's Home Page

With time you start to see the cracks in the YEC picture, the falsehoods of some of their prominent speakers, it’s a sad story and can be very harmful.

As Helen says Christians should not be afraid of science. YEC’s would have us switch off to mainstream science and listen to their narrow interpretation of Genesis.
If I’m to love God with all my heart , my mind , my soul I can’t do that if I have to switch my mind off and ‘just belief’ YEC’s narrow interpretation.

 

[Brett]

Helen,

I admit to having only skimmed the second webpage you gave (http://www.setterfield.org/quantumredshift.htm#periodicitiesandgeo), as I can humbly admit to not having the education needed to understand it (yet - hopefully

). As such, I can only argue your point from the perspective of the scientific community's acceptance of c decay.

http://www.ldolphin.org/bowden/centj.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c-decay.html
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~ktikkane/c-const.html

Basically, I'd have to say that the most convincing evidence against the c-decay theory (at least thus far) is that it is the result of only one group's work. For a theory to gain any credibility in science, iexperiments testing it must be performed over and over, with sufficient peer review. Every website discussing c-decay mentions only Barry Setterfield. This makes this an extremely immature theory, to be sure, especially compared to the much-greater evidence supporting an old Earth. It's a testament, I think, to your presuppositions that you choose to believe one lone researcher, but choose to disbelief in the vast majority of the scientific community.

Regarding having trust in God, I do! God is not only the author of the bible, but he is the author of the world! Personally, I believe that the physical evidence so strongly warrants belief in an old Earth, that by necessity Genesis must be viewed as metaphor.

 

[Anthro]

Knowing there are articulate old-earthers here gives me a lot of hope. Christians will continue to be self-relegated to their slim little sub-culture till they mature through YEC. One can hear many in the world saying, You mean I gotta believe the earth is around 6,000 years old to be a good Christian??? before turning away.

Morton's story is great, though I really could have done without his laundry list of names he has been called and who called him them.

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by doug_mmm:
Many have almost lost their faith due to young earth creationism.

On the contrary, I personal know of no one who has lost his or her faith due to YEC, which takes a literal approach to Genesis. If anything it has strengthen their faith in God’s word. OTOH, I know personally 3 young people, whom I work with, who have lost their faith within the passed few years because of evolution. I know even more who during college lost their faith due to over zealous philosophical microbiologists who were overly aggressive atheists. These same professors would deny any student who didn’t believe in evolution a letter of recommendation. My wife being one of these, but with the help of many local Dentists, (Whom btw, said that ones stand on evolution will in no way hinder their practice of medicine and to think that is absurd.) and Pastors and was still admitted, despite these atheistic professors who have an agenda against Christian students and their beliefs.

I don’t believe for a second that my family doctor or dentists needs to believe in evolution in order to be a good doctor. Mainstream science IMO doesn’t concern themselves with evolution. My neighbor is a microbiologist at Eli Lilly and evolution is something they don’t study or try to prove. A deacon at my church is a geologist who collects and analyzes soil samples before construction begins, and again, evolution is something they don’t study or try to prove.

Who then concerns themselves with evolution? It’s the philosophical college science professors (I’m using this in a broad sense) who has nothing better to do, but harass the Christian student by threating to fail them if they don’t conform to their religion of evolution.

I almost lost mine because of it. The Universe is not 6-10K years old , there is every evidence to the contrary.

Show me from the bible where it says that the earth is in fact older than 6-10k. It sure isn’t in Genesis 1 or 2. When I was a kid growing up I didn’t get an old earth from the scriptures and neither did you. It was my and your science teacher that taught it to us in grade school.

 

[LarryN]

Show me from the bible where it says that the earth is in fact older than 6-10k.

Just to be contentious:

One could easily ask the reverse: "Show me from the bible where it says that the earth is 6-10k old."

If one simply points to Ussher to make this statement, then the range of dates (6-10k) shouldn't be present. If Ussher is used as the basis, one should simply say that the Earth is 6k old.

If, therefore, Ussher is not the basis for such a statement, what is?

Is there another basis used for statements which imply that the Bible itself establishes a certain date (or date-range) for creation? I'm looking for something concrete.

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by LarryN:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Show me from the bible where it says that the earth is in fact older than 6-10k.

Just to be contentious:

One could easily ask the reverse: "Show me from the bible where it says that the earth is 6-10k old."

If one simply points to Ussher to make this statement, then the range of dates (6-10k) shouldn't be present. If Ussher is used as the basis, one should simply say that the Earth is 6k old.

If, therefore, Ussher is not the basis for such a statement, what is?

Is there another basis used for statements which imply that the Bible itself establishes a certain date (or date-range) for creation? I'm looking for something concrete. </font>[/QUOTE]Hi Larry

doug_mmm made a truth claim by his own assertion that the earth is not 6-10k yrs young. Obviously doug_mmm is a Christian, so I would like for doug_mmm, whom the question was posed to, to back his truth claim biblically and not from some secular source from outside the Bible.

If you’d like to take a stab at it go ahead. But, since I’m a bible believer and the bible is my final authority, I’ll entertain your redirected question. I hope the bible is concrete enough for you.

Genesis 1 and 2 taken at face value along with the genealogies as scripture records them suggests that the earth isn’t millions of years old, but not much older than 4k. When a number, and the phrase ‘evening and morning,’ are used for each of the six days of creation, you’ll think of it as a normal 24 hr period day. If the days of creation were hundreds of thousands of years, then we have a problem. Adam was created on day 6. Adam lived to be 930 yrs young. See the problem here, Titus 1:2 says that God cannot lie. Jesus Christ in Mark 10:6 taught that Adam and Eve where created in the beginning of creation, just as it is recorded in Genesis.

So Larry, I was gracious enough to give you my biblical reasons and I can supply even more. You care to entertain the same question I posed to doug_mmm? What biblical verses suggests millions of years old to you?

 

[LarryN]

So Larry, I was gracious enough to give you my biblical reasons and I can supply even more. You care to entertain the same question I posed to doug_mmm? What biblical verses suggests millions of years old to you?

You're reading something into my questions that I didn't say. I simply asked you to back up your assertion. I didn't state a position one way or the other. Go back and reread my post. I never said how old I believe the earth to be.

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by LarryN:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> So Larry, I was gracious enough to give you my biblical reasons and I can supply even more. You care to entertain the same question I posed to doug_mmm? What biblical verses suggests millions of years old to you?

You're reading something into my questions that I didn't say. I simply asked you to back up your assertion. I didn't state a position one way or the other. Go back and reread my post. I never said how old I believe the earth to be. </font>[/QUOTE]My apologies.

So was my answer concrete enough for you?

 

[LarryN]

A follow-up: The point I was trying (apparently not very successfully) to make is that a person can't state that they date creation based on Ussher's chronology while at the same time allowing up to 10,000 years since creation. Since the Ussher chronology dates creation to about 4,004 B.C., allowing up to 10,000 years is incompatible with Ussher. John Morris has said this for one- he allows up to 10,000 years since creation, and yet expresses adherance to the Genesis chronology. The two statements are incompatible together.

 

[Brett]

But, since I’m a bible believer and the bible is my final authority.

Given that God not only wrote the Bible but also "authored" the universe we live in, why is the bible necessarily a better authority than physical evidence we find in the universe He created?

 

[Anthro]

Some of you are hard-tieing the time of the creation of the earth to the time of the creation of Adam. It need not be so.

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by Anthro:
Some of you are hard-tieing the time of the creation of the earth to the time of the creation of Adam. It need not be so.

Hi Anthro

Is it b/c tying Adam to the creation model as laid out in Genesis throw a hammer in the OE model?

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by Brett:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> But, since I’m a bible believer and the bible is my final authority.

Given that God not only wrote the Bible but also "authored" the universe we live in, why is the bible necessarily a better authority than physical evidence we find in the universe He created? </font>[/QUOTE]Hi Brett

Because the scriptures are God breathed and that also includes Genesis 1 and 2. if God done it any other way, He would’ve had Moses pen it a different way. Genesis taken at face value, that a third grader can understand, can come to the conclusion that the universe was created in 6 literal 24 hr days. It’s not until one actually starts to study the bible and start to put the genealogies of the bible together do we start to find a problem w/ what we where taught in grammar school concerning the age of the earth.

Man gets into trouble when he allows any outside influence to help him interpret the bible. Science (not to pick on science, not all science is bad.) contradicts with the word of God. So man has a choice. a. Have faith that the word of God is true, b. throw out the word of God, or c. allegorize it if it conflicts w/ science.

If man goes w/ C to allegorize it, we start to see more and more of the bible being allegorized. Some men are already spiritualizing the virgin birth and resurrection of our Lord. And we’re already seeing men testifying that there are many ways to God, other than through Jesus Christ.