Posted on 06/25/2007 5:55:14 PM PDT by Alien Syndrome
In the United States the old but bitter debate between evolution and creationism is heating up again.
Three of the Republican presidential candidates do not believe in evolution and a high-tech creation museum recently opened in Kentucky.
Much of the debate has been fuelled by a book claiming the Grand Canyon, one of America's most well-known landmarks, was carved by Noah's flood rather than erosion.
Every national park has at least one gift shop - usually more - selling t-shirts, snow domes, mugs, postcards and books.
At the Grand Canyon you will find books on the canyon's history, the canyon's animals and even the canyon's deaths.
One book, Grand Canyon: A Different View, contains the following excerpt:
"Grand Canyon is not just an icon of beauty. It is a solemn witness to the mighty power of God who is not only the omnipotent creator of all things but also the avenging defender of his own holiness."
It is amazing to think a humble river was able to carve such a mighty canyon. Of course, a geologist will tell you that reflects the power of time rather than the power of the river - the canyon is millions of years old.
But Grand Canyon: A Different View presents a different perspective.
The book is compiled by Tom Vail, who has been guiding rafting trips down the Colorado River for 25 years.
He says for the first 15 years he was an evolutionist.
"In 1994 I became a Christian and started looking at the canyon as my book says, from a different view, and I started exploring the creationist model of the formation of the canyon," he said.
"What I found was all those little questions I had as an evolutionist had answers, and pretty logical answers as I looked at it."
Mr Vail's book is not some cheap pamphlet. It is a full colour coffee-table book, featuring expensive paper, sophisticated layout, spectacular photos, scientific language and lots of quotes from the Old Testament.
Not surprisingly, it is generating debate.
The gulf between creationists and mainstream scientists is as wide as the canyon itself.
The American Geological Institute and other groups demanded the book be removed from the national park.
The debate only fuelled sales of the book and Tom Vail says there is plenty of evidence inside the canyon to back his belief.
"We see some very large folding in the canyon where sedimentary layers, which are laid down horizontally, have been curved or carved in big bends, some of them 300 feet tall, and this is done without cracking the rock. How do you do that with hard rock?" he said.
"I'm definitely going against the tide here, but when you look at the evidence, there are major flaws in the dating methods, for example.
Much to the horror of mainstream scientists, creationism seems to be making a comeback in the United States.
A multi-million dollar creation museum recently opened, at least three of the Republicans running for President do not believe in evolution and Tom Vail's rafting trips are welcoming customers from as far away as Australia.
Opinion polls suggest 43 per cent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. Only 14 per cent believe humans evolved without divine involvement.
That isn't evidence. Just someone's opinion.
There's the same physical evidence to support creation that there is to support it just happening, out of nothing, by itself
Well if you define creationism as the big bang, because there isn't any physical model that explains the initiation of the universe (hand of God is as good as anything) then I'll have to agree; however, if you define it as some arbitrary event that happened within human history, then I'll have to say you're wrong. Like I said earlier, neither you nor I can prove that creation didn't happen 5 minutes or 5 seconds ago, but conceptually that's just silly.
There is good consistent physical evidence for everything that happened right back to the inflationary stage, and then earlier than that who knows. so if you're defining that God created the universe with the big bang, then that is the sort of creationism that makes sense. otherwise I can't agree.
Your posts are interesting. Do you think the universe had a beginning?
Yet somehow when I present you with some of that evidence and ask for the creationist explanation, no answer is forthcoming.
Neanderthal man—Not a hoax.
carbon 14 dating—Not a hoax.
sediment layers—Ehh wot? Not a hoax.
dinosaurs and humans living in different time periods—Not a hoax.
Lucy—Not a hoax.
Thanks for trying!
Are you funning me?
Do you think that's why he put "and the evening and morning..." in there? Oh well, since we don't believe that, we'll just ignore that little bit.
"The advent of man I find misread as well Genesis states that man was created on the sixth day and that G D then rested. Then it tells of how G D saw that of the men he created that there was no man that tilled the soil. He then create a new man slightly different from the others, ergo Adam and Eve were created on the eight day or after. This explains where Cain got his wife from."
"Oh rats!", God said, "I forgot to create a man to till the soil!" (slaps forehead). Course, he didn't want to put that in Genesis, so he conveniently left that out.
yes, these are the people who want to get a hold of your children at 5 or 6 years old.
This article, IMO, is designed to paint the religious right as lunatics, to scare people away from voting republican.
Emphasis on *routinely*.
"The difference between science and other ways of attempting to acquire knowledge is that science is iterative."
Er, have they been moving elements around on the periodic table again? Has the electromagnetic spectrum been moving around again? Have they changed the laws of chemistry again?
Or are you incorrectly equating science with metaphysics?
The theory of evolution is outside my field, but I have educated myself about it and can address topics from many areas of it because it's very easy to find papers by others who have done the research. You don't have to be an expert to be able to dig up papers.
The thing with creationism is there are no papers. The theory of evolution gets along well with chemistry, geology, astronomy, physics--all other fields. Findings in these areas meld well with the theory of evolution and are rapidly incorporated. But creationism has had the same data for the past 150 years and done precisely nothing with it. The other fields of science have gone back into the past and said where the various continents were at various times, what plants and animals lived there, what the environment was like (hot? cold? dry? wet?), and even the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Creationism doesn't even look at the data. If the evidence were compatible with creationism, you would be buried in papers the same way I am.
You all refer to me as a blithering idiot, and that’s on your good days.
I'm sorry you think that of me, although also somewhat amused. I think of you as a blithering idiot on your bad days, like when you're asking someone why they drank the kool-aid. :-D On most days I find you to have at least average intelligence unfortunately hampered by ideology. My challenges aren't so I can feel good about stumping you, they are efforts to make you think, take a look at the evidence, and see if it really jibes with your model of origins.
Others consider me wildly optimistic because I'm still here handing out information, but since I was once a creationist I don't think it's unheard of that someone might change their mind.
Plus I really like talking about science!
Deliberate ignorance of elementary science is not a virtue.
Please reconcile 'evening and morning' with millions of years for me. Are you from the 'evening and morning' in heaven camp?
How do you tell what parts of the Bible are from a 'heavenly perspective' and therefore subject to interpretation and what parts are not? Is it only those parts that man (i.e., science) accepts as 'true' (as routinely re-interpreted)?
The periodic tables being printed today are significantly different from those I had in high school.
The electromagnetic spectrum is not the same class of concept as a periodic chart, our understanding of the spectrum has certainly been refined in the last 150 years, as have the "laws" of chemistry and gravity. There are quite a few phenomena, such as superconductivity, that were not anticipated and which are not yet fully understood.
Are you unaware of this, or are you leading up to an actual argument?
If you can demonstrate that this "empirical evidence" exists anywhere but your bizarre imagination, please show us a sample.
Shouldn’t ALL the evidence be looked at,
It is but, there's only so much time in a school day for science and that short time is best spent studying science not ignorantly debating every whako idea blurted out by pseudoscience charlatans and their deluded followers.
Now you know I asked if the elements had been moving around, not being added. Were your periodic tables in a different order or are you just trying to avoid the point?
"The electromagnetic spectrum is not the same class of concept as a periodic chart, our understanding of the spectrum has certainly been refined in the last 150 years, as have the "laws" of chemistry and gravity. There are quite a few phenomena, such as superconductivity, that were not anticipated and which are not yet fully understood."<./i>
Oh? Have radio waves changed position on the spectrum? Or Infrared? Ultraviolet?
"Are you unaware of this, or are you leading up to an actual argument?"
Why did you cut it out and then pretend it wasn't there? Think no one will notice?
"Or are you incorrectly equating science with metaphysics?"
You're not being honest.
There's a reason why they call themselves "creationists". They just "create" their own interpretations to suit their current state of willful ignorance. Try not to rile them up too bad. It's upsetting them terribly to think that students are being taught elementary science that contradicts their personally created self-delusions.
The periodic chart has a history and is still subject to revisions. The sequence of elements is determined by atomic number, and several elements have been added since I was in high school.
But your basic point, as I understand it, is that there are some phenomena that are so well understood and so well documented, that we take then to be be facts.
Common descent is a fact accepted even by critics of evolution. It is subject to no more doubt than the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.
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