My wife's boss (a biologist) got a book in her inbox a couple of days ago put out by the North Dakota Bible Society - the grandiosely titled Evolution Cruncher. Apparently someone mailed these to all the biology faculty at the university of Maryland. I had a brief look through last night. I've been exposed to creationist literature before, so I sort of knew what to expect. I was nonetheless surprised by how blatantly dishonest this book is. I guess it's been a while since I read anything by young earth creationists, so my memory had faded somewhat. Take a look at the site. It's scary that these guys are a significant political constituency in some parts of the country.

I should clarify that I'm not hostile to all creationists - there are sincere and honest people who are creationists. I am, however, extremely hostile to blatant manipulative liars, which the North Dakota Bible Society apparently are.

Amen, Brother!!

I read for about ten seconds, scanned for about another 50, and I think my head is going to explode.

I was not aware that the dinosaurs were wiped out by Noah's Flood.

I am going to read the early chapters of my Bible to see what it says about all the dinosaurs and if it explains why Noah didn't put any on the Ark.

http://evolution-facts.org/c04.htm

"In 5 to 10 billion years, 3 or 4/10,000ths of an inch per year would produce 20-60 miles [32-97 km] of dust. In view of this, our men at NASA were afraid to send men to the moon. Landing there, they would be buried in dust and quickly suffocate! So NASA first sent an unmanned lander to its surface, which made the surprising discovery that there was hardly any dust on the moon! In spite of that discovery, Neil Armstrong was decidedly worried about this dust problem as his March 1970 flight in Apollo 11 neared. He feared his lunar lander would sink deeply into it and he and Edwin Aldrin would perish. But because the moon is young, they had no problem."

Did Apollo 11 land on the moon in March 1970?

Did Apollo 11 land on the moon in March 1970?

Yes, in the same bizarro universe in which the moon is young. In this one, of course, it happened in July, 1969.

"I am going to read the early chapters of my Bible to see what it says about all the dinosaurs and if it explains why Noah didn't put any on the Ark."

Easy answer. They missed the boat. Just like the unicorn.

God said "go get two of everything" but, Noah being a man, and since the Fall fallible, missed nabbing the dinosaurs.

That or it was planned. If Noah had stuffed two of every dinosaur on the ark, there wouldn't have been room for the mammals. Ah hah! It's a conspiracy by mammalits . . .

Sorry, couldn't resist.

The thing I love about creationists is that theri favorite argument is "what is the chances of this happening by itself (was they wave heir arms about").

Pretty high says I, since were are here. Actually it makes no difference. It is a meaningless question.

The miss the point that if things turned out a bit different (could 've) there would be some saurian guy asking the same question.

I went cross-eyed looking at some of the so-called astronomy information (http://evolution-facts.org/c04.htm). I wouldn’t say it was dishonest so much as incredibly ignorant. That is, many of the items are so obviously wrong to anyone with a bit of knowledge of the subject, if I were trying to fool people I’d pick something else.

It isn’t worth doing a point by point list, but a few examples - like (2) and (3) Big stars can’t be billions of years old. Duh. Never looked at all those pretty pictures of star formation, did he? Or (8) that all comets should self destruct in a few thousand years due to solar heating – apparently he has no clue to the true size of the solar system, nor has he ever heard of the Oort cloud or the Kuiper belt. Or in (16) that recent creation would explain Io’s volcanoes. So would tidal heating. There are many other problems, but come on . . .

Incidentally, I’m always amazed at people who take the ark story literally. Unlike most of the Bible, it is quite specific about many of the physical events. It makes perfect sense as the type of story you might expect from an ancient agrarian society – flooding was part of life in most places, and the idea of saving farm animals on a raft would be obvious. But it can’t work without a long list of miracles not mentioned in the story. The ark would be redundant at best.

What gets me about the religious fanatic element is there stance on some social controversies, e.g., rights for gays.

They love saying things like their position is supported by 2000 years of religious belief and "people couldn't be wrong for 2000 years."

The time from Aristotle to Galileo was about 2000 years. It's hard (for me, at least) to say what Aristotle's natural philosophies have to do with Christianity.

Well, Galileo finally put Aristotle's theory of gravity to a scientific test. He discovered Aristotle was wrong. The Roman Catholic Church's response? They put Galileo on trial for heresy and threatened him with death.

Religion doesn't come off looking too good in this case, to put it mildly. And Christianity can, with some justice, claim to be one of the world's better religions.

I have to agree that creationists that try to make an argument without the least understanding of physics look pretty stupid (and that's being kind.)

I often come across information that challenges my belief in God, I don't know how an honest person couldn't.

SDB made an argument that was quite challenging that I respond to here.

Life is a process... and most people are not paying attention.

Okay well Ken how do explain differences in RNA DNA. You don't inherit any RNA DNA information from you father, it come straight from your mother and mutation rates are much lower. Beyond that I believe geneticists have worked out pretty well the rate of mutation in DNA structures and we are talking rates that take very long periods of time to produce statistically significant changes. Periods that are longer than the few scant several 100,000 years we've exhisted as modern homo sapiens.

I remember getting talked into going to a church camp on year by a friend of mine when I was 11. I remember they were explaining the whole story of genesis to me and I of course asked, "Where's the part about the dinosaurs?" *Blank Stares*

I was at later time talked into again by the same friend to attend a seminar by a "Scientist" who would explain exactly the significant details of the bible that applied to the sciences that we know today. He said that to put it simply God is eternal and to God 1 day is 500,000,000 years and 500,000,000 years is 1 day. Therefore when God created the heaven and the Earth in the Morning, by the evening the Dinosaurs had run around and died off before the next day when he created man or some such nonsense. Sounds like God might have the same problem I do on Friday around 3 o'clock, it seems like 500,000,000 years before 5 o'clock arrives.

Oh and if we were created, then I wish God woulda given necks that would be cut off so easily.

I've always wondered why they never try this explanation: If God is omnipotent, time shouldn't mean anything to him. So he just created all the time at the same time. Like he was standing outside of time, and went something like this; okay, now if I put an empty planet to that end, then one type of animals and plants here, now what would look like a logical progress in this, hmmm...;).

Hefty, I see your misunderstanding... I'm not trying to explain anything, what I'm trying to do is to understand things as they really are.

Keeping in mind that the bible is not a science textbook and does contain poetry of sorts in many places, I find it significant that it talks about somethings that are simple to understand today, but our ancestors would have had little chance of understanding correctly.

For instance it says that the Earth is round and hangs upon nothing. It could be an accident, but then it could also mean that the author (as opposed to the writer) understood the true nature of our planet.

Over a thousand years before Columnbus the Greeks had made a fairly accurate measure of the circumference of the Earth. Perhaps this knowledge did exist earlier and was incorporated in the text.

Who knows all the answers? I agree that most people don't have enough knowledge to defend their faith. I completely agree that many look pretty stupid trying to do so. But I also know that many of the people ridiculing faith are stopping well short of truth themselves.

Don't riducule... think, learn, understand, gain wisdom. Ok, well if you must ridicule... try to be funny, we appreciate the effort ;)

Perhaps, but Ken, from your site it sounds as if you DO take the story of a very recent world flood and ark literally. Is this true?

I believe there may have been a great flood but I also believe what the ancients called the world represented a much, much smaller slice of the pie than what we call the world today.

In other words, a regionalized event.

VR, Mike... I decided to respond here.

I am both a Christian and an engineer. I happen to see the incredible elegance in the universe and believe that God could have 'created' it in such a way that it continues to grow and 'evolve'.

I for one think it is silly that God would create a universe only a few thousand years ago and bother to 'create' fossils, or put stars light years away.

And if there is a God that can create the universe, why does He have to do it in such simplistic manner? We impose our limited understanding on the universe and try to rationalize it to our satisfaction. Whether or not people understood what it was, atoms have existed since the beginning. The question that people must answer for themselves is whether there is a creator or just a random creation?

My two cents,
Mike

The moon dust one has been "fisked" almost as many times as the horry old "300 year lava flow dated at 300,000 years.

Sadly bad science is like a really persistent weed.

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