Danmark wrote:
Volbrigade wrote:
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Replying to post 89 by Danmark]
I might have some respect for these YEC proponents if... they just said, "It's a miracle! God did all of this by miracles."
A miracle? Yes, of course. A direct intervention by God upon His creation. Our creation itself is a miracle.
That doesn't mean we cannot seek to ascertain what occurred when the miracle took place.
Dinosaurs lay eggs; and their young are much smaller than adult specimens.
Evolution aboard the Ark??? No idea what you're trying to say...
The greatest miracle, of course, is the direct intervention of God, through His incarnation as the Savior, Jesus Christ, into our space-time dimensionality, so that we can inherit His eternal one.
That is the one that has the utmost, and most vitally important, impact on each of us.
I said nothing about "evolution aboard the Ark."
Mea culpa. Got you confused with another poster.
What I did address were some very specific problems with John Baumgardner's "runaway subduction theories" and his claim that whirlpools saved the dinosaur's. Do you have a specific rebuttal for the problems raised in his theories?
No -- not a specific one.
I will confess that I do not have the expertise in geophysics to perform my own personal peer review of his work. Nor in astrophysics, to do the same with the various Big Bang models. Nor in molecular biology, to unravel for myself whether the empty claims routinely paraded as the new "proof" of m2m mechanisms (until -- "whoops -- no, that doesn't actually work...") are specious.
I, being a layman, must rely on the authority of experts in those areas -- just as I do whenever I take a seat on an airplane.
I found the rebuttal very interesting. And a perfect example of how science should work. "Here is my hypothesis..."; "here are some problems with your hypothesis".
Let's look at them. Baumgardner's proposal may well prove to be unworkable. Or, as in the case with many promising theories, it may be a matter of "it could not have happened that way, UNLESS..." x, y, and/or z.
"Nothing is more tragic than the slaying of an elegant theory by an ugly fact".
I remind you -- that statement sums up the m2m myth.
Are there problems with Baumgardner's proposal, that must be worked out before it can be accepted or rejected? I should think so. That neither surprises nor troubles me.
But they are nothing compared to the problems involved with the lack of mutations, or other natural processes, that can cause an increase in information within the genome, of the order needed to climb from a microbe to a man, whether given a billion years, or 10 x 10 x 10 billion years. Blood simply does not come from a turnip, no matter how long you wait.
What you (generally -- those who believe "nothing + time + chance = everything") and I (generally -- theists, who believe God exists outside the finite universe that He created) both are in need of is direct Divine intervention to make what we believe hold together.
Microbes certainly did not become men, absent some transcendent, guiding force (as someone said "who said anything about evolution being random?").
However, the admission of that transcendent, guiding force opens other possibilities. Those who are interested in pursuing
truth (and not just their careers) must be courageous in that pursuit. The "community" of scientists, like all human associations, is imperfect -- subject to the same clique-ishness, envy, and herd mentality that any other is. "Science" may be objective, but scientists themselves most certainly
aren't.
So -- the posts on this thread indicate that neither you, nor any other respondent, has any familiarity with the claims and proposals made by the growing number of scientists who have rejected the empty logic of "we must assume no God", for the bedrock of God's word as foundational to their epistemological worldview.
If you want to continue basing your belief about the origins and history of the world (and the consequences of those beliefs, in terms of the ontology which follows from it) on the sound of "one hand clapping" -- that is your own affair.
Here's what I will do.
I will take as my starting position, not the agnostic "we don't know" (and no evidence will ever be sufficient to change our position); but "I believe the Bible to be a transmission from outside our time domain; which conveys information from the only witness to the event of creation; and spiritual inspiration in guiding the writings of history subsequent to that event."
And see which position best corresponds to the facts and evidence before us.
The beauty of it is, the experts that I turn to -- who have PhDs from secular universities; and yard-long accomplishments in their field of expertise, MUST be expertly aware of the arguments (and that is all they are; inferences -- there is no proof of their claims, quite the opposite) made by m2m proponents, in order to rebut them.
So it's a "two-fer".
I appreciate a good bargain.
From my perspective, the time dilation and other factors involved with "the stretching of the heavens", and the ubiquitous evidence for the flood of Noah, are sufficient to confirm my belief that a man rose from the dead on a Sunday after Passover, 2,000 years ago, validating His claim to be the embodiment of the creator who spoke the Cosmos into existence, roughly 4,000 years prior.
If they are not for you -- I have no choice but to live with that.
Do you still want to discuss the Christianity--Islam thing?
