Quote:
Originally Posted by Brother David
That's just another example of the YEC's throwing everything at the wall and hoping something will stick.
Their tactic in their "debates" and other presentations isn't intended to give a reasoned and coherent view of the natural world. Instead, they just try and baffle people.
"Hey! If light did really slow down, then that means nobody knows how fast it can go! Nobody knows anything! You weren't there at the time of the creation but I can pretend that I was and that makes me the authority! ..."
... and so on. 
The universe has no constants and is unmearsuable - in their view. So it's perfectly alright to just make things up. Ultimately, for me, I came to the realization that these guys were actually selling a trickster god, like Loki and not Jesus Christ. That's what got me out of the YEC camp as a young person.
Hugh Ross has presented some rather good material over the years and Creation and Time is one of them. His "anti-evolution" stuff is disappointing, however. |
I am afraid to post on this thread for fear Coadie will show up.
I think "anti-evolution" may be too strong a word for Ross. Besides you only find it disappointing because you are convinced it is true. I think the fact that someone who pursues truth in science and does not find evolution, as defined below, to be true is a positive thing. Theistic evolution or special creation does not threaten my theology, I just don't buy the evolution explanation. Ross' organization doesn't seem to me to have an agenda that keeps them from being objective like many YEC do. Evolution wouldn't be the first dominate theory in Science that came up short and was eventually replaced.
I think atheistic scientists must believe evolution is true because to acknowledge anything less requires a rational being who created something from nothing. When one cannot believe that he must look elsewhere for a solution because a creative being simply cannot be an explanation.
A scientist who believes in God however is free to go wherever the facts lead, even to a miracle of the creation of life. Sure there may be a bias towards special creation, however that bias is not nearly as exclusive when examining the facts as one's bias who rejects completely any idea of a God. One fills the gaps with Father Time, the other with the miracle of special creation. If the gaps are filled with facts that contradict special creation one might easily abandon those ideas. However when those gaps point to a special creation, it must be rejected by atheistic scientist.
"As an astronomer, educator, and evangelical minister, I concur that the normal physical science definition for evolution is well established—things do change with respect to time and in some cases over a time-scale of billions of years. Incidentally, this fact can be established not just from the scientific record but also from the Bible. The first chapter of Genesis is set up as a chronology documenting how God changed the world over six specific time periods. A literal and consistent reading of the Bible, taking into account all its statements on creation, makes clear that the Genesis creation days cannot possibly be six consecutive 24-hour days. They must be six lengthy epochs. Ussher's chronology represents faulty exegesis, as many Bible scholars affirm.
It is the common life science definition for evolution that must be questioned—the hypothesis that all the changes that take place in lifeforms, both in the present and the past, are by strictly natural processes. For the lifeforms of the present era, I would agree. We do see natural selection and mutational advance at work within some species. But, as biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich report, "The production of a new animal species in nature has yet to be documented. In the vast majority of cases, the rate of change is so slow that it has not even been possible to detect an increase in the amount of differentiation."
http://www.reasons.org/shell-game-ev...n-and-creation