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To: metmom
So, that leaves two possibilities as far as I see it; 1) God did use evolution as the process by which man was created or 2) the fossil record is being misinterpreted. If anyone else can see other possibilities, feel free... I know however, that #2 is not going to be real popular with some folks.

A reasonable postulate.

Now, lets take it to the next step. The real issue is to analyze the issue quantitatively, rather than qualitatively.

The creationist / ID crowd here uses some pretty clever semantics, but it is essentially deceiving. To wit: they argue that the "fossile record is in doubt." OK, how much in doubt?? Are the dates controversial or uncertain to a factor of +- 10%, 50%, a factor of 2, a factor of 10??? (The answer is that they are controversial to a factor of about 2).

Well, then, how old is the fossile record compared to Biblical, young Earth creationism?? Well, (in round numbers), the fossile record is 500 million years old. The Biblical creation occured 5,000 years ago. That's a factor of 100,000 to 1. It's a little beyond the uncertainty.

A similar argument can be made for the geologic record, which goes back a couple of billion years. Perhaps the strongest argument is the cosmological argument. Multiple, quite disparate astronomic measurements put the age of the Universe at about 15 billion years. That's a much larger factor.

339 posted on 10/01/2005 3:54:10 PM PDT by 2ndreconmarine (I've had a bad day at work. I'm in a bad mood. Time to stomp on a creationist.)
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To: 2ndreconmarine

But not everybody is a Young Earth Creationist. Did you see my post a few back where I mentioned Ussher, the man responsible for the 6,000 year old idea? (post#296) The calculations he did were questionable at best. Since science obviously disproves this, then his calculations were wrong. This issue is addressed in a book "The Fingerprint of God" by Hugh Ross, which I've also mentioned before. Scientists like Newton, Kepler, and Galileo who believed in creation, saw no conflict between what their calculations predicted for the size and age of the universe and the Bible. This only became an issue after Ussher's calculations, which some people have accepted as fact. If he had not done this, there would be no controversy.


342 posted on 10/01/2005 5:04:50 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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