Allen Roy wrote:
> I originally posted anonymously a short autobio. from Curt Sewell.
> There were some responses which I sent to him for him to comment on if
> he wished. He did so, thinking that the 5 responses were from one
> person (that was my fault). He also has an autobio. book out that can
> be found at Amazon.com: God at Ground Zero : The Manhattan Project
> and a Scientist's Discovery of Christ the Creator
> by Curt Sewell. 1. I used the phrase "believed early Genesis."
> Yes, I'm very aware
> that many people prefer the phrase "believed early Genesis to be an
> accurate
> historical narrative and scientific record." But, to me, those two
> phrases
> ARE synonymous, and my intended audience would understand completely.
> I used
> a short-cut. I believe that the entire Bible was inspired by God, and
> was
> intended to be read and studied as His "user's instruction manual for
> proper
> living." As such, I believe that He guided its composition so that
> sincere
> but simple-minded readers could understand it. To me, it is obvious
> that a
> sincere and simple-minded reader would get the impression that it was
> intended to be taken at its face value, which is a literally true
> document.
> (Of course, you don't have to be simple-minded to understand it.
> :-) You
> just have to keep your priorities straight -- put God first, and human
> wisdom
> second. The simple text describes six literal days (not eras), and
> other
> Biblical statements show that the action of His creation was within
> the last
> 6 or 8 millennia. I don't know of a single historical writing in the
> Bible
> that has ever been documented as untrue, in contrast to many errors
> found in
> other ancient books. There have been several archaeologists who have
> tried
> to find such errors, and ended up as Bible believers.
>
> ...................................................
> 4. Radioactive dating is based on the assumption of
> Uniformitarianism
> -- the idea that the present is essentially the product of the past,
> and that
> no massive supernatural event has taken place, that could not be
> detected and
> measured by present-day science. In other words, there is the basic
> belief
> that our world has come into being by some sort of slow materialistic
> process
> of cosmic evolution. In still other words, the Pb-206 that we find
> around us
> got there only by the decay of U-238. (There are other decay chains
> that
> I'll ignore for now.) One of the key calibrations for U-Pb dating
> came from
> measurement of various lead isotopes in iron meteorites. As Henry
> Faul says,
> "If one assumes that the solar system condensed from a primordial
> cloud, it
> follows that the materials of planets, asteroids, and meteorites have
> a
> common origin. ..." [Faul, "Ages of Rocks, Planets, and Stars,"
> McGraw-Hill, 1966]
>
> Using this key UNPROVABLE assumption, one can prove that the
> earth is
> ancient. BUT THAT IS CIRCULAR LOGIC, based on the initial assumption
> of a
> slow materialistic origin.
>
> These two items together show the incoherence of this man's
> thought on these matters. Of course assumptions need to be made in
> order to use radioactive dating - but assumptions have to be made in
> any scientific work. The argument, however, is not "circular" in the
> proper sense - i.e., one doesn't assume the antiquity of the earth but
> only something about the original abundances of isotopes.
> But then there is apparently complete unawareness of the fact that
> he is making presuppositions, & the most naive ones possible, about
> the character of the biblical text. & this naivete is accompanied by
> the hubris of telling us, as if he were a biblical scholar how Genesis
> was written. (Sorry, I accidentally snipped this. See the original
> post.)
> It's a tragedy that competent scientists and biblical scholars
> have to spend their time refuting this kind of stuff over and over
> again, tired old arguments that have long ago been disposed of. & it
> could just be left unanswered, like claims for phrenology and circle
> squaring, if it weren't for the fact that it causes so much havoc
> among churches, distorts the gospel, and gives people the impression
> that they have to blow their brains out before they can be Christians.
>
>
> Shalom,
>
>
> George
>
> George L. Murphy
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> "The Science-Theology Interface"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 22 2001 - 12:46:27 EDT