Report on the YEC seminar in Durango, 9-2003

From: John W Burgeson (jwburgeson@juno.com)
Date: Sat Sep 20 2003 - 13:57:35 EDT

  • Next message: John W Burgeson: "Re: YEC Invasion"

    Well, I've just come from a presentation at a local Durango church on why
    YEC is the only "right" position to take. I took fairly copious notes,
    and when I've sorted them out, and transcribed them, I'll be posting
    them, along with a copy to the two presenters, Joe Sebeny and Roger
    Heyen, and the pastor of the church, Mike Williams, Ph.D..

    I have asked these gentlemen to argue their case on this LISTSERV; so far
    I think they have not shown up (I am about 50 messages behind). This
    post, and subsequent ones, may incent them otherwise.

    Joe had emailed me privately that he personally thought a person such as
    myself, distinctly scornful of YECism, might still be a Christian. I had
    asked him to make that point, as appropriate, in his talk. In that talk,
    he specifically said that non-YEC people were calling Jesus a liar. That
    all other interpretations than YEC "do great harm to the cause of
    Christ." That so-called "Christian" scientists doing radiometric dating
    deliberately falsify their findings. That TEs do not worship "the God of
    the Bible." At each of these places I listened carefully to see if he
    would give the slightest caveat; he did not.

    To his credit, he did say, in an unrelated discussion of evidences, that
    TEs and PCs "might" be Christians, "although in so doing they cannot be
    consistent with either science or scripture." But this came 10 minutes or
    so after he had said the things in the paragraph above.

    The book table, which was impressive, had copies of a children's book on
    "Bombey," even though that argument was demolished 20 years ago. The
    propaganda machine was rolling.

    There was some new stuff, apparently. But I'll wait to tomorrow to give a
    full report.

    Joe, Roger, and Mike. This post is to an Internet LISTSERV. It will be
    "public" for some years, and will be accessed within a few days by
    perhaps 200 people, almost all of whom are both Christians and trained in
    the sciences. Most of these guys are a lot more conservative than I am,
    BTW. There are even two or three brave YECers among them, one of whom
    knows more about coal than Stephen J. Gold knew about beetles. You are
    welcome to join in the discussion, and to correct any place I have
    unfairly reported your remarks. Just hit the reply key. Or direct your
    mail to ASA@calvin.edu. Better still, join the discussions directly; info
    on how to do this is on the ASA web site at www.asa3.org.

    This much more I will say, Joe. If I really believed the Bible taught
    what you think it teaches, I could not in any way take it seriously.
    Whether I would not then be a Christian, I don't know. Maybe. Might as
    well believe in Mother Goose.

    Burgy

    www.burgy.50megs.com

    ________________________________________________________________
    The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand!
    Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER!
    Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Sep 20 2003 - 14:13:46 EDT