>> ... Kelvin ... once calculated that powered flight was not possible.
>
>Do you have a reference on this flight comment by Kelvin?
Kenneth R. Miller; chapter "Scientific Creationism Versus Evolution:
the Mislabled Debate", in _Science and Creationism_, Ashley Montagu,
Ed., Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 58
>> Anyway, Barnes nowhere gives any calculations in the _Impact_ articles,
>> and I bet he doesn't in the _Acts and Facts_ article either.
>
>I wonder if it was really lifted from an article he cites by Slichter
>1964 because Barnes said on page 2 of the impact article that slichter
>said that the "the time scale of the earth-moon system still presents a
>major problem."
Given Barnes' propensity for making silly arguments and misrepresenting
sources, I'd bet that Slichter's article doesn't support his claims, but
is about something rather different. I don't have easy access to the
journal in which Slichter wrote (Barnes cites this as Slichter, Louis B.,
"Secular Effects of Tidal Friction Upon the Earth's Rotation," _Jour.
Geoph. Res._, 1964, Vol. 8, No. 14, pp. 4281-4288. Perhaps someone
else can look this up quickly; otherwise it'll take me a few days.
>well the Kelvin (that is, Barnes Impact article 16) seems to be more
>about rotation rather than the distance to the moon.
Yes, but the two things are intimately related.
>I feel that now I have to be in the strange position of defending YEC's
>in general. We really shoulding judge all YEC's behaviors based on
>Huse.
Of course. My comments were based not just on Huse's book, but on
what I've read in many YEC books. On a variety of online forums I
keep seeing references to tertiary books like Huse's, and invariably
they are of extremely poor quality. Take a look at the very popular
_It's a Young World After All_ by Paul D. Ackerman. It's sold in
virtually all Christian bookstores. How about the books by Bowden,
Kofahl & Segraves, Parker, Ham, Baugh, Chittick? Gish, Morris and
Austin are an order of magnitude better, but are simply more
sophisticated in communicating their misunderstandings. The only
(apparently) YEC book I've ever read that even comes close to being
reasonable is Marvin Lubenow's _Bones of Contention_. Many of the
people who write ICR monographs produce better material than do the
greater lights, but they invariably neglect extremely important
published counterarguments. The basic flavor of this body of material
is to poke holes in standard science wherever possible, and to ignore
everything that doesn't fit with YEC ideas or the hole-poking. As
Davis Young has pointed out, this is embarrassing for honest, non-YEC
Christians.
I initially got into this field when I started researching the 1985
book by Jehovah's Witnesses called _Life - How Did it Get Here? By
Evolution or by Creation?_ I was appalled to find how much the book
misrepresented science and scientists' comments. I had to look at
many YEC books because the JW author plagiarized many of his arguments
from them. The book even plagiarized a book written to support a
paranormalist view of the origin of life, _The Neck of the Giraffe_
(Francis Hitching, 1982). The result of this research was that I
concluded that YEC's and JWs had a fundamentally dishonest mindset
in dealing with origins issues. Nothing I've seen contradicts that
conclusion.
>Indeed, I think Huse's book is one of my top two absolute worst
>creationist books, which is saying something about its quality.
Which is the other one?
>However, I don't think it's really fair to accuse YEC's of poor work
>based on what Huse did. After all, these kinds of mistakes are made in
>all fields, not just YECs. Huse's book can stand as a horrible example
>of this sort of thing, but beyond that, we should be cautious.
Quite right. The work of most other YEC authors falls on its own
lack of merit.
Alan