Moorad wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Moorad Alexanian<alexanian@uncwil.edu>
>[mailto:alexanian@uncwil.edu]
>Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 10:39 AM
>To: george murphy; Glenn Morton
>Cc: Asa@Calvin. Edu
>Subject: RE: Flawed anthro views of RTB
>
>
>George when an author writes a novel and creates all the
>characters and the
>world in which these characters exist, isn't there a logical
>consistency that
>the author can insist on? Couldn't our world be analogous to that? Moorad
Then it is a sham, a fraud. More ominously it is another form of the
appearance of age argument which means we can't trust our senses. I will
explain because George is hitting at a very important point of inconsistency
among the anti-evolutionists.
If the nuclear resonances were not fixed as they are, we could not have
evolved. For instance there are three features of nucleosynthesis which must
exist or elements higher than helium wouldn't exist. If the precise
resonances were not as they are, either stars would burn their fuel very
quickly and thus explode or nothing higher than helium would exist. See
1 nuclear resonances in formation of carbon p 251
2 fortuitous non resonance of O16
3 radioactive nature of Beryllium 8 p 253
John D. Barrow Frank J. Tipler THE ANTHROPIC COSMOLOGICAL
PRINCIPLE New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Now, If life didn't evolve, this doesn't mean anything for creation because
everything including the resonances and rates of decay of beryllium means
nothing for the origin of life, in spite of it looking like it should. The
truth is, in this scenario, that life was magically and instantaneously
created which gives us no reason to understand why the resonances are as
they are. In the special creation viewpoint, life didn't need the resonances
in order to be created. Thus they are meaningless but they make the universe
look rigged for an evolutionary scenario. If that is the case, then our
senses can not tell us the truth about the universe.
AND IF OUR SENSES CAN'T TELL US THE TRUTH ABOUT THE UNIVERSE FROM THE SENSE
DATA WHICH COMES TO OUR EYES, EARS ETC., THEN HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE THINK
WE READ IN THE BIBLE IS WHAT IS ACTUALLY ON THE PAGE? The gospel depends
utterly upon our ability to trust both our sense data and logic. That is
what the disciples based their decisions upon when they came to believe that
Jesus was the Christ. But make the universe a grand illusion and we can't
trust that the resurrection isn't illusory also! Christians often envisage a
universe in which the age is one of only appearance, or the anthropic
coincidences are illusory, where what looks like evolution really isn't,
where animals which have 98% the same DNA sequence aren't related even
though they appear to be, where human-like behavior found in the fossil
record doesn't indicate humanity, where what looks like speciation isn't
speciation, where transitional-looking fossils really aren't transitional
fossils, where the gradual complexification of life in the Precambrian isn't
really the gradual complexification of life, etc. All of the above are
cases where the sense data is doubted for theological reasons, with the
doubter often thinking he is doing Christianity a service when in fact he is
undermining the entire reason for our faith--the real, non-illusory
resurrection which was determined to happen based solely upon sense data!
Beleive the sense data!
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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