Creationists Gather...Dinosaurs Subject of Discussion

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.”

With all the baggage laid on Darwin in this thread, from Racism and Communism to Nazism, I think a brief pause to look in on the man himself is in order.

It's late in 1881, in the last years of Darwin's life. Darwin is a non-Christian and has been for some thirty years, even if the erosion of his belief was gradual. In many ways, however, Darwin retains the attitudes and inclinations of the quiet and conservative country rector (cum naturalist) he aspired to be as a young man. Although radicals all over Europe want to be associated with him, Darwin views them with as much with as much circumspection as any English upper-middle class gentleman would, and rather more insight.

Now, with Germany having newly began its commitment to socialism (which will ultimately lead to facism) two German atheists want to come for dinner...

[Darwin's] reverie was interrupted by a cryptic telegram:

Doctor Ludwig Büchner Germany is in London could he have Honour of interview Wednesday or Thursday at hour most convenient to your leaves Friday Pardon abruptness and Boldness of request.

It threw the family into commotion. The wire was from Aveling, attending the Congress of the International Federation of Freethinkers in the capital. Büchner, President of the Congress, was fifty-seven and renowned; Aveling, thirty and notorious. As a land nationalizer and leader of the workers' movement, Büchner might have descended on Wallace; as a zealous materialist he might have singled out Tyndall. But no, Darwin for German physicians [in which profession 19th century "scientific" radicals were most heavily concentrated] had assumed heroic status, elevated by a crusading Darwinismus. Büchner thought that he was greeting a noble ally. The gentle squire of Downe [i.e. Darwin] had always feared such a grotesque misunderstanding.
Charles asked Emma: how could he refuse the distinguished Büchner, atheist or no? And Aveling had always treated him civilly. They could come for lunch, stay an hour or so, and that would be that. An appalled Emma, expected to play hostess to notorious atheists, bargained for something better. Since Brodie Innes [the local rector] was near by, shouldn't he be invited too? And she trusted that Herr Büchner "talks English & will refrain from airing his very strong religious opinions."
The next afternoon, Thursday the 28th [1881], Jackson ushered everyone to the dining-room table at one o'clock. (A nervous Bessy stayed upstairs.) At the head sat Emma, her serene face haloed in sunlight from an Indian summer day. Opposite her, near the door where the servants passed with steaming platters, was Frank, and beside him Bernard and some friends. Across from the children, in a single imposing row, sat Charles and the atheists. Between Aveling and Emma, as if to shield her, was the white-haired Revd Brodie Innes, amiable and upright. The table became an embodiment of Darwin's life-long dilemma. It was less a lunch, more a last supper; everybody he had loved, everything he had feared, every paradox of his career had come together in a penultimate act. Here, his disapproving evangelical wife, his kindly Tory vicar, his genetically weak children, and his atheistic disciples, Büchner to his right and Aveling on the left, gloating in his physical repulsion, a malevolence emanating from his presence "as from a diabolical source of being." In the middle sat the parish naturalist, the failed ordinand, the Devil's Chaplain, damning and defying all expectations.
Some explanation of the parson's presence was evidently required. Mindful of the mixed company, Charles put it masterfully: "Brodie Innes & I have been fast friends for 30 years. We never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and then we looked hard at each other and thought one of us must be very ill." Nerves were jangled, the situation fraught. It would have been a nightmare, but for the funny turn.
Worms came up during the first course. Aveling expressed pious horror that the author of the Origin had stooped to a "subject so insignificant." the freethinking missionaries had the great Victorian social problems in mind. Neither expected to find their hero obsessed by the sods rather than sons of the soil. Turning gravely, Charles stated, "I have been studying their habits for forty years." For him the humble explained the great, but not in a way that Aveling -- soon to be Marx's "son-in-law" -- could appreciate. After the sweet, which he was forbidden but ate anyway, Charles adjourned with Frank and the guests to the smoking room, his old study, where he had written the Origin.
They lit cigarettes and Darwin, completely out of character, pitched in. "Why do you call yourselves atheists?"

Read the rest (an excerpt from an excellent biography of Darwin) in the following thread:

The "gentle squire of Down" (Charles Darwin) & the day the Pinko Atheists came to lunch

Also see messages from me, starting with number 8, on creationism/Christianity and racism.

I will also warn that the thread is heavily spammed by a (self described) "evolutionary anarchist" named budlt2369. I wouldn't recommend wasting time with his posts, but of course that is up to you.

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