From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (Class Guest3)
Subject: Re: Progressive Creationism Part 2
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 15:10:16 GMT

Bruce Salem (salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: 	The kind of reconciliation of Scripture with Geology
: which Mr. Acker submits is highly suspect. Even with his disclaimer
: that he doesn't agree with all of it, one suspects that Jim's willingness
: to post it implies that he thinks that it is a worthwhle approach.
 	
	Hmmm... a worthwhile approach?  From a strict scientific viewpoint,
I could care less if Scripture jives with what science has determined.  From a
religious viewpoint, I find the discussion interesting.  I gather from 
reading Boice that this is a series of lessons on Genesis he presented to his
church.  Since there are 60 chapters, somebody must have thought it 
worthwhile.  (Boice is pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.)
	The conference on origins I attended at Washington Cathedral basically
said this:  The scientific or religious investigation of origins is valid.
But they should not overlap -- they are different spheres and pursued
for different purposes.

: 	Now, having seen Jim's bio, I can say that someone who writes
: papers on the chemistry of minerals in aqueous systems, and I presume
: something about diagenetic processes, is not necessarily an expert on
: subjects such as stratigraphy, geochronology, etc.
:
	Not an expert.  When one chooses to specialize in a field up to
the Ph.D. level, you become an expert in that field.  My expertise lies
in chemistry, surface reactions, seawater composition, surface weathering
processes, etc.
	But you pick up a lot of knowledge on the way.  For example, 
water masses are dated with bomb-produced carbon-14 or tritium.  I might
need to know a little about geochronology to understand that.  Also, 
sediment deposition rates are determined from thorium isotopes, which
have a high scavenging efficiency for particulates.  The exact isotopes
are in the book behind me, if you want them.
	Stratigraphy -- in my surface weathering study in the Catoctin
Mountains of Maryland, there are several different geologic units with
differing susceptibilities to acidification.  The Catoctin formation,
a metabasalt consisting primarily of epidote and albite, has secondary
calcite that contributes to a high acid-neutralizing capacity (ANC).  The
Wissahickon quartzite has a much lower ANC;  hence, the streams have a higher
susceptibility to acidification.  I have to know a little
stratigraphy, too.  I know what it is, and when somebody tells me that
a feature is Ordovician and not Devonian, I know he's talking about geologic
ages though I have to check the chart to remember which one is older.
	BTW, Bruce, how much do you know about:  the difference between
first-order and second-order reaction kinetics?  Nucleophilic substitution
reactions?  Inhibition of calcite reaction rates by adsorption of phosphate
ions?  The structure of vermiculite?  Clay mineral chemistry (which might
be important to the formation of the K-T boundary iridium anomaly?)   
I apologize up front for not being Isaac Asimov, who knew darn near 
everything about everything.
 
: 	What really bothers me is the lack of care already evident
: about language, the kind found in Scripture and the kind found in
: scientific work, as though they must be reconciled. They cannot be
: reconciled as if they use the same standards of knowledge, or the
: same type of experience, or the same standard of objectivity. Religion
: is not science and vice versa, and the language of the former cannot
: be reconciled with the language of the latter. It is that the contexts
	
	True!  But in order to show that not everyone is so 
unreasonable as the ICR hacks, I'm posting Progressive Creationism to show
that intelligent inerrantists still grant a lot more weight to science than
our San Diego friends.  What is Progressive Creationism, exactly?  It's
an attempt to show that the simple framework of the Genesis story doesn't
have to be at odds with the detailed knowledge of Earth's origins 
determined by science.  It isn't a theory by itself (anybody reading it
can tell that) -- it's a conscious attempt to calm the troubled minds
of believers.  It's Davis Young's search for the calm center.

: cannot be bent to become the same. The epistemological bases are not
: reconciliable. I prefer to make appeals to faith personal and psychological
: having no external correspondence, and to leave science with a weak
: claim to knowledge as weak as humanly possible, and to not allow for
: Mankind the knowledge he gives to Gods, including his ability to know
: Gods or to speak for them. Scripture is human speech of what humans
: thought God said to them, nothing more. Those prophets can have nothing
: more in knowledge any of the rest of us can have.
	
	Right.  But just to throw another light on it...
	If you completely ignore whether or not the prophets were inspired
by God(s), the fact that these texts were preserved gives insight into the
way that the historical peoples related to and interpreted the world 
around them.  Only a few privileged individuals in any society are given
the lofty title of "commentator":  George Will, Jonathan Swift, C.S. Lewis,
Thomas Paine (? on name, author of "Common Sense"), Jean-Paul Sartre,
etc.  Perhaps they do have more in knowledge than the rest of us have, 
whether or not that knowledge is God-inspired.

: Bruce Salem

	Jim Acker
	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: talk.origins