.
I have removed the RETURN codes to make the text easier to read.
Continuing my commentary:
One could properly say that God (somehow) brought about each life form over the course of the long period of time that the earth has existed,
Implicit in this statement is that the earth is millions of years old, and truth be told, the only thing approaching "evidence" of that we have are the cast bronze plates found in museums that assert in raised letters, shiny with the touch of Modernist worshipers like the toes of St. Peter in his basilica, whatever number of "millions" of years between one "event" and another someone has dreamed up.
But no human being was present for these events to observe and report on them. And the bronze age, while being thousands of years old, far predates the existence of such bronze museum plates.
What is going on is commonly referred to as
circular reasoning, which any first grade student can recognize if he has been taught the concept.
If you go to any museum of natural history and hear the paleontology department docent pronounce that the fossil record has these particular dates assigned there because
those are the dates assigned to the rocks that surround the fossils in question --- then if you walk around the corner and down the hall to the geology department and hear the geology docent pronounce that the reason the rocks displayed have the various associated dates attached is because
those are the dates of the fossils that are commonly found in such rocks --- you are seeing circular reasoning in action.
The dates of the fossils cannot be ascertained by virtue of their own reality, that is, inherently identifiable as being so many years old. Such methods as carbon dating are proven unreliable when the rotting carcass of a recently deceased sea lion with meat still on the bones is forensically tested by an independent lab which finds the bones, stripped of their flesh and dried to look as though they're really old, are then dated by their carbon content to be 20,000 years old. But the bones were part of a sea lion, swimming in the sea, no more than a mere two months prior.
Woops.
The dates of sample rocks, tested in any way you choose for their age without any regard for fossils found nearby when the rocks were dug up, cannot be ascertained. All geologists rely on dates of nearby fossils, for rocks
per se cannot be dated.
and (for reasons of His own) starting with the simpler creatures and slowly
Slowly: it all depends on how "slow" you're talking about. Millions of years?
Hogwash. Try a day or two for starters.
moving to the more advanced, until finally bringing about mankind. So far, so good (and we have already parted company here with the atheist who would claim that there was no God at all the least ways involved in this, not even by setting up the biological processes (or principles) by which all of this is brought about).
But what exactly goes inside that "(somehow)" and "(for reasons of His own)" to explain what happened? Again, I take issue with a false picture which many "creationists" seem to be implying, if not directly stating: God just waved His magic wand and POOF! a flash of light, a puff of smoke, and voila! There it is, like a rabbit pulled out of a black top hat.
Griff Ruby attempts to garner favor with atheists and God haters by blaspheming the infinite power of God by attaching profane words like
a flash of light, a puff of smoke and voila!Griff Ruby will see just how much power God has when he breathes his last and faces his particular judgment without any flashes, puffs or voilas. I hope he reconsiders his attitude before it's too late for him.
This scenario betrays a false (or at least grossly inadequate) understanding of the miraculous manner of God's working. How many of us have obtained the miraculous answers to our prayers, not by dramatic apparent (or real) violations of established laws of Physics, but merely by a person's change of heart, or by some extraordinary "coincidence" or even "serendipity?"
How much noise does a change of heart entail? Or an extraordinary coincidence (there are no real coincidences, BTW)? Or serendipity: does that entail a puff of smoke or a
'voila'?
By all evidences, God normally and most frequently (by far) functions in accordance to the laws He Himself set up, not in violation of them.
God is the creator of those laws, incidentally. And God can suspend any such laws at will, for example, when the sun stood still in the old testament while the Israelites fought a battle, or when the sun fell from the sky at Fatima for 70,000 eyewitnesses to see, or when the Red Sea was parted for Moses and his people to escape the army of Ramses (probably him anyway), or when the dead rose from their graves and spoke to their respective families at the moment of the Resurrection. None of those things, or other such events are according to the laws of nature.
Ergo, God may very likely have utilized naturalistic means (using laws He Himself established) to accomplish at least much of that evolutionary sequence of life forms.
Dear Griff Ruby: evolution is a lie, it's not a theory, it's a losing hypothesis with no evidence, failing all experiments. Wake up.
There is no reason to assume therefore that the attempt to find and describe natural processes by which progressively more and more advanced life forms can emerge
One and one-half century of experiment and searching has produced nothing useful. How much more time do you need?
must therefore be an exercise in doing away with God.
All of the funding for all the experiments has come from God-haters who want to do precisely that. Now THAT'S evidence!
The bare ability to even think about such things, to ask these questions, and to seek and find answers (however naturalistic they may be) itself implies the existence of a God who imparted this ability or quality to some of His creatures (i. e. ourselves). The fact of evolution
Evolution is not a fact, it is a falsehood.
was already well known even when Darwin was born, but by his own adult life, the best anyone else could come up with was Lamarck's "theory" that things that happen to living organisms somehow get passed on to their [descendants]. So, by Lamarck's "theory," if you cut the tails off rats and then breed these tail-less rats, soon you will have rats which are born without tails. As all of us know, it doesn't work that way, and their descendants remain as long-tailed as ever. The real genius of Darwin's theory (it really was the first idea good enough to dignify with the word "theory")
It's not really a theory but a bad hypothesis.
is not that it is somehow unassailable and perfect in all details, for clearly some parts of it are no good at all and altogether rejected by modern science, especially those parts which Darwin invented as a kind of "intellectual scaffolding" (Darwin knew this part would not hold up) to explain what only the later science of Genetics could explain, of genes (Mendel), crossbreeding (Burbank), DNA (Crick), and the gene mapping that goes on today. Rather, it was his fundamental insight into the creative process itself which makes his work so important.
What Darwin introduced does nothing whatsoever for our insight into God's creative process itself.
In a very tiny nutshell, and rather crudely put, the creative process requires two basic [components]:
1) The random generator, which comes up with brand new patterns continuously and utterly randomly. Since the vast majority of the "new patterns" it spews out are useless and worthless, the second component is needed, hence:
There never has been any evidence that randomness has been any part of God's creative process. All random mixing of RNA and/or DNA has resulted in chaos, disease, corruption and death, not a new species.
2) The judging selector, which scans all of the random spew for useful and worthwhile new patterns, and somehow
Not "somehow," as Stephen J. Gould would have said, but "DOES NOT."
retains and preserves them for future use. For Darwin's "random generator," he used the well known and widely observed fact every organism is unique, not like any that precedes it or follows it. For example, you do not resemble either of your parents, nor any of your siblings (unless you have an identical twin, and even then there are still at least some small differences; people who know a pair of identical twins well have no difficulty telling them apart).
Where do the small differences which make each person unique come from? Darwin really didn't know of course, but no one disputes THAT it happens. To Darwin, it seemed entirely random. Obviously that isn't exactly the case, as geneticists have found out since. Darwin's real contribution was "natural selection" which is what mechanism would naturalistically preserve any "change" which happened to produce a superior ability, and quickly eliminate any of the (doubtless far more common) changes which happened to produce an inferior ability.
More fairy tale fantasy. Fairy tales for grown-ups, because children couldn't care less; they're smarter in some ways!
All of the stupid evolution story books that flooded the libraries for decades have fallen flat on the ears of innocent children, who prefer the great nursery rhymes of old and children's fables to this gibberish.
It is the relationship of these two components, and especially the nature of the second, which is carefully kept out of the creationist writings. Repeatedly, again and again, and anon, the creationist writings (even the more [respectable] ones which [acknowledge] the old earth) misrepresent "evolution" (never distinguishing the fact from the theories)
Evolution is not a fact, it's a fallacy and a lie, because it's not a theory, it's a bad hypothesis.
as consisting of only the first of these two principles. How many times does one see in the creationist literature such lame arguments as: "Imagine a tornado blowing through a junkyard and somehow constructing a fully functional 747 Jumbo Jet."
The probability of a living cell accidentally coming to life out of non-life, or an animal embryo morphing into a new species and then maturing into a viable new animal is arguably LESS than the jumbo jet scenario.
Ignoring for the moment the clear and obvious problem
of "where in a junkyard is the jet's fuel going to come from,"
Where in a lifeless cell is the breath of life going to come from?
one can see that such a scenario is strictly a case of the first [component], the random generator, all by itself (and not even an adequate one of that since, recall the jet fuel problem).
Without some mechanism to make any two colliding particles, which could actually be the first parts of some Jumbo Jet, somehow stick together for the duration, while other [combinations] of particles which are not [useful] in that construction somehow don't stick together, of course the jet could never emerge. (duh!) How many other similar "points" are made in the creationist literature: "sheer chance" "chance alone" "what are the odds..." "the likelyhood of..." "1 in a goolgeplex" and so forth, all with the same dishonest misrepresentation of Darwin's theory that natural selection is what makes the evolution of life possible.
Natural selection has long been abandoned as another dead end, so it's not worth mentioning. Do you have anything else, Griff?
>The ever expanding fossil record and our massively increased knowledge of microbiology have given the lie to Darwin. Were it not for the fact that atheists need a cosmology (which only Darwin provides), Darwinian evolution would have long since been discarded onto the ash heap of science along with Malthus. When a theory violates certain known scientific and philosophic laws, then I can calmly sit in my armchair and condemn it with comfort.
Griff Ruby:
Genuine theories of evolution (such as Darwin's), unlike the hideous parodies of it invented by the creationists,
Darwin doesn't need any help in the "hideous" department!
and also unlike the distortions and abuses of it, such as by Teilhard or the contemprary "liturgical experts" who use "evolution" as some sort of excuse for their change for the sake of change, in fact violate no known basic "scientific and philosophical laws." Certain specific details, such as the progress to certain specific animals, that Darwin postulated have of course failed to continue as valid in [view] of later finds, and of course the science of genetics is vastly more advanced
today than what Darwin had to use as his "intellectual scaffolding," but that is all.
>Darwinian evolution posits three things as having occurred which violate both scientific and philosophical laws. First, that we got something from nothing (the material that constituted the Big Bang -- and this violates both science and philosophy).
Griff Ruby:
Darwin never heard or of nor thought of any such thing as a "big bang." That idea comes later, and some might reasonably link the initial "creation of Heaven and Earth" (Genesis 1:1) with a "big Bang," should such latter continue to be borne out by the facts.
Here we go again, attributing loud noises to the acts of God. Will this nonsense ever end? Or do we have to wait for Griff Ruby's particular (and silent) judgment?
By the way, standard theology posits that God made this initial creation "ex nihilo" from nothing. This belief (a great many Catholic saints have upheld it) similarly violates your same "science and philosophy" as you define them here.
>Second, that life came from non-life (a theory disproved by [Pasteur] and others).
Griff Ruby:
Darwin had not the faintest idea where the first life from non-living matter came from, and so put in his writings the admission that "God" must have "breathed life into a few forms, or at least one."
>Third, that intelligent life came from non-intelligent life (which is violative of Catholic philosophy/theology).
Griff Ruby:
One must not confuse mere [intelligence] with being in the image and likeness of God. Some animals can be very, very smart, but only mankind has the ability to make a moral choice about his actions, to reflect upon what he has done, make plans for the future, to sacrifice his life for a cause, and so forth.
I know a man who swears that his pet dog has both intellect and free will. BTW, he also believes in "evolution."
Naturalistic processes can and do explain the rise of mere animalistic soulish (but non-spiritual) intelligence, but the crossover from merely such to the spiritual man must be (and the Faith and Scripture explicitly confirm) an instance of an overt action of Divine intervention. "God ... breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Genesis 2:7
>All of which leads me where? I do not know. I know that the Church requires me to believe in two first parents, Adam and Eve, given immortal souls by God, and I believe that, ultimately, all things have been made by God. Other then that, I am not sure. Creationism is not scientific,
Griff Ruby:
Sounds to me like from this you have a fairly good idea, and most importantly the real purpose of the Divine account of Creation.
>but neither is Darwinian evolution. The earth is very old, but the evidence of the age of man is unconvincing at best. I am left with the humbling realization that I do not know how, in exact detail, we got here. Griff, you seem to be sure you know. The Creationists seem to be certain that they know. However, neither side can prove their case and both sides have holes in them big enough to drive a truck through.
Griff Ruby:
Every understanding of any field we could study is necessarily limited, as is the nature of our status as limited beings. However, I have the benefit of understanding what Darwinian evolution actually teaches, not the parodies of it, and can therefore see its strengths in helping one glimpse the working of God in populating this planet with its rich diversity of life, and also being able to see its real limitations, such as not explaining the source of the first self-replicating molecules on this earth, and again, accounting for the spiritual nature of man.
Moreover, my understanding of the basic principles of biological evolution
Biological evolution is a lie, a fantasy and a bad hypothesis.
FUGGEDABOUDIT.furnish for me a tremendous source of devotional reverence: There is a profound parallel between the utterly naturalistic fact that certain forms of changes to life are "naturally selected" to "out-evolve" certain others.
Perhaps you ought to get familiar with better devotional material. Have you ever read the works of St. John of the Cross or St. Alfonsus de Liguori or St. Maximilian Kolbe or St. John Bosco or St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, for starters?
Likewise, not all persons are "chosen," and not all go to heaven.
The majority of the saints to whom you are wont to refer have proposed that the majority of mankind is damned, and God knew they would be before they were born. How's that for devotional material?? Where does that leave Griff Ruby and his noisy pantomime of God's silent creation?
The fascinating difference is that where an animal has no choice as to what it is and its ability to survive, we DO have a choice to "evolve" ourselves into what God wants us to be, or to refuse that and go to Hell (without even the handbasket for company).
So now we're going to confuse "conversion" with evolution? Give me a break.
It even has bearing on our traditionalist cause which sets us apart from all others who call themselves "Catholics" or even "Christians": Darwin's theory has this meaning for us, namely that we traditional Catholics fight to preserve the Mass which alone has survived the harsh "natural selection" process of the persecution of the early centuries. While there certainly never existed anything in the ancient Church as artificial and contrived as the Novus Ordo, there certainly was some considerable room for liturgical [spontaneity] and originality and even (of a sort) experimentation. The alternate Rites (Eastern, etc.) are surviving examples of some of that initial variation, but a considerable continuity no doubt existed between and around those few discrete forms, all of which have failed to survive the harsh conditions of the early centuries. In other words, God created the Tridentine liturgy we value so much exactly the same way He created every living thing, by natural evolution!
So now the Mass has been subject to natural evolution (Vatican II didn't even dare to say that -- they used "developed organically."
The Novus Ordo on the other hand is a sheer artifice, like a machine which may even imitate life, but which has no life (obviously), or at absolute best, it is like those wingless, eyeless, or crinkly-winged fruit flies scientists used to grow in their labs by irradiating fruit fly eggs. To the complete irony and confusion of all, some contemporary "liturgical experts" have even concocted their bastard creation in the name of "evolution." But their "evolution" is mere change for the sake of change, and bears no real similarity to the real evolutionary processes which created the living creatures and the Tridentine Mass in its present form. (It's a forgone conclusion that Jesus, at the famous Last Supper, could not possibly have prayed a full Tridentine Mass, since, for one thing, the saints listed in the Canon hadn't been born yet, for another no Gospel readings had been written as yet.) I am therefore an open and unabashed Liturgical Darwinist.
We fight for the traditional Mass, Sacraments, and teaching, not because we fear it will disappear without our help (it is incapable of disappearing; God's promises to His Church have utterly guaranteed that), but rather to save our own souls, and that of others around us, and to "magnify the Lord."
>I would also like to intersperse some comments into the text of your missive:
> >> It is the height of scientific illiteracy to believe that some armchair
> >> speculator, with a degree (?) in some altogether unrelated field,
> >> can just write some book, and with that sweep away several
> >> centuries of scientific observations, experiments, explorations,
> >> findings, theories, methods, processes, and discoveries.
>Would you mean people like: Copernicus, who's book changed the scientific world's view on the relationship of sun and earth? Newton, who's work changed the scientific world's views on so many things that I will not even attempt to list them? Darwin, who's book changed the scientific world's view on how life came to be? Einstein, who by simply sitting in his patent office armchair, changed the scientific world's view on light and motion and time itself?
Griff Ruby:
None of these great men qualify in any sense as mere "armchair speculators." All did experiments, many explored, all ran their theories and ideas and evidences past other scientists of their day to see their worth, and carefully refrained from publishing any radical new theories until evidences were found for them which other scientists of their day had seen and could respect. Rather, I refer to the likes of George McReady Price who invented the whole "flood geology" which more contemporary creationists merely repeat (and rather palely at that), Duane Gish who deliberately misrepresents what he had learned in his own more conventional schooling in biology (he at least did obtain a degree in the right field (or close enough), but has been shown to be culpably dishonest
in his representation of what he learned). He is a bought man, writing things he himself knows to be untrue, for sheer profit and popularity with the creationist crowd. Practically all resorts to "fossil evidence" all other creationists make refer, directly or indirectly, to the lone source of Gish.
Henry Morris, who makes a big deal about all the minerals which wash into the sea, and by his deliberate miscalculations seem to imply that the earth
must be young else all the minerals would have long since flowed into the sea. "Deliberate" because many have tried to point out to him the geological processes such as plate tectonics which cause what may have been once sea bottom to ascend out of the water, lifting the minerals right back out again.
His own figures even have it that all the Aluminum should have gone into the sea in a mere 17 years, a young earth indeed!
>I could list others, but I think I made my point. The very nature of science lends itself to just this sort of thing. Theories are posited and are shaped by evidence. But when someone comes along with a greater understanding and a superior theory, then that one person can change our understanding of nature overnight. There is a very good argument that Michael Behe, in Darwin's Black Box,
Behe is a good author and his book makes for good reading.
has done just that by pointing out that microbiology is so complex that random mutation over time cannot possibly explain the complexity of life. [/color]
Griff Ruby:
There is not a single tenable scientific theory that takes the position of
"Oh, it's far too complicated!" The very most he would be legitimately capable of doing (given the above description of his work, not having read it myself I admit)
Time to become informed, perhaps?
would be to point up whatever limitations the current theories might as yet still have, rendering them [inadequate] to explain all that is seen. (They are adequate to explain much of what is seen, but admittedly not everything.)
>> If we arbitrarily knock out biological evolution from our scientific understanding somehow, we not merely damage, but negate:
>> Biology - study of physical life in general
>> Biochemestry - study of chemical proccesses of living oragnisms
>> Pharmacology - study of chemical interactions with life
>> Toxology - study of poisons and toxicity
>> Pathology - study of what can go wrong (e. g. diseases)
>> Zoology - study of physical animal life in general
>> Botany - study of physical plant life in general
>> Hydrology - study of fluid dynamics, water movement, erosion
>> Paleontology - study of fossils in the geologic strata
>> Radiology - study of radioactive [disintegration]
>> Geology - study of the earth and its movements and processes
>> Genetics - study of genes (i. e. DNA)
>> Astronomy - study of the stars, planets, planetary motions
>> Spectrography - study of light
>> Thermodynamics - study of heat flow and processes
>> Physics - study of physical processes and motion
>> Marine biology -- my child had to endure the classroom fanatics of a die-hard evolutionist who assured me that his evolution (his religion, to be honest) was pervasive and essential to EVERYTHING in his classroom and curriculum. He firmly believed that it's impossible to study sea creatures without a firm belief and recognition of evolution. Maybe Griff Ruby was one of his students!?
>This is hyperbole and, worse, is just plain nonsense. It is irrational from the point of view of fact as well as logic. Before having the good sense to switch my fields to history, then law, I was a chemistry (polymer) major at Case Western Reserve University. I took a number of courses in physics and chemistry.
Griff Ruby:
Let me take just one of those: Physics. Young earth creationists have no
credible explanation for the fact that we can see stars and galaxies so far away that the light we see coming from them today had to have been eminated by them millions and even billions of years ago.
Since stars have a lifespan, the light we see that appears to be from particular stars would have come from them long ago and what we see now is how they would have appeared that long ago, at least some of these stars might not exist at this time. Therefore what we see now is not what objectively exists now but what would have existed some time in the past. And that is NORMAL for our perception, not ABNORMAL.
Some try to claim that they really are not anywhere near so far away as all that (which you should be able to see what damage that does to our methods of astronomical science), or that the universe was created with the "light" already there coming (in that case why have the original exist at all, especially in the case of those galaxies so far away that no light from them could ever possibly reach the earth before the world ends anyway?). Their main response (and I have seen someone on this list actually claim it) is that "the speed of light is changing." I have seen in creationist literature where they attempt to prove this (quite some time ago, so I only remember it in general terms), by citing some early attempts to measure the speed of light, the earliest attempts of which could find no difference between the speed of light and infinity, so the first measurement is "infinity." Later methods might have measured to the accuracy of (let us say) the nearest 100,000 miles per second, and therefore arrived at the figure of 200,000 miles per second. Still later methods might have measured it to the nearest 10,000, giving a figure of 190,000 miles per second. Only much later do current methods give us the totally accurate 186,282.whatever we have and work with today. But chart it out! See? first measurement: Infinity second measurement: 200,000 third measurement: 190,000 last measurement: 186,282 whatever It's going down; the speed of light is decreasing, so therefore the light of those remote galaxies first travelled at an infinite speed and therefore already arrived first thing after creation. Ludicrous as that obviously is, I have seen that exact argument seriously put forth in print in the creationist literature as the reason to believe that the light from remote galaxies could reach the earth despite everything having appeared only 6,000 years ago!
How much smarts does it take to see through that? Repeat today the same primitive experiments that obtained the higher figures back then, and the same higher figures will be obtained again. Nothing is changing. (duh!) Now, where do such creationist claims leave the subject of Physics? If the speed of light is not constant (then it should never have been designated by the letter "c" for "constant," obviously), then what happens to all of the many Physics equations (e = mc(squared) being only the best well known of them) which use the constant "c"? Einstein's theory of relativity has shown us the fundamental role light, and the speed of light, plays in nearly all of Physics, even where "c" may divide out of the equation. Now, if "c" is constantly changing and untrustworthy (and that without creating any sort of "red shift" or "blue shift" (amazing), all of that goes out the window.
And maybe Max Planc's constant is also constantly changing, and maybe Avogadro's number as well! Who knows?
> I have a great number of friends who are engineers and scientists. My father-in-law (R.I.P.) was a medical doctor. How much of what any of us learned, studied, or used was dependent on evolutionary theory? Zip, zero, nada, null, etc. Other than an anthropology course I took, evolution was irrelevant to what I learned.
Griff Ruby:
If you didn't sit in all his classes, how can you say that? The fact is that without the fact of evolution (and even our admittedly imperfect attempts to theorize just how it all happened), there is no reason whatsoever for there to be any other creature on earth which would share even the remotest similarity to humans, on which for surgeons to train or drug inventors to experiment on, let alone so many different creatures which share with man: a backbone, ribs, a four-chambered heart, lungs, a brain, two eyes, two ears, a tongue, a digestive system, skin, teeth, and hair, etc. either just exactly like ours (chimpanzie's teeth, for example are truly exactly like our own), or close enough to be obviously a mere variation from mankind's. If every living "kind" (whatever that means, creationists seem at a loss to know exactly where that falls on the scale of: Kingdon, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species), then there is no reason that any "kind" whatsoever would the leastwise resemble mankind at all.
And don't say "God created them to be like man because He knew that one day surgeons in training would benefit from such otherwise needless similarities,"
because God could just as easily put dolphin bones in the same geological layer as trilobites (which He never did). Obviously, each progressively more
advanced creature served at the very least as some sort of "prototype" for the next more advanced, and at least to that extent can be regarded as the
"source" of the next. Even if a man could go though medical training without even thinking of this fact (nor having it explained to him), and even if
(as I do know of some few medical doctors who are six-day creationists) they use the [knowledge] and training while disowning the theory which explains why
such [knowledge] and training would be the least bit valid, or even available, so what? It's still there in the background.
>Furthermore, your claims constitute a logical fallacy. Most of these fields of study deal with learning about, studying, and attempting to understand the world we live in. The physical laws of the universe have been set and do not change.
Griff Ruby:
As demonstrated above with the speed of light example, many creationists do believe that the physical laws of the universe do change. They furthermore posit a big and unexplainable change in that "God is no longer creating."
[snip]
>You should read Behe. He is a microbiologist writing about microbiology. His claim is simple (but extremely nuanced): life is so complicated that random mutations and slow evolution cannot possibly explain the systems of living organisms. No Darwinian evolutionist has been able to discredit his science, so they simply do what you did: call him a Creationist and dismiss him and his arguments. But sophistry is not science, and Behe's arguments have yet to be refuted.
Griff Ruby:
Creationists demand the impossible, that somehow a theory should come into existance which explains everything totally and completely, without any room for further [knowledge]. Even if such a thing were attainable, creationists still fault scientists for not having attained it instantly, and refuse to entertain any of it until such a point should be attained. If it was up to the creationists to come up with theories, that "attainment" would be doubly impossible since even the beginning would not have been embarked upon.
One could have similarly said (before the discovery of Thermonuclear fusion) "gee, you have not satisfactorily explained how the sun keeps burning, so why don't you just forget about studying it altogether and accept our claim that it is all just another one of God's magic tricks."
By the way, I don't see creationists coming up with any "theories" at all. The whole creationist "case" boils down to "we can't explain it; therefore it must be God." From what you are saying, Behe is merely a simpler case of "we can't explain it (it's so-o-o complicated...)," leaving it for others to supply the "it must be God" part.
Well, OK, maybe not quite. Creationists do attempt some very crude "theories" (hypothesis, actually) about "Flood Geology" and attempt to make the worldwide flood (clearly a chaotic and random process like the tornado in the junkyard) somehow produce the finely detailed layering of sediment and the fossil record, but that's it. That's all.
Wrong again. Griff needs to study more, this time with an open mind.
I have watched a small mountain of pulverized concrete pile up nearby over about 4 months where a portable crushing mechanism was set up for this purpose. Cleanup of earthquake debris generated chunks of broken concrete up to the size of small cars was systematically smashed to gravel-sized rocks and carried up a movable conveyor belt to let free-fall into mounds. The piles set there for several more months, and now, over the past year, trucks and skip loaders have gradually scooped up loads to carry away for road bed material. As the bulldozers have removed crushed rocks from the bottom of the pile, sheer walls standing nearly vertical for 30 feet high are left exposed for all to see, and what we can see that was deposited (caused by) gradual pouring of gravel into tall piles, is the same patterns of layering and strata that we can see in the road cuts alongside the nearby highway. That is, material that I saw deposited in a few short weeks of time looks indistinguishable from the conglomerate patterns in hillsides that were exposed in native undisturbed soil when the roadway cuts went through the hillsides.
In another story, Mt. St. Helens erupted and new pyroclastic flows that had not existed before the eruption left strata and layers in their wake that geologists have since admitted looks exactly like layers and strata they would have said had occurred over millions of years, but instead, we now know happened in a matter of a few minutes.
But revising the way geologists think takes a long time, like the movement of a glacier does.
If the chaotic explosion of a volcano and the chaotic spill of crushed rock grabbed by a skip loader can expose "finely detailed layering of sediment" then why would an enormous flood not be able to do so as well?
In point of fact,
controlled laboratory experiments have produced exactly the same "finely detailed layering of sediment" that you can see in any hillside cut away in longstanding native soil.
So, they're far from mere hypotheses, and obviously rise to the level of theories, because they are supported by real life observation of real life events as well as lab experiments, UNLIKE so-called evolution (which is a bad hypothesis).
Most important what is altogether missing is any serious attempt to explore How, When, and Why God has been creating this extraordinary universe we live in.
The theories [bad hypothesis] of evolution, however flawed they may prove to be, at least represent such an attempt, and our religious tendancy [tendency] to abandon such research to the atheists is Christianity's Great Shame. There were many great scientists who were Catholics way back when, but you don't see many (if indeed any) today, especially in the biological sciences. Even fewer fundamentalists.
[snip]
They may be few, but they do exist, and their numbers are growing.............
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Topic: Griff Ruby on Evolution (Read 5436 times)