I like the look and feel of this blog.

Work - that is a vocation given to us by God, to bless our neighbor. We do long for the day in hope.

My last day in the city is 8 Aug. Come by for lunch my son, it is my shout.

Blessings,

Lito (your uncle)

This post is appropriate for me. I wanted to write you sooner but I procrastinated. Had been thrown into the deep end and have not contacted yet that venture capitalist, I am trying to track him down. Have you BTW seen Ben Stein’s Expelled?

Blessings,

LPC

I agree with much of what your interpretation is with regards to the presentation. Despite that agreement, I am still a young earth creationist.

God bless.

Firstly, it was the fourth event presented by Creation Ministries International that I have been to (although it was called Answers in Genesis for the first two), and it had more content than at least the last two I went to (I can’t really remember the first one). That said, it didn’t have as much ‘content’ and ‘evidence’ as I was expecting, especially given the topic was ‘Evidence for Noah’s Flood in Australia’. I was expecting explanations of why various specific geological structures in Australia are the way they are because of the flood. Instead, a number of ‘traditional’ young earth creationist arguments were put forward – ‘polystrate fossils’, ‘catastrophes’ can cause geological features, various things to do with the Mount Saint Helens eruption and radiocarbon dating doesn’t work; and not much of that was in reference to Australian geological features in particular.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. The presentation began (after the 2 Peter reference) with a mention that scientists think there was a global flood on Mars (which has no liquid water on it today) while they are quite sure that there hasn’t been a global flood on Earth (which is 75% covered in water with an average depth of about 4km). My first thought was something like ‘that’s because there’s probably evidence for a global flood on Mars but not on Earth’ (I don’t very often see scientists claiming things are true that they have no evidence for), but a bit of research makes me think the claim Tas made is not correct. What is true is that scientists do think that there has been some massive flooding on Mars in the past, even enough to name a geologic age the Noachian age due to the flooding that occurred at this time - the floods were twice as large as the largest known floods on earth, but they were not global (http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/722/3, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/martian-met/geology.html). However, I can’t find anything about a global flood on Mars except at various creationist sites. My comment here is that, even if the claim was true, it wouldn’t mean anything (other than being a nice one sentence argument). But the claim seems to be wrong, and this is one of the things that annoy me. Even if creationism is correct (concerning their claims about the age of the earth and the global flood), it is not going to convince people if the arguments/evidence put forward is just wrong, especially when the evidence is based on misrepresenting what scientists already think.

After this, there was a lot of talk about how various geological features can be caused by ‘catastrophes’ (namely, floods). I didn’t really see the point in this as it only demonstrated that catastrophes have played a part in shaping the earth as it is today. (I guess it would be reassuring for a creationist who didn’t follow the arguments very closely as they could see it as evidence that Noah’s flood made the earth look like it does, but that’s not what the evidence showed.) My main point here is that mainstream geologists also think that various catastrophes have played a part in shaping the earth. For example, the dominant theory for the origin of our moon is the giant impact hypothesis, which states that a Mars sized body collided with the Earth soon after the formation of the Earth (a catastrophe somewhat greater than a global flood); the English Channel is thought to have been caused by two rather large floods a few hundred thousand years ago; there are about 170 known meteor impact craters on earth, some of which are rather large (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth) – the 170km Chicxulub crater in Mexico is about 65 million years old, and is often thought to be at least partly responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs (or more correctly, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event). Apart from those, there have been some quite violent volcanoes (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Garita_Caldera) and huge tsunamis (which can be caused by meteor impacts in water). But mainstream geologists see these events occurring on Earth where some much more gradual changes also take place – a few billion years of plate tectonics and weathering come to mind. So yes, catastrophes do happen.

There was a claim made concerning the formation of coal – that an experiment was done in which wood and clay was put in a test tube and heated for a month and that brown coal was formed from this. Tas went on to say that if they did it for longer, they ended up with something like black coal. The problem with this is that it isn’t quite true. They didn’t use wood, they used lignite, one of the materials that wood is composed of (and this does make a difference). And it didn’t produce coal (Tas may not have said that coal was produced, but if you weren’t listening closely, I’m sure you would have gotten the impression that they did make coal), it produced something that chemically resembled coal. Here again we have a claim which is misleading at best, and at least some of what was said was wrong. (http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen99/gen99424.htm, http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/kuechmann_cretin_comedy_II.htm (although that site isn’t particularly nice at times, it does have some things that shouldn’t be ignored.))

Anyway, I was going to write a bit more (especially on radiocarbon dating), but this is probably long enough for one post.

That’s a terrible definition of science.

A couple of things which can be clarified briefly are:

1. The impression I got from 2 Peter 3:3-4 is what I stated above. I am willing to stand corrected about that not being his intent put forward.

2. By scientific and science I am referring to people that hold science to be an absolute truth and reject Christianity. I’m well aware that they constantly contradict themselves with their views.

3. With regards to the ‘mechanics’ of the Trinity, I don’t think I made my point here well enough. What I was trying to illustrate is that we hold to the view that the flood did happen, though saying ‘This rock formation was caused by Noha’s flood’ I find to be nothing more than speculation. Having said that, I don’t disagree with it Noha’s flood being a possible cause.

4. I shall admit though, having thought through things a bit more that I have probably been a bit unfair on Dr Walker. Mainly because the only encounter with his work I’ve had has been the talk.

Hope I have cleared things up a bit. Sorry for being unclear on a couple of terms. With regards to iron sharpening, the reason I post my rants is to get some feedback on the ideas.

God bless,
Matthew Delves

The talk started of with a reference to 2 Peter3:3-4 and whilst it may hold some reference, it gave the impression that the view about to be presented was right because it was persecuted by ‘modern scientists’ which is simply ignorant. Regrettably this underlying assumption was restated several times in the lecture and gave no basis to his arguments.

I don’t think that was the intention at all. I think what was trying to be stated by quoting that verse was something along the lines of this: It’s not a new thing for people to scoff at Christian teaching and evangelism, especially when it comes to the arena of science “Hey Noah, what do you mean there’s going to be a flood? That’s unscientific!” (possible comment)

Science completely rejects such an assumption on the grounds of it being unreproducible.

…yet many are happy to accept the Big Bang, itself unreproducible. “Science” needs to make up its mind, and not be inconsistent.

The Bible is silent on the issue in that whilst it does say there was a flood, it doesn’t give much in the way of geological specifics or describe the nature of the erosion that results from such a flood. So then, how do we make sense of this? What was presented by Tas was neither scientific or biblical.

The Bible also doesn’t explain the mechanics of the Trinity, but you still believe it’s the only Biblical model that works. The Bible doesn’t explain how Jesus rose from the grave, either, yet you believe that to be true too. I don’t see what you’re getting at…

Having said all that, do I disagree with what he put forward? No. Is this contradictory? No. I’m simply saying that his assumptions are nothing but that. He is simply trying to use science to prove the Bible and I find that nothing but folly.

I don’t think he was trying to do that. He was quite clear, I thought, in explaining his starting point: if there was a global Flood, what evidence should we expect to find? That is starting from the Bible, which is the opposite of what you claim there.

Getting back again to Dr. Tas Walker, his remarks were nothing but unscientific and unbiblical. He tried to show evidence for Noha’s flood scientifically and unfortunately failed to do anything but state assumptions and bag out the silent scientific community.

I think you’re being unfair here. You haven’t defined “scientific” in your post at all, so it’s hard to know what you mean by that. As for unbiblical, you got annoyed at him earlier for quoting Scripture… I’m confused.

I think that’s enough iron-sharpening from me for now

Because of Him,

&y.

Do you yourself care about other people, would you pick up the phone if it was a telemarketer?

Why is it that beer can be compared to Jesus?