When Baptists ignore science

[UTEOTW]

Originally posted by Artimaeus:
Yes, the evidence does "suggest" an old earth. Yet, five minutes after the creation the evidence would have suggested an old earth, too.

You did not answer my direct question directly, but I will assume this answer means you are in the "appearance of aga" camp. If wrong, please let me know.

You are correct to say that superficially there would have been, from necessity, an appearance of age "five minutes" after a recent creation. But we are talking something much deeper here. For instance, without a functionally mature surface, the earth would not have been very useful. So dirt and rivers and streams and such would be expected. It is a matter of functionality. But this fails to explain much. What functionality is gained by having rocks record millions or billions of years withing their makeup? What functionality is gained by filling the ground with fossils that show evolution? What functionality is gained by recording hundreds of millions of years of continental drift within the rocks? What functionality is gained by giving humans pseudogenes that show a common ancestor with the other apes? The stars may have been given as a sign but what functionality is gained by encoding in their light a history that according to you never happened?

Appearance of age works on the surface but it does nothing to explain the actual data that indicates on old earth. It sounds good on the surface. And it can be quite convincing to a subset of the population. It can be quite frustrating as you take every good piece of evidence for an old earth and dismiss it as God must have just made it that way for some unknown reason. But in the end, it is just an admission that the evidence really does show an old earth but you want to keep denying that fact.

 

[Scott J]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
Scott J

The best "interpretations" say the universe is billions of years old.

The "best" interpretations according to who? Do they operate under the assumption that there might have been a direct act of creation for the universe or do they operate on the assumption that everything observed must have come by processes that do not depend on a Creator?

Everyone makes a starting assumption on this topic. No one can claim objectivity because no one has a adequate perspective to make such a claim. I can say honestly that evolution is a "possibility" because the explanations given by its students are not demonstrably implausible.

If you want to dispute those "interpretations" please give us the interpretation that does a better job of explaining what we have observed and makes better predictions about what will be found in the future.

I don't require an "interpretation". I have a reliable eye witness account. God made this claim. Neither you nor I nor Moses nor any other person asked Him to- He did it of His own accord.

Otherwise your objections to the interpretaion really have no merit.

Yes, in spite of your evasion, they do. I operate from the position I described earlier. "God could do it... He said He did it... so I believe He did it..." Operating from this premise but being as open minded as I am able (with regard to conclusive proof that this premise is false), I find the explanations of creation scientists just as credible, if not more so, than those of materialistic scientists.

Theistic evolutionists agree that God could have created the universe as described in Genesis but deny that He did regardless of what He said. Why? Because someone operating from a paradigm built on the presupposition that everything that exists is a result of purely natural processes interpretted data in accordance with that paradigm.

 

[Scott J]

Originally posted by Anthro:
Do you believe that you can date "in the beginning"?

No. But whether the events in Genesis 1-11 occurred 4500-6000 years ago or 45,000 to 60,000 years ago or 4.5 million to 6 million years ago, they recount certain events occurring within a certain, very short time frame. They recount a sudden, direct act of creation by an omnipotent Creator. They do not describe, alude to, nor even allow a long process of evolution.

 

[Anthro]

Originally posted by Travelsong:
If only you would remove your ear plugs and blinders and make an attempt to understand why old earth creationists feel the evidence suggesting an old earth is compatible with Scripture rather than tossing out accusations which equate to calling your bretheren apostates.

As a OECer, I believe the position is not only compatible with Scripture, but better explained by and demostrated in the Scripture. IOW, one may start at Scripture and end with Scripture alone to gain an OEC position. I think this is very important to keep in mind.

 

[Artimaeus]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
You did not answer my direct question directly, but I will assume this answer means you are in the "appearance of aga" camp. If wrong, please let me know.

I would think I am in the "appearance of age" camp but, only somewhat. I think the original creation was VERY GOOD and the appearance of age would have ber extremely superficial, but, that the Fall and Flood did some horrific damage to the original pristene creation. As I am not a scientist (and I make no pretense of being one) I am like a fan at a tennis match between a YEC and an OEC. One side volleys and I say, "Yeah, what about that?" and then the other side returns and I then say to the other side, "Yeah, what about that?" I am not actually IN the game but I am a fan and am sitting on the YEC side.

What functionality is gained by having rocks record millions or billions of years withing their makeup?

As I don't have the sklills to answer many of your questions, I won't try. I do, however, have an anecdotal story pertaining to this statement. I live in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky and have many relatives and friends who work in the mines (at least they did until the coal boom went bust). As some of these mines can be quite deep, it is common for them to pass through several layers of rock covering several geologic eras. How would you explain the existence of a very well preserved fossilized tree standing straight up through the middle of several layers of rock which supposedly took hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of years to be formed?

 

[UTEOTW]

Hey, Artimaeus

Before this gets a chance to get too tension filled, let me try and make something clear. You say that "I am not actually IN the game but I am a fan and am sitting on the YEC side." Look, that is something I can respect. Your faith is strong and I do not think that it really matters too much that we disagree on this. There would be a whole lot more that we agree on than we disagree on.

My problem is really with those who are in the game. Helen's original post showed the danger of what happens when some people are confronted with this conflict. It is a challenge to some's faith. That is one reason I have chosen to be in the game. (The other is more personal. I have a natural scientific curiosity and this is a good outlet for that.) I think that this is something that needs to be decided. Now I think we are at polar opposites considering what should be done, but eventually that will work itself out. I really wish the evidence did support a young earth, it does make things more simple. I just do not think that it does. There are many things I just think cannot be explained by the Fall and Flood. It all just fits together so well.

I will try and answer your question about fossils extending through multiple strata. (BTW, I work in coal gasification research. We "burned" some Kentucky coal a few years ago and may do so again.) The simple answer is that uniformitarianism does not preclude catastrophe. A geologists named John Dawson described the process way back in 1868 from a formation in Nova Scotia where fossil tress were found vertically through many layers complete with scattered coal seals. I am certainly no expert on this, but it sounds like a combination of rapid burial and compaction with time. An easy example to see might go something like this. Say a stand of trees were buried in volcanic ash from an eruption. The trees fossilize. With time, as layers are added on top, the ash is compacted. After a perios of time, many layers have been added and through settling and compaction, the fossil tree now extends through quite a few of these layers. There are quite a few places today where you can see the beginning of what could become polystrate fossils. I have seen with my own eyes a grove of trees instantly buried in ash while in Hawaii. There are other places where you can see trees buried by floods, by changes in the course of a river, by rising sea levels, and other means. Sort of a principle of uniformitarianism in that things worked the same in the past as they do today. The modern examples and the ancient examples give evidence to support each other. You can look at the ancient examples, make a hypothesis about how it happened from the evidence you see, and then compare that to similar processes happeneing today. Hope that helps.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
[QB] Excellent, Paul of Eugene.

You are so much more eloquent than I'll ever be.

UTEOTW, I think you've kept up your side of the eloquence contest very well.

I think all sides of the creation - evolution debate can recognize that there are some definate states of mind here we should be aware of.

Some are very protective of the Scriptures, while they are relatively unconcerned with the fate of such man-made edifaces as the body of scientific opinion. These are the ones who generally believe evolution to be false.

Some are very interested in the way the world and the universe are put together and very familiar with the scientific method; they accept the findings of science. These are the ones who generally believe Genesis must be interpreted in some way other than literal.

Both sides can be perfectly sincere in seeking the truth to the very best of their ability. Both sides consider the other to be missing something.

Both sides can't be right. One is more right than the other. Hence the desire to inform the other side of the reasons they hold to what they do.

From my own side - Old Earth evolutionist - I keep noting that whenever those with the most strident voices calling for a literal interpretation will, in fact, yield that need when they must, when the literal interpretation cannot be true. There are many examples of scripture where the literal interpretation simply cannot be true and therefore we adopt an alternate to literal interpretation. Examples include the saying of Jesus that cannot follow Him unless we "hate" our father, mother, brother, sister; the passage in Joshua that states it was the sun that stood still on that famous long day; the passage describing both grasshoppers and all the unclean insects as having four legs; the generations in Matthew for the Christ, specifically said to have 14 generations over a time period that had more; the list could be extended.

What we have here is the fact that some of us have come to be so acquainted with the evidential merit for the old earth view that we are compelled to interpret scripture in accordance with what we know to be true.

Others just don't see it that way. Many will go to their graves, never having the evidence for evolution and the old earth view come to be compelling in their minds.

It is my view that it is only a matter of a few generations for the scientific revolution to become complete in this arena, as we have historically witnessed the same transition over the similar conflict concerning the fact that the earth moves.

Today, many of the worthy posters hold the opposite view around here. And that's the way it is, folks . . .

 

[Brett]

Paul of Euegene,

Your posts are wonderful. God bless you.

 

[UTEOTW]

BUMP

Now that Helen is posting again, I would like to see if I can get answers to my questions back on page two. By the time she came back after the holidays this thread had been pushed back off page two. Plus we were on this topic when the C/E forum was closed and I am interested in getting answers.

 

[Helen]

Please be so kind as to post your questions, or copy them in brief form, again. You have several long posts on that page.

 

[UTEOTW]

OK. I'll outline it such that you can find the right spots.

We have been discussing whether or not there should be noticable time slowing effects of objects within the Milky Way and the LMC and SMC. You have, in various threads said that there should not be as the last jump was beyond the LMC and SMC and that the curve is quite flat in that region. I have disagreed and you suggested that perhaps I do not understand the idea well enough. I grant that and ask to be enlightened since it does not make sense to me at this point. I suggest two basic problems.

First, you give claim that there is evidence of measurable slowing of the speed of light in the last few hundred years from experiments on earth. I say that this means that there should be measurable anomalies based on faster light in the past and the changes in the speed of light with time changing the amount of the slowing of time even in very nearby astronomical objects.

Second, I use the concept of integrating the velocity with time to obtain distance to show that the objects in the LMC and SMC (distant objects in the Milky Way too, but I did not bring this up) should have a significant amount of slowing to be able to get their light here in the given amount of time. I would crudely estimate at least a 200 fold slowdown. In addition, there should be a rapid enough change in the speed of light with time that you should see all kinds of things speeding up though continued observation in the LMC and SMC. Further, based on the curves for light speed you have devised, you should be able to predict these changes in advance. For instance let's say we measured the period of an eclipsing binary 10 years ago. This is a purely gravitational system and as such its "orbital time" should be unaffected by changes in the speed of light. We would expect, since the speed of light had been slowing since the light was emitted that we observed 10 years ago and when the light was emitted that we are seeing now, that you should be able to predict what the period would be if the measurement was taken today. I ask if such predictions have been made, if they have been confirmed through observation, and if it offers a better explanation than what was given by scientists for the change? This seems to be a rather easy means to begin to verify or to dismiss Barry's ideas.

So I ask what was the speed of light when SN1987A went supernova and I ask to describe the change in light speed from that object in the iterim, especially what rate was the speed of light changing at the time and how much different is the speed of light when light reaching us now from that object was emitted versus when the first light from the supernova was emitted. That gives me good idea on what changes should observable in the LMC as a whole. I ask if any of the observations desribed and the end of the previous paragraph have been carried out, and if so what where the results and where can I read about them. I also would like a comment at least on the nearby objects.

 

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Loren B:
It is incredibly sad that with this man's background he has so turned his back on what should have been a solid foundation. Churches need to recognize that public education is undermining their children's beliefs and use Sunday School for more than a pep rally and entertainment.

YES, this is true. However, it only goes to verify what the Word of God has already told us:
1 John 2:19 states: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us."

Every generation is born lost and in sin. We must evangelize anew each successive generation. However, mere outward conformity as a child does not necessarily guarantee the inner heart conviction. We must diligently guard our children against the forces that may destory their faith and belief in God. E. O. Wilson's story is a very strong case for Christian education but we must make doubly sure that our children have experienced salvation and possess conviction rather than conformity to our wishes. Parents and teachers can mold the outward behavior but only God can change the heart.