Re: The Flood/ID

Daniel Criswell (dcriswell1@juno.com)
Tue, 31 Mar 1998 18:46:20 -0500

On Tue, 31 Mar 1998 22:18:37 +1000 "Jon Warren" <jon.warren@ibm.net>
writes:
>I have been on the list for several weeks now and have found
>the discussions both interesting and informative. Thank you!
>
>I have two questions that are on topics recently touched on,
>namely the Flood and Intelligent Design. To give you a quick
>background, I was raised in a Christian family, and am not a
>scientist, although I have read fairly widely and believe I
>have a better than average grasp of scientific matters. Some
>years ago I became interested in Creation Science. However after
>reading a lot of their material I decided to read some of the
>refutations made by other scientists, and came to the conclusion
>that a lot of Creationists are not scientists. This sparked
>somewhat of a crisis in my faith with which I am still struggling.
>
>Firstly the Flood question. The February 98 edition of Scientific
>American has an article on Greenland Ice Cores, by Messrs Richard
>Alley and Michael Bender. In the article they explain how ice
>crystals formed during summer and winter vary in size, and how in
>spring the stronger winds deposit more dust onto the ice. They
>use this information to count the yearly layers of ice formed in
>Greenland, and are also able to calibrate the data using trapped
>volcanic dust from known eruptions. The problem for believers in a
>global flood is that the authors of the article believe they have
>counted back 110,000 years, with no interruptions of a cataclysmic
>nature. How can this information be reconciled with the account in
>Genesis of a global flood?

It can't. Make your choice now. Believe the Bible or believe Scientific
American.

>The second question relates to the issue of intelligent design.
>Richard Dawkins in his book "The Blind Watchmaker" (pages 15 & 93)
>relates how the human eye is structured, and in particular how the
>photocells do not have their light sensitive area closest to the
>source of light, but instead buried several layers down. The
>nerve cells connecting the eye to the brain are instead uppermost,
>and the connections run across the surface of the retina to the
>"blind spot" where they pass through the retina and on to the brain.
>Is it reasonable to ask why the eye is designed in this way,
>when any human engineer would be able to suggest an obvious
>improvement, ie have the nerve cells behind the light sensitive
>area, eliminating the need for a blind spot. This is especially
>the case when we discover that this is how the eye of the octopus
>is structured. Are we allowed to ask why an intelligent designer
>would choose this design? Is there some hidden benefit we are
>unaware of? Is he just demonstrating his creative power?

No you are not allowed to question "why" God does this or that. How can
the created say to the creator, "Why have you made me like this?"

>Humbly yours,

Stay humble.
>
>Jon Warren.
>
Nice to meet you, Jon.

Dan
>
>_____________________________________________________
>jon.warren@ibm.net
>

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