From: swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Atheist Evangelical?!
Date: 23 Nov 92 23:53:52 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <14NOV199217202934@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>, lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) writes:
|>  Instead, he argued that the geological
|> time scale is correct.  He argued that flood geology is garbage--flood
|> geologists don't even know the difference between clastic and chemical
|> sediment, which he explained and gave lots of pictures of rock in the
|> Grand Canyon.

This is, if anything, an understatement.  As far as I can tell they do not even
know the difference between ripple cross-bedding and bedding planes!
[And, considering that that distinction is described in the first few chapters
of any book on sedimentology ...]

|> Citing the most recent (Nov. 1992) Scientific American, he said that
|> evolution isn't a big tree, but a forest.  (The article was by Jeffrey
|> Levinton, or something like that.)  He argued that this accords with
|> the Genesis account.

Ah yes, taking the debate about the origin of 'higher' life forms (multi-
cellular animals, mostly) and misapplying the results to life as a whole.

Yes, there is a fairly well respected hypothesis (perhaps even theory) that
multicellular animals form a forest rather than a tree, and that is what the
Scientific American article was about.  But even in this form the idea is
scarcely the current consensus.

Applying it to the origin of all life is simply bogus.

|>    He talked about Genesis in some detail, pointing out the difference
|> between the verbs bara (creation only done by God) and asah (which
|> humans or natural processes can do).  He pointed out that in the creation
|> of man, both words are used.  The "Let us make man in our image" is bara,
|> but "God formed man out of the earth" is asah.  Clayton interprets this
|> to mean that God created man's spiritual aspect, but that human beings
|> as physical creatures evolved.  He made some other arguments that
|> various aspects of Genesis match the scientific picture (e.g., continental
|> drift and Genesis 1:9).

Nice, now what is meant by "man's spiritual aspects"?  What are they?  How do
we recognize them?

|>    He critiqued the Ussher calculations, pointing out that they were
|> based on assumptions that there are no undated verses in the Bible,
|> no missing people in genealogies, genealogies are always in chronological
|> order, no historical period is omitted from the Bible, and that the
|> genealogies in the Bible were given for chronological reasons.  He argued
|> (with examples) that every one of these assumptions is incorrect.

Reasonable, since Ussher himself did not believe his calculations to be
unassailable - he knew quite well he was making some uncertain assumptions.

It was only thier (unauthorized by the author) inclusion in an English translation
of the Bible that gave them thier current near-scriptural status.

|>    He argued that uniformitarianism is false on the basis of the asteroid
|> collision theory of dinosaur extinction and "quick-frozen" mammoths.

He seems to be equating basic uniformitarianism (the basis of all historical
sciences) with Lyellism - the idea that all things procede at uniform rates.
The current uniformitarianism is quite confortable with asteroid collisions and
frozen mammoths, only Lyell and his students would have been upset by these
things (and that was last century).

|>  He also had some valid criticisms of
|> dogmatism in grade school textbooks (omitting relevant evidence, presenting
|> theories which scientists don't hold anymore, presenting speculation as
|> fact).

So do I.  I would add, simplification of concepts to the point of falsity,
presentation of science as a list of 'known facts', failure to present
standards of evidence ...

I have found maybe *two* recent children's books on dinosaurs I would actually
recommend (including the one in the "U.S.A." series).

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com