From: SPC (spc1941@juno.com)
Date: Fri Apr 18 2003 - 19:07:34 EDT
Mr. Fischer:
I can remember how this very argument helped to put the nails into YEC's coffin (at least for me) back when I was questioning the young-earth approach that I had always grown up with. So, as someone who was convinced in part by the alternating polarities equidistant from mid-ocean rifts, maybe I can offer some insight into your own presentation of the argument.
(1) I remember watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel (or some network like that) where they displayed a black-and-white schematic of the alternating polarities running parallel to the mid-ocean rifts. The episode had nothing to do with creationism, but the picture was so compelling that its implications for the age of the Earth were immediately apparent. Words just can't do justice in describing the amazing regularity from one region of polarity to the next. So if you can find a comparable schematic that plots various magnetic readings progressing outward from the rifts, it would help drive the point home in big way.
(2) Part of your presentation seems to hinge on creationists believing that these alternating regions were all formed during the Flood. I'm certainly not an expert on the YEC movement, but I doubt that this is true for all creationists (or even most of them). Let me provide an alternative approach that doesn't depend on when YEC's think the polarity regions came into being. It's the same logic that first confronted me years ago.
The different regions of polarity pointed to events that technically never occurred if the Earth were only a few thousand years old. Whether the regions of polarity were made during the Flood or during a recent creation, they still point to reversals in the Earth's magnetic field that simply never happened if YEC is correct.
At the time I was also pondering the dilemma posed by supernova SN1987a. The star was found to be 170,000 light years away and so the star's explosion never really occurred in a YEC universe. It was just made to look that way so that astronomers and astrophysicists were really studying a non-event.
The problem posed by the polarity regions parallel to the mid-ocean rifts was the straw that broke the camel's back. I realized that I had been postulating a Matrix-like Earth and universe (referring the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix) where mankind is surrounded by an environment much of which isn't authentic but merely seems to be real. I was holding to a system of thought that, in essence, claimed many of the events observed on the Earth and in the universe simply never occurred in spite of all appearances to the contrary.
Since I was unwilling to believe that the Lord would place us into a Matrix-like "reality", I gave up my belief in YEC and chose instead to allow reality to be real.
Steve
________________________________________________________________
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 : Fri Apr 18 2003 - 19:09:37 EDT