Posted on 03/10/2007 11:07:03 AM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--Secular scientists who fear allowing the conclusions of creationism into secular universities have good reason to be afraid because they are accountable to the creator, Kurt Wise, professor of theology and science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on the Albert Mohler Radio Program in February.
“If it’s true that there was a creation, then you realize that means there’s someone in control,” Wise said on the broadcast hosted daily by Southern Seminary’s president. “And if there was a flood -- in other words, a creator who actually judged this creation -- that means we’re in big trouble. So I think there’s every reason why an evolutionist would be very frightened of creationists advocating creationism.”
Wise appeared on the Feb. 13 show to comment on discussion stirred by recent news articles on evolution in commemoration of what would have been Charles Darwin 198th birthday Feb. 12. A USA Today article pointed out that some secular scientists are upset over the fact that a number of creationists have obtained doctoral degrees from major universities recently.
Wise earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University in paleontology under late evolutionist Stephen J. Gould. Mohler noted that famed evolutionist Richard Dawkins called Wise “the greatest disappointment he knows in modern science” -- a designation Mohler said should be worn with pride.
“I am absolutely thrilled you end up in the center of his target, and that’s why you are on the program today,” Mohler said. “It’s because you have so boldly set out the case. Richard Dawkins can’t imagine anyone who understands modern science in terms of its theory and history and paradigm and model and still believes the words, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’”
It is important for Christians to talk about evolution, Mohler noted, because too often believers have responded inadequately to the challenges of Darwinism.
“For the better part of two centuries the Christian church has been trying to figure out how to respond to the challenge of Darwinian theory and the prevailing evolutionary model,” Mohler said. “I’ll just be very candid to say that in so many cases the church has failed.”
The two greatest errors Christians have made are capitulating to evolution on one hand and rejecting it in an unintelligent way on the other hand, Mohler said.
Wise argued that accepting the Bible’s account of creation makes intellectual sense.
“If you want a correct account of an event, you want an eyewitness,” Wise said. “You want an eyewitness who’s reliable. You want an eyewitness who understands. Who better than God Himself? If He really is the creator, then He has the accurate account. How could a scientist thousands of years later, who wasn’t there, actually have a better account of the origin than God Himself?”
Modern science is limited because it draws conclusions based only on the things scientists can observe and experience, Wise said.
Scientists “cannot deduce anything about a creation,” he said. “They’ve never seen a creation before -- not a creation out of nothing of the universe. Their experience is limited to what they see and hear in the present. With those kinds of limitations, they couldn’t possibly deduce the right thing about the beginning of things.”
Humans cannot separate science and religion because scientists begin their work with assumptions about the world that are “deeply religious,” Wise said, adding, “Science drips with theology. You cannot do science without making theological assumptions.”
Mohler pointed to the writings of prominent evolutionists as evidence that theology and science overlap.
“All you have to do is read the evolutionists,” he said. “They’re always talking about the meaning of life. Richard Dawkins tries to find it in the mystery in the sheer accidental nature of the whole thing. The late Carl Sagan tried to find it in the immensity of what appears to the human eye to be limitless space.... You can’t talk about humanity without talking about the meaning of human life.”
In response to a question from a caller, Mohler and Wise said they believe the earth is relatively young because they trust the Bible’s account of creation as accurate and straightforward.
“At the end of the day, I cannot interpret the straightforward words, sentences and propositions of Genesis 1-11 any differently than Romans 1-11,” Mohler said. “So that’s why I hold to a young earth.”
Wise agreed.
“It seems to be a clear reading of Scripture that God told us that the earth is young,” he said. “And I hold that position for that reason. I also believe that science is such that these (evolutionary theories) are theories of humans. So if it’s a choice between God’s clear Word and humans’ reason, then I’m going to take God’s Word.”
No, that's a nobodysaurus.
hehehe.
Q. What's harder than getting a pregnant Brontosaurus into the ark?A. Getting a Brontosaurus pregnant in the ark!
(Noah! Make them stop. I'm getting seasick!)
If that's what you believe, fair enough. I don't, as I see the Bible as a mixture of myths, human stories and historical events written down by people. I don't believe for one moment that it's God's word at all.
Great answer! (sarcasm intended) So, instead of staying on topic, and addressing the objection I made, you just launch off into some infantile ad hominem attack against someone not even involved in the discussion.
And you people are supposed to be "reasonable"?
I'm not sure why this is so hard for you to understand. Le Chatelier's has *quite a lot* to do with amino acid polymerisation because amino acid polymerisation (a step-condensation reaction) IS AN EQUILIBRIUM REACTION. The rate and extent to which a condensation reaction will proceed is DIRECTLY DEPENDENT upon the concentration of product wrt concentration of reactants. If *you* knew anything about chemistry, you'd know this, and you'd know that in condensation reactions such as that under discussion here cannot proceed unless the system in which the reaction is occurring is driven (i.e., you are constantly removing either the desired product molecule of the small molecule - in this case water - which is produced by the reaction). At least that's what I was taught in my grad school course on polymers....
I mean, for you to claim that equilibria have nothing to do with this discussion is, frankly, ludicrous.
You are also wrongly working on the assumption that amino acid condensation/hydrolysis is the only pathway in such a system as our early Earth. I wasn't aware that chemistry operated differently in the lab than in the natural environment. It is foolish to think of an environment as diverse as one would find on a planet would be restricted to one set of chemical circumstances. The variety of conditions is incredibly diverse.
Then complain to your fellow evolutionists, because they are the ones who came up with, and continue to argue for, exactly the model I am critiquing. YOu're right - chemistry DOESN'T operate differently in the lab versus a natural environment, and that is exactly the point. In the lab, if you wish to make a step condensation reaction proceed to anything like completion (or, in the case under discussion, to a large molecular weight protein), you have to constantly remove the water produced as a product of the reaction, via vacuum, heat, or some other method. If you don't, your reaction halts due to equilibria concerns. Likewise, if you try to conduct a condensation reaction such as amino acid polymerisation to form proteins in a body of water like an ocean, your going to have no success. It wouldn't happen in that huge local excess of product small molecule. Indeed, you'll probably reverse the reaction and see the hydrolysis of any dimers that did manage to form. I'm sorry, but your argument is simply wrong, it's not in line with the science.
And you stated, "And then you have to look at the stability and reactivity of the products involved." True enough, and this ALSO works against the evolutionist framework for the early earth origin of life. Let's look at the stability of amino acids in an open environment. If the "early earth atmosphere" were really reducing as is claimed, then there would be essentially no ozone layer protection of the earth's surface from even hard UV light. Amino acids and proteins are degraded by ultraviolet, which means that any proteinaceous oligomer product formed by a hypothetical amino acid condensation as is proposed by evolutionists would be degraded pretty much anywhere it appeared on earth, except of course past a certain depth of the ocean (where it would be hydrolysed instead). And if we propose that the earth's atmosphere were oxygen-containing, then you suffer the problem of the degradation of both amino acids and protein oligomers by gaseous oxygen. Either way, you have an environment where the product of the reaction is not stable and would be destroyed long before the proteins could "develop into life-sustaining molecules". Even if this degradation would theoretically serve to drive the equilibrium towards the product side by constantly removing product, you still have the equilibrium effect of a huge excess of water (product) driving the reaction back to the reaction side IN THE MEDIUM WHERE THE REACTION ACTUALY TAKES PLACE. In short, the hard science itself simply does NOT allow the evolutionist theory to work.
And you don't understand evolution. None of what you discuss above has anything to do with it. That's abiogenesis and is a differnt field of study completely. There is a lot of interesting work being done there, but it is not evolution.
If you will notice, I said "evolutionist theories about the naturalistic formation of life in an early earth scenario." I'm not addressing genetic theories of evolution here. I am addressing the set of naturalistic theories which evolutionists use to posit the formation of life molecules which eventually developed into life itself. Can you show me an evolutionist who DOESN'T thing that life developed naturalistically from non-living precursor molecules? If so, then your argument in this paragraph may have some validity. Otherwise, your argument is nothing more than a straw man.
BLASPHEMY j/k
Excuse me? The discussion was about the article, yes? The ridiculous, false, incredibly stupid article making Bull**** claims on behalf of scripture?
You **wish** it was about whether every aspect of evolutionary theory meets a narrow criteria of "well established". Unfortunately, the author wasn't as skilled as Gish at unmitigated bull**** and specious logic, so the discussion gets to be about what creationists actually believe.
The discussion, as it had evolved to the point at which you responded to my post, was not about the article per se, but the feasibility of evolutionary theory, that of abiogenesis in particular, or at least that's how I interpreted the direction to be.
However, your statement about Gish does bring us back to the very valid point (to which you never responded) that Gish did seem to always manage to run circles around evolutionist professors of biology and geology. Pretty good for a "bull**** artist", I'd say.
But he's not a scientist.
All scientist are evolutionists.
Wise is not an evolutionist,
Therefore Wise is not a scientist.
....and evolution is scientific because all scientists believe it.
The sad fact is that 80% of professionals in the life sciences are not smart enough to explain what is wrong with the above.
> Pretty good for a "bull**** artist", I'd say.
I would drop the "for a", but at least it appears we can agree on that.
We can also agree that none of the current hypotheses put forth regarding abiogenesis are "well established" observations.
We might even agree that common descent, while clearly and far and away the best going explanation for the diversity of life, isn't in the same class as the age of the earth, or the non-existence of the Noachian deluge as far as well established observations go.
> The discussion, as it had evolved to the point at which
> you responded to my post, was not about the article per
> se, but the feasibility of evolutionary theory,...
I interpreted it to be: at what point does an observation become well established enough that relying on literal interpretations of mystical books of bed time stories for bronze age goat herders over them constitutes psychosis?
I think it's clear that many creationists are well past that tipping point.
The earth moves.
Germs cause disease.
The earth is quite old."
Oh, two can play this game: Some examples that irreligious folk have had trouble with over the years:
killing political opponents is wrong.
killing inconvenient friends is is wrong.
killing religious people is wrong.
The most famous atheists of all time, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung. and Pol Pot murdered more people than all the religious wars in history. Get out your calculator. Get out your history book. Add it up.
---AND a Darwinist?
That's an odd linkage. If Darwinism is correct, you are merely a complex result of positive and negative charges in combination over time. In essence, a very long number.
Freedom must come from somewhere outside of nature, else it is an illusion.
I am wondering, and this is a serious question that I hope you'll be able to be mature enough to try to answer, but how do evolutionists explain apparent young-Earth observations ranging from the excessive presence of helium in zircon contained in deep Precambrian granitic rock to the rapid decay of the earth's magnetic field to the almost complete lack of cosmic-ray induced dust on the Earth's moon?
I interpreted it to be: at what point does an observation become well established enough that relying on literal interpretations of mystical books of bed time stories for bronze age goat herders over them constitutes psychosis?
I don't know. At what point do evolutionists stop believing in fairy tales that are based upon nothing more than the psychosocialogical need to believe them?
Let me see if I've got this straight... your argument is that believing obvious falsehoods makes men "good"?
BTW, understanding that the earth moves, the earth is spheroid, germs cause disease or that the earth is billions of years old does not imply any rejection of religion or good per se. Just the rejection of certain brain dead literal interpretations of certain texts.
The same with evolution.
killing political opponents is wrong.
killing inconvenient friends is is wrong.
killing religious people is wrong.
LOL! Religious folks have done all of the above as well!
[Insert "No True Scottsman" fallacy here].
Ross Humphreys work? Plenty of explanations by 'evolutionists' out there. Here's a good source. There are also plenty of counters out there to the decay of the earth's magnetic field and the cosmic ray dust on the moon argument.
Indeed, the second of these (the moon dust) is specifically mentioned on AnswersinGenesis.org as an argument that Creationists should NOT use! See Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.
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