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.
Yeah, yeah and Santa clause is your mother, and all that dribble: I have heard that before...
All I am asking is that students critically analyzy all the evidence both for, against darwinist evolution?
What do you really have against that..if its nothing then go back to your hole!
Jim,
Please check your FREEPMAIL re cloture etc. today.
I think we the troops greatly need your overt wisdom, input and leadership at this crucial time.
Given this statement, I assume you have at your disposal at least some "evidence against evolution" that you would like to see added to high school biology curricula. Care to share it?
Only the amateur adventurers like David Tallichet, Larry Vardiman and Carl Wieland thought that.
Well, that's unfair to Mr. Tallichet; No one really knows what Wieland & Vardiman think, they're just sniping from the sidelines.
David Tallichet actually made the effort to get to Greenland to look for the planes in 1977, but crashed his airplane on the ice and had to cancel his search.
Professional meteorologists expected that based on 2m /snow per year, the squadron could be under as much as 300ft of snow & ice after 50 years.
In 1984, observations by Pursuits Unlimited confirmed that the pros were correct.
In 1986, the Greenland Expedition Society (not the 'Greenland Society of Atlanta' as Larry Vardiman wrote) made an expedition to the site but couldn't locate the aircraft. The site, being an active glacier, had moved ...
GES re-examined the data and two years later, the Society made another expedition and found the "Lost Squadron" at 260ft below the surface --two kilometers down-stream from where the crews had had landed in 1942. Then, 4 years later, they had "Glacier Girl" on the surface.
And as Paul Harvey says: "Now you know the full story."
They were working on assumptions that weren’t true. If you start out with wrong assumptions, then how can your conclusions be reliable?
Excellent question.
However, it seems that the assumptions used by GES were correct ... No?
I came to the fear and conclusion a long time ago that this creationism and intelligent design silliness will contribute to and expedite the end of the conservative movement in the U.S.
Because the light that was created on day one, is different than the lights (plural) created on day four...sun stars, etc.
Now, what that light was on day one, I don't know, and I don't pretend to know. All I know is that there is a distinction between the two. This failure, by many, to understand this very clear, simple point, leads me to believe that those who raise an argument such as yours, simply have not read the text with any type of diligence.
That said, let me refer you to one of your previous posts in which you propose that creation is from God's perspective. In fact, I agree with you, so why is it so hard to understand that God would establish such a standard unit of time, from the beginning, for the purposes of understanding and communication with his special creation...and by extension, he would set the earth in motion to comply with this standard.
What is so hard to understand about that.
Again, please give one example of this alleged evidence against evolution.
What do you really have against that..if its nothing then go back to your hole!
You seem to have your head stuck up yours!
Actually, they are usually better informed than the naturalists; for whom willful ignorance is assumed 'a priori'.
"It's upsetting them terribly to think that students are being taught elementary science that contradicts their personally created self-delusions."
Wrong again. They are being taught a philosophically-created self-delusion masquerading as science (knowledge).
Again, I will point out that I asked if the elements of the periodic table have been 'moved around'. They have not. Your insistence on equating 'moved around' with 'added' in order to avoid the point is noted, however.
"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."
Such phenomena would be science, but not because they are 'well understood and so well documented'. This is a reasoning error again. The reason this would be science is because it is testable and repeatable. This is only true to the extent that the Humean philosophic position is not invoked and this too is a metaphysical choice, not a reasoned or 'scientific' one.
"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."
This would not be science. It is not testable and repeatable. This is metaphysical belief.
"Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS."
Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics (New-York: Simon and Schuster), 1961.
"The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.... Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense."
Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973), p. 78.
Day and night only require a source of light. Read Rev 21:23.
The day was 24 hours long.
You are correct that your confusion is not of God.
It’s clear that Voldemort carved the Grand Canyon, just like he carved a lightning bolt in Harry’s forehead via curse.
I plan to go with whatever creation myth the people of Lemuria (or Mu) had. They actually experienced great floods.
Don't be ridiculous. God will kill us with fire.
Flooding! You wish! Try using water wings during that!
Same science course no doubt, but I was awake.
re·volve(r-vlv)
v. re·volved, re·volv·ing, re·volves
v.intr.
1. To orbit a central point.
2. To turn on an axis; rotate. See Synonyms at turn.
3. To recur in cycles or at periodic intervals.
4. To be held in the mind and considered in turn.
5. To be centered: Their troubles revolve around money management.
v.tr.
1. To cause to revolve.
2. To ponder or reflect on.
revolve
A verb
1 roll, revolve
cause to move by turning over or in a circular manner of as if on an axis; “She rolled the ball”; “They rolled their eyes at his words”
Category Tree:
move; displace
roll, revolve,transit
2 orbit, revolve
move in an orbit; “The moon orbits around the Earth”; “The planets are orbiting the sun”; “electrons orbit the nucleus”
Category Tree:
travel; go; move; locomote
circle; circulate
orbit, revolve
retrograde
3 revolve, go around, rotate
turn on or around an axis or a center; “The Earth revolves around the Sun”; “The lamb roast rotates on a spit over the fire”
Indiana University let those guys go after the basketball coach (Bobby Knight) and things haven't been the same since.
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