Trudeau insults Christians in Easter Day Doonesbury cartoon

Doonesbury Cartoon ^ | April 20, 2003 | Gary Trudeau

[TomSmedley]

To suggest, as Trudeau does, that we are dopes is insulting. He further misrepresents Creationism as being incompatible with intellectual development.

I work with several Christian world-view ministries, including my local church and Imago Dei. As I keep telling these young folks, "You can't fight something with nothing. Never bring a knife to a gun fight." In order to be sound and solid in our faith, we need to think about explicitly Biblical/Christian biochemistry (see Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box), genetics (invented by a Christian minister, Grigor Mendel), ecology, paleontology, anatomy, physics, astronomy, geology, cosmology, history and archeology.

The world view we were brought up in through American public education has as its root purpose the explicitly denial of the God-honoring facts in each of these crucial areas. Instead, we were offered the most bizarre grim fairy tales of spontaneous generation, primordial soup, and a universe as an artifact without an artisan; as all the truly intelligent people know, it magically created itself.

[FactQuest]

As you might guess....we disagree

Yes, but I'm hopeful we can have a civil debate. You seem reasonable.

Column is perfectly in line with what we would expect to see with Global Flood.. See the links in my last post, and logical arguments in previous posts.

There are far more problems with a Global Flood than the evidence of geology. And the text doesn't require it. But, the whole sorting issue doesn't work. Which mechansim do you favor to account for the sorting? Size? Swimming speed? Any of these would lead to a different sort order than what we see. Its frankly just too easy to come up with examples.

For that matter, there is the issue of dating. Sure, you can find a lot of stuff pointing out how flawed c-14 dating is. Unfortunately, that info is outdated. There are many different dating techniques now, and corroborated datings are quite convincing. These technique support the datings of the layers as being laid down over long amounts of time. Minor problems here and there notwithstanding.

"The population argument is false"

Not really....if one does the math we would have wall to wall people...even accounting for some wars and disease.

Did you count predators? Starvation? Seems like you model would call for wall to wall turtles, too.. but we're not buried in turtles now, are we?

Coal can be created in the laboratory in very short order with organic material under heat and pressure.

Great. Then that must account for all those anomalous human artifacts found it coal, that are trumpeted by creationist sites as proof that earth is young. Hmm, that would mean that at least some coal could be recently formed, while other coal is not...

[TomSmedley]

Besides Trudeau's spittle there is another comic called Boondocks in the paper. It's just trash.

An angry young artist named Aaron
Whose worldview is bleak and despairin'
Has bid us adieu
Now his venomous spew
Can pollute some Boondocks we're not sharin'

(Comment I sent to our paper when they yanked this strip!)

[kkindt]

How does evolution contradict God?
1. The God who speaks in Genesis says that "death" came to us NOT inorder for him to "evolve" our species, but as a punishment and consequence of sinful rebellion against him.
2. Devolution is evident in the creation but we have never OBSERVED evolution of the macro kind (by that I mean from one species to another) so Evolution contradicts real science.

[TomSmedley]

Mark 6.3 calls Jesus a carpenter and the son of Mary.

I view that as an insult, a reference to our Lord's ambiguous paternity. Everywhere else in the Bible, folks are identified as the sons of their fathers!

[kkindt]

Not only does he suggest that we ignore or don't know about evolutionary doctrine but he makes the claim that modern biology and chemistry etc. all DEPEND upon evolution being true. Hog wash. ALL modern medicine, chemistry can be conducted and is being conducted by Christians who do not believe in evolution and their practice and treatment of patients doesn't depend upon them believing in Evolution. And please, do not cite to me the idea that penicillin used too much in treatment causes bacteria to "evolve". That is not true - they don't become anything more than bacteria. What happens is that too much penicillin gets rid of the "weaker" bacteria so that stronger one's survive. That is not real evolution of one kind of species to another - and that is the issue at hand.

[TomSmedley]

There are directing forces involved also.

If I were a heathen, I'd respond with a hearty "May the Force be with you!" As a Christian, however who wishes you the best, I need to say, "May the personal God who created you encounter you and transform your days into radiant reflections of His creative goodness!"

Come on over into my universe! It's a much more personable, and happier place. The party is happening now -- and one of the places at the table might have your name posted!

[Verginius Rufus]

The context in Mark is the rejection of Jesus by the people of Nazareth. I would guess they don't mention Joseph's name because he was already dead by this time, and I would suppose that the ordinary people of the town had no inkling of the story of the virgin birth. They are surprised when Jesus begins to preach in the synagogue and ask where He got this learning...as if they had seen Him up till then as an ordinary citizen of the town.

[f.Christian]

Are the sewers backed up on the DU today ?

[Nataku X]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Things have been busy for me.

Anyway, your first link is the only link that is of value. Considering the disappointment of finding that the Paluxy prints are many times bigger than a normal human's prints, and the crushed trilobite fosisls.

I might also mention that tetrapods were indeed present in Devonian time, including many-toed horse-like ancestors--and following historical precendent and the lack of cites or photographs on this, I believe it is far more likely that this is an overblown feature that few would take seriously, like the Paluxy prints that are many times bigger than human footprints Questionably human in appearance, and not human in size.

The last of the three links is astonishingly ignorant in geology, and whatever points it may have made is overridden by the entire first half speaking on geology. At the very least, it misinterpreted the Mississippian being intwined with other rock layers--, layers 9 and 10 belong to Mississippian. I also should make the point that the only place where you can find an older fold on top of a newer fold is with an overturned or recumbent fold and is very easy to trace... diagrams of folds.

I scanned for cites on footprints you found--basically, with all the valid cites I found that didn't just put forth blind evidence and gave details on size, photographs, etc., they are all more or less "giant" just like the Paluxy ones. Not too convincing. Overall, I did not see a single example of a fossil--just accusations that geologists like to mix them up in different strata somehow (which, again, is not what you think... )

I know there is more in that article (like that fossilized human leg) but I own the whole YEC library, and have done thorough researching on the Intenret for these examples. In general... they fall in two categories: (1) they are poorly cited, and hence no pictures, scientific articles, etc., exist... like that 90-foot plum tree or (2) they have accompanying pictures, but these pictures are very dubious (e.g., all those giant human footprints). In other words, I have already seen that evidence, and I have already rejected it grudgingly. It's not my job here to convince you. I've read Morris's The World That Perished, Ken Ham's (?) The Lie: Evolution, and my favorite author, complete with funny witticisms and beautiful illustraions, but most inaccurate, (at least learn how to spell "Halley's Comet" right and Sirius is NOT a white dwarf...), Kent Hovind. I've not read them in years, so I've forgotten much of it, but I do own the entire library--at least, up to 2000 or so--and spent my childhood reading all of them many times over.

Finally, in none of those articles, do I find an explanation of plants surviving the Flood. Furthermore, if all humans died before the flood, as you cite... then why are there no giant human skeletons to accompany all these giant footprints? Is it an odd coincidence that only the Nephilim had their footprints fossilized but none of their bones, and vice versa for humans?

Throughout it all, you have failed to meet my original challenge... finding an example of an out-of-order fossil. The only answer I have found meeting my criteria is a whale fossil buried vertically crossing many geologic strata, but that turned out to a huge exaggeration--it was actually buried in one geologic strata, that had been tilted 45 degrees.

[KneelBeforeZod]

better headline: "Truedeau gets repsonse he wanted"