> It can't. Make your choice now. Believe the Bible or believe Scientific
> American.
>
Ouch. Dan seems to be saying that the data was correctly interpreted,
but is nevertheless incorrect. Although I've argued that since the wine
Jesus created in Cana (John 2) was created with the appearance of age,
and therefore the history of the wine could not be determined by
scientific analysis of the wine, I still do not feel comfortable with
the either/or choice offered here by Dan.
At least one other possibility is that the *assumptions* used to
interpret the data were incorrect. On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 15:20:24 -0500,
Steven Schimmrich (Subject: Re: Walter Brown Jr. Video) posted a similar
objection to the YEC view of the origin of the Coconino Sandstone as
being a submarine deposit:
"Art and others have failed, however, to convince anyone else (except
those
who view such reinterpretations as support for a belief in a global
flood).
I still contend that the Coconino is terrestrial, not submarine, and the
trees
at Yellowstone were not floated to the bottom of a lake. Virtually all
geologists
agree with me."
I followed Steve's post with 5 observations supporting (or at least not
refuting) a submarine origin for the Coconino. When Steve has had time
to digest the info, probably including finding the original citations
and checking for rebuttals in the subsequent articles pulished in the
same journals, he will defend his position. The point I am making is
that, even in my YEC-sympathetic mind, in geology we are not dealing
with the inscrutable results of a miraculous act(s), but hard data which
is subject to being misinterpreted.
Art Chadwick, who has spent much of his life re-examining primary data,
posted to the Evolution Reflector (23 Jan 1998 21:52:28 -0800; Subject:
Re: uniformitarianism) in his dialogue with Glenn Morton (an OEC):
I would like to challenge you to do some really creative thinking and
see
if you can come up with an explanation consonant with a shoret
chronology.
I'll bet you could if you put your creative mind to it. That is what I
mean by checking things out. And don't just tell me it's impossible.
Figure out a way to make it happen. That's what it has been like in
every
problem we have tackled. It looked impossible until we actually had put
in
a few years work on it. But they always end up revealing something
remarkable about the assumptions prevalent in geology today.
(Incidentally
we will be presenting our Tapeats paper at the Int'l Sed. Congress in
Spain
in April!)
In the same post of Steve's from above, he challenges YEC's to get into
the fray: "And almost everyone else disagrees with you. Perhaps
young-earth creationist
should initiate rigorous field research projects, publishing their
results in
peer-reviewed scientific journals, which present compelling evidence
that the
fossils at Joggins were deposited allochthonously. Why would geologists
not
accept this? There's no conspiracy here. There's no reason whatsoever
for most
geologists to really care one way or the other because you're not
talking about
any sort of major paradigm shift. Geologists believe the fossils at
Joggins are
in situ because that's what the evidence seems to indicate and those
who've argued
against this (Rupke) haven't presented compelling-enough
counterarguments. That's
how science works."
I disagree with much of the preceding paragraph, but I wholeheartedly
agree that: "Perhaps young-earth creationist should initiate rigorous
field research projects, publishing their results in peer-reviewed
scientific journals, which present compelling evidence... That's how
science works." This is a sharp divergence from the approach advocated
by our friend Dan, and one to which I am personally committed.
Bill