Re: textbooks

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Sat, 06 Dec 1997 12:14:43 -0600

At 02:35 AM 11/29/97 -0800, Robert L. Miller wrote:

>I did not say most students were processed by science courses. I said many
>students are processed by the university and become agnostic or atheist, and
>much of the blame for that falls onto (whether rightly or wrongly) science
>courses. There are many who agree with me on this point but I am sorry to say I
>can not give you some references.

I disagree strongly with your placement of blame. I feel that it is the
responsibility of the Christian community to provide an apologetic which can
withstand the onslaught of data that students are going to face in biology
and geology classes. It is not the responsibility of those who disagree with
Christianity to cease from advocating their views.

What happens in those classes is that the student finds that what he was
taubht about science and the facts is not what the facts actually are. My
oft cited simple example of this is the claim by creationists that the
entire geologic column does not exist anywhere on earth. This is patently
absurd and false. Such claims are:

"There is no one place on the earth's surface where a complete
correlation along the lines of the usual geological charts can be
shown. Such a column would require about a thousand miles of
geological strata, whereas in fact nowhere can more than a few
thousand feet be examined. The 'geological column' is built up on
paper by selecting suitable aspects from widely separated areas of
the earth's surface."~Clifford Wilson, In the Beginning God...",
(Balston Spa, New York: Word of Truth Productions, 1975), p. 20

and

"Now the geologic column is an idea, not an actual series of rock
layers. Nowhere do we find the complete sequence. Even the walls
of the Grand Canyon included only five of the twelve major systems
(one, five, six and seven, with small portions here and there of
the fourth system, the Devonian."~Henry M. Morris and Gary E.
Parker, What is Creation Science?, (El Cajon: Master Books, 1987),
p. 163

So what happens when a geology professor brings in the well log from the
W.H. Hunt trust Estate, Larson No 1 oil well from McKenzie County, North
Dakota which drills through rocks of every single geologic period? What
happens when the professor then informs the students that the entire
geologic column exists in 23 basin around the world? The are:
Lat/Longitude
1. The Ghadames Basin in Libya 30N 12E
2. The Beni Mellal Basin in Morrocco 33N 6W
3. The Tunisian Basin in Tunisia 35N 10E
4. The Oman Interior Basin in Oman 20N 57E
5. The Western Desert Basin in Egypt 28N 27E
6. The Adana Basin in Turkey 35N 36E
7. The Iskenderun Basin in Turkey 35N 35E
8. The Moesian Platform in Bulgaria 44N 28E
9. The Carpathian Basin in Poland 48N 23E
10. The Baltic Basin in the USSR 58N 20E
11. The Yeniseiy-Khatanga Basin in the USSR 73N 100E
12. The Farah Basin in Afghanistan 33N 65E
13. The Helmand Basin in Afghanistan 34N 67E
14. The Yazd-Kerman-Tabas Basin in Iran 33N 55E
15. The Manhai-Subei Basin in China 34N 123E
16. The Jiuxi Basin China 45N 83E
17. The Tung t'in - Yuan Shui Basin China 32N 114E
18. The Tarim Basin China 39N 115E
19. The Szechwan Basin China 29N 105E
20. The Yukon-Porcupine Province Alaska 66N 143W
21. The Williston Basin in North Dakota 48N 105W
22. The Tampico Embayment Mexico 22N 98W
23. The Bogata Basin Colombia 4N 73W

It is not the professors fault for telling the students the actual facts.
It is the fault of many christian apologists and preachers who don't tell
the students the facts and thus make the student vulnerable to the advocates
of atheism who point out this and many more discrepancies between what many
Christian apologists and preachers teach and what actually is.

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm