>Evolution is basically a religious philosophy. Both creation and evolution
>are religous views of life upon which people build their particular models
>of philisophy, science or history. The issue, therefore, is not science
>versus religion but religion versus religion (the science of one religion
>versus the science of another religion).
>
Randy, I don't think it is quite as siumple as this. It is an issue of
Christians mis-representing the observational data! For instance, the
existence of the geologic column is often said to be fictional by one
creationist author after another.
Randy Wysong wrote:
"Surprising as it may seem, the only real evidence for the
geological succession of life, as represented by the timetable, is
found in the mind of the geologist and on the paper upon which the
chart is drawn. Nowhere in the earth is the complete succession of
fossils found as they are portrayed in the chart."~Randy L. Wysong,
The Creation-Evolution Controversy, (Midland Mich.: Inquiry Press,
1976), p. 348
Henry Morris wrote:
"Remember that the geologic column is largely an artificial
construct, not existing as a whole in any one location. Local
geologic columns do exist, however, and it is these that preserve
the remnants of geologic history."~Henry M. Morris, "The Geologic
Column and the Flood of Genesis", Creation Research Society
Quarterly 33:1(June, 1996), p. 53
Friar and Davis write:
"One example of a uniformitarian approach to geology is the so
called law of superposition. Because successive sedimentary rock
strata are deposited in a regular fashion today, younger strata
should lie on top of older ones. So the uppermost fossils in a
column of sediment should be the youngest, and the lower ones the
oldest. Unfortunately, a two-billion-year-old succession of
sediments is unavailable for examination. Such events as mountain-
building, continental drift, and erosion are said to have destroyed
much of the record. So the total fossil history of the earth must
be pieced together from fragments here and there that have been
spared for our examination.
"It is not easy, however, to tell where widely separated
strata of equivalent age may be. Here is where a degree of
circularity enters the geological reasoning. All too often the age
of a stratum is inferred from the fossils it contains, but the
fossils' age is established on the basis of other geologic
formations (sometimes on a different continent), and sometimes on
the basis of very haphazard studies carried out in the nineteenth
or even eighteenth centuries. Faced with this problem, many
geologists decide the age of a stratum by asking biologists to
estimate how primitive the organisms contained in it are. So the
age of the fossil determines its evolutionary position, but the
fossils' evolutionary position determines its age! Uniformitarians
elude this objection to thier methods by recourse to 'absolute'
dating methods, which we will soon discuss."~Wayne Frair and
Percival Davis, A Case For Creation, 3rd ed., (Chicago: Moody
Press, 1983), p. 66
All of these guys are observationally wrong. Go to western North Dakota and
drill an oil well. You will drill through rocks of every geologic period.
The fossils are all found in proper order just as seen on the geological
charts. The W.H. Hunt Trust, Larson #1 well, drilled in McKenzie Co. North
Dakota and 80 other wells from that county, penetrated all geologic periods.
There are over 20 other locations on earth where the entire geologic column is
piled up in proper order. See my web page (at the bottom) for a very, very
detailed description of the entire geologic column. Why do Christian
apologists fail to do the proper research to know this? I think it is because
they prefer not to know. Knowing things like this means you have to deal with
the information.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm