Creation Science discussion [Archive]

Socrates

February 9th 2003, 12:25 AM

I wrote:

"Yeah, pull the other one. The ASA site basically tells Christians to accept materialism, from which evolution is deduced, then try to fit God and the Bible into it. It's pathetic to see professing Christians huffing and puffing to keep up with materialistic thinking on origins, all the while panting, "yes, yes, that's what God REALLY meant!""

J.J. Ramsay, our local compromiser, replies:

"Oh, please! ASA is not advocating materialism, period."

Oh, sorry, they advocate "methodological naturalism" rather than philosophical materialism. But there is no practical difference, and this dodge reminds me of the assorted misotheists insisting that atheism means without a belief in God rather than belief in no God. .:argue:

JJR:
"Rather, the scientists of ASA believe that the evidence from radioactive dating and fossils cannot be explained away without gross distortions of fact."

And the scientists of AiG believe that the evidence of failure when the techniques are tested on rocks of KNOWN age are enough to distrust "dates" on rocks of UNKNOWN age. So we should certainly never trust circumstantial evidence of radiometric "dating" over the historical eye-witness account of Genesis. They also point out that there are a number of articles showing that these "infallible" datings give results that contradict each other, well outside the official experimental uncertainty -- see e.g. http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/area/magazines/TJ/docs/TJ_v14n2_Crinum.pdf by a Ph.D. Geologist, or, since that's likely to be too advanced for you, the popular-level version http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/382.asp.

JJR:
"I would not be surprised to find that a scientist of ASA would find the articles from skeptics like Farrell Till to be just as sloppy as articles from so-called creation scientists."

Many of them are real scientists by any normal criterion, e.g. earned Ph.D.s from secular universities in science, publications in normal scientific journals. You're just making pathetic assertions that creationists can't possibly be real scientists. :argh:

And frankly, with their commitment to materialism, or whatever synonym they choose to call it, doesn't give me any confidence that they could splatter Feral McTill effectively.

Socrates:

"And you've gotta be kidding that they have made even a dent into the devastating arguments against radiometric dating at http://www.answersingenesis.org/hom.../faq/dating.asp."

JJR again simply accepts the compromisers' propaganda uncritically and writes:

"Actually they have "made a dent" and then some, and in the very article to which I pointed, http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html. The articles on that page to which you pointed made several of the mistakes mentioned in the ASA article."

You mean, this desperate ASA article explains away the known problems that the AiG articles refers to :bonk:. News flash -- all dating methods rely on ASSUMPTIONS about the past. All radiodating's proponents do is and we see its proponents making excuses for the failures by pointing out where the assumptions fail. So they have a cheek to whinge when creationists point out these same assumptions when the "dates" contradict the revealed Biblical time scale.

J. J. Ramsey

February 9th 2003, 09:06 PM

(Note to the moderators: perhaps this should become a new thread, since it's getting off topic.)

Socrates:
Oh, sorry, they advocate "methodological naturalism" rather than philosophical materialism. But there is no practical difference . . .

Actually, the difference between methodological and philosophical naturalism is huge. Philosopical naturalism is a world view asserts that God does not exist, period. Methodological naturalism is not a world view at all; rather it is a methodology that takes as a working assumption that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation. Someone who is a believer of philosophical naturalism would treat the working assumption of methodological naturalism as an absolute and take the frequency of divine intervention to be zero, while a theist would treat that working assumption as fallible, only a heuristic that holds true enough to be useful. The theist scientist would probably also assert that if the working assumption is false, then the results of the experiment or investigation will so indicate; naturalistic explantions will then simply not be consistent with the data.

The difference between methodological and philosophical naturalism can be understood if one imagines the hypothetical positions of philosophical and methodological flat-earthism. The philosophical flat-earther will assert that the Earth really is flat, while the methodological flat-earther will simply assert that the Earth can be treated as flat for most practical purposes. Now, philosophical flat-earthism is obviously false, yet most of the time, we are methodological flat-earthists. The curvature of the Earth is so small that it can be treated as zero except in specialized cases, such as when one is navigating very long distances or working in a space program.

JJR:
"Rather, the scientists of ASA believe that the evidence from radioactive dating and fossils cannot be explained away without gross distortions of fact."

And the scientists of AiG believe that the evidence of failure when the techniques are tested on rocks of KNOWN age are enough to distrust "dates" on rocks of UNKNOWN age. So we should certainly never trust circumstantial evidence of radiometric "dating" over the historical eye-witness account of Genesis.

Let's see here. Take a dating method that can be contaminated under known conditions, and then date a rock contaminated under those conditions. All that points out is that radioactive dating methods have their limitations, not that they are automatically unreliable.

They also point out that there are a number of articles showing that these "infallible" datings give results that contradict each other, well outside the official experimental uncertainty -- see e.g. http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/area/magazines/TJ/docs/TJ_v14n2_Crinum.pdf by a Ph.D. Geologist [Snelling], or, since that's likely to be too advanced for you, the popular-level version http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/382.asp.

Snelling's work is questionable. One of the guys on the ASA mailing list noted the following problems <http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199712/0216.html>:

"How was the wood preserved in the basalt. Kilauea basalt flows come out
of the ground at 2100 degrees F. (Volcanoes (Time-Life Books, 1982), p. 131)
Trees caught in the path of the lava burn. The stumps, if they are buried
and removed from the air are then subjected to a 2100 degree temperature.
This is high enough to melt stainless steel. I can not imagine that wood,
subjected to this type of temperature would be able to come out of it either
charred or intact. It simply should be obliterated. . . .

"Secondly, was a stump found with roots in it going into the underlying siltstone. Finding roots in the lower layer does not mean ipso facto that those roots belong to the wood Snelling is dating.

"Thirdly, I would note that tree roots are notorious for wedging into crevaces in rocks. One must be careful to check that the lava conforms to the shape of the wood. If the wood were the roots of trees that had wedged into this basalt before it was was buried."

Another site <http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/crefaqs.htm#who> had pointed out that the "'wood" sample wasn't straight-up wood, but an iron concretion contaminated with organic material.

"And you've gotta be kidding that they have made even a dent into the devastating arguments against radiometric dating at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dating.asp."

JJR again simply accepts the compromisers' propaganda [sic :P] uncritically and writes:

"Actually they have "made a dent" and then some, and in the very article to which I pointed, http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html. The articles on that page to which you pointed made several of the mistakes mentioned in the ASA article."

You mean, this desperate ASA article explains away the known problems that the AiG articles refers to.

Desperate? You are telling me that Christians are desperate to defend findings that make belief in the Bible, theodicy, and our understanding of sin and death more complicated to understand and difficult to defend? Yeah, right.

News flash -- all dating methods rely on ASSUMPTIONS about the past.

And if those assumptions were bad, the world would not conform to them at all, and there would be no radioactive dating at all, just a bunch of spurious results that failed to form a pattern.

All radiodating's proponents do is and we see its proponents making excuses for the failures by pointing out where the assumptions fail.

Those so-called "excuses" are no more invalid than the answering of various apparent contradictions of Scripture. All the young-earth creationists have done is answered good methodology with bad.

Socrates

February 9th 2003, 10:07 PM

(Note to the moderators: perhaps this should become a new thread, since it's getting off topic.)

Yeah, and whose fault is that? You were the one who took pot shots at another recommended site, then made derogatory comments that the AiG scientists are not real ones even though they are far more qualified than the likes of you! :bonk:
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Socrates:
Oh, sorry, they advocate "methodological naturalism" rather than philosophical materialism. But there is no practical difference . . .

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J.J. Ramsay wrote:
"Actually, the difference between methodological and philosophical naturalism is huge. Philosopical naturalism is a world view asserts that God does not exist, period. Methodological naturalism is not a world view at all; rather it is a methodology that takes as a working assumption that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation."

Like I said, no PRACTICAL difference. Proponents of either view are examples of the "scoffers" that Peter referred to in 2 Peter 3. These Scoffers, with whom Ramsay wants to ally, are WILLINGLY IGNORANT of two basic facts of history:

1. Special acts of creation
2. God's judgement of sin with a global Flood.

As for me, unlike JJR, I refuse to kowtow to the Gospel of Methodological Naturalism according to the atheist Eugenie Scott, but will accept God's clear revelation that there HAVE been those acts of intervention in the past. And note, philosophical materialists MUST be methodological naturalists, so why should Christians give in to them?

"Someone who is a believer of philosophical naturalism would treat the working assumption of methodological naturalism as an absolute and take the frequency of divine intervention to be zero, while a theist would treat that working assumption as fallible, only a heuristic that holds true enough to be useful. The theist scientist would probably also assert that if the working assumption is false, then the results of the experiment or investigation will so indicate; naturalistic explantions will then simply not be consistent with the data."

And they are not. And there is no reason to expect they would be. But the bottom line is, no Christian should adopt a naturalistic view of ORIGINS as opposed to OPERATIONAL science. AiG says it well here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism

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Socrates:
"And the scientists of AiG believe that the evidence of failure when the techniques are tested on rocks of KNOWN age are enough to distrust "dates" on rocks of UNKNOWN age. So we should certainly never trust circumstantial evidence of radiometric "dating" over the historical eye-witness account of Genesis. "

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JJR:
"Let's see here. Take a dating method that can be contaminated under known conditions, and then date a rock contaminated under those conditions. All that points out is that radioactive dating methods have their limitations, not that they are automatically unreliable."

More excuses. But the excuses get larger all the time, as John Woodmorappe points out in his book "The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods". And it just shows that there are reasonable ways that creationist scientists can explain the isotope ratios that materialists and their compromising churchian allies like JJR and ASA INTERPRET as ages. The book Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth by Ph.D. geologists and nuclear physicists explains more.

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Socrates:
They also point out that there are a number of articles showing that these "infallible" datings give results that contradict each other, well outside the official experimental uncertainty -- see e.g. http://www.answersingenesis.org/Hom...14n2_Crinum.pdf by a Ph.D. Geologist [Snelling], or, since that's likely to be too advanced for you, the popular-level version http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/382.asp.

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JJR pontificates:

"Snelling's work is questionable."

Sez U.

One of the guys on the ASA mailing list noted the following problems <http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199712/0216.html>:

"How was the wood preserved in the basalt. Kilauea basalt flows come out of the ground at 2100 degrees F. (Volcanoes (Time-Life Books, 1982), p. 131) Trees caught in the path of the lava burn. The stumps, if they are buried and removed from the air are then subjected to a 2100 degree temperature. This is high enough to melt stainless steel. I can not imagine that wood, subjected to this type of temperature would be able to come out of it either
charred or intact. It simply should be obliterated. . . ."

Nonsense. The stump showed CHARRING. And the inside would be more insulated from the extreme hear, by both the outer layers of wood and by the cooled and hardened surface of the basalt.

"Secondly, was a stump found with roots in it going into the underlying siltstone. Finding roots in the lower layer does not mean ipso facto that those roots belong to the wood Snelling is dating."

More pathetic evasion from someone who wasn't there. Snelling documented exactly where and when he found the wood.

"Thirdly, I would note that tree roots are notorious for wedging into crevaces in rocks. One must be careful to check that the lava conforms to the shape of the wood. If the wood were the roots of trees that had wedged into this basalt before it was was buried."

Another site <http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/crefaqs.htm#who> had pointed out that the "'wood" sample wasn't straight-up wood, but an iron concretion contaminated with organic material.

Well, if you trust a known apostate like Joe Merde, you need your head read. :duh: But typical of Churchian compromisers who just accept anything an agnostic or atheist claims. And this referred to a totally different sample, i.e. wood in the Hawkesbury Sandstone. Shows how little you know, and how much you are willing to trust anyone who doubts the Bible. In any case, Dr Snelling is a Ph.D. geologist, and he knows wood when he sees it! And the delta-C-13 tests are consistent with no contamination despite the pathetic dodges by Merde.

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Socrates:
You mean, this desperate ASA article explains away the known problems that the AiG articles refers to.

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JJR:

"Desperate? You are telling me that Christians are desperate to defend findings that make belief in the Bible, theodicy, and our understanding of sin and death more complicated to understand and difficult to defend? Yeah, right."

Yeah, it is right. They have made their compromise with naturalism because they crave academic respectability above all else. And groups like AiG show up the fact of their compromise. So no matter how well argued their articles are, no matter how highly qualified their authors, the compromisers will reject them in favor of explanations of misotheists like Merde and Eugenie Scott.

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Socrates:
"News flash -- all dating methods rely on ASSUMPTIONS about the past. "

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JJR:
"And if those assumptions were bad, the world would not conform to them at all, and there would be no radioactive dating at all, just a bunch of spurious results that failed to form a pattern."

The Rate book has some good ideas about explaining both the patterns and the ANOMALIES. I.e. what processes explain the observed chemical ratios, which the materialists INTERPRET as ages -- when it suits them!

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Socrates:
"All radiodating's proponents do is and we see its proponents making excuses for the failures by pointing out where the assumptions fail."
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JJR:

"Those so-called "excuses" are no more invalid than the answering of various apparent contradictions of Scripture. All the young-earth creationists have done is answered good methodology with bad."

As if you'd be in a position to know.

No, the YECs realise that since creation is CURSED, we should interpret the data in creation according to the unfallen Written word of God: Scripture. Compromisers like you and ASA twist the propositional revelation of Scripture to fit in with the data from the cursed creation interpreted by fallen men.

J. J. Ramsey

February 10th 2003, 12:29 AM

Socrates:
(Note to the moderators: perhaps this should become a new thread, since it's getting off topic.)

Yeah, and whose fault is that? You were the one who took pot shots at another recommended site. . .

True, however, that was because I've seen the YEC stuff debunked multiple times, and I do not want disappointment with YEC to lead to rejection of Christianity. Atheists have tried to assert that if YEC is false, then Christianity is false. I would like to disabuse people of that notion.

And note, philosophical materialists MUST be methodological naturalists, so why should Christians give in to them?

True, but it doesn't work the other way round. Philosophical materialists are a subset of methodological naturalists.

JJR:
"Let's see here. Take a dating method that can be contaminated under known conditions, and then date a rock contaminated under those conditions. All that points out is that radioactive dating methods have their limitations, not that they are automatically unreliable."

More excuses. But the excuses get larger all the time

If you can't tell the difference between excuses and explanations . . .

JJR pontificates:

"Snelling's work is questionable."

One of the guys on the ASA mailing list noted the following problems <http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199712/0216.html>:

"How was the wood preserved in the basalt. Kilauea basalt flows come out of the ground at 2100 degrees F. (Volcanoes (Time-Life Books, 1982), p. 131) Trees caught in the path of the lava burn. The stumps, if they are buried and removed from the air are then subjected to a 2100 degree temperature. This is high enough to melt stainless steel. I can not imagine that wood, subjected to this type of temperature would be able to come out of it either
charred or intact. It simply should be obliterated. . . ."

Nonsense. The stump showed CHARRING. And the inside would be more insulated from the extreme hear, by both the outer layers of wood and by the cooled and hardened surface of the basalt.

At 2100 deg. F, the charring wouldn't be enough to insulate.

Another site <http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/crefaqs.htm#who> had pointed out that the "'wood" sample wasn't straight-up wood, but an iron concretion contaminated with organic material.

Well, if you trust a known apostate like Joe Merde, you need your head read. :duh: But typical of Churchian compromisers who just accept anything an agnostic or atheist claims. And this referred to a totally different sample, i.e. wood in the Hawkesbury Sandstone.

If Joe Meert is an apostate, that is his problem. Saying that his being an apostate negates his argument is simply an ad hominem attack.

As for me accepting "anything an agnostic or atheist claims," I'm surprised that you don't see the irony in saying that about someone who just took potshots at Farrell Till!

I have to concede that the Meert article refers to a different sample. Looks like Snelling has found wood samples in supposedly old rock before. That said, considering that both the "wood" samples in the Hawkesbury Sandstone and the Marlstone rock bed appear to be mineral samples, I'd have to wonder if Snelling didn't do it yet again with the Crinum sample. That this supposed wood sample survived a 2100 deg. F lava flow would suggest that, as with the other samples, it isn't wood.

the YECs realise that since creation is CURSED, we should interpret the data in creation according to the unfallen Written word of God: Scripture. Compromisers like you and ASA twist the propositional revelation of Scripture to fit in with the data from the cursed creation interpreted by fallen men.

Think carefully about what you just wrote. You seem to be implying that since creation is cursed, we cannot correctly interpret it without the guidance of the Scriptures. Yet how do we ever come around to knowing that our interpretation of creation must be mediated through Scripture? I can tell you why I find the Bible (especially the New Testament) reliable, as can Holding, Glenn Miller of Christian-Thinktank.com, or Jaitus. Yet ultimately we do that by using our fallen minds, and the fallen minds of the sources we consult, to interpret the scraps of evidence that are part of this cursed creation. Yet how can a cursed creation testify to us the truth of Scripture if the creation itself cannot be interpreted without it?

Socrates

February 10th 2003, 01:13 AM

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JJ Ramsey:
(Note to the moderators: perhaps this should become a new thread, since it's getting off topic.)

Socrates:
Yeah, and whose fault is that? You were the one who took pot shots at another recommended site. . .

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JJR:

"True, however, that was because I've seen the YEC stuff debunked multiple times, ..."

In your dreams. But in reality, you've inadvertently provided the REAL reason for rejection: it's not the FACTS that the materialists and their churchian hangers-on like you object to, but the fact that creationists refuse to play by their self-serving RULES -- see The Rules of the Game (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1135.asp)

JJR continues with his rationalization for compromizing with materialism and rejecting God's revelation about the history of our world:

"... and I do not want disappointment with YEC to lead to rejection of Christianity. Atheists have tried to assert that if YEC is false, then Christianity is false. I would like to disabuse people of that notion."

More likely, atheists are disgusted when they see that Christians don't even believe their own book! I've personally heard the erudite polymath CEO of AiG(Australia), Dr Carl Wieland, telling an audience how he was an atheist at university, and the various Christians would try to witness to him. Ya know, the usual "invite Jesus into your heart". But Dr W would always point out that if the Bible was wrong right at the start, why should he trust it anywhere else? And he could show that all the doctrines of Christianity, e.g. sin against the creator, punishment by death, the human ancestry of Christ, are all predicated upon a straightforward understanding of Genesis. He actually considered the claims of the gospel when some Christians actually affirmed that they did believe Genesis, and gave good reasons.

And the liberals are just more consistent: they interpret the Rez and Virginal Conception passages the same way as compromisers interpret Genesis -- i.e. use the same paradigm of methodological naturalism and call it "science".

What, do you think that if Christians make fundamental concessions to atheism when it comes to origins that they will make concessions in return? Get real, give them an inch and they'll take a mile! :help:

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Socrates:
And note, philosophical materialists MUST be methodological naturalists, so why should Christians give in to them?

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JJR:
"True, but it doesn't work the other way round. Philosophical materialists are a subset of methodological naturalists."

Exactly. But why should any Christians want the slightest part of a fundamentally God-rejecting worldview that ignores God's clear teaching of what He has done in the past?

quote:
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JJR:
"Let's see here. Take a dating method that can be contaminated under known conditions, and then date a rock contaminated under those conditions. All that points out is that radioactive dating methods have their limitations, not that they are automatically unreliable."

Socrates:
"More excuses. But the excuses get larger all the time"

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JJR, still desperate to justify his compromise, ranted :rant:

If you can't tell the difference between excuses and explanations . . .

Evidently you can't, since as shown below you just parroted one God-hater without even realizing that he was talking about something completely different.

Actually I apologize for the above. It was most unfair to parrots, since as AiG has reported, they seem to show rudimentary comprehension of what they imitate -- see Bird-brain matches chimps (www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2451.asp)

quote:
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Socrates:
"Nonsense. The stump showed CHARRING. And the inside would be more insulated from the extreme hear, by both the outer layers of wood and by the cooled and hardened surface of the basalt."

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JJR:
"At 2100 deg. F, the charring wouldn't be enough to insulate."

Perhaps you should learn some elementary physics, e.g. the difference between heat and temperature!! As should be painfully obvious by now, you have no credibility when you pontificate on science, so don't expect us just to take your word for things.

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Socrates:
Well, if you trust a known apostate like Joe Merde, you need your head read. But typical of Churchian compromisers who just accept anything an agnostic or atheist claims. And this referred to a totally different sample, i.e. wood in the Hawkesbury Sandstone.

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JJR:

"If Joe Meert is an apostate, that is his problem. Saying that his being an apostate negates his argument is simply an ad hominem attack."

That was hardly my main point. After all, I showed, and to your credit you conceded, that Merde was talking about something else. But my comment SHOULD give you a hint that this guy also has an agenda, i.e. to discredit the Bible. And anyway, I trust Dr Snelling, who is at least as qualified as Merde, and was there at the time!!

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Socrates:
"the YECs realise that since creation is CURSED, we should interpret the data in creation according to the unfallen Written word of God: Scripture. Compromisers like you and ASA twist the propositional revelation of Scripture to fit in with the data from the cursed creation interpreted by fallen men. "
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JJR:

"Think carefully about what you just wrote. You seem to be implying that since creation is cursed, we cannot correctly interpret it without the guidance of the Scriptures."

This is especially so in the area of Origins science. And where claims about the past contradict the eye-witness revelation in Scripture, Scripture must take priority. In particular, any attempt to build a model of Earth history which rejects the global Flood a priori as per Hutton is inevitably going to be flawed. So is any attempt to build a model of biology that presupposes materialism (under whatever name you choose to call it) and rejects the clear Biblical teaching that living things were created to reproduce "after their kind", the first man was made from dust, and the first woman from his rib.

JJR:
"Yet how do we ever come around to knowing that our interpretation of creation must be mediated through Scripture?"

It goes back to 2 Timothy 3:15-17. An AiG article (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4000.asp) answered another compromiser who denied that Scripture was also authoritative about the history of the world, as follows:

[Compromiser]: The latter is given not as a source of scientific information but rather as an authority on matters of faith and conduct.(2 Tim 3:15).

[AiG Ph.D. scientist]: Let’s analyse this in context to see if Day’s ‘limited inerrancy’ view holds water. 2 Timothy 3:15–17 reads: 'and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.' (NIV)

While one key purpose of Scripture is to instruct us in faith and conduct, v. 16 makes it clear that all Scripture is God-breathed, not just some. That is, its inerrancy is not restricted just to those verses deemed to relate to faith and conduct. After all, doctrine is inextricably linked to history and science, so that whatever Scripture affirms on scientific or historical matters is also true. For example, the key doctrine of the Resurrection is linked to the historical fact that Jesus’ body had vacated the tomb on the third day. It also impinges on science, because naturalistic scientists assert that it is impossible for dead men to rise. And the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is tied to the historical accuracy of the event recorded in Genesis (1 Cor. 15:21–22).

As I pointed out in my original article, there’s no end to the apostasy demonstrated by Allan Day [the compromiser]. Day hasn’t responded to Jesus’ question to Nicodemus in John 3:12: ‘I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ (NIV). Nor has he addressed the question of what to do if a Scriptural teaching on conduct conflicts with ‘science’, e.g. the Bible’s prohibition on adultery or homosexual acts vs ‘scientific’ assertions that such behaviours are ‘in our genes’.

JJR:

"I can tell you why I find the Bible (especially the New Testament) reliable, as can Holding, Glenn Miller of Christian-Thinktank.com, or Jaitus. Yet ultimately we do that by using our fallen minds, and the fallen minds of the sources we consult, to interpret the scraps of evidence that are part of this cursed creation."

No, we realise that that Scriptures are propositional revelation, which nature is not. Compromisers often conflate the "facts of nature" with interpretations of the data. So there is always an extra step to make propositional statements about nature.

Also, it does not require infallible interpretation to know that some interpretations of Scripture are CORRECT, any more than one has to be an infallible mathematician to know that 1+1=2.

JJR:
"Yet how can a cursed creation testify to us the truth of Scripture if the creation itself cannot be interpreted without it?"

No, the Scripture is its own authority. It would be wrong to use "science" to try to prove the Bible, because that would make science the authority. But as Kyle and I have agreed, science is always correcting itself. So it makes more sense to use the truth of Scripture to build models about the creation. :read:

Socrates

February 10th 2003, 02:12 AM

Answers in Genesis is an organization of integrity

Despite the baseless assertions of various misotheistic gutter websites and their churchian allies like JJR and ASA, Answers in Genesis has shown much scientific integrity. They actively discourage fallacious arguments.

For example, the same Dr Snelling, while employed by AiG, showed that the moon dust argument was unsound. See Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System (www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/moondust(v7n1)/moondust.asp).

They also published a web page, Arguments we think creationists should NOT use (www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp). And they have cautioned against arguments by fellow YECs if they are unsound -- see Maintaining Creationist Integrity (www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1011hovind.asp) and Unleashing the Storm (www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0113peterson.asp)

J. J. Ramsey

February 10th 2003, 05:52 PM

Socrates:
JJR continues with his rationalization for compromizing with materialism and rejecting God's revelation about the history of our world:

"... and I do not want disappointment with YEC to lead to rejection of Christianity. Atheists have tried to assert that if YEC is false, then Christianity is false. I would like to disabuse people of that notion."

More likely, atheists are disgusted when they see that Christians don't even believe their own book! . . . Dr W would always point out that if the Bible was wrong right at the start, why should he trust it anywhere else?

The problem with an atheist (or in Dr. W's case, former atheist) asking the question "if the Bible was wrong right at the start, why trust it anywhere else?" is that the answer is actually favorable to the Christian. No debunking of the beginning of the creation story in Genesis is going to erase 1) that the New Testament documents exist, 2) that the Gospels and Acts came to exist relatively shortly after the events they described occured, 3) and that the various naturalistic explanations of the accounts in the New Testament have been clumsy and ad hoc, or dependent on speculation that has either been found to be contrary to fact or is simply totally unsupported by what we know of the first century.

And he could show that all the doctrines of Christianity, e.g. sin against the creator, punishment by death, the human ancestry of Christ, are all predicated upon a straightforward understanding of Genesis.

Except that isn't true, either. The understanding of Jesus as the Lamb of God is far more tied up with the Jewish sacrificial system and the Passover than with Genesis. The resurrection is hardly dependent on Genesis at all, except perhaps for an obscure link between Jesus and the Tree of Life. The human ancestry of Christ is based on Him coming out of Mary's womb!

And the liberals are just more consistent: they interpret the Rez and Virginal Conception passages the same way as compromisers interpret Genesis -- i.e. use the same paradigm of methodological naturalism and call it "science".

Methodological naturalism clearly doesn't apply to the resurrection or the virgin birth because its working assumption, that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation, is obviously false in these instances. Here we are not dealing with divine intervention as a "God of the gaps" -- which is what methodological naturalism is supposed to guard against -- but rather divine intervention as the prima facie explanation. The infrequency of divine intervention becomes a non-issue because resurrections and virgin births themselves are infrequent.

What, do you think that if Christians make fundamental concessions to atheism when it comes to origins that they will make concessions in return? Get real, give them an inch and they'll take a mile!

You mean that I'm supposed to decide what to believe based on what my opponents believe? That if my opponents believe something, that I must be opposed, no matter how convinced I am of their evidence? I cannot refuse to believe something merely on the grounds that it would be a concession or giving in.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Socrates:
And note, philosophical materialists MUST be methodological naturalists, so why should Christians give in to them?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JJR:
"True, but it doesn't work the other way round. Philosophical materialists are a subset of methodological naturalists."

Exactly. But why should any Christians want the slightest part of a fundamentally God-rejecting worldview that ignores God's clear teaching of what He has done in the past?

That's a loaded question. You are assuming that methodological naturalism is even a world view, let alone a God-rejecting one, when it is only a method with limited application. Go back and read my bit about philosophical and methodological flat-earthism.

JJR, still desperate to justify his compromise, ranted :rant:

If you can't tell the difference between excuses and explanations . . .

Evidently you can't, since as shown below you just parroted one God-hater without even realizing that he was talking about something completely different.

Let's see. I mistook one case of Snelling finding young wood in old stone in Australia with another case of Snelling finding young wood in old stone in Australia. Gee, hard to see how I could make a mistake there.

Socrates:
"Nonsense. The stump showed CHARRING. And the inside would be more insulated from the extreme hear, by both the outer layers of wood and by the cooled and hardened surface of the basalt."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JJR:
"At 2100 deg. F, the charring wouldn't be enough to insulate."

Perhaps you should learn some elementary physics, e.g. the difference between heat and temperature!!

I think you are the one that has to learn some physics. Insulation is imperfect protection. If the surrounding temperature is too high for too long, the insulation will do no good.

Socrates:
But my comment SHOULD give you a hint that this guy also has an agenda, i.e. to discredit the Bible.

When it comes to a hot topic like creation vs. evolution, everybody has an agenda, and no one is even close to neutral. The question is not who has what agenda, but rather what arguments and evidence they bring to the table and what effect their biases have on their arguments.

And anyway, I trust Dr Snelling, who is at least as qualified as Merde, and was there at the time!!

"Was there at the time" should be immaterial. Scientists are supposed to document their findings and subject them to peer review, so that people who weren't there can subject the findings to scrutiny.

Anyhow, the e-mail quoted by Meert from GeoChron Labs (one of the labs also referred to in the AiG article to which you linked.), where Snelling's "wood" sample turned out to be an iron concretion, does not inspire my confidence in Snelling. I suppose Meert could have fabricated that e-mail, yet even Snelling commented that it was "reddish-brown and hardened by petrifaction", which is consistent with the "wood" sample being mineral.

JJR:

"Think carefully about what you just wrote. You seem to be implying that since creation is cursed, we cannot correctly interpret it without the guidance of the Scriptures."

Socrates:

This is especially so in the area of Origins science. And where claims about the past contradict the eye-witness revelation in Scripture, Scripture must take priority.

-- snip --

It goes back to 2 Timothy 3:15-17. [ . . . All Scripture is God-breathed . . . ]

-- snip --

No, the Scripture is its own authority.

You seem to be begging the question here. How you determine that Scripture is its own authority? How can you affirm Scripture apart from testing and corroborating its claims?

Socrates

February 11th 2003, 12:01 AM

Socrates:
"JJR continues with his rationalization for compromizing with materialism and rejecting God's revelation about the history of our world:"

"... and I do not want disappointment with YEC to lead to rejection of Christianity. Atheists have tried to assert that if YEC is false, then Christianity is false. I would like to disabuse people of that notion."

S:
More likely, atheists are disgusted when they see that Christians don't even believe their own book! . . . Dr W would always point out that if the Bible was wrong right at the start, why should he trust it anywhere else?

JJR:

The problem with an atheist (or in Dr. W's case, former atheist) asking the question "if the Bible was wrong right at the start, why trust it anywhere else?" is that the answer is actually favorable to the Christian. No debunking of the beginning of the creation story in Genesis is going to erase 1) that the New Testament documents exist, 2) that the Gospels and Acts came to exist relatively shortly after the events they described occured, 3) and that the various naturalistic explanations of the accounts in the New Testament have been clumsy and ad hoc, or dependent on speculation that has either been found to be contrary to fact or is simply totally unsupported by what we know of the first century."

But why even consider the second part of any book if the first part is bunk? Especially when the second part often refers to the first part as reliable.

S:
And he could show that all the doctrines of Christianity, e.g. sin against the creator, punishment by death, the human ancestry of Christ, are all predicated upon a straightforward understanding of Genesis.

JJR:
Except that isn't true, either. The understanding of Jesus as the Lamb of God is far more tied up with the Jewish sacrificial system and the Passover than with Genesis.

Shows how little you know, but it's hardly surprising from a compromiser. The Jewish Targumim and early Christians alike regarded Genesis 3:15 as the protevangelion. And the Jewish passover was preceded by the sacrificial motifs in Genesis, which already taught that humanity was sinful and that blood sacrifice was necessary.

The resurrection is hardly dependent on Genesis at all, except perhaps for an obscure link between Jesus and the Tree of Life.

Oh, for goodness's sake, try reading the Bible rather than the compromisers and God-haters who mean so much to you. The greatest chapter on the Rex is 1 Cor. 15, and this directly connects the life brought by the Last Adam with the death brought by the first man, Adam.

The human ancestry of Christ is based on Him coming out of Mary's womb!

Oh yeah, and where do you get that from? Why, Luke of course. And Luke 3 traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, "the [son] of God", not back to ape-like creatures or pond scum.

S:
And the liberals are just more consistent: they interpret the Rez and Virginal Conception passages the same way as compromisers interpret Genesis -- i.e. use the same paradigm of methodological naturalism and call it "science".

JJR:
Methodological naturalism clearly doesn't apply to the resurrection or the virgin birth because its working assumption, that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation, is obviously false in these instances.

And neither should it apply to the Creation or the Flood, equally well attested in Scripture.

Here we are not dealing with divine intervention as a "God of the gaps" -- which is what methodological naturalism is supposed to guard against -- but rather divine intervention as the prima facie explanation.

What nonsense. The design argument is not based on any "gaps" in our knowledge, but rather on the analogy of what we DO know about the laws of information! Have you displayed the common courtesy of reading the sections about origin and operational science (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism)?

The infrequency of divine intervention becomes a non-issue because resurrections and virgin births themselves are infrequent.

Yes, and so are direct creations by God and a global Flood!!

S:
What, do you think that if Christians make fundamental concessions to atheism when it comes to origins that they will make concessions in return? Get real, give them an inch and they'll take a mile!

JJR:
You mean that I'm supposed to decide what to believe based on what my opponents believe? That if my opponents believe something, that I must be opposed, no matter how convinced I am of their evidence? I cannot refuse to believe something merely on the grounds that it would be a concession or giving in.

Well, that's exactly what you are doing!! You swallow methodological naturalism, invented by atheists like Eugenie Scott, and refuse to stand up for Scripture because you are worried that atheists might think you're stupid.

But you should be far more worried that atheists have even less respect for "useful idiots" like you and ASA that they cultivate, to use Lenin's term for his allies in the West who were too stupid to realise that they were knocking off the branch they were sitting on.

Socrates:
And note, philosophical materialists MUST be methodological naturalists, so why should Christians give in to them?

JJR:
"True, but it doesn't work the other way round. Philosophical materialists are a subset of methodological naturalists."

S:
Exactly. But why should any Christians want the slightest part of a fundamentally God-rejecting worldview that ignores God's clear teaching of what He has done in the past?

JJR:
That's a loaded question. You are assuming that methodological naturalism is even a world view, let alone a God-rejecting one, when it is only a method with limited application. Go back and read my bit about philosophical and methodological flat-earthism.

I have, which is more than can be said for you with the articles I recommend. But yes, MN is God-rejecting, because it rejects the special intervention by God in creation and the Flood, denying what He has revealed!

JJR, still desperate to justify his compromise, ranted

If you can't tell the difference between excuses and explanations . . .

S:
Evidently you can't, since as shown below you just parroted one God-hater without even realizing that he was talking about something completely different.

JJR:
Let's see. I mistook one case of Snelling finding young wood in old stone in Australia with another case of Snelling finding young wood in old stone in Australia. Gee, hard to see how I could make a mistake there.

:duh: the difference between igneous and sedimentary rock for a start!

JJR:
"At 2100 deg. F, the charring wouldn't be enough to insulate."

S:
Perhaps you should learn some elementary physics, e.g. the difference between heat and temperature!!

JJR:
I think you are the one that has to learn some physics. Insulation is imperfect protection. If the surrounding temperature is too high for too long, the insulation will do no good.

Depends on the amount of heat energy that can be transferred. That's why people can walk on coals at 600 deg C but would be badly burnt by metal at 150 dec. It's hardly an isolated occurrence for inner parts of organic material to be relatively unscathed.

Socrates:
But my comment SHOULD give you a hint that this guy also has an agenda, i.e. to discredit the Bible.

JJR tries to justify his blind faith in the testimony of misotheists.

When it comes to a hot topic like creation vs. evolution, everybody has an agenda, and no one is even close to neutral. The question is not who has what agenda, but rather what arguments and evidence they bring to the table and what effect their biases have on their arguments.

No, their biases determine their interpretation of the data!

S:
And anyway, I trust Dr Snelling, who is at least as qualified as Merde, and was there at the time!!

JJR:
"Was there at the time" should be immaterial. Scientists are supposed to document their findings and subject them to peer review, so that people who weren't there can subject the findings to scrutiny.

And Dr Snelling did!!

Anyhow, the e-mail quoted by Meert from GeoChron Labs (one of the labs also referred to in the AiG article to which you linked.), where Snelling's "wood" sample turned out to be an iron concretion, does not inspire my confidence in Snelling. I suppose Meert could have fabricated that e-mail, yet even Snelling commented that it was "reddish-brown and hardened by petrifaction", which is consistent with the "wood" sample being mineral.

I wouldn't put much past a known God-hater like Merde. After all, as a God-rejector, he has no objective basis for telling the truth. But I don't believe he's consciously deceiving in this case. It's more likely that the GeoChron people have misled him -- see Dating Dilemma Deepens: Moore on ancient radiocarbon (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative6-26-2000.asp)

S:
No, the Scripture is its own authority.

JJR:
You seem to be begging the question here. How you determine that Scripture is its own authority? How can you affirm Scripture apart from testing and corroborating its claims?

No, you fail to realise that ALL philosophical systems start with AXIOMS, or presuppositions that are not provable. That is not to say that there is no good reason for believing the propositions of Scripture, but any attempt to "prove" them would be putting something else in authority over Scripture. You do worse: you put the axiom of materialism (under the guise of MN), also unprovable, over the propositional revelation of Scripture.

J. J. Ramsey

February 11th 2003, 09:09 PM

S:
And he could show that all the doctrines of Christianity, e.g. sin against the creator, punishment by death, the human ancestry of Christ, are all predicated upon a straightforward understanding of Genesis.

JJR:
Except that isn't true, either. The understanding of Jesus as the Lamb of God is far more tied up with the Jewish sacrificial system and the Passover than with Genesis.

S:
Shows how little you know, but it's hardly surprising from a compromiser. The Jewish Targumim and early Christians alike regarded Genesis 3:15 as the protevangelion. And the Jewish passover was preceded by the sacrificial motifs in Genesis, which already taught that humanity was sinful and that blood sacrifice was necessary.

You mean the Genesis 3:15 that says: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel (NRSV)"? At best that verse is a vague foreshadowing of the resurrection, and even one who takes the chapters of Genesis to have happened can read this verse as merely meaning that women and snakes would be at odds. An understanding of Jesus as the Lamb of God might be enhanced by this verse, but hardly dependent on it.

As for the sacrificial motifs in Genesis teaching that "humanity was sinful and that blood sacrifice was necessary," you are reading an understanding of the sacrificial motifs in the post-Exodus Law of Moses into the sacrifices of Genesis. There are no sin offerings in Genesis. Offerings, yes, but not for atonement.

JJR:
The resurrection is hardly dependent on Genesis at all

S:
Oh, for goodness's sake. . . . The greatest chapter on the Rex is 1 Cor. 15, and this directly connects the life brought by the Last Adam with the death brought by the first man, Adam.

You are partly right. I had forgotten that Paul's material about Christ as the second Adam dealt with the resurrection as well as the atonement. That said, the resurrection still is hardly dependent on the resurrection. It is not as if the encounters of Mary Magdalene, Thomas, and the other disciples suddenly go away if Paul is wrong in his interpretation of Jesus as the second Adam.

quote:
The human ancestry of Christ is based on Him coming out of Mary's womb!

And Luke 3 traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, "the [son] of God", not back to ape-like creatures or pond scum.

Jesus' mother is obviously human, so one generation is quite enough to establish that Jesus is of human ancestry. The rest of the geneology could be dead wrong, and it wouldn't matter.

JJR:
Methodological naturalism clearly doesn't apply to the resurrection or the virgin birth because its working assumption, that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation, is obviously false in these instances.

And neither should it apply to the Creation or the Flood, equally well attested in Scripture.

Except that what is going on is not a direct attempt to explain the creation accounts naturalistically, but an attempt to explain explain accounts of the presence of rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, etc., which aren't, on their face, accounts of miracles at all, and thus, not cases where divine intervention is the prima facie explanation for the accounts.

Now if the creation stories in Genesis are true, than applying methodological naturalism to the rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, etc. should lead to one of three things:

Corroboration of the Genesis accounts. The naturalistic explanations would obviously not include divine intervention per se, but they would show aftereffects of flood, or young fossils, etc.
Ad hoc, clumsy explanations. The evidence doesn't care about human assumptions, and if the assumptions are wrong enough, they simply won't conform to the evidence.
Evidence neutral to naturalism. The evidence can be explained just as well under naturalism as under Scripture. It's a wash.

Neither of the first two have happened very much, and the end result has been that the explanations suggested by the physical evidence have displaced the explanation from Genesis.

By the way, early on in the study of rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, stone tools etc., attempts were made to fit all this evidence in a timeline that fit the Biblical account. It was as the explanations became more ad hoc and clumsy that the relatively short timeline of thousands of years gave way to a timeline of millions of years.

JJR:
Let's see. I mistook one case of Snelling finding young wood in old stone in Australia with another case of Snelling finding young wood in old stone in Australia. Gee, hard to see how I could make a mistake there.

the difference between igneous and sedimentary rock for a start!

Yeah, that one does deserve a :duh: after all. That said, I was not initially sure that Meert was talking about the same article. I noticed, though, that both the Meert web page and the Snelling article mentioned both basalt, sandstone, and Australia, so I figured that there was one wood-in-stone find, not two. My bad.

On the bright (?) side, I seem to have found a pattern in Snelling's research. :(

JJR:
Anyhow, the e-mail quoted by Meert from GeoChron Labs (one of the labs also referred to in the AiG article to which you linked.), where Snelling's "wood" sample turned out to be an iron concretion, does not inspire my confidence in Snelling. I suppose Meert could have fabricated that e-mail, yet even Snelling commented that it was "reddish-brown and hardened by petrifaction", which is consistent with the "wood" sample being mineral.

S:
I wouldn't put much past a known God-hater like Merde. After all, as a God-rejector, he has no objective basis for telling the truth. But I don't believe he's consciously deceiving in this case. It's more likely that the GeoChron people have misled him -- see Dating Dilemma Deepens: Moore on ancient radiocarbon (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative6-26-2000.asp)

I'm sorry, but that page from AiG appears to tell the same story as that e-mail shown on Meert's site. What's really damning is that the comments of the AiG guys seem to be willfully misunderstanding the correspondence they quote. For example:

AiG complains:

"if Jim Moore wanted the ‘inside story’ why did he contact Dick Reesman? DR does not manage Geochron’s C-14 lab, nor was he involved in analysing the wood sample."

Yet later, Dick Reesman says:

"Let’s get farther down to the nitty-gritty.Andrew Snelling sent us a small sample of something that he called “fossilized(?) wood.” Probably he should have said “fossilized (?) wood(?)”. I have no idea what it really is. Neither I nor our C-14 lab manager could tell what it was when we received it, nor can I find anyone today who can tell me what it is. It is soft and kind of fluffy (well, that’s not the right word, but I can’t think of the right word right now) looking. Under the petrographic microscope it is opaque and kind of fluffy (well, that’s not the right word, but I can’t think of the right word right now) looking. Whatever it is, it does not appear to be wood now, and I can’t tell if it ever was wood."

Apparently Dick Reesman did have access to the wood sample and could examine it, and also could consult with the C-14 manager. So in spite of AiG's complaints, Dick Reesman was the right person from whom to get the "inside story."

Dick Reesman also comments:

"DR: Had this sample been submitted by one of our clients other than a Creationist we would have said it was not worth analyzing since no one knew what it was, and what good is a "date" on some unidentified material if it can’t be related to anything specific in the real world?"

Aside from the dig at creationists, Reesman has a point. If one can't even tell what a sample is, then it is dog-hard to tell what carbon in the sample is contamination and what it is supposed to be in the sample. Hence the age of the carbon in the sample doesn't tell one anything. In other words, garbage in, garbage out.

Yet AiG misses the point:

Of course evolutionists would not think it worth analysing for C-14 in Triassic material because they believe it is millions of years old.

What Reesman objected to wasn't that the material was supposed to be Triassic, but that the material was unidentifiable.

What is more disturbing is this bit from AiG:

"We consider that by providing this information [about the "wood" sample], the lab has probably violated its fiduciary duty to AiG, its customer. It has a duty to maintain confidentiality with respect to customers and projects and any inquiries or disclosures should have been handled through, and authorised by AiG, not the lab or one of its employees."

If Snelling were working for industry with trade secrets to protect, AiG might have a point. However, AiG's mission is supposed to be scientific, and its findings should be open to question and inquiry. There is no need for confidentiality. And what's this about the lab probably violating its fiduciary duty? Can't AiG do its homework and figure out whether a violation really took place?

S:
No, the Scripture is its own authority.

JJR:
You seem to be begging the question here. How you determine that Scripture is its own authority? How can you affirm Scripture apart from testing and corroborating its claims?

No, you fail to realise that ALL philosophical systems start with AXIOMS, or presuppositions that are not provable. That is not to say that there is no good reason for believing the propositions of Scripture, but any attempt to "prove" them would be putting something else in authority over Scripture.

Not all presuppositions are unprovable, though, and many are really conclusions that we have come to take for granted. The presupposition that Scripture is infallible is not necessarily unprovable. To say that Scripture is infallible implies that when Scripture says something about physical reality, then examining said physical reality should either corroborate the Scripture or fail to contradict it. Indeed, if we don't test the Scriptures in some fashion, then we have no way of knowing whether they are any more correct than the Qur'an, or Hindu or Buddhist writings.

Socrates

February 11th 2003, 09:53 PM

S:
Shows how little you know, but it's hardly surprising from a compromiser. The Jewish Targumim and early Christians alike regarded Genesis 3:15 as the protevangelion. And the Jewish passover was preceded by the sacrificial motifs in Genesis, which already taught that humanity was sinful and that blood sacrifice was necessary.

Our favorite compromiser with materialism JJRamsey replied:

"You mean the Genesis 3:15 that says: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel (NRSV)"? At best that verse is a vague foreshadowing of the resurrection, and even one who takes the chapters of Genesis to have happened can read this verse as merely meaning that women and snakes would be at odds. An understanding of Jesus as the Lamb of God might be enhanced by this verse, but hardly dependent on it."

The point is, EVERY doctrine of Christianity has its roots in Genesis! Here is a hint of the Virginal Conception, because the coming one who will crush the head of the serpent is the seed of the woman. Biblical genealogies always trace the father's lineage, but here is something unusual to indicate that the seed will have no human father. Of course, this is further explained in God's progessive revelation in Scripture.

As for the sacrificial motifs in Genesis teaching that "humanity was sinful and that blood sacrifice was necessary," you are reading an understanding of the sacrificial motifs in the post-Exodus Law of Moses into the sacrifices of Genesis. There are no sin offerings in Genesis. Offerings, yes, but not for atonement.

The blood sacrifice for sin is foreshadowed by the fact that God make Adam and Eve coats of skin, to replace their fig leaves. Then Abel's blood sacrifice was accepted, while Cain's vegetable offering was rejected. After the Flood, Noah sacrificed the "odd" one of the seven clean animals and birds.

S:
Oh, for goodness's sake. . . . The greatest chapter on the Rex is 1 Cor. 15, and this directly connects the life brought by the Last Adam with the death brought by the first man, Adam.

JJR:
You are partly right. I had forgotten that Paul's material about Christ as the second Adam dealt with the resurrection as well as the atonement. That said, the resurrection still is hardly dependent on the resurrection. It is not as if the encounters of Mary Magdalene, Thomas, and the other disciples suddenly go away if Paul is wrong in his interpretation of Jesus as the second Adam.

It's "last Adam". But for Paul, the whole reason that Jesus came to die was bound up in the real physical death that the first man, Adam, brought. Your cowardly cringe towards evolution undermines this key teaching, since evolution teaches that humanity sprung from one or more populations of ape-like creatures, and there was already death before Adam.

Without Paul's clear teaching, the Rez has little theological basis, and could stand as an isolated weird event from history.

I've shown that if Genesis is denied, other parts of the Bible are also undermined, including the New Testament. You would do far better to trust the Bible rather than the God-haters who have decreed methodological naturalism.

JJR:
The human ancestry of Christ is based on Him coming out of Mary's womb!

S:
And Luke 3 traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, "the [son] of God", not back to ape-like creatures or pond scum.

Jesus' mother is obviously human, so one generation is quite enough to establish that Jesus is of human ancestry. The rest of the geneology could be dead wrong, and it wouldn't matter.

But here again is another part of the Bible that is undermined by your craven capitulation to materialism.

JJR:
Methodological naturalism clearly doesn't apply to the resurrection or the virgin birth because its working assumption, that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation, is obviously false in these instances.

S:
And neither should it apply to the Creation or the Flood, equally well attested in Scripture.

JJR:
Except that what is going on is not a direct attempt to explain the creation accounts naturalistically, but an attempt to explain explain accounts of the presence of rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, etc., which aren't, on their face, accounts of miracles at all, and thus, not cases where divine intervention is the prima facie explanation for the accounts.

Sorry, point missed yet again. We have a clear written account of miraculous events in the past. So it is sheer folly for professing Christians to try to explain Earth's geology and biology while declaring a priori that this written record is inadmissible as evidence.

Now if the creation stories in Genesis are true,

If? IF??!! Are you calling Jesus a liar?

than applying methodological naturalism to the rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, etc. should lead to one of three things:

Corroboration of the Genesis accounts. The naturalistic explanations would obviously not include divine intervention per se, but they would show aftereffects of flood, or young fossils, etc.

They do. But you are still in evidentialist mode. We don't look for "proof" of Genesis. Rather, we accept it as a reliable record of the past, and interpret the data accordingly. You and the materialists you idealise deny miraculous intervention a priori[i] and interpret the data according to [i]this framework. No creationist denies any observation by an evolutionist, but disputes his interpretation.

By the way, early on in the study of rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, stone tools etc., attempts were made to fit all this evidence in a timeline that fit the Biblical account. It was as the explanations became more ad hoc and clumsy that the relatively short timeline of thousands of years gave way to a timeline of millions of years.

More revisionism. The 18th century was the time of the so-called "Enlightment" which was really the Endarkenment. Hutton was a deist who made it clear that he rejected a priori any explanation which involved processes that are not happening today--see quote (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/hutton.asp)

who have a good reason to be truthful,in favor of materialists who have no such logical reason.]

S:
No, you fail to realise that ALL philosophical systems start with AXIOMS, or presuppositions that are not provable. That is not to say that there is no good reason for believing the propositions of Scripture, but any attempt to "prove" them would be putting something else in authority over Scripture.
JJR:
Not all presuppositions are unprovable, though, and many are really conclusions that we have come to take for granted.

No, but the point was that an AXIOM [i]by definition is unprovable. And that every philosophical system has axioms.

The presupposition that Scripture is infallible is not necessarily unprovable. To say that Scripture is infallible implies that when Scripture says something about physical reality, then examining said physical reality should either corroborate the Scripture or fail to contradict it. Indeed, if we don't test the Scriptures in some fashion, then we have no way of knowing whether they are any more correct than the Qur'an, or Hindu or Buddhist writings.

But there are some things that can't be proven, e.g. the Dukes of Edom in Genesis 36, what happens after death, the virginal conception, that we are jusaved by grace alone through faith alone, etc. Of course I agree that there is excellent supporting evidence, e.g. that Jesus rose from the dead, vindicating His claims to be who He said He was, and He validated Scripture. But this is further reason why we should use the Biblical framework to interpret the data to build a model of Earth history. You fail to realise that data don't speak for themselves, but are always interpreted.

But you have actually pointed out a further problem -- if Scripture fails when it talks about the physical world which can be tested, then why trust it on spiritual matters that can't be tested (cf. John 3:12)? So are you still keen to affirm that an error in Genesis has no ramifications for the Christian faith?

J. J. Ramsey

February 12th 2003, 12:13 PM

S:
The point is, EVERY doctrine of Christianity has its roots in Genesis!

Your examples showing that Genesis may be a vague foreshadowing of some Christian doctrines are a far cry from showing that those doctrines are rooted in Genesis.

S:
The Jewish Targumim and early Christians alike regarded Genesis 3:15 as the protevangelion.

JJR:
"You mean the Genesis 3:15 that says: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel (NRSV)"? At best that verse is a vague foreshadowing of the resurrection, and even one who takes the chapters of Genesis to have happened can read this verse as merely meaning that women and snakes would be at odds. An understanding of Jesus as the Lamb of God might be enhanced by this verse, but hardly dependent on it."

S:
Here is a hint of the Virginal Conception

Yes, a hint at best. If that verse you quoted had never existed, the virgin birth would still be comprehensible. That hardly constitutes dependence.

JJR:
As for the sacrificial motifs in Genesis teaching that "humanity was sinful and that blood sacrifice was necessary," you are reading an understanding of the sacrificial motifs in the post-Exodus Law of Moses into the sacrifices of Genesis. There are no sin offerings in Genesis. Offerings, yes, but not for atonement.

S:
Then Abel's blood sacrifice was accepted, while Cain's vegetable offering was rejected. After the Flood, Noah sacrificed the "odd" one of the seven clean animals and birds.

And as I said before, none of those are sin offerings. The sacrifice-for-sin motif appears only after the Exodus.

S:
The blood sacrifice for sin is foreshadowed by the fact that God make Adam and Eve coats of skin, to replace their fig leaves.

That interpretation is a real stretch, especially since it is never even mentioned in Genesis.

S:
But for Paul, the whole reason that Jesus came to die was bound up in the real physical death that the first man, Adam, brought.

Without Paul's clear teaching, the Rez has little theological basis, and could stand as an isolated weird event from history.

At the very least, the Resurrection is vindication that Jesus was right all along. It is also a sign of the resurrection to come at the end of history. Hardly just an isolated weird event.

S:
I've shown that if Genesis is denied, other parts of the Bible are also undermined, including the New Testament.

Hardly. If anything, you've shown, in spite of yourself, that even if Genesis was pretty thoroughly trashed, the core doctrines of Christianity still manage to hold. :bonk:

Think about it. That actually puts atheists in a really bad position, because once they are all done disproving Genesis, one can always reply, "Yeah. So?"

JJR:
Methodological naturalism clearly doesn't apply to the resurrection or the virgin birth because its working assumption, that divine intervention is infrequent enough to be ruled out as a likely proximate cause of the results of an experiment or investigation, is obviously false in these instances.

S:
And neither should it apply to the Creation or the Flood, equally well attested in Scripture.

JJR:
Except that what is going on is not a direct attempt to explain the creation accounts naturalistically, but an attempt to explain explain accounts of the presence of rock strata, fossils, old skeletons, etc., which aren't, on their face, accounts of miracles at all, and thus, not cases where divine intervention is the prima facie explanation for the accounts.

S:
Sorry, point missed yet again. We have a clear written account of miraculous events in the past. So it is sheer folly for professing Christians to try to explain Earth's geology and biology while declaring a priori that this written record is inadmissible as evidence.

No, Socrates, you missed the point. One is not directly examining the accounts in Genesis -- in which case divine intervention cannot be ruled out, as with the virgin birth. Rather, one is examining the fossil finds directly, without even knowing ahead of time whether they have any relevance to origins or creation. Until one examines a given fossil find, one has no way of knowing whether is it really old or if it's a relatively recent grave or trash heap. Once one has established what the various fossil finds mean, then if they are relevant to origins, one can cross-check with the written record in Genesis. If the cross-check leads to a straightforward corroboration, great. If there's a discrepancy, then the natural next step is to see if the findings can be harmonized with the written record. If that fails, well . . . :(

Notice that the methodological naturalism only necessarily applies to the first step. If corroboration or harmonization involve seeing if some miracle in Genesis explains the evidence, then methodological naturalism is obviously ditched. As one explores the evidence, the working assumptions get refined or changed altogether.

Notice also that the working assumption of methodological naturalism is a sufficient assumption for most mundane finds. If methodological naturalism explains a deeply buried bunch of thousand year-old shellfish shells near a coastline as a trash heap left by humans who lived off the marine life, then there is no great reason to probe into questions of divine intervention, or even to consider Genesis one way or the other. In short, the working assumption of methodological naturalism is good enough for most purposes, which is why it continues to be used. It is only in special cases where the heuristic of methodological naturalism breaks down.

(If you think about it, miracles wouldn't be miracles if the working assumption of methodological naturalism weren't usually true. Without an underlying regularity, miracles wouldn't stand out as unusual.)

S:
No, you fail to realise that ALL philosophical systems start with AXIOMS, or presuppositions that are not provable.

JJR:
Not all presuppositions are unprovable, though, and many are really conclusions that we have come to take for granted.

S:
No, but the point was that an AXIOM by definition is unprovable. And that every philosophical system has axioms.

And my point was that not all philosophical presuppositions are truly axioms. Many of them are really working assumptions that can be found at times to conflict with the real world. For example, as I said before, the presupposition that Scripture is infallible is not necessarily an unprovable axiom. Nor is the assumption of methodological naturalism, for that matter. As I said before:

JJR:
To say that Scripture is infallible implies that when Scripture says something about physical reality, then examining said physical reality should either corroborate the Scripture or fail to contradict it.

Also, if methodological naturalism is wrong in a given instance, then examining physical reality will likewise show either outright contradiction or questionable interpretations of the evidence.

But you have actually pointed out a further problem -- if Scripture fails when it talks about the physical world which can be tested, then why trust it on spiritual matters that can't be tested (cf. John 3:12)?

If Scripture uniformily failed when it spoke of the physical world, then I would have no reason to trust it. However, from about Abraham onward, contradictions of the Old Testament and archaeological evidence are either iffy or nonexistent, and occasionally there are bits and pieces of external corroboration. The New Testament holds up at least as well as the Old Testament.

So are you still keen to affirm that an error in Genesis has no ramifications for the Christian faith?

I wouldn't say that errors in Genesis have no ramifications for the Christian faith so much as insufficient ramifications. The evidence for the New Testament is strong enough that errors in Genesis, though problematic, are not fatal.

Pilgrim

February 12th 2003, 02:25 PM

Interesting conversations going on here. Let's keep in mind that we are, so far, dealing here with brothers in Christ. It is often tempting to get very heated and throw names rather than arguments in our passion, but let's not give into that temptation and instead show the world that we are Christians by our concern one for another.

(end of moderator interuption)

In regards to the Abrahamic Sacrifice in Genesis 15. It was not a substitutional sacrifice having to do with removing sin. Rather it was standard operating practice for the covenant/treaty form in the Ancient Near East. Such covenants were sealed at the end by a sacrifice in which the subject or vassle walked through the sacrifice as symbolic gesture pointing to what would happen if the covenant was not kept. Of course the wonderful thing about the example in Genesis 15 is that God walks through the sacrifice, not the subject.

Pilgrim

Socrates

February 12th 2003, 10:47 PM

JJ Ramsay (with Christians like him, who needs materialists?):
Notice also that the working assumption of methodological naturalism is a sufficient assumption for most mundane finds. If methodological naturalism explains a deeply buried bunch of thousand year-old shellfish shells near a coastline as a trash heap left by humans who lived off the marine life, then there is no great reason to probe into questions of divine intervention, or even to consider Genesis one way or the other. In short, the working assumption of methodological naturalism is good enough for most purposes, which is why it continues to be used. It is only in special cases where the heuristic of methodological naturalism breaks down.Still in evidentialist mode I see. It's the wrong way round. One should accept Genesis the way the NT did, as historical narrative. Therefore one should build one's models on this. But you and the ASA build your models on methodological naturalism, which equals atheism for all practical purposes when it comes to models of the past.

Based on Genesis, I try to see whether rocks were formed in Creation Week, deposited in the Flood, carved by its recessive stage, or the result of post-Flood events. MN just declares a priori that a global flood is inadmissible as an explanation.

Also, based on Genesis, I look at biology to see if there are examples of design, and try to ascertain the kind boundaries, e.g. by hybridization data. MN declares that special acts of design are inadmissible, so asserts that life began by chemical evolution, and from this first cell, all life evolved by mutations and natural selection (yes, yes, and other naturalistic processes).

(If you think about it, miracles wouldn't be miracles if the working assumption of methodological naturalism weren't usually true. Without an underlying regularity, miracles wouldn't stand out as unusual.)Yeah, I heard that at a lecture at an AiG camp, so why not tell us something I couldn't learn from them! Except, as AiG points out, MN should be applied only to areas where the Bible is silent, e.g. operational science (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism) in the present. It should NOT be applied to places where the Bible clearly teaches that God acted miraculously, e.g. the Creation and Flood (as well as the Fall and Babel). Materialists and their churchian allies like JJR and ASA persistently misrepresent the creationist case as an ad hoc appeal to miracles, which they do NOT in the area of operational science.

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 07:26 AM

Pilgrim inkects a moderatorial note:
Interesting conversations going on here. Let's keep in mind that we are, so far, dealing here with brothers in Christ. It is often tempting to get very heated and throw names rather than arguments in our passion, but let's not give into that temptation and instead show the world that we are Christians by our concern one for another.I completely agree. Does this include going to websites :spam: by known God-haters :rant: to try to dig up dirt on fellow Christians, as JJ Ramsey has done? :thinking:

Yog^sothoth

February 13th 2003, 10:36 AM

JJ says:

Now if the creation stories in Genesis are true,

Socrates babbles:

If? IF??!! Are you calling Jesus a liar?

I fail to see a point of validity here. The bible was written well before the coming of jesus (The old testamet anyway) and we know very well that much in the way of telescoping of history and a sort of perversion of oral tradition happened until it was written down, yet there is a certain truth which exsists in these passages. Saying "If the stories in Genesis are true" only shows that JJ is not a blind follower in as such that he is looking for a greater truth than the written record of a 1000 years of Oral tradition.

And I respect him for that.

If you reply, do so without using answersingenesis as reference.

:bonk:

Pilgrim

February 13th 2003, 10:48 AM

Socrates:
Pilgrim inkects a moderatorial note:I completely agree. Does this include going to websites :spam: by known God-haters :rant: to try to dig up dirt on fellow Christians, as JJ Ramsey has done? :thinking:

I'll tell you what, it seems only fair at this moment for you to be concerned with your own responses and to let JJ think about his. And as always, the mods will stay out unless it goes out of bounds. Wondering what the bounds are? They can be read here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=924#post924)

Thanks. And thanks for the good conversations so far.

Pilgrim

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 11:31 AM

JJRamsey wrote:
Now if the creation stories in Genesis are true,

I replied:

If? IF??!! Are you calling Jesus a liar?
Then Yog^sothoth showed his inability to get the point. But then whaddya expect from someone who has claimed on this site to be a Christian but said that he doesn't care about the Bible. Alas, the word "Christian" is deflated currency these days.

I fail to see a point of validity here. The bible was written well before the coming of jesus (The old testamet anyway) and we know very well that much in the way of telescoping of history and a sort of perversion of oral tradition
What graphocentric chauvinism, with no idea of the reliability of oral tradition in an oral society--see here (http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_03_01_01.HTML).

happened until it was written down, yet there is a certain truth which exsists in these passages. Saying "If the stories in Genesis are true" only shows that JJ is not a blind follower in as such that he is looking for a greater truth than the written record of a 1000 years of Oral tradition.As I pointed out, Jesus disgreed, because He quoted the first two chapters of Genesis as straightforward history, and used them to teach about marriage (Mt. 19:3-9, cf. Mark 10:6-9). Jesus also taught that the Flood and Ark were real events, and that they were to parallel the Second Coming (Luke 17:26-27).

If you reply, do so without using answersingenesis (www.answersingenesis.org/) as reference.I'll use whatever I please.:p :bonk:

Pilgrim

February 13th 2003, 11:34 AM

Is it the general understanding here, then, that a story must be factually true to be effective for teaching?

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 11:40 AM

Pilgrim:
Is it the general understanding here, then, that a story must be factually true to be effective for teaching?No, that's not what I said. I've never denied that there are parables and poetry in the Bible. But Genesis 1-11 does not have any of those characteristics. I said that Jesus treated the Creation and Flood accounts as history, and used them to make teaching points.

Pilgrim

February 13th 2003, 12:03 PM

Speaking of a-prioris!

Anyway, what do you make of the poetic nature of the creation account in Genesis 1. I only ask because you say it has not qualities of any other genre than historical narrative and in fact it does. Which is why I interpret it in terms of the "framework hypothesis."

Also, in another post you mentioned something about it being an eye-witness account. It is written in 3rd person so who is the eye-witness?

Peace,
Pilgrim.

Pilgrim

February 13th 2003, 12:04 PM

Let me clarify, in fact, Genesis one does rerpresent of form of Hebraic prose poetry, or at least it has been cogently argued so by the likes of Hugenburger, Stuart, and Kline.

Pilgrim

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 12:56 PM

Anyway, what do you make of the poetic nature of the creation account in Genesis 1.What do you make of your propensity to ask leading questions?

I've pointed out elsewhere:

But anyone who wishes to argue that Genesis is symbolic should address my arguments already presented. That is, the Hebrew grammar of Genesis shows that Genesis 1–11 has the same literary style as Genesis 12–50, which no one doubts is historical narrative. For example:
The early chapters of Genesis frequently use the construction called the ‘waw consecutive’, usually an indicator of historical sequence.
Genesis 1–11 also has several other trademarks of historical narrative, such as ‘accusative particles’ (’eth) that mark the objects of verbs, and many terms that are carefully defined.
The Hebrew verb grammar of Genesis 1 has a particular feature that exactly what is expected if it were representing a series of past events. That is, only the first verb is perfect, while the verbs that continue the narrative are imperfect. In Genesis 1, the first verb is bara’ (create) which is perfect, while the subsequent verbs that move the narrative forward are a series of imperfects, including wayyomer (‘And … said’, v. 3), and wayehi (‘and there was’, v. 3). [Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 2nd Ed., trans. Cowley, A.E., Oxford University Press, Oxford 1910, states (pp. 132–133): ‘One of the most striking peculiarities in the Hebrew consecution of tenses is the phenomenon that, in representing a series of past events, only the first verb stands in the perfect, and the narration is continued in the imperfect.’]
Parallelisms, which are characteristic of Hebrew poetry, are absent from Genesis, except where people are cited, e.g. Genesis 4:23. If Genesis were truly poetic, it would use parallelisms throughout.
Everywhere else Genesis 1-11 is cited in the Bible, it is treated as history. E.g., the days of Creation Week are the basis for the days of the working week in the 4th Commandment, Jesus cites Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 to teach on marriage, Luke 3 and Hebrews 11 treat Genesis 1-11 personages as equally historical with later ones, Paul accepts the reality of Adam bringing death to teach on the Resurrection in 1 Cor. 15, Paul justifies his commands on men and women teaching in Church with the historical fact of Adam's creation before Eve and the fact that Eve was deceived and Adam not.

I only ask because you say it has not qualities of any other genre than historical narrative and in fact it does. Which is why I interpret it in terms of the "framework hypothesis."This view is popular among compromising evangelical academics who can see the futility of day-age and Gap Theory compromises. But it’s strange, if it were the true meaning of the text, that no-one interpreted Genesis this way until Arie Noordtzij in 1924. Actually it’s not so strange, because the leading Framework exponent Meredith Kline, whom you cite below, admitted that his rationale for a bizarre, novel interpretation is a desperation to fit the alleged ‘facts’ of science (Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 48:2–15, 1996):
‘To rebut the literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation week propounded by the young-earth theorists is a central concern of this article. At the same time, the exegetical evidence adduced also refutes the harmonistic day-age view. The conclusion is that as far as the time frame is concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequence of events, the scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic origins.’ ....

‘In this article I have advocated an interpretation of biblical cosmogony according to which Scripture is open to the current scientific view of a very old universe and, in that respect, does not discountenance the theory of the evolutionary origin of man.’Pilgrim asked in another post:

Also, in another post you mentioned something about it being an eye-witness account. It is written in 3rd person so who is the eye-witness?God of course, the one who inspired the Editor Moses.

Let me clarify, in fact, Genesis one does rerpresent of form of Hebraic prose poetry, or at least it has been cogently argued so by the likes of Hugenburger, Stuart, and Kline.Prose poetry?! Next we'll be talking about Marxist capitalists. And as I point out, these guys are cravenly capitulating to "science", which drives them to their eisegetical contortions, instead of sticking to the text as your namesake GrayPilgrim advocates.

See also From Chaos to Cosmos: A Critique of the Framework Hypothesis (http://capo.org/cpc/pipa.htm)

J. J. Ramsey

February 13th 2003, 01:28 PM

Socrates:
Still in evidentialist mode I see. It's the wrong way round. One should accept Genesis the way the NT did, as historical narrative.

If one is directly investigating Genesis, yes, that is an appropriate starting point. If one is investigating finds that may or may not have anything to do with Genesis in the first place, then it isn't even a starting point that would come to mind.

But you and the ASA build your models on methodological naturalism, which equals atheism for all practical purposes when it comes to models of the past.

(As noted here (http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=15099#post15099), the definition of methodological naturalism that I had used for this discussion and the definition used by van Till aren't quite the same. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll try to continue to use my definition, not van Till's.)

If it is dogmatically assumed that methodological naturalism always holds, then, yes, it would for all practical purposes assume atheistic models of the past. As I have said multiple times :argh:, I do not treat it as something that always holds. If it is clear on the face of things that methodological naturalism is a bad starting point, or if in the course of an investigation, methodological naturalism shows itself to be a bad fit for the data, then it is discarded.

Based on Genesis, I try to see whether rocks were formed in Creation Week, deposited in the Flood, carved by its recessive stage, or the result of post-Flood events.

Fair enough. However, none of those things have panned out.

MN [methodological naturalism] just declares a priori that a global flood is inadmissible as an explanation.

Um, no, MN does no such thing. MN would simply be agnostic about whether such a flood had a supernatural cause. However, evidence of a global Flood, whatever its cause, could be found under MN.

Also, based on Genesis, I look at biology to see if there are examples of design, and try to ascertain the kind boundaries, e.g. by hybridization data.

Also fair enough. However, here it is also important to be your own devil's advocate here, especially since what you are doing is trying to prove a negative, specifically, trying to prove that something cannot have been formed by chance. That involves smoking out all the possible ways that something might have come about by chance. This is potentially doable, but it requires imagination, research, and time.

Note also that design can be true and YEC false.

(Sidenote: Contrary to popular belief, one can prove a negative. For example, one can show that a ball is not in a shoebox. However, proving a negative becomes more difficult as the time and space in which something is not supposed to occur or have occured grows larger.)

MN declares that special acts of design are inadmissible

Well, van Till's MN does, more or less. (Sorry about screwing up some of the semantics of this discussion by bringing in my own definition of MN. My bad.) More to the point, van Till's MN would simply say that science would be unable to conclude whether something was specially designed.

Note, however, that if a special act of design had occured and all the relevant evidence were present, then MN (either my variant or his) would simply yield no explanation and would fail. Of course, finding all the relevant evidence can be problematic.

so [MN] asserts that life began by chemical evolution, and from this first cell, all life evolved by mutations and natural selection (yes, yes, and other naturalistic processes).

MN asserts no such thing, not on its own. If YEC were true and evidence from creation corroborated it, MN would simply yield no solution.

Note that means that MN is theoretically consistent with YEC; it would merely not have anything to say about it.

Yeah, I heard that at a lecture at an AiG camp

Well, you heard wrong, and if you had given it an ounce of thought, you'd realize that no form of naturalism leads to evolution on its own. Obviously, Darwinian evolution is consistent with naturalism, and as both Dawkins and Plantinga pointed out, full-blown philosophical naturalism is hard to swallow without Darwinian evolution. However, naturalism on its own is merely some statement about nonexistence of the supernatural, and without other pieces of data, such as indications of an old earth, biological changes over time, etc., naturalism is insufficient to even suggest evolution.

Either you misheard what the AiG guy said at the lecture, or the AiG guy unintentionally misled you.

Materialists and their churchian allies like JJR and ASA persistently misrepresent the creationist case as an ad hoc appeal to miracles.

Um, no, not at all. What I and ASA see is that the YEC case is based on flat out bad methodology. So far I've seen the following lousy science:

Unidentifiable rocks are interpreted as wood.
The ancient dates yielded from radiometric dating are attributed to God using plasma conditions in the initial phase of creation. Yet the plasma would have to revert back to matter in the course of creation, and once that happened, the processes that set the radiometric clocks to zero would occur: argon would be released from cooling molten igneous rock; the mixing of magma underneath the Earth's crust would mix strontium-87 and strontium-86 in a consistent ratio, etc. In short, any initial plasma conditions would be irrelevant.
Not being foolproof is confused with total unreliability.
Dick Reesman's e-mail is blatantly misunderstood and misconstrued.
The cursedness of creation is used as a cop-out.

I have also seen from the YEC camp other forms of sloppy thinking. I've seen them treat evolution and materialism as one and the same. I've seen them talk as if all the scientists who believe evolution are engaged in some conspiracy to discredit theism when most of them couldn't care less. I've seen them engage in baseless ad hominem attacks, attributing motives like cowardice and desperation to those arguing against YEC.

Basically, what ASA and I see is that the facts so far are against YEC, and that the arguments in favor of YEC have routinely fallen apart under scrutiny.

Yog^sothoth

February 13th 2003, 01:32 PM

hey, how did you know i was a marxist capitalist?:rofl:

As far as science is concerned:

Science is an attempt to explain how god works. It is unfortunate the turns early scientific thought took during the enlightenment, but I would blame this on the church. Science and religion should exsist hand in hand but they do not because of people like socrates here who still think that questioning God is a bad thing. Because of the early scientific atheiists and popular culture of modern society, we think that science is with absence of god...and I would have to say that is wrong.

Without science, all socrates can do here is quote scripture and scriptorial studies from answers in genesis. Who says the bible is truth? The bible says the bible is proof. That may have been all fine and dandy a couple thousand years ago but in todays doubting thomas society the common human needs more. This is where science comes in.

Have fun trying to rip me apart Socrates. It's starting to be funny!:rofl:

Stratnerd

February 13th 2003, 02:14 PM

MN just declares a priori that a global flood is inadmissible as an explanation.

Why? In fact, ALL the creationists that I have seen explain the flood have used natural explanations. Certainly, a global flood scenario is not something that requires divine intervention per se. I've never seen an explanation that invoke supernaturally created rain or water.

Why not ask if it happened at all?

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 11:05 PM

JJR wrote:

Socrates:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, I heard that at a lecture at an AiG camp

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, you heard wrong, and if you had given it an ounce of thought, you'd realize that no form of naturalism leads to evolution on its own.

BZZT! Try reading in context! You have totally misconstrued what I was referring to :o :

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(If you think about it, miracles wouldn't be miracles if the working assumption of methodological naturalism weren't usually true. Without an underlying regularity, miracles wouldn't stand out as unusual.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, I heard that at a lecture at an AiG camp, so why not tell us something I couldn't learn from them!
But then, what should I expect from a person who goes to God-hating websites to find dirt on Christian organisations. :eww:

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 11:35 PM

The fifth-columnist JJ Ramsey spewed:

What I and ASA see is that the YEC case is based on flat out bad methodology. So far I've seen the following lousy science:
Not that JJR would know.

Unidentifiable rocks are interpreted as wood.Oh yes, JJR managed to totally misconstrue But as the article said:

"If Dick Reesman would read the paper properly he would see that the issues he raises are all dealt with. The uncertainty he refers to (out of context) is only whether or not there was any of the original organic material left. Geochron’s analysis established that some of the original carbon was still present in the sample. It was clear from the morphology that it was fossilised wood (see photo in article). ...

"Only a small part of the sample was sent to Geochron and it may not be possible to conclude from their sample that it was wood. Most of the fossil is still embedded in the piece of sandstone (see photo in article) and it is easier to identify it from the larger sample. The identification of the wood was discussed in the article."

JJR:
The ancient dates yielded from radiometric dating are attributed to God using plasma conditions in the initial phase of creation. Yet the plasma would have to revert back to matter in the course of creation, and once that happened, the processes that set the radiometric clocks to zero would occur: argon would be released from cooling molten igneous rock; the mixing of magma underneath the Earth's crust would mix strontium-87 and strontium-86 in a consistent ratio, etc. In short, any initial plasma conditions would be irrelevant.Without specifics, it's impossible to comment. But we DO know that excess argon is explained away where rocks of known young age give K-Ar "dates" of millions of years. Indeed, this can give us geochemical information on the magma source, and show that the magma has not been around long enough to degas. See [url=http://www.icr.org/research/as/as-r01.htm ]The Cause Of Anomalous Potassium-Argon ‘Ages’ for recent andesite flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, and the Implications for Potassium-Argon ‘Dating’ (]Dating Dilemma Deepens: Moore on ancient radiocarbon[/url), or since that's obviously too advanced for the likes of you, see the layman's version Radioactive ‘dating’ failure: Recent New Zealand lava flows yield ‘ages’ of millions of years (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/cenv22n1_dating_failure.asp)

Also during an AiG camp, Dr Walker, the author of the Moore article, explained that in his own Honors thesis (which was awarded 1st Class), he got wonderful straight lines for certain elements which would ordinarily be interpreted as isochron ages. The trouble was, in this case there is no way they could be caused by ages, indicating that geochemical processes can produce so-called isochrons that have nothing to do with age. See also The Failure of U-Th-Pb ‘Dating’ at Koongarra (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/tj_v9n1_koongarra.asp)

JJR:
Not being foolproof is confused with total unreliability.
No, that if it is not foolproof on rocks of known age, then why should we allow it to over-ride Scripture on rocks of unknown age?

JJR:
Dick Reesman's e-mail is blatantly misunderstood and misconstrued.Yeah, and we've seen several examples of your own misconstruing showing that you need remedial reading comprehension courses.

JJR:
The cursedness of creation is used as a cop-out.onsense. We point out that creation's cursedness is a very good reason not to use this to over-ride the plain meaning of Scritpure as you do.

JJR:
I have also seen from the YEC camp other forms of sloppy thinking.From a guy whose positively drooling with slop.

JJR:
I've seen them treat evolution and materialism as one and the same. Hearsay. Rather, they point out that evolution is a deduction from a materialistic paradigm, not that all evolutionists are philosophical materialists.

I've seen them talk as if all the scientists who believe evolution are engaged in some conspiracy to discredit theism when most of them couldn't care less.More hearsay. I've heard AiG reject conspiracy theories, but to point out that the leading evolutionists are indeed antitheists. They also point out the a priori materialistic bias regardless of the evidence. See quotes by Lewontin (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/lewontin.asp) and Todd (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/todd.asp)

JJR:
I've seen them engage in baseless ad hominem attacks, attributing motives like cowardice and desperation to those arguing against YEC. What a prize wuss! Nothing any YECs have said comes even close to what the evolutionists have said against them, using typical swear words such "armies of the night" (Asimov), "mind virus" (Dawkins), "perverting our children", "taking us back to the dark ages", "yahoos" (Gould) "scientifically ignorant" (despite their earned science Ph.D.s), "literalists" (despite their clear arguments why Genesis should be read as literal history, and the Psalms as poetry), etc.

Basically, what ASA and I see is that the facts so far are against YEC, and that the arguments in favor of YEC have routinely fallen apart under scrutiny.Not that JJR has any clues.

It's a shame that JJR is so full of pride in his own human reasoning divorced from Scripture, and craves academic respect more than faithfulness to God's written Word.

TheFiveSolas

February 13th 2003, 11:42 PM

Yog wrote:

The bible was written well before the coming of jesus (The old testamet anyway) and we know very well that much in the way of telescoping of history and a sort of perversion of oral tradition happened until it was written down...

I need to point out that this begs the very question at hand, namely the fact that Scripture claims for itself that it has its origin in God (i.e., theopneustos, God-breathed) not man. Therefore, when you treat the Bible as if it is just like a normal human document you are begging the question by assuming, a priori, that Scripture is NOT God-breathed. This is a form of intellectual "stacking the deck" in your favor (in Vegas this is called cheating). It necessarily follows that if Scripture is inspired by God, then it is NOT a normal human document.

Yog wrote:

Who says the bible is truth? The bible says the bible is proof. That may have been all fine and dandy a couple thousand years ago but in todays doubting thomas society the common human needs more. This is where science comes in.

Can science be used to prove or disprove one time historical (thus unrepeatable) events? No, science speaks to us only about repeatable, testable events.

Yog, you are again begging the question at hand. Your very statement reveals your underlying bias, a presupposition that ASSUMES right from the outset that science ALONE can tell us what is true. This bias on your part RULES OUT right from the outset the Christian claim that knowledge can also come by means of divine revelation.

How can you rationally justify your unspoken philosophical bias against divine revelation of the type claimed by Scripture itself? What epistemological justification can you bring forth to justify this belief of yours?

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 11:44 PM

Science is an attempt to explain how god works. It is unfortunate the turns early scientific thought took during the enlightenment,You might like to read the real history of things like the Galileo affair, maybe from the non-AiG source Christianity on Trial -- see review (http://www.tektonics.org/chrtrial.html).

but I would blame this on the church.Actually, it was a Christian world view that gave birth to modern science, as shown by historians of science like Jaki and Eiseley. Atheism has nothing within its own framework to say that the universe is rational, so atheism per se could not have given rise to science.
Science and religion should exsist hand in hand but they do not because of people like socrates here who still think that questioning God is a bad thing.
Actually, it's the overt contradiction of God which is a bad thing.

Because of the early scientific atheiists and popular culture of modern society, we think that science is with absence of god...and I would have to say that is wrong.
I've never attacked science in my life! I have attacked evolution -- which has nothing to do with science!

Without science, all socrates can do here is quote scripture and scriptorial studies from answers in genesis. I've quoted plenty of science, evidently above your level. But I keep science in perspective.

Who says the bible is truth?
Jesus for one, as I've said. If you have the slightest proof that He was wrong, or misquoted, then let's hear it.

Have fun trying to rip me apart Socrates. It's starting to be funny!I'd prefer a challenge.:bonk:

Socrates

February 13th 2003, 11:54 PM

In fact, ALL the creationists that I have seen explain the flood have used natural explanations. Certainly, a global flood scenario is not something that requires divine intervention per se. I've never seen an explanation that invoke supernaturally created rain or water.The point is, MN rejects that a global Flood happened, and declares that it is inadmissible as an explanation. The miraculous aspect could be the timing, initiation or process of the Flood. But God does say that the Flood had natural sources of water, from the fountains of the great deep and the windows of heaven.

Why not ask if it happened at all?Because God has revealed that it did, and Jesus (fully God and fully man) affirmed its historicity.

Stratnerd

February 14th 2003, 12:07 AM

FS,

Can science be used to prove or disprove one time historical (thus unrepeatable) events?

Not necessarily true. You can have a historical hypotheses that can be disproven. Cases that come to mind are phylogenies, which are statements (hypotheses) of history and data can be gathered to support or reject such hypotheses.

This bias on your part RULES OUT right from the outset the Christian claim that knowledge can also come by means of divine revelation.

Does it? Or maybe Yog is questioning what to do (or trust) if two scenarios don't jive.
=============================================
S,

The point is, MN rejects that a global Flood happened, yes but

and declares that it is inadmissible as an explanation.
but MN doesn't say a global flood is impossible, but there's no evidence to support it

But God does say that the Flood had natural sources of water, from the fountains of the great deep and the windows of heaven. Exactly! So why would MN say it is impossible?

Because God has revealed that it did
assuming, of course, you trust Moses.

Socrates

February 14th 2003, 12:18 AM

Strathnerd:

Socrates:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
and declares that it is inadmissible as an explanation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

but MN doesn't say a global flood is impossible, but there's no evidence to support itNo, I was right. Starting with Hutton (see quote (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/hutton.asp)), MN has DECREED that it is not an admissible explanation for the evidence. However, the Flood makes perfect sense of the evidence.

Soc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because God has revealed that it did
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

assuming, of course, you trust Moses.Since Jesus trusted Moses, this is not negotiable.

TheFiveSolas

February 14th 2003, 12:41 AM

I wrote:

Can science be used to prove or disprove one time historical (thus unrepeatable) events?

Stratnerd wrote:

Not necessarily true. You can have a historical hypotheses that can be disproven. Cases that come to mind are phylogenies, which are statements (hypotheses) of history and data can be gathered to support or reject such hypotheses.

Let me elaborate. Can science prove the Christian interpretation of one time historical (thus unrepeatable) events? For example, can science prove or disprove the interpretation of the flood that "God sent a flood upon the Earth"? Or that the universe came into being because "God created" it? Or that "God raised Jesus from the dead"?

In another thread I mentioned a physics professor I know of that is fully convinced that Jesus literally and historically rose from the dead. He finds the evidence/facts overwhelming (i.e., the empty tomb, the eyewitness accounts, etc.) However, he believes that quantum mechanics has "proven" that there are some very strange phenomena that happen in our universe and Jesus' resurrection is one of them.

No, the only way to KNOW that the Christian INTERPRETATION of these and other facts is true is if God has revealed it in Scripture. If Scripture is what it claims then it follows by necessary and logical consequence that there exist NO HIGHER authority by which it can be authenticated (authorized).

Such is the nature of ultimate authorities, they cannot be proven by some other (higher) authority for the simple reason that none higher exists.

Ishmael

February 14th 2003, 01:12 AM

Stratnerd

February 14th 2003, 02:03 AM

S -

No, I was right. Starting with Hutton (see quote), MN has DECREED that it is not an admissible explanation for the evidence. So Hutton speaks for all? Hardly! Nothing in MN precludes a global flood. Apparently even AIG steers away from the supernatural and the flood for, at least, the water:

"So, the "fountains of the great deep" are probably oceanic or possibly subterranean sources of water. In the context of the flood account, it could mean both."

"Quite clearly, then, the waters of Noah’s Flood are in today’s ocean basins."

AIG had God pushing around plates to get it going but I've seen creationist literature remove God from even that... wasn't it Walt Brown???? Regardless, water, sedimentation, etc are completely natural.

However, the Flood makes perfect sense of the evidence. not to me... but why does the evidence even matter to you? As you've already said Genesis is true then interpret after the fact. So what does evidence have to do with it?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

FS,

Let me elaborate. Can science prove the Christian interpretation of one time historical (thus unrepeatable) events? I didn't think that science could prove anything but could only rule out certain hypotheses....

For example, can science prove or disprove the interpretation of the flood that "God sent a flood upon the Earth"? Or that the universe came into being because "God created" it? Or that "God raised Jesus from the dead"?

Yes, no, no. Some you can some you can't but I wouldn't lump them all together. Certain aspects like the actual event (e.g., the flood) certainly can be evaluated by science but whether these things happen through divine influence cannot be.

However, he believes that quantum mechanics has "proven" that there are some very strange phenomena that happen in our universe and Jesus' resurrection is one of them. sure strange things happen, but it doesn't follow that because some things happen that all other things to do.

is if God has revealed it in Scripture. well, how do you know?

Such is the nature of ultimate authorities, they cannot be proven by some other (higher) authority for the simple reason that none higher exists. is that the reason, really?

Socrates

February 14th 2003, 03:28 AM

Soc:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
No, I was right. Starting with Hutton (see quote), MN has DECREED that it is not an admissible explanation for the evidence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Strathnerd:

So Hutton speaks for all? Hardly!
Well d'oh :duh:, he was just the FOUNDER of uniformitarianism!

Nothing in MN precludes a global flood. Apparently even AIG steers away from the supernatural and the flood for, at least, the water:

"So, the "fountains of the great deep" are probably oceanic or possibly subterranean sources of water. In the context of the flood account, it could mean both."Just what I said! That's what the Bible gives as a source of the water!! The mechnism for starting the Flood could well have been supernatural. But the point about Hutton and MN is that they reject processes not seen to be happening today. Special acts f creation and global floods are not seen today, so they are automatically inadmissible. But unlike the capitulating JJ Ramsey, I'm not going to be bullied by materialists into disregarding cleasr eyewitness records of Earth history.

"Quite clearly, then, the waters of Noah’s Flood are in today’s ocean basins."

AIG had God pushing around plates to get it going but I've seen creationist literature remove God from even that...Maybe you should try to understand catastrophic plate tectonics (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/tectonics.asp)

wasn't it Walt Brown???? Who cares about his hydroplate theory?

Soc:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
However, the Flood makes perfect sense of the evidence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
not to me... You must have mistaken me for someone who gives a monkeys.

but why does the evidence even matter to you? As you've already said Genesis is true then interpret after the fact. So what does evidence have to do with it?Wrong again! :argh: As I (and now TheFiveSolas) has pointed out, the Biblical propositions form the framework by which the data are interpreted. Only the philosophically naive like you think that somehow facts speak for themselves. So when I look at the fata from the rocks or living things, I interpret this "evidence" to build a model of Earth's history. MN follows Hutton in disallowing one sort of explanation for explaining the evidence.

We already know of Strathnerd's philosophical ignorance from his response to TheFiveSolas, since he fails to see that ALL philosophical systems start with axioms. Therefore he has no right to object when TFS and I use a different set of axioms -- the propositions of Scripture -- from his Huttonian ones.

Pilgrim

February 14th 2003, 10:10 AM

Socrates:
JJR wrote:

BZZT! Try reading in context! You have totally misconstrued what I was referring to :o :

But then, what should I expect from a person who goes to God-hating websites to find dirt on Christian organisations. :eww:

Do you consider all positions that are contrary to yours to be god hating ones?

Socrates

February 14th 2003, 10:16 AM

Pilgrim
Do you consider all positions that are contrary to yours to be god hating ones?No, only those of anti-biblical apostates, e.g. Joe Meert, whom JJR cited uncritically because it gave him a chance to slag off against creationists who show up his craven compromise for what it is.

Pilgrim

February 14th 2003, 10:23 AM

Socrates:
ALL philosophical systems start with axioms. Therefore he has no right to object when TFS and I use a different set of axioms -- the propositions of Scripture -- from his Huttonian ones.

Right well said there and as honest a statement as I've seen around here. A clear admission as to the creationest assumptions and apriori and quite right in pointing out that every system starts with them.

Stratnerd

February 14th 2003, 10:37 AM

Well d'oh , he was just the FOUNDER of uniformitarianism! So? Please explicitly state your point? MN = Hutton?

But the point about Hutton and MN is that they reject processes not seen to be happening today.

1. WHat does Hutton have to do with this? Uniformitarianism is only part of how geology sees the planet.

2. MN does not equal uniformitarianism

Special acts f creation and global floods are not seen today,

Creation is one thing and a flood is another. Again, nothing in MN precludes an observation of a global flood since itself requires no supernatural intervention. Isn't water natural?

Maybe you should try to understand catastrophic plate tectonics

Details are unimportant here. The fact is that creationist authors have put forth natural explanations for such an event. Therefore, this is another event that is not precluded by MN.

Who cares about his hydroplate theory? who cares about any of them? evidence is irrelevent to a creationist

Only the philosophically naive like you think that somehow facts speak for themselves. funny, I don't think that at all.

I interpret this "evidence" to build a model of Earth's history. quotes are put to good use here since any amount of evidence against a flood will be meaningless.

-- from his Huttonian ones. Wrongo jacko

Socrates

February 14th 2003, 10:54 AM

who cares about any of them? evidence is irrelevent to a creationistwho cares about any of them? Evidence to the contrary is irrelevant to a bigoted anti-creationist who is evidently not interested in representing his opponents fairly.

Soc:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I interpret this "evidence" to build a model of Earth's history.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Strathnerd:
quotes are put to good use here since any amount of evidence against a flood will be meaningless. No, rather, that it's possible for a uniformitarian to interpret the evidence in his framework, while I interpret the same evidence in a global Flood framework. And you are also ignorant of Kuhn's studies about paradigms -- in the history of science, a paradigm can tolerate many anomalies before it is overthrown.

Wrongo jackoAs if you'd know.

Stratnerd

February 14th 2003, 11:15 AM

Evidence to the contrary is irrelevant to a bigoted anti-creationist who is evidently not interested in representing his opponents fairly.

Then please set me straight: what does evidence (without quotes!) mean to a creationist?

No, rather, that it's possible for a uniformitarian to interpret the evidence in his framework, Again, a global flood is not precluded by mn. Perhaps it is by uniformitarianism but then mn is not the same as uniformitarianism, is it? Catastrophes are allowable by mn, why not?

And you are also ignorant of Kuhn's studies about paradigms -- in the history of science, a paradigm can tolerate many anomalies before it is overthrown. No, I'm not. Creationism is not a paradigm if you consider paradims to be able to be overthrown. If you accept Genesis as being True - then evidence is irrelevent! There are no anomolies and all non-fitting data must be explained ad hoc.

As if you'd know.

Of course I do; you made the statement about me!

J. J. Ramsey

February 14th 2003, 05:08 PM

Pilgrim

February 14th 2003, 05:55 PM

I'm really learning alot from both sides here. I would again remind everyone that we share a common fellowship in Christ here and that within the grace of God there is room for varying positions and even room for us when we are wrong. With that in mind let's continue to concentrate on the argument and points at hand and not the person of other posters.

Thanks and Peace in Christ.
Pilgrim

Socrates

February 15th 2003, 02:08 AM

S quotes from AiG:

"If Dick Reesman would read the paper properly he would see that the issues he raises are all dealt with. The uncertainty he refers to (out of context) is only whether or not there was any of the original organic material left. Geochron’s analysis established that some of the original carbon was still present in the sample.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Geochron's analysis established that there was carbon. Whether or not it was original is questionable. Since Reesman could not determine what it was, he has no way of knowing whether the carbon was originally from incompletely fossilzed wood. Note that the d C-13 PDB measurements do not help. All they establish is that the carbon is from an organic source, which may or may not come from the outside.Shows what little you know, but since you apparently trust God-hating sources so gullibly, I'm not surprised. If it weren't for the fact that these samples came from rock allegedly millions of years old, no one would question that the carbon was intrinsic to the sample.

S quotes from AiG:

"Only a small part of the sample was sent to Geochron and it may not be possible to conclude from their sample that it was wood. Most of the fossil is still embedded in the piece of sandstone (see photo in article) and it is easier to identify it from the larger sample."

--------------------------------------------------------------

I'll grant that GeoChron may have had a sample too small to indicate whether it was from a piece of fossilized wood. Unfortunately, while that may certainly answer Reesman's objection, that does not make a difference. Brilliant, totally refuting an objection that meant so much to you (well, it must have been right because it came from a known God-hater who JJR therefore trusts as more reliable than a Bible believer), but it makes no difference ! :huh:

The core question is whether the carbon in the sample would have had to come from within the sample -- and the answer to that is still "No." The very porosity of it makes it susceptible to capturing carbon carried by tricklings of water or oil.This was dealt with by the delta-C-13 tests that ruled out contamination, as explained in the Moore response!!:

"Furthermore the quarry from where the sandstone was obtained is well above the water table, and in evolutionary thinking has been that way for millions of years. So the idea of circulating groundwater does not wash."

S:
But we DO know that excess argon is explained away where rocks of known young age give K-Ar "dates" of millions of years. Indeed, this can give us geochemical information on the magma source, and show that the magma has not been around long enough to degas. See The Cause Of Anomalous Potassium-Argon ‘Ages’ for recent andesite flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, and the Implications for Potassium-Argon ‘Dating’,

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's see. K-Ar dating is based on the assumption that once an igneous rock has cooled, the only argon-40 that should be in it should come from the decay of potassium-40. This assumption is not dogmatically presumed to be true by those who do K-Ar dating, but understood to have exceptions. First, it is known that this assumption is only approximately true in the first place because bubbles can trap air, which contains traces of argon-40. There is a simple calculation that accounts for this. Second, it is known that the argon-40 from deep magma can introduce contamination. These conditions are understood by both ICR, the creationists who wrote the technical article to which you referred, and by those who do K-Ar dating.But many minerals are now declared to be unsuitable which were once gladly used. It's all ad hoc, as shown by John Woodmorappe's book The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods (http://shop.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/AIGAU.storefront/en/product/10-3-090)

So what does ICR do? They collect igneous rocks where the second condition (argon-40 from deep magma) is known to be a problem. ICR even explicitly notes that its samples contained xenoliths that probably came from the mantle and carried the argon-40. Not only that, but the argon-40 levels were so low that the instruments weren't sensitive enough to get clear readings.Oh, come off it. The xenolith excuse was totally demolished, and is often used as an excuse even when none are found!

-------------------------------------------------------------

if it is not foolproof on rocks of known age, then why should we allow it to over-ride Scripture on rocks of unknown age?

-------------------------------------------------------------

In the case of the ICR article, the answer is simply that the rocks of known age in question had known contamination problems. They were simply not good test samples.No, they are declared to have contamination problems after the events.

YEC Ph.D. geologists and nuclear physicists are working on how to explain both the "good" results and the many anomalies, based on the truth of the Biblical framework which JJR rejects.

Once more, excuses about contamination expand all the time. For example, many of the samples would not be assumed to be contaminated were it not for the anomalous ages. And for C-14, delta-C-13 is alleged to rule out contamination.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Also during an AiG camp, Dr Walker, the author of the Moore article, explained that in his own Honors thesis (which was awarded 1st Class), he got wonderful straight lines for certain elements which would ordinarily be interpreted as isochron ages. The trouble was, in this case there is no way they could be caused by ages, indicating that geochemical processes can produce so-called isochrons that have nothing to do with age. See also The Failure of U-Th-Pb ‘Dating’ at Koongarra.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, all that article shows is that blindly assuming that the assumptions of the dating method hold is bad methodology. If the guiding assumption of U-Th-Pb dating is that the uranium, thorium, and lead are staying put, check whether they stay put! Of course, on top of that, one should cross-check with another dating method if possible.Yeah, yeah, heard all that before. But so often, these excuses are made up after the event. So we should point them out whenever the "dates" contradict Biblical chronology as affirmed by Jesus in Mark 10:6.

---------------------------------------------------------------

JJR:
The cursedness of creation is used as a cop-out.

S:
Nonsense. We point out that creation's cursedness is a very good reason not to use this to over-ride the plain meaning of Scritpure as you do.

---------------------------------------------------------------

That is still using creation's cursedness as a fallback excuse when the results aren't in YEC's favor.They are!

It is also a questionable excuse. All Genesis says about creation being cursed is that the ground is not going to be nearly as fertile as it used to be and that Adam and Eve would have to work hard to get food to grow (Gen. 3:17b-18). There is no sign that creation would "lie." If the creation accounts in Genesis are true, ...Once more, JJR sounds oh-so-pious about creation not lying, but is happy that Jesus might have believed a lie when He affirmed the historicity of Genesis. In any case, creation is not deceptive -- anti-YECs deceive themselves by trying to interpret data while ignoring God's eye-witness record of history. JJR is like Lucy in parable of the candle (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1247.asp)

... there should be nothing stopping creation from showing evidence of YEC.It does, despite JJR's repeated petitio principii! The problem is that JJR is interpreting it from the wrong framework. But I hope readers will notice JJR's implicit agreement that long ages really do contradict the creation account (not "accounts" as JJR says, parroting JEDP nonsense.

The ASA site basically tells Christians to accept materialism, from which evolution is deduced,

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You assume a straightforward link between evolution and materialism, as if they were tightly linked and one naturally led to the other. You never say outright that evolution equals materialism, but you casually make the connection, as if you took it for granted.I have provided plenty of documentation that evolutionists make their deduction from practical materialism.

You blithely write as if those who believe in evolution are of a camp out to corrupt Christians. You write of "compromisers," "fifth-column," "propaganda," and so on. All true.

The war motif is repeated throughout your posts.
And I remind you that YOU started it, so stop whinging! As usual, there is one rule for anti-YECs and another for YECs, i.e. that any attack on YECs is OK, but the slightest harshness when YECs defend themselves is beyond the pale.

JJR:
I've seen them engage in baseless ad hominem attacks, attributing motives like cowardice and desperation to those arguing against YEC.

S:
What a prize wuss!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I'm a wuss because Christians engaging in slander offends me?Then look in the mirror! And as I said, you evidently have no problem with the far worse anti-YEC roaring that make mine seem like gentle purring by comparison. You're happy to dish it out (and the worse the anti-Christianity of your source, the better) but just go crying to momma when you get some back!

Yog^sothoth

February 15th 2003, 09:29 AM

Socrates, I think you seem to need some medications or something. Discussion is one thing but you act nothing less than a rabid pit bull hell bent on eating all the brown bunnies in the field. JJ made a posting about someone he went to go see speak and wanted to discuss what it is he found. He never said, I hate god. I hate him so much i wish he was never around to say, "let there be light." He simply posted something hoping someone would discuss it with him in a calm and civil manner.

Instead you galloped along like a grand inquisitor with a tatto on your butt that says "You are a god hater because you don't believe in the same christianity i do."

Having the tatto there is one thing but the fact that you moon everyone you talk to is somewhat irritating.

So like, medication.; maybe an anti-psychotic like Geodon or Clozaril (a side-effect of this drug is death...heh), or maybe some nerve pills like Paxil or Xanax. Ask your doctor if they are right for you....that is if you can stop yourself from NOT mooning him.

hmmm, or are medications to god hating for you?:cheers:

Socrates

February 15th 2003, 09:37 AM

Yog needs psychiatric treatment for his delusional tendencies even before he gets past his kindergarten level understanding of logic and science.:bonk: :p :dunce:

Pilgrim

February 15th 2003, 10:44 AM

As they say on Saturday night live...Simmer down now! Let's ease up on the ad hominums.

J. J. Ramsey

February 15th 2003, 12:17 PM

Socrates:
Shows what little you know, but since you apparently trust God-hating sources so gullibly, I'm not surprised. If it weren't for the fact that these samples came from rock allegedly millions of years old, no one would question that the carbon was intrinsic to the sample.

You are assuming without proof that no one would question whether the carbon was from the sample or not. The sample has a very porous surface that can easily capture contamination. That is a red flag, period. (The porosity would be true even if -- especially if -- the sample were fossilized wood.)

JJR:
The core question is whether the carbon in the sample would have had to come from within the sample -- and the answer to that is still "No."

S:
This was dealt with by the delta-C-13 tests that ruled out contamination, [b]as explained in the Moore response!!:

Socrates, all the delta-C-13 tests establish is that the carbon comes from an organic source. Since the rock is porous and hardly in a watertight environment, organic carbon washed in from the outside cannot be ruled out.

Oh, come off it. The xenolith excuse was totally demolished

I've read that ICR article. Xenoliths are used as an explanatlon for the excess argon, even by ICR.

YEC Ph.D. geologists and nuclear physicists are working on how to explain both the "good" results and the many anomalies, based on the truth of the Biblical framework which JJR rejects.

Working on it? That's not even close to good enough. Would you buy an atheist's assertion that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead on the grounds that the atheist was working on a argument to support that assertion? Of course not. So far, the only arguments that you have presented have been

Speculation about the Earth being formed under plasma conditions that sped up some radioactive half-lives, ignoring that radiometric clocks are zeroed under terrestrial conditions, not plasma conditions, and that the plasma conditions would have had to revert back to terrestrial conditions for us to get the present-day earth.
Pointing out known exceptions to the working assumptions of radiometric dating that can be and are dealt with by checking the site to make sure that the working assumptions do indeed hold and/or cross-checking with another dating method.

I noticed that you seem to have missed the matter of cross-checking with multiple methods. Cross-checking can help root out anomalous dates even if one cannot directly test for contamination problems, because what contaminates one radiometric method will not contaminated a radiometric method based on wholly different elements. Excess argon-40, for example, is irrelevant to the rubidium-strontium method.

But I hope readers will notice JJR's implicit agreement that long ages really do contradict the creation account (not "accounts" as JJR says, parroting JEDP nonsense.

If you had read some of my other posts, you would know that I don't think all that much of JEDP (http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=14923#post14923). As for creation account versus creation accounts, that's a to-may-to, to-mah-to issue. It is obvious that there are two different sections in the recounting of creation in Genesis, one dealing with the whole Earth, and the other focusing on Eden. You can call the two sections part of one account, or call each section an account. That's just an issue of semantics and defining one's terms. Unless one is trying to do nonsense like pitting the sections against each other, or making from it overreaching conclusions as in JEDP, it doesn't really make a difference.

Socrates

February 15th 2003, 01:08 PM

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Socrates:
Shows what little you know, but since you apparently trust God-hating sources so gullibly, I'm not surprised. If it weren't for the fact that these samples came from rock allegedly millions of years old, no one would question that the carbon was intrinsic to the sample.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You are assuming without proof that no one would question whether the carbon was from the sample or not. The sample has a very porous surface that can easily capture contamination. That is a red flag, period. (The porosity would be true even if -- especially if -- the sample were fossilized wood.)By your "reasoning" we could never date wood, but evidently C-14 labs disagree! But I would of course think that contamination is far more frequent than uniformitarians would like to admit!!

JJR:
The core question is whether the carbon in the sample would have had to come from within the sample -- and the answer to that is still "No."

S:
This was dealt with by the delta-C-13 tests that ruled out contamination, [b]as explained in the Moore response!!:

------------------------------------------------------------------

Socrates, all the delta-C-13 tests establish is that the carbon comes from an organic source. Since the rock is porous and hardly in a watertight environment, organic carbon washed in from the outside cannot be ruled out.Ramsey still hasn't a clue how this test is supposed to be able to tell whether the carbon is intrinsic or the result of contamination.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, come off it. The xenolith excuse was totally demolished

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I've read that ICR article. Xenoliths are used as an explanatlon for the excess argon, even by ICR.You've given no reason so far for us to think that you are a reliable or scientifically knowledgeable source. One article Radio-dating in rubble (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n3_radio_dating_rubble.asp) says:

"Some have argued that the magma (underground lava) must have picked up chunks of old rock as it moved through the Earth. They claim that these pieces of old rock (xenoliths) contaminated the sample and gave the very old age. This criticism is unfounded because Dr Austin was particularly careful to identify xenoliths and ensure none were included in the sample.

Of course, it would always be possible to claim that the sample contained xenoliths that Dr Austin did not see. This would not be the first time this rationalization has been used. Dalrymple, for example, described a case where the date was wrong, but xenoliths couldn’t be seen under the microscope. He suggested that excess argon from microscopic xenoliths which were somehow distributed uniformly through the sample such that they were invisible."

------------------------------------------------------------------

YEC Ph.D. geologists and nuclear physicists are working on how to explain both the "good" results and the many anomalies, based on the truth of the Biblical framework which JJR rejects.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Working on it? That's not even close to good enough.
Are you serious?? Would you also object to evolutionists working on incompletely solved problems? I thought that's what science is about.

Would you buy an atheist's assertion that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead on the grounds that the atheist was working on a argument to support that assertion? Of course not.No, I would leave that to you with your evident distrust of the Bible's reliability. Anyway, it's a totally different issue. The parallel would be with anomalies in the evolution/old earth paradigm.

So far, the only arguments that you have presented have been

Speculation about the Earth being formed under plasma conditions that sped up some radioactive half-lives, ignoring that radiometric clocks are zeroed under terrestrial conditions,
not plasma conditions, and that the plasma conditions would have had to revert back to terrestrial conditions for us to get the present-day earth.A ridiculous conflation of two different explanations. The nearest thing I can think of is from the article Billion-fold Acceleration of Radioactivity
Demonstrated in Laboratory (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0321acc_beta_decay.asp):

Now, let us visualize the following situation at the beginning of Creation Week. As God creates the atoms which will subsequently be assembled into all of the matter that will constitute all of the objects in the physical universe, He first creates them all in a completely ionised state (i.e. nuclei alone). This plasma persists for several hours on the First Day, during which time bb decay freely takes place under the bare-nucleus conditions of all of the atoms. This process, though, is insufficient by itself to generate billions of years’ worth of excess 187Os.7 However, if there were a simultaneous weakening of the presently-existing nuclear force, as suggested by Humphreys,8 the Re-Os ‘clock’ would be accelerated another few orders of magnitude. Not only the Re-Os clock, but probably many other radioactive (and even stable) nuclides would experience appreciable amounts of bb decay under the bare-nucleus conditions of the plasma. We note that the potential or actual bb decay gives a large ‘head start’ to extreme accelerations of radioactive decay.
....
Thus, at 600 MK, the effective t½ of 176Lu is only about 8 days!11 This is short enough that if, as discussed earlier, all of the atoms in the universe had been created in a very hot state—which just means very high kinetic energies—(and maintained that way for several hours on the First Day), all the excess 176Hf in existence would have been generated within that short period.

The rapidly-accumulated products of the accelerated radioactive decay subsequently became part of every object in the created universe, albeit at differing concentrations. During the remainder of the Creation Week, as God cooled and organized the plasma into solid celestial objects, such as planets, the excess radiogenic isotopes became partitioned into the relevant mineral phases, perhaps according to accelerated geochemical processes. The modern uniformitarian geologist misreads this deployment of the radiogenic isotopes as isochrons indicative of up to billions of years to time. This span of time never happened."

So, just as even now, many rocks have argon from the magma, so they were NOT zeroed upon crystallization, there is also no reason to believe that crystallization would expunge all radiogenic isotopes under this scenario (which is not presented dogmatically unlike evolution).

Pointing out known exceptions to the working assumptions of radiometric dating that can be and are dealt with by checking the site to make sure that the working assumptions do indeed hold ...

And making excuses when they give "dates" different from evolutionary expectations!!

... and/or cross-checking with another dating method.

I noticed that you seem to have missed the matter of cross-checking with multiple methods. Cross-checking can help root out anomalous dates even if one cannot directly test for contamination problems, because what contaminates one radiometric method will not contaminated a radiometric method based on wholly different elements.Well d'oh :duh: one of my first posts was about the conflict bewteen the K-Ar date of basalt and C-14 date of wood encased in it (see Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/382.asp). You managed to misconstrue a totally different example, and made a right botch of that too!

Excess argon-40, for example, is irrelevant to the rubidium-strontium method.Which has plenty of its own problems as amply documented, e.g. in Woodmorappe's book.

Socrates

February 15th 2003, 01:20 PM

Pilgrim:

Right well said there and as honest a statement as I've seen around here. A clear admission as to the creationest assumptions and apriori and quite right in pointing out that every system starts with them.But don't expect the likes of Ramsey and Stratnerd to grasp this logical point. They are still harboring the delusion that there are such things as neutral facts, and that creationists are the only ones with biases. Once more, the main objection to creation is not the "facts" (which we don't dispute) but the rules by which they are interpreted. See The Rules of the Game (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1135.asp)

J. J. Ramsey

February 15th 2003, 09:26 PM

JJR:
Socrates, all the delta-C-13 tests establish is that the carbon comes from an organic source. Since the rock is porous and hardly in a watertight environment, organic carbon washed in from the outside cannot be ruled out.

S:
Ramsey still hasn't a clue how this test is supposed to be able to tell whether the carbon is intrinsic or the result of contamination.

From AiG's own mouth <http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v21n3_date-dilemma.asp#r9>:

"delta C-13 PDB denotes the measured difference of the ratio C-13/C-12 (both stable isotopes) in the sample compared to the PDB (Pee Dee Belemnite) standard . . . Organic carbon from the different varieties of life gives different characteristic delta C-13 values."

In other words, delta C-13 PDB is just a ratio that tells what kind of lifeform the carbon came from. On its own, it cannot tell whether or not the carbon is from contamination.

JJR:
You are assuming without proof that no one would question whether the carbon was from the sample or not. The sample has a very porous surface that can easily capture contamination. That is a red flag, period. (The porosity would be true even if -- especially if -- the sample were fossilized wood.)

S:
By your "reasoning" we could never date wood, but evidently C-14 labs disagree!

No, by my reasoning samples obviously vulnernable to significant contamination shouldn't be dated. If the sample in question were a piece of unfossilized wood, or a piece of a scroll, or bone, then there's a very good chance that the vast majority of the carbon in the sample is not contamination. The Hawksbury sample is at best mostly fossilized wood. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to tell if the carbon in the sample is from a cell wall, in which case there is a good chance that the carbon is from the original wood, or from within a pore, in which case it could easily have been captured from various water trickles.

S:
One article Radio-dating (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n3_radio_dating_rubble.asp) in rubble says:

"Some have argued that the magma (underground lava) must have picked up chunks of old rock as it moved through the Earth. They claim that these pieces of old rock (xenoliths) contaminated the sample and gave the very old age. This criticism is unfounded because Dr Austin was particularly careful to identify xenoliths and ensure none were included in the sample.

Of course, it would always be possible to claim that the sample contained xenoliths that Dr Austin did not see.

I read the article on which the AiG article was based, http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r01.htm. Probably what did happen is that Austin did not do as good a job of removing xenoliths as he thought. From a review of "The Radiometric Dating Game" (http://www.tim-thompson.com/plaisted-review.html):

In his Mt. St. Helen's study, Austin collected what he thought was a freshly solidified dacite. He removed the gabbro xenoliths, but there's no mention if he found and removed any lighter colored, less obvious xenoliths, such as andesites or quartz diorites. Austin states that xenoliths of gabbro, quartz diorite, basalt, and andesite are common at the Mt. St. Helen site.

Figure 4 in Austin's report (http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r01.htm) shows a photomicrograph (http://www.icr.org/research/sa/images/sa-r01e.jpg) from one of his dacite samples. Notice that the feldspars in the figure are zoned. The zoning indicates that the feldspars have a long cooling history. The cores of the feldspars could be hundreds of thousands or a few million years older than the rims. As others have pointed out at anti-creationism web sites, the zoning is probably why Austin got a K/Ar age of 340,000 years for his feldspar/glass concentrate. The glass may have crystallized in the 1980's as Austin expected, but the feldspars may be much older. Bowen's reaction series (Perkins, 1998, p. 93-95) states that olivines, pyroxenes and Ca-feldspars are the first minerals to crystallize out of a mafic to intermediate magma. As the magma cools and the temperature drops, hornblendes and more sodium-rich feldspars may crystallize. As the temperature continues to drop, feldspars even richer in sodium crystallize. By this time, the magma may reach the surface and the remaining melt may be rapidly quenched to a glass. If Austin really wanted to date the 1986 eruption, he should have only sampled the glass. This is NOT an easy task and it may not be possible with a messy rock like this dacite. Austin's K/Ar dates are consistent with Bowen's reaction series. The pyroxene fractions which should have crystallized first, provide the oldest ages of 1.7 -2.8 million years. The amphiboles, which crystallized later, are in a fraction that provided a younger age of 0.9 million years. His glass and feldspar fraction is probably a mixture of young glass, old Ca-feldspars, and sodium-rich feldspars that have an intermediate age. Not surprisingly, this mixture gave a younger age of about 340,000 years, but still much older than 1986 AD. His whole rock age was no doubt affected by a mixture of young glass, older feldspar and pyroxene phenocrysts and some possibly ancient xenocrysts or lightly colored (hard to see) xenoliths. In conclusion, Austin's results do NOTHING to refute the validity of K/Ar dating.

S:
YEC Ph.D. geologists and nuclear physicists are working on how to explain both the "good" results and the many anomalies, based on the truth of the Biblical framework which JJR rejects.

JJR:
Working on it? That's not even close to good enough.

S:
Are you serious?? Would you also object to evolutionists working on incompletely solved problems?

Of course, I wouldn't object to evolutionists working on incompletely solved problems. I would, however, object to them saying that because they are working on the problem that it's as good as solved.

JJR:
[You have presented] Speculation about the Earth being formed under plasma conditions that sped up some radioactive half-lives, ignoring that radiometric clocks are zeroed under terrestrial conditions,
not plasma conditions, and that the plasma conditions would have had to revert back to terrestrial conditions for us to get the present-day earth.

S:
A ridiculous conflation of two different explanations. The nearest thing I can think of is from the article Billion-fold Acceleration of Radioactivity Demonstrated in Laboratory (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0321acc_beta_decay.asp).

That's the article, although I hardly see how it is a conflation of two explanations.

[Snipping excerpt from Woodmorappe's article because it's long. See above link or Socrates' previous post.]

S:
So, just as even now, many rocks have argon from the magma, so they were NOT zeroed upon crystallization, there is also no reason to believe that crystallization would expunge all radiogenic isotopes under this scenario

There are several problems with Woodmorappe's scenario. Let's concede to Woodmorappe the following points:

All the isotopes used in radioactive dating had their half-lives shortened during the plasma conditions.
The daughter and parent elements tended to remain near each other as they reverted to normal matter.

Those two points are from the article. Point #2 takes care of the objection that the radiometric clocks would be reset to zero after the plasma reverted to regular matter.

There are still problems. Socrates, you already pointed out that the YEC camp is trying to explain the "good" results, which implies that good results exist. In the most of the good results, multiple dating methods are applied to the same sample, and the radiometric clocks agree with each other; they are more or less in sync. Now under Woodmorappe's scenario, the radiometric clocks would have to accelerate in sync with each other; otherwise, they would be out of step with each other, and not agree as they do now.

JJR:
I noticed that you seem to have missed the matter of cross-checking with multiple methods. Cross-checking can help root out anomalous dates even if one cannot directly test for contamination problems, because what contaminates one radiometric method will not contaminated a radiometric method based on wholly different elements.

S:
Well d'oh one of my first posts was about the conflict bewteen the K-Ar date of basalt and C-14 date of wood encased in it (see Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict.

The context, Socrates, should have made it clear that I was referring to apply different dating methods directly on the same rock. :no:

JJR:
Excess argon-40, for example, is irrelevant to the rubidium-strontium method.

S:
Which has plenty of its own problems as amply documented, e.g. in Woodmorappe's book.

But the rubidium-strontium method does not have the same problems as potassium-argon. The likelihood that the methods would agree with each other if one of them yielded a spurious date is pretty low.

Socrates

February 15th 2003, 11:31 PM

-----------------------------------------------------------------

JJR:
Socrates, all the delta-C-13 tests establish is that the carbon comes from an organic source. Since the rock is porous and hardly in a watertight environment, organic carbon washed in from the outside cannot be ruled out.

S:
Ramsey still hasn't a clue how this test is supposed to be able to tell whether the carbon is intrinsic or the result of contamination.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

From AiG's own mouth <http://www.answersingenesis.org/hom...-dilemma.asp#r9>:

------------------------------------------------------------------

"delta C-13 PDB denotes the measured difference of the ratio C-13/C-12 (both stable isotopes) in the sample compared to the PDB (Pee Dee Belemnite) standard . . . Organic carbon from the different varieties of life gives different characteristic delta C-13 values."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

In other words, delta C-13 PDB is just a ratio that tells what kind of lifeform the carbon came from. On its own, it cannot tell whether or not the carbon is from contamination.No, try reading without your strong prejudice against anything that supports the Bible. The quote entails that it can tell if the carbon was from wood or something else.

JJR:
You are assuming without proof that no one would question whether the carbon was from the sample or not. The sample has a very porous surface that can easily capture contamination. That is a red flag, period. (The porosity would be true even if -- especially if -- the sample were fossilized wood.)

S:
By your "reasoning" we could never date wood, but evidently C-14 labs disagree!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, by my reasoning samples obviously vulnernable to significant contamination shouldn't be dated. If the sample in question were a piece of unfossilized wood, or a piece of a scroll, or bone, then there's a very good chance that the vast majority of the carbon in the sample is not contamination. The Hawksbury sample is at best mostly fossilized wood. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to tell if the carbon in the sample is from a cell wall, in which case there is a good chance that the carbon is from the original wood, or from within a pore, in which case it could easily have been captured from various water trickles.Yeah, right, even though it's well above the water table and the delta-13C-PDB can test where the carbon came from.

S:
One article Radio-dating in rubble says:

"Some have argued that the magma (underground lava) must have picked up chunks of old rock as it moved through the Earth. They claim that these pieces of old rock (xenoliths) contaminated the sample and gave the very old age. This criticism is unfounded because Dr Austin was particularly careful to identify xenoliths and ensure none were included in the sample.

Of course, it would always be possible to claim that the sample contained xenoliths that Dr Austin did not see.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I read the article on which the AiG article was based, http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r01.htm. Probably what did happen is that Austin did not do as good a job of removing xenoliths as he thought. From a review of "The Radiometric Dating Game": Talk about special pleading by a known God-hater. Austin was there, this pillock was not. And as I quoted above, xenoliths are often used as a catch-all even when none were found.

S:
YEC Ph.D. geologists and nuclear physicists are working on how to explain both the "good" results and the many anomalies, based on the truth of the Biblical framework which JJR rejects.

JJR:
Working on it? That's not even close to good enough.

S:
Are you serious?? Would you also object to evolutionists working on incompletely solved problems?

---------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, I wouldn't object to evolutionists working on incompletely solved problems. I would, however, object to them saying that because they are working on the problem that it's as good as solved.

But they do, so start objecting!! And the creationists are quite reasonable to say that they have solved the problem in principle but have not fine-tuned the details yet. Bottom line --- the science ends with the measurement of certain isotopes. the "dates" are an interpretation which we know must be wrong because it contradicts the eye-witness creation account in Genesis which Jesus confirmed as history. The creationists are still working on what processes could have caused these ratios, both the "concordant" and discordant ones.

JJR:
[You have presented] Speculation about the Earth being formed under plasma conditions that sped up some radioactive half-lives, ignoring that radiometric clocks are zeroed under terrestrial conditions,
not plasma conditions, and that the plasma conditions would have had to revert back to terrestrial conditions for us to get the present-day earth.

S:
A ridiculous conflation of two different explanations. The nearest thing I can think of is from the article Billion-fold Acceleration of Radioactivity Demonstrated in Laboratory.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
That's the article, although I hardly see how it is a conflation of two explanations.[/quote]But then you don't see much because you're in the tight grip of the naturalistic paradigm.

Socrates, you already pointed out that the YEC camp is trying to explain the "good" results, which implies that good results exist.

Of course.

In the most of the good results, multiple dating methods are applied to the same sample, and the radiometric clocks agree with each other; they are more or less in sync.Your trust is so touching -- pity it's in the wrong people (i.e. those who are mostly atheists and agnostics like Merde, Thompson, Dalrymple et al.) rather than Christ who affirmed the creation account, and was THERE!! (John 1:1-3, Col. 1:16-17). I've explained this above.

Now under Woodmorappe's scenario, the radiometric clocks would have to accelerate in sync with each other; otherwise, they would be out of step with each other, and not agree as they do now.They frequently don't agree, as I said. Also, the RATE group is working on the effects of accelerated decay, which Woodmorappe's article shows is possible despite the usual propaganda that decay rates are always constant.

JJR:
I noticed that you seem to have missed the matter of cross-checking with multiple methods. Cross-checking can help root out anomalous dates even if one cannot directly test for contamination problems, because what contaminates one radiometric method will not contaminated a radiometric method based on wholly different elements.

S:
Well d'oh one of my first posts was about the conflict bewteen the K-Ar date of basalt and C-14 date of wood encased in it (see Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The context, Socrates, should have made it clear that I was referring to apply different dating methods directly on the same rock. This is good enough, because the samples must be the same age.

----------------------------------------------------------------

JJR:
Excess argon-40, for example, is irrelevant to the rubidium-strontium method.

S:
Which has plenty of its own problems as amply documented, e.g. in Woodmorappe's book.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

But the rubidium-strontium method does not have the same problems as potassium-argon. The likelihood that the methods would agree with each other if one of them yielded a spurious date is pretty low.But the concordance isn't nearly as much as Ramsey thinks, and the discordance is much more. Does Ramsey realise that dating labs ask for "estimated age"? There is lots of pressure to get "dates" that agree, and there is also the tendency to ignore the many dates that do not.

Rb-Sr has its own geochemical problems, e.g anomalous isochrons, within-suite variations of 87Sr/86Sr, isotope mixing from sources, and open system behavior (A.A. Snelling, Geochmical processes in the mantle and crust, ch. 5 in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth. Oh sorry, Ramsey will distrust Dr Snelling even though he has an earned Ph.D. in geology and much practical experience of dating methods, because he has no record of anti-God activism unlike Merde and Thompson, and actually believes the Bible from cover-to-cover).

Blake Reas

February 16th 2003, 02:29 AM

Guys,

I think that everyone in this discussion are Christians ( if not correct me please!). We really need to show kindness in this discussion why does it always have to get so stupid!

Socrates I agree with your position in part, although we would probably conflict on our interpretation of Genesis 1 in little ways I tend to incorporate the LFH (Literary Framework Hyp.) into my view but that is only for a totally different post. Anyway please show Christian Courtesey! While I disagree with Ramsey and Yog mainly because I do not see how they handle the fall, this does not mean I need to call them "Pillocks" or ridicule their sources of information. Even though the people they may use are not Christians. Let's have the right tone to this discussion and try not to let our emotions get in the way of good argumentation :yipee: !

On the Evolutionist side I have not read all of the post but lets do the same for the YEC brethern and IDers! We are all here united for one reason and that is the resurrection of our Lord! Later guys!

In Christ,
Blake

P.S. I would jump in on this conversation but to be honest I am not very well equipped to deal with science! :bawl:

ICU:

Socrates

February 16th 2003, 04:34 AM

Hey Blake

You must have missed all the bile Yog and Ramsey spat at me -- see for example Post# 16645. I was merely following the Biblical challenge-riposte paradigm (http://www.tektonics.org/madmad.html). I would be concerned if you thought there was one rule for YECs and another for anti-YECs.

Also, note that the word "Christian" has long become debased currency. E.g. Yog claims to be one, but has explicitly stated that he doesn't care about the Bible, despite Christ saying "The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). And Ramsey also doesn't believe Christ on Genesis (Mark 10:6, Luke 17:26-27), but "unequally yokes" with God-haters in his (vain) attempt to undermine a Bible-upholding ministry like Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/).

Oh, did you see my response to Pilgrim on the novel LFH earlier in this thread: Post# 15544?

Pilgrim

February 16th 2003, 08:35 AM

I think Socrates makes a good point. Which is why these forums have set aside a special area for just such passionate exchanges. I think a good idea would be for Socrates or JJ to issue a challenge in the gym and 1-1 moderated debate area so they can unleash what ever verbal wrestling moves they want! It would be fun to watch.

However, on threads and in forums like these we try to maintain an atmoshpere with a little less vitriol. Please keep that in mind.

Pilgrim

Blake Reas

February 16th 2003, 03:25 PM

On the Evolutionist side I have not read all of the post but lets do the same for the YEC brethern and IDers! We are all here united for one reason and that is the resurrection of our Lord! Later guys!

Socrates I totally agree with you! The post was for everyone! And no I have not read the whole thread I have skipped around! I did not want to offend anyone I was just trying to remind everyone of CHRISTIAN etiquitte which it appears most of you have forgotten. Speak the Truth in Righteousness guys!
:brow:

In Christ,
Blake
P.S. Socrates I am not your enemy in this debate! I am on your side! :cheers:

J. J. Ramsey

February 16th 2003, 05:20 PM

JJR:
In other words, delta C-13 PDB is just a ratio that tells what kind of lifeform the carbon came from. On its own, it cannot tell whether or not the carbon is from contamination.

S:
The quote entails that it can tell if the carbon was from wood or something else.

delta C-13 PDB can tell whether the carbon is from a plant source, certainly. As this table (http://www.iaea.or.at/programmes/nahunet/e4/nmrm/stab_st/C.htm) shows, delta C-13 PDB values consistent with wood are also consistent with cellulose in general -- which is from what the cell walls of plants are made, wood included. In short, the carbon could have come from decayed plant material in soil carried by water down through to the sample.

JJR:
The Hawksbury sample is at best mostly fossilized wood. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to tell if the carbon in the sample is from a cell wall, in which case there is a good chance that the carbon is from the original wood, or from within a pore, in which case it could easily have been captured from various water trickles.

S:
Yeah, right, even though it's well above the water table

Um, Socrates, remember how water gets to the water table? Water from rain, rivers, etc. trickles down through the layers of earth on its way to the table, and on its way down, the various layers trap whatever junk has been dissolved in the water. That means that the sample probably over time has intercepted water on its way to the table and trapped some of its contaminants, which in turn contaminated the sample itself.

If the sample had been beneath the water table, the chance for contamination would have been lesser, not greater.

JJR:
Socrates, you already pointed out that the YEC camp is trying to explain the "good" results, which implies that good results exist.

S:
Of course.

JJR:
In the most of the good results, multiple dating methods are applied to the same sample, and the radiometric clocks agree with each other; they are more or less in sync.

Now under Woodmorappe's [plasma conditions] scenario, the radiometric clocks would have to accelerate in sync with each other; otherwise, they would be out of step with each other, and not agree as they do now.

S:
They frequently don't agree, as I said.

Yet they agree often enough. It has been pointed out that using two different dating methods on the same sample is common practise.

Also, the RATE group is working on the effects of accelerated decay

Again, the "working on it" argument doesn't wash.

JJR:
I noticed that you seem to have missed the matter of cross-checking with multiple methods.

S:
Well d'oh one of my first posts was about the conflict bewteen the K-Ar date of basalt and C-14 date of wood encased in it (see Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict.

JJR:
The context, Socrates, should have made it clear that I was referring to apply different dating methods directly on the same rock.

S:
This is good enough, because the samples must be the same age.

It's only good enough if it can be established that the basalt and the carbon from the samples must be the same age.

The biggest problem with the scenario of a lava flow entombing the wood has been mentioned already. A 2100 deg. F lava bath is enough to vaporize wood. (Sorry I didn't clarify that before.) An impression might have been left on the cooling lava, but the organic object leaving the impression would have been obliterated <http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199712/0241.html>. The leaf imprint in the basalt may have been from just that. The heat alone suggests that if the sample was entombed in the rock, it was not wood at the time.

If the sample is subject to contact with water trickling through the ground, then the same problems with the Hawksbury sample apply.

It is also worth noting that we have more information on the Hawksbury sample than we have on the other wood-in-rock sample that you mentioned. For the Hawksbury sample, we have an opposing side of the story from the correspondence of two workers at GeoChron Labs, while with the other sample, the only information is from Snelling, and those scrutinizing the work have only his documentation, good or bad, from which to work.

Does Ramsey realise that dating labs ask for "estimated age"?

I would not be surprised if that has more to do with making sure that they use appropriate equipment to do the measurements than it does with some evolutionist conspiracy. If, for example, one is trying to use the C-14 radiometric clock on a sample that is expected to be very old, then special techniques are necessary. Similar issues may be the case for other techniques. Of course, this is speculation, but my point is that asking for the estimated age is not necessarily a sign of anything sinister.

One more thing to consider, Socrates. From http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/8906_radiometeric_dating_does_work_12_30_1899.asp:

A few verified examples of incorrect radiometric ages are simply insufficient to prove that radiometric dating is invalid. All they indicate is that the methods are not infallible. Those of us who have developed and used dating techniques to solve scientific problems are well aware that the systems are not perfect; we ourselves have provided numerous examples of instances in which the techniques fail. We often test them under controlled conditions to learn when and why they fail so we will not use them incorrectly. We have even discredited entire techniques. . . .

In order to accomplish their goal of discrediting radiometric dating, however, creationists are faced with the daunting task of showing that a preponderance of radiometric ages are wrong — that the methods are untrustworthy most of the time. Not only that, they have to show the flaws in those dating studies that provide independent corroborative evidence that radiometric methods work. This is a tall order and the creationists have made no progress so far.

This means that bringing up isolated examples of radiometric dating problems can only help so much. Unless one conclusively shows either that radiometric dating is systemically in error, or that methodological errors are so common that nearly all the dates must be thrown out, the most one can say to have done is raise a few question marks.

Socrates

February 17th 2003, 04:37 AM

JJR:
In other words, delta C-13 PDB is just a ratio that tells what kind of lifeform the carbon came from. On its own, it cannot tell whether or not the carbon is from contamination.

S:
The quote entails that it can tell if the carbon was from wood or something else.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
JJR continues to unequally yoke himself with some god-hater and spouts:

delta C-13 PDB can tell whether the carbon is from a plant source, certainly. As this table shows, delta C-13 PDB values consistent with wood are also consistent with cellulose in general -- which is from what the cell walls of plants are made, wood included. In short, the carbon could have come from decayed plant material in soil carried by water down through to the sample.

No, this would not have kept the correct values. Otherwise delta C-13 PDB would be virtually useless as a cross check against contamination. But JJR shows the whole problem -- it's easy to make excuses when the methods do not work, so they have no case against creationists pointing out the same thing when the dates contradict the only eye-witness record we have. and this is the bottom line -- a reliable eye-witness trumps circumstantial evidence every time!

S:
Yeah, right, even though it's well above the water table

----------------------------------------------------------------

Um, Socrates, remember how water gets to the water table? Water from rain, rivers, etc. trickles down through the layers of earth on its way to the table, and on its way down, the various layers trap whatever junk has been dissolved in the water. That means that the sample probably over time has intercepted water on its way to the table and trapped some of its contaminants, which in turn contaminated the sample itself.

If the sample had been beneath the water table, the chance for contamination would have been lesser, not greater.
Of course I know, as does Dr Walker who is actually qualified in geology unlike you -- and we Australians actually know a thing or two about water tables -- heard of the Great Artesian Basin? But he makes it clear that only below the water table is the circulating groundwater likely to be an issue, rather than just special pleading.

Yet they agree often enough. It has been pointed out that using two different dating methods on the same sample is common practise.And they often fail. So it's time to work on theories which explain both the concordances and discordances. It's called scientific progress.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Also, the RATE group is working on the effects of accelerated decay

---------------------------------------------------------------

Again, the "working on it" argument doesn't wash.You need to wash behind your ears then, and abuse your fellow materialists that they are not allowed to be "working on" any unsolved or partially solved problems.

It's only good enough if it can be established that the basalt and the carbon from the samples must be the same age.

The biggest problem with the scenario of a lava flow entombing the wood has been mentioned already. A 2100 deg. F lava bath is enough to vaporize wood. D'oh, have you looked up the boiling point of carbon? :dunce:

If the sample is subject to contact with water trickling through the ground, then the same problems with the Hawksbury sample apply. Yeah, the more excuses you make are just grist to my mill, because they give clues about why we should be less trusting of ANY "dates" that contradict God's Word.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Does Ramsey realise that dating labs ask for "estimated age"?

--------------------------------------------------------------

I would not be surprised if that has more to do with making sure that they use appropriate equipment to do the measurements than it does with some evolutionist conspiracy. If, for example, one is trying to use the C-14 radiometric clock on a sample that is expected to be very old, then special techniques are necessary. Similar issues may be the case for other techniques. Of course, this is speculation, but my point is that asking for the estimated age is not necessarily a sign of anything sinister.Wrong again -- a specialist C-14 lab will also ask this question.

Then JJR typically unequally yokes with the humanist-founded-and-operated NCSE (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/189.asp), who talk the most absurd nonsense as I've already covered.

Bottom line: Christians should trust the eye-witness reports of our God Himself, endorsed by Jesus Himself who was there, since He is fully God and fully Man. These reports must override any circumstantial objections. As has been shown time and time again, supposedly irrefutable objections to the Bible have been obliterated, and the same is happening as we speak to radiometric dating. JJR is just like the compromising churchians during the Scopes Trial who gushed that Christians ought to accept evolution because of the "irrefutable proof" of Piltdown Man and embryonic recapitulation! :bonk:

J. J. Ramsey

February 17th 2003, 11:03 AM

JJR:
delta C-13 PDB can tell whether the carbon is from a plant source, certainly. As this table shows, delta C-13 PDB values consistent with wood are also consistent with cellulose in general -- which is from what the cell walls of plants are made, wood included. In short, the carbon could have come from decayed plant material in soil carried by water down through to the sample.

S:
No, this would not have kept the correct values. Otherwise delta C-13 PDB would be virtually useless as a cross check against contamination.

Technically, that is reasoning by wishful thinking: The check must be useful, or else it would be useless.

However, the fact of the matter is that delta C-13 PDB is helpful as a check against contamination, just not perfect. Say for example, that one finds a wood sample on which one wants to do C-14 dating, only to find that the delta C-13 PDB results are not consistent with all the carbon being from a plant source. Here, delta C-13 PDB has value as a disconfirmatory test, showing the sample to not be quite what it appears to be.

Now say the delta C-13 PDB results from the sample show that all the carbon in the sample is at least from a plant source. In and of itself, all that shows is no significant contamination from non-plant sources. What would establish that there is no significant contamination from plant sources would be visual inspection, checking the site of the sample for possible sources of contamination, etc.

S:
Yeah, right, even though it's [the sample's] well above the water table

JJR:
Um, Socrates, remember how water gets to the water table? Water from rain, rivers, etc. trickles down through the layers of earth on its way to the table, and on its way down, the various layers trap whatever junk has been dissolved in the water. That means that the sample probably over time has intercepted water on its way to the table and trapped some of its contaminants, which in turn contaminated the sample itself.

S:
Of course I know, as does Dr Walker who is actually qualified in geology unlike you -- and we Australians actually know a thing or two about water tables -- heard of the Great Artesian Basin?

But he makes it clear that only below the water table is the circulating groundwater likely to be an issue, rather than just special pleading.

If this is the same Dr. Walker who seemed to willfully misinterpret (http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=14479#post14479) Dick Reesman's e-mail, then I can't say I hold that much trust in his authority.

One big problem I see is ambiguity in the term "circulating groundwater." If by "circulating," one is referring to just the underground currents of water, then yes, that would apply to just the water table. If one is using the term "circulating" more loosely to include the movement of water as it permeates downward toward the water table, then saying the sample is above the water table is quite beside the point.

In any event, no talk about circulating groundwater is going to erase that the water still has to get to the water table, and that that sample in question is in a position to intercept some of the water and its contaminants on the way down.

S:
Also, the RATE group is working on the effects of accelerated decay

JJR:
Again, the "working on it" argument doesn't wash.

S:
You need to wash behind your ears then, and abuse your fellow materialists that they are not allowed to be "working on" any unsolved or partially solved problems.

Fellow materialists? :no: Still confusing an attack on the merits of a position with advocating an opposing position, Socrates? Your namesake would have known better.

And as I said before, I have no objection to anyone "working on any unsolved or partially solved problems," only on equating "working on" with "as good as solved."

JJR:
The biggest problem with the scenario of a lava flow entombing the wood has been mentioned already. A 2100 deg. F lava bath is enough to vaporize wood.

S:
D'oh, have you looked up the boiling point of carbon?

Socrates, shame on you! You ought to know that the boiling point of compounds is not related to the boiling points of their composing elements. :no: Further, the the empirical evidence shows (http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199712/0241.html) that if objects in the path of hot lava flows leave anything behind, they leave casts. The objects themselves are obliterated.

S:
Does Ramsey realise that dating labs ask for "estimated age"?

JJR:
I would not be surprised if that has more to do with making sure that they use appropriate equipment to do the measurements than it does with some evolutionist conspiracy. If, for example, one is trying to use the C-14 radiometric clock on a sample that is expected to be very old, then special techniques are necessary. Similar issues may be the case for other techniques. Of course, this is speculation, but my point is that asking for the estimated age is not necessarily a sign of anything sinister.

S:
Wrong again -- a specialist C-14 lab will also ask this question.

Wait a minute. :huh: How does a specialist C-14 lab asking for the estimated age negate what I just said?

Then JJR typically unequally yokes with the humanist-founded-and-operated NCSE . . .

Socrates, you will have to enlighten me as to how using a non-Christian source for information equates to being "unequally yoked" to it.

. . . who[NCSE] talk the most absurd nonsense

I fail to see how the following (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/8906_radiometeric_dating_does_work_12_30_1899.asp) is nonsense:

A few verified examples of incorrect radiometric ages are simply insufficient to prove that radiometric dating is invalid. All they indicate is that the methods are not infallible. Those of us who have developed and used dating techniques to solve scientific problems are well aware that the systems are not perfect; we ourselves have provided numerous examples of instances in which the techniques fail. We often test them under controlled conditions to learn when and why they fail so we will not use them incorrectly. We have even discredited entire techniques. . . .

In order to accomplish their goal of discrediting radiometric dating, however, creationists are faced with the daunting task of showing that a preponderance of radiometric ages are wrong — that the methods are untrustworthy most of the time. Not only that, they have to show the flaws in those dating studies that provide independent corroborative evidence that radiometric methods work.

Care to explain the problems with it instead of hand-waving it with an ad hominem?

S:
Bottom line: Christians should trust the eye-witness reports of our God Himself . . . These reports must override any circumstantial objections.

My bottom line: Christians should not put confidence in current YEC arguments against radiometric dating, which so far are based on questionable speculation that has yet to fit the facts (such as Woodmorappe's theory of the Earth forming under plasma conditions), and dating failures that are better explained by fallibilities in the dating methods than by an overall lack of reliability in the methods. If the creationists come to have better explanations that can withstand scrutiny by the broader scientific community, great. Until then, though, we are better off defending the evidence in favor of the New Testament, which we know has held well under scrutiny, than in trusting in pseudoscience because it appears to affirm what we (and I do mean we) want to believe.

Socrates

February 17th 2003, 11:56 AM

Technically, that is reasoning by wishful thinking: The check must be useful, or else it would be useless.

However, the fact of the matter is that delta C-13 PDB is helpful as a check against contamination, just not perfect. Say for example, that one finds a wood sample on which one wants to do C-14 dating, only to find that the delta C-13 PDB results are not consistent with all the carbon being from a plant source. Here, delta C-13 PDB has value as a disconfirmatory test, showing the sample to not be quite what it appears to be.Ramsey and the others who want to maintain faith in these fallacious dating methods will always come up with pathetic excuses why they fail. Would that they were as inventive when they contradict the Word of God.

Now say the delta C-13 PDB results from the sample show that all the carbon in the sample is at least from a plant source. In and of itself, all that shows is no significant contamination from non-plant sources. What would establish that there is no significant contamination from plant sources would be visual inspection, checking the site of the sample for possible sources of contamination, etc.Which was in the report!!

S:
Of course I know, as does Dr Walker who is actually qualified in geology unlike you -- and we Australians actually know a thing or two about water tables -- heard of the Great Artesian Basin?

But he makes it clear that only below the water table is the circulating groundwater likely to be an issue, rather than just special pleading.

------------------------------------------------------------

If this is the same Dr. Walker who seemed to willfully misinterpret Dick Reesman's e-mail, then I can't say I hold that much trust in his authority.So now Ramsey resorts to vicious slanders against his theological and scientific superiors, since he above calls Dr Walker a liar. But as I showed, the only willful misinterpretation of this article (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative6-26-2000.asp) is in Ramsey's mind.

Also, the RATE group is working on the effects of accelerated decay

JJR:
Again, the "working on it" argument doesn't wash.

S:
You need to wash behind your ears then, and abuse your fellow materialists that they are not allowed to be "working on" any unsolved or partially solved problems.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Fellow materialists? Still confusing an attack on the merits of a position with advocating an opposing position, Socrates? Your namesake would have known better.[quote]No, he wouldn't have let you get away with your games either, and would have caught you out for being a materialist for all practical purposes when it came to Earth's past, and rejecting the reports of an Eye Witness.

[quote]
JJR:
The biggest problem with the scenario of a lava flow entombing the wood has been mentioned already. A 2100 deg. F lava bath is enough to vaporize wood.

S:
D'oh, have you looked up the boiling point of carbon?

---------------------------------------------------------------

Socrates, shame on you! You ought to know that the boiling point of compounds is not related to the boiling points of their composing elements. Shame on you more likely, since the compounds in this case don't boil but the volatiles leave behind carbon, which has an enormously higher boiling point. And the temperature of the lava flow, as I've explained, is not the only important thing -- what matters also is how much heat is transferred. And indeed we do find charring. And don't try and fool us with the words on a newsgroup of a well-known apostate who has only a B.S. degree in physics. Dr Snelling himself explains (Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict: Fossil wood in ‘ancient’ lava flow yields radiocarbon (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/382.asp)):

"The wood was in three states — ash, charred and intact. Those on-site at the time speculated that there had been two distinct trees, partly standing, still organic in nature, and thus not petrified. The imprint of a leaf was also discovered within the basalt, which was also regarded as remarkable, remembering that the enclosing rock was once molten lava erupted at 1000–1200 °C (about 1800–2200°F)."

"So how could these tree trunks have survived being engulfed by molten lava? At approximately four metres (13 feet) thick, the basalt flow is relatively thin, and thus cooling would have been rapid (perhaps days, but a few weeks at most). This is verified by the observed internal structure of the basalt flow. Since the tree trunks were engulfed at the bottom of the flow, cooling may have been immediate, with any water present in the wood aiding extremely rapid encapsulation and thus preservation."

S:
Does Ramsey realise that dating labs ask for "estimated age"?

JJR:
I would not be surprised if that has more to do with making sure that they use appropriate equipment to do the measurements than it does with some evolutionist conspiracy. If, for example, one is trying to use the C-14 radiometric clock on a sample that is expected to be very old, then special techniques are necessary. Similar issues may be the case for other techniques. Of course, this is speculation, but my point is that asking for the estimated age is not necessarily a sign of anything sinister.

S:
Wrong again -- a specialist C-14 lab will also ask this question.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Wait a minute. How does a specialist C-14 lab asking for the estimated age negate what I just said?I dunno why I bother to waste my time -- this lab should be able to tell us the date, not the researchers tell it the date they want.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Then JJR typically unequally yokes with the humanist-founded-and-operated NCSE . . .

-------------------------------------------------------------

Socrates, you will have to enlighten me as to how using a non-Christian source for information equates to being "unequally yoked" to it.I would have thought it was obvious -- that you desperately seek out all the god-hating sites you can find to try to discredit Biblical chronology.

-------------------------------------------------------------

. . . who[NCSE] talk the most absurd nonsense

-------------------------------------------------------------

I fail to see how the following is nonsense:Because it begs so many questions and overlooks all the many problems.

-------------------------------------------------------------

S:
Bottom line: Christians should trust the eye-witness reports of our God Himself . . . These reports must override any circumstantial objections.

-------------------------------------------------------------

My bottom line: Christians should not put confidence in current YEC arguments against radiometric dating, ...What do you care about Christianity, since your version of it has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ? And why would any Christian or anyone else trust anything a demonstrable scientific ignoramus like you says, over the highly qualified YEC geophysicists and nuclear physicists researching radiometric dating? But you're right in one sense -- these top-class scientists themselves would say that a Christian's faith should be based on YEC scientific arguments, but on the Word of God.

This also means, as Lewis Dabney (1820—1898), Professor of Theology at Union Theological Seminary, Virginia, for over thirty years, pointed out (Discussions of Robert Lewis Dabney, vol. 3, Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA, p. 136, 1982):

"The authority of the Bible, as our rule of faith, is demonstrated by its own separate and independent evidences, literary history, moral, internal, prophetical. It is found by the geologist in possession of the field, and he must assume the aggressive, and positively dislodge it from its position. The defender of the Bible need only stand on the defensive. That is, the geologist must not content himself with saying that his hypothesis, which is opposed to Bible teachings, is plausible, that it cannot be scientifically refuted, that it may adequately satisfy the requirements of all the physical phenomena to be accounted for. All this is naught, as a successful assault on us. We are not bound to retreat until he has constructed an absolutely exclusive demonstration of his hypothesis; until he has shown, by strict scientific proofs, not only that his hypothesis may be the true one, but that it alone can be the only true one; that it is impossible any other can exclude it."

... which so far are based on questionable speculation that has yet to fit the facts (such as Woodmorappe's theory of the Earth forming under plasma conditions), ... Better than demonstrably questionable assumptions about the initial conditions, system closure and decay-rate constancy.

... and dating failures that are better explained by fallibilities in the dating methods than by an overall lack of reliability in the methods.I.e. Ramsey, because of his materialistic bias, would rather trust dating methods he just admitted are fallible rather than God's infallible Word, the Bible.

If the creationists come to have better explanations that can withstand scrutiny by the broader scientific community, great.And as I've amply shown, the "scrutiny" has nothing to do with any dispute of the facts but with their self-serving rules that rule out creation a priori (see Games some people play (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v23n4_games) and The Rules of the Game (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1135.asp) .

Until then, though, we are better off defending the evidence in favor of the New Testament, which we know has held well under scrutiny, ...Which in turn affirms the reliability of the Old Testament!!

... than in trusting in pseudoscience because it appears to affirm what we (and I do mean we) want to believe. You mean, pseudoscience supporting the materialism/methodological naturalism Ramsey desperately wants to believe because he craves the adulation of man, i.e. the academics in ASA et al.

J. J. Ramsey

February 17th 2003, 01:25 PM

JJR:
Now say the delta C-13 PDB results from the sample show that all the carbon in the sample is at least from a plant source. In and of itself, all that shows is no significant contamination from non-plant sources. What would establish that there is no significant contamination from plant sources would be visual inspection, checking the site of the sample for possible sources of contamination, etc.

S:
Which was in the report!!

Except that the wood from the report in question (http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/area/magazines/TJ/docs/TJ_v14n2_Crinum.pdf) was fossilized, making it far harder for visual inspection to determine the probable source of the organic carbon, and the report does not mention any sort of search for ground cracks, water flow, nearby surface vegetation, or any other examining of the site to determine possible ways that organic carbon could contaminate the sample. The author of the report, Snelling, relies only on the delta C-13 PDB results and the lab cleaning procedures.

Speaking of lab cleaning procedures, the e-mail from Dick Reesman (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative6-26-2000.asp) seems to be doubtful of how well the procedures could have gotten rid of all the contamination.

"All we could do with the sample was to chemically pretreat it as if it contained wood, and to analyze what was left. This would have included many types of organic carbon that might have been adsorbed on, or in, the sample."

Of course, that refers to Snelling's Hawksbury sample, not the sample of his mentioned in the above report. However, unless the cleaning procedures were different for the different samples, the problems would hold.

As far as I can tell, GeoChron is primarily geared for sample that are mostly organic, not samples that are nearly all mineral with trace carbon.

Dr Snelling himself explains (Radioactive ‘Dating’ in Conflict: Fossil wood in ‘ancient’ lava flow yields radiocarbon):

"The wood was in three states — ash, charred and intact. Those on-site at the time speculated that there had been two distinct trees, partly standing, still organic in nature, and thus not petrified. The imprint of a leaf was also discovered within the basalt, which was also regarded as remarkable, remembering that the enclosing rock was once molten lava erupted at 1000–1200 °C (about 1800–2200°F)."

"So how could these tree trunks have survived being engulfed by molten lava? At approximately four metres (13 feet) thick, the basalt flow is relatively thin, and thus cooling would have been rapid (perhaps days, but a few weeks at most). This is verified by the observed internal structure of the basalt flow. Since the tree trunks were engulfed at the bottom of the flow, cooling may have been immediate, with any water present in the wood aiding extremely rapid encapsulation and thus preservation."

Yet that still doesn't answer the main objection, which is that if the lava had been as hot as Snelling said, he shouldn't have found wood at all, charred or otherwise, as pointed out in this e-mail (http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199712/0241.html). A lava flow of the kind Snelling describes leaves, at best, casts or impressions of the organic objects left in its path, not remains of the objects themselves. That opens the question of whether the samples in question were really "entombed" in the manner Snelling thinks they were.

And as I said before, we only know what Snelling is telling us, no peer-review outside YEC circles, not even e-mails from GeoChron as with the Hawksbury sample. There is so much that is not available for scrutiny that it is hard to tell what Snelling may or may not have overlooked. It is all too easy for scientists trying to prove YEC to look like they have an unassailable case when they are the ones controlling the presentation of the facts.

Socrates

February 17th 2003, 09:34 PM

JJR:
It is all too easy for scientists trying to prove YEC to look like they have an unassailable case when they are the ones controlling the presentation of the facts.First, as I've pointed out, scientists are NOT trying to prove YEC. Rather, YEC is a corollary of Biblical authority. Rather, they are very happy to disprove old-earth attacks, but they keep Dabney's wise advice in hand.

Second, Ramsey has a nerve whinging about YEC control, when there's widespread censorship of anything that questions the materialistic paradigm or its churchian version. The establishment often denies even the right of reply. That's why YECs started their own peer-reviewed journals. And now they have widely accessed websites, so they can make mincemeat of crass anti-creationist articles like the one by Scientific American --- see a devastating response (p://www.answersingenesis.org/news/scientific_american.asp) and Scientific American's pathetic attempt to bully AiG into removing it here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/0711sciam.asp). Hahahah, I saw an email by Rennie to an anti-creationist where he lamented that sales dropped after his article and they won't go near that topic again -- no wonder after such a pasting, and after their bluff was called! :rofl:

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 11:19 AM

It is always uncomfortable to talk about one group trying to control the evidence because we don't want to be seen as loony conspiricy theorists, but it's not paranoia if it's true, as they say.

To that end, I have a close friend who is an evolutionary biologist (I should say his PhD from the University of Calilfornia Davis is in that field) Since that time he came to faith and he tells me some startling stories of suppresed evidence. He once told me of a univeristy storage area that contained a whole room of fossil evidence that was contradictory to accepted evolutionary theory and every one was labled as "anomoly" and then stored away where no one could study it.

That's a little scary to me. Suppressing evidence so that ones pet theories can not be closely evaluated is not what science is supposed to be about.

Pilgrim

Stratnerd

February 18th 2003, 11:45 AM

P -

With no disrepect to you at all: It's really hard to believe your friend if you are portraying the story like I think you are. That is, there's a room at a university with items like Triassic human remains, Cambrian deer atlers etc. etc and then on top of it the room is off limits to study.

Was this at UC Davis?

J. J. Ramsey

February 18th 2003, 12:11 PM

Pilgrim:
To that end, I have a close friend who is an evolutionary biologist (I should say his PhD from the University of Calilfornia Davis is in that field) Since that time he came to faith and he tells me some startling stories of suppresed evidence. He once told me of a univeristy storage area that contained a whole room of fossil evidence that was contradictory to accepted evolutionary theory and every one was labled as "anomoly" and then stored away where no one could study it.

One question I have is if they really want to suppress the evidence, why store it rather than throw it away?

Another question I have is how did he come by knowledge of this storage room? Did he see it for himself? Did a friend or acquaintance see it? Was it something that everybody "just knew"? Was it something he read about?

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 01:26 PM

He was an eye witness to it. I know it sounds pretty far fetched but I got to thinking of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Lucy tells a rather hard to believe tale about a strange world which she finds througha portal in the back of a wardrobe. Her siblings, when asked about Lucy's honesty, state that up until that point they have only ever known her to be honest.

The advice they are given is that if they know her character to be wholy honest then they must take her at her word.

This is the situation I am in with my friend. I know him to be a man of utmost honesty and have never known him to lie maliciously so in this matter I take him at his word.

To your other question about hiding rather than destroying...how does one destroy or throw away a fossil so that it can not be found again? It would seem to me to be more cost effective and easy to simply store them away.

Pilgrim

Stratnerd

February 18th 2003, 01:50 PM

P-

This is the situation I am in with my friend. I know him to be a man of utmost honesty and have never known him to lie maliciously so in this matter I take him at his word.

Was this at UC-Davis? I have a friend in the dept there and I could ask her about it. But it doesn't make any sense to hide that kind of stuff. But if you believe there must a global conspiracy! UC-Davis is just one of several thousand research institutions that have active geological/paleo departments and you must assume if there is an entire room of this stuff other instiutions are also finding and nobody is saying anything. I've been out on several digs and I've personally never came across any "anamolies" and I was never told to keep "hush" if I ever found something. This also means that all amateur paleo types (many of which are highly respected in academia) are also keeping it hush.

how does one destroy or throw away a fossil so that it can not be found again? It would seem to me to be more cost effective and easy to simply store them away. My personal collection includes 200 lbs of fossils and it would take me about 3 minutes to destroy it. All it takes is a sidewalk.

J. J. Ramsey

February 18th 2003, 01:58 PM

Pilgrim:
I have a close friend who . . . once told me of a univeristy storage area that contained a whole room of fossil evidence that was contradictory to accepted evolutionary theory and every one was labled as "anomoly" and then stored away where no one could study it.

JJR:
[I]f they really want to suppress the evidence, why store it rather than throw it away?

Pilgrim:
[H]ow does one destroy or throw away a fossil so that it can not be found again?

A small sledgehammer works well. :smile: Seriously, though, especially if the anomolous fossils were coming in a little at a time, it would be a fairly simple matter to throw it in a trash can or a dumpster. It's not like one is throwing away a body that would raise a stench after a while. Unless one was already suspicious about evidence being thrown out, the likelihood is that no one would look through the garbage to find it, and no one would see anything telltale.

JJR:
[H]ow did he come by knowledge of this storage room?

Pilgrim:
He was an eye witness to it.

Good so far. The next sensible question to ask is how does he know what the room was really for?

The advice they are given is that if they know her character to be wholy honest then they must take her at her word.

I don't doubt your friend's character. What I do doubt is whether he correctly understood what he saw. In other words, he could be honest but mistaken.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to talk to your friend to try to get the details of how he found out about the storage room and its purpose.

Sometimes you just have to play devil's advocate.

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 04:22 PM

All good words of advice. Given his expertise and credentials I am confident that he would have understood what he saw. I have a hard time believing in some "conspiricy" but I think that it is not unreasonable to think that people might take measures to secure their own pet theories becuase of the amount of reputation stakes on such things.

You see it in many fields, even theology and exegesis. For example, many scholars will tell you that source criticism as it is posited today is not a really good way of talking about Biblical authorship and that the endless redaction of JEPD into subsets really is unreasonable, however, they have staked their reputations against singular. mosaic authorship, so they continue to espouse JEPD because it is better than the option of admitting they were wrong. (Childs. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture)

Stratnerd

February 18th 2003, 04:59 PM

P -

but I think that it is not unreasonable to think that people might take measures to secure their own pet theories becuase of the amount of reputation stakes on such things.

evolution isn't a pet theory - it's a paradigm and if a scientist had fossils that were convincing that our depiction of evolutionary history was false, I'm sure that scientist (in this case hundreds if not thousands of scientists) would come forward if not just for the money (think of the value of a human skull from the Cambrian).

J. J. Ramsey

February 18th 2003, 05:12 PM

Pilgrim:
All good words of advice. Given his expertise and credentials I am confident that he would have understood what he saw.

The thing is that his credentials and expertise may not be too helpful in his making sense of what he saw. We're not talking about technical stuff, but about people putting fossils into storage. A lot hinges on how well he read his colleagues' actions and motives.

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 05:17 PM

I am trying to remember the name of the Chinese gentleman who is quite respected in the field and wrote an article a few years ago (actually I think it was an interview in the Wall Street Journal) in which he was talking about some issues he had with evolution as it was currently formulated. He was not a Christian at all but was seeing some real problems. Anyway, the line he used that made me grin was, "In China we can critque Darwin but not the government, in America you can critique the government but Darwin is out of bounds." Does anyone remember that quote or it's author?

Pilgrim

Stratnerd

February 18th 2003, 05:30 PM

I remember the article and I emailed the guy asking about it and he never emailed me back. I don't remember his name but his specialization was Cambrian fossils.

People critique Darwin all the time and even evolution. There is a small difference though - you will not be sent to jail in the states. In fact, Dembski and Behe have been made rich off of blasting evolution so I hardly see the analogy.

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 05:38 PM

You're right about that, but it seems like the mainline is as dismissive of the minority as the minority is of them. I saw this video last year where several scientists who had broken ranks with their collegues in regards to evolution claimed to have been black balled out of main line academia. I don't know if the claims are true but it was interesting that in each case, the loss of tenure or the stalling of job searches came about immediately on the heals of each scienctists dissenting view of evolution. Well, at least a Darwinian evolution.

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 05:39 PM

For the record, I am not a YEC, or even a creationist in the stricktest sense of the word. I interpret Genesis 1 in terms of the "framework" hypothesis.

And for the record, I am a God lover.

Pilgrim

J. J. Ramsey

February 18th 2003, 06:23 PM

Pilgrim:
You're right about that, but it seems like the mainline is as dismissive of the minority as the minority is of them. I saw this video last year where several scientists who had broken ranks with their collegues in regards to evolution claimed to have been black balled out of main line academia. I don't know if the claims are true but it was interesting that in each case, the loss of tenure or the stalling of job searches came about immediately on the heals of each scienctists dissenting view of evolution. Well, at least a Darwinian evolution.

I think a big part of the problem is that many of the spokesmen and professional advocates against evolution are considered disproven or even dishonest. By implication, that makes those who believe them likewise either dishonest themselves or fooled into falsehood.

(Warning to moderators: lots of elephants, I mean, links coming up. Sorry. :frown:)

On the YEC front, the perception of dishonesty is pretty strong. I know that I have seen one YEC presentation whose presenter I would not buy a used from. Others have been likewise dissatisfied, finding creationists continue to propagate errors even after they have been corrected (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/gish-exposed.html), have questionable degrees (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html), and misrepresent data from the scientific mainstream and quote out of context (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-geochronology.html). Often creationists are downright vituperative, as in, for example, Woodmorappe's reply to a critique of his wook (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodgeo/wood1.html). It is filled with ad hominem attacks, facile comparisions to Nazis, even saying that Christians who do not believe YEC are harlots and compromisers. After reading it, I even entertained the thought that Socrates and Woodmorappe might be one and the same! Is it any wonder that so many scientists do not like the advocates for YEC?

On the ID front, it seems far less a matter of dishonesty and more a matter of just not finding the ID arguments, such as those of Behe (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html) and Dembski (http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/), to hold up to scrutiny.

Faramir

February 18th 2003, 07:10 PM

J. J. Ramsey:

I think a big part of the problem is that many of the spokesmen and professional advocates against evolution are considered disproven or even dishonest. By implication, that makes those who believe them likewise either dishonest themselves or fooled into falsehood.

(Warning to moderators: lots of elephants, I mean, links coming up. Sorry. :frown:)

On the YEC front, the perception of dishonesty is pretty strong. I know that I have seen one YEC presentation whose presenter I would not buy a used from. Others have been likewise dissatisfied, finding creationists continue to propagate errors even after they have been corrected (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/gish-exposed.html), have questionable degrees (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html), and misrepresent data from the scientific mainstream and quote out of context (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-geochronology.html). Often creationists are downright vituperative, as in, for example, Woodmorappe's reply to a critique of his wook (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodgeo/wood1.html). It is filled with ad hominem attacks, facile comparisions to Nazis, even saying that Christians who do not believe YEC are harlots and compromisers. After reading it, I even entertained the thought that Socrates and Woodmorappe might be one and the same! Is it any wonder that so many scientists do not like the advocates for YEC?

On the ID front, it seems far less a matter of dishonesty and more a matter of just not finding the ID arguments, such as those of Behe (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html) and Dembski (http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/), to hold up to scrutiny.

I know that this is not going to make me popular around here, but I agree with you. It seems to me that some (not all, not even most) of the "leaders" of both the evolution camp, and the "YEC" camp are less than honest at times.

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 08:45 PM

Socrates

February 18th 2003, 08:45 PM

Pilgrim should be less uncritically accepting of what professing Christian Ramsey parrots from the essentially atheistic Talk Origins crowd.

Fact is, all the scientists at AiG and ICR have earned science Ph.D.s from secular universities. This cannot be undermined by pointing out a few lone wolf creationists who have degree-mill diplomas.

And I've already pointed out Ramsey's selective wussiness, getting all self-righteous about a perfectly reasonable defence by Woodmorappe against another professing Christian who unequally yokes with unbelievers to attack the Bible (as Ramsey does all the time). For example, I wrote:

"Nothing any YECs have said comes even close to what the evolutionists have said against them, using typical swear words such "armies of the night" (Asimov), "mind virus" (Dawkins), "perverting our children", "taking us back to the dark ages", "yahoos" (Gould) "scientifically ignorant" (despite their earned science Ph.D.s), "wooden literalists" (despite their clear arguments why Genesis should be read as literal history, and the Psalms as poetry), etc."

I could also point out that Dennett wants religions kept in cages.

Woodmorappe has nothing on the vituperation against Creationists that I've already mentioned, and has been practised on this site, e.g. Post #16645. Even the smear about fake credentials is an reprehensive guilt-by-association ploy. So is Ramsey's crass comment "Is it any wonder that so many scientists do not like the advocates for YEC?" since that makes an inflammatory and prejudicial contrast between scientists and YEC advocates, although many ARE scientists by all the usual criteria.

And Ramsey is happy to accuse Dr Walker (who also has earned degrees from secular universities) of lying. Yep, one rule for YECs and another for their detractors. Ramsey would probably award the blatant viewpoint discrimination by Texas Uni professor Michael Dini, who refuses to recommend students for med school unless they not only understand evolution but BELIEVE it. See http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0114dini.asp

I'm also not sure which is worse, Pilgrim saying "I believe Genesis but interpret it via the Framework Hypothesis" (despite its being a complete novelty and invented to kowtow to evolution -- see Post# 15544) or Ramsey simply denying that Genesis is authoritative.

No Pilgrim, the reasons that the establishment don't like either creationists or even the ID movement is that they challenge the materialist paradigm!! But they would love Ramsey because he accepts it fully for all practical purposes (but calls it "methodological naturalism"), so offers no challenge to their materialistic faith. And like Lenin with the "useful idiots" in the West, they love people like Ramsey who can white-ant the church from within, telling people that they can't, or don't need to, trust their own Book. The atheist Eugenie Scott has this down to a fine art:

"… I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day!"

Blake Reas

February 18th 2003, 08:52 PM

THEISTIC Evolutionist like to prance around and call IDers and YEC's dishonest. Well I think it is dishonest of them to make blanket statements. I have seen many Evolutionist caught in lies or throwing Straw Men Arguments out.

In Christ,
Blake

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 08:53 PM

(despite its being a complete novelty and invented to kowtow to evolution -- see Post# 15544)

I was not aware you were an expert on Hbraic literature?

If the interpretation is correct, and a very cogent argument for such has been made, then in fact it is not a novelty but rather, it is the original and therefore oldest interptretation.

To simply write it off as you have shows your own unreasonable aprioris.

Socrates

February 18th 2003, 09:03 PM

Pilgrim:
I was not aware you were an expert on Hbraic literature?No, but GrayPilgrim is, and AFAIK he had no problem with my arguments. And so were Luther and Calvin, who had no doubt that the days were ordinary days, and neither did people like E.J. Young, who staunchly criticised the Framework Hypothesis.

If the interpretation is correct, and a very cogent argument for such has been made, then in fact it is not a novelty but rather, it is the original and therefore oldest interptretation.You would have us all believe that the Hebrew exegetes through most of the ages didn't see this interpretation? Then suddenly, after deists and atheists supposedly "proved" millions or years and evolution, people like Arie Noordtzij in 1924 came up with this Framework thing that had never before been seen. And I've cited Kline himself making it crystal clear that a major motivation was to avoid conflicts with vast ages and evolution.

But this is really the fleas wagging the tail wagging the dog. As E.J. Young pointed out, why should we allow "science" to question the Bible? Why not question the "science" instead?

To simply write it off as you have shows your own unreasonable aprioris.If you had bothered to read my post, you would know that I have NOT "simply written it off" but given REASONS. And

ItalianGold

February 18th 2003, 09:23 PM

[QUOTE]Socrates:
Pilgrim should be less uncritically accepting of what professing Christian Ramsey parrots from the essentially atheistic Talk Origins crowd.

"should" (as in "should be less uncritically...") always causes the hairs on the back of my neck to prickle. Maybe I just resent being should on all the time.

Fact is, all the scientists at AiG and ICR have earned science Ph.D.s from secular universities. This cannot be undermined by pointing out a few lone wolf creationists who have degree-mill diplomas.

And are these scientists currently publishing in respected scientific journals?

Pilgrim

February 18th 2003, 09:30 PM

You would have us all believe that the Hebrew exegetes through most of the ages didn't see this interpretation?

Why is that more unreasonable than what we would have people believe about Hebrew exegetes missing the description of Christ?

Socrates

February 18th 2003, 09:30 PM

Socrates:
Pilgrim should be less uncritically accepting of what professing Christian Ramsey parrots from the essentially atheistic Talk Origins crowd.

Italian Gold:
"should" (as in "should be less uncritically...") always causes the hairs on the back of my neck to prickle. Maybe I just resent being should on all the time.Get over it.

Soc.
Fact is, all the scientists at AiG and ICR have earned science Ph.D.s from secular universities. This cannot be undermined by pointing out a few lone wolf creationists who have degree-mill diplomas.

IG:
And are these scientists currently publishing in respected scientific journals?
Some are still, most have done so, and I respect TJ (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/technical.asp) as a peer-reviewed journal as it most certainly is. However there is blatant censorship of creationist or ID material from the establishment journals. This sort of question is a way of admitting that you can't answer their arguments. See also Do Creationists Publish in Notable Refereed Journals? (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/538.asp)

Socrates

February 18th 2003, 09:37 PM

Moderator Note: deleted for content

Stratnerd

February 18th 2003, 11:49 PM

the loss of tenure
it takes a huge mistake to lose tenure and I've only heard of twice and both were for pornography. I know many creationists that are active at universities even in biology departments (I had one where I did my ms work and his last lecture for 20+ years was Genesis). Heck, I bet Lehigh U. loves Behe for giving them more publicity than their wrestling program. I know of many more cases of lawsuits surrounding profs who haven't received tenure and the university has caved-in every time. I just don't by conspiracies and such. It always comes down to a lack of grant-getting talent when a professor gets the boot and there's no creationist check-off box in NSF applications.

As for creationists publishing - sure many of them do but not much stuff on creationism. And as a reviewer of a journals (damn, that reminds me to get reading) I would never reject a creationist paper simply because it was creationist material. It better be, like all other manuscripts, based on good science.

Socrates

February 19th 2003, 12:21 AM

Stratnerd:

As for creationists publishing - sure many of them do but not much stuff on creationism. And as a reviewer of a journals (damn, that reminds me to get reading) I would never reject a creationist paper simply because it was creationist material. It better be, like all other manuscripts, based on good science.As I've documented, "good science" is stipulatively defined as methodological naturalism, which means that creation is ruled out of court a priori.

Stratnerd

February 19th 2003, 12:29 AM

As I've documented, "good science" is stipulatively defined as methodological maturalism, which means that creation is ruled out of court a priori.

methodological maturalism is something that I'm positive you lack....

Not so, as I've already pointed out many many times. Supernatural events are, sure. BUT events like a global flood, 6000-year old Earth and inhabitants would have a "fingerprint" from which many many "naturalist" hypotheses can be generated. Even creationists do this... Dembski does this with his calculations, you even mentioned a creation model... does this generate testable hypotheses? (it must to be called a model). So to keep hiding behind that excuse is, well, inexcusable.

J. J. Ramsey

February 19th 2003, 09:54 AM

Stratnerd:

Socrates:
As I've documented, "good science" is stipulatively defined as methodological maturalism, which means that creation is ruled out of court a priori.

methodological maturalism is something that I'm positive you lack....

Not so, as I've already pointed out many many times. Supernatural events are, sure. BUT events like a global flood, 6000-year old Earth and inhabitants would have a "fingerprint" from which many many "naturalist" hypotheses can be generated. Even creationists do this... Dembski does this with his calculations, you even mentioned a creation model... does this generate testable hypotheses? (it must to be called a model). So to keep hiding behind that excuse is, well, inexcusable.

Furthermore, the rejections of the various arguments against radiometric dating and the arguments in favor of ID have not been on the grounds of "it's supernatural, so it must be false," but on the grounds of methodological and logical failures.

Pilgrim

February 19th 2003, 09:55 AM

Socrates:
I can't believe that Pilgrim is confusing how Jesus corrected faulty understandings of prophecy with his own thesis, that it required God-haters to inspired "corrrection" of the allegedly faulty understanging of Genesis which is history. It also has dire implications that Christ let His church be misled for most of its history. It's a pity that Pilgrim isn't more questioning of uniformitarian "science" that motivates these compromise views.

To call such men of faith as Meredith Kline "God Haters" is a serious error. To throw such accusations at people who clearly love God and strive through prayer and education and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to know God better is to betray those who are infact our brethren in faith.

From this point on, any post that characterizes posters who are our brethren in Christ with opposing views as "God haters" or assumes their guilt by association shall be deleted. Such ad hominum attacks in this arena are not consistant with the philosophy of TWeb fourms. If you want to get down and ugly then go to the gym.

Socrates

February 19th 2003, 11:53 AM

Pilgrim:
To call such men of faith as Meredith Kline "God Haters" is a serious error. To throw such accusations at people who clearly love God and strive through prayer and education and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to know God better is to betray those who are infact our brethren in faith. I did no such thing so get off your high horse. If you had been listening, you would have known that I meant the God-haters like Hutton, Lyell, Darwin and Huxley --- obviously, because they are the ones who came up with long ages and evolution.

It was only after their ideas became popular that conservative exegetes invented all sorts of compromise positions such as day-age, gap theory and the framework hypothesis. These conservatives are not God-haters by any means, but they are allowing the hypotheses of God-haters to override Scripture.

I never said Kline was a God-hater, and I never would. But I have documented how a major motivation for his Framework Hypothesis was to accommodate long ages and an evolutionary origin of mankind.

And apparently you have no problem (or none that I've noticed) with Ramsey accusing Bible-believing Christians of intentional falsehood, i.e. accusing them of lying, on the say-so of atheists, so let's have some even-handedness please. Or other things like questioning the credentials of creationists in general because some atheistic website finds one or two lone-wolf creationists with dubious credentials.

From this point on, any post that characterizes posters who are our brethren in Christ with opposing views as "God haters" or assumes their guilt by association shall be deleted. Such ad hominum attacks in this arena are not consistant with the philosophy of TWeb fourms. If you want to get down and ugly then go to the gym.It's ad hominem (accusative singular) -- hominum is the genitive plural.

Pilgrim

February 19th 2003, 12:31 PM

my apologies for the spelling error.

BrianB

February 20th 2003, 02:41 PM

Hmm, first try at posting here...

Pilgrim, I think the guy you're referring to is Dr. Paul Chien, Chairman and Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of San Francisco. Look here:

http://www.discovery.org/crsc/fellows/PaulChien/

Also, you can download (for a dollar) an audio lecture by Paul Chien on the Cambrian Biota. If I recall, he makes that comment in his lecture.

http://home.christianity.com/local/29520.html

For this topic in general, I recommend the following:
The 2000 Yale Conference on Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe
http://resources.christianity.com/ministries/discoveryinstitute/main/
(linked from above)

The Life After Materialism Conference in honor of C.S. Lewis. (search on the above site)

If you get the "Discovery Institute Archives" you'll have everything from these two conferences.

BTW Pilgrim, I see you were exposed to Kline at GCTS. I'm just curious, did you take Hugenberger's Theology of the Pentateuch class?

Warm Regards,
Brian

Pilgrim

February 20th 2003, 02:48 PM

BrianB:
Hmm, first try at posting here...

Pilgrim, I think the guy you're referring to is Dr. Paul Chien, Chairman and Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of San Francisco. Look here:

http://www.discovery.org/crsc/fellows/PaulChien/

Also, you can download (for a dollar) an audio lecture by Paul Chien on the Cambrian Biota. If I recall, he makes that comment in his lecture.

http://home.christianity.com/local/29520.html

For this topic in general, I recommend the following:
The 2000 Yale Conference on Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe
http://resources.christianity.com/ministries/discoveryinstitute/main/
(linked from above)

The Life After Materialism Conference in honor of C.S. Lewis. (search on the above site)

If you get the "Discovery Institute Archives" you'll have everything from these two conferences.

BTW Pilgrim, I see you were exposed to Kline at GCTS. I'm just curious, did you take Hugenberger's Theology of the Pentateuch class?

Warm Regards,
Brian

I did not, but I was exposed to Hugey a lot. My wife had him for several classes and he was our pastor while were attending a local congregational church there.

Pilgrim

February 20th 2003, 02:48 PM

And welcome to the forum Brian, glad to have you around!

BrianB

February 20th 2003, 03:44 PM

Pilgrim,

Thanks for the welcome, and I love listening to him preach. He's the senior pastor at Park Street where I attend, so I get to listen to him every week and download the mp3s just in case I miss. Technology is so cool.

Warm regards,
Brian

Pilgrim

February 20th 2003, 03:51 PM

I envy you. I miss Boston terribly. I used to attend Gordon's last church, "Lanesville Orthodox Congregational Church" when I was in seminary. It was a really cool place to go to church. He is an amazing teacher.

I used to go to Park Street often as well. One of my dear friends, Elizabeth Shively, is on staff there now. I worked at a Church in Quincy for a time and used to bring my highschoolers down to Park Street on Sunday evening for the services. They loved it.

Peace,
Pilgrim

TenDimensions

February 20th 2003, 06:33 PM

Socrates:
As I've documented, "good science" is stipulatively defined as methodological naturalism, which means that creation is ruled out of court a priori.

Socrates, I have one question then.

By which standards would you apply should science begin to allow scientific theories to include supernatural explanations?

The very definition of supernatural is something that is beyond human testability or comprehension. So how would you propose that science *not* be materialistic a priori?

You want to reject evolution because it's materialistic and doesn't accept the possibility that things are simply "too complex" to have come about through natural processes alone. So what prevents us from giving up on any number of unknown phenomenon simply because they seem "too complex" to have natural explanations now?

Suddenly, things like gravity start getting explained in all sorts of very strange ways since no physicist knows exactly *how* gravity works. No graviton particle has yet been detected - so let's just say it's the Will of God. Why not? No need to limit ourselves to only the material world when the human imagination could come up with so much better theories when not limited by such pesky notions as scientific naturalism.

That's the part I've never understood about ID theory.

Oh and by the way - I find it most extremely ironic that you've made your handle the name of a philosopher who was most famous for claiming that he "knew" nothing for sure. His entire philosophical foundation was to chip away at what the "wise" men seemed to think they knew. That doesn't mean you only get to chip away at evolutionists, you know. :brow:

J. J. Ramsey

February 20th 2003, 07:51 PM

TenDimensions:
The very definition of supernatural is something that is beyond human testability or comprehension.

I'd actually strongly disagree with that assessment. All "supernatural" means is beyond or outside of natural law. There is nothing about the supernatural that makes it necessarily outside human testability, or more importantly, human examination.

The main problem with the supernatural being included in standard-issue scientific explanations is a practical one. The temptation to explain gaps in our understanding with an explanation like "a deity did it" is very strong -- and probably the reason behind many animistic and polytheistic religions. The problem is, once the gap is explained that way, it tends to close further inquiry. If instead of filling the gaps in our knowledge that way, we simply say we do not know, then that invites the curious to fill in the gap with an explanation that accords with reality, which is usually a natural explanation.

Socrates

February 20th 2003, 11:53 PM

TenDimensions:

I think your question is already addressed by the section Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism). I've given the gist of this many times. Now I know what Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/) means when they advise against participation in debate forums -- replying to the same things over and over again is incredibly timewasting.:argh: :hrm: :help:

TenDimensions

February 22nd 2003, 01:40 PM

02-20-2003 @ 06:51 PM
J. J. Ramsey:

I'd actually strongly disagree with that assessment. All "supernatural" means is beyond or outside of natural law. There is nothing about the supernatural that makes it necessarily outside human testability, or more importantly, human examination.

That's an intriguing statement that I'm willing to entertain. Can you give me an example?

The problem is, once the gap is explained that way, it tends to close further inquiry.

Agreed.

TenDimensions

February 22nd 2003, 03:24 PM

02-20-2003 @ 10:53 PM
Socrates:

TenDimensions:

I think your question is already addressed by the section Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#Naturalism). I've given the gist of this many times. Now I know what Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/) means when they advise against participation in debate forums -- replying to the same things over and over again is incredibly timewasting.

I've spent many hours reading and debating what Answers in Genesis has on their site. I've even recommended it to other Creationists who were using outdated Creationist arguments or just plain old silly logic. At least Answers in Geneis puts together a seemingly logical argument. However, at the heart of what they're doing is producing persuasive essays in an attempt to exploit science's perceived weaknesses: its willingness to show its warts and mistakes - and its silence on things unknown. Through these two things I've found AiG routinely exaggerate and twist real science in an attempt to put forth its own agenda (and in the process try and make science look like it has its own agenda).

In any event, I immediately went to the link you provided. The actual article is quite long, but since you referred me to a particular section, I'll focus on that for now.

Right away I am surprised to see the article use a Biblical verse in an attempt to refute a scientist's claim:

Lerner and others claim scientists must practise methodological naturalism, i.e. that natural causes are the only ones allowed, and God, if He exists, did nothing that can be investigated (contrary to Romans 1:18–23).

Fascinating, but really only goes to show how Creationism is more an attempt to prove the literal interpretation of the Bible "right" rather than the honest attempt at valid scientific inquiry.

The next two sentences are nothing more than an attempt to set up the reader with the "agenda" of atheists:

They claim that doesn’t necessarily imply ontological naturalism, i.e. that nature is all that really does exist, and God doesn’t. However, the converse is definitely valid, which is one reason it is promoted by so many atheists — atheists must believe that nature is all there is.

Note the fact that AiG admits that Lerner made no claims that God can't exist - however, AiG can't leave that alone and feel they must press the obvious - atheists don't believe in God. Attempting to draw the conclusion from the other direction (atheists are pushing an evolution agenda, therefore evolutionists must be atheists in disguise) is logical fallacy and misdirection at its best on AiG's web site.

The article then goes to make a distinction between operational science and origins/historical science. Their statement:

origins science helps us to make educated guesses about origins in the past

Is fairly accurate but mysteriously leaves off historical science. Not all science studying the past is interested in origins. I bring this up because despite how much Creationists would like evolution to be tied (and dependent) on origin of life issues like abiogenesis - they simply aren't the same issue and are studied in completely different areas of science.

Furthermore, I feel there is an obvious logical flaw right out in the open:

because creation finished at the end of Day 6, biblical creationists would try to find natural laws for every aspect of operation science, and would not invoke a miracle to explain any repeating event in nature in the present.

I'd be very, very interested to hear just how Creationists define the "past". How far back in human history must something be before it is valid to "invoke a miracle to explain"? Clearly some types of miracles occurred during the Great Flood - but what about the building of the pyramids? Does this apply to any unexplained event in the far past? The near past? Do miracles only get applied to events that are "poorly" understood, "partially" understood, or "not" undersood? I'd love to see some written and document guidelines by which scientists may use to determine when and how it is appropriate to invoke miracles in their theories.

The author feels it's necessary to point out how he feels that operational science must be "material" in nature and even goes into anecdotes explaining how he's gone so far as to mark wrong a student's paper for saying "God did it" in reference to an operational science question. This is all just more emotional story telling in an attempt to get the reader to nod his head and say to himself, "See, these guys really are rational scientists". Ironic, considering that would be a valid answer according to the author if it was regarding an origin or historical science question. Apparently the methodology of scienctific principals applies only to operational science - as this section of the article is attempting to imply - falsely I might add. Not only that, but I take exception to these divisions of science. This is implying more differences than there really are I suspect. All in an attempt to be able to justify moving away from materialism when it comes to speculating about the past.

So Lerner is wrong that creationists are in any way hindered in real operational science research, either in theory or in practice.

Here the author is attempting to narrow the context of Lerner's quote, show how (when narrowed) it doesn't apply to Creationism, and then show how one speculative theory is as good as the next when dealing with origins and the past.

In contrast, evolution is a speculation about the unobservable and unrepeatable past

Since I know that the author here is referring to a very specific area of evolution - the idea that genetic change and natural selection can yield new species - I'll concentrate on that idea with an analogy. That single aspect of evolution is no more speculative than the idea that gravity is caused by gravitons. Granted, this may drift into what AiG has conveniently separated out into "operational" science, but the analogy holds, IMHO. The underlying causes of gravity are probably more mysterious than the proposed mechanisms for evolution. Does that mean Intelligent Design can be proposed as the underlying cause of gravity?

The article then states erroneously:

Rather than observation, origins science uses the principles of causality (everything that has a beginning has a cause11) and analogy (e.g. we observe that intelligence is needed to generate complex coded information in the present, so we can reasonably assume the same for the past)

This statement is flawed on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. First of all science (even origins and the conveniently left out historical science) uses a lot more than just causality and analogy. How about physical evidence we dig up out of the ground? We're not sitting back in our arm chairs thinking this stuff up out of thin air.

Secondly, the Watchmaker argument is wildly flawed and has been soundly rebuked by Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker. However, I'd be interested in reading any Creationist critique on that book since I haven't found any - there must be some out there. I saw the critique of his discussion on the formation of the eye and can address that, but the Watchmaker argument is another matter entirely that, while extremely attractive and initially makes a lot of sense, truly falls apart when examined closely.

The article goes on making some assumptions about scientists again:

And because there was no material intelligent designer for life, it is legitimate to invoke a non-material designer for life.

The problem with this statement is in the use of the word "designer". When faced with complexity the human mind naturally turns towards the concept that since only humans can "make" things it requires human-like intelligence to "make" things as well. And since we are so mind-boggingly complex it must require an intelligence equally mind-boggingly intelligent for the creation of life! This is the assumption at the heart of Creationism and why it is a religion and not a science. I have no problem with Creationism as a religion, but when they begin hijacking science in an attempt to legitimize their position and get it taught in religious free science classrooms it gets my hackles up. People are entitled to their opinions, but science never makes such positive assumptions before embarking on a quest for knowledge. Science assumes nothing exists and therefore only operates in the material world.

Darwin's "Origin of the Species" was simply just another brilliant scientific work searching out answers to the physical world around us. Made all the more brilliant given that the underlying mechanism (genes) were still nearly one hundred years away from being discovered! Creationism does close the door on further scientific inquiry.

Creationists invoke the miraculous only for origins science, and as shown, this does not mean they will invoke it for operational science.

Is this a promise? If ID theory starts getting taught in the classroom will it not occur to Creationists to start teaching that an intelligent designer is the reason people "look different"? Or is the real cause of gravity? Will the ID people not get into the abortion debate? How long will they stay silent on euthanasia?

Intelligent Designers and Creationists are not scientists - they are first and foremost religious right-wing, extremely conservative, people who have a legitimate right to express their ideas to whomever will listen. What they do not have the right to do is hijack science in an attempt to legitimize their religious beliefs into fact.

And by the way, this article does absolutely nothing to address my original question other than some reassurances by the author that Creationists won't be applying intelligent design to what they define as "operational" science any time in the future. This is really just a smoke and mirrors argument and isn't even logically sound.

Blake Reas

February 22nd 2003, 05:41 PM

Lerner and others claim scientists must practise methodological naturalism, i.e. that natural causes are the only ones allowed, and God, if He exists, did nothing that can be investigated (contrary to Romans 1:18–23).

Fascinating, but really only goes to show how Creationism is more an attempt to prove the literal interpretation of the Bible "right" rather than the honest attempt at valid scientific inquiry.

Actually Romans 1:18-23 makes some very good points. When you say literal interpretation are you referring to Gen. 1 or this verse? I mean the verse in Romans is pretty clear on how to interpret it an their is no "poetic meaning".
I would also like to point you to the Philosophy forum and read some stuff by TheFiveSolas. With out assuming the Christian worldview you cannot make rational claims. I think that is the way in which AIG is using it I could be wrong though.

In Christ,
Blake

Stratnerd

February 22nd 2003, 06:12 PM

Lerner and others claim scientists must practise methodological naturalism, i.e. that natural causes are the only ones allowed, and God, if He exists, did nothing that can be investigated (contrary to Romans 1:18–23).

I've never meant a single scientist that adheres to the philosophy that "natural causes are the only ones allowed". I'm not saying they don't exist but they are probably in the minority. Rather natural causes are the only causes that can be investigated but this is much different from saying that the historical veracity a supernatural event is beyond investigation. I've argued this with Socrates - events like creation, global flood, <10,000 year old universe can be investigated by making predictions of what the world would look like should these be true. Sure, creation itself is beyond the world of science, but if all the organisms on this planet and the planet was <10,000 years old, then there should be some tell-tale signs.

TenDimensions

February 22nd 2003, 08:51 PM

02-22-2003 @ 04:41 PM
Blake Reas:

With out assuming the Christian worldview you cannot make rational claims. I think that is the way in which AIG is using it I could be wrong though.

I'm sorry, but I think I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that unless I am arguing from a position that understands the Christian worldview that I can not make any rational claims as to what logical flaws there are in their claims?

J. J. Ramsey

February 22nd 2003, 09:16 PM

02-22-2003 @ 12:40 PM
TenDimensions:
quote:02-20-2003 @ 06:51 PM

J. J. Ramsey:

I'd actually strongly disagree with that assessment. All "supernatural" means is beyond or outside of natural law. There is nothing about the supernatural that makes it necessarily outside human testability, or more importantly, human examination.

That's an intriguing statement that I'm willing to entertain. Can you give me an example?

Think about the work done by James Randi to debunk various supernatural claims. That work wouldn't even be coherent if supernatural claims were wholly outside testability.

Blake Reas

February 22nd 2003, 10:31 PM

02-23-2003 @ 12:51 AM
TenDimensions:

I'm sorry, but I think I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that unless I am arguing from a position that understands the Christian worldview that I can not make any rational claims as to what logical flaws there are in their claims?

No I am saying that you have no basis for making claims. In the naturalistic Worldview you have nothing to account for Logic. You must assume on the Christian Worldview to even have the starting point to reason. You can reason without thinking about God becasue he has made you a rational being.
Check out the stuff by TheFiveSolas, he explains it much better than I do. He is in the Phil. department.

In Christ,
Blake

Blake Reas

February 22nd 2003, 10:32 PM

Socrates

February 23rd 2003, 01:33 AM

Socrates:

I think your question is already addressed by the section Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science. I've given the gist of this many times. Now I know what Answers in Genesis means when they advise against participation in debate forums -- replying to the same things over and over again is incredibly timewasting.
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10D:

I've spent many hours reading and debating what Answers in Genesis has on their site.It doesn't show.

I've even recommended it to other Creationists who were using outdated Creationist arguments or just plain old silly logic.That's something anyway.

At least Answers in Geneis puts together a seemingly logical argument. However, at the heart of what they're doing is producing persuasive essays in an attempt to exploit science's perceived weaknesses: its willingness to show its warts and mistakes - and its silence on things unknown.Alas, evolutionists do NOT want students to know about the weaknesses of evolution. They have eve hounded teachers who point out the errors in the textbooks like faked pictures of embryos and staged photos of peppered moths.

Through these two things I've found AiG routinely exaggerate and twist real science in an attempt to put forth its own agenda (and in the process try and make science look like it has its own agenda).More assertions, as is typical of evolutionary propgandists.

Right away I am surprised to see the article use a Biblical verse in an attempt to refute a scientist's claim:If you were really as familiar with AiG as you claim, you would not be surprised. AiG is up-front that they treat the Bible's propositions as axioms, and point out that EVERY belief system starts with axioms (unprovable starting assumptions).

Lerner and others claim scientists must practise methodological naturalism, i.e. that natural causes are the only ones allowed, and God, if He exists, did nothing that can be investigated (contrary to Romans 1:18–23).

Fascinating, but really only goes to show how Creationism is more an attempt to prove the literal interpretation of the Bible "right" rather than the honest attempt at valid scientific inquiry.
Again, wrong, because AiG has made it clear that they do NOT try to prove the Bible, because that would set something else in authority over it. And they also make it clear that "literal" is not the right word, but the grammatical-historical hermeneutic (which shows that Genesis is history not poetry).

"They claim that doesn’t necessarily imply ontological naturalism, i.e. that nature is all that really does exist, and God doesn’t. However, the converse is definitely valid, which is one reason it is promoted by so many atheists — atheists must believe that nature is all there is."

10D:
Note the fact that AiG admits that Lerner made no claims that God can't exist - however, AiG can't leave that alone and feel they must press the obvious - atheists don't believe in God. Attempting to draw the conclusion from the other direction (atheists are pushing an evolution agenda, therefore evolutionists must be atheists in disguise) is logical fallacy and misdirection at its best on AiG's web site.How is it logically fallacious when the article explicitly said that this conclusion doesn't follow. But the leaders in the evolution-only push are overwhelmingly atheists, e.g. Eugenie Scott and Lerner himself. But as Scott has made it clear, she wants to use compromising clergy as useful idiots in this campaign, so doesn't want to be too blatant about the atheistic nature of evolution. The author cited a number of examples of atheistic bias, and the fact that evolution is part of the religion of Humanism.

The article then goes to make a distinction between operational science and origins/historical science. Their statement:

origins science helps us to make educated guesses about origins in the past

Is fairly accurate but mysteriously leaves off historical science. I understand that they use this as an approximate synonym.

Not all science studying the past is interested in origins. I bring this up because despite how much Creationists would like evolution to be tied (and dependent) on origin of life issues like abiogenesis - they simply aren't the same issue and are studied in completely different areas of science.Then blame the evolutionists because they make a lot of chemical evolution! And please remind us of the title of Darwin's most famous book.

Furthermore, I feel there is an obvious logical flaw right out in the open:

"because creation finished at the end of Day 6, biblical creationists would try to find natural laws for every aspect of operation science, and would not invoke a miracle to explain any repeating event in nature in the present."

I'd be very, very interested to hear just how Creationists define the "past". How far back in human history must something be before it is valid to "invoke a miracle to explain"? Clearly some types of miracles occurred during the Great Flood - but what about the building of the pyramids? Does this apply to any unexplained event in the far past? The near past? Do miracles only get applied to events that are "poorly" understood, "partially" understood, or "not" undersood? I'd love to see some written and document guidelines by which scientists may use to determine when and how it is appropriate to invoke miracles in their theories. The article provides this!

Genesis 1:28 gives us permission to investigate creation, unlike say animism or pantheism that teaches that the creation itself is divine. And since God is sovereign, He was free to create as He pleased. So where the Bible is silent, the only way to find out how His creation works is to experiment, not rely on man-made philosophies as did the ancient Greeks.10D continues:

The author feels it's necessary to point out how he feels that operational science must be "material" in nature and even goes into anecdotes explaining how he's gone so far as to mark wrong a student's paper for saying "God did it" in reference to an operational science question. This is all just more emotional story telling in an attempt to get the reader to nod his head and say to himself, "See, these guys really are rational scientists". Ironic, considering that would be a valid answer according to the author if it was regarding an origin or historical science question. But it was not, so the anecdote was perfectly reasonable. Remember, the anticreationists including Lerner were tugging at the heartstrings about how harmful creation would be to the practice of science, but since nearly all that counts as scientific research is operational, it was perfectly reasonable to tell this anecdote to deflect Lerner's charge.

Since I know that the author here is referring to a very specific area of evolution - the idea that genetic change and natural selection can yield new species - I'll concentrate on that idea with an analogy. That single aspect of evolution is no more speculative than the idea that gravity is caused by gravitons. Granted, this may drift into what AiG has conveniently separated out into "operational" science, but the analogy holds, IMHO. The underlying causes of gravity are probably more mysterious than the proposed mechanisms for evolution. Does that mean Intelligent Design can be proposed as the underlying cause of gravity?Pure assertion. And once again, if you really were familiar with AiG, you would know that they regard rapid speciation as an important aspect of the creation model. The very article in question addresses this here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#really)!

The article then states erroneously:

"Rather than observation, origins science uses the principles of causality (everything that has a beginning has a cause11) and analogy (e.g. we observe that intelligence is needed to generate complex coded information in the present, so we can reasonably assume the same for the past)"

This statement is flawed on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. First of all science (even origins and the conveniently left out historical science) uses a lot more than just causality and analogy. How about physical evidence we dig up out of the ground? We're not sitting back in our arm chairs thinking this stuff up out of thin air.What a silly objection -- did the article say ONLY causality and analogy?? And there must be some date for which one can make analogies and apply causality principles. Does he really have to spell it out for you?

Secondly, the Watchmaker argument is wildly flawed and has been soundly rebuked by Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker. However, I'd be interested in reading any Creationist critique on that book since I haven't found any - there must be some out there. I saw the critique of his discussion on the formation of the eye and can address that, but the Watchmaker argument is another matter entirely that, while extremely attractive and initially makes a lot of sense, truly falls apart when examined closely.Oh, puh-lease, Dawko the First, King of Atheism and Master Just-So Story-Teller. And you clearly didn't even bother to use the AiG site's search engine, because I easily found A Response to Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/264.asp). Furthermore, the author of the Lerner article has demolished Dawko's later book Climbing Mount Improbable here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3750.asp)

Is this a promise? If ID theory starts getting taught in the classroom will it not occur to Creationists to start teaching that an intelligent designer is the reason people "look different"? Or is the real cause of gravity? Will the ID people not get into the abortion debate? How long will they stay silent on euthanasia?First, I'm not interested in forcing anyone to teach ID. Secondly, why the heckl shouldn't ID people present their opinions on abortion or euthanasia? Should only atheists be allowed to have opinions?

Intelligent Designers and Creationists are not scientists - they are first and foremost religious right-wing, extremely conservative, people who have a legitimate right to express their ideas to whomever will listen. What they do not have the right to do is hijack science in an attempt to legitimize their religious beliefs into fact.Ah yes, here comes the mud-slinging. You have no idea of the political views of the author, who is a scientist by any normal criterion, except a stipulative one by 10 that creationists can't be scientists. And it's far better documented how the leaders of evolution have an anti-theistic agenda, especially your beloved Dawkins.

And by the way, this article does absolutely nothing to address my original question other than some reassurances by the author that Creationists won't be applying intelligent design to what they define as "operational" science any time in the future. This is really just a smoke and mirrors argument and isn't even logically sound.Nonsense, there was ample reason to believe that physics and chemistry would be unaffected, and there is no reason to believe that creationists would invoke miracles to explain the operation of DNA transcription and translation, cell division, nanotechnology, computing, etc.

TenDimensions

February 23rd 2003, 10:26 AM

First, Socrates, let me say, that was an excellent reponse. I'm going to really enjoy contributing here.

02-23-2003 @ 12:33 AM
Socrates:

It doesn't show.

Sorry you feel that way. I disagree with a lot of what I've read there, but I've read it.

Alas, evolutionists do NOT want students to know about the weaknesses of evolution. They have eve hounded teachers who point out the errors in the textbooks like faked pictures of embryos and staged photos of peppered moths.

A couple of points here: 1) Science eduction is already pitiful at best in our schools and on top of that it's science trivia, not eduction. 2) Every area of science has area's of 'weaknesses' as you would call them. Should we teach all of them? Students would graduate thinking scientists didn't know anything!

More assertions, as is typical of evolutionary propgandists.

Well, technically assertions are an essential component to debate. :brow:

If you were really as familiar with AiG as you claim, you would not be surprised.

I was being facetious.

AiG is up-front that they treat the Bible's propositions as axioms, and point out that EVERY belief system starts with axioms (unprovable starting assumptions).

Except science - because science isn't a belief system.

Again, wrong, because AiG has made it clear that they do NOT try to prove the Bible, because that would set something else in authority over it. And they also make it clear that "literal" is not the right word, but the grammatical-historical hermeneutic (which shows that Genesis is history not poetry).

Semantics as far as a non-believer is concerned. The purpose of AiG is to let its readers feel better about interpreting the Bible literally. I think we're just going to have to settle for us disagreeing as to what AiG is seeking to accomplish.

But the leaders in the evolution-only push are overwhelmingly atheists, e.g. Eugenie Scott and Lerner himself. But as Scott has made it clear, she wants to use compromising clergy as useful idiots in this campaign, so doesn't want to be too blatant about the atheistic nature of evolution.

Evolution is a scientific theory - not a theory put forth by atheists. Just because it is a central tenet to atheists and that atheists push it - doesn't automatically mean all evolutionists are atheists. A nickel is a coin, but a coin isn't necessarily a nickel. That's what my point was (and still is).

The author cited a number of examples of atheistic bias, and the fact that evolution is part of the religion of Humanism.

We're starting to drift a little into philosophy and I'd be more than willing to follow you into another discussion forum regarding this topic.

Then blame the evolutionists because they make a lot of chemical evolution! And please remind us of the title of Darwin's most famous book.

Darwin's theory pre-supposes a starting reproducing organism. I strongly doubt that Darwin attempted to tackle the extremely difficult topic of origin of life - it was The Origin of Species. He was discussing the diversity of life - not the origin of it.

The article provides this!

Genesis 1:28 gives us permission to investigate creation, unlike say animism or pantheism that teaches that the creation itself is divine. And since God is sovereign, He was free to create as He pleased. So where the Bible is silent, the only way to find out how His creation works is to experiment, not rely on man-made philosophies as did the ancient Greeks.

So if I understand this correctly the AiG position is that we can use science to test anything that the Bible is silent on, but when it comes to what the Bible speaks about - the Bible is always right. This reminds me of a statement a Creationist said to me when I accused her of not following where science leads her. "I have no problem with science and think its right most of the time - except when it discovers something that contradicts the Bible, then I believe the Bible". Right, okay. :huh:

And once again, if you really were familiar with AiG, you would know that they regard rapid speciation as an important aspect of the creation model. The very article in question addresses this here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/lerner_resp.asp#really)!

Yes, I've read this stuff. But this isn't really the speciation you and I are arguing about so what's the point? Nor did any of these examples destroy the Theory of Evolution - it merely forced evolutionists to take another look at certain aspects of it. That happens all the time in science. How often does a passage in the Bible get re-interpreted based on new evidence?

Oh, puh-lease, Dawko the First, King of Atheism and Master Just-So Story-Teller.

Out of curiosity, have you ever read anything by him?

And you clearly didn't even bother to use the AiG site's search engine, because I easily found A Response to Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/264.asp).

Thanks for pointing me to that link - I had actually forgotten about coming across that link a while back. Perhaps it was because it was barely three pages of rebuttal to his 300+ pages.

Furthermore, the author of the Lerner article has demolished Dawko's later book Climbing Mount Improbable here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3750.asp)

I haven't gotten to Climbing Mount Improbable yet, but when I do I'll be sure to check out this link.

First, I'm not interested in forcing anyone to teach ID. Secondly, why the heckl shouldn't ID people present their opinions on abortion or euthanasia? Should only atheists be allowed to have opinions?

Of course, not - that wasn't my point. Right now there are those who want ID in the science classroom alongside evolution. My point was that if they feel ID is a valid scientific theory - what other applications will they feel it can be applied to in the future? Don't bother responding - this is technically a slippery slope logical fallacy.

Ah yes, here comes the mud-slinging. You have no idea of the political views of the author, who is a scientist by any normal criterion, except a stipulative one by 10 that creationists can't be scientists.

The very definition of science doesn't allow for supernatural explanations when developing theories for the natural world. How can it? So, if a "scientist" does so - well, people will make their own conclusions.

And it's far better documented how the leaders of evolution have an anti-theistic agenda, especially your beloved Dawkins.

This is true. I won't deny that. It doesn't necessarily make them wrong, though.

Nonsense, there was ample reason to believe that physics and chemistry would be unaffected, and there is no reason to believe that creationists would invoke miracles to explain the operation of DNA transcription and translation, cell division, nanotechnology, computing, etc.

This almost sounds like a challenge. Would do I get from you if I find an example of a Creationist applying God to the physical world in some other theory?

Socrates

February 23rd 2003, 10:45 AM

First, Socrates, let me say, that was an excellent reponse. I'm going to really enjoy contributing here.Thanx, have fun. No point doing something if you don't enjoy it ;)

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Again, wrong, because AiG has made it clear that they do NOT try to prove the Bible, because that would set something else in authority over it. And they also make it clear that "literal" is not the right word, but the grammatical-historical hermeneutic (which shows that Genesis is history not poetry).
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Semantics as far as a non-believer is concerned. The purpose of AiG is to let its readers feel better about interpreting the Bible literally. I think we're just going to have to settle for us disagreeing as to what AiG is seeking to accomplish.Shouldn't we accept AiG's own statement unless you have proof to the contrary? And that they do NOT interpret the whole Bible "literally" but according to its genre

So if I understand this correctly the AiG position is that we can use science to test anything that the Bible is silent on, but when it comes to what the Bible speaks about - the Bible is always right. This reminds me of a statement a Creationist said to me when I accused her of not following where science leads her. "I have no problem with science and think its right most of the time - except when it discovers something that contradicts the Bible, then I believe the Bible". Right, okay.You got it! Except that I dispute no actual discoveries by science, only the interpretations of these discoveries.

Yes, I've read this stuff. But this isn't really the speciation you and I are arguing about so what's the point?You were the one who demanded that I answer the talk.origins trash on speciation.

Nor did any of these examples destroy the Theory of Evolution - it merely forced evolutionists to take another look at certain aspects of it. That happens all the time in science. How often does a passage in the Bible get re-interpreted based on new evidence?Quite, the Bible is the infallible Word of the omniscient Creator, science is a fallible human enterprise, especially in the area of origins/historical science. So I can't understand Christians who try to adapt the Bible to an admittedly fallible idea.

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Oh, puh-lease, Dawko the First, King of Atheism and Master Just-So Story-Teller.
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Out of curiosity, have you ever read anything by him?
Yes I have read Climbing Mount Improbable, and found the review to be spot on.

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And it's far better documented how the leaders of evolution have an anti-theistic agenda, especially your beloved Dawkins.
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This is true. I won't deny that. It doesn't necessarily make them wrong, though.Never said it did. But it DOES make it wrong to claim that only the creationists have a religio-philosophical agenda.

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Nonsense, there was ample reason to believe that physics and chemistry would be unaffected, and there is no reason to believe that creationists would invoke miracles to explain the operation of DNA transcription and translation, cell division, nanotechnology, computing, etc.
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This almost sounds like a challenge. Would do I get from you if I find an example of a Creationist applying God to the physical world in some other theory?If you could, I'd say that the person has confused creation with vitalism.

TenDimensions

February 23rd 2003, 05:49 PM

02-23-2003 @ 09:45 AM
Socrates:

Shouldn't we accept AiG's own statement unless you have proof to the contrary?

Only if you accept science's official statement that evolution is not anti-religion - it is simply science based on the evidence. :rofl:

And that they do NOT interpret the whole Bible "literally" but according to its genre

Yes, I'm familiar with this. But you would agree that various sects of Christianity interpret different parts of the Bible more literally than some, right? And you would agree that AiG tends towards more literally interpretation than most sects?

I said: So if I understand this correctly the AiG position is that we can use science to test anything that the Bible is silent on, but when it comes to what the Bible speaks about - the Bible is always right. And then you said:

You got it! Except that I dispute no actual discoveries by science, only the interpretations of these discoveries.

Okay, I just want to make sure we're really clear about this. You're willing to take a text that is well over 2,000 years old (I'm primarily speaking of the OT) over modern science because of your belief that it is the infallible Word of God, right?

Let me ask this question then. By what guidelines do you use to determine the difference between an "actual" discovery and an "interpreted" discovery?

You were the one who demanded that I answer the talk.origins trash on speciation.

Well, yes, but that was in reference to you saying that macro-evolution couldn't happen. Are you saying that thelink (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) is only providing evidence for micro, not macro? Is there any way macro could be proven to you other than living for a million years?

Quite, the Bible is the infallible Word of the omniscient Creator, science is a fallible human enterprise, especially in the area of origins/historical science. So I can't understand Christians who try to adapt the Bible to an admittedly fallible idea.

For a "fallible" human enterprise it seems to have been remarkably, even astoundingly, successful since its formalization and strict adherance to. Just look at the evidence - the applied science has resulted in all the technology that you see around you - and who knows where it may end? But you would still put more weight behind an ancient text than modern science? Who exactly is making the bigger leap of faith?

And it's far better documented how the leaders of evolution have an anti-theistic agenda, especially your beloved Dawkins.
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TenDimensions wrote:
This is true. I won't deny that. It doesn't necessarily make them wrong, though.
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Never said it did. But it DOES make it wrong to claim that only the creationists have a religio-philosophical agenda.

So we both admit to having leaders on both sides of the issue with agendas. Fair enough. But given that there seem to be so many more evolutionists on my side (check this humorous article (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp) out) would you try and make the statement that all evolutionists must be secret atheists or have some agenda? Because I think that's what AiG tries to imply - at the very least they imply that any outspoken evolutionist must have an atheistic agenda.

Socrates

February 23rd 2003, 09:44 PM

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Socrates:

Shouldn't we accept AiG's own statement unless you have proof to the contrary?
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JJR:
Only if you accept science's official statement that evolution is not anti-religion — it is simply science based on the evidence. Except that science and evolution have nothing to do with each other, at least in the normal operational sense of science which is responsible for curing diseases and sending men to the moon etc. You fail to note this distinction.

I've also provided quotes which display the a priori bias of many evolutionists regardless of the evidence, e.g. Lewontin (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/lewontin.asp) and Todd (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/tools/quotes/todd.asp).

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And that they do NOT interpret the whole Bible "literally" but according to its genre
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Yes, I'm familiar with this. Then you should not have tried to paint AiG as rigid literalists.

But you would agree that various sects of Christianity interpret different parts of the Bible more literally than some, right?I don't have to agree or disagree since I don't deign to defend or attack any Christian sects.

And you would agree that AiG tends towards more literally interpretation than most sects?Again, I'd need to know what part of Scripture you mean. E.g. AiG would interpret Genesis as literal history, as did most Church Fathers and Reformers, because Genesis has the literary structure of historical narrative. AiG would probably not interpret some anthropomorphic passages as literal unlike the Mormons, simply because AiG would recognise the anthropomorphisms.

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10D:
I said: So if I understand this correctly the AiG position is that we can use science to test anything that the Bible is silent on, but when it comes to what the Bible speaks about - the Bible is always right. And then you said:

Soc:
You got it! Except that I dispute no actual discoveries by science, only the interpretations of these discoveries.

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10D:
Okay, I just want to make sure we're really clear about this. You're willing to take a text that is well over 2,000 years old (I'm primarily speaking of the OT) over modern science because of your belief that it is the infallible Word of God, right?Yes, quite simply because what you call "modern science" has nothing to do with real operational science, but is rather forensic/historical/operational science.

Have you seen the film Cry in the Dark aka Evil Angels starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill? It was about an infamous miscarriage of justice in my country, where an unhealthy reliance on forensic evidence (neglecting its assumptions)—and ignoring eye-witness accounts and even operational scientific evidence of the capability of dingos— wrongly convicted Lindy Chamberlain of murdering her baby in the desert. There was also anti-Christian bigotry against a Seventh-Day Adventist couple whichb contributed to some disgraceful rumor-mongering that the baby's name Azaria means "Sacrifice in the Wilderness" when in reality it means "Yah(weh) is my help".

Let me ask this question then. By what guidelines do you use to determine the difference between an "actual" discovery and an "interpreted" discovery?Let's give some examples:

In a rock, the isotope ratio is the actual discovery. Claiming that this ratio as due to radioactive decay over a long period of time is an interpetation.
DNA is X% similar between two organisms is a discovery. Claiming that this proves that they diverged from a common ancestor Y million years ago is an interpretation.
A fish population trapped in a cave loses its power of sight over generations is a discovery. Claiming that this proves goo-to-you evolution and that sight could have been gained by a similar process is an interpretation.
A mutation confers anti-biotic resistance to a bacterium, therefore it is selected over non-resistant bacteria in a hospital is an observation. So is the fact that this mutation was information-losing, because it disabled a cell pump so the bacterium could no longer pump in its own killer. It is an interpretation to claim that this process can explain goo-to-you evolution and refute Biblical creation.

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You were the one who demanded that I answer the talk.origins trash on speciation.
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Well, yes, but that was in reference to you saying that macro-evolution couldn't happen. Excuse me sir, but you must not misrepresent me to my face! I have repeatedly said that I agree with AiG's advice NOT to make the micro-macro distinction, and have even gently chided someone on "my" side here for denying that speciation can happen.

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Soc:
And it's far better documented how the leaders of evolution have an anti-theistic agenda, especially your beloved Dawkins.
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TenDimensions wrote:
This is true. I won't deny that. It doesn't necessarily make them wrong, though.
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Soc:
Never said it did. But it DOES make it wrong to claim that only the creationists have a religio-philosophical agenda.
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10D:
So we both admit to having leaders on both sides of the issue with agendas. Fair enough. But given that there seem to be so many more evolutionists on my side (check this humorous article out) would you try and make the statement that all evolutionists must be secret atheists or have some agenda?The source for that article is a case in point — the NCSE is a Humanist-founded-and-operated organisation. It also has nothing to do with real science like physics and chemistry and everything to do with promoting a naturalistic view of origins.

Because I think that's what AiG tries to imply — at the very least they imply that any outspoken evolutionist must have an atheistic agenda.It is so true of the leaders. It is true of you!! And even evolution's churchian supporters have become for all practical purposes atheists when it comes to Earth's history.