[/caption] Posted on 05/11/2012 10:56:54 AM PDT by ReligiousLibertyTV
[dc]O[/dc]n May 14, noted philanthropist and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson is scheduled to give the commencement address at Emory University and receive an honorary degree. But there is a problem. In recent weeks Emory faculty and students have asked the University to disinvite Dr. Carson because he is a critic of evolutionary theory and advocate of creationism. Faculty and staff have written that Dr. Carson’s “great achievements in medicine allow him to be viewed as someone who ‘understands science’” poses a direct threat to science that “rests squarely on the shoulders of evolution.”
The anti-Carson letter describes how there is “overwhelming” evidence of “ape-human transitional fossils” and how this evolution process has advanced an ability to develop animal models for disease and that even “the work of Dr. Carson himself is based on scientific advances fostered by an understanding of evolution.” The letter then argues that “the theory of evolution is as strongly supported as the theory of gravity and the theory that infectious diseases are caused by micro-organisms.”
In 2010, Gallup released a poll that found that 40% of Americans believe in strict creationism, the idea that humans were created by God in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Thirty-eight percent believe that God guided the process of human evolution from lower life forms over millions of years , and only 16% believe that humans evolved without divine intervention. Sixty percent of those who attend church weekly believe that we were created less than 10,000 years ago. Gallup notes that the numbers have remained generally stable for the past 28 years.
That the number of adherents of creationism remains so strong, even though Charles Darwin’s book, “On the Origin of Species” has been around since 1859 and has been taught in most public schools since the 1960s, is a testament to the persistent strength of American religious belief and faith over contradictory concepts.
Earlier this week, Forbes magazine staff writer Alex Knapp wrote an essay entitled, “Why Some Christians Reject Evolution,” arguing that many Christians reject evolutionary theory because it conflicts with the Protestant view of the doctrines of original sin and salvation.
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Perhaps the only way to explain how evolved human beings would end up with a soul is expressed in the hybrid evolution-creation concept advanced by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis (1950). Pius XII writes, "For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”
In Catholic thought, this has been interpreted to provide room for the concept that human beings were created over millions of years through evolution, and that God ultimately provided pre-existing, pre-created souls to those He designated and that these souls reconnect to God through practicing the sacraments.
In contrast, American evangelicals tend to view Adam and Eve as actual living people, who were literally created by God as clay forms into which God breathed the breath of life. There was no death before the fall of humanity. The time frames are important because they rely on the Biblical chronologies Matthew 1 and Luke 3:23-28 to prove that Jesus was in the prophetically-designated ancestral line of David, and draw the genealogical line all the way back to Adam, the first created human being.
Many evangelicals reject the hybrid view of creation and evolution because it would necessarily require them to regard creation, as discussed in the books of Genesis and of a new earth in Revelation, as allegory and submit the pervasive teachings of the Bible referencing Creation and other supernatural activity to the realm of mythology or cultural contextualism. Acceptance of “scientific” views of evolution would then, by necessity, require a major reconfiguration of matters of faith – and that is something that most adherents to strict creationism are unwilling to do.
Knapp, whose own religious beliefs are not indicated, notes that while some churches have found ways to incorporate the idea of change over time into their belief systems, “for many Christians, evolution isn’t a minor fact of science that can be resolved into the mythos of their faith. It is, rather, a fundamental attack on their faith and many things that they believe.”
There have been a number of heated arguments on the campuses of a diverse array of religious universities regarding how issues of origins should be taught. Some have tried to walk the middle line of teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to creationism and evolution. Critics of those teaching intelligent design point out that trying to split the issue down the middle does no favors to either side and in the end is nothing but a weakened form of creationism, and an explanation that is of no value to secular science.
Within the larger context of American Protestant Christianity the debate continues without resolution. Among Christians, creationists are often asked to consider various forms of evidence of a long-history of the earth, but those advocating for a long-earth have largely ignored discussion of the genealogies of the New Testament and the concepts of original sin and salvation. Christian evolutionists have failed to provide a verse-by-verse rebuttal to the Biblical Creation narrative or to acknowledge the extent to which acceptance of creation would impact theology.
Instead theistic evolutionists operate on the supposition that Creationists will eventually bifurcate their religious beliefs from scientific understanding, because incompatibilities must be resolved in favor of science. This places faith directly in conflict with science and any resultant battle on these issues will take centuries if true academic freedom is to be granted, but can resolve faster if the voices of religious dissent are silenced and those who have openly criticized evolution are denied a seat at the academic table.
The attempt to “purify” academia by silencing the voices of critics such as Dr. Carson would be the first step toward a secular Dark Ages. So far, it appears that despite the controversy, Emory University’s commencement ceremony will go forward as planned.
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In response to the controversy at Emory, as of this writing nearly 2,000 people have signed a Petition to reaffirm “Dr. Ben Carson’s Welcome and Defend His Right to Express His Views.” Click here to view the Petition.
No, I just pointed out the inconsistencies that many researchers have uncovered over the past several decades with your treasured radio-isotope dating ~ it is not accurate.
If Americans came from Europeans - why are there still Europeans?
But I'm supposed to believe that it IS accurate to say that finding any instance of radiometric dating being inaccurate means that all of them must be?
That's hilarious.
Um Ok you are asserting that DNA re-writes itself ~ never been observed. Mutations are copy errors that will eventually kill off the organism. Bacteria has approx 500 million A/C/T/G pairs that mimic computer codes [actually vice-versa] upto approx 3 billion coded pairs for humans and then peaking at approx 50 billion coded pairs for Paris Japonis. Macro-evolution has never been observed!!!
Or consider Dr. Walt Brown Ph.D. per creationscience.com:
15. Codes, Programs, and Information
In our experience, codes are produced only by intelligence, not by natural processes or chance. A code is a set of rules for converting information from one useful form or language to another. Examples include Morse code and Braille. Code makers must simultaneously understand at least two ways of representing information and then establish the rules for converting from one to the other and back again. It is hard to imagine how natural processes and long periods of time could produce one language. Having two languages form by natural processes and be able to automatically convert one to the other is unbelievable.
The genetic material that controls the physical processes of life is coded information. Also coded are very complex and completely different functions: the transmission, translation, correction, and duplication systems, without which the genetic material would be useless, and life would cease. It seems obvious that the genetic code and the accompanying transmission, translation, correction, and duplication systems were produced simultaneously in each living organism by an extremely high intelligence.
Likewise, no natural process has ever been observed to produce a program. A program is a planned sequence of steps to accomplish some goal. Computer programs are common examples. Because programs require foresight, they are not produced by chance or natural processes. The information stored in the genetic material of all life is a complex program. Therefore, it appears that an unfathomable intelligence created these genetic programs.
Life contains matter, energy, and information. All isolated systems, including living organisms, have specific, but perishable, amounts of information. No isolated system has ever been shown to increase its information content significantly. Nor do natural processes add information; they destroy it. Only outside intelligence can significantly increase the information content of an otherwise isolated system. All scientific observations are consistent with this generalization, which has three corollaries:
Macroevolution cannot occur.
Outside intelligence was involved in the creation of the universe and all forms of life.
Life could not result from a “big bang.”
You wouldn't want to imply that the soul was created "separately" --- it is at no time separate from the body of the newly-conceivced child. But it is, Catholics would say, "individually" created and infused as the body comes into being. In other words, you get your body from your parents, but your soul comes straight from God. Here's a Link to some Catechism references if you want to get it in context.
Your bigger problem is in explaining the 101 natural clocks [so far but still going up] that completely contradict your one precious method.
How about you start by exploring the moon as a natural clock. It’s current orbit is receding at a constant rate, so how far back can you go before the tides cover the highest mountain peaks, or better yet before the Earth and Moon orbits collide? It’s almost like something major catastrophe knocked it out of it’s orbit or some such...
That’s strange because I included a reference to your Ur dating reference but you are the one choosing to exclude these many varied other references that contradict your evolutionary timeframe.
Typical liberal defense mechanism - accuse your opponent of doing that which you are doing in spades.
Assuming you’ve read your own references, do they include all the instances of radiometric dating of Urainium providing consistent measurements of billions of years of measurable decay?
Hmmmmmm.... is right.
Yes, Piltdown was a fraud, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was peripherally involved, to the extent that he searched for and found a tooth which fit the supposed jaw of "Piltdown Man".
After finding the tooth, Teilhard moved to France and had nothing more to do with it.
As for Peking Man, no fraud is alleged, even though original bones were lost during WWII, no new large cache has been found, and the controversy over possible Asian origins of homo erectus remains unresolved.
Certainly no wrong-doing by Tielhard is alleged.
Further, Tielhard had his own problems with Church hierarchy, which was not so happy about his theological outlook.
In that regard, we might also mention the Church's most famous scientific dispute: with Galileo Galilei.
But the larger point is this: the greatest of Catholic philosophers, those "doctors of the Church" such as Saints Augustine and Aquinas, always insisted there must be no contradiction between revealed and discovered truth.
Of course, mere church mortals have sometimes experienced difficulty meeting such a high standard, but that is what they are supposed to teach.
When I was a kid, I remember my Dad getting hold of a level that had the vial mis-mounted. When he figured out that it didn't work right, he threw it out and went and got a different level. He didn't just quit using levels.
It’s not like Venus is the only conundrum for evolution in our solar system!
Again from creation.com/age-of-the-earth
=== Astronomical evidence for a young(er) age of the earth and the universe ===
65. Saturn’s rings are increasingly recognized as being relatively short-lived rather than essentially changeless over millions of years.
66. Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Earth’s moon is inconsistent with its supposed vast age because it should have long since cooled if it were billions of years old.
66. Recession of the moon from the earth. Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age.
67. The moon’s former magnetic field. Rocks sampled from the moon’s crust have residual magnetism that indicates that the moon once had a magnetic field much stronger than earth’s magnetic field today. No plausible ‘dynamo’ hypothesis could account for even a weak magnetic field, let alone a strong one that could leave such residual magnetism in a billions-of-years time-frame. The evidence is much more consistent with a recent creation of the moon and its magnetic field and free decay of the magnetic field in the 6,000 years since then. Humphreys, D.R., The moon’s former magnetic field—still a huge problem for evolutionists, Journal of Creation 26(1):5–6, 2012.
68. Ghost craters on the moon’s maria (singular mare: dark “seas” formed from massive lava flows) are a problem for the assumed long ages. Enormous impacts evidently caused the large craters and lava flows within those craters, and this lava partly buried other, smaller impact craters within the larger craters, leaving “ghosts”. But this means that the smaller impacts can’t have been too long after the huge ones, otherwise the lava would have flowed into the larger craters before the smaller impacts. This suggests a very narrow time frame for all this cratering, and by implication the other cratered bodies of our solar system. They suggest that the cratering occurred quite quickly. See Fryman, H., Ghost craters in the sky, Creation Matters 4(1):6, 1999; A biblically based cratering theory (Faulkner); Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe.
69. The presence of a significant magnetic field around Mercury is not consistent with its supposed age of billions of years. A planet so small should have cooled down enough so any liquid core would solidify, preventing the evolutionists’ “dynamo” mechanism. See also, Humphreys, D.R., Mercury’s magnetic field is young! Journal of Creation 22(3):8–9, 2008.
70. The outer planets Uranus and Neptune have magnetic fields, but they should be long “dead” if they are as old as claimed according to evolutionary long-age beliefs.
71. Assuming a solar system age of thousands of years, physicist Russell Humphreys successfully predicted the strengths of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune.
72. Jupiter’s larger moons, Ganymede, Io, and Europa, have magnetic fields, which they should not have if they were billions of years old, because they have solid cores and so no dynamo could generate the magnetic fields. This is consistent with creationist Humphreys’ predictions. See also, Spencer, W., Ganymede: the surprisingly magnetic moon, Journal of Creation 23(1):8–9, 2009.
73. Volcanically active moons of Jupiter (Io) are consistent with youthfulness (Galileo mission recorded 80 active volcanoes). If Io had been erupting over 4.5 billion years at even 10% of its current rate, it would have erupted its entire mass 40 times. Io looks like a young moon and does not fit with the supposed billions of year’s age for the solar system. Gravitational tugging from Jupiter and other moons accounts for only some of the excess heat produced.
74. The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Studies of the few craters indicated that up to 95% of small craters, and many medium-sized ones, are formed from debris thrown up by larger impacts. This means that there have been far fewer impacts than had been thought in the solar system and the age of other objects in the solar system, derived from cratering levels, have to be reduced drastically (see Psarris, Spike, What you aren’t being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD, available from CMI).
Methane on Titan (Saturn’s largest moon)—the methane should all be gone because of UV-induced breakdown. The products of photolysis should also have produced a huge sea of ethane. As the original Astrobiology paper said, “If the chemistry on Titan has gone on in steady-state over the age of the solar system, then we would predict that a layer of ethane 300 to 600 meters thick should be deposited on the surface.” No such sea is seen, which is consistent with Titan being a tiny fraction of the claimed age of the solar system.
75. The rate of change / disappearance of Saturn’s rings is inconsistent with their supposed vast age; they speak of youthfulness.
76. Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, looks young. Astronomers working in the “billions of years” mindset thought that this moon would be cold and dead, but it is a very active moon, spewing massive jets of water vapour and icy particles into space at supersonic speeds, consistent with a much younger age. Calculations show that the interior would have frozen solid after 30 million years (less than 1% of its supposed age); tidal friction from Saturn does not explain its youthful activity (Psarris, Spike, What you aren’t being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD; Walker, T., 2009. Enceladus: Saturn’s sprightly moon looks young, Creation 31(3):54–55).
77. Miranda, a small moon of Uranus, should have been long since dead, if billions of years old, but its extreme surface features suggest otherwise. See Revelations in the solar system.
78. Neptune should be long since “cold”, lacking strong wind movement if it were billions of years old, yet Voyager II in 1989 found it to be otherwise—it has the fastest winds in the entire solar system. This observation is consistent with a young age, not billions of years. See Neptune: monument to creation.
79. Neptune’s rings have thick regions and thin regions. This unevenness means they cannot be billions of years old, since collisions of the ring objects would eventually make the ring very uniform. Revelations in the solar system.
80. Young surface age of Neptune’s moon, Triton—less than 10 million years, even with evolutionary assumptions on rates of impacts.
81. Uranus and Neptune both have magnetic fields significantly off-axis, which is an unstable situation. When this was discovered with Uranus, it was assumed by evolutionary astronomers that Uranus must have just happened to be going through a magnetic field reversal. However, when a similar thing was found with Neptune, this AD hoc explanation was upset. These observations are consistent with ages of thousands of years rather than billions.
82. The orbit of Pluto is chaotic on a 20 million year time scale and affects the rest of the solar system, which would also become unstable on that time scale, suggesting that it must be much younger. (See: Rothman, T., God takes a nap, Scientific American 259(4):20, 1988).
83. The existence of short-period comets (orbital period less than 200 years), e.g. Halley, which have a life of less than 20,000 years, is consistent with an age of the solar system of less than 10,000 years. ad hoc hypotheses have to be invented to circumvent this evidence (see Kuiper Belt). See Comets and the age of the solar system.
84. “Near-infrared spectra of the Kuiper Belt Object, Quaoar and the suspected Kuiper Belt Object, Charon, indicate both contain crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate. This watery material cannot be much older than 10 million years, which is consistent with a young solar system, not one that is 5 billion years old.” See: The “waters above”.
85. Lifetime of long-period comets (orbital period greater than 200 years) that are sun-grazing comets or others like Hyakutake or Hale–Bopp means they could not have originated with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. However, their existence is consistent with a young age for the solar system. Again an ad hoc Oort Cloud was invented to try to account for these comets still being present after billions of years. See, Comets and the age of the solar system.
86. The maximum expected lifetime of near-earth asteroids is of the order of one million years, after which they collide with the sun. And the Yarkovsky effect moves main belt asteroids into near-earth orbits faster than had been thought. This brings into question the origin of asteroids with the formation of the solar system (the usual scenario), or the solar system is much younger than the 4.5 billion years claimed. Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006.
87. The lifetime of binary asteroids—where a tiny asteroid “moon” orbits a larger asteroid— in the main belt (they represent about 15–17% of the total): tidal effects limit the life of such binary systems to about 100,000 years. The difficulties in conceiving of any scenario for getting binaries to form in such numbers to keep up the population, led some astronomers to doubt their existence, but space probes confirmed it.
88. The observed rapid rate of change in stars contradicts the vast ages assigned to stellar evolution. For example, Sakurai’s Object in Sagittarius: in 1994, this star was most likely a white dwarf in the centre of a planetary nebula; by 1997 it had grown to a bright yellow giant, about 80 times wider than the sun (Astronomy & Astrophysics 321:L17, 1997). In 1998, it had expanded even further, to a red supergiant 150 times wider than the sun. But then it shrank just as quickly; by 2002 the star itself was invisible even to the most powerful optical telescopes, although it is detectable in the infrared, which shines through the dust (Muir, H., 2003, Back from the dead, New Scientist 177(2384):28–31).
89. The faint young sun paradox. According to stellar evolution theory, as the sun’s core transforms from hydrogen to helium by means of nuclear fusion, the mean molecular weight increases, which would compress the sun’s core increasing fusion rate. The upshot is that over several billion years, the sun ought to have brightened 40% since its formation and 25% since the appearance of life on earth. For the latter, this translates into a 16–18 ºC temperature increase on the earth. The current average temperature is 15 ºC, so the earth ought to have had a -2 ºC or so temperature when life appeared. See: Faulkner, D., The young faint Sun paradox and the age of the solar system, Journal of Creation (TJ) 15(2):3–4, 2001. As of 2010, the faint young sun remains a problem.
90. Evidence of (very) recent geological activity (tectonic movements) on the moon is inconsistent with its supposed age of billions of years and its hot origin.
91. The giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn radiate more energy than they receive from the sun, suggesting a recent origin. Jupiter radiates almost twice as much energy as it receives from the sun, indicating that it may be less than 1 % of the presumed 4.5 billion years old solar system. Saturn radiates nearly twice as much energy per unit mass as Jupiter. See The age of the Jovian planets.
92. Speedy stars are consistent with a young age for the universe. For example, many stars in the dwarf galaxies in the Local Group are moving away from each other at speeds estimated at to 10–12 km/s. At these speeds, the stars should have dispersed in 100 Ma, which, compared with the supposed 14,000 Ma age of the universe, is a short time. See Fast stars challenge big bang origin for dwarf galaxies.
93. The ageing of spiral galaxies (much less than 200 million years) is not consistent with their supposed age of many billions of years. The discovery of extremely “young” spiral galaxies highlights the problem of this evidence for the evolutionary ages assumed.
94. The number of type I supernova remnants (SNRs) observable in our galaxy is consistent with an age of thousands of years, not millions or billions. See Davies, K., Proc. 3prd ICC, pp. 175–184, 1994.
95. The rate of expansion and size of supernovas indicates that all studied are young (less than 10,000 years). See supernova remnants.
Have you checked the assumptions that are involved in radiometrics?
Thank you. I appreciate your suggestion and am making this change:
In Catholic thought, this has been interpreted to provide room for the concept that the bodies of human beings were created over millions of years through evolution, and that God ultimately provided separately-created souls to human beings. These souls reconnect to God through practicing the sacraments.
(You can see it in context at http://religiousliberty.tv/burden-of-proof-why-american-evangelicals-reject-long-earth-creationism-evolution.html )
I want to be as fair and accurate as possible when describing what people believe.
Michael Peabody
Thank you. I appreciate your suggestion and am making this change:
In Catholic thought, this has been interpreted to provide room for the concept that the bodies of human beings were created over millions of years through evolution, and that God ultimately provided separately-created souls to human beings. These souls reconnect to God through practicing the sacraments.
(You can see it in context at http://religiousliberty.tv/burden-of-proof-why-american-evangelicals-reject-long-earth-creationism-evolution.html )
I want to be as fair and accurate as possible when describing what people believe.
Michael Peabody
The problem is “scientists” counting ice layers as years when they should be counting them as snowstorms...
The only real problem with evolutionary science is how much bias and corruption gets introduced through government grants to continue ‘researching’ this worthless and godless ideology. Evolution continually presents more outright fraud and fabrication than all the other scientific disciplines combined.
The only assumption I know of is that the half-life of any given radioisotope is assumed to be constannt.
As far as I know there have never been two samples of the same radioisotope found to have different half-lives, so the assumption seems sound.
Do you have evidence that the half lives can be made variable to account for a margin of error of 4500000% ?
It is all true - I assume you are referring to alleged contradictions in the accounts? Please point out the alleged contradictions that you think exists.
Are you claiming all the scientists that ever measured more than 10,000 years of decay in a radioisotope sample were bribed to falsify their results?
Yet you have no explanation for observed errors nor even what percent of these perceived errors are discarded.
Worst of all for critical thinking and the scientific method ~ zero explanation for the far easier to observe natural clocks that I’ve been pointing out throughout this thread.
Another couple of assumptions for radioisotope dating:
Initial ratio of father and daughter elements, and
Volcanic heat resets these radioisotope clocks.
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