Evidence for a young Earth

[rogue06]

Do you know the differences between an assertion and an argument jorge? 6 and below is an assertion, why should I or other accept there is 'no possible way' at all? How do you know that?

Because Jorge says so. And he'll repeat his assertion if you need more evidence.

ETA: And he did

**********************************************************************************

I'll do neither ... with one short post I will prove to the world just how dumb and irrational you are...

You say that my #6 is false. Here it is :

6. Under NO circumstances should any organic material (e.g., red blood cells) remain after that time.

So, you are actually saying that, e.g., red blood cells, DNA included, exposed to an open environment
should remain (identifiable / intact) after tens of millions of years.

Deep inside the middle of a T rex femur is not exactly what one would call "exposed to an open environment" is it. And it, IIRC, wasn't red blood cells that were found but rather evidence of heme in the bones which indicates that it probably originally came from red blood cells. IOW, its the remains of blood cells and not blood cells themselves.




ETA2: As for DNA... Claims that it was extracted could not be confirmed under further inspection and peer review. What has been confirmed is that proteins were extracted. That is all.

[JonF]

exposed to an open environment

Boy, you know less about this story than you know about thermo.

[Jorge]

Because Jorge says so. And he'll repeat his assertion if you need more evidence.

*********************************************************************************************

Your word for the day is IMPROVE --- something that you fail to do time and time again.

Going back to 2005, people like AiG have written about the cult-like attitude of you people.
As an example, consider the following (highlights are mine) :

As AiG wrote in a news release [in 2005] about this find [tissue and red blood cells in "68 million year old T-Rex fossils] (in a release which was distributed nationwide to the secular media):

The deeply entrenched idea of long ages is so dominant in most of the scientific establishments that facts will not undermine the evolution belief system. . . . Philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn have pointed out what generally happens when a discovery contradicts a paradigm: the paradigm is not discarded but modified.

Years ago when a startled Dr. Schweitzer found what appeared to be blood cells in a T. rex bone, she said, “it was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. . . . The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?” Her first reaction was to question the evidence, not the paradigm.

Almost certainly this astonishing discovery will become an “accepted” phenomenon that even “stretchy” soft tissues must be somehow capable of surviving for millions of years . . . and “stretching” beyond belief the idea that the evolutionary timetable concerning dinosaurs can be true.

Regardless of how the evolutionist community finally decides what to do with this fossil conundrum, the creationists now possess immensely powerful evidence against the well-publicized belief that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and instead have tremendous support for the biblical timeline of a recent creation.
.
.
.
The above highlights illustrate PRECISELY the kind of attitude / response that I have received here from the Evo-Faithful. Don't believe me? Just go back and read the posts for yourself. Question anything EXCEPT the Gigayears & Evolutionary Paradigm. That paradigm is the Sacred Cow of Materialism and cannot be compromised. Distorting Scripture is fine -- besides, "the Bible is just a book written by ancient, ignorant men and filled with poetic-figurative language".

Get a C - L - U - E people !!!

Jorge

[lilpixieofterror]

As nicely as I can say this, Terror, I have almost no respect for your comments.

I know you don't because your rabid YECism prevents you from seeing anything beyond your own narrow nose.

You are irrational, you have little to no knowledge, you are a Master Parrot,
and your logic is wacky-wacko (oh, wait, that falls under "irrational").

Then you would have no problem showing me as wrong. It is too bad though that that my grades are usually A's or B's and that is with very little study beyond homework. It is also too bad that my test scores, IQ scores, words of my teachers and peers also say otherwise. Believe what you want though Jorge, I know you already will come up with any rationalization to believe whatever you want to believe, regardless of facts or evidence.

I will still be a nice guy and respond to your question :

Lets see how this little rant of yours is and if you can actually give arguments and not just reply with a load of assertions and taunts.

Organic material
- ANY organic material - is simply not long-lived. Mineralization preserves
the structure of the material but not the material itself. The chemical
bonds that make up, e.g., DNA would not / could not possibly last more
than a few thousand years under the best conditions. Don't take
my word for it - ask any biochemist. As for the question by other
Dodos here on TWeb asking why we don't see much more organic
material in fossils, the answer is fairly obvious (to me). Conditions
must be "just right" for fossilization - everyone knows this. Likewise,
conditions have to be "just right" for organic material to be preserved
within fossilized material. Most of the time mineralization will be total
and so the organic material will be lost. But under the right conditions
some of the organic material is "encased" in a protective "chamber".
This keeps it organic for several thousand years. But under NO
conditions would this organic material remain identifiable / intact for
tens of millions of years. This is the part that you people willingly ignore.

It is too bad for you that you didn't actually read the articles that were posted. You do know that many soft tissue found preserved was mineralized, right? You also are aware that there has been articles written about this saying that the reason in the cases it is believed to be because it is protected by the bones and that is why in cases it is found, it is found within bone structures. You know, do you actually read articles you disagree with Jorge? How stuff words has an article on it here. I also posted an article from The Smithsonian that actually is from the person that discovered it and she gave her reasons in the article too. Did you actually read it or again, do you only pick and choose what you want to believe and ignore the rest? All this proves is that we do not quite understand how preservation works or how decay works, it does not prove the earth has to be young. Unless of course, you can prove (IE not assert) it is impossible. Now please prove and stop asserting that there is no way possible, that is an assertion, not an argument. So what experiment proves your assertion? Did you perform an experiment that showed that? Did you put it up for peer review? Nope, of course not you have asserted, without evidence, that you are right and everybody that dares to disagree with you, is wrong. Yet, you have presented zero evidence to show your assertion is true and as such, it will be ignored until you present the evidence.

You may now repeat - as you always have - that your question has
not been answered.

You have done what you have done before, asserted it was impossible because well... it is impossible. That isn't an argument, that is an assertion. You know the difference between an assertion and an argument, right?

[Jorge]

Boy, you know less about this story than you know about thermo.

************************************************************

Hehehe ... I have FORGOTTEN more thermo than you will probably ever learn in your lifetime.

So, you are saying that I am wrong - that these animals did NOT die in an "open environment".
So, they went to a sanitized, contained laboratory? They were hermetically encased in a chamber?
What is YOUR view of where / how they died if not in the "open environment" ? Please, educate me ...

Jorge

[rogue06]

*********************************************************************************************

Your word for the day is IMPROVE --- something that you fail to do time and time again.

Going back to 2005, people like AiG have written about the cult-like attitude of you people.
As an example, consider the following (highlights are mine) :

As AiG wrote in a news release [in 2005] about this find [tissue and red blood cells in "68 million year old T-Rex fossils] (in a release which was distributed nationwide to the secular media):

The deeply entrenched idea of long ages is so dominant in most of the scientific establishments that facts will not undermine the evolution belief system. . . . Philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn have pointed out what generally happens when a discovery contradicts a paradigm: the paradigm is not discarded but modified.

Um, Jorge. That's how science works. Not just wrt evolution but all science. For instance, when we discover something previously unknown about how disease spreads we don't immediately scrap Germ Theory but first see if it can be accommodated into the current model. It is only if the new data can't fit into the current model that we even start thinking about discarding the model. But whatever is proposed as a replacement must provide a better explanation for the data than the old model -- and not just one point but all of the data. This is where the YEC model falls flat and why it was long ago abandoned.

[lilpixieofterror]

Your word for the day is IMPROVE --- something that you fail to do time and time again.

And your word of the day is ASSERTION since you do that daily.

Going back to 2005, people like AiG have written about the cult-like attitude of you people.

You mean like making YEC, instead of Christ the center of your faith and acting as though those who are not YEC's are not Christians or at best, compromised Christians? Oh wait... that is what you do!

As an example, consider the following (highlights are mine) :

As AiG wrote in a news release [in 2005] about this find [tissue and red blood cells in "68 million year old T-Rex fossils] (in a release which was distributed nationwide to the secular media):

The deeply entrenched idea of long ages is so dominant in most of the scientific establishments that facts will not undermine the evolution belief system. . . . Philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn have pointed out what generally happens when a discovery contradicts a paradigm: the paradigm is not discarded but modified.

Years ago when a startled Dr. Schweitzer found what appeared to be blood cells in a T. rex bone, she said, “it was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. . . . The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?” Her first reaction was to question the evidence, not the paradigm.

Almost certainly this astonishing discovery will become an “accepted” phenomenon that even “stretchy” soft tissues must be somehow capable of surviving for millions of years . . . and “stretching” beyond belief the idea that the evolutionary timetable concerning dinosaurs can be true.

Regardless of how the evolutionist community finally decides what to do with this fossil conundrum, the creationists now possess immensely powerful evidence against the well-publicized belief that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and instead have tremendous support for the biblical timeline of a recent creation.

So AIG doesn't understand science themselves and just make silly assertions? Science is not all knowing and neither is any field of human knowledge. Theology has had changes too, right along with interpretation of Biblical passages. Does that prove all of Christianity is wrong or that we are creatures of limited understanding and as we gain and learn new things, we add to or improve what we previously thought? Really Jorge, you need to drop the panic button theology, it really doesn't make much sense and it is as contradictory and inconsistent as can be. Why is it ok to change our views on what the Bible 'really says' about the position of the earth among the planets, but it isn't ok to change our position on what the Bible 'really says' on the age of the earth and creation? Inconsistent much? Of course you are because rabid YECism usually is very inconsistent on just what it believes is ok and isn't ok.

The above highlights illustrate PRECISELY the kind of attitude / response that I have received here from the Evo-Faithful. Don't believe me? Just go back and read the posts for yourself. Question anything EXCEPT the Gigayears & Evolutionary Paradigm. That paradigm is the Sacred Cow of Materialism and cannot be compromised. Distorting Scripture is fine -- besides, "the Bible is just a book written by ancient, ignorant men and filled with poetic-figurative language".

Then Jorge, present your evidence that it is wrong. You can't and that is why you hide behind assertions, taunts, and rants. In truth, I can change what you say above to this:

"The above highlights illustrate PRECISELY the kind of attitude / response that I have received here from the rabid YEC-faithful. Don't believe me? Just go back and read the posts for yourself. Question anything EXCEPT your personal interpretions of the Bible. That paradigm is the Sacred Cow of rabid YECism and cannot be compromised. Distorting Scripture is fine -- besides, "the Bible must be taken to literal extreme, at all times and it is impossible for it to contain, symbolism, metaphor, etc, it must either all be true are all false, there is no in between"."

And puff, it describes you quite well. Irony at it's best. Keep screeching at the top of your lungs that anybody that disagrees with you is 'distorting scripture' cause I guess, in your world view, repeating it enough makes it true!

[Jorge]

I know you don't because your rabid YECism prevents you from seeing anything beyond your own narrow nose.



Then you would have no problem showing me as wrong. It is too bad though that that my grades are usually A's or B's and that is with very little study beyond homework. It is also too bad that my test scores, IQ scores, words of my teachers and peers also say otherwise. Believe what you want though Jorge, I know you already will come up with any rationalization to believe whatever you want to believe, regardless of facts or evidence.




Lets see how this little rant of yours is and if you can actually give arguments and not just reply with a load of assertions and taunts.



It is too bad for you that you didn't actually read the articles that were posted. You do know that many soft tissue found preserved was mineralized, right? You also are aware that there has been articles written about this saying that the reason in the cases it is believed to be because it is protected by the bones and that is why in cases it is found, it is found within bone structures. You know, do you actually read articles you disagree with Jorge? How stuff words has an article on it here. I also posted an article from The Smithsonian that actually is from the person that discovered it and she gave her reasons in the article too. Did you actually read it or again, do you only pick and choose what you want to believe and ignore the rest? All this proves is that we do not quite understand how preservation works or how decay works, it does not prove the earth has to be young. Unless of course, you can prove (IE not assert) it is impossible. Now please prove and stop asserting that there is no way possible, that is an assertion, not an argument. So what experiment proves your assertion? Did you perform an experiment that showed that? Did you put it up for peer review? Nope, of course not you have asserted, without evidence, that you are right and everybody that dares to disagree with you, is wrong. Yet, you have presented zero evidence to show your assertion is true and as such, it will be ignored until you present the evidence.



You have done what you have done before, asserted it was impossible because well... it is impossible. That isn't an argument, that is an assertion. You know the difference between an assertion and an argument, right?

*******************************************

Good freagin' grief !!!

Just one comment - I cannot stomach any more than that ...

"All this proves is that we do not quite understand how preservation works or how decay works,
it does not prove the earth has to be young."

I did not say - EVER - that this "proves" that the earth has to be young. I DID say that this
is a reasonable / logical / scientific POSSIBILITY. See my earlier post to R06 --- you people
are so deeply entrenched in your paradigm and in your FAITH that you cannot see anything
except what supports your position and you dismiss without a second thought anything that
opposes that position. Furthermore ...

What you have done is invoked IGNORANCE to come to your rescue. "All this proves is that
we do not quite understand ... blah ... blah ... blah"

Yeah, right ... you already KNOW the "answer" and so when the EVIDENCE does not support
your "answer" then simply invoke "we don't understand it YET ... but we will ... trust us!"

I'd just as soon trust Hitler to watch over a schoolroom of Jewish children. Bwahaha

Jorge

[Wally]

Hehehe ... I have FORGOTTEN more thermo than you will probably ever learn in your lifetime.

That would explain your lack of knowledge on this subject.

So, you are saying that I am wrong - that these animals did NOT die in an "open environment".
So, they went to a sanitized, contained laboratory? They were hermetically encased in a chamber?
What is YOUR view of where / how they died if not in the "open environment" ? Please, educate me ...

Jorge

So, explain to the rest of us, how would that carcass have been fossilized under those circumstances.

[Jorge]

And your word of the day is ASSERTION since you do that daily.



You mean like making YEC, instead of Christ the center of your faith and acting as though those who are not YEC's are not Christians or at best, compromised Christians? Oh wait... that is what you do!



So AIG doesn't understand science themselves and just make silly assertions? Science is not all knowing and neither is any field of human knowledge. Theology has had changes too, right along with interpretation of Biblical passages. Does that prove all of Christianity is wrong or that we are creatures of limited understanding and as we gain and learn new things, we add to or improve what we previously thought? Really Jorge, you need to drop the panic button theology, it really doesn't make much sense and it is as contradictory and inconsistent as can be. Why is it ok to change our views on what the Bible 'really says' about the position of the earth among the planets, but it isn't ok to change our position on what the Bible 'really says' on the age of the earth and creation? Inconsistent much? Of course you are because rabid YECism usually is very inconsistent on just what it believes is ok and isn't ok.



Then Jorge, present your evidence that it is wrong. You can't and that is why you hide behind assertions, taunts, and rants. In truth, I can change what you say above to this:

"The above highlights illustrate PRECISELY the kind of attitude / response that I have received here from the rabid YEC-faithful. Don't believe me? Just go back and read the posts for yourself. Question anything EXCEPT your personal interpretions of the Bible. That paradigm is the Sacred Cow of rabid YECism and cannot be compromised. Distorting Scripture is fine -- besides, "the Bible is just a book written by ancient, ignorant men and filled with poetic-figurative language"."

And puff, it describes you quite well. Irony at it's best. Keep screeching at the top of your lungs that anybody that disagrees with you is 'distorting scripture' cause I guess, in your world view, repeating it enough makes it true!

**********************************************************************

Someone please fetch me a gun ... I want to put myself out of the misery of dealing with the likes of you.

Jorge

[rogue06]

Years ago when a startled Dr. Schweitzer found what appeared to be blood cells in a T. rex bone, she said, “it was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. . . . The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?” Her first reaction was to question the evidence, not the paradigm.

Schweitzer has repeatedly commented on how it drives her crazy how those seeking to use her work to discredit evolution "twist your words and they manipulate your data.” Further she has said she has begun to take it personally in that they continue to do so even after she has repeatedly sought to correct these perceptions.

Almost certainly this astonishing discovery will become an “accepted” phenomenon that even “stretchy” soft tissues must be somehow capable of surviving for millions of years . . .

The softness has been greatly exaggerated by YEC websites. The tissue, after being "demineralized (0.5M EDTA,pH 8.0) for 7 days, changing buffer daily" is slightly elastic not "soft"

[lilpixieofterror]

Good freagin' grief !!!

That is what I think when I read your post, then again, I do not have cognitive dissonance either.

Just one comment - I cannot stomach any more than that ...

Yeah, I'm sure you can't stomach that you are wrong and just making up things as you go along.

"All this proves is that we do not quite understand how preservation works or how decay works,
it does not prove the earth has to be young."

I did not say - EVER - that this "proves" that the earth has to be young.

Then why did you say:

"6. Under NO circumstances should any organic material (e.g., red blood cells) remain after that time."

Trying to switch up your position when your assertions are called again and acting as though you never contradicted yourself? That makes it as clear as a bell, you believe it proves these bones can not be young, yet you have not shown it at all. You've asserted it, without evidence and now you've been called on it; you're trying to weasel your way out of having to back your assertions.

I DID say that this
is a reasonable / logical / scientific POSSIBILITY. See my earlier post to R06 --- you people
are so deeply entrenched in your paradigm and in your FAITH that you cannot see anything
except what supports your position and you dismiss without a second thought anything that
opposes that position. Furthermore ...

You only said that after you were called upon your assertion of:

"6. Under NO circumstances should any organic material (e.g., red blood cells) remain after that time."

Now you seem to want to talk a softer position now you've been called on it and you can't back it up and never admit you were wrong. How typical... anyway I see other views all the time and I talk with and hang out with those I do not agree with daily. Check my profile under my friends. I have friends in tons of belief systems and I talk to lots and lots of people. I also will explain to people why I hold to the views I do and give reasons why. You know, unlike you that argues though assertions, taunts, rants, etc.

What you have done is invoked IGNORANCE to come to your rescue. "All this proves is that
we do not quite understand ... blah ... blah ... blah"

Jorge, does finding out that a previously held belief or understanding is wrong mean we do not quite understand something? Of course, kind of like finding out the earth orbited the sun showed we didn't quite understand how the cosmos worked as well as we thought we did and thus we changed our position. That is how creatures of limited understanding work in their world. We find something new and we think, "Hummm, I wonder how that came to be" and thus we come to understand something better or change up our views upon what we once thought. Well... assuming that we are not driven by ideology that is (you know, like you are).

Yeah, right ... you already KNOW the "answer" and so when the EVIDENCE does not support
your "answer" then simply invoke "we don't understand it YET ... but we will ... trust us!"

Then you are welcome to show that finding a soft tissue sample in a fossil proves the earth has to be young. You can't do it, so you simply do what you do best, insult, act like you are smarter then everybody, argue with assertions, and claim victory.

I'd just as soon trust Hitler to watch over a schoolroom of Jewish children. Bwahaha

As mean and nasty as ever, eh? My goal when I have been a Sunday school teacher in the past is to teach children how to think for themselves. This means I presented both sides of an argument and I would personally explain why I believe the way I did, but they didn't have to follow what I believe themselves. The Bible commands of us to be able to give an answer for our faith and why we believe, so we can answer everybody. That is my goal in life and that will be my goal for my children when the reach that age to be able to think for themselves. It seems though you want children to just think and believe like you do. How funny...

[lilpixieofterror]

Someone please fetch me a gun ... I want to put myself out of the misery of dealing with the likes of you.

Yeah, I know you don't like to actually have to prove your assertions and being put on the spot to defend them. Is this the part you run away and claim victory or is that later?

[phank]

Yeah, by now everyone interested in this material has read it all. Which apparently doesn't include Jorge, whose religious approach to science is intractable. So briefly, what we've learned is
1) Some of the original tissue structures were unexpectedly preserved during mineralization,
2) Some of the original organic molecules and atoms not part of the mineralization were unexpectedly preserved
3) Some circumstances (protection by bones, etc.) can, rarely, keep soft tissues and their structures preserved long enough to mineralize accurately.
4) If we ignore 90% of the data, misrepresent the rest, and insult enough people, SOME of us can use foregone conclusions to substitute for evidence.
5) Once creationists have decided on a comfortable fabrication, God Himself can't get through to them (or alternatively, God Himself may be protecting them from knowledge).

[Cerebrum123]

Evolution is an observed fact. The Theory of Evolution seeks to explain this fact. Evolution happens because the chemistry of DNA makes evolution unavoidable due to the fact that DNA doesn't replicate perfectly. Any time you have imperfect self-replicators in an environment of limited resources, the result is a tendency of those best suited to acquire and use the resources to produce more offspring. Hence evolution happens because its built right into the molecules.


It rarely comes up, but in my limited experience I've been very surprised at how many YECs I personally know who are very iffy about whether the account is literal history.


Which at least to me suggests that He wasn't approaching the text as literally as many YECs demand. There was nobody to get married at the "beginning of creation" (Day 1 no matter how you view the days). It wasn't until Day 6 so it certainly wasn't literally from the "beginning of creation."


The NT writers also often alluded to Psalms. Are you claiming that everything presented in Psalms is literal history. Further, if I were to refer to Robin Hood while making a point does that point automatically fail if Robin Hood wasn't an actual historical person?


Thank you for that.


Really? Then how do you explain Theistic Evolution? Are you saying we "start out a priori rejecting God, and trying to find a way to explain the creation in a way that HE IS NOT NEEDED"?


I'm sure you can provide a quote from Darwin saying that his whole point of evolution was "to find a way to explain the creation in a way that HE IS NOT NEEDED," right?


Actually life is the driving force of evolution. Dead things generally don't reproduce. Your claim makes as much sense as declaring that death is the driving force of Christianity since our goal is to join Jesus in heaven.


There was no reason to doubt that the Earth was older than supposed until the evidence started to accumulate much like you can't find a Church Father who doubted that the Earth was immobile and the Sun revolved around it or that the firmament was solid structure. But after Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler started providing the evidence these views (based on literal interpretations of Scripture) weren't accurate those views were eventually abandoned.

Further, there were several Church Fathers who thought that the creation days were a thousand years long. For instance St. Cyprian of Carthage in his "Treatises" wrote that, “As the first seven days in the divine arrangement containing seven thousand years…”

St. Justin Martyr in “Dialogue with Trypho the Jew” (155AD), and Irenaeus in “Against Heresies” (185AD) were other early Church Fathers who clearly thought that each day of creation equaled 1000 years, and used Adam’s death at nearly a thousand and the curse that said “on this day ye shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17) as evidence.

According to the Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Methodius said that Origen suggested the possibility that each day was a thousand years long based on II Peter 3:8. Victorinus also held that the days of creation were each a thousand years long, as he said in his “On the Creation of the World”: “Wherefore to those seven days the Lord attributed to each a thousand years,” though I don’t know if he used the same reasoning as the others did.


Various theologians have complained at different times that virtually every scientific advancement encouraged atheism in some way or another.

Newton faced such a reaction from several quarters for his ideas concerning gravity. They were condemned as being anti-God and promoting atheism. He was accused of substituting gravity for God. The eminent Puritan theologian John Owens declared that Newton’s discoveries as, “built on fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against evident testimonies of Scripture.”

Newton himself was concerned that his laws of motion would be used to devise anti-Scriptural theories concerning the origin of the Earth and Solar System – which is precisely what William Whiston, who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair at Cambridge, and others would do. Also, some scholars trace Newton’s theories on gravitation to strange “alchemic” views about subtle power pervading all of creation and being the key to the transformation of base metals into gold.

Supposedly Pierre-Simon de Laplace (mathematician and astronomer whose work was crucial to the development of mathematical astronomy and statistics though best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system) while explaining Newton’s theory concerning the origin of the Solar System to Napoleon (a former pupil, and before he became Emperor) was asked by Napoleon about the role of God and replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.” Even if this quote is apocryphal in nature it still betrays an attitude or at the very least a fear that it led to atheism.

Copernicus’ theories and Galileo’s discoveries were savagely attacked in this manner (“To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as the claim that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin.” ... “To affirm that the sun … is at the center of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting Scriptures.”)

There was a similar, though much less vehement reaction to Descartes according to the “New Cambridge Modern History,” IV, p.139:

[Descarte’s] “innovations in math and optics were welcome but his mechanistic physics and physiology were at first opposed, in Protestant Utrecht and Leiden as in Catholic Louvain and in Paris, because his doctrines were held to lead to atheism and to have theologically dangerous implications for the nature of the soul and for the eucharist.”

Heck, even Higher Criticism was widely criticized for promoting an atheistic worldviews in many quarters.


There have always been some who took it in a woodenly literal manner. But ask yourself this, considering the widely different ways the days have been interpreted don't you consider it odd that not one single Council or creed addresses this if it were actually important?


Seriously?

I'm going to try and respond to this again, my keyboard started acting up. I'm only going to respond to this post by Rogue, and something Roy said. Roy, I misspelled Lyell's name. Is it that big of a deal? I have a condition that causes among other things myoclonic seizures, and these make typing errors common in my posts. The "free science from Moses" were Lyell's own words. There have been two versions of this that I have seen from Lyell, and they both say basically the same thing, one is just longer.

Rogue, for point 1, changes in gene frequency over time has been observed, but "evolution" in the way needed for single celled organisms to have multiple cells, and other such vast changes has not been observed. This is equivocation.

For point 2, that's interesting, but I would wonder why they are thinking that it might not be history.

For point 3, semantics, and YEC is NOT about taking the most literal reading of the Bible, that is a straw man. It's about taking the Bible in the correct context ie. history as history, poetry as poetry, prophecy as prophecy etc. Also if you made a chart for the timeline of YEC compared to evolutionary timeline, and put the creation of man on it, you would have man at the END of the scale on the evolutionary chart, but at the BEGINNING of the YEC chart, and by far less than 1 percent on the YEC chart.

As for point 4, another straw man, lpot used the same straw man in her post. My position wasn't that every point a person makes has to use historical sources, but that the points that WERE made, don't make any sense UNLESS they are referring to literal history. This one especially fits into that category.2 Peter 3
New International Version (NIV)
3 Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

Now how can they be held responsible for "deliberately forgetting" something for which there is no evidence of, or never happened in the first place(as far as I know the Earth is supposed to have been formed from molten rock that cooled, and not water)? This makes NO SENSE if it were not referring to a real historical event. I wanted to tack this last part on real quick before I post. Without a global flood, then God has repeatedly broken His promise "never to destroy the earth again", because there have been a great deal of local floods that have been absolutely massive. If we can't trust Him on something as simple as this, then why trust Him on something as important as Salvation?

As for point 5, admitting that YEC is an interpretation is easy to do because it's true. The question becomes is it a valid interpretation? Based on Biblical evidence(talking solely the Bible right now), it seems to be the only one that makes sense, especially considering what the rest of the Bible has to say about the early chapters of Genesis.

As for point 6, I didn't say that TE scenarios start out a priori by rejecting God. I should have clarified that better. IMO TE seems to mostly just take evolutionary scenarios and then add God to it.

As for point 7, I don't have a quote of Darwin saying that in those words, but if you look at his attitude towards God in his own writings, you will see that he had become quite hostile to Christianity. He had been raised listening to evolutionary ideas, and eventually used them to shut God out of his life all together. For him it was the very creation that is supposed to "declare the glory of God" that led him further from God.

As for point 8, even lpot admitted that when no pressure is applied to a creature no evolution occurs (just look at the earlier posts on this thread, I even said that mutations would cause some kind of evolution even without death, but it's not quite the same). The primary pressure to evolve would be death, right? Without the "pressure" of a species being wiped out, there is no reason for it to evolve. Which is actually the part you seem to have ignored from my previous post.

As for point 9, those were ideas imposed from OUTSIDE Scripture, but I will admit that Scripture had been abused to support those notions, the same thing happened with slavery, and various other things throughout history.

As for point 10, if we can't answer the questions like these from the Bible, then people are extremely unlikely to view any of the Bible to be authoritative on ANY issue. It's Biblical authority that is the main point that I am trying to defend. As for no creed being formed based on creation, it's IMO because they weren't being attacked on this front.No one had any reason to doubt that God did indeed create, and in the order and method in which He said He did. Also many of the allegorical "day is as a thousand years" that I have seen, have been saying that there WILL be a total of 7,000 years of time for this Earth, and that the last 1,000 would be the Millennium spoken of in Revelation. It wasn't usually that the original days lasted that long, but that they represented ages that were to come.

As for point 11, that is EXACTLY how every atheist I have come across thinks(before I came to TWeb anyway), they are only (sometimes) willing to concede some kind of "lighting the fuse of the Big Bang", but nothing more than that. No special revelation, no miracles(after all science has "proven" that miracles don't happen),Jesus was at most a good teacher. They don't trust any of the Bible, and mostly due to "evolution" proving it all wrong. Even phank was saying how natural laws are more than sufficient to explain everything that exists, so that we have no need of God. I wish I could remember where he posted that. Lpot had been responding to him on that one, so she can likely show you where he said essentially that.