Regarding Chuck's recent broadcast/review of
the book, Rare Earth...Here's some jottings that
he ought to take note of in future.
Sincerely, Edward T. Babinski
(author of Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists,
and editor of Cretinism or Evilution?)
ed.babinski@furman.edu
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_babinski/
>>the conventional
>>wisdom that the universe is teeming with intelligent
>>life.
Who ever said the universe was "teeming" with life?
That's akin to confusing "Star Trek and Star Wars"
images of the universe with modern day astronomy.
>>They simply don't think the evidence
>>supports the view that the universe is full of
>>planets suitable for life.
Who ever said the universe was "full" of
planets suitable for life? Some, planets maybe,
including planets like ours, which is just one planet
out of over 50 billion galaxies each containing over
a billion stars. Probably the majority of life
on other planets (should it evolve there and
should we visit them) will turn out to be small
and simple. After all, single celled life forms
dominated our planet for over a billion years,
which is longer than all the time that multicellular
life forms have dominated our planet.
>>Many recently discovered gas giants, like Jupiter,
>>surprised astronomers by exhibiting wildly
>>eccentric, or highly ellipitical orbits.
The gas giants that astronomers have recently discovered
circling nearby stars are, I believe,
LARGER than Jupiter. And they HAVE to BE in order
for us to DETECT them with our relatively
crude telescopes which still can't pick up
visual images of planets as small as our earth.
But the fact that rings of matter have been seen
orbiting nearby stars has lead astronomers to
conclude that planetary systems around stars
other than the earth are not as improbable
as previously thought.
>>Finally, Brownlee and Ward argue that Jupiter's
>>immense size protects the Earth. With its great
>>mass, 318 times greater than the Earth's, Jupiter
>>scatters comets and other bodies that might
>>otherwise catastrophically collide with our planet.
There have been FIVE, count them, FIVE major
extinctions in the past on our planet.
And evidence of disasterous asteroid impacts
can be found throughout the geologic column.
So, I think that even the great OZ of a planet
called, "Jupiter" isn't so great at scattering
comets and other bodies that catastrophically
collide with our planet. Not to mention that
astronomers have recognized over a hundred large
asteroids whose orbits round the sun intersect
with our planet's own orbit round the sun.
So it's not exactly a "garden of Eden" here on
our little world.
>>The Solar System's position in the galaxy, the Moon's vital
>>contribution to the Earth's rotation, the role of
>>plate tectonics
Plate tectonics!? A young-earth creationist's WORST
nightmare. According to Bob Schadewald, who has attended
numerous creationist conferences over the past two
decades, one of the best arguments against young-earth
creationism is that "we have irrefutible proof via
plate tectonics that radiometric dating can provide reliable dates.
Investigations of global plate tectonics resulted in
a computer model of plate motions, where the direction
component of the motion vector could be generated
using using ordinary geologic methods, but the magnitude
component ultimately (via magnetic striping) is based on
radiometric dating. In recent years, numerous (hundreds,
I think) measurements of relative plate motions have
been made using special equipment and the Global Positioning System.
The measurements match the predictions of the model beautifully.
If radiometric dating doesn't work, then how does this happen?
Why are the measurements so close to the predictions and so
repeatable? FWIW, I gave copies of a paper on this to
several creationists last year at International Creationist
Conference 98, some of them long-time friends. Not *one*
of them has made any attempt to respond. In my experience,
when creationists hide from an argument and won't even attempt
to respond, it means that they have retreated to their
last resort: Deep denial. That is why I still advocate
hammering them with this one." (Bob Schadewald)
Bob is talking about the way the sea floor spreads from
the center of the Atlantic with the most recent dates
coming from where the spreading begins, and the
oldest dates moving outward from where the spreading
began, the dates match the expectations based on
the measured movements of the plates via the Global
Positioning System and land based measrements, which
are conclusively known and proven and which cumulate
each year, so there is no doubt that such movement is
taking place and at what rate. Such data is "death"
to young-earth creationism. Another similar death
knell for creationism is the carbon-dated layers of
a varved lake bed in Japan that go back 30,000 years,
each deeper layer being older than the previous one,
by a year. Or the carbon-dated tree ring series, of
which there presently are three that go back to
10,000 years, each individual tree ring from inner
to outer, being carbon-dated one year older. The matches
in all such cases attest to an age for the cosmos
that exceeds the young-earth creationist's ages for
the earth.
>>-- one line of evidence after another
>>lead Rare Earth's authors to conclude that our
>>planetary home is quite possibly unique.
With so much of the cosmos unexplored, I doubt
that anyone is ready to announce with truly
scientific satisfaction that a planet such as
ours with intelligent life on it is necessarily "unique."
We just don't know. But people like Colson
apparently "do" because "the Bible tells them so."
>>The evidence, like that reported in their book,
>>makes the case for intelligent design just as the great
>>scientist Isaac Newton understood it hundreds of years
>>ago.
What bombast. Nobody has "made" the case
for intelligent design (see book review below).
And certainly the authors of even the book
that Colson is praising have made no such
statement, but merely pointed out the relatively
lucky circumstances in which we have found ourselves
on this planet.
Furthermore, speaking of Newton and praising
his "insight," what about all of Newton's thousands
of pages of biblical research that led him to reject
the TRINITY, and convinced him the world was only
a couple thousand years old, (though Newton
admitted that the world was older than Ussher
said, because some of the "days" of creation
were believed by Newton to be a couple thousand
years long). Or what about Newton's brilliant biblical
research that led him to predict the world would end
before our century?
>>What's exciting is that intelligent design is now
>>returning to science: scientists need only the
>>openness to embrace it.
Intelligent design is not "returning to science."
Saying that "God did it" may induce awe in believers,
but a scientist still wants to know HOW, and will
investigate HOW the cosmos was formed via a series
of steps that scientists can formulate and understand.
Even if it never happened quite that way, a scientist
would STILL want to know HOW the Designer came up
with certain ideas and HOW He implemented them, step
by step. It's that step by step knowledge that
science is interested in, not just stopping with
"it popped into existence." That's where the theologian's job
ENDS and the scientist's questions BEGIN.
HOW do you "pop" something into existence, by what means
and steps did the Designer change mud into man, and form
creatures from the earth? And why were things done
THAT way rather than any OTHER?
And why couldn't or why didn't the Designer
make birds with light bones and curved light skulls
and large keel bones and a host of other adaptations for
flight, right from the start? Why start with
obviously lizard shaped creatures with heavy bones,
long dragging boney tails, teeth, trangular thick
reptilian skulls, small keel bones, unfused
wrist bones (which make maneuverability in the air
less easy), that lack other features, like
the small guiding feather the avula of modern birds?
Why did the Designer in other words, work his way
UP to modern birds (including the humming bird
which is the only one that can fly backwards, a
recently designed variety) instead of being able to
create them perfect the first time? The same goes
for many other creatures in the fossil record
whose changes did not come "instantaneously" but
in steps.
I'd love to see Colson review recent book, Destiny or Chance :
Our Solar System and Its Place in the Cosmos
by Stuart Ross Taylor Written by a leading planetary scientist,
this book tells the remarkable story of how our solar system came
into existence, in other words, it's past history, step by step.
It provides a fast-paced, non-technical and expert tour of our new
understanding of the Earth, its planetary neighbours and other
planetary systems. En route we discover that chance events have shaped
the course of the history of our solar system. Dramatic collisions,
for example, caused the tilts and spins of the planets, the extinction
of the dinosaurs and the rise of man. For all those interested in
understanding our solar system and its place in the cosmos, this is
a lucid and compelling read.
Best, Edward T. Babinski
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