"On putting God in the textbooks...well, I believe Creation science is valid science and should sit right next to evolution as being taught. What are evolution scientists afraid of? "

Stephen J. Gould again, because he said it better than I can:

“‘Creation science’ has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage — good teaching—than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?”

— "Verdict on Creationism," The Skeptical Inquirer, 1988, 12 (2): 186.

-ol' 2long

Aaahhh...the evil white man persecuting everyone else on the planet.

Just for a side deal...of course it is getting off the subject...

The Real Story of Thanksgiving
November 24, 2004


So this is really nothing new. This history revisionism is not something that's been going on since outcome based education. It's been going on for quite a while. The supposed true story of Thanksgiving can be summed up very quickly. The Pilgrims came from England to escape oppression. They arrived in a new land and were immediately overwhelmed with their own incompetence as human beings. They couldn't grow food. They couldn't feed themselves. They couldn't protect themselves. They had no clue what to do. The Indians, who greeted them with friendly leis and bouquets upon their arrival said, "Oh, we're the Indians, we're glad you're here," fed the Pilgrims and taught them how to grow corn and how to hunt and basically taught them how to live.

And that's what the first Thanksgiving was, and then of course the Pilgrims continued to populate and propagate, and eventually killed all the Indians and took over their country and that was the thanks the Indians got for their niceties in feeding the Pilgrims and keeping them alive -- and, hence, the evil white European tradition was born. That's all poppycock. That is all absolute BS with a capital B and a capital S. It's almost the exact opposite of that.

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It's time for the real story of Thanksgiving and the George Washington 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation.

When I was going to grade school and it was time to teach us about Thanksgiving, the basic synopsis of what I was told was the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, a bunch of destitute white people. When they arrived; they had no clue what to do, didn't know how to grow corn, didn't know how to hunt, basically didn't know how to do anything. And if it weren't for the Injuns who befriended them and gave them coats and skins and taught them how to fish and shared their food and corn with them, the Pilgrims wouldn't have survived and the Pilgrims thanked them by killing them and taking over the country and bringing with them syphilis, environmental destruction, racism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia.

That's basically the Thanksgiving story we were all raised with. The latter part of that has been recently added as part of the politically correct multicultural curriculum. But basically the story of Thanksgiving that we all had was that the Pilgrims arrived, were basically inept, incompetent white people, the Indians were very compassionate and nice and shared everything that they had with them and for their thanks, the Pilgrims wiped them out, created the cavalry and basically took over the country, stole it from them, and then amen -- and so we all grew up thinking that that's what happened. The Indians were great people but now they live on reservations and how did this happen since they were so nice to us way back when. That's not anywhere near the truth.

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Let's allow our real undoctored American history lesson to unfold further. If our schools and the media have twisted the historical record when it comes to Columbus, they have obliterated the contributions of America's earliest permanent settlers, the Pilgrims. Why? Because they were a people inspired by profound religious beliefs to overcome incredible odds. Today, public schools are simply not teaching how important the religious dimension was in shaping our history and our nation's character. Whether teachers are just uncomfortable with this material or whether there's been a concerted effort to cover up the truth, the results are the same. Kids are no longer learning enough to understand and appreciate how and why America was created.

The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century. The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible.

The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford's own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!

This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well. Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives.

"He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future."

Here now, in its entirety, the William Bradford journal, what he wrote about the social experiment after abandoning what essentially was socialism shortly after the Pilgrims had arrived in the United States or in the new world:

"'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote. 'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense...that was thought injustice.' Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They un-harnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products.'"

Not just use themselves and not just send to a common store but they could market. They could grow as much, they could sell it for what they could get for it, and the incentive was clear to do as much as possible on both sides. "And what was the result? 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of plenty' and the 'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47) In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.' Now, let me ask you: Have you read this history before? Is this lesson being taught to your children today? If not, why not? Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience?

Guess what? There's even more that is being deliberately withheld from our modern textbooks. For example, one of those attracted to the new world by the success of Plymouth was Thomas Hooker. Thomas Hooker established his own community in Connecticut, the first full-fledged constitutional community, perhaps the most free society the world had ever known. Hooker's community was governed by the fundamental orders of Connecticut, which established strict limits on the powers of government. So revolutionary and successful was this idea that Massachusetts was inspired to adopt its body of liberties. The body of liberties included ninety-eight separate protections of individual rights, including no taxation without representation, due process of law, trial by a jury of peers, and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. Now, those no doubt sound familiar to you and they should because these are ideas and concepts that led directly to the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Nevertheless, the Pilgrims and the Puritans of early New England are often vilified today as witch burners and portrayed as simpletons. But to the contrary, it was their commitment to pluralism and free worship that led to these ideals being incorporated into American history, and our history books purposely conceal the fact that these notions were developed by communities of devout Christians who studied the Bible and found that it prescribes limited representative government and free enterprise as the best political and economic systems. Now, there's only one word for this. It's censorship. There was a time when every schoolchild did learn these basic lessons of the American culture. Now these truths are being and have been systematically expunged from history books in favor of liberal social studies clap trap," and the chapter goes on. This brings us to our Founding Fathers, the geniuses who crafted the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

These were men who shook up the entire world by proclaiming the idea that people had certain God-given freedoms and rights and that the government's only reason to exist was to protect those freedoms and rights from both internal and external forces -- and that simple, yet brilliant, insight has been all but lost today in liberalism's relentless march toward bigger, more powerful, more intrusive government," and that's why I wanted to add to the reading today the George Washington First Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. Thanksgiving was about thanking God for bounty and freedom and opportunity and blessings. Thanksgiving is a time we celebrate the Pilgrims realizing the best way to enjoy prosperity in a new world that was foreign to them. Yes, there was cooperation with the Indians and, yes, the Indians did extend the handshake of freedom when we arrived by teaching the Pilgrims how to farm and so forth, but after that, all the bounty that was created by the first settlers were shared with the Indians.

There was no wiping them out. There was no infiltration. There was no introduction of various diseases and -isms like sexism or racism or any of this, as have been attached in recent multicultural curricula to the so-called white Europeans who invaded this pristine land and destroyed the goodness and the oneness that the Indians enjoyed with this land. That's what's being taught today. What is not being taught today is the devotion to God that these people had, but the failure of a socialist compact to adequately provide for the residents of the first colony and how William Bradford himself saw it was failing almost from the outset and devised a new compact which was basically capitalism and unfettered competition, and incentive, and then it was Katie bar the door. All of these things are part of the original Thanksgiving, and even when I go back and remember my days in school, I was not taught this. I was not taught the involvement and the references to God.

I was not taught that the Pilgrims had all this bounty after awhile and shared it with the Indians. It was quite the opposite. The purpose of teaching Thanksgiving when I was a kid was to tell all of us just how wonderful the Indians were and how well they treated us when we arrived because we were basically inept and incompetent.

It is false? says who? Havent seen that body of evidence. Saying it is false does not make it so.

Well, since this has been such a good thread, and since one of the themes of my protagonists is that I supposedly havnt cited my sources (which I have), then let me offer up this article. And please tell me that this...and the reams of other good scientific study out there, is not science. And this is coming out of creation science.
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Highlights of the Los Alamos Origins Debate

John R. Baumgardner

The following article has been adapted from my contributions to an ongoing debate over origins issues in the letters to the editor section of our local newspaper [1]. Our town, Los Alamos, located in the mountains of northern New Mexico, is the home of the Los Alamos National Laboratory which, with approximately 10,000 employees, is one of the larger scientific research facilities in the United States.

Can Random Molecular Interactions Create Life?

Many evolutionists are persuaded that the 15 billion years they assume for the age of the cosmos is an abundance of time for random interactions of atoms and molecules to generate life. A simple arithmetic lesson reveals this to be no more than an irrational fantasy.

This arithmetic lesson is similar to calculating the odds of winning the lottery. The number of possible lottery combinations corresponds to the total number of protein structures (of an appropriate size range) that are possible to assemble from standard building blocks. The winning tickets correspond to the tiny sets of such proteins with the correct special properties from which a living organism, say a simple bacterium, can be successfully built. The maximum number of lottery tickets a person can buy corresponds to the maximum number of protein molecules that could have ever existed in the history of the cosmos.

Let us first establish a reasonable upper limit on the number of molecules that could ever have been formed anywhere in the universe during its entire history. Taking 1080 as a generous estimate for the total number of atoms in the cosmos [2], 1012 for a generous upper bound for the average number of interatomic interactions per second per atom, and 1018 seconds (roughly 30 billion years) as an upper bound for the age of the universe, we get 10110 as a very generous upper limit on the total number of interatomic interactions which could have ever occurred during the long cosmic history the evolutionist imagines. Now if we make the extremely generous assumption that each interatomic interaction always produces a unique molecule, then we conclude that no more than 10110 unique molecules could have ever existed in the universe during its entire history.

Now let us contemplate what is involved in demanding that a purely random process find a minimal set of about one thousand protein molecules needed for the most primitive form of life. To simplify the problem dramatically, suppose somehow we already have found 999 of the 1000 different proteins required and we need only to search for that final magic sequence of amino acids which gives us that last special protein. Let us restrict our consideration to the specific set of 20 amino acids found in living systems and ignore the hundred or so that are not. Let us also ignore the fact that only those with left-handed symmetry appear in life proteins. Let us also ignore the incredibly unfavorable chemical reaction kinetics involved in forming long peptide chains in any sort of plausible non-living chemical environment.

Let us merely focus on the task of obtaining a suitable sequence of amino acids that yields a 3D protein structure with some minimal degree of essential functionality. Various theoretical and experimental evidence indicates that in some average sense about half of the amino acid sites must be specified exactly [3]. For a relatively short protein consisting of a chain of 200 amino acids, the number of random trials needed for a reasonable likelihood of hitting a useful sequence is then on the order of 20100 (100 amino acid sites with 20 possible candidates at each site), or about 10130 trials. This is a hundred billion billion times the upper bound we computed for the total number of molecules ever to exist in the history of the cosmos!! No random process could ever hope to find even one such protein structure, much less the full set of roughly 1000 needed in the simplest forms of life. It is therefore sheer irrationality for a person to believe random chemical interactions could ever identify a viable set of functional proteins out of the truly staggering number of candidate possibilities.

In the face of such stunningly unfavorable odds, how could any scientist with any sense of honesty appeal to chance interactions as the explanation for the complexity we observe in living systems? To do so, with conscious awareness of these numbers, in my opinion represents a serious breach of scientific integrity. This line of argument applies, of course, not only to the issue of biogenesis but also to the issue of how a new gene/protein might arise in any sort of macroevolution process.

One retired Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow, a chemist, wanted to quibble that this argument was flawed because I did not account for details of chemical reaction kinetics. My intention was deliberately to choose a reaction rate so gigantic (one million million reactions per atom per second on average) that all such considerations would become utterly irrelevant. How could a reasonable person trained in chemistry or physics imagine there could be a way to assemble polypeptides on the order of hundreds of amino acid units in length, to allow them to fold into their three-dimensional structures, and then to express their unique properties, all within a small fraction of one picosecond!? Prior metaphysical commitments forced him to such irrationality.

Another scientist, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, asserted that I had misapplied the rules of probability in my analysis. If my example were correct, he suggested, it "would turn the scientific world upside down." I responded that the science community has been confronted with this basic argument in the past but has simply engaged in mass denial. Fred Hoyle, the eminent British cosmologist, published similar calculations two decades ago [4]. Most scientists just put their hands over their ears and refused to listen.

In reality this analysis is so simple and direct it does not require any special intelligence, ingenuity, or advanced science education to understand or even originate. In my case, all I did was to estimate a generous upper bound on the maximum number of chemical reactions -- of any kind -- that could have ever occurred in the entire history of the cosmos and then compare this number with the number of trials needed to find a single life protein with a minimal level of functionality from among the possible candidates. I showed the latter number was orders and orders larger than the former. I assumed only that the candidates were equally likely. My argument was just that plain. I did not misapply the laws of probability. I applied them as physicists normally do in their every day work.

Why could this physicist not grasp such trivial logic? I strongly believe it was because of his tenacious commitment to atheism that he was willing to be dishonest in his science. At the time of this editorial exchange, he was also leading a campaign before the state legislature to attempt to force this fraud on every public school student in our state.

Just How Do Coded Language Structures Arise?

One of the most dramatic discoveries in biology in the 20th century is that living organisms are realizations of coded language structures. All the detailed chemical and structural complexity associated with the metabolism, repair, specialized function, and reproduction of each living cell is a realization of the coded algorithms stored in its DNA. A paramount issue, therefore, is how do such extremely large language structures arise?

The origin of such structures is, of course, the central issue of the origin of life question. The simplest bacteria have genomes consisting of roughly a million codons. (Each codon, or genetic word, consists of three letters from the four-letter genetic alphabet.) Do coded algorithms a million words in length arise spontaneously by any known naturalistic process? Is there anything in the laws of physics that suggests how such structures might arise in a spontaneous fashion? The honest answer is simple. What we presently understand from thermodynamics and information theory argues persuasively they do not and cannot!

Language involves a symbolic code, a vocabulary, and a set of grammatical rules to relay or record thought. Many of us spend most of our waking hours generating, processing, or disseminating linguistic data. Seldom do we reflect on the fact that language structures are clear manifestations of non-material reality.

This conclusion may be reached by observing the linguistic information itself is independent of its material carrier. The meaning or message does not depend on whether it is represented as sound waves in the air or as ink patterns on paper or as alignment of magnetic domains on a floppy disk or as voltage patterns in a transistor network. The message that a person has won the $100,000,000 lottery is the same whether that person receives the information by someone speaking at his door or by telephone or by mail or on television or over the Internet.

Indeed Einstein pointed to the nature and origin of symbolic information as one of the profound questions about the world as we know it [5]. He could identify no means by which matter could bestow meaning to symbols. The clear implication is that symbolic information, or language, represents a category of reality distinct from matter and energy. Linguists therefore today speak of this gap between matter and meaning-bearing symbols sets as the 'Einstein gulf' [6]. Today in this information age there is no debate that linguistic information is objectively real. With only a moment's reflection we can conclude its reality is qualitatively different from the matter/energy substrate on which the linguistic information rides.

From whence then does linguistic information originate? In our human experience we immediately connect the language we create and process with our minds. But what is the ultimate nature of the human mind? If something as real as linguistic information has existence independent of matter and energy, from causal considerations it is not unreasonable to suspect an entity capable of originating linguistic information also is ultimately non-material in its essential nature.

An immediate conclusion of these observations concerning linguistic information is that materialism, which has long been the dominant philosophical perspective in scientific circles, with its foundational presupposition that there is no non-material reality, is simply and plainly false. It is amazing that its falsification is so trivial.

The implications are immediate for the issue of evolution. The evolutionary assumption that the exceedingly complex linguistic structures which comprise the construction blueprints and operating manuals for all the complicated chemical nanomachinery and sophisticated feedback control mechanisms in even the simplest living organism simply must have a materialistic explanation is fundamentally wrong. But how then does one account for symbolic language as the crucial ingredient from which all living organisms develop and function and manifest such amazing capabilities? The answer should be obvious -- an intelligent Creator is unmistakably required.

But what about macroevolution? Could physical processes in the realm of matter and energy at least modify an existing genetic language structure to yield another with some truly decel capability as the evolutionists so desperately want to believe?

On this question Prof. Murray Eden, a specialist in information theory and formal languages at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed out several years ago that random perturbations of formal language structures simply do not accomplish such magical feats [7]. He said, "No currently existing formal language can tolerate random changes in the symbol sequence which expresses its sentences. Meaning is almost invariably destroyed. Any changes must be syntactically lawful ones. I would conjecture that what one might call 'genetic grammaticality' has a deterministic explanation and does not owe its stability to selection pressure acting on random variation."

In a word, then, the answer is no. Random changes in the letters of the genetic alphabet have no more ability to produce useful new protein structures than could the generation of random strings of amino acids discussed in the earlier section. This is the glaring and fatal deficiency in any materialist mechanism for macroevolution. Life depends on complex non-material language structures for its detailed specification. Material processes are utterly impotent to create such structures or to modify them to specify some decel function. If the task of creating the roughly 1000 genes needed to specify the cellular machinery in a bacterium is unthinkable within a materialist framework, consider how much more unthinkable for the materialist is the task of obtaining the roughly 100,000 genes required to specify a mammal!

Despite all the millions of pages of evolutionist publications -- from journal articles to textbooks to popular magazine stories -- which assume and imply material processes are entirely adequate to accomplish macroevolutionary miracles, there is in reality no rational basis for such belief. It is utter fantasy. Coded language structures are non-material in nature and absolutely require a non-material explanation.

But What About the Geological/Fossil Record?

Just as there has been glaring scientific fraud in things biological for the past century, there has been a similar fraud in things geological. The error, in a word, is uniformitarianism. This outlook assumes and asserts the earth's past can be correctly understood purely in terms of present day processes acting at more or less present day rates. Just as materialist biologists have erroneously assumed material processes can give rise to life in all its diversity, materialist geologists have assumed the present can fully account for the earth's past. In so doing, they have been forced to ignore and suppress abundant contrary evidence that the planet has suffered major catastrophe on a global scale.

Only in the past two decades has the silence concerning global catastrophism in the geological record begun to be broken. Only in the last 10-15 years has the reality of global mass extinction events in the record become widely known outside the paleontology community. Only in about the last 10 years have there been efforts to account for such global extinction in terms of high energy phenomena such as asteroid impacts. But the huge horizontal extent of Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary formations and their internal evidence of high energy transport represents stunning testimony for global catastrophic processes far beyond anything yet considered in the geological literature. Field evidence indicates catastrophic processes were responsible for most if not all of this portion of the geological record. The proposition that present day geological processes are representative of those which produced the Paleozoic and Mesozoic formations is utter folly.

What is the alternative to this uniformitarian perspective? It is that a catastrophe, driven by processes in the earth's interior, progressively but quickly resurfaced the planet. An event of this type has recently been documented to have occurred on the earth's sister planet Venus [8]. This startling conclusion is based on high resolution mapping performed by the Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990's which revealed the vast majority of craters on Venus today to be in pristine condition and only 2.5% embayed by lava, while an episode of intense volcanism prior to the formation of the present craters has erased all earlier ones from the face of the planet. Since this resurfacing volcanic and tectonic activity has been minimal.

There is pervasive evidence for a similar catastrophe on our planet, driven by runaway subduction of the pre-catastrophe ocean floor into the earth's interior [9]. That such a process is theoretically possible has been at least acknowledged in the geophysics literature for almost 30 years [10]. A major consequence of this sort of event is progressive flooding of the continents and rapid mass extinction of all but a few percent of the species of life. The destruction of ecological habitats began with marine environments and progressively enveloped the terrestrial environments as well.

Evidence for such intense global catastrophism is apparent throughout the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and much of the Cenozoic portions of the geological record. Most biologists are aware of the abrupt appearance of most of the animal phyla in the lower Cambrian rocks. But most are unaware that the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary also represents a nearly global stratigraphic unconformity marked by intense catastrophism. In the Grand Canyon, as one example, the Tapeats Sandstone immediately above this boundary contains hydraulically transported boulders tens of feet in diameter [11].

That the catastrophe was global in extent is clear from the extreme horizontal extent and continuity of the continental sedimentary deposits. That there was a single large catastrophe and not many smaller ones with long gaps in between is implied by the lack of erosional channels, soil horizons, and dissolution structures at the interfaces between successive strata. The excellent exposures of the Paleozoic record in the Grand Canyon provide superb examples of the this vertical continuity with little or no physical evidence of time gaps between strata. Especially significant in this regard are the contacts between the Kaibab and Toroweap Formations, the Coconino and Hermit Formations, the Hermit and Esplanade Formations, and the Supai and Redwall Formations [12].

The ubiquitous presence of crossbeds in sandstones, and even limestones, in Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and even Cenozoic rocks is strong testimony for high energy water transport of these sediments. Studies of sandstones exposed in the Grand Canyon reveal crossbeds produced by high velocity water currents that generated sand waves tens of meters in height [13]. The crossbedded Coconino sandstone exposed in the Grand Canyon continues across Arizona and New Mexico into Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas. It covers more than 200,000 square miles and has an estimated volume of 10,000 cubic miles. The crossbeds dip to the south and indicate that the sand came from the north. When one looks for a possible source for this sand to the north, none is readily apparent. A very distant source seems to be required.

The scale of the water catastrophe implied by such formations boggles the mind. Yet numerical calculation demonstrate that when significant areas of the continental surface are flooded, strong water currents with velocities of tens of meters per second spontaneously arise [14]. Such currents are analogous to planetary waves in the atmosphere and are driven by the earth's rotation.

This sort of dramatic global scale catastrophism documented in the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and much of the Cenozoic sediments implies a distinctively different interpretation of the associated fossil record. Instead of representing an evolutionary sequence, the record reveals a successive destruction of ecological habitat in a global tectonic and hydrologic catastrophe. This understanding readily explains why Darwinian intermediate types are systematically absent from the geological record -- the fossil record documents a brief and intense global destruction of life and not a long evolutionary history! The types of plants and animals preserved as fossils were the forms of life that existed on the earth prior to the catastrophe. The long span of time and the intermediate forms of life that the evolutionist imagines in his mind are simply illusions. And the strong observational evidence for this catastrophe absolutely demands a radically revised time scale relative to that assumed by evolutionists.

But How Is Geological Time To Be Reckoned?

With the discovery of radioactivity about a century ago, uniformitarian scientists have assumed they have a reliable and quantitative means for measuring absolute time on scales of billions of years. This is because a number of unstable isotopes exist with half-lives in the billions of year range. Confidence in these methods has been very high for several reasons. The nuclear energy levels involved in radioactive decay are so much greater than the electronic energy levels associated with ordinary temperature, pressure, and chemistry that variations in the latter can have negligible effects on the former.

Furthermore, it has been assumed that the laws of nature are time invariant and that the decay rates we measure today have been constant since the beginning of the cosmos -- a view, of course, dictated by materialist and uniformitarian belief. The confidence in radiometric methods among materialist scientists has been so absolute that all other methods for estimating the age of geological materials and geological events have been relegated to an inferior status and deemed unreliable when they disagree with radiometric techniques.

Most people, therefore, including most scientists, are not aware of the systematic and glaring conflict between radiometric methods and non-radiometric methods for dating or constraining the age of geological events. Yet this conflict is so stark and so consistent that there is more than sufficient reason in my opinion to aggressively challenge the validity of radiometric methods.

One clear example of this conflict concerns the retention of helium produced by nuclear decay of uranium in small zircon crystals commonly found in granite. Uranium tends to selectively concentrate in zircons in a solidifying magma because the large spaces in the zircon crystal lattice more readily accommodate the large uranium ions. Uranium is unstable and eventually transforms through a chain of nuclear decay steps into lead. In the process, eight atoms of helium are produced for every initial atom of U-238. But helium is a very small atom and is also a noble gas with little tendency to react chemically with other species. Helium therefore tends to migrate readily through a crystal lattice.

The conflict for radiometric methods is that zircons in Precambrian granite display huge helium concentrations [15]. When the amounts of uranium, lead, and helium are determined experimentally, one finds amounts of lead and uranium consistent with more than a billion years of nuclear decay at presently measured rates. Amazingly, most of the radiogenic helium from this decay process is also still present within these crystals that are typically only a few micrometers across. However, based on experimentally measured helium diffusion rates, the zircon helium content implies a time span of only a few thousand years since the majority of the nuclear decay occurred.

So which physical process is more trustworthy -- the diffusion of a noble gas in a crystalline lattice or the radioactive decay of an unstable isotope? Both processes can be investigated today in great detail in the laboratory. Both the rate of helium diffusion in a given crystalline lattice and the rate decay of uranium to lead can be determined with high degrees of precision. But these two physical processes yield wildly disparate estimates for the age of the same granite rock. Where is the logical or procedural error? The most reasonable conclusion in my view is that it lies in the step of extrapolating as constant presently measured rates of nuclear decay into the remote past. If this is the error, then radiometric methods based on presently measured rates simply do not and cannot provide correct estimates for geologic age.

But just how strong is the case that radiometric methods are indeed so incorrect? There are dozens of physical processes which, like helium diffusion, yield age estimates orders of magnitude smaller than the radiometric techniques. Many of these are geological or geophysical in nature and are therefore subject to the question of whether presently observed rates can legitimately be extrapolated into the indefinite past.

However, even if we make that suspect assumption and consider the current rate of sodium increase in the oceans versus the present ocean sodium content, or the current rate of sediment accumulation into the ocean basins versus the current ocean sediment volume, or the current net rate of loss of continental rock (primarily by erosion) versus the current volume of continental crust or the present rate of uplift of the Himalayan mountains (accounting for erosion) versus their present height, we infer times estimates drastically at odds with the radiometric time scale [16]. These time estimates are further reduced dramatically if we do not make the uniformitarian assumption but account for the global catastrophism described earlier.

There are other processes which are not as easy to express in quantitative terms, such as the degradation of protein in a geological environment, that also point to a much shorter time scale for the geological record. It is now well established that unmineralized dinosaur bone still containing recognizable bone protein exists in many locations around the world [17]. From my own first hand experience with such material, it is inconceivable that bone containing such well preserved protein could possibly have survived for more than a few thousand years in the geological settings in which they are found.

I therefore believe the case is strong from a scientific standpoint to reject radiometric methods as a valid means for dating geological materials. What then can be used in their place? As I Christian, of course, I am persuaded the Bible is a reliable source of information. The Bible speaks of a worldwide cataclysm in the Genesis Flood which destroyed all air breathing life on the planet apart from the animals and humans God preserved alive in the Ark. The correspondence between the global catastrophe in the geological record and the Flood described in Genesis is much too obvious for me not to conclude that these events must be one and the same.

With this crucial linkage between the biblical record and the geological record, a straightforward reading of the earlier chapters of Genesis is a next logical step. The conclusion is that the creation of the cosmos, the earth, plants, animals, as well as man and woman by God took place just as it is described only a few thousand years ago with no need for qualification or apology.

But What About Light From Distant Stars?

An entirely legitimate question then is how we could possibly see stars millions and billions of light years away if the earth is so young. Part of the reason scientists like myself can have confidence that good science will vindicate a face-value understanding of the Bible is because we believe we have at least an outline of the correct answer to this important question [18].

This answer draws upon important clues from the Bible while applying standard general relativity. The result is a cosmological model that differs from the standard Big Bang models in two essential respects. First, it does not assume the so-called cosmological principle, and, second, it invokes inflation at a different point in cosmological history.

The cosmological principle is the assumption that the cosmos has no edge or boundary or center and, in a broad-brush sense, is the same in every place and in every direction. This assumption concerning the geometry of the cosmos has allowed cosmologists to obtain relatively simple solutions of Einstein's equations of general relativity. Such solutions form the basis of all Big Bang models. But there is growing observational evidence that this assumption is simply not true. A recent article in the journal Nature, for example, describes a fractal analysis of galaxy distribution to large distances in the cosmos that contradicts this crucial Big Bang assumption [19].

If instead the cosmos has a center, then its early history is radically different from that of all Big Bang models. Its beginning would be that of a massive black hole containing its entire mass. Such a mass distribution has a whopping gradient in gravitational potential which profoundly affects the local physics, including the speed of clocks. Clocks near the center would run much more slowly, or even be stopped, during the earliest portion of cosmic history [20]. Since the heavens on a large scale are isotropic from the vantage point of the earth, the earth must be near the center of such a cosmos. Light from the outer edge of such a cosmos reaches the center in a very brief time as measured by clocks in the vicinity of the earth.

In regard to the timing of cosmic inflation, this alternative cosmology has inflation after stars and galaxies form. It is noteworthy that within the past year two astrophysics groups studying high-redshift type Ia superdecae both conclude cosmic expansion is greater now than when these stars exploded. The article in the June 1998 issue of Physics Today describes these "astonishing" results which "have caused quite a stir" in the astrophysics community [21]. The story amazingly ascribes the cause to "some ethereal agency."

Indeed, the Bible repeatedly speaks of God stretching out the heavens: "...O LORD my God, You are very great, ... stretching out heaven as a curtain... (Ps. 104:1-2); "Thus says God the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out..." (Is. 42:5); "... I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself..." (Is. 44:24); "It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands, and I ordained all their host." (Is. 45:12).

As a Christian who is also a professional scientist, I exult in the reality that "in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth" (Ex. 20:11). May He forever be praised.

References:


[1] A collection of these letters is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.nnm.com/lacf.

[2] C. W. Allen, Astrophysical Quantities, 3rd Ed., University of London, Athlone Press, p. 293, 1973; M. Fukugita, C. J. Hogan, and P. J. E. Peebles, "The Cosmic Baryon Budget," Astrophys. J., 503, 518-530, 1998.

[3] H. P. Yockey, "A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 67, 377-398, 1978; Information Theory and Molecular Biology, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

[4] F. Hoyle and N. C. Wickramasinghe, Evolution From Space, J. M. Dent, London, 1981.

[5] A. Einstein, "Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge", in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, P. A. Schilpp, ed., Tudor Publishing, NY, p. 290, 1944.

[6] J. W. Oller, Jr., Language and Experience: Classic Pragmatism, University Press of America, p. 25, 1989.

[7] M. Eden, "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, P. S. Moorhead and M. M. Kaplan, eds., Wistar Institute Press, Philadelphia, p. 11, 1967.

[8] R. G. Strom, G. G. Schaber, and D. D. Dawson, The Global Resurfacing of Venus, Journal of Geophysical Research, 99, 10899-10926, 1994.

[9] S. A. Austin, J. R. Baumgardner, D. R. Humphreys, A. A. Snelling, L. Vardiman, and K. P. Wise, "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History," pp. 609-621; J. R. Baumgardner "Computer Modeling of the Large-Scale Tectonics Associated with the Genesis Flood," pp. 49-62; "Runaway Subduction as the Driving Mechanism for the Genesis Flood," pp. 63-75, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, Technical Symposium Sessions, R. E. Walsh, ed., Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, 1994.

[10] O. L. Anderson and P. C. Perkins, "Runaway Temperatures in the Asthenosphere Resulting from Viscous Heating, Journal of Geophysical Research, 79, 2136-2138, 1974.

[11] S. A. Austin, "Interpreting Strata of Grand Canyon," in Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, S. A. Austin, ed., Institute for Creation Research, Santee, CA, 46-47, 1994.

[12] Ibid., pp. 42-51.

[13] Ibid., pp. 32-36.

[14] J. R. Baumgardner and D. W. Barnette, "Patterns of Ocean Circulation over the Continents During Noah's Flood," Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, Technical Symposium Sessions, R. E. Walsh, ed., Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, 77-86, 1994.

[15] R. V. Gentry, G. L. Glish, and E. H. McBay, "Differential Helium Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment, Geophysical Research Letters, 9, 1129-1130, 1982.

[16] S. A. Austin and D. R. Humphreys, "The Sea's Missing Salt: A Dilemma for Evolutionists," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. II, pp. 17-33, R. E. Walsh and C. L. Brooks, eds., Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, 1990.

[17] G. Muyzer, P. Sandberg, M. H. J. Knapen, C. Vermeer, M. Collins, and P. Westbroek, "Preservation of the Bone Protein Osteocalcin in Dinosaurs," Geology, 20, 871-874, 1992.

[18] D. R. Humphreys, Starlight and Time, Master Books, Colorado Springs, 1994.

[19] P. Coles, "An Unprincipled Universe?," Nature, 391, 120-121, 1998.

[20] D. R. Humphreys, "New Vistas of Space-Time Rebut the Critics," Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, 12, 195-212, 1998.

[21] B. Schwarzschild, "Very Distant Superdecae Suggest that the Cosmic Expansion is Speeding Up," Physics Today, 51, 17-19, 1998.

Well if your going to talk about the Pilgrims, I guess I can contribute with this article I particularly like - long but a very good read, at least I think!

Separation of Church and State
by
Edwin Kagin
Lecture given at Marshall University
October 22, 1996
I am a secular humanist. I got that way primarily by reading this book, the Holy Bible. This is the one put out by the Gideons. It's the 1611 edition known as the King James Version. Fundamentalists believe that this is the only authorized gospel, the only Word of God. It was written in 1611 under the auspices of King James the First of England, a homosexual, and is used as the authority for the fundamentalist church. My father was a Presbyterian minister and I was raised deeply into this book. I understand it: if you want to talk the Bible, we can talk the Bible. If you want to debate the Bible, we can debate the Bible.

I have also studied the Constitution of the United States of America, and the principles upon which the republic was founded. I understand the laws upon which this country was founded. One of the reasons that secular humanist alliances have sprung up on various college campuses recently is that there is a new and very dramatic movement in this country toward getting away from some very important things that America was founded on. There are people today who are trying to impose upon America, upon a free democracy, their ideas that America is a Christian nation. Not only that it is a Christian nation, but that it is their kind of Christian nation. And to that end, we are to have prayers in public schools, mandated by law. We are to teach creationism, not evolution. We are to go backwards to the days of the theocracy.

Some years before the authoring of the American Constitution, there were witch trials in Salem Massachusetts. By the way, there were no witches burned in America -- that's a myth. Witches were hanged -- they hanged quite a few too, several dozen. And primary among the evidence was what was known as spectral evidence. That's where someone would come and say an angel or a demon appeared to me and told me Mary So-and-So is having an affair with the Devil. And based upon this evidence, they were hanged. So ultimately, the governor of Massachusetts prohibited that kind of evidence in a trial.

Prior to the development of our Constitution, many states, including Virginia and Connecticut and other states, had language in their constitutions saying that the governments of those states were based upon Christian principles. Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, if you didn't go to the right church, and the right church was a Congregationalist church, they'd find you and come and talk to you. You could be accused and convicted of a crime called Sabbath-breaking. If you did it again, you could go to jail. You'd be put in the public stocks. There were many people who didn't want to attend a Congregationalist church -- there were some Catholics, there were some Baptists, there were some Anabaptists. There were all sorts of different religions which had different views.

We get the impression in history, especially around Thanksgiving time, that the Puritans were a bunch of righteous people who came to America seeking religious freedom. In point of fact, the Puritans came from England after their regime was overthrown in what was known as the Restoration. They chopped off the head of their king, Charles the First. Then a very strict religious theocracy under Oliver Cromwell was set up in England. They closed the theaters. The Puritans were in complete control. It was said that a Puritan was someone who suspected somewhere, somehow, there might be someone who was still happy. So a very rigid system of belief was imposed upon the people. After a while, the English got tired of it, and they brought back Charles the First's son Charles the Second from France. He opened the theaters, and things got happy again. The Puritans, not content with this, leave and sail on the Mayflower to the New World. While off the shores of America, they form what is know as the Mayflower Compact. You will hear fundamentalists say this was how our country was set up -- not so. This was the articles of faith of this one religious group. They didn't come here to escape religious persecution, they came here because they couldn't persecute everybody else anymore. And they have been trying to do it ever since. We are the heirs of the Puritans in the New World.

Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine accepted the prevailing belief of that time: a philosophical doctrine know as Deism. This was not Christian: it said that there was a God, but that this God had made the world and then gone on to other things -- sort of forgot about it. He had put things into motion and then went on to other places in the universe. Thomas Jefferson was very well aware that many of the state constitutions said that they were set up on the basis of "Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" and he didn't want anything to do with it. So after much debate, the Constitution of the United States was set up as a totally godless document. The word God is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States. You can win bets on this point. These people who say that America is a religious nation are simply wrong. Sometimes they will quote to you in support of their argument the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In the first place, the Declaration of Independence forms no part of the law of the United States. It was a document that was used to severe ties with England, and when Thomas Jefferson is speaking of the "Creator" and of "Nature" and "Nature's God," he is not talking in the same sense as Jerry Falwell or the religious right when they talk about America being a Christian nation.

In the Constitution of the United States, the founders wanted to be very clear that no particular religion was going to be given precedence over any other. If we're going to have prayer in the public school, who's prayer is it going to be? Catholic prayer, Jewish prayer, Branch Davidian, perhaps Mormon, Christian Science, Native American? Who's prayer will we have? I got written up by a Seventh Day Adventist a while back. I had sued all of the judges in Northern Kentucky. They had entered an ordinance saying that anyone in a divorce who had children had to attend Catholic social services. Liberty Magazine of the Seventh Day Adventists sent a fellow who had a doctorate in theology degree to interview me. He was Christian, but I knew where he was coming from, and he knew where I was coming from. We got along just fine. I said to him, "I know why you want to do this. You know that if an official religion is ever set up in the United States, it ain't gonna be Seventh Day Adventism." And he said that he did know that.

So what religion will be our official religions? Here's what the Constitution says: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." No religious test at all: not whether you believe in God, much less whether you believe in a specific religion -- no religious test at all. For you scholars, that is Article 6, Section 3. Once the Constitution was written, various states refused to ratify it until a certain Bill of Rights was added. Ten Amendments to the Constitution -- not the Ten Commandments -- ten Amendments. The very first amendment in the Bill of Rights -- the same Bill of Rights that the thirteen colonies insisted be there before they would sign -- reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. " Those are the first words of the Bill of Rights. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Well, the fundamentalists say, "You're prohibiting the free exercise of religion by not letting us teach creationism and having prayers in the public schools." Ridiculous. You can practice all the religion you want in your homes, in your churches, in your synagogues, any place you want.

In fact, if you want to really get biblical on them, Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount specifically forbad public prayer. Matthew chapter 6, verse 6: "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." He then goes on in the Sermon on the Mount to tell what will happen to those who disobey: "And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." [Matthew 7:26-27] So maybe the problems of America are not caused by lack of public prayer, but because of it.

Consider the Netherlands, which is perhaps the most secular nation on earth. In the Netherlands, birth control is freely given, homosexuality is tolerated, and many drugs are legal. You can get a marijuana cigarette after dinner. Pornography is legal. Euthanasia for people who are in intractable pain is permitted. And guess what? They have less of a crime rate, they have less teenage pregnancy, they have less drug abuse, and less abortion than the most religious nation on earth, the United States of America. There may be a lesson to be learned here. America is by far the most religious nation on the face of the earth. More people are professing Christians here than any place else in the world. And yet a country like the Netherlands, where this is not true, does not have the kind of problems we have, because it is a rational society, where morality is based on the consequences of behavior. Moral choices have consequences. If you drive drunk, you are liable to get killed. You behave morally because of reason , not because some book told you to.

To the Eastern mind, Christianity is an incredible religion, because it calls on something outside of ourselves to tell us what to do. Christianity claims that without God we are nothing, that we must look to some authority to tell us what to do, rather than be able to figure it out by moral choice. Hitler remained a loyal Catholic for his entire life. He was never excommunicated. Hitler made abortion illegal -- it was a crime in Germany. Think about it. How much true good are the Mother Teresas of the world doing by going and helping these starving children that their philosophy helped to produce? Is this moral, or would it be more moral to have birth control universally available?

In the course of what I call the American Religious Civil War, the ARCW, the fundamentalists have declared war on reason and are trying to convince people in universities, on the radio, through tapes, TV, and other media, that America is a Christian nation set up on Christian principles. I wish to show you how to refute this overwhelmingly. You may have heard of Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. Oddly enough, the Baptists of a few hundred years ago were very much in favor of separation of church and state, because they were being persecuted by the Anabaptists. There were bloody wars fought over how you got baptized -- whether you got sprinkled on your head as a child, or whether you got dunked as an adult in a pool of water. And people died over this nonsense. The Danbury Baptists wrote to Thomas Jefferson to see what the First Amendment really meant. Thomas Jefferson spent a lot of time on his response, and even cleared it with the Secretary of State. Here is what he said: " I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." Here is church, here is state, and there is a Constitutional wall between them and that is the principle of our democracy.

To give you an example of how some people can attack truth, we have in the fundamentalist camp a fellow by the name of David Barton. In an article from the Freedom Writer, "The Religous Right's Master of Myth and Misinformation," we learn that Barton is consciously and deliberately changing history in basic American documents. He has added a line to Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists that I just read to you. According to Barton, Jefferson went on to add that the wall was meant to be one-directional, protecting the church from the state, but not the other way around. And furthermore, it was intended to keep Christian principles in government. That's what David Barton is saying, and it is a damned lie! It is a knowing lie. He knows it's not true, because he can look at the text and see what it says. It is not an accident, it is a "damn 'cussed lie." Telling lies for God! "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer." [Psalms 19:14] He is damned by his own rules!

Let me give you just a few other examples of the principle of separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson also said, "I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another." The only way any religion can be free is if they are all free, and if there is no state religion. Let's suppose you have some little religious movement that nobody likes Do you want to go to jail for it? Or do you want to have the right to free exercise? You can go build a church any place you want to. Nobody's going to stop you. But you can't come to Marshall University, and have a Christian Center on campus, because that's illegal. That's preferring one religion over another. I have been to see your Christian chapel, and I understand it's paid for by private funds and is on private property. But they've got a sign that looks deceptively like a Marshall University sign, it doesn't have the "M.U." on it, but it looks just like it apart from that. Then further I note on the campus map that is paid for by taxpayer's dollars that the Christian Center is shown there. And I have also seen the Student Handbook where the Christian Center is listed as one of the services provided by Marshall University. That's the establishment of religion. That's preferring religion over nonreligion.

The fundamentalists want to give the impression that those who disagree with them are bad people, that they are somehow immoral, that they are responsible for all the sins of the world. I believe in killing the hummingbird with a cannon on this one: we are talking about the survival of our freedoms, we are talking about democracy. Thomas Jefferson said this: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." Who's foot should we measure all shoes by? What religion shall be our official religion? Who here can define Christianity? If it was so clear and easy to define, then why are there so many sects, why so many different creeds? Even within the denominations, Baptists, Presbyterians splintering off. Do we believe that the Eucharist actually turns into the body and blood of Christ, as the Catholics say, or is it merely symbolic as the Protestants claim? How do we know? And if there is a God, why is it not perfectly obvious to everyone? Why are there some people who are rational, who otherwise seem to lead fairly decent and moral lives who say, "No, I don't see any evidence for it." And further, would a just God condemn creatures he made with the faculties of reason who use this power of reason to say "I don't see the evidence"? Why doesn't the Blessed Virgin Mary appear simultaneously on all TV and radio stations in the languages of all the people announcing the truths of God? Why not a message on the moon, clearly visible to all? Something that nobody could doubt. Why have visions only appeared to schizophrenic children? Why so much misinterpretation about something so important as this?

Again, Thomas Jefferson says, "I will never by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." "The clergy, by getting themselves established by law, and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man." James Madison spoke similarly, in a 1774 letter to William Bradford: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize [sic], every expanded prospect." Our ancestors spoke out a lot more than we are. Why are we so afraid of these abysmal little tyrannical minds who are trying to commit treason against the government of the United States?! Why are we letting them get away with it? "The religion, then, of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as days may dictate. This right is in its nature an inalienable right."

On June 10, 1797, the President of the United States John Adams signed a treaty with the nation of Tripoli, a Muslim country. In the order of hierarchy of laws, the Constitution of the United States is at the top, underneath that are treaties between sovereign governments, then the various federal laws and the laws of the states. Under the Constitution, treaties (except maybe some with the Indians) have the highest force of law in our country. The treaty with Tripoli, signed by the President, and unanimously ratified by the United States Senate, reads, "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." I didn't make this up. This was widely circulated in the newspapers of the time, it was widely debated. The Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights were condemned by fundamentalists ministers all over the country as being godless documents. The people knew what these documents meant. Once again, we are witnessing this treasonous, un-American attitude arising, trying to claim that what the founding fathers said, what the Constitution said, and what the treaties between sovereign countries said, don't mean that. We're having people like this Barton fellow, who is trying to add lines to Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists to try to make it say what he wants it to say, and not what it says. Love it or leave. If you don't like the American system, go set up your theocracy on an island, get out of town. But don't mess with American freedom.

There is a wonderful little pamphlet, called a "nontract," put out by the Freedom From Religion Foundation entitled "Is America a Christian Nation?" Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation was a fundamentalist minister. He converted a lot of people. And finally he started thinking, and he became an atheist. He wrote a book called Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist . He tells why he came to this conclusion, and why he left the fold. He found that there was no proof for the claims of Christianity, and that the people who were claiming to be religious were doing bad things.

Case in point: in Northern Kentucky right now, there is a state park called Big Bone Lick State Park. It is a park devoted to archaeological finds. An Australian fundamentalist group called "Answers in Genesis" has come to Northern Kentucky and is trying to establish a creationist theme park near Big Bone Lick to teach children and others that evolution is wrong and that creation science is right. If you ever wanted an example of an oxymoron, "Creation Science" is it. What they are trying to say is that evolution is a religious belief system of the secular humanists, and that creationism is a true science. They also believe that this humanistic belief in evolution is responsible for all the bad things that are happening in the world. They see it as a war. Here's one of their cartoons: We have two fortresses. Over here we have evolution at the base of this one, and there are flags that say "Humanism, divorce, racism, euthanasia, homosexuality." All these things are caused by belief in evolution. And over here we have creation that has a flag of Christianity, blowing holes into the towers of evolution. I didn't invent the idea of the American Religious Civil War. They're the ones who declared the war on reason.

Let me give you some examples of how the religious right is trying to take over. A handout from the "Genesis Theme Park" in Northern Kentucky says, " Virtually science museums, zoos, and other similar attractions indoctrinate guests with evolutionary and antibiblical propaganda." Notice how they juxtapose neatly those concepts. That evolution is necessarily antibiblical -- you either believe one or the other. A classic logical fallacy is called the "either/or" fallacy. "It must be the Bible, or it must be evolution." The handout continues: "A major family park and learning center proclaiming the glories of God's creation and the authority of His Word is desperately needed to counter the anti-God philosophy so prevalent in today's world." They have declared war against reason.

Here is a wonderful little comic book put out by Mother Jones. It's called "Holy War: The religious right's secret campaign to take over my daughter's public school." All over the country, stealth candidates are arising. That sounds paranoid, but these are real enemies. They are getting into the school boards, and they want to teach creationism. Right now in one of our counties in Kentucky, a school superintendent has glued pages of the science textbooks together which talk about the Big Bang theory, because that's wrong and he doesn't want anybody to learn it. They are trying to go back to the time before Copernicus. If we are really going to follow the truths of Genesis and the Bible, we must believe the earth is flat. You ought to read the Bible and see if you really can accept it as true. If you read it literally, the earth is flat. It speaks of the four corners of the earth, the pillars of the earth. Jesus was taken by Satan to a high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the earth. You can't do that on a round earth. Clearly the people who wrote the Bible, like other people of the time, thought the earth was flat. There is even a religious organization called the "Flat Earth Society" that advocates that belief. They are dedicated to the biblical proposition that the earth is in fact flat.

Have you ever heard of "family friendly libraries"? That's another thing the fundamentalist are trying to do. They think that only they can define a family. They've got a program called "Focus on the Family." There's a neat bumper sticker that says "Focus on your own damn family. Leave my family alone." The "family friendly" libraries are trying to censor books. Here's a wonderful little volume called the "X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible." It has enough gleaned from the Holy Word to make it banned in any fundamentalist library. That's why you ought to read the Bible. There is a wonderful story about Lot, -- the one who was saved from Sodom. His two daughters get him drunk and seduce him in order to get pregnant. These terrible stories just go on and on.

This is the field manual of the Free Militia. This book will scare the wits out of you. You know about the militia movements? These are people who believe that America was founded as a Christian nation, and that it is their duty by force of arms if need be to preserve that. Anybody who disagrees with them is an enemy of God. Onward Christian soldiers. This is their field manual, telling what kind of guns to get, how to organize teams of 8 people to attack the homes of nonbelievers. It is extremely scary.

As we get closer and closer to the year 2000, more and more of this nonsense is going to come up. There is right now a millennialist fever in the United States. There are many people who believe that Jesus will be returning at the millennium. I will note that many people thought that Jesus would return in the year 1000 as well. He didn't. In the first place, and this may come as a shock to you, the year 2000 is not the first year of the millennium. The year 2000 is the last year of this millennium. The first year of the next millennium is 2001, and that's why Arthur C. Clarke name his book "2001." Arthur C. Clarke, by the way, is an atheist. Our calendar dating the birth of Jesus is wrong. This is 1996 AD, which means "Anno Domini," or, "in the year of our Lord." It is supposed to be 1996 years after the birth of Jesus. But it really isn't, because if we take the Bible literally, we know that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. We know from very accurate and numerous historic sources that Herod the Great died in the year 4 BC. So if Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, he would have been born at least as early as 4 BC. So if that's the case, then the millennium has come and gone, and nothing happened. So don't worry about the millennium.

We have discussed prayer in the public schools, the creationist movement, and the attack on the libraries. My voice is getting a little stale, and I'm ready to answer some questions...



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



Edwin F. Kagin
Attorney at Law
P.O. Box 48
Union, KY 41091
Phone: (859) 384-7000
Fax: (859) 384-7324
Email: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Web: www.EdwinKagin.com

Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Edwin F. Kagin

Last updated: 25 January 2005

More SJG (I hope you don't think I have no opinions of my own. But since I've said this previously, it seems 2 me that quoting Gould's writing on the same point would be useful - and he WAS perhaps one of the most prolific and famous evolutionists the world has seen since Darwin's time):

“In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each. Their main pseudoargument held that Genesis literalism is not religion at all, but really an alternative form of science not acknowledged by professional biologists too hidebound and dogmatic to appreciate the cutting edge of their own discipline. When we successfully pointed out that ‘creation science’—as an untestable set of dogmatic proposals—could not qualify as science by any standard definition, they turned around and shamelessly argued the other side. […] (They actually pulled off the neater trick of holding both positions simultaneously.) Now they argued that, yes indeed, creation science is religion, but evolution is equally religious. Thus, they claimed, creation science and evolution science are symmetrical—that is, equally religious. Creation science isn't science because it rests upon the untestable fashioning of life ex nihilo by God. Evolution science isn't science because it tries, as its major aim, to resolve the unresolvable and ultimate origin of life. But we do no such thing. We understand Hutton's wisdom—‘he has nowhere treated of the first origin …of any substance… but only of the transformations which bodies have undergone…’”

— "Justice Scalia's Misunderstanding," Bully for Brontosaurus, New York: W. W. Norton, 1991, pp. 455-456.


One thing that I think is going on here, that WAT described beautifully and that is evident in all of us trying so hard 2 get our own point across 2 the other - at least unders2d if not agreed 2 - is that, not only are we talking about different subjects and methodologies for seeking the truth about our subjects, we THINK differently.

Scientists, even not-so-good ones know that they must keep in mind that their favorite idea could at any time be proven 2 be incorrect (though the chances of that happening after a considerable period of time of surviving rigorous tests by their peers diminishes progressively - as has happened with evolution theory, but not yet with the Big Bang theory). If we become "married" 2 a particular pet idea and it later is falsified, we could wind up feeling devastated. The right way 2 approach science is with a perpe2ally open mind. When my ideas are proven wrong (and they are, including recentlyl, though hopefully not 2 frequently!) I refine them or try 2 address other problems within my discipline that are pressing or fascinate me in some way.

Success or failure of a hypothesis is cut and dry. When my scientific proposals fail, I try something else (or go have my head examined if I've taken it personally). Religious beliefs are very, very personal. Hearing that they're "untestable" might sound like an affront, because of the personal na2re of spiri2al matters. When I make a proposal 2 my like-minded spiri2al friends about a spiri2al matter, I guess I go in2 the discussion knowing that ultimately, the test of my ideas is how successful I am at implementing them in my behavior and what kind of feedback I get. I don't get defensive (I hope) when someone tells me that something I've thought about is "wrong" (though I haven't been told that, it's more like "here, try this instead, it might be more effective"). I don't say "well, my god or my book says it's so, so there!"

That might not have worked as well as I intended it 2. But hopefully you get my point a bit.

-ol' 2long

A few questions and answers to Gould and such......
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Question: "Since creationism is based on the Genesis creation story, why should it be included in public education?"

Answer: Scientific creationism is not based on Genesis or any other religious teaching. One can present the scientific evidences for creation (and against evolution) without referring at all to the Bible or to any type of religion.

Entire books have been written on scientific creationism without a single quotation from the Bible and without basing any argument on Biblical authority or doctrine. Such arguments deal with genetics, paleontology, geology, thermodynamics, and other sciences with theology or religion. Indeed, the scientific case for creation is based on our knowledge of DNA, mutations, fossils, and other scientific terms and concepts which do not even appear in the Bible. Furthermore, creationist scientists many who were formerly evolutionists made a thorough study of the scientific evidences related to origins and are firmly convinced (not by religious faith but by the scientific evidences) that the scientific data explicitly support the Creation Model and contradict the Evolution Model.
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Question: "But isn't this so-called scientific creationism simply a backdoor method of getting Biblical creationism introduced?"

Answer: We could just as easily ask whether teaching evolution is a backdoor method of introducing atheism. Scientific creationism and Biblical creationism can, in fact, be taught quite independently of each other. We ourselves are opposed to the teaching of Biblical creationism in public schools. Teachers of biblical creationism should have a good knowledge of the Bible and a firm commitment to its authority, and these qualifications cannot be imposed on public school teachers. Biblical creationism, as well as other sectarian views of creation, should be taught in churches (as well as synagogues and mosques) but only scientific creationism in public schools. Both can well be taught in religious schools.
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Question: "What is the difference between scientific creationism and Biblical creationism?"

Answer: The first is based solely on scientific evidence, from such sciences as those listed above; the second is based on Biblical teachings. The Genesis record includes the account of the six days of creation, the names of the first man and woman, the record of God's curse on the earth because of human sin, the story of Noah's ark, and other such events which could never be determined scientifically. On the other hand, scientific creationism deals with such physical entities as fossils, whereas the Bible never refers to fossils at all. It is quite possible for scientific creationism to be discussed and evaluated without any reference whatever to Biblical creationism.
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Question: "But isn't the very fact that creationism requires a Creator proof that it is religious, rather than scientific?"

Answer: It must be remembered that there are only two basic models of origins, evolution and creation. Either all things have developed by continuing naturalistic processes, or they have not; there is no other alternative. Each model is essentially a complete world view, a philosophy of life and meaning, of origins and destiny. Neither can be either confirmed or falsified by the scientific method, since neither can be tested or observed experimentally, and therefore either one must be accepted on faith! Nevertheless, each is also a scientific model, since each seeks to explain within its framework all the real data of science and history. Creationism is at least as non-religious as evolutionism, and creationists are sure that the Creation Model fits the facts of true science better than the Evolution Model. It is true that creationism is a theistic model, but it is also true that evolutionism is an atheistic model (since it purports to explain everything without a creator). If theism is a religious faith, then so is atheism, since these are two fully comparable systems, each the opposite of the other.
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I tried to stay away.

I really did.

But the argument that the earth is only a few thousand years old using the Biblical account of the great flood as fact coupled with questions of the accuracy of radioactive decay is about the most ludicrous argument I personally have ever seen.

MM, are you sure this wasn't supposed to be funny? - that's it isn't satire on the creationists themselves?
This author, footnote 16, a creationist, goes on to conclude, in your post, that the rates of decay are not constant and this coupled with the factual account of Noah's flood indicate that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

This takes the cake. This is so absurd that ANY further reliance on your sources are laughable.

I've never mentioned this before on this forum, but I am a professional nuclear engineer. I have loads of education, training, and first hand knowledge of a lot of things nuclear, so you're treading on my turf.

I've cautioned you about making absolute statements, but I'm extrtemely comfortable now making a rare one of my own.

No way, no how, absolutely bunk, that the rates of decay of uranium 238 varies over time - or any other isotope for that matter. Period. Period. Period. End of story, no debate, no rebuttal, complete and total bunk.

If this were so, your lights would now go out - because the nuclear reactors generating 20% of this country's electricity could not contiune to function.

Are your lights still on?

So that's a HUGE "if" in the quote above, and because it is absolutely wrong, any further reliance on that absurd "if" is also WAY out to lunch.

Absolutely amazing.

Please tell me you don't believe this crap??

WAT

"Question: "But isn't this so-called scientific creationism simply a backdoor method of getting Biblical creationism introduced?"

Answer: We could just as easily ask whether teaching evolution is a backdoor method of introducing atheism."

Good point, and there'd be something here 2 worry about, perhaps, if the science community was an atheist organization, which it isn't (so you don't have 2 worry). Evolution is being taught in science classes at schools, and your 2uestion pertains 2 whether creationism should also be taught in science classes at schools. For this 2 be an equatable argument, we should seriously consider whether evolution should be taught in church or, if science is the malevolent atheistic entity you imply, whether atheism should be taught in church. I think that would be prepostrous, just as I think teaching creationism in school is prepostrous.

"Scientific creationism and Biblical creationism can, in fact, be taught quite independently of each other."

As they currently are (most of the time), and should continue 2 be.

"but only scientific creationism in public schools. Both can well be taught in religious schools."

You lost me there. "creation" isn't a science discipline, and so it should not be taught in public schools, unless testable hypotheses can be formulated, tested, verified or falsified, and revised as this progresses.

"Question: "What is the difference between scientific creationism and Biblical creationism?"

Answer: The first is based solely on scientific evidence, from such sciences as those listed above;"

There is no scientific evidence for creation.

"the second is based on Biblical teachings."

Do you think the Bible should be peer-reviewed, and revised if it's found 2 be unscientific or... ...dare I say, false?

"The Genesis record includes the account of the six days of creation, the names of the first man and woman, the record of God's curse on the earth because of human sin, the story of Noah's ark, and other such events which could never be determined scientifically."

Much of the early Bible stories include mythology inherited from earlier cul2res (see Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth" if you find this statement offensive - it is most certainly not intended 2 be). The biblical Noah is the same character as the earlier Babylonian Gilgamesh, for example - flood, ark and all (but multiple gods). Myths are like parables - they're metaphorical stories 2 make fundamental points. The characters and events may or may not be real, it's the point that matters.

"On the other hand, scientific creationism deals with such physical entities as fossils, whereas the Bible never refers to fossils at all. It is quite possible for scientific creationism to be discussed and evaluated without any reference whatever to Biblical creationism."

I once saw a seminar by Gish (at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, CA, in the late 70's) where he used the fossil record 2 support his claims of evidence of multiple Noah-like floods - his particular example being that the dinosaurs were wiped out by such a flood. I was familiar with the example he used, a herd of Iguanodons that had died and were all buried at the same time. There were dozens, if not hundreds of individuals in this fossil bed. But it had long been determined that these animals fell of a cliff, perhaps in a stampede - far from a global catastrophe, but certainly catastrophic for that herd. That was just one example of a number of similar examples he made that I was familiar with as a geologist (one other pertained 2 the dinosaur tracks in Glen Rose, Texas). I found Gish 2 be nothing less than a manipulative liar, and I was so disappointed in Calvary Chapel for hosting such dangerous nonsense that I never went back (I had been attending with my W, before we were M'd, and she attended church with me - I was a Christian Scientist at that time).

"Question: "But isn't the very fact that creationism requires a Creator proof that it is religious, rather than scientific?"

Answer: It must be remembered that there are only two basic models of origins, evolution and creation."

You missed Gould's point above. Evolution addresses the observed changes in species, not the origin of life. THAT is another fascinating endeavor, though, that I am involved with periferally. It is a very *imma2re* science at this point in time, and is likely 2 go through many revolutions over the years 2 come.

"Either all things have developed by continuing naturalistic processes, or they have not; there is no other alternative. Each model is essentially a complete world view, a philosophy of life and meaning, of origins and destiny. Neither can be either confirmed or falsified by the scientific method, since neither can be tested or observed experimentally, and therefore either one must be accepted on faith!"

There are certainly aspects of this argument you've made that I would agree are matters of faith. But for evolutionary models? Not true. I can observe that the fossil record shows evolution of forms (toothed birds 2 toothless birds; horses with toes, then hooves; finger bones being used for flippers, arms, forelegs, wings in dolphins and ichthyosaurs, people, cattle, pterosaurs and bats, respectively). Science has tested hypotheses that have been proposed 2 explain these observations. Many have been tossed in the can and the proponents sent back 2 their desks and labs (and the field), but the pic2re has been developing, refining, and solidifying for over a 150 years now. But these examples hilight the point Gould made that evolution science does NOT address the origin of life, rather the observation that change has occurred over time.

"Nevertheless, each is also a scientific model, since each seeks to explain within its framework all the real data of science and history."

History is something of a different subject, particularly when you get in2 the sometimes gray realm of cul2re, human behavior, psychology. However, aspects of history, like biblical archaeology, are scientific endeavors.

"It is true that creationism is a theistic model,"

And thus it isn't a scientific model because it isn't falsifiable (that would be blasphemous).

"but it is also true that evolutionism is an atheistic model (since it purports to explain everything without a creator)."

This roundaboutish description is true, provided you don't suggest that atheism is a religion, AND you don't lump scientists in2 something like "organized atheism" or secular humanism as an entity with an agenda. There is no deliberate "stand" for atheism in science, rather the recognition that subjects of religion don't belong in scientific debates.

"If theism is a religious faith, then so is atheism, since these are two fully comparable systems, each the opposite of the other."

I should have read on before I posted above. I was afraid you'd say that.

-ol' 2long

WAT,

Do I believe it? I dont know. These scientists do, and provide proof to back up their assertions. Now you may be a nuclear scientist. But saying somethign is bunk is not proving it is bunk. Maybe it is...maybe these scientists are all wet behind the ears. Or you could be. I dont know.

What this article, and the reams of studies and experiments out there in creation science show for me is this:

1. That evolutionist scientists that dismiss creation scientists as not real, or pseudo-scientists, is flat out false. Thes guys go thru the same training, same schooling. They have molecular biology PhDs, they write their findings in scientific journals. Everythign supposed "real" scientists do. So, as my argument has been all along, evolution has not been proven (actually cannot be proven), nor has Creationism, by merely using scientific means. But to dismiss a whole block of scientific research a "bunk" without solid refutation, is to me folly. If this guy is wrong, then prove it. Just as I would say to him on his assertions. He has written this. I am now reading more about this to learn more...to see if he is right...or if there are holes in his argument. But, I am not saying that he isnt a real scientist, nor is he doign real scientific work.

2. If his assertions are true, then it is another nail in the coffin for evolutionary theory as it currently stands. But again, let's see the peer review on what he has written. Let's see you, and other nuclear scientists weigh in on his assertions with proof.

In His arms.

Hey WAT, isnt this an absolutist statement also!!

2Long...this statement is patently not true.

MM,

I feel like you have been hit hard on this thread, a thread you started to help people with their marriages and then of course it got side tracked as they all do.

I just want to say that at first I was upset with your views of Christianity because they differed drastically from my own, and how those very views relate to our families. But then with your kindness and patience you show that you are very sincere in your beliefs. You simply want the best, for yourself and others. That is plain to see.

You have not become rude, not even once though you have been hit pretty hard from all directions. You patiently deal with all the rebukes and differing opinions.

Although I disagree with your views of separation of church from school and state, and salvation, I really am growing to respect and admire you.

YOU MM are a class act! Thank you for that MM. Your a great guy!

And since you brought up toothless birds and dinosaurs...I thought I would bring up a little work I found here:

Weaver, I thank you. I also find respect for you and for others here that have taken this thread at what it was meant to be....equal human beings in a discussion.

I have seen many of the posts you have made to those on this web site in order to help them thru the mess they are in and I rarely can say that I have differed with you.

Remember, even in families, people disagree. That does not make them less family.

Again, my humble thanks.

In His arms.

"I feel like you have been hit hard on this thread, a thread you started to help people with their marriages and then of course it got side tracked as they all do."

This kind of "hitting hard" is what we, as scientists go through when we have an idea that we want tested. It isn't meanness. I hope MM realizes that. I think he does. But it is certainly what puts many lay people off regarding science.

"I just want to say that at first I was upset with your views of Christianity because they differed drastically from my own, and how those very views relate to our families. But then with your kindness and patience you show that you are very sincere in your beliefs. You simply want the best, for yourself and others. That is plain to see."

I have never doubted this.

"You have not become rude, not even once though you have been hit pretty hard from all directions. You patiently deal with all the rebukes and differing opinions."

I hope you don't think I've been rude. WAT did it, so I will 2: I'm a planetary geologist with a BS, MS, and a PhD in geology. We're looking for life on Mars (among many other fascinating things about that world that I won't be more specific about, because there aren't THAT many planetary geolgists in the world)). It would be exciting as all get out if we found difinitive evidence of life there. We haven't, as yet. There have been a number of potential discoveries that have all been falsified - often with lot of heated debate and even hurt feelings. But the discovery of life on another world would cause a huge shift in our perspective on life in the universe (all we know about is right here, at the moment, in spite of the vastness of the universe and the possibilities...), and any such discovery absolutely MUST be rigorously scrutinized, even brutally so, 2 make certain it isn't an extrapolation of wishful thinking.

MM, you obviously have a lot of religious training. I understand that you're involved in law. When dealing in detail with someone else's subject, I find that I either have 2 take "the expert's" word for some statement, if I don't have the time 2 investigate it for myself, or hunker down and go through the same training they went through so that I can speak from a position of authority. Having a long background in geological training, and being familiar with much of the litera2re on the subject of evolution, I can assure you that evolutionary science is intact, though progressing as it should. It is not fraught with doubts about whether evolution occurred, in spite of what your creation science experts may be telling you.

weaver:

"Although I disagree with your views of separation of church from school and state, and salvation, I really am growing to respect and admire you."

As do I.

"YOU MM are a class act! Thank you for that MM. Your a great guy!"

He IS the "king of plan B" after all! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

-ol' 2long

One thing I should have added, and I hope 2long doesn't mind me repeating what he said on another thread, on Gray's thread - but I don't think he will.

I said I was very upset about this thread and felt a certain affinity towards Csue because she would understand my feelings.

Well 2long came back and said that he felt a certain affinity with you. And I couldn't understand it at the time , but now I do.

It is your kindness and compassion for other people, not very different from 2long at all.

It's the very realizations like these that keep us all plugging away... that we are so very, very much alike and in need of each other.

I think God would be pleased somehow!

I think God would be pleased with all of us here. And I agree...2Long and I are not very different when you get right down to it....kinda like Dinosaurs with feathers!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I would also like to quickly reply to what 2Long just said. I too understand that those like GC, WAT, 2Long and others bring a lot of expertise to the table. And as you said 2Long, I try to tread lightly on other's turf!! Nothing like walking into a room and proclaiming that I am an expert because I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express last night!!

On the condition of evolution, I have no doubt that it is moving forward and that it is going through its paces. Again, I have never said throughout here that it has been disproven. What I have said (and meant) is that it has not been proven. That there are very real questions that have yet to be answered. And that creation science does have a legitimate place at the table.

From a legal and historical standpoint, which are within my area of expertise, these two models have yet to definitively prove they are right. A conclusion, based purely on science, has not been made to their vailidity that a legal process could say that one is true.

I have concluded in my life up to now that evolution is false. How so? Because of the questions with evolution. Because of the findings by creations scientists. Because of historical findings that back the Biblical account to date.

Do I have proof where I can wal into a courtroom? Dont think so. That is why the spiritual realm fills in the gap that neither of these models can fill in. It is like driving down a road. I see on the map that up ahead, there is a river that the road crosses. I have no proof that that road has a bridge over it. But due to my map, and due to my past experiences with roads, I assume that there will be a bridge there. Thus I do not slow down to make sure it is there before crossing. I just speed ahead with faith that it will be.

Both sides of this debate do this. We take what we know, what we have seen, and we speed forward with confidence that due to what we have seen, then the road ahead will provide bridges.

I do wish that evolutionary scientists were less dogmatic in there refutation of creation science. Let them stand side by side. Let them face each other, debate each other. Let them provide proof for their positions, and proof of why the other is invalid. What are they afraid of.

So far, I have not read where creation scientists want to teach creation and not evolution. I think it is because they believe, as I do...that the truth does not need defending. When stacked up against a falsehood, the truth is easily discernible. As long as those doing the viewing are objective.

So what are evolutionists afraid of? If creation science is bunk, then they should have no problem letting it out there to be destroyed by evolution. As long as creation science stays within the same constructs evolution science does, then what is the problem?? I would think evolutionists would love the ability to blow creation science out of the water!!

In His arms.

MM:

"I do wish that evolutionary scientists were less dogmatic in there refutation of creation science. Let them stand side by side. Let them face each other, debate each other. Let them provide proof for their positions, and proof of why the other is invalid. What are they afraid of."

That's the point, though. Evolutionary science, and even evolutionary scientists as a group, are not dogmatic at all. There have been debates between scientists and creationists many times in the past 20 or so years. Problem alway has been that the creationists want 2 be recognized as approaching the problem from a scientific basis, but they don't "play by the rules". They hang on2 their desire 2 make a science out of biblical creation even when they're shown that it is unscientific 2 do so. Fear isn't a factor here - though I will certainly admit that I wouldn't want 2 go in front of an audience and argue with the likes of Duane Gish - 2 him, getting the attention is the prize, not the truth, so there'd be no benefit 2 agreeing 2 do something like that.

I wish you were right about creation scientists not wanting it 2 be taught in schools (though you said instead of evolution, not along with it, which I believe they are trying 2 achieve).

Scientific "truth" most certainly does need defending, though. Spiri2al truth only needs defending if called in2 question, and most paritioners of any given church are less likely 2 do that than a scientist would be 2 question the prevailing theories. Different animals altogether, though.

And I don't have any problem with letting creation science have it's stab at the same levels of scrutiny, revision, and community acceptance that real science has. But our kids' textbooks are not the place for such debates.

If creation science does go the route of the scientific method, then their peers (including those evolutionists that might be interested in reviewing the publications) will bolster or destroy it, depending on it's scientific merits. I've got more important things 2 do, though.

-ol' 2long