My piont was that a scientific Law is the observation of the phenomenom - the falling apple. A theory is the explanation fo why that happens. Newton's theory has been questioned but the law of gravity remains unquestioned. But that's as far as I'll go with your post. Once you start talking string theory my brain starts crying.
The idea that God set everything in motion was actually the prevailing one before Darwin and fundamentalism. Evolution ( much older idea then Darwin's Natural Selection) was accepted and the process by which it worked was God's design. Oh thank you! I love those quotes! If this whole discussion is interesting then you'd probably find some research into church history interesting as well. Key to this whole debate is the development of fundamentalism. It began to spring up in reaction to textual criticism (where the ancient documents, Bible included are read with an eye to the human hands that wrote them - better and more thorough explanation at the link). Personally I think the religious side of this whole issue is AT LEAST as neat and interesting as the science side!
This is an opinion piece not backed by any research or even considered for publication by any peer-reviewed journals. This is not science, nor does it even pretend to be. I can find similar opinion pieces about a non-moon landing or the earth being flat, but they are also baseless.
No, it wouldn't be considered for publication in any peer-reviewed journal. Why not? Because they refuse to look at any evidence that could possibly put evolution in a bad light.
I had a physical chemistry professor who wrote a book about the qualities of sub-atomic particles that resemble a consciousness. An underlying consciousness present in every atom everywhere - sounds a bit godlike to me!
The article you linked presented no data, no evaluation of data acquired elsewhere, just an opinion. Those types of articles do not get published regardless of topic. Plenty of controversial theories have been published in scientific journals. Everything from relativity to quantum theory has been resisted by those holding other ideas. However, their work met the criteria of the scientific journals and they were published, repeated by others, and ultimately accepted by the scientific community. Evidence was ultimately accepted that proved Piltdown man was a hoax, even though it fit what the establishment wanted to believe. An alternate view was eventually proven through research, publication, and verification through 3rd parties. That is the strength of the scientific method versus divine inspiration. There is the capacity for correction, although it may take some time, whereas divine inspiration leaves little room for discussion, investigation, and or new interpretations.
I like the idea of the Deism religious beliefs that were brought about during the enlightenment period of the 18th Century. It is based on the Newtonian World-Machine. The theory behind this religion is that the world was pretty much set into motion by God. However, he then steps back and watches it play out (which I believe could be an answer to the question of why God lets so many die in hurricanes or typhoons, etc.) My own personal belief is that this is entirely possible and explains a lot of things. However, there are 2 points to the religion that I disagree with. First I think God can and does step in occasionally or whenever he wants to. They believe that there are no such thing as miracles and I disagree there. Second, they believe that Jesus was just a man, nothing divine about him. I completely disagree there. But as far as how God set the universe into motion, this religious theory touches on a lot of my own thoughts and feelings in the matter when I look at the science of the universe and their findings.
I just have to reccomend something that I think everyone here would appreciate. It's Theory of Evolution: A History of Controversy from The Teaching Company. I listened to this awhile ago and it did a wonderful job of outlining the history of Evolution but also treated creationism and ID with a good deal of respect. The lecturer does a fantastic job of talking about all of it without insults or demeaning a certain group and it's really an eyeopening look at all the issues surrouning this. It's not without bias of course but it's still a great listen.
Science Wars from the Teach. Co. also seems to be a good one - we're only a few lectures in so far. Discussing how science has been viewed since the Enlightenment. I understand it does deal a bit with the evolution vs creationist views of science but we haven't gotten there yet. We're still just finishing Bacon's inductive reasoning vs. Descarte's deductive approach, so I'm guessing it will be awhile! LOL
These quotes also sum up how I approach science and faith. I believe God does exist although not always in the context of some structured religions and I believe from my heart based on things I have experienced that seemed miraculous to me. I also often feel that many structured religions are too narrow minded and do not leave room for the use of the fabulous brain God has given us to think with. It's seems to me that God gave us free will because he wanted us to love him and follow him because we choose to - otherwise he would have built that in and there would be no discussion such us this. We would have been born without any doubts or need for answers. Instead he made us incredibly curious - we are all born with some degree of desire for discovery. Sometimes that need for discovery is crushed out of us by school, religion, family or other circumstances or institutions. I have to say, so far, it is easy for me to believe that the "big bang" and/or evolution is ID. I will also say that I am constantly learning new things and re-evaluating my opinions on the how and why. Yet the presence of God does not seem to leave me - even in my most heathen moments. To Dawn: Thank you for your polite, yet firm input. Whether you meant to or not, you have become something of an academic mentor and tutor for me - at least where this topic is concerned. I've bookmarked a few sites you mentioned so I could spend more time on them later for my own education.
There's a book called "Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card, in the SciFi genre. It talks about "philotic connections" that are probably based on that same idea. It's a pretty interesting concept.
This has been pretty neat discussion. I am a young earth creationist. I used to fall for evolution, generally because of the public school and that is all I was ever taught. Until I was introduced to some of the other things out there. somebody asked for creation links. You can Google Lou giglio, he has several talks where he speaks about creation, and God's works. Here is one, on youtube. I can't actually watch and see which one it is since I have dial up. I have watched several of his DVD's though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4 Another one is Answers in Genesis. They have a whole lot of information and resources http://www.answersingenesis.org/ The truth project by focus on the family (Dr. Del Tackett) while not about creations vs evolution does a great job of speaking about them, and pointing out some problems in evolution with some great science pointing towards ID. http://www.thetruthproject.org/ There is also a blog for the truth project and a few weeks ago Dr. Tackett went to the Grand Canyon that has some awesome info in it. great pictures too. http://deltackett.com/ The last two are not "scientific" but where they pull it all together for you.
"Not backed by any research..." ?? To the contrary, the last link in that post had many references: Johanson, D.C. and Edey, M.A., Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981. Return to text. Johanson, D. and Shreeve, J., Lucy’s Child: The Discovery of a Human Ancestor, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, p. 19, 1989. Return to text. Richmond, B.G. and Strait, D.S., Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor, Nature 404(6776):382, 2000. Return to text. Richmond and Strait, Ref. 3, pp. 382–385. Return to text. Richmond and Strait, Ref. 3, p. 383. Return to text. Stokstad, E., Hominid ancestors may have knuckle walked, Science 287(5461):2131, 2000. Return to text. Collard, M. and Aiello, L.C., From forelimbs to two legs, Nature 404(6776):340, 2000. Return to text. Collard and Aiello, Ref. 7, p. 339. Return to text. Just as questions are raised about those links, so those articles raised questions about Lucy. And Lucy's bones can be studied. The burden of proof remains with the people who claim she was humanoid, when the bones match animals existing today.
You're right, I forgot I hadn't had a chance to check the second link. Of course, the references given are not research done by the author, but re-interpretation of results done by scientists. www.talkorigins.com reviews such claims from these articles and how it misrepresents what the papers and authors had to say. I would suggest reading these references yourself and seeing how they were misquoted and or misconstrued. For example the knuckle-walking claim from www.talkorigins.org: Claims that Lucy was not capable of bipedality and may have been a knuckle walker. This is totally unsupportable. I know of no scientist who has ever studied Lucy and concluded that she was not bipedal (which is not to deny that she may also have been arboreal). For example, McHenry (1986) points out that the feet, knees, legs and pelvises of australopithecines are strongly adapted to bipedality, while the hands and wrists show no adaptations to knuckle walking or any other form of quadrupedality. (More recently, Richmond and Strait (2000) did find evidence of a trait associated with knucklewalking in Lucy's wrist, but they still believe she was bipedal.) So, he quotes that Lucy may have knucklewalking characteristics but totally skips the scientist's conclusions that Lucy was still bipedal. He did no research - he just picked what he wanted to twist out of existing research. Scientists are still studying Lucy and they may find better answers with time, but no scientists have come to the conclusions that Oard has done. My guess is that his background in meteorology has not prepared him well to assess this field. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA230_1.html This link contains a great cartoon at the bottom that sums up a lot of the creationist 'research'.
I haven't read the rest of this thread. So if I repeat everything that's already been said, please forgive me. I was educated in a Christian school that (obviously) taught creation, but didn't put a date on the Earth Here's the thing...nobody has all the facts. No preacher, no scientist, not the pope, not the leaders of the world, NO ONE BUT GOD KNOWS THE FACTS. Quite frankly, there are lots of things that science and creation agree on, but they just put different labels on it. The big hang-up seems to be the age of the Earth, the Big bang, and whether man evolved from monkeys. I believe in Creation, but it kind of sounds like the Big Bang as scientists are able to describe it with the tools they have available to them. As far as the age of the earth is concerned, the Bible doesn't specifically say what year it was created and it says it happened in 6 days. How long is a day to God? Could it be 500 million of our years? I'd say yes, it could. The other thing is that maybe when God was showing the author of Genesis the creation, he had to put it into a format which could be understood, or showed it to him in a vision. How can you show billions of years and have it make sense to the human brain? I don't know. I do know that it is nearly impossible for me to wrap my mind around. But so is the Trinity or that somebody could rise from the dead. But to partly answer your question, If you believe that the earth is billions of years old, steer clear of creation based science curriculums. I believe in Creation, but also that the earth is over 4 billion years old. I bought Mysteries of History and couldn't even get past the first chapter out of disgust with the content and tone. We are now doing History Odyssey instead and both kids have really enjoyed it.
Jen you have a lot of good points. I agree with a lot of what you said. I didn't even know about the young earth thing until a local board here was talking about how they had problems with one curriculum because it mentioned the earth being millions of years old and they had to correct that. That made me pause and have to look into it more. Since this thread I have done a lot of research on that topic and found that the young earth theory was put about in the 17th century by Bishop James Ussher who used the Grigorian calendar. His theories were even based on a widely held belief that earth was only 6,000 year olds (4 thousand before Jesus and almost 2 thousand after). But I agree with you Jen, who is to say how long a day is to God. Anyway, I have found this thread really interesting and have to say that I will probably not chose a creationist curriculum based on this. I would not be opposed to one who gives equal time and thought to both theories, HOWEVER, like Dawn said before, that's almost impossible to find. Maybe we should write something! haha! hmmm, actually that is worth a thought! I'd have to wait until I got my degree first.
Just to mention the "day" you all are talking about in the above couple posts... When God told the Hebrews to work for 6 days and rest for one day, the word is the same word in the Hebrew as the word used in telling us about the six days of creation. A day is a 24 hour period in both of these cases.
I heard Ken Ham speak on the word DAY once. He says that there are about six different indicators for it to be interpreted as a 24-hour period. Just ONE of them causes that interpretation, but in Genesis One ALL of them are present. Yet Genesis One is the ONLY place where people balk at that interpretation. So the question for me (speaking ME, Jackie, and NOT Ken Ham!) is WHY do people show this inconsistency? Only one reason I can think of. They don't WANT to believe what God's word says. So they grab on to this as a handy excuse not to.
You haven't read liberal biblical scholarship I take it. LOTS of balking! Regardless, Genesis is a piece written by ancient Hebrews. I'm willing to take my guide on how to interpret it from Jewish sources and there really isn't a Jewish tradition of interpretting it literally. That seems to be something Christian and much later. Even some early Christian sources, like Augustine, didn't take the days as literal. If anyone's interested the moderate/liberal take is that Genesis contains 2 seperate creation stories. The first, the days of creation, is seen as probably a liturgical piece written by a priestly source. The second, the garden, is taken to be much older and edited together from a couple of different oral traditions. Fun stuff.
