Posted on 07/20/2002 2:08:38 PM PDT by yankeedame
Saturday, July 20, 2002
Creationists gather today:Dinosaurs subject of discussion
By Cindy Schroeder, cschroeder@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION — As children create models of dinosaurs, their parents can search for Biblical references to the giant creatures at a weekend conference hosted by a pro-Creationist ministry that vows to “defend scripture from the very first verse.”
The site of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Boone County is being graded. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM | Organizers of the program running today and Sunday at Big Bone Baptist Church in Union say the Answers in Genesis family conference is expected to draw between 500 and 600 people within a day's drive of the Tristate. They say it is part of an ongoing series of family conferences that the 8-year-old nonprofit ministry — now building a 50,000-square-foot museum in Hebron — has offered throughout the country to “give (believers) arguments to help debunk evolution.”
Answers in Genesis followers believe the Earth's creatures were created by God and were not the result of an evolutionary process as espoused by scientists such as Charles Darwin.
“Our purpose is to equip Christians to be able to defend Christianity against the evolutionary ideas (or) secular ideas that challenge the Bible,” said Ken Ham, executive director of Answers in Genesis and the conference's keynote speaker. He said organizers will present what they believe is the factual account of the history of the world as presented in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.
Like those who promote Intelligent Design, Answers in Genesis followers believe that all life was the result of a creator. However, they carry that theory further, in that they maintain the creator “is the God of the Bible and you can trust the God of the Bible,” Mr. Ham said.
With the help of the writings of “Scriptural Geologists,” Terry Mortenson, a full-time lecturer with Answers in Genesis who has degrees in theology and geology, will attempt to show that dinosaurs walked the Earth with man.
Arnold Miller, a professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati, challenged participants to “go out and examine the evidence themselves,” rather than allow others to interpret the evidence for them.
“I'm all for Answers in Genesis having every opportunity to say what they want,” Mr. Miller said. “But I would challenge anyone who goes to this conference to demand direct positive evidence that the creation of life took place over six days in 4004 B.C. or whatever they say. People should ask, "What's the evidence? Let's hear it.'
“It's one thing to provide misleading characterizations in scientific debates. It's another to say that the answers (to issues such as how life began) really are in Genesis.”
God bones-fossils---wings...halos...certificates/charts---degrees?
Gonna publish soon?
My post was replying to a suggestion that God could have created the world with fossils already in the earth, and other signs of vast age on day one.
In my exposure to creationism, it seemed fairly common for creationists to hold that the earth was (consistent with Bishop Usher's calculations from scriputre) about 6,000 years old.
As far as ancient literature claiming the universe was created recently... Just turn to Genesis 1:1 and you'll read: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. That's got the earth showing up right at the beginning, and humans show up just 6 days later. Then if you follow Usher's calculations (based on the lineage from Adam)... you can deduce that this all happened just 6000 years ago. Seems pretty recent to me.
My point is that the abundant physical evidence that the world, and the cosmos, are very old contradicts such a literal reading of Genesis. Any hypothesis that God deliberately created a world which only appears billions of years old requires God to be deceitful. So I prefer to believe instead that Genesis, written for a pre-technological semi-nomadic people thousands of years ago, is only a poetic fable containing some essential spiritual truths but not a literal history of the world.
But that aside, I'm still hoping for an answer to my post #99 - how do you figure Darwin cost 100 million lives?
No difference in my mind. I think the creationists forget one tiny detail about God: He created the set of physical laws by which the Universe operates. For a Creator to go outside the boundaries He Himself established would be to go against the very order He established, something I do not believe even He can or would do.
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That means the sky and the Earth. The word "Universe" is not in the sentence. BTW, the notion of a "big bang" is every bit as much dead as evolutionism, being based on an interpretation of cosmic redshift phenomena which has essentially been disproven. The universe is not expanding and, in all likelihood, has simply always been around.
Enough rain to flood the whole earth is a layer of fresh water over a mile thick... would the saltwater of the oceans be diluted to an extent that there would be mass extinction of several saltwater species? Or contrawise, wouldn't the brackish mix cause a problem for many freshwater species from the former lakes and rivers which have been subsumed within the advancing seas?
Worst case scenario is the ark needs both saltwater and freshater tanks for at least the most sensitive aquatic species. Then, doesn't Noah have to build some kind of mechanism to keep the water sufficiently oxygenated for 40 days and nights? Temperature regulation might be a problem, too.
The increasingly widespread growth of ignorance, mysticism, and outright luddite stupidity is a threat to all advanced societies. The particular flavors within all that ignorance are not particularly important because they are all fought with the same tools - knowledge, reason, and the continuing advancement of science.
Not to mention keeping the darned things clean. Yikes!
That means the sky and the Earth.
But you conveniently ignore the part that says In the beginning. You seem to think there was an earlier beginning, a kind of pre-beginning, when God created the stars and stuff, before "the beginning" began.
And what entitles you to declare that "the heaven" just means "the sky"? Genesis doesn't even have God creating Light until verse 3... so were all the stars of the universe emanating darkness for eons before God got around to creating the earth and then light?
call everything spam they don't like---can't deal with!
evo cry babies!
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