First off, Carter's refusal to use anyone who knew anything about the oil
industry in the Energy Department had absolutely nothing to do with financial
improprieties or fear of them. The applicants were willing to divest
themselves of stock etc. That was not an issue. Carter was afraid that they
wouldn't be OBJECTIVE. As a result, we got a real mess. We have had similar
problems in the Clinton administration.
I would respectfully disagree with you that this is like asking O.J's family
to be on a jury. The issues of science is not decided by jury. To be able to
judge whether the chain of logic in a particular science is valid or not
requires years of study and much knowledge. I am totally incapable of
judging the validity of the recent mathematical proof of Fermat's last
theorem (a really big deal to mathematicians). So how do I know this guy
isn't lying? I have to depend upon the word of his peers who have the
knowledge to judge whether or not his proof is a PROOF. Even most
mathematicians do not have the expertise in that particular area of math to
be able to judge the proof's validity.
You obviously seriously question whether or not the scientist will tell you
the truth about evolution or the data of evolution. But your question goes
beyond simply the area of evolution. So tell me how you or I as laymen in
mathematics, would tell whether a claim of mathematical proof is valid?
I wrote:
>> My
>>suggestion as a friend is try to steer them away from geology.
Kevin replied
>No -- I don't think steering them AWAY from geology is the answer,
>Glenn. I think the answer lies in seeking how to investigate the
>evidence of geology and find out what else *might have* happened.<<
I spent 15 years in a very intense search looking for " what else *might
have* happened." I was a professional geoscientist with access to more
geological data than ANY university has access to.The fact is that the
majority of detailed geological, seismological and well core data is housed
in the warehouses of the oil industry. They have more money to spend on
scientific data collection.
With access to all this data, and attempting every solution I could think of
I failed to find a single hypothesis which would both explain the data of
geology AND a global flood. In fact, until I came up with the views I now
hold, I was unable to geologically support a local flood which would fit the
physical description of the flood in the Bible.
Of course you can say I was just too dumb to figure it out. But I will
guarantee you one thing, I gave that approach everything I had and it simply
couldn't be done. If someone else can do it, my hat is off to
them--seriously. I finally had to come to the conclusion that I couldn't do
it and I knew of no one else who could either.
And in the process of looking for a solution I had to sweep out of the way so
many erroneous "facts". Morris writes:
>> "So we have done what we could, trying to concentrate our
research efforts wherever the potential impact in terms of
Christian witness would be greatest in relation to expenditures.
To a large extent, this criterion has led us to focus on geological
field studies, especially on so-called overthrust formations and on
anomalous fossils. If it can be shown, by studies at the thrust
planes, that enough of these 'thrust faults' are not really
overthrusts but only normal sedimentary sequences, or if it can be
shown that several supposed out-of place fossils have not really
been dispaced at all but have been normally deposited with the
encasing sediments, then the standard geologic age system would
eventually have to be abandoned in favor of the creation/flood
model of earth history."
"Teams have therefore been sent to study overthrusts in
Colorado, Nevada, and other places. Other teams have studied
anomalous fossil sites in Utah, Oklahoma, and other places. In
each case, the evidence seemed strongly to favor the creation/flood
model, but was not sufficiently compelling by itself to settle the
question, and so we did not publish the results at the time."~Henry
M. Morris, A History of Modern Creationism, (San Diego: Master Book
Publishers, 1984), p. 251.
George McReady Price, an early creationist started the disbelief in thrusts.
He wrote:
>> "In other words, those who first examined and reported on
these various cases thought that the rocks had of course been laid
down as we find them. But afterwards, when it was discovered that
the fossils were in the reverse of the 'invariable' order, they and
their fellow geologists had to invent the theory of thrust faults,
and say that the 'older' rocks must have been lifted up and pushed
over bodily on top of the much 'younger' ones in order to save the
reputation of their 'invariable' world time-table."~George McCready
Price, The Geological Ages Hoax, (New York: Fleming H. Revell,
1931), p. 79<<
What these guys, who don't work with oil company data, miss, is the well
logs, which drill through sedimentary rocks in a particular sequence then
drill through 10,000 feet of GRANITE (not a sedimentary rock) and then drill
back into sediment with the same fossils, same order as what was on top. The
granite and the overlying sediments had been thrusted over the lower
sediments for many miles. The sediments above and below contain the same
sedimentological characters, the same fossils all in the same order.
Since Granite is not sedimentary, it could not have been deposited by a
flood. Thus there had to be an overthrust! Seismic data in conjuntion with
the well gives a picture of how the thrust dips into the earth. If anyone
wants a reference I will provide one.
So tell me, when I see data like this, contradicting what a young earth
creationist says, am I to remain silent? And how are you going to verify the
claim of the young earth creationist as well as the claim of the scientist in
this case?
Kevin quoted Raup saying that we have "EVEN
>FEWER EXAMPLES OF EVOLUTIONARY TRANSITION THAN WE
>HAD IN DARWIN'S TIME."<<
Well, let's trade quotes. Even from the beginning, some evolutionists
thought Darwin was wrong in his view of how evolution occurred. Creationists
want to confine all evolutionists to an agreement with Darwin. Darwin could
be wrong and he was wrong on the way speciation occurred. That does not
necessarily disprove evolution any more than the fact that Wegener,(who
proposed continental drift), wrong about his suggested mechanism, disproves
continental drift.
Thomas Huxley wrote:
"Mr Darwin's position might...have been even stronger than it is, if he had
not embarrassed himself with the aphorism 'Natura non facit saltum' [Nature
makes no leaps]...nature does make jumps now and then, and a recognition of
the fact is of no small importance." in Ian Tattersall, _The Fossil Trail_,
Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 37-38
glenn