#####################
Subj: Re: This Saturday's Debate
Date: 98-01-04 21:12:17 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Lets talk on the phone, call me at 714 898-8331.
BillBillyJack6Re: This Saturday's Debate
#####################
Subj: Re: This Saturday's Debate
Date: 98-01-05 10:22:13 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: DWise1
> Lets talk on the phone, call me at 714 898-8331.
As I've already explained to you, that is impossible. I'm too busy and
cannot find a large enough slice of time to speak in private and
uninterrupted on the phone. Do I need to enumerate the reasons to you yet
again? It won't be any trouble at all for me, since I keep copies of all my
correspondence.
Besides, I see you hankering to impose your own "Gish Gallop" on me. That
would serve no purpose whatsoever and would try my patience greatly.
Substantive claims are best transmitted in written form, since they should be
refered back to again and again as they lead to the discovery of more facts.
Cheap rhetorical tricks, attempts at verbal legere-de-main, die in written
form and can only hope to survive and succeed in verbal form -- plus their
success is not measured in terms of the information they impart nor the
teaching of any facts or truths, but rather in their ability to skirt the
truth and to deceive the listener. If you have something substantive to say,
then you can and should write it down, but if your only intent is to deceive
me, then you have no choice but to insist on a phone conversation. What is
your intent, Bill, to give me the facts or to baffle me with BS? The choice
of medium tells much.
Besides, I had asked you to give me good reasons for why this should take
place on the phone and not in written form. You only offered one reason
which did not at all address the question. Again, I ask you why this should
take place on the phone and not in written form.
For that matter, you still have not answered any other of my questions. If
there is any substance at all to your claims -- or if you have any confidence
at all in your position -- , then you should not hestitate to respond. Yet
you remain extremely evasive. Why? (oops, there's yet another question for
you to avoid answering).
######################################
Subj: Creation/Evolution
Date: 98-01-09 22:23:47 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1
Bill, you will recall that I mentioned finding a couple web pages which
present and critique your AOLCREAT.TXT. Thinking that the owner of one,
Liberator, lived locally, I emailed him with the announcement of the recent
debate at Cypress College. It turned out that he lives in Chicago, but we
got to comparing notes about trying to discuss creation/evolution with you
and how hard it is to get anything substantive out of you. Anyway, he asked
that I CC him these messages, which I am doing.
I noticed in the announcement for the next meeting that the speaker will be
producing "surprising quotes" from leading scientists -- specificially named
were SJ Gould and Colin Patterson. I'm pretty sure I know what claims will
be made about Patterson, so I will give you here the full story (copied here
from a message I posted in a forum on CompuServe last year, so you cannot
claim that this shows I have lots of free time in which I could call you):
## BEGIN NARRATIVE ###
The story of what had happened to Colin Patterson is long and sordid and has
not been ended by the death of one of the principals (not Patterson).
Strahler relates it on pages 354 - 355 [of his book, "Science and Earth
History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy"].
Here is the usual quote found in a wide variety of creationist works,
starting with an Impact article in the ICR's "Acts & Facts" newsletter, to
"show" that Patterson had turned on evolution:
"One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let's
call it a non-evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for
over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One
morning I woke up and somthing had happened in the night, and it struck me
that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one
thing I knew about it....
.. For the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various
people and groups of people. Question is: Can you tell me anything you know
about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that
question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the
only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary
Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very presigoius body of
evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually
one person said, 'I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high
school'. "
Dr. Colin Patterson
Senior Palaeontologist,
British Museum of Nat Hist.
Quoted from Keynote address at the
American Museum of Nat Hist, NY
Nov 5, 1981
In a later letter to a Steven Binkley (17 June 1982), Patterson reveals what
had happened:
"Obviously I have not helped you fight your local creationists -- sorry. The
story behind the 'Impact' article is that last November I gave a talk to the
systematics discussion group in the American Museum of Natural History. I
was asked to talk on 'evolutionism and creationism,' and knowing the meetings
of the group as informal sessions where ideas could be kicked around among
specialists, I put the case for difficulties and problems with evolution,
specifically in the field of systematics. I was too naive and foolish to
guess what might happen: the talk was taped by a creationist who passed the
tape to Luther Sunderland. Sunderland made a transcript, which I refused to
edit since it was pretty garbled, and since I had no exact record of what I
did say. Since, in my view, the tape was obtained unethically, I asked
Sunderland to stop circulating the transcript, but of course to no effect.
"There is not much point in my going through the article point by point. I
was putting a case for discussion, as I thought off the record, and was
speaking only about systematics, a specialised field. I do not support the
creationist movement in any way, and in particular I am opposed to their
efforts to modify school curricula. In short, the article does not fairly
support my views. But even if it did, so what? The issue should be resolved
by rational discussion, and not by quoting 'authorities,' which seems to be
the creationists' principal mode of argument."
Now for the rest of the story, as Patterson related it in Creation/Evolution
Newsletter (now NCSE Reports) 4:6, Nov/Dec 84, pp 4-5.
Basically, as Patterson described in the letter, he was asked to give a talk
to a systematics discussion group in the American Museum of Natural History
on "evolutionism and creationism," which he did on 5 Nov 1981. Knowing that
these meetings were informal sessions where ideas could be kicked around
among specialists, he put a case for difficulties and problems with
evolution, especially in the field of systematics. He was speaking off the
record and only about systematics, a specialized field.
A creationist in the audience taped the talk and passed the tape to a
creationist writer, the late Luther Sunderland ("Darwin's Enigma"), who made
a transcript and started circulating it. Sunderland had sent a copy to
Patterson, but Patterson refused to edit it because it was so badly garbled,
he had no notes about what he had actually said at the talk, and the tape had
been obtained unethically. On the last grounds, he asked Sunderland to stop
circulating the transcript, but to no avail.
Sunderland used that transcript in an article entitled "Prominent British
Scientists Abandon Evolution" for "Contrast" (March-April 1982). In June
1982, Sunderland and Gary Parker abridged that article into "Evolution?
Prominent Scientist Reconsiders" in the ICR's "Acts & Facts" newsletter (No
108). Patterson's statement concerning the ICR article was that it did not
fairly represent his views, and that he does not support the creationist
movement in any way and he in particular is opposed to their efforts to
modify school curricula. Needless to say, since that article Patterson has
been widely quoted by creationists.
On 10 March 1985, Sunderland wrote a letter to Creation/Evolution Newsletter
(CEN) in response to their earlier article (paraphrased from above) in which
Patterson had criticized him. In that letter, Sunderland stated that in 1979
Patterson described himself as a gradualist evolutionist and then 18 months
later (in Nov 1981) said that he had become an anti-evolutionist or
non-evolutionist. Sunderland concluded: "Why not talk about the real issue,
i.e., why an avowed believer in evolution should become an anti-evolutionist?
He changed his position because of the dramatic fossil evidence -- the only
direct scientific evidence on origins."
CEN forwarded Sunderland's letter and "Contrast" article to Patterson, who
responded, apologizing for the long delay due to a coronary and to an
increasing distaste for dealing with American creationists in general and
Sunderland in particular. To Sunderland's last statement that Patterson had
changed his mind because of the fossil evidence: "rubbish. I got myself
tangled because of six months cogitating about homology, the central concept
of comparative biology. Five years later, I know of no alternative to common
ancestry as an explanation for homology. The efforts I have made to find an
alternative convince me that there isn't one." (note that "common ancestry"
is another name for "evolution")
Patterson found the article full of nonsense about him. And as for that
awful question, "Can you tell me anything you know about evolution?", he said
that he still thought it to be a reasonable question and that "[t]he point
isn't necessarily that the question is unanswerable, but perhaps that we
should be ready to answer it, and posers like it."
So, you see that Patterson has not abandoned evolution, but quite to the
contrary, he knows of no alternative explanation.
The impression one gets of Patterson is that he tries to be rigorous and
restrictive in what he terms as factual (i.e. direct observations and perhaps
the most directly obvious generalizations based thereupon) and that he
considers things non-factual as a matter of faith (denotationally correct,
but not connotationally and it is the connotations that creationists
exploit). By analogy, he might consider a jury's verdict of guilty "beyond a
reasonable doubt" as an act of "faith," no matter how well-reasoned and
well-supported that jury's deliberation may have been, because it was not
ENTIRELY determined by his restricted use of "fact."
Also, he seems to like to ask questions to get people to think and will even
do the same to himself. He seems to dislike any amount of presupposition on
anybody's part and so will ask direct questions about basic ideas and
assumptions not because nobody can answer such questions, but because
everybody should be able to:
"The awful question -- 'Can you tell me anything you know about evolution
...' ... The point isn't necessarily that the question is unanswerable, but
perhaps that we should be ready to answer it, and posers like it."
(CEN, 5:5, Sep/Oct 85, pg 4)
## END NARRATIVE ###
Now that you know what really happened, what will you do when your speaker
uses that Impact misrepresentation of Patterson? Will you correct him or
inform the audience of all the facts surrounding the incident? Or will you
applaud him, knowing that he had just perpetuated a lie? Remember that my
creation/evolution discussions with Charles Lange had started with my
question of whether fundamentalist Christianity condones lying if it furthers
the spread of Christianity (reference my file, WARUM -- also at my web site,
describing how I got started and arrived at my opinion of creation science).
Similarly, watch for your speaker to misrepresent Gould as being critical of
evolution and of saying that there is no evidence for evolution. In reality,
Gould was being critical of one very specific evolutionary idea, phyletic
gradualism, the idea that evolutionary change proceeds at a gradual and
uniform rate, and was saying that there is no evidence for that particular
idea. Phyletic gradualism is also refered to as "strict Darwinism". Watch
for that and consider what action you should take when you see it.
Gould is most definitely not friendly to creationism and very strongly
objects to creationist claims that he supports their position. Remember that
meeting that John Peloza had called in order to drum up support from the
parents? While I could not attend myself, I did read a report of that
meeting, which did not turn out as he had hoped. At one point, John repeated
the claim that Gould supports his position, whereupon somebody asked him if
Gould was going to testify on his behalf. John was taken completely
off-guard and could not think of an answer, whereupon his lawyer quickly
stepped in and offered some excuse about problems in subpoenaing somebody
from out-of-state (though the trial would have been in federal court, so
there shouldn't have been problems of jurisdiction).
Continuing on the subject of the debate about debating, I found on the Web a
few copies of an article by Eugenie Scott of the NCSE, such as in the
Talk.Origines Archive at
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/debating-creationists.html. Out of those, I
chose the one which was already in text-file format (ie, not HTML) to attach
to this email for your edification. I do trust that you know who Eugenie
Scott is and what the NCSE is; let me know if you don't.
Of particular interest to our current exchanges (ie, your still arguing over
the shape of the bargaining table while I'm wanting to get something
substantive going) is her description of the "Gish Gallop", which I have
mentioned to you a number of times before:
## BEGIN EXERPT ##
Now, there are ways to have a formal debate that actually teaches the
audience something about science, or evolution, and that has the potential to
expose creation science for the junk it is. This is to have a
narrowly-focused exchange in which the debators deal with a limited number of
topics. Instead of the "Gish Gallup" format of most debates where the
creationist is allowed to run on for 45 minutes or an hour, spewing forth
torrents of error that the evolutionist hasn't a prayer of refuting in the
format of a debate, the debaters have limited topics and limited time. For
example, the creationist has 10 minutes to discuss a topic on which
creationists and evolutionists disagree (intermediate forms, the nature of
science [with or without the supernatural], the 2nd law of thermodynamics
disproves evolution, the inadequacy of mutation and selection to produce new
"kinds", etc.) The evolutionist then has a 5 minute rebuttal, followed by a
2 minute reprise from the creationnist. Next, the evolutionist takes 10
minutes to discuss an agreed-upon issue, with the creationist taking the next
five minutes, and the 2 minute followup.
With this format, the audience is given digestable bits of information and is
not overwhelmed by a barrage of impossible-to-answer nonsense. The
evolutionist at least has a fighting chance to teach something about science
and evolution.
Of course, whenever the ICR has been presented this option, they have refused
to debate. Which in itself suggests the utility of using this approach! I
think they recognize that they have a lot to lose in any other than the "Gish
Gallup" format. Tough luck. I can't see any reason why evolutionists should
make it easier for
them to rally their troops.
## END EXERPT ##
That last paragraph is especially a propos. As I have already told you, I
strongly suspect that your intent is to proselytize to me and that your
technique involves a variant of the "Gish Gallup", hence your insistence that
we talk on the phone, since the "Gallup" becomes ineffective in print. I
have mentioned this suspicion to you a number of times before and you have
never once denied it nor offered any assurances to the contrary.
Like it or not, this issue is about scientific claims and the facts
supporting or refuting those claims. Since creation science makes some
rather specific claims, those claims need to be examined and discussed. This
means that the claims and their sources need to be noted down and researched.
The "Gish Gallup" does nothing to support this effort. Indeed, I would be
interrupting you constantly as I'm writing down your claims and requesting
your sources, as well as for me to service my own real-time interrupts.
Rather than having me constantly break your train of thought, it only makes
sense for you to present your claims in writing via email. Email is the
near-perfect medium for this kind of exchange. Besides, if you do have any
substantive claims, then you would want to write them down, wouldn't you?
Again, if you can offer any sound reasons why a phone call would serve our
purposes far better than an email exchange, then please offer those reasons.
Despite your abysmal history of not answering any questions, I realized that
I should have posed this one:
Consider the statement: "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then
Scripture has no meaning."
Does that statement accurately reflect your own beliefs?
PS
I still have no idea what you were talking about in your 10 Oct 97 message to
me:
Subj: Re: Where'd ya go?
Date: 97-10-10 01:07:56 EDT
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Its not!
BillyJack6
Re: Where'd ya go?
Bill, what's "not"? Please, explain what you meant. This is the fifth time
I've asked you this question.
billyjack6
liber8r@mcs.com
######################################
Subj: Oops -- I forgot!
Date: 98-01-09 22:28:15 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1
File: DEBATI~1.TXT (21080 bytes)
DL Time (14400 bps): < 1 minute
In my rush to send the email off (with my wife yelling "Aren't you off the
phone yet!?! -- yet another reason why calling you is virtually impossible.
Nu?), I forgot to attach the file that contains the article by Eugenie Scott.
Here it is.
######################################
Subj: Re: This Saturday's Debate
Date: 98-01-16 23:24:33 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
I am not big on typing and I prefer oral to typed. Thats why.
######################################
Subj: Re:Creation/Evolution
Date: 98-01-17 03:06:37 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Nice letter and I honestly feel flattered that you have so painstakingly
responded and feel hurt that my responses are so brief to the point of being
nonexistant. The reason I prefer a phone call is I am very very busy with
work, coaching a junior high basketball team, other things that would only
disgust you to elaborate on and tons of email. I apologize.
Time wise and enjoyment wise for me is the phone. I would also love to have
dinner with you.
Now I thank you for the Colin Patterson explanation. But still, it appears
he did say that. there is a tape of it and although his point was the
evolutionists need fast answers and he feels they were not stumped, they
nevertheless appeared to be silent.
I am familiar with Ms. Scott and have heard her debate. Let me summarize her
debate: "science has nothing to do withthe supernatural (which I agree with)
there fore creation science has nothing to do with science (Which I disagree
with). Sciecne can not prove creation, but sciecne could falsify the
creation model which it does not. The creation model being matter, energy,
life and order are the result of a supernatural and intelligent source.
Thansk again!
Billy Jack
In a message dated 98-01-09 22:23:47 EST, you write:
<< Now that you know what really happened, what will you do when your speaker
uses that Impact misrepresentation of Patterson? Will you correct him or
inform the audience of all the facts surrounding the incident? Or will you
applaud him, knowing that he had just perpetuated a lie? Remember that my
creation/evolution discussions with Charles Lange had started with my
question of whether fundamentalist Christianity condones lying if it furthers
the spread of Christianity (reference my file, WARUM -- also at my web site,
describing how I got started and arrived at my opinion of creation science).
>>
######################################
Subj: Something I found on the Web
Date: 98-01-17 13:18:31 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1
Bill, just thought I'd share with you something that I found on
the Web the other day.
Slowly but slowly, I'm preparing an HTML report of my research on Harold
Slusher's moondust claim. Since Henry Morris referenced that claim in his
book, "Scientific Creationism," and since Henry Morris has admitted to
another researcher, Tom Wheeler, that that claim is wrong, I thought that it
would be interesting to see if the newest edition of his book still carried
that claim (as I suspect that it would). Not having had time to stop by a
Christian bookstore to check, I decided to Yahoo for references to Morris'
book, just to see if I could find any references to a new edition.
Unfortunately, even the ICR site refered to the 1985 edition as being the
most recent one.
However, along the way I did find a page about the moon dust claim in
general, "Footprints in the Dust", written by a Revd. Dr. Ernest Lucas, Tutor
in Biblical Studies at Bristol Baptist College
(http://www.totalweb.co.uk/csis/onlinepapers/papers/paper1.html). In
particular, he looked at the claim as given by Henry Morris in "Scientific
Creationism" in the text on page 152, but not the footnote. On that page,
Morris makes his claim based on the 1960 Scientific American article by Hans
Pettersson in which he had measured the amount of nickel settling down onto a
mountaintop in Hawaii. He had chosen that site in the middle of the Pacific
in order to get away from industrial contamination from the Far East, but at
that time we did not realize how far said contamination could be carried by
high altitude winds. In addition, while Pettersson offered a range of values
for the amount of dust influx and chose the mid-range value as the most
reliable figure, Morris went straight for the maximum value. Morris only
mentions Slusher's claim in a footnote:
"Hans Pettersson, "Cosmic Spherules and Meteoritic Dust," Scientific
American, Vol 202 (February 1960), p. 132. More recent measurements indicate
a much great [sic] influx of dust than Pettersson calculated, and thus a
still younger age for Earth and the moon (see G.S. Hawkins, Ed., Meteor
Orbits and Dust, published by NASA, 1976). Figures obtained by actual
measurements in space as listed in this publication, yield 200 million tons
of dust coming to earth each year."
As you will recall, that NASA publication was actually the 1967 publication
of papers submitted at an August 1965 conference. The methodology for
obtaining the measurements used by Slusher, the acoustical recording of
particles impacting a microphone, turned out to be flawed, though that fact
was not mentioned in the paper. And Slusher misrepresented his source,
including one factor which the source specifically showed to not be
applicable and including another factor in violation of mathematical
procedures, thus inflating his results by a factor of one million. When
corrected, his calculations yield an even smaller amount of moon dust than
was actually found.
Lucas points out that the earlier expectation of a much thicker dust layer
came from much older Earth-bound observations (like Pettersson's) and that by
1968, one year before the Eagle landed, we were quite certain that the dust
layer would be thin, especially after the first US soft landing on the moon
(and I do not mean Apollo 11 -- do you remember the soft landing to which I
refer?). Lucas repeatedly cites papers published well before "Scientific
Creationism" and chides "the authors of Scientific Creationism" for excluding
that information:
"Since this evidence had been published in 1968 it is surprising that a book
claiming to be scientific, published six years later is unaware of it, or
ignores it. One of the basic rules of good scientific work is that you
must keep up to date with what is being published in the area
in which you are working. If you fail to do this you risk basing your
conclusions on out-of-date evidence or disproven arguments. It is amazing to
find people associated with what is called The Institute for Creation
Research falling into this basic trap. It undermines confidence in the
quality of their science and their research. It is even more amazing to find
a book published in 1992 (The Facts of Life by Richard Milton), and
highly acclaimed by advocates of the 'young Earth' theory, still quoting the
argument about the lack of dust on the Moon, based solely on Pettersson's
1960 paper, and apparently totally ignorant of all the relevant new evidence
that has accumulated in the 30 years since then." (HTML tags left in)
Bill, remember how I warned you about the disasterous side-effects of
proselytizing with creation science? Well, I'm not the only one concerned
about it. Here is what Rev Lucas says in conclusion:
"Does the failure of these authors to be up to date really matter ? Yes, for
several reasons. First of all, Christians should be concerned about the
truth. The God we are committed to is the God of truth (John 15:26). Of all
people, Christians should be most punctilious about using only those
arguments that are based on sound methods of scholarship and the best
evidence available. This is a matter of obedient Christian discipleship, not
simply a desire to look good in the eyes of other scholars. Secondly,
following from this, it is dishonouring to God when Christian scholars are
found to be using sloppy arguments based on out-of-date evidence - and I know
secular scholars who have little respect for Christianity because of this.
"Finally, it is a matter of considerable pastoral and evangelistic
importance. Christian scholars who wrongly claim to be presenting sound
'scientific' arguments are misleading their fellow Christians who read their
books. Most of these readers do not have either the opportunity or the
inclination to check up on the reliability of the arguments used and evidence
presented. Some of those readers may in time be stumbled in their faith
because of their misplaced confidence in what they have read. Christian
students who, with more zeal than wisdom, confidently confront lecturers with
arguments culled from books like Scientific Creationism have sometimes
been made to look foolish when the lecturer has been able to show that the
argument does not stand up to the evidence, even the evidence available when
it was first put forward. That has not only shaken the faith of the
Christians, but Undermined their witness to their fellow students. Perhaps
publishers of books on 'scientific creationism', and the managers of
bookshops which sell them, ought to consider putting a spiritual health
warning on them."
Remember that classic case of the creationist geology graduates hired by
creationist and practicing petroleum geologist Glenn R. Morton. All of them
suffered severe crises of faith because they were utterly unprepared to face
the geological facts every petroleum geologist deals with on a daily basis,
but which creation science had taught them did not exist and could not exist
if Scripture were to have any meaning.
(FWIW, I found a web page by Glenn R. Morton, "The Entire Geologic Column in
North Dakota", at
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/geo.htm, along with links to others of his
pages. Remember
that he is most definitely a creationist.)
Remember also the students in Ray Baird's 4th/5th grade class whom Baird had
taught ICR-brand creationism. A number of those students became atheists as
a direct result, because, it was reported, they found creationism so
ridiculous that if religion required them to believe in it, then they wanted
nothing to do with religion. What's the current price for millstones, ready
to wear? I think I spotted a quarry just down the street from the ICR; a
very good location which should draw them a lot of business.
To repeat the quotation of Gregg Wilkerson, co-founder of Students for
Origins Research and former young-earth creationist, at the 1990
International Conference on Creationism [ICC, a convention of creationists,
so this was a creationist talking to creationists]):
"Creationism by and large attracts few to the gospel, but it turns many
away."
Now I repeat yet another question which you have not answered (actually, I do
not believe that you have answered any of my questions yet):
"I hope you wouldn't mind my asking about your success rate. How many people
have you actually converted to Christianity via creation science? How many
likely converts do you think you had turned off with creation science (eg,
they had exhibited interest, but expressed or exhibited doubts about creation
science claims)?" [second time this question has been asked]
In addition, how many of the people you have converted stayed converted? Of
those who later became unconverted (abandoned their new faith), what reasons
did they give? (I realize that it would have been highly unlikely that you
would have ever seen them again and so probably have no idea of what happened
to them and why)
Remember that Gregg Wilkerson certainly knows of what he speaks, because he
was in the business of proselytizing via creationism on a far larger scale
than you could ever be. He also had the organization in place to track and
to analyze the effects of their efforts. He spoke from experience when he
stated that creationism drives more people away than it attracts. You will
recall my telling you that if ever I were to feel inclined to become a
Christian, the realization that I would be expected to believe in creation
science, something that I know for a solid fact is false and dishonestly
wrought, would save me from converting (just as my fundamentalist Christian
training had saved me from converting during periods of vulnerability in my
adolescence).
How, then, can you honestly ever expect to use creation science to convert me
or anybody else possessing knowledge of creation science? The only way would
be for us to abandon our higher moral and ethical standards of truth and
honesty. Why would I ever want to lower my standards so drastically?
"I'm a great fan of science you know." (Slartibartfast)
#########################################################
#########################################################
Subj: Re: Something I found on the Web
Date: 98-01-22 18:13:45 EST
From: unknownsender@unknown.domain
To: DWise1@aol.com (DWise1)
:-)
The Liber8r
The Liber8r can be reached by e-mail, and web site respectively:
liber8r@mcs.com
http://www.mcs.net/~liber8r/
----------
From: DWise1
To: liber8r@mcs.com
Subject: Re: Something I found on the Web
Date: Wednesday, January 21, 1998 9:06 AM
>You love the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy too, huh?
First heard about it on All Things Considered c. 1981, so I was ready and
waiting with the tape recorder when it first aired on National Public
Radio.
Upon separating from the Air Force, I played the tapes a few times through
driving home to California from North Dakota. Caught the TV show on PBS
in
1983 (or '84). Took that quote from the radio play scripts, which have
been
published.
Last year, some British astronomers worked out a value for the Hubble
Constant, which is used to estimate the age of galaxies. And the answer
was
.... 42.
----------------------- Headers --------------------------------
Return-Path:
Received: from relay14.mail.aol.com (relay14.mail.aol.com [172.31.109.14])
by air13.mail.aol.com (v37.8) with SMTP; Thu, 22 Jan 1998 18:13:44 -0500
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90])
by relay14.mail.aol.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0)
with ESMTP id SAA02786 for ;
Thu, 22 Jan 1998 18:13:20 -0500 (EST)
Received: from liber8r.mcs.net (liber8r.pr.mcs.net [199.3.42.5]) by
Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id RAA22323 for ;
Thu, 22 Jan 1998 17:13:13 -0600 (CST)
Message-Id: <199801222313.RAA22323@Kitten.mcs.com>
From: "\"The Liberator\""
To: "DWise1"
Subject: Re: Something I found on the Web
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 16:59:40 -0600
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1155
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
#########################################################
Subj: Re: Something I found on the Web
Date: 98-01-28 23:44:47 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
In a message dated 98-01-17 13:18:31 EST, you write:
<< How, then, can you honestly ever expect to use creation science to convert
me or anybody else possessing knowledge of creation science? The only way
would be for us to abandon our higher moral and ethical standards of truth
and honesty. Why would I ever want to lower my standards so drastically?
>>
Hi Wise One! No one can convert you. All I can do is present a case to you.
But I honestly know that you know God exists but choose not to honor
acknowldge or give thanks to God. Romans 1 says that and that was my case
when I was an atheist, I prayed many times while an atheist.
However...you never ever heard me tout the moon dust depth...that is a
uniformitarian argument and ridiculous. How would a depth of dust prove an
age? Maybe it was a mile deep 200 years ago and got swiped away 100 years
#########################################################
Subj: Tally the Votes
Date: 98-02-06 00:50:30 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1
Sorry for the delay, due to a death march at work and some problems with my
PC at home.
Your message, repeated for Liberator's sake:
### BEGIN ###
Subj: Re: This Saturday's Debate
Date: 98-01-16 23:24:33 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
I am not big on typing and I prefer oral to typed. Thats why.
### END ###
And I am not big on oral communication and I prefer typed to oral.
Therefore, on this point alone, the reasons for one medium and for the other
number the same; it's your drothers against my drothers. In order to break
the tie, we now need to look to the other reasons we have both given.
I have offered reasons for choosing email over telephony and since August I
have repeatedly requested that you offer your reasons for choosing telephony
over email. Given that more than enough time has elapsed to get all the
responses in, let us now tally the results.
Again, here are the reasons I have already offered for choosing email over
telephony:
1. This issue is about scientific claims and the facts supporting or refuting
those claims. Since creation science makes some rather specific claims,
those claims need to be examined and discussed. This means that the claims
and their sources need to be noted down and researched. Written
communication (eg, Email) is the near-perfect medium for this kind of
exchange, whereas telephony is a very poor medium.
2. I am currently on a very busy schedule which includes many 14- and 15-hour
days plus weekends and I do not see any indication that this kind of schedule
will change within the next year or beyond. I write during lunch, which
enables me to eat and communicate simultaneously, something which a phone
conversation would not allow, or would at least render garbled and rather
messy.
3. When I am at home, I have to compete with my wife and teenagers for use of
the phone (guess who usually wins -- remember my email of 98-01-09 22:28:15
EST, in which I described how sending my previous email kept getting
interrupted with my wife yelling, "Aren't you off the phone yet!?!").
4. I suspect that you might only want to proselytize at me and so precious
time and effort would have been horribly wasted for naught (if that is not at
all your intent, then I apologize, but past experience with several other
creationists indicates this assumption to have a very high probability of
being true). [this was confirmed when you concluded your email of 98-01-28
23:44:47 EST with words to the effect of "Now let's get on with converting
you!" (actual text lost due to computer malfunction)]
5. I get interrupted often, which I can edit out of e-mail, but not out of a
phone conversation. Writing does not require a single continguous chunk of
time whereas a phone conversation does. Besides, I can do more than one
thing while I write, such as eat my lunch, which I could not do in a phone
conversation, and I can filter interruptions out a lot more easily. We would
need time to talk uninterrupted, which I cannot possibly guarantee.
6. Email is asynchronous whereas a telephone conversation has to be
synchronous. Id est, we both need to be on-line at the same time to talk on
the phone, whereas we do not need to do so when using email. Given your own
very busy schedule, it would be very difficult to schedule our fragments of
free talk to coincide with one another, especially since a series of
conversations would be required for a meaningful discussion, ie, for claims
to be made, followed by research into that claim and the formulation and
delivering of a response. Hence email is the better choice.
7. If I try calling from work, then I would have to answer to my supervisor
for making that kind of a personal call. If I try calling from home, then I
would have to answer to my boss (la jefa) and the "Spanish Inquisition"
(she's Mexican, so I tend to enjoy that line from Monty Python -- in case you
suffer from cultural deprivation: (Husband responding to his wife's many
questions about where he's been) "Well, I never expected the Spanish
Inquisition!" (Monks and a cardinal bursting into the room) "Nobody EVER
expects the Spanish Inquisition!" ... well, I guess you had to have been
there, right?). It is her firm and oft expressed opinion that all
creationists are total idiots who would never allow themselves to see reason
nor understand the truth, so don't waste your time on them. Her attitide is
that I have too many other things to do so she doesn't want to catch me
wasting my time following the issue, so I make sure that she doesn't by
quietly following the issue while she's not watching. Calling from home
would obviously blow my cover. And I'm not about to run up my cell phone
bill in an exercise that will prove to be futile (as you blast me with your
"Gish Gallop") and, at the very best, highly inefficient (since email is
vastly superior to telephony for transmitting sizable amounts of factual
information).
8. It is our firm policy that we never buy anything over the phone nor at the
door (this being in reference to reason #4 above -- have I ever told you
about the "after-life insurance" variant of Pascal's Wager that somebody
tried on me once? -- and only once ).
In the five months that have transpired since I had started asking you to
offer any sound reasons why a phone call would serve our purposes far better
than an email exchange, you have only offered two reasons: "Becuase I like
the phone better." and "I can teach you more quicker on the phone".
So, the counts are: 8 sound reasons and one personal preference for email
and one personal preference and one reason of questionable soundness for
telephony. Email wins, nine reasons against two.
Email is the clear winner and so email it shall be. Shall we begin?
Finally?
#########################################################
Subj: Creation/Evolution
Date: 98-02-06 00:50:48 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: DWise1, liber8r@mcs.com
Again, sorry for the delay, due to a death march at work and some problems
with my PC at home.
Again, your message, repeated for Liberator's sake:
### BEGIN ###
Subj: Re:Creation/Evolution
Date: 98-01-17 03:06:37 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Nice letter and I honestly feel flattered that you have so painstakingly
responded and feel hurt that my responses are so brief to the point of being
nonexistant. The reason I prefer a phone call is I am very very busy with
work, coaching a junior high basketball team, other things that would only
disgust you to elaborate on and tons of email. I apologize.
Time wise and enjoyment wise for me is the phone. I would also love to have
dinner with you.
Now I thank you for the Colin Patterson explanation. But still, it appears
he did say that. there is a tape of it and although his point was the
evolutionists need fast answers and he feels they were not stumped, they
nevertheless appeared to be silent.
I am familiar with Ms. Scott and have heard her debate. Let me summarize her
debate: "science has nothing to do withthe supernatural (which I agree with)
there fore creation science has nothing to do with science (Which I disagree
with). Sciecne can not prove creation, but sciecne could falsify the
creation model which it does not. The creation model being matter, energy,
life and order are the result of a supernatural and intelligent source.
Thansk again!
Billy Jack
In a message dated 98-01-09 22:23:47 EST, you write:
<< Now that you know what really happened, what will you do when your speaker
uses that Impact misrepresentation of Patterson? Will you correct him or
inform the audience of all the facts surrounding the incident? Or will you
applaud him, knowing that he had just perpetuated a lie? Remember that my
creation/evolution discussions with Charles Lange had started with my
question of whether fundamentalist Christianity condones lying if it furthers
the spread of Christianity (reference my file, WARUM -- also at my web site,
describing how I got started and arrived at my opinion of creation science).
>>
### END ###
>The reason I prefer a phone call is I am very very busy with work,
>coaching a junior high basketball team, other things that would only
>disgust you to elaborate on and tons of email. I apologize.
Well let's see, what disgusts me besides senseless violence, waste, and
stupidity is deceipt [list not necessarily complete]. Do you mean to tell me
that you engage in such behavior?
I am also very busy with work and with the many other things that make up
life, but that is yet another reason why I prefer email. I can piece a
message together bit by bit over time instead of having to create it in
real-time in one single sitting. If a phone conversation gets interrupted,
then the message is disrupted, if not lost altogether. But if the writing of
an email gets interrupted, then minimal disruption would result and should be
totally transparent to the reader. Likewise in the reading of an email; you
can pick it back up right where you left off, or even go back a little to
refresh your memory of what was being said. You cannot do that in a
telephone conversation.
Besides, in order to have a telephone conversation, we would both have to
schedule a large enough contiguous block of free time to occur at exactly the
same time. I have no control over my schedule; just last week I watched an
entire afternoon that I had slated for taxes and training get rescheduled
away out from under my feet literally at the last minute. There is almost no
way I can schedule a lengthy telephone conversation with you and guarantee
that it will take place on schedule, that it will take place undisturbed and
uninterrupted, or that it will not be constrained by unfavorable pressure
placed upon me by my boss or by my jefa (depending on whether I attempt it at
work or at home).
On the other hand, we do not have to schedule and coordinate our email time
anywhere near as tightly and we can do so with minimal coordination of our
efforts. We write our message at any odd scraps of time that we can find,
then send it at any odder time. Then we receive the other's message at any
odd time (that we happen to log in), read it off-line at our leisure (and
relatively undisturbed), and compose our response piece-by-disjointed-piece
at any odd scraps of time that we can find, etc. It is much less stressful,
much more enjoyable, and much more practical. And an added benefit is that
we can stop and think about what has been said and, if there is ever any
question of what had been said, we both have a record.
>Time wise and enjoyment wise for me is the phone. I would also love to have
>dinner with you.
Time-wise and enjoyment-wise for me is email, as I described above.
Dinner? You've got to be kidding! What is your logic here? If we cannot
even schedule a telephone conversation, how are we ever supposed to be able
to schedule a sit-down dinner? And just how am I supposed to get that one
past the Spanish Inquisition? I appreciate the sentiment, although I also
strongly suspect your motives, but that has to be the most impractical
suggestion you've made yet.
>I am familiar with Ms. Scott and have heard her debate. Let me summarize
her
>debate: "science has nothing to do withthe supernatural (which I agree
with)
>there fore creation science has nothing to do with science (Which I disagree
>with). Sciecne can not prove creation, but sciecne could falsify the
>creation model which it does not. The creation model being matter, energy,
>life and order are the result of a supernatural and intelligent source.
OK, let's look at that:
Premise 1 == "science has nothing to do withthe supernatural" [sic]
Premise 2 == "The creation model [is that] matter, energy,life and order are
the result of a supernatural and intelligent source" [sic]
Conclusion: "there fore creation science [which is based on the creation
model] has nothing to do with science" [sic]
Gee, Bill, it looks like a QED to me. If science has nothing to do with the
supernatural nor with supernaturalistic causes and explanations and the only
explanation that the "creation model" has to offer is supernaturalistic, then
"creation science", which is based upon that "creation model", would indeed
have nothing to do with science. Why do you disagree with that?
I cannot tell in your message where your summary of Dr. Scott's presentation
ends and your own comments begin again; I will assume that the summary only
occupied one sentence, ending with "(Which I disagree with)".
"Sciecne can not prove creation, ...". True.
"... but sciecne could falsify the creation model ...". False. Since by
definition science cannot deal with the supernatural, science cannot prove
nor disprove supernatural events or speculations, such as creation and the
"creation model" as you have stated it here (that "creation model" actually
does not function as a model since it does not explain anything nor was
patterned after anything observable; its only function outside of pure
rhetorics is to consign everything that is not part of the "creation model"
to the "evolution model", including "most of the world's religions, both
ancient and modern", as Dr. Henry Morris described it to me -- but that is
part of another discussion and of another of my web pages, when I can find
the time). The only way that science could come into play here is if these
supernatural events were to have had natural results. But even then,
determining the cause of manifestations in the natural world of supernatural
events is outside of science, since science cannot deal with
supernaturalistic causes.
Therefore, the "creation model" has nothing to do with science and science
cannot prove nor disprove creation nor the "creation model." QED
Creation science is a slightly different matter. Insofar as creation science
deals with and dwells on the "creation model", creation science has nothing
to do with science. It is not dealing with anything that falls within the
domain of science. It is not observing, nor measuring, nor hypothesizing
about, nor theorizing about, nor testing any natural phenomena nor events.
Nor can it determine any naturalistic results that would be expected from
supernatural events, since to do so would require us to be able to study the
supernatural directly and to determine the nature or workings of the
supernatural, which is impossible. The only honest course of action for
creation science in the study of the supernatural is to admit abject
ignorance, which creationist writers often do (albeit usually in order to
avoid having to produce any evidence FOR their "creation model" -- for nearly
a decade on CompuServe, I and others have repeatedly asked a very large
number of creationists for such evidence and I had never seen any such
evidence offered). Here, science can no more disprove creation science than
it can creation or the "creation model", however, we can determine that
neither creation, nor the "creation model", nor creation science serving in
this capacity have anything to do with science.
However, creation science does not restrict itself to the "creation model",
but rather directs most of its attention and efforts on speculations based
solely on a single religious tradition (true, that single tradition has been
modified and has diversified some through the splintering of that single
religious tradition into innumerable sects, many of which have blended in
parts of other religious traditions, but still basically we are looking at a
single religious tradition here). Creation science determines that, in order
for that religious tradition to be literally true, certain things must be
true about the natural world, eg, a young earth, Noah's flood). From there,
creation science proceeds to gather "evidences" supporting their expectations
and, more especially, to support the curious logic of the "Two Model
Approach" (which uses its straw-man "evolution model", which in reality has
almost nothing to do with evolution, to generate a false dilemma in order to
"prove" the "creation model" solely by "disproving" the "evolution model"
without ever having to present any evidence FOR the "creation model" -- more
on this and other fallacies of the Two-Model Approach in an upcoming web
page) by generating "evidences" against any competing scientific views or
ideas.
Please note first of all that in these efforts, creation science is NOT
studying or dealing with creation itself, but rather is dealing with one
particular religious tradition concerning creation. Furthermore, by having
generated a body of claims concerning their expectations of what to find in
the natural world and by generating a body of claims and "evidences" to
support those claims and to attack competing claims and ideas, creation
science provides science with something well within the domain (dare I say,
"jurisdiction") of science which science can test and either prove or
disprove. While creation itself cannot be tested by science, these
natural-world claims of creation science CAN be tested, they HAVE been
tested, and they have FAILED the tests of science. Over and over again.
Now, let's look again at your statement. First you quote and disagree with
Dr. Scott's conclusion (as you interpreted her presentation) that "creation
science has nothing to do with science". But then you try to shift our
attention away from creation science and substitute in the "creation model".
Since that kind of trick almost always works in a spoken medium (eg, on the
phone or in person) but can be detected and countered in a written medium, I
believe that this is the primary reason why you insist on using the phone and
are avoiding using email like the plague. Why would the Truth need to be
upheld by tricks?
As we've established, science cannot prove nor disprove nor in any way work
with creation nor with the "creation model" as stated. Creation and your
"creation model" have nothing to do with science. Furthermore, when working
with creation or with your "creation model", creation science has nothing to
do with science and science cannot deal with creation science under those
conditions. Finally, we established that it is when creation science tries
to make pronouncements about the physical world and about what the scientific
evidence is and shows, that science can and does deal with it.
>Now I thank you for the Colin Patterson explanation. But still, it appears
>he did say that. there is a tape of it and although his point was the
>evolutionists need fast answers and he feels they were not stumped, they
>nevertheless appeared to be silent.
I disagree that his point was that "evolutionists need fast answers", but
rather I read him as saying that this was something that everybody in the
field should have thought through thoroughly and, having done so, should have
been able to answer his question. Remember that at that time, he had been
going through that very same process of reassessment and thinking through the
basis of evolutionary biology and palaeontology. What normally happens
instead is that many professionals take what they learn as students as being
axiomatic and do not go through that exercise (another problem, which Dr.
Scott pointed out in another context, is that many colleges and universities
in the US do not teach evolution to their biology students -- hence your list
of biologists who are creationists -- implying that these were trained in
evolution and have rejected it -- doesn't mean that much since they may have
never been taught evolution in the first place). Remember also that he came
out of six months of this process firmly convinced that "descent with
modification from a common ancestor" is still the best explanation we have
for what we find.
The principal question here is, as always when an authority is quoted,
whether the authority actually meant what the quoter is saying he meant, ie
whether the quote is being taken in context. I and others have found that
out-of-context quoting is very common in creation science. Indeed, one very
effective set of slides used in debating against Gish display Gish's
quotation of a source right along-side of the original source. I also have
an example of a creationist quoting a source about an anomalous C-14 date
taken from mortar in a stone wall followed by the creationist claiming that
no explanation could be offered for that anomaly; however, that quotation had
an ellipsis in the middle (ie, "...") which the creationist had used to cut
out the text in the original which DID explain the anomalous date.
I haven't had enough free time to put together a proper response for you,
however, many of the Web sites quoting Colin Patterson quote from the same
fragment of one particular paragraph in a letter he had written to Luther
Sunderland in which they show him saying that there are no transitional
fossils. However, one site contains the entire text of that letter, which
clearly shows that Patterson was talking about the kind of transitions we
would expect to support GRADUALISM, which Patterson still believed in at that
time, and that it is impossible to determine whether a given fossil is in the
DIRECT LINE OF DESCENT from one form to another. That is entirely different
from the implied meaning that there are no fossils which demonstrate that one
group had descended from another (ie, cousins do count). Note also that
Punctuated Equilibria talk of lack of transitional forms also refers to forms
demonstrating gradualism, so creationist quoting of Gould and company about
such lacks similarly lift him out of context. When I have time, I will pass
on to you a reference to and a brief description of an article which lists
many known transitional series of fossils and contains the source references
for them.
In the meantime, it would help if you were to tell me which Patterson quotes
your speaker had used and how he had used and interpreted those quotes for
the audience.
#########################################################
Subj: Re:Something I found on the Web
Date: 98-02-06 00:51:04 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: DWise1, liber8r@mcs.com
Your message, repeated for Liberator's sake:
### BEGIN ###
Subj: Re: Something I found on the Web
Date: 98-01-28 23:44:47 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
In a message dated 98-01-17 13:18:31 EST, you write:
<< How, then, can you honestly ever expect to use creation science to convert
me or anybody else possessing knowledge of creation science? The only way
would be for us to abandon our higher moral and ethical standards of truth
and honesty. Why would I ever want to lower my standards so drastically?
>>
Hi Wise One! No one can convert you. All I can do is present a case to you.
But I honestly know that you know God exists but choose not to honor
acknowldge or give thanks to God. Romans 1 says that and that was my case
when I was an atheist, I prayed many times while an atheist.
However...you never ever heard me tout the moon dust depth...that is a
uniformitarian argument and ridiculous. How would a depth of dust prove an
age? Maybe it was a mile deep 200 years ago and got swiped away 100 years
### END ###
I had some serious computer problems at this point (due, apparently, to a
loose connector)
and had lost the entire file that contained your message. Using ScanDisk,
this is all that I could recover. As I remember, that last paragraph ended
in about one more word, "ago", and was followed by a single sentence calling
for us to get underway with my conversion. As the Rabbi Hillel taught c. 20
BCE: "Do not to others that which is displeasing to yourself. That is the
whole of the Law [ie, the Torah]. Now go and learn it." As you will recall,
Rabbi Hillel was the only rabbi to have been mentioned on Star Trek, though
indirectly and unfortunately not quoted. Perhaps you recognize what he said,
though the formulation you are more familiar with didn't come along until
about 50 years later.
>However...you never ever heard me tout the moon dust depth...that is a
>uniformitarian argument and ridiculous. How would a depth of dust prove an
>age? Maybe it was a mile deep 200 years ago and got swiped away 100 years
It is true that I have never heard you tout that particular claim, but that
was not why I was sharing my finding with you. If it had been, then I would
have quoted from Rev. Lucas' research into the wealth of scientific sources
available for years before the writing of "Scientific Creationism" that
contradicted Dr. Morris' claims and that Morris had ignored. Nor would I
have prefaced the quotation with:
"Bill, remember how I warned you about the disasterous side-effects of
proselytizing with creation science? Well, I'm not the only one concerned
about it. Here is what Rev Lucas says in conclusion:"
Nu? Is it becoming apparent to you now? Rev. Lucas' points that I was
sharing with you had nothing directly to do with the moon dust claim, but
rather the moon dust claim was just the example he used to illustrate the
lack of quality in creation science research, which I expanded upon with my
own research in order to demonstrate the degree of shoddy scholarship and
misrepresentation of the sources that are to be found there and which I
consider to be typical of creation science. And whether you as one
individual creationist place any of your faith on the moon dust claim is not
that important, considering that many creationists do rely on it heavily and
many creationist materials, including the ICR's, which had gone through the
motions of distancing themselves from that claim, still use it.
Let me point out Rev. Lucas' points that I was sharing with you were:
1. "First of all, Christians should be concerned about the truth. The God we
are committed to is the God of truth (John 15:26). Of all people, Christians
should be most punctilious about using only those arguments that are based on
sound methods of scholarship and the best evidence available. This is a
matter of obedient Christian discipleship, not simply a desire to look good
in the eyes of other scholars."
2. "Secondly, following from this, it is dishonouring to God when Christian
scholars are found to be using sloppy arguments based on out-of-date evidence
- and I know secular scholars who have little respect for Christianity
because of this."
3. "Finally, it is a matter of considerable pastoral and evangelistic
importance. Christian scholars who wrongly claim to be presenting sound
'scientific' arguments are misleading their fellow Christians who read their
books. Most of these readers do not have either the opportunity or the
inclination to check up on the reliability of the arguments used and evidence
presented. Some of those readers may in time be stumbled in their faith
because of their misplaced confidence in what they have read. Christian
students who, with more zeal than wisdom, confidently confront lecturers with
arguments culled from books like Scientific Creationism have sometimes
been made to look foolish when the lecturer has been able to show that the
argument does not stand up to the evidence, even the evidence available when
it was first put forward. That has not only shaken the faith of the
Christians, but Undermined their witness to their fellow students. Perhaps
publishers of books on 'scientific creationism', and the managers of
bookshops which sell them, ought to consider putting a spiritual health
warning on them."
I shared Rev. Lucas' points with you to show you that my warnings about the
dangers of creation science were not just the opinion of an atheist, but that
Christian ministers have also arrived at the same conclusions independently
of me. If I can find it, there is a letter written by an evangelical
Christian to an organization of Christians warning them in no uncertain terms
that Gish, Morris, and company are lying to them. When Gish spoke at
Berkeley, his alma mater, a Christian student club distributed fliers
accusing him of doing the work of the devil.
To make sure it's clear:
Point #1 says that Christians should be concerned with the truth and with the
sound methods of scholarship needed to seek the truth. As Orson Scott Card
declared to the idea of creationists lying in order to uphold the truth of
Genesis: "The Truth never needs to be upheld by a lie!"
Point #2 is really two points. The first point is the very same one taught
to everyone who has ever put on a uniform: the dishonor you bring to that
uniform is shared by everybody else who wears that uniform. If you as a
Christian are found to use faulty or dishonest arguments in the furtherance
of your faith, then that taints your fellow Christians and, ultimately, your
entire religion and your god.
The second sub-point is that as your reputation for sloppy, faulty, and
fallacious arguments grows, it not only destroys your own credibility, but
also the credibility of honest Christian scholars and of your entire religion
and your god. To yet again quote Gregg Wilkerson: "Creationism by and large
attracts few to the gospel, but it turns many away."
Point #3 is summed up in Rev. Lucas' suggestion that "creation science"
materials be labeled with a "spiritual health warning." The sub-points are:
a. "creation science" authors mislead their fellow Christians, most of whom
are unable or unwilling to check the claims out for themselves.
b. Their misplaced confidence in creation science may threaten their ability
to keep their Christian faith.
c. Public display of their having been misled by creation science (eg,
confronting lecturers with creation science arguments that do not stand up to
the evidence) has not only shaken the faith of the other Christians present
(say nothing about the faith of the one having made a public fool of
himself), but has also undermined Christian witnessing to the other students.
The way that Rev. Lucas wrote this indicates that he has actually seen this
happen.
So you see, Bill, my warnings about the dangers of creation science are not
just the ramblings of an atheist nor my own personal delusions. Christian
clergymen also see the same dangers that I do. You really do need to think
these problems through.
>However...you never ever heard me tout the moon dust depth...that is a
>uniformitarian argument and ridiculous. How would a depth of dust prove an
>age? Maybe it was a mile deep 200 years ago and got swiped away 100 years
[ago.]
I agree that that argument is ridiculous, yet it is still very popular among
creationists. Even though the ICR has gone through the motions of trying to
distance themselves from it after Slusher's claim blew up in their faces,
their publications still carry that claim and I wouldn't be surprised to
learn that they continue to use it in their debates.
However, the primary problem with the claim is not that it depends on the
gradual continuous accumulation of meteoric dust, but rather that the
creationists formulating this claim had used outdated sources, misrepresented
their sources, and jimmied the figures about to inflate their results (Morris
had chosen the highest available figure, even though the source had expressed
great doubt about its validity, and Slusher inflated his results by a factor
of 1,000,000 by including a term that the source said did not apply and by
applying a short-term (a few hours) maximum variation from the average rate
AS the average rate over billions of years). In short, it is yet another
case of shoddy scholarship and deceptiveness that is so typical of what I and
many others have found in creation science.
Before we can talk about it any further, I need to ask you a few simple
questions:
What is your definition here of "uniformitarian"?
Do you have other definitions of this term that you use? (eg, are there
differences in how you used the term here and in how science uses the term)
Who would use uniformitarian arguments? (obviously, from this example, we
know that creationists do)
What are the alternatives to uniformitarian arguments?
I hope that you do not find these questions too threatening and that you will
be able to answer them. I do intend to continue on this particular subject
and would prefer to have your actual inputs rather than to have to assume
what you meant.
>But I honestly know that you know God exists but choose not to honor
>acknowldge or give thanks to God.
I know that you will believe whatever you want to, irregardless of the truth.
I also know that you either will not or cannot allow yourself to realize that
all the gods are of human invention, to serve as a means for the human mind
to begin to understand the Great and Infinite Unknown. Of course, the human
mind, limited and puny as it is relative to the Universe, cannot even begin
to fathom the Unknown, and so the very best of the gods can at their absolute
best fall short of being a pale shadow of What Really Is. Still, the gods do
help some people along their spiritual paths.
I do not doubt that your god does exist ... in your mind. If belief in your
god helps you on your path, then I would not want to mess with it. As you
know (assuming that you have read my messages), that is a primary reason why
I oppose "creation science", because it would endanger your faith and the
faith of others like you. And given the distorted view of atheism that you
and those others hold to as the alternative should you lose your faith, I
would consider that danger to be great.
As for myself, your path is not my path. I prefer to follow the Gautama
Buddha's teaching to not believe in the gods, for believing in the gods would
only hold you back.
>Romans 1 says that and that was my case
>when I was an atheist, I prayed many times while an atheist.
I'm sure that was very true in your case, but you need to keep in mind that
you were not an actual atheist, but rather an "atheist of opportunity," an
opportunistic theist looking for any excuse to misbehave with impunity. By
your own account, you had rejected your god solely for the purpose of seeking
out and indulging in hedonistic excesses and depravity without any guilt nor
any thought of consequences or accountability. The only way that such a
foolish attitude can make any sense to the fool^H^H^H^Hperson
using/abusing it is if that person does still believe that his god exists but
refuses to acknowledge that god for convenience sake. In short, you are
projecting; I am not you.
[FYI, just in case you do not know ASCII, Control-H, AKA "^H", is the
backspace character, with an ASCII code of 8. The "^H" sequence is sometimes
used for humorous effect in messages to indicate that the sender had first
written down what he really meant and then backspaced over it and replaced it
with a more euphemistic term, while at the same time sharing what he had
originally written; eg, "... sharks^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers ..." To be honest, I
do not know if ANSI supports it, since the actual backspace character never
actually gets transmitted -- HISTORICAL NOTE: dumb terminals connected to
multi-user systems would transmit each character from the keyboard to the
computer, which would transmit that character back to the monitor; in such a
system, the backspace would be transmitted and interpreted by the monitor,
though not actually get displayed except perhaps in certain modes or on a
communications analyzer.]
>All I can do is present a case to you.
Ah, finally! Or should I say instead, "Promises, promises."
Reminds me of an old joke, so old that I can barely remember it. It used to
be considered a dirty joke and, while it seems rather tame now, I will clean
it up further. Also, I can only describe it to you, since I don't even
remember most of it anymore. A woman about to marry for the third time, each
marriage having lasted a number of years, went in for a prenuptual exam. Her
doctor was amazed to discover that she was still a virgin. I forget why the
first marriage was never consumated, but the reason for the second one was
that she had married a salesman who kept telling her how great it was going
to be, but his presentation would always take so long that they would both
fall asleep before he could never deliver on his promises.
Similarly, you are big on claims and bluster, but you never deliver. You say
the evidence supports creation? But you never present any of it, even when
asked directly for it, repeatedly.
You blustered really bigtime in your "Weird Science" that "not one
evolutionist has yet [found a single error in Weird Science]", but when I
presented my 80-page critique of it in which I found errors in every single
frame of every single page, your only response was "the only critique is the
spelling of Lemcont Demoy's name". I wonder, do you still make that claim in
your "new and improved" edition?
You offered to present your lesson, as if you really wanted to, I asked you
to go ahead and present it, and, yet again, nothing resulted.
Now you say "All I can do is present a case to you." and finish off with
"Let's get started converting you!" (reconstructed from memory). Let me
guess what will follow: nothing. Right?
BTW, when this started, since there was such a tone of urgency in your
messages, I volunteered to make the extra effort to check my AOL email much
more frequently than usual and I did keep my promise (and believe me, in my
household that extra effort was not easy). You will notice that I do not
make that effort any more, because you ended up having nothing to say.
>Let's get started converting you! (reconstructed from memory).
"Do not to others that which is displeasing to yourself. That is the whole
of the Law. Now go and learn it."
And again, since I understand, according to your beliefs as I have read them
expressed and my own fundamentalist Christian training, my conversion would
require me to believe in creation science, which I know to be false and
deceptive, why should I want to convert? Don't you understand that creation
science places a barrier to conversion in the way of myself and of others
like me of high moral standards? Don't you understand that creation science
places Christians and Christianity on the moral low ground?
#########################################################
Subj: Re: Tally the Votes
Date: 98-02-07 01:16:09 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
no
#########################################################
Subj: Let's Get on with it, already.
Date: 98-02-19 23:34:47 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: DWise1, liber8r@mcs.com
Your message, repeated for Liberator's [liber8r@mcs.com] sake (it is really
quite easy to CC, you know):
### BEGIN ###
Subj: Re: Tally the Votes
Date: 98-02-07 01:16:09 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
no
### END ###
How could you simply say, "no"? Conducting our discussion via email is the
only logical choice. It should be intuitively obvious to even the most
casual observer that the reasons for emailing far outnumber and outweigh the
reasons for telephoning and that the reasons for emailing are far more
compelling than the reasons for telephoning. Do you deny those facts? On
what basis? Why, in the face of reason, are you so dead-set against using
email? Mere personal preference, which is about all the reason that you had
to offer, is not a compelling reason.
As I have already told you repeatedly, it is virtually impossible for me to
call you in order to discuss the issues. I cannot call you from work and I
cannot call you from home. Just where the hell am I supposed to call you
from? And when, given our mutual overloaded schedules? And just what am I
to expect from a phone conversation with you, given how evasive you have been
so far? If you expect me to call you, which you know is impossible for me to
do, then YOU need to come up with a workable plan for me to do so (HINT:
since *I* am expected to place that call, then *I* will decide whether your
plan is workable or not). Remember that you got this started by asking for
feedback on your AOLCREAT.DOC and by urgently telling me to talk with you
"ASAP". Why then are you the one who is doing all he can to keep our
discussions from happening?
I have been trying to deal with you in good faith, whereas you have been
nothing but evasive. I have been trying to get a discussion going, whereas
you have been blocking any and all discussion. A lot of questions have been
asked; I have answered yours whereas you have not answered mine. Do you
remember how you reacted when I offered a web page WHICH I HAD WRITTEN MYSELF
[in caps for emphasis] in explanation of my answer for accepting an ancient
age for the earth? To jog your memory, here it is again:
### BEGIN ###
[You]
Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print
Date: 97-08-10 21:54:42 EDT
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why?
[Me]
>Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print
>Date: 97-08-10 21:54:42 EDT
>From: BillyJack6
>To: DWise1
>
>Do you think the earth is 4.6 billion years old? Why?
>
I do not recall trying to claim an exact age of the earth. Surely the
"exact" age is and will continue to be a subject of active debate and
investigation, from determining at which point in its formation the earth
could be considered as having actually come into being (eg, assuming an
accretion model, do you start the clock when the very first planetessimals
start to clump or when most of the current mass had accreted, or somewhere
inbetween?) to the accuracy and the concurrence of the dating methods used.
So I would not necessarily claim that the earth is exactly 4.6 billion years
old (give or take 100 million years), but I see no scientific reason to
seriously doubt that order of magnitude (while I can understand some
religious reasons).
"Why?" Because the preponderance of geological evidence shows that the earth
has had a very long history. I understand from your writings that you are a
young-earth creationist, which would mean that you believe the earth to be
about 6000 years old (I would assume that you are not taken with the ICR's
lame attempt at stealth tactics when they try to hide their biblical basis by
claiming 10,000 years instead). The geological evidence clearly shows that
the earth is much older than 6000 years, many times over. Clearly enough for
creationist geologist Glenn R. Morton, who as a creationist would dearly love
to find the earth to be young, but as a practicing geologist must accept the
evidence that it is instead quite ancient. And clearly enough for the
creationist geology students he had hired and who suffered severe crises of
faith when confronted with that hard geological evidence (please note that
they did not suffer any crises of GEOLOGY).
Again, I refer you to my web page on the subject:
http://members.aol.com/dwise1/geology.html
which is linked to by my creation/evolution web page:
http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev.html
Since you have an AOL account, I know that you have access to the Web.
Now, I should reverse your question:
Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Why?
[You]
Subj: Re: A Letter the Register Would Not Print
Date: 97-08-17 18:01:32 EDT
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Wait! Time out! You did not answer why you think teh earth is 4.6 billion
+/- 100 million years old. All you said is "geology." Please tell me what
evidence from geology convinces you of this.
Thank you,
Bill
[Me -- actual text of message lost]
I responded that I had indeed answered the question and that the specific
information
you asked for was on my web page. I was refering you to that web page so as
to not
make the email overly large (by more than 50,000 bytes).
[You]
Subj: Re: Yes, Geology
Date: 97-08-21 21:46:47 EDT
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
you are very eloquent but also very evasive.
No where did you answerhte question..you said "geology." And pointed me to a
web page. I expect more of you. Do not hide behind some else's web
page....give me your answer.
BillBillyJack6Re: Yes, Geology
[Me -- paraphrased]
response was given on-line to the effect that that web page is indeed mine
and written by me, so I have indeed answered the question. Yet again, I
offer
to get that file to him by other means if he is either unable or unwilling to
access the Web.
[You]
Nothing. There were no further messages on this matter and you did not email
me again until
after I sent you my "What Happened to You?" email about one month later, and
even then, your only response was:
Subj: Re: Where'd ya go?
Date: 97-10-10 01:07:56 EDT
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Its not!
BillyJack6
Re: Where'd ya go?
Despite repeated requests that you explain what you meant by that hysterical
outburst
[NOT in the sense of being funny], "Its not!", you have never explained it
nor
addressed it nor my requests.
### END ###
Bill, when you thought that I had not answered your question (when, in fact,
I had), you immediately challenged me on it and insisted that I answer your
question, calling me "evasive". And you were not very nice about it either,
now were you, Bill?
And yet, Bill, the truth is that YOU are the one who does not answer any
questions and YOU are the one who is being evasive. You know that I am
telling the truth here. You cannot deny it. Why do you believe that certain
behavior and standards are wrong for me to do (even though you just imagined
that I had done wrong) and completely alright for you to do? Do not to
others that which is displeasing to yourself; that is the whole of the Law
(damn-straight Pharisee teaching, that).
And it's not as if I was trying to hit you with really tough questions that
you should find impossible to answer (such as the standard creationist
tactic, embodied in the Gish Gallop, you were trying to use on me). They
were, for the most part, simple, straight-forward questions that were
intended to establish what your position is so that we could discuss it.
While some are tougher and more probing than others, they were all intended
to be answerable; not a single one was intended to stump you, unlike your
questions to me, which ARE intended to stump the victim -- uh -- mark -- uh
-- OK, victim -- , thus placing him in a vulnerable position wherein he is
more easily discredited and/or persuaded/converted (remember, my Christian
training is Fundamentalist and I have observed fundamentalist proselytizing
techniques for many years -- I know how your game is played).
Here are just a few of those questions (yet again):
1. Do you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old? Why?
2. Do you agree with John Morris that if the earth is more than 10,000 years
old then Scripture has no meaning?
3. What would happen if you found irrefutable proof that the earth is far
older than 10,000 years? What effect would that have on you? How would it
affect your faith? Should it? Why?
4. [to your "Have you ever heard my lesson?"] Do you have a lesson to
present? Then please, go right ahead and present it. Nothing is stopping
you, nor has anything ever been stopping you.
5. What was meant by your outburst, "Its not!" (Subj: Re: Where'd ya go?;
Date: 97-10-10 01:07:56 EDT)? What's "not"? Please, provide some context.
What are you talking about?
6. How, then, can you honestly ever expect to use creation science to convert
me or anybody else possessing knowledge of creation science? The only way
would be for us to abandon our higher moral and ethical standards of truth
and honesty. Why would I ever want to lower my standards so drastically?
7. Which Patterson quotes did your speaker use and how did he use and
interpret those quotes for the audience.
8. What is your definition [in your assessment of the moon-dust claims as "a
uniformitarian argument and ridiculous."] of "uniformitarian"? Do you have
other definitions of this term that you use? (eg, are there differences in
how you used the term here and in how science uses the term) Who would use
uniformitarian arguments? (obviously, from this example, we know that
creationists do) What are the alternatives to uniformitarian arguments?
Questions #1, #7, and #8 should be no-brainers for you; they require only
simple statements of fact, ones which you should already know the answer to
and would readily offer in most fora. If you feel at all threatened by my
questions, these particular questions should be the least threatening of the
lot. Indeed, question #1 is undoubtedly an article of faith for you, which I
believe you have stated many times elsewhere. So why do you avoid stating it
again here? I assume that your reluctance to answer question #1 is due to
the fact that know that you have no evidence to support it and do not want to
admit it. Answering question #8 might prove a bit more difficult for you,
since it may reveal confusion on your part as to what "uniformitarian" means
and how scientists do science, or even possibly your use of the standard
creationist tactic of switching between different meanings of the same term.
Likewise, question #4 should be no problem for you, since you have
undoubtedly presented it to others many times in the past. The only
difficulty here is that you need to present it in written form (which I
suspect you have already done to others -- so, again, why do you avoid doing
so here? And besides, you had brought it up yourself.). Again, since this
is something that you have sought to present to others in the past, you
should not feel threatened by my request that you respond.
Questions #2, #3, and #6 are more difficult for you, since they require you
to think about your position and its consequences. #2 is very important for
you to answer, since it would reveal a strong motive on your part to not
examine your creation science too closely nor critically; #3 is little more
than an extension of #2, asking you to more closely examine the consequences
of your beliefs. Question #6 directly addresses the central issue of the
effects of using creation science as a tool for proselytizing. Believe it or
not, answering these questions are also in your own best interest, for it is
written: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will
never be in peril."
Question #5 would undoubtedly be the most threatening of the lot. Your "Its
not!" [sic] (grammar, lad, grammar -- you really should have studied German,
you know; I learned more about English grammar in two years of high school
German than I had ever learned in 12 years of English classes) was obviously
an emotional outburst stemming from strong denial. In order for you to
answer this question, you would have to reflect back on what you were
thinking at the time and then share those thoughts with Liberator and me.
Plus, your pride would suffer from having to admit to the human weakness of
having emotional outbursts (yet another reason not to use the phone --
emotional outbursts occur very easily on the phone while writing allows us to
address issues and questions more dispassionately). Still, with my having
written about so many different things up to that point, I need to know which
one you were reacting to. Furthermore, I would need to know why you said
"Its not!" [sic].
I would remind you that in your silence and evasion you are witnessing loud
and clear about your religion and creation science.
Regarding your February newsletter, I was surprised that you, knowing what
you do, had presented that scenario of a child asking whether Genesis was
talking about literal 24-hour days. Don't you remember how I became an
atheist as a child? Having been baptized the year before, I decided to learn
what I was required to believe, so I started reading the Bible, starting with
Genesis 1:1, with the understanding that I was to take it literally (whether
my church at that time required biblical literalism, I do not know). I made
it through at least half of Genesis, but it did not take me long to find that
what Genesis described was so unbelievable that I realized that I could not
believe it. At that point, I became a non-believer, an atheist, because I
had read the Bible and took it literally.
How, then, knowing that, can you insist that children be taught to take the
Bible literally? All our actions have consequences. When are you going to
start to think about the consequences of your actions?
#########################################################
Subj: Re: Let's Get on with it, already.
Date: 98-03-03 00:00:55 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Sigh, here is the problem, you like long e mails, I do not. I like the phone
you do not. I am not saying I am better than you, or conceding you are
better than me. We are just two folks who like different media.
#########################################################
Subj: Re: Let's Get on with it, already.
Date: 98-03-21 18:55:28 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: DWise1, liber8r@mcs.com
Sorry about the long delay in getting back to you. Having had low
expectations (and lack of ready access), I hadn't logged in to AOL for a
couple weeks. Plus, we've been putting in a lot of long hours on our current
project, so I haven't had any free time to speak of.
Your message, repeated for Liberator's [liber8r@mcs.com] sake (CC'ing hardly
takes any typing at all):
### BEGIN ###
Subj: Re: Let's Get on with it, already.
Date: 98-03-03 00:00:55 EST
From: BillyJack6
To: DWise1
Sigh, here is the problem, you like long e mails, I do not. I like the phone
you do not. I am not saying I am better than you, or conceding you are
better than me. We are just two folks who like different media.
### END ###
Pardon my skepticism, but it sure looks to me that there is a lot more going
on there than mere personal preference. I think that you are using your
personal preference as an excuse to avoid a discussion that would expose the
vulnerability of creation science.
In the real world, if two parties are trying to do something, if there are
two different means of doing it, and if one of these means turns out to be
too highly impractical or impossible for one of the parties to use, then the
other means is selected. Practicality overrules personal preference every
time. In the real world, when both parties are trying to get something done.
But when one party does not want to get that something done, then that party
will use whatever it can to block the process, such as insisting on some
impossible conditions. And that party will appeal to something like personal
preference in order to put on the appearance of cooperating, when in fact
that party is sabotaging the process. Remember the Paris Peace Talks?
Bill, that is what I see you doing. We have already established that it is
virtually impossible for me to call you, yet you steadfastly refuse to
proceed via email, a means which we have both demonstrated that we are both
able to use. If you really wanted to discuss creation science, then you
would agree on using the medium of email, considering that using the
telephone has been ruled out as virtually impossible. Your steadfast refusal
indicates that you are seriously opposed to an email exchange for some other
reason other than personal preference. I believe that I know what that
reason is: you know that an examination and discussion of creation science
in light of the
evidence will expose it as fraudulant.
What makes all this really strange is that YOU are the one who tried to get
this started. You are the one who urged me to get in touch with you. You
had to talk with me "ASAP". I told you that I could not call you, but that
you should email your questions to me and I would try to answer them as
quickly as possible. You sounded so urgent, that I told you that I would
increase the frequency with which I check my AOL email, just for you, which I
did do.
Then suddenly you didn't want to talk about anything. You wouldn't answer
any questions. All you would do is insist that I call you on the phone,
despite the fact that that is virtually impossible for me to do. Why?
On 98-01-17, you mentioned "tons of email", which sounds to me like you do
engage in lots of email exchanges with others. Then why are you so opposed
to doing so with me and only want to deal with me over the phone? I have
also noticed that you are very vociferous and cocky with somebody who you
think doesn't know what's going on, yet you instantly become very
close-mouthed and cagey when you realize that you're dealing with somebody
who knows something.
[NOTE: I think I might understand a little more now that I just did a search
in DejaNews on "Bill Morgan"+evolution. You naughty little Spam'er, you!]
It looks like we both have very different ideas of what we are trying to
accomplish and that we've been working at cross purposes. I came in thinking
that we were going to examine, evaluate, and discuss creation science claims
and the evidence. I was even hoping to finally see somebody try to present
some evidence FOR the "creation model" (something that I and others had
repeatedly requested on CompuServe and had never seen anybody present in over
five years -- a few creationists even got very beligerent about it).
Secondarily, since my experience with and study of creation science has shown
it to be blatantly false and misleading (sometimes deliberately so, though it
is not always possible to prove deliberate deceipt, although there are a
number of cases of cover-up), I was wanting to discuss the consequences of
proselytizing through creation science (which is loss of faith; I found a lot
more such material the other day on the Web, posted by a creationist who had
published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly and ghost-wrote for Josh
McDowell) and the ethics and morality of "lying for the Lord".
On the other hand, it appears that you came in thinking of nothing else but
to proselytize, even though your facade was one of discussing
creation/evolution. First you tried to shoot my position out from under me
with a few stock "unanswerable questions", which, much to your surprise, I
handled (indeed, you became very upset with me when I refered your question
about geological evidence to my webpage, which I had written, on that very
subject). Then you became very cagey and insisted that I call you on the
phone and evaded all other discussion
in email.
As I had covered in my presentation of the reasons for choosing email over
the telephone, a discussion of creation science and of the corresponding
evidence requires the communication of a lot of factual information, for
which email is very well-suited and for which the telephone is very
ill-suited. Hence, for my purpose in conducting this discussion, email (or
some other written form) is the obvious choice. However, for your purpose of
proselytizing, you need a medium which communicates emotional content, which
hinders the examination of factual information, and which allows you to
perform feats of verbal legere-de-main as well as the old standard, the "Gish
Gallop." For your purposes, the telephone works best and email would be
sure-death, especially against a knowledgeable opponent/mark. Hence your
steadfast insistence on the telephone.
Sorry, but I do not have the time to waste on your trying to convert me.
Please remember that I got my Christian training from Chuck Smith's church --
you have heard of Chuck Smith, I trust (for Liberator's sake, Chuck Smith is
the minister who founded Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Calif, which formed
the center of the Jesus Freak movement in the late 60's here. It is still
going strong and has grown into something of a local fundamentalist
mega-church and Christian school with very strong ties with the ICR). You
wouldn't be telling me anything that I hadn't already heard many times over.
For that matter, the mere fact of my fundamentalist Christian training worked
miracles in fending off a door-to-doorproselytizer:
Me: "Sorry, we're not Christian."
She: "Would you like to learn about Christianity?"
Me: "I have. That is why we are not Christian."
She: left immediately
It worked almost as good as a red thumbtack on the door frame (I'll tell you
that story later -- refer to the Holmes case of the Norwood [sp?] Builder.).
Therefore, even if I do find a way to call you, you would find it very
unsatisfactory. I would be making that phone call with the same purpose as I
approached these emails: to engage in an examination of creation science
claims. That means that if you start in with your Gish Gallop, I would be
interrupting you constantly so that I could write down your claims. It
wouldn't work out for either of us.
On 98-02-19, I wrote:
"As I have already told you repeatedly, it is virtually impossible for me to
call you in order to discuss the issues. I cannot call you from work and I
cannot call you from home. Just where the hell am I supposed to call you
from? And when, given our mutual overloaded schedules? And just what am I
to expect from a phone conversation with you, given how evasive you have been
so far? If you expect me to call you, which you know is impossible for me to
do, then YOU need to come up with a workable plan for me to do so (HINT:
since *I* am expected to place that call, then *I* will decide whether your
plan is workable or not). Remember that you got this started by asking for
feedback on your AOLCREAT.DOC and by urgently telling me to talk with you
"ASAP". Why then are you the one who is doing all he can to keep our
discussions from happening?"
Even though I had asked that question somewhat rhetorically and out of
exasperation, I will repeat it now as a question that requires an answer:
Given the virtual impossibility for me to call you, just
exactly how am I supposed to call you? What workable plan
can you present?
Regarding your complaint about the length of my emails, need I point out to
you that my emails would be undoubtedly be shorter if I didn't have to repeat
the questions you have refused to answer or the material that you couldn't or
wouldn't understand (eg, Rev. Lucas' assessment of the damage done to faith
and to the credibility of Christianity by creation science), or if I didn't
have to offer conjecture about what you believe or claim.
Even considering all of the above, I think I found another possible
explanation of your dislike of email. I did a quick search of the news
groups and found that in 1996 you had spammed your AOLCREAT.DOC all over the
place -- indeed, in some very strange places. You had posted it as a
*TWELVE*-parter to (some newgroup names truncated by DejaNews):
a.bsu.talk
a.bsu.programming
a.bsu.religion
alc.suicide
alt.atheism
alt.evil
alt.religion.all-worl
alt.religion.barfing-
alt.religion.broadcas
alt.religion.christia
alt.religion.christian-teen
alt.religion.christian.calvary-chapel
alt.sex
k12.ed.science
school.teachers
In addition, others, including god@boy.com and lady@love.com, spammed it even
further afield:
alt.bible.prophecy
alt.christnet
alt.christnet.bible
alt.christnet.philoso
alt.hemp
alt.magick
alt.pagan
alt.paranormal
alt.philosophy.objectivism
alt.religion.buddhism
alt.religion.christian
alt.religion.mormon
alt.religion.rabbet
alt.religion.scientology
alt.romance
alt.romance.chat
alt.romance.matureadult
alt.romance.online
alt.romance.teen
alt.satanism
alt.society.anarchy
alt.sports.football.p
alt.sports.football.pro.dallas-cowboys
alt.sports.football.pro.denver-broncos
bionet.molbio.evoluti
sci.anthropology
sci.anthropology.pale
sci.astro
sci.bio
sci.physics
talk.atheism
talk.origins
A number of the replies that I read expressed displeasure at the inordinate
length of your post, at the highly inappropriate choice of news group (many
tried to direct you to talk.origins, though one reply suggested that you had
already been torn to shreds there so you had turned to targeting those who do
not know any better -- I did notice that you had yourself steered well clear
of talk.origins), and at your repeating the same old false claims that had
been refuted over and over again in the past.
I am sure that you received an avalanche of emails because of that spamming,
most of them quite negative (ie, it must have been flame-city there for quite
a few months, especially as your "friends" out there continued the spamming)
-- especially from the members of the football newsgroups, I would think. I
would think that that experience alone would have soured you on email. Yet I
would also think that you would have gotten several unpleasant phone calls
too, so why didn't that make you phone-shy?
In case you had missed the replies at the time, here are a few (I tried to
take them mainly from the Christian newsgroups -- you should see some
familiar themes):
"Bill, I do not want to sound harsh but this stuff would get ripped to
shreads on 'talk.origins'. While I believe in creation as the only source of
my existance these arguments have been refuted many times. While I know that
you are trying, I hate seeing people branded as 'liars for Jesus'. "
Subject: Re: Creation or Evolution? You Decide
From: chrislee@netcom.com (Christopher A. Lee)
Date: 1996/09/30
Message-ID:
Newsgroups:
alt.bible.prophecy,alt.christnet,alt.religion.christian,alt.christnet.bible,a.bsu.religion,alt.atheism,talk.atheism,talk.origins
[More Headers]
In article <52n731$gb8@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca> jjamal@suntek.mb.ca writes:
>I read the following article. It is very informative. Many people will
>learn something out of it.
Yes, that creationists are ignorant, gullible and unducated. Or liars. Or
both. And dishonest.
[snip]
>
>Creation vs. Evolution
>What is the Better Explanation?
>
>
> Hi. My name is Bill Morgan. I am a Registered Mechanical Engineer
>and I love science and learning about science. I have been studying
>the Creation vs. Evolution for several years and have made this text
>file to present a clear, easy to understand case for Creation. This
>case for Creation will be built using science.
[snip]
This crap has been refuted on alt.atheism and talk.origins each time Bill
Morgan posted the identical article. Yet he ignores the responses and
repeats the same drek hoping that people have forgotten it from last time.
Subject: Re: Creation or Evolution? You Decide :)
From: David Byrden
Date: 1996/10/01
Message-ID: <325174C4.5CA@iol.ie>
Newsgroups: alt.christnet.philosophy
[More Headers]
Still Learning wrote:
> Hi! Let me introduce myself. I'm Pam, I'm new to the net...
> Thanks again, and continue spreading the word of the
> Lord!
Hi, Pam! Let me introduce myself. I'm David, longtime
resident of the Net, and I'm jumping in here because I think
that somebody should explain to you that Bill Morgan was talking
through his butt. Really, everything he said was either wrong,
already disproven, or self-contradictory. Email me if you'd like
details, at goyra@iol.ie
Subject: Re: Evolution or Creation? You Decide :)
From: hyde@rossby.tamu.edu (William Hyde)
Date: 1997/03/17
Message-ID: <5gk9sc$8u1@rossby.tamu.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
[More Headers]
In article <332cbf9b.5586051@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
wrote:
>Creation vs. Evolution
>What is the Better Explanation?
>
>
> Hi. My name is Bill Morgan. I am a Registered Mechanical Engineer
>and I love science and learning about science. I have been studying
>the Creation vs. Evolution for several years and have made this text
>file to present a clear, easy to understand case for Creation. This
>case for Creation will be built using science.
I read your case.
It is not built using science.
You lied to us. (If you truly are an engineer you cannot
claim enough ignorance to get you off the hook.)
That is a sin.
William Hyde
Dept of Oceanography
Texas A&M University
Subject: Re: Evolution or Creation? You Decide :)
From: yotaxes@pipeline.com (That Guy, From That Show!)
Date: 1996/12/24
Message-ID: <32c05297.769224@news.pipeline.com>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian-teen
[More Headers]
BillyJack6@aol.com wrote:
>Creation vs. Evolution
>What is the Better Explanation?
>
>
> Hi. My name is Bill Morgan. I am a Registered Mechanical Engineer
>and I love science and learning about science. I have been studying
>the Creation vs. Evolution for several years and have made this text
>file to present a clear, easy to understand case for Creation. This
>case for Creation will be built using science.
[SNIP]
I will not waste any time by allowing this guy to speak any furthur.
I read the whole thing, and the one thing that I am convinced of omre
than any other thing is that this guy is NOT an engineer. Something
else I am convinced of is that he has had psychological training, as
he follows some very well known post-Freudian methods to lull people
over to believing he is objective. He says he wants you to view
things from an objective standpoint, but he doesn't do it himself. He
is hell-bent (sic) to prove creationism, as is convinced that there is
a plot amonst the media cabal with the government to keep creationism
down.
By the way, there is no such thing as a "registered" engineer. You
get your diploma, and that's it. No registration process except if
for private industry, which is not registration, but certification.
Matt Singerman
messt66+@pitt.edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~messt66/
"A man needs god like a fish needs a bicycle"
R.A.W.
Subject: Re: Creation or Evolution? You Decide :)
From: jimf@vangelis.co.symbios.com (Jim Foley)
Date: 1996/10/04
Message-ID: <53381a$fts@jupiter.ks.symbios.com>
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology.paleo
[More Headers]
In article <52ktk0$q4t@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
wrote:
>Creation vs. Evolution
>What is the Better Explanation?
The Fossils Hominids FAQ has a detailed analysis of most of the
arguments that creationists make about the human fossil record. It also
has information on the best evidence for human evolution. Like
billyjack6, I encourage everyone to look at the evidence and decide for
themselves. I doubt that many people who actually examine the evidence
will come to the conclusion that billyjack wants them to, though.
The faq is at
http://earth.ics.uci.edu:8080/faqs/fossil-hominids.html
(If you haven't visited it recently, have another look. I recently
reorganized it to make it much easier to navigate, and quicker to load)
--
Jim (Chris) Foley, jim.foley@symbios.com
Assoc. Prof. of Omphalic Envy Research interest:
Department of Anthropology Primitive hominids
University of Ediacara (Australopithecus creationistii)
Subject: Re: An article on Evolution/Creation
From: welsberr@inia.tamug.tamu.edu (Wesley R. Elsberry)
Date: 1997/08/17
Message-ID: <5t677d$44q@inia.tamug.tamu.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
[More Headers]
Posted and emailed.
[DWISE1: SNIPPED -- don't want you to get an over-long email, Bill; the
entire message available upon request]
SciCre-ists often complain that evolutionary theory runs counter to
the second law of thermodynamics, information theory, or sometimes
just "thermodynamics".
Thermodynamics addresses processes which may involve changes in
energy distribution or availability. Because SciCre-ists challenge
evolutionary mechanism theories on the basis of thermodynamics, it
follows that some particular process or processes must have been
identified as being objectionable by those SciCre-ists.
This challenge is designed to test the rigor of the SciCre-ist's claim
regarding thermodynamics. Because the SciCre-ist has made the claim
that one or more evolutionary processes are thermodynamically invalid
or unviable, the following three questions must be answered if there
is any competence of the SciCre claim at all:
1. Specifically, which process or processes are identified
as being thermodynamically invalid? [Identify the process such that
it can be researched.]
2. Specifically, which evolutionary mechanism theory
postulates the process or processes identified in (1) as being
necessary to evolutionary change? [Identify the theory such
that the claim can be researched.]
3. Defend the claim that the process identified in (1)
and referenced in (2) has not been observed in extant populations.
[Processes which are observed to happen in extant populations
are highly unlikely to be thermodynamically invalid. Indicate
sources that tend to confirm the claim that the process is not
observed to happen.]
In my reading and research on evolutionary mechanism theories, I
have found no reliance upon any process that has not been observed in
extant populations. This leads me to treat claims of thermodynamic
inviability for these theories with great skepticism.
Roster of the challenged:
Date Name Forum Response
961229 DJ (alpha@one.net) talk.origins None
970101 Bill Morgan k12.ed.science None
970224 Joe Sinisi talk.origins "I am planning to get back to you
by this upcoming weekend." (970225) Further email revealed that Joe could
not get a professor to stand by the assertion that the 2LOT and evolution
were contradictory.
970303 Neil Aitchison talk.origins None
970304 Jim Frank alt.sci.physics.new-theories None
970817 Andrew Irwin talk.origins Pending
Newly challenged persons have the "Response" field listed as
"Pending". "Pending" automatically changes to "None" if no
response is sent to me at welsberr@inia.tamug.tamu.edu within one
month. A later response will replace a "None" entry after
receipt.
--
Wesley R. Elsberry, 6070 Sea Isle, Galveston TX 77554.
Student in Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences.
http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/elsberry
the wolf then pulled a number of other arguments as to why the lamb should
die
Subject: Re: How do you know the Bible is the truth?
From: Shy.David@EdenBBS.COM
Date: 1996/09/01
Message-ID: <50amci$hce@news.dx.net>
Newsgroups:
alt.atheism,alt.bible.prophecy,alt.christnet,alt.christnet.bible,alt.magick,alt.pagan,alt.religion.scientology,alt.satanism,alt.society.anarchy
[More Headers]
NOTE: Non-occult related newsgroups have been trimmed
by me--- sd.
In article <01bb98b6$49ed9f40$b5281ecc@default>, "Nick
Heath" wrote:
>> So long as it's only view as a GUIDE there woudn't
>> be any problem but that's not the way it's wave around
>> by 99% of christianity[sic].
> There is a really cool file that this guy wrote on the
> subject of creation vs evolution you should read. here
> it is....
>
> Nick
>
> begin 600 aolcreat.txt
> MT,\1X*&Q&N$`````````````````````.P`#`/[_"0`&```````````````!
I've read the inane occult prattle you have posted
(most of the newsgroups you sent it to do not want
binary shit posted to them). (By the way, the file
name should be "aolcreat.doc" since it appears to be
a Word 6.0 file, though it's badly corrupted.)
Judging by what could be recovered from the file, the
author ("Bill Morgan") is utterly incompetent and
ignorant about the subject he pretends to discourse
about. If "really cool" is a synonym for bizarre,
uninformed occult beliefs devoid of reality, then you
have a point in that the document is a "should read."
He has obviously never studied Evolutionary Theory,
nor is he aware of the thousands of times his very
old, pathetic "arguements" have been conclusively
refuted.
He is utterly confused about how evolution occured
(he claims it was "by chance," which is false) and
he claimed "evolutionists" are people who "deny"
the existance of gods---- both claims are, of
course, bullshit: hince his demonstrated ignorance
and incompetence. He also confused "atheists" with
"evolutionist," even though the two are not
synonomous.
His "argument by design" was debunked by David Hume
et all over 130 years ago. No one can say what a
NON-DESIGNED object would look like---- how can one
therefore define what a "designed" thing looks like?
He also boldly, shamelessly lied about the first two
laws of Thermodynamics--- his understanding of
thermodynamics is zero.
He then, out of ignorance, asserted that biopoesis is
the same thing as evolution--- it is not.
He then, out of ignorance, starts to prattle on and on
about cosmology---- which has nothing to do with his
subject (theistic anti-evolution).
He also failed to try and support his occult beliefs:
he merely complained, in kindergarten-level (and very
false) caricatured "understanding" of evolution and
Evolutionary Theory, about science--- no evidence at
all was mentions for to support an alternative.
He also confused evolution with Evolutionary Theory.
In summary, ignorant fools like this are a bane to
Christianity and the Body of Christ, as idiots like
this tend to give Christians a bad name. Documents
like "aolcreat.txt" show non-believers just how very
ignorant, stupid, uninformed, deceptive, uneducated,
blatently IMBICILIC Christians can be.
--
Rev David Michael Rice.
Mariner's Ministries, Dana Point, CA.
To end on a lighter note, I've recently been reading a sci-fi novel by Viktor
Koman, "The Jehovah Contract" (originally "Der Jehova-Vertrag"), c. 1984.
Set in Los Angeles a few months before 2000, he depicts Orange County as
having been renamed to Disney County (yeah, he missed that prediction by
about a decade or two -- given the way that Disney Co. has been taking
over Anaheim). Interestingly, he is the one who led the campaign to save one
of the original Disneyland monorails (do a search on his name). Early in the
story, after the main character had started his search for God in the
theology section of the library, he is told that theologians are the wrong
source:
"You can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up
their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy."
And during the 1985 Paul Trout Affair, Rev.Dr. William Schulz, then UUA
President (now heading Amnesty International), quoted Augustine of Hippo:
"God is not what you imagine, or what you think you understand.
For if you understand, you have failed."
#########################################################
creationism
##and##
##and##creation science##and##evolutionQuick
0
Member Name: Bill Morgan
Location: Southern California USA
Sex: Male
Hobbies: Volleyball; Tennis; Reading; My dog;
Computers: This one my buddy Daniel Parrish assembled for about 800 bucks
Occupation: Mechanical Engineer
Personal Quote: Jesus lives and Darwin is still dead (but Darwin Believes in
God now..too late)
http://www.aol.com
#########################################################
Subj: The Subject was Moon Dust
Date: 98-03-25 23:25:11 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1
You (98-01-28 23:44:47 EST):
"However...you never ever heard me tout the moon dust depth...that is a
uniformitarian argument and ridiculous. How would a depth of dust prove an
age? Maybe it was a mile deep 200 years ago and got swiped away 100 years"
Me (98-02-06 00:51:04 EST):
"What is your definition here of "uniformitarian"?
Do you have other definitions of this term that you use? (eg, are there
differences in how you used the term here and in how science uses the term)
Who would use uniformitarian arguments? (obviously, from this example, we
know that creationists do)
What are the alternatives to uniformitarian arguments?"
Many terms carry more than one meaning, especially within different technical
fields. This leads to a common creationist tactic of shifting between the
different meanings of a technical term (eg, "transitional form", "vestigial
remain"), thus enabling them to misquote a scientific source without changing
a word (granted, much of such semantic shifting could be unintentional,
caused by the creationist's own ignorance). Hence my question here
concerning your definitions of the term, "uniformitarian". Since I do not
expect you to ever answer these questions (though what you would be afraid of
here, I do not know), so I will proceed.
The primary definition of "uniformitarian" in science refers to the basic
assumption in science that the natural forces and processes that we observe
in the present existed in the past and acted the same in the past as we
observe them acting in the present under the same or similar conditions.
This enables us to examine the results of past processes and determine which
processes under what conditions had produced those results. Since reference
is to NATURAL forces and processes, this normally excludes supernaturalistic
causes from consideration.
Another meaning of "uniformitarian" refers to slow, gradual processes in
which the results slowly and gradually accrue or accrete; I believe that this
was the meaning that you used in your statement. Please note that this
meaning is far more restrictive in terms of the rates of the processes
involved than is the previous meaning, which can and does include
catastrophic and rapid processes.
Creation science presents us with a dichotomy between two different
approaches, especially in the field of geology, which it calls
"Uniformitarianism" and "Catastrophism," the names of two major schools of
thought in 19th century geology. As usual, creation science applies
established names to something of creationist manufacture, to something quite
different from the established body of knowledge and ideas to which that name
normally applies. Here, creation science uses "Uniformitarianism" to denote
the idea that geological formations formed through slow and gradual accreting
processes, whereas "catastrophism" denotes the idea that geological
formations formed through rapid and catastrophic events, such as the Noachian
Flood, within a very short period of time (eg, one year), as well as allowing
for supernaturalistic processes which, of course, we can know nothing about
(given the nature of the supernatural).
Armed with these two terms, creationists then point to evidence of rapid
depositation as evidence against conventional geological ideas. Creationists
falsely depict non-creationist geologists as claiming that a formation dated
to have formed over thousands of years had gradualistically formed at a
ever-constant rate of a few hundredths of an inch per year (which I did read
geologist Dr. Niven, who has an advanced degree in geology, claim in an
article in the Creation Research Society Quarterly -- I am not making any of
this up). This latter claim is like Richard Dawkins' analogy of interpreting
the story of the Israelites taking 40 years to get from the Red Sea to Canaan
as meaning that, each and every day, they picked up their tents and all their
belongings and moved them exactly the same fraction of an inch closer to
Canaan.
Of course, the creationist ideas of Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism are
bastardizations that only serve to deceive. Non-creationist geologists do
not believe in strictly gradualistic rates of depositation, except where
there is evidence indicating such a rate. They are fully aware of the
effects of rapid depositation due to rapid, catastrophic events and they also
know how to determine that such events had occurred. They do know what they
are doing and Dr. Niven, due to his advanced degree on the subject, should
have known better than to have misrepresented geological practice as he had
done -- in other words, it most certainly appears that he had deliberately
lied about what geologists think and do. Again, if you can only support your
position by lying about what others do and believe, then you should give up
right then and there.
As you would recall from my geology page
[http://members.aol.com/dwise1/geology.html] -- that is, IF you had read it,
which I am sure you have not -- the creationist usage of these two terms is
different from their normal usage:
### BEGIN EXERPT #######
Another thing to remember is that Flood Geologists are not
catastrophists. Catastrophism was prevalent in the early 19th century as an
opposing view to uniformitarianism. Both camps agreed that the earth is very
old and that the strata were laid down over a very long time. Where they did
disagree was over the role of violent events in the earth's history; the
catastrophists maintained that only extremely violent events could account
for the folding and tilting of the earth's strata while the
uniformitarianists maintained that gradual sustained processes would have
sufficed. Both groups avoided mixing science and religion and would argue
for "day-age" or gap theories if pressedto reconcile geology with Genesis.
A third group, the Scriptural Geologists, or "diluvialists", was not so
reluctant. This group got their start from the 1820's work of William
Buckland and Adam Sedgwick in which they argued that river valleys and
certain other sedimentary deposits were the results of a recent worldwide
flood. In a few years, however, Buckland's own field work started
undermining diluvialism and then, with the publication of Lyell's _Principles
of Geology_, both Buckland and Sedgwick abandoned diluvialism.
But the Scriptural Geologists continued writing their views, which were
hardly distinguishable from modern Flood Geologists, from the 1820's into the
late 19th century. They were highly critical of catastrophists,
uniformitarians, and the very founders of diluvialism alike, and Buckland and
Sedgwick returned the favor with devastating rebuttals.
Then in the 1920's and 1930's, George McCready Price revived Scriptural
Geology and called it "catastrophism" even though he knew better: "The
theory of 'catastrophism' as held a hundred years ago, had no resemblance to
the theory here discussed, except in name." (_The Geological Ages Hoax_,
George McCready Price, 1931, Fleming H. Revell Co., pg 101)
Later in 1960, Henry Morris again popularized Scriptural Geology with
_The Genesis Flood_, for which he had apparently drawn most of his ideas from
Price. The main question now is whether Morris does not know that his stuff
is not catastrophism and that the true catastrophists of the 19th century had
rejected it, or whether he does know better but finds it politically
expedient to avoid admitting that his Flood Geology is traditionally known as
Scriptural Geology.
### END EXERPT #######
Recall my question: "Who would use uniformitarian arguments? (obviously,
from this example, we know that creationists do)."
Also obviously, I was refering to claims based on slow, gradual processes.
Scientists will make such claims, but only where it is warranted.
Creationists do too, though most often where it is not warranted. To see
this, you need only look at the ICR's ubiquitous list of young-earth
"evidences", which seems to always include (some individual claims combined):
- Influx rates into the ocean of several materials (eg, sediment, uranium,
sodium, clorine, calcium, carbonate, sulphate, copper, gold, silver, mercury,
lead, tin, aluminum, lithium, titanium, chromium, maganese, iron, cobalt,
zinc, rubidium, strontium, bismuth, thorium, antimony, tungsten, barium,
molybdenum).
- Formation of C-14.
- Cooling of earth by heat efflux.
- Accumulation of dust on the moon.
- Development of the total human population.
- Decay of the earth's magnetic field.
It should come as no surprise that these items are based on the creationist
form of "uniformitarianism," since for my copy, Henry Morris explicitly
stated that they would be. I don't think we need to go into much detail
here.
The influx rates of various substances into the ocean do not take into
account the rates at which these substances percipitate out and otherwise
leave the oceans; eg, massive salt deposits and sea floors covered with
magnesium nodules (which promise immense mineral wealth to whoever can figure
out how to collect them economically -- there was even some diplomatic
wrangling by third-world nations to get their share). In addition, some of
those influx rates are listed as indicating an earth-age of 1400, 1000, 350,
140, or 100 years, which should have immediately clued Morris in to the fact
that there is a lot more going on there than he thinks. In other words, by
having failed its sanity check, his conclusions are shown to be crazy .
The cooling of the earth by heat efflux makes the assumption that there is no
source of heat within the earth to replenish the heat lost through cooling,
as, I believe, Lord Kelvin had made his calculations. This assumption is now
well known to be totally false, the decay of radioactive materials being one
source of renewed heat.
The development of the total human population is also known, though outside
the ICR, as "The Bunny Blunder." It is covered in far more detail in MY web
page (ie, *I* wrote it), http://members.aol.com/dwise1/bunny.html. Henry
Morris must really like this argument, because we can watch him develop it
since 1961. He used a very simplistic "pure birth" math model, the problems
of which are covered in introductory books on math modeling. In addition, he
misinterprets his results, thinking that they indicate the maximum age for
the earth when in reality they only indicate a MINIMUM age. And, like the
influx results, the application of this method to non-human populations, such
as bunnies (hence the name), would give us an age for the earth of about 100
years (using Morris' method of misinterpretating the results). You really
should read my web page on this; the impact of his population model on human
history can be hilarious.
The rates of formation of C-14 and the decay of the earth's magnetic field
are both discussed in my page, http://members.aol.com/dwise1/points23.html,
of Paul Ekdahl's (a Seventh-Day Adventist) posting of 23 arguments against
evolution on CompuServe and my responses thereto. It turns out that these
two are tied together. Here are those two entries (yes, I know that Paul's
C14 claim differs from Morris'):
### BEGIN EXERPTS ###
17. Radiocarbon dating, which has been accurately calibrated by counting the
rings of living trees that are up to 3,500 years old, is unable to extend
this accuracy to date more ancient organic remains. A few people have
claimed that ancient wood exists which will permit this calibration to be
extended even further back in time, but these people have not let outside
scientists examine their data. On the other hand, measurements made at
hundreds of sites worldwide indicate that the concentration of radiocarbon in
the atmosphere rose quite rapidly at some time proir to 3,500 years ago. If
this happened, the maximum possible radiocarbon age obtainable with the
standard techniques (approximately 50,000 years) could easily correspond to a
true age of 5,000 years.
Response:
Radiocarbon is produced in the upper atmosphere through bombardment by
charged particles, "cosmic rays." Many of these particles are deflected by
the geo-magnetic field, so the stronger the field, the less radiocarbon is
produced. That the level of radiocarbon in ancient times was much higher
indicates that the geo-magnetic field had been weaker at that time (directly
contradicting your claim #22 below), which has been verified by a number of
independent means.
Even worse, creationist claims require that dating methods yield ages
that are too old (i.e. that everything is younger than we date them to be),
but this error, if left uncorrected, does the exact opposite and yields ages
that are TOO YOUNG.
And could you expound on those "few people" who "have not let outside
scientists examine their data" "that ancient wood exists which will permit
this calibration to be extended"? It would be interesting to see if they
actually exist and what their claims are supposed to be.
22. Direct measurements of the earth's magnetic field over the past 140
years show a steady and rapid decline in its strength. This decay pattern is
consistent with the theoretical view that there is an electrical current
inside the earth which produces the magnetic field. If this view is correct,
then just 25,000 years ago the electrical current would have been so vast
that the earth's structure could not have survived the heat produced. This
implies that the earth could not be older than 25,000 yrs.
Response:
Thomas Barnes used measurements of the dipole component of the earth's
magnetic field, which did show a decrease over time, but ignored measurements
of other components of the field which show a corresponding INCREASE (this is
even ignoring a possible toroidal component within the earth). This would
indicate that instead of a massive loss, there was a transfer of energy from
one component to another.
When plotted, the measurements of the dipole component fall on a straight
line segment. Instead of extrapolating the dipole field intensity back in
time along a straight line, Barnes extrapolated back EXPONENTIALLY.
Ironically, such a blind extrapolation into the past using a constant rate is
exactly what the creationists accuse scientists of doing, yet Barnes does it
here (as does Morris in his human population model -- see the "Bunny
Blunder") with apparent impunity!
Also, Barnes performed his extrapolation despite a wealth of independent
data which show that the dipole field has fluctuated in the past, growing
more and less intense. You yourself provided some of this data in your claim
#17 above in which you showed that the level of radiocarbon was much higher
about 3500 years ago. The dipole field had to have been much weaker then to
have allowed more cosmic radiation in to produce that much radiocarbon. This
directly contradicts Barnes' claim.
### END EXERPTS ###
Enough said about those two claims, except for an interesting little exchange
with Paul Ekdahl over his statement:
"A few people have claimed that ancient wood exists which will permit this
calibration to be extended even further back in time, but these people have
not let outside scientists examine
their data."
To which I replied:
"And could you expound on those "few people" who "have not let outside
scientists examine their data" "that ancient wood exists which will permit
this calibration to be extended"? It would be interesting to see if they
actually exist and what their claims are supposed to be."
I had to repeat that request a few times, whereupon Paul Ekdahl pulled a Gish
on me and claimed that since I wanted to know what his source was, then I had
to provide that information myself (just as Gish had done to Schadewald about
Gish's infamous bullfrog-protein claim; for the full story, see my web page,
http://members.aol.com/dwise1/bullfrog.html). Though in Paul's case, I think
that he was honestly confused over what was going on. It soon became obvious
to us that all he knew how to do was to post massive verbatim quotations from
creationist books. He refused to discuss any of it, nor answer any
questions, except with yet another verbatim. I honestly believe that he did
not understand much of what he posted. On the few occasions that I could get
him to do his own writing, he would invariably drop all pretense and try to
convert me, going straight for the jugular. His interest in the "discussion"
died suddenly when he finally realized that he could not convert me. Maybe
it was when I answered his description of how SDA founder Ellen G. White
would perform the most amazing physical feats while in a trance by telling
him that in Aikido I could do the exact same things and more (eg, throwing an
attacker without even touching him), only without having to go into a trance.
That was the last I ever heard from him.
And he never did answer my original question.
But now, back to the list. And what do we see there, but the moon-dust
claim! In his Scientific Creationism (1985), Henry Morris repeated his
standard moon-dust claim based on the Hans Pettersson Scientific American
article and added a footnote containing Harold Slusher's patently bogus claim
which I had described to you before (ie, where he misrepresented a 1967 NASA
document as having been published in 1976, "well into the space age!", and
then inflated his figures contrary to his quoted source and contrary to
mathmatical practices -- believe it or not, Slusher is still on the physics
faculty at UT El Paso, though he does not have a personal web page there like
most of the other faculty members in his department; is he trying to lay low
and avoid the people who want to ask him about his claims?). About a decade
ago, Morris wrote in Science, Scripture, and the Young Earth (1989, 95 pp.)
that the moon-dust claims are unreliable and are no longer used because of
the difficulty in getting a consistent value for the rate of meteoric dust
infall. Okay, it looks like the ICR does occasionally correct itself, after
all.
But wait! Morris' Scientific Creationism is still sold in bookstores and
directly from the ICR with the admittedly bogus moon-dust claims still in it,
as are several other creationist books (eg, Ackermann's "It's a Young Earth
After All", which bases an entire chapter on Slusher's bogus NASA claim).
Why, just a couple weeks ago, I went into a Christian bookstore and found a
current ICR young-earth book which contains that ubiquitous "evidences" list,
including moon dust, with a reference back to Morris' Scientific Creationism.
That indicates that the ICR makes retractions when it is expedient for them
and then they just continue to make their same old false claims as if nothing
had happened (eg, continuing to make their false bombadier beetle claim even
after Gish had admitted in a public forum that it was wrong; continuing to
make their false Paluxy River man-track claims even after John Morris had
admitted that they are not man-tracks; their debate-circuit SOP of owning up
to mistakes when there is no way out of it, but not reporting that fact in
their newsletter and continuing to make the same false claims in the next
town, as well as expressing bewilderment when confronted by the same evidence
refuting their false claims, as if seeing that evidence for the very first
time).
You will recall that I also said in that message:
"I agree that that [moon-dust] argument is ridiculous, yet it is still very
popular among creationists. Even though the ICR has gone through the motions
of trying to distance themselves from it after Slusher's claim blew up in
their faces, their publications still carry that claim and I wouldn't be
surprised to learn that they continue to use it in their debates."
A cursory search through web-space shows that the moon dust claim continues
to circulate widely among creationists and newly arrived creationists read it
in the literature presented as if it were still the current doctrine. This
illustrates the principal strength of creation science: even though its
claims have been refuted, every few years there comes along a new generation
of creationists who are not aware of what had gone before them -- verily, a
sucker is born every minute.
A case in point happened at one of the last of Scott Alexander's [or
żAlexander Scott's?] amateur creation/evolution debates at The City (Have you
seen? It's all torn down and they're completely redoing the whole thing --
Liberator: see the footnote). A young (18-20) creationist got up to present
us with conclusive evidence that none of the "evolutionists" had ever heard
of and that would blow us all completely away: the speed of light is
decaying; it's slowing down! He was himself totally blown away when that
half of the audience started laughing and explaining to him what that claim
was, who had made it originally, and why it was wrong. He had just learned
of it himself, but he had no knowledge of the history of the claim and the
widely known refutation of it. In fact, even the ICR has refuted that claim,
said refutation having been presented by Aardsma [sp?] in an Impact article.
In spite of that, I still see it in the ICR's list of "evidences." Boy, not
only does the ICR believe in resurrection, but they also actively practice
it.
#########################################################
Subj: Moon Dust II
Date: 98-03-25 23:25:30 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: liber8r@mcs.com, DWise1
This was originally the end of the preceding message, "The Subject was Moon
Dust"
In conclusion, I've included some text on the subject of the moon-dust
argument and a creationist refutation thereof. The URL is
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html. After giving the following
exerpt, the author includes modern readings and calculations based thereupon
(66.18 cm of dust on the moon after 4.5 billion years) and the announcement
of a Creation Research Society research project to study meteor encounters
with the upper atmosphere, indicating that creationist interest in the
moon-dust argument is still alive and well despite its sordid history.
The rest of this message consists of that exerpt:
### BEGIN EXERPT #######
3. Accumulation of meteoritic dust on the Moon
The most common form of this young-Earth argument is based on a single
measurement of the rate of meteoritic dust influx to the Earth gave a value
in the millions of tons per year. While this is negligible compared to the
processes of erosion on the Earth (about a shoebox-full of dust per acre per
year), there are no such processes on the Moon. Young-Earthers claim that the
Moon must receive a similar amount of dust (perhaps 25% as much per unit
surface area due to its lesser gravity), and there should be a very large
dust layer (about a hundred feet thick) if the Moon is several billion years
old.
Morris says, regarding the dust influx rate:
"The best measurements have been made by Hans Pettersson, who obtained the
figure of 14 million tons per year1."
Morris (1974, p. 152) [italic emphasis added -CS]
Pettersson stood on a mountain top and collected dust there with a device
intended for measuring smog levels. He measured the amount of nickel
collected, and published calculations based on the assumption that all nickel
that he collected was meteoritic in origin. That assumption was wrong and
caused his published figures to be a vast overestimate.
Pettersson's calculation resulted in the a figure of about 15 million tons
per year. In the very same paper, he indicated that he believed that value to
be a "generous" over-estimate, and said that 5 million tons per year was a
more likely figure.
Several measurements of higher precision were available from many sources by
the time Morris wrote Scientific Creationism. These measurements give the
value (for influx rate to the Earth) of about 20,000 to 40,000 tons per year.
Multiple measurements (chemical signature of ocean sediments, satellite
penetration detectors, microcratering rate of objects left exposed on the
lunar surface) all agree on approximately the same value -- nearly three
orders of magnitude lower than the value which Morris chose to use.
Morris chose to pick obsolete data with known problems, and call it the
"best" measurement available. With the proper values, the expected depth of
meteoritic dust on the Moon is less than one foot.
For further information, see Dalrymple (1984, pp. 108-111) or Strahler (1987,
pp. 143-144).
Addendum: "loose dust" vs. "meteoritic material"
Some folks in talk.origins occasionally sow further confusion by discussing
the thickness of the "lunar soil" as if it represented the entire quantity of
meteoritic material on the lunar surface. The lunar soil is a very thin layer
(usually an inch or less) of loose powder present on the surface of the Moon.
However, the lunar soil is not the only meteoritic material on the lunar
surface. The "soil" is merely the portion of powdery material which is kept
loose by micrometeorite impacts. Below it is the regolith, which is a mixture
of rock fragments and packed powdery material. The regolith averages about
five meters deep on the lunar maria and ten meters on the lunar highlands.
In addition, lunar rocks are broken down by various processes (such as
micrometeorite impacts and radiation). Quite a bit of the powdered material
(even the loose portion) is not meteoritic in origin.
Addendum: Creationists disown the "Moon dust" argument
There is a recent creationist technical paper on this topic which admits that
the depth of dust on the Moon is concordant with the mainstream age and
history of the solar system (Snelling and Rush 1993). Their abstract
concludes with:
"It thus appears that the amount of meteoritic dust and meteorite debris in
the lunar regolith and surface dust layer, even taking into account the
postulated early intense bombardment, does not contradict the evolutionists'
multi-billion year timescale (while not proving it). Unfortunately, attempted
counter-responses by creationists have so far failed because of spurious
arguments or faulty calculations. Thus, until new evidence is forthcoming,
creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence
against an old age for the moon and the solar system."
Snelling and Rush's paper also refutes the oft-posted creationist "myth"
about the expectation of a thick dust layer during to the Apollo mission. The
Apollo mission had been preceded by several unmanned landings -- the Soviet
Luna (six landers), American Ranger (five landers) and Surveyor (seven
landers). The physical properties of the lunar surface were well-known years
before man set foot on it. Even prior to the unmanned landings, Snelling and
Rush document that there was no clear consensus in the astronomical community
on the depth of dust to expect.
Even though the creationists themselves have refuted this argument, (and
refutations from the mainstream community have been around for ten to twenty
years longer than that), the "Moon dust" argument continues to be propagated
in their "popular" literature, and continues to appear in talk.origins on a
regular basis:
Baker (1976, p. 25)
Brown (1989, pp. 17 and 53)
Jackson (1989, pp. 40-41)
Jansma (1985, pp. 62-63)
Whitcomb and Morris (1961, pp. 379-380)
Wysong (1976, pp. 166-168)
See the talkorigins.org archived feedback for February and April 1997, for
additional examples.
### END EXERPT #######
### FOOTNOTE ###
Liberator:
The City was built at the end of the 60's in Orange, California. It was
envisioned as a kind of planned community, wherein housing, work, shopping,
and recreation would all be in one place. That vision never really
materialized, though they did end up with an open-air mall (quite feasible in
Southern California), an apartment complex, and a number of business
buildings which grew in number over the years. They enclosed the mall some
time in the next decade. Then a couple years ago, business started getting
bad and a number of stores closed, including B. Dalton's Bookseller, my only
reason for going there. Then their anchor stores, Penney's and May Co., both
closed and most of the rest of the businesses left shortly after that. A few
months ago, they announced plans for converting it into an outlet center.
Last weekend, I drove past there for the first time in months and was
surprised to see that the entire mall had been razed and the steel for the
new mall was being raised.
In the late-80's, one Scott Alexander (or Alexander Scott -- I forget which,
but I'm sure it's the opposite of the character's name in "I Spy") opened a
creationist fossil shop in The City called "In the Beginning." It was small
and laid out like a jewelry store. To his credit, he labeled the fossils
with the standard ages, but he also sold creationist books and had a number
of exerpts from creationist books blown up and hanging as posters on the
walls. It was in response to the poster of the standard creationist
misquotation of Darwin concerning the evolution of the eye that started us
talking. I informed him of what Darwin actually wrote, though he was
skeptical. The next time I was there, I gave him a copy of the misquoted
text. He immediately stuck it under the counter, where I'm sure it stayed
just long enough for him to round-file it. On that first visit, he asked
what I thought of the shop and I told him that the selection of books needed
a bit more balance. But when I suggested Phillip Kitchner, he became rather
upset at the idea. Guess creationists don't like "balanced treatment" when
somebody tries to apply it to them, eh?
I think the store lasted there only about a year. After about six months, he
held three or four amateur night creation/evolution debates in the mall's
community room. The format was loose and informal. Basically, anybody in
the audience who wanted to give a presentation was invited to. I usually
spoke, though the creationists really hated it when I tried to explain to
them what the "two-model approach" is and what its major problems are.
Though there was one incident I found interesting. Either the first or
second time I visited the shop, another customer joined the conversation and
soon it was just the two of us, since Scott had work to do. We discussed
what the evidence was and I was mainly pointing out the fallacies of
creationist claims.
At one point, Scott inadvertantly helped me out. The other guy made a fairly
standard claim that the ante-diluvial world did not have any oceans, but was
mostly land, plus, that most of the fossilized animals were buried in the
Flood. So I asked Scott what kind of fossil is most commonly found. Marine
fossils, of course, lots and lots of them. Well, so much for there having
been no oceans before the Flood, eh? The subject quickly changed to
something else.
After quite a while, with me doing most of the talking, he suddenly declared
that it was now his turn. Guess what? Instead of discussing creationism, he
tried to convert me (gee, where have we seen that before?). But the argument
he used was almost classic. I hadn't heard it used before, though I have
heard it used a few times since then, so he must have gotten it from
somewhere.
He tried to sell me after-life insurance! What it was was a redressing of
the classic Pascal's Wager in a car insurance analogy. He said that we get
car insurance just in case we ever get into an accident. If we have an
accident, then we are glad we bought the insurance and if we never have an
accident, then at least buying the insurance had saved us all that worry.
Similarly, if Hell exists and we convert, then we are saved, but if we don't
convert, then we are damned for Eternity. And if it turns out that Hell does
not exist, then we would have lost nothing by having converted but had gained
peace of mind.
Unfortunately for him, I already knew Pascal's Wager and its problems.
Blaise Pascal postulated that there are two possible conditions, either God
exists or He does not, and there are two possible actions, either you believe
in God or you do not, yielding four possible outcomes:
1. God exists and you believe in Him: you are saved.
2. God exists and you do not believe in Him: you are damned.
3. God does not exist and you believe in Him: no loss.
4. God does not exist and you do not believe in Him: no loss.
By his reasoning, with these outcomes, if you do not believe in God, then
there is a 50% chance of losing really big-time, whereas if you do believe in
God, then there is 100% chance you will not lose. Therefore, choosing to
believe in God is a sure thing, because you are sure to not lose and,
even if God does not exist, then you are at least a much better person for
having believed.
Looks deceptively simple ... because it is. There is a very basic question
which never gets asked here: which god? Just because some of the gods may
exist, does not mean that they all exist. Which one do you choose?
Remember, if you choose the wrong one, the outcome will be the same as for
not choosing any (ie, #3 and #4). Each god has roughly the same probability
of existing as any other (ignoring the some pantheon package deals), or that
none of them exist, so choosing the right god is not 100% as presented to us,
but rather is a fraction of 1%. Even worse, you are not so much choosing a
god as you are choosing a theology. Some gods have a variety of theologies
associated with them, each one considering itself the True Faith and the
others heresies, so even if you choose the right god, if you choose the wrong
theology, then you are just as out of luck as if you chose the wrong god,
some times even more so. Pascal was a Catholic, so he was talking about
choosing to be a Catholic. The Protestants using his Wager in vain have
already chosen the wrong theology and so picked the losing side of the Wager
and are trying to make losers out of everyone they proselytize to. To choose
none of the gods actually turns out to be the safer bet, because, unlike the
Christian god, a lot of the gods couldn't care less whether you believe in
them or not.
And what happens if you choose a god and it turns out that none of them
exist? Pascal naively assumed that being a Catholic had an inherent benefit
of making you a better person, which you could not achieve as a non-believer.
I think there's some room for argument in the first part, but we both know
that that last part is not true. It kind of reminds me of Bill's mistaken
ideas when he thought that he was an atheist.
Pascal maintained that believing costs you nothing, but that is not true.
What if you could not pursue your dream career because your chosen god
forbade it? Or marry your one true love (your "media naranja" ("half
orange") as my wife's grandmother had put it) because your god forbade you to
marry that kind of person? Or learn the sciences because your god forbade
you to study the truth? Or to think for yourself because your god forbade
it? For you and for me, that would be too great a cost to bear.
So I told my after-life insurance salesman that his after-life insurance was
a rotten deal (unfortunately, I didn't think of that name for it until the
next day, but that poor guy was already hurting too much). We had to pay an
exorbinant price for something that would only pay in the most restricted and
oddest of circumstances. By the car insurance analogy, it would only pay if
you were hit by a green Edsel -- on the northbound side of the Santa Ana
Freeway -- while it was exceeding the speed limit -- backing up -- at night
-- with its lights off -- being driven by a one-armed Lithuanian midget.
He had been so self-assured that his argument was flawless and unassailable.
He couldn't understand what had just happened. I think he still doesn't know
what had hit him.
Which goes to show that it does pay to read the classics.
#########################################################
Subj: What it's really all about
Date: 98-03-29 14:12:08 EST
From: DWise1
To: BillyJack6
CC: DWise1, liber8r@mcs.com
Well, Bill, we could be chatting away merrily, presenting claims and
counter-claims and evidence and explanations and rebuttals; me learning what
the latest claims are and you learning what science has to say on the subject
and what the creationists' quoted sources really said. But I know that that
is not what you want out of this discussion (I nearly said "are here for",
but had to correct myself since
you are not here) and neither am I really, as you should have figured by now.
Though I am here in part for such discussion, there is a more serious matter
that needs to be handled.
Nor is it as sinister as it might sound (and I do assure you that I am
dexterous ). If
you had read my account of "how I had arrived at my current position in the
creation/evolution issue", also linked by "How I got started and why I oppose
'creation science'" [http://members.aol.com/dwise1/warum.html -- in case you
do not know any German, it means "why"], then you would know that I had
started out for the discussion, but then that was before I learned of
creation science's Dark Side.
After having discounted creationist claims out of hand in high school, when I
heard the same claims still circulating a decade later, I thought that there
must be something to those claims after all and decided to investigate. I
approached creation science with an open and inquiring mind, interested in
seeing what its claims and evidence were. I very quickly discovered that it
was all a crock (eg, read my account of the very first time I saw a leading
creationist in action, on
CBN -- before Pat Robertson's station went into stealth mode). I studied
further, discovered the NCSE, and learned even more about what was going on.
Then I entered into the on-line discussions on CompuServe around 1986, where
I mainly responded to the posting of standard creation science claims. At
that time, I had much more ready access to a university library, so my usual
approach to a new claim was to ask for references to the source(s) that claim
was supposed to be based on, look up those sources in the library, and then,
in most cases, be able to refute that claim simply by revealing what the
sources really said or was actually talking
about (ie, what the context was). Indeed, it was by browsing through the
NASA documents that I stumbled upon the document that Slusher's moon-dust
claim was based on and whose front cover immediately refuted most of his
claim (ie, the front cover had the conference's date on it, which preceded
Slusher's claimed date by 12 years).
Then one day -- I'll have to do a search for it -- I responded jokingly
on-line (I very rarely respond on-line, prefering to save on the on-line
charges by preparing messages off-line, getting in, posting the messages,
running through a few message threads, capturing the whole thing to an ASCII
file to be read off-line, then getting out quick -- but now CompuServe has
disabled that capability, so I cannot use it any more) to somebody else's
Star Wars reference, also jokingly posted, by typing Darth Vader noises and
warning against the "Dark Side of the Farce."
But then after I had posted it, it struck me as being a very apt description
of creation science.
Certainly, some of the creationist claims were quite farcical, especially
Morris' "Bunny Blunder," Gish's "Bullfrog Affair," and various aspects of
Flood Geology. And I had been noticing some odd behavior in some of the
creationists. There is a psychological/sociological phenomenon called
"selective blindness" which is an inability to see something, such as
homeless people on the street, because one either does not want to deal with
it or because one does not want to admit that it exists, not even to oneself
(in the third or fourth book of the Hitchhiker trilogy, Douglas Adams
describes an invisibility device which operates on the SEP principle,
"Somebody Else's Problem"). I was noticing something similar which I termed
"selective dumbness", in which no matter how simply you explain something,
the creationist just could not understand what you are telling him. They
weren't of low intelligence nor of meager education; their own writing and
ability to conduct themselves indicated otherwise. Nor was it just my style
of writing that confounded them, because they did the same thing to others as
well. It was just that when you presented them with conclusive evidence that
they could not dismiss or refute, many of them just could not understand it
and could not see what it had to do with anything. And when I would ask
someone to consider a hypothetical situation (such as I had asked you: "What
would happen if you found irrefutable proof that the earth is far older than
10,000 years? What effect would that have on you? How would it affect your
faith? Should it? Why?"), they would either nearly go ballistic on me or be
totally unable to understand the question and in either case, of course,
never came close to answering the question, let alone thinking about it
(which is exactly what they were wanting to avoid).
Both on-line and elsewhere, I observed most other "evolutionists" react to
this "selective dumbness" by assuming that the creationists deliberately
refused to listen or to admit defeat. But I saw the situation differently,
due to my own fundamentalist Christian training, to my having heard Dan
Barker describe that state of mind in a number of fundamentalists where "your
theology becomes your psychology" (Barker had grown up a fundamentalist,
watching his mother doing the housework while she sang in tongues, and was
personally called by God to the ministry -- he is now a key figure in the
Freedom From Religion Foundation), to the standard creationist and
fundamentalist either-or rhetorics (and its consequences; eg: Ray Baird
turning some of his elementary grade students into atheists by using "public
school edition" creation science materials that repeatedly urged the student
to choose between the Creator and godless evolution), and to my having heard
and read numerous testimonies of how people became atheists. I realized that
something much deeper was at work. I realized that this was no mere
intellectual exercise for them, as it was for many on the pro-evolution side,
but that they saw the core of their being, their faith, as being at stake.
Fundamentalist rhetorics is full of false dichotomies which all seem to boil
down to either the Bible is completely true or none of it is true and you
should be an atheist. Creation science materials, including the "public
school" editions, themselves repeatedly challenge the student to choose
between the Creator and atheistic evolution (ie, engages in proselytizing --
yet another reason to keep those materials out of the schools). John Morris
made this very clear when he said "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old
then Scripture has no meaning." Plus, creation science is a branch of
apologetics, one of whose primary functions is to remove doubts in the
believer's mind by harmonizing doctrine with the real world, so if creation
science is shown to be wrong, then it will have failed in that harmonizing
and if creation science was the only or primary reason for that individual to
be able to keep his faith (much more on this in the next email), then he'll
find that he hadn't built his faith on a rock, but rather on quicksand. Most
others seemed to think that creationists are paranoid for taking any
criticism of creation science as an attack against their faith, whereas I
could see that it could very well be taken that way -- not because of science
or evolution itself, but rather because of what they had been taught by their
own religious leaders and by creation science.
That is when I realized that I was watching the Dark Side of creation science
at work. It holds its followers' faith hostage. They dare not question it.
They dare not examine it too closely. They dare not allow themselves to
realize that there is something very seriously wrong with it. It has its
followers trapped to where they dare not allow any doubt creep into their
minds about it or else their faith would be destroyed. Why would their faith
be destroyed? Because that is what they had been taught would happen. How
do we know that this is indeed what happens? From the horror stories told by
those who had lost their faith in this manner. How do we prevent such loss
of faith? By breaking the hold of the Dark Side and letting them learn that
their faith does NOT depend on the truth of creation science or its claims.
That Scripture will not have any more nor any less meaning whether we find
that the earth is 10,000 years old or 4,500,000,000 years old. The Dark Side
is seductive, but it can have no hold on the unclouded mind (apologies for
having mixed genres).
Or as in the story of the man who saw the Buddha shortly after he had gained
Enlightenment: "Are you a god?" "No." "Are you a prophet?" "No." "Then
what are you?" "I am awake."
With that realization, the focus of my concern changed. Where before I was
primarily concerned with creation science's violations of basic truth and
honesty, I was now becoming increasingly concerned about the effect that
creation science has on its followers and would have on the people being
exposed to it, its future victims, especially the young children who are the
ICR's primary targets (again, refer to Ray Baird's 4th & 5th grade students,
whom Baird had taught creationism with ICR "public school edition" materials
and succeeded in converting some of them to atheism). The problems creation
science creates for science education (which really isn't in that good a
shape to begin with; my middle-school son knows more about science than his
science teacher did last year -- and in some high schools around here they'll
even have a
PE teacher teach biology!) began to run a close second in my mind to the
problems it creates for its followers. As Orson Scott Card observed, the
dumb ones are safe enough, because they'll just be happy fools and laugh at
evolution for the rest of their days. Rather, it's the smart ones, the ones
who will actually think about what they are being taught, who are in danger,
especially the ones who accept creation science's misrepresentation of
evolution and then learn what evolution really is ("I just learned what
evolution really is. And you lied to me. And if you lied to me about that,
then what else did you lie to me about? Did you lie about sin and
redemption? About the Resurrection? Why should I ever believe you again?"
-- I have also seen and heard that same scenario played out in several
atheist testimonials).
If you had read and comprehended my previous messages, then you should have a
fair idea about my religious beliefs. My beliefs are strongly non-theistic
and agnostic, in the stricter sense of the words (I trust you do not wish me
to reiterate them at this point). I am no stranger to Christian theology,
which I find very unsatisfactory, much as I tend to view Amida Buddhism (pray
in the name of the Amida Buddha, "Namu Amida butsu", all the time and, if you
did it enough times, the Amida Buddha will get you off the Wheel).
Of course, I would like to see more people grow out of Christianity and
theism. However, I would very much prefer that they outgrow the need for
such beliefs and not be driven out because of bad theology or because of
idiocies like creation science, or because of any number of other intolerable
things (eg, having been betrayed or lied to by their religious leaders,
however well intentioned). The latter case too often produces an
anti-religion atheist who hasn't shaken his religious training about what an
atheist is and does. That religious training is false and sows the seeds of
the neophyte atheist's self-destruction, which none of us needs. You should
know what that's like, having been an "atheist of opportunity" who turned
"atheist" in search of guiltless debauchery.
I want to prevent the unnecessary creation of anti-religion atheists and
nihilistic, self-destructive hedonists whose crashing and burning everybody
ends up paying for. I see creation science as a major contributor in turning
Christians to atheism, the hard way, and so I oppose creation science in part
as an attempt to counter its robbing Christians of their faith. That may
seem paradoxical to you, but it is very compatible with my religious beliefs
which, unlike your Christian beliefs, call for respecting the beliefs of
others and helping them along their particular paths, even though they are
different from my own.
So why am I trying to talk with you? Because of the danger you pose to
others. You have been seduced to the Dark Side and you are very active in
trying to seduce others. You stated in your spammings: "What got me out of
my atheist beliefs was ... the evidence of Creation versus Evolution. " and
"I had held fast to evolution for years until I had the opportunity to hear
the Creation side. I want you to hear it too. For you Christians out there,
I also would like to share the Creation case to strengthen your belief and
strengthen your witness for when people ask you
"why do you believe and why should I?""
Your statement above, your repeated spammings, your comic book ("Weird
Science"), your
writings in the newsletter, your giving of free classes, and your offering to
accept phone calls collect from virtually anywhere on this planet, all
despite your extremely busy schedule, indicate your dedication and zeal in
proselytizing through creation science and your dedication to the idea that a
"true Christian" must also believe in creation science. You have repeatedly
avoided answering the simple and direct question of whether you agree with
John Morris that "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture
has no meaning." From your demonstrated dedication to a young earth and from
my long experience with creationists, I can feel very safe in assuming that
your answer would be a definite "yes" and only a little less safe in assuming
that
you believe that other "true Christians" should or must also agree with
Morris. This places you and your converts/followers in the high-risk group.
And if you've been active teaching creation science to children or trying to
get creation science taught in the schools, then it's mill-stone time (I
trust that you are familiar enough with the New Testament to recognize the
reference).
Well, here is what one former Christian and special creationist has to say
about your "shar[ing] the Creation case to strengthen your belief and
strengthen your witness":
"About a year and a half ago, I was a firm special creationist. I am now a
believer in evolution; not even sure if God is required. In 1995, Glenn
Morton wrote to Stephen Jones about Stephen's provisional acceptance of
common descent (as quoted by SJ Sunday, January 11, 1998 5:16 PM), "I know
exactly how difficult a paradigm shift like that is." Well, let me tell you,
the shift is absolutely devastating. I'm still struggling with all this. I
still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community
did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a
gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed." (edited slightly for
readability by translating HTML tags)
Now, if it were just you, I would have warned you once or twice of the error
of your ways and then let you suffer the consequences of your own actions.
But since you are very active and determined in trying to pull others in,
many other people will also suffer the consequences of your actions, as some
may have already. That makes it even more imperative for me to inform you of
what you are doing and the damage it causes.
In the next email, I will point you to Glenn Morton's web page and share with
you some of what he has to say there about the effects of creation science
teachings on faith.
In the meantime, I would recommend that you go on-line and start asking
atheists how they had become atheists. Do not assume that your own past
gives you any special insight into the minds or beliefs of atheists. Go to
the source. Learn from the atheists themselves what they think and believe.
You might learn something for a change.
#########################################################