Nelson's writing
John W. Burgeson (johnburgeson@juno.com)
Sun, 15 Aug 1999 10:42:43 -0600
Bill Hamiliton wrote recently: (hi Bill):
---------------------------
I could consider myself a living refutation of their (Nelson's) above
statement. I
grew up in an environment where evolution was accepted, as was
Christianity. I wouldn't say I was a Christian, but that was just
because
I had not yet been confronted with the need to acknowledge that Jesus
Christ is my Lord and Savior who died for my sins. After I made that
acknowledgment and started to attend a conservative church I was amazed
to
find that evangelicals ("still, in 1972, yet!") didn't accept evolution.
Being committed to evenhandedness in evaluating people's claims --
especially the claims of my new Christian colleagues -- I studied the
creationist literature and accepted much of it for about the next 20
years.
(as an engineer, I guess I'm allowed to know just enough about science
to
be dangerous) However, I kept finding inconsistent arguments and -- in at
least one case (Setterfield) -- terrible misuse of statistical inference,
and that bothered me. I started looking at talk.origins in 1991 and --
again because I believe in evaluating people's claims as evenhandedly as
possible -- read some of the geology references suggested by talk.origins
members. Again I found reasoning that I as an engineer understood from
the
conventional scientific community, and distortions, misunderstandings,
tortured reinterpretations of evidence and -- in some cases -- downright
deception from the creationists....
----------------
Point well taken, Bill. I will agree that Nelson and Reynold's used
overkill in their statement -- as written it covers ALL TEs. I suspect
they were thinking more of Dawkins and Gould than Bill Hamilton! < G >
If their statement had been written "some persons," I would have no
problem with it and, I suspect, neither would you.
Bill continues:
---------------------------
Two points of recent creationism that are hard to refute are that God is
certainly capable of reordering nature, and that nature _can_ be
deceptive.
Those two points will keep some people working at the recent creationist
program until the Lord returns. And they should, because they may still
be
proven correct in the end.
-------------------------
I really doubt this. But not, I guess, to a 100% certainty.
Bill continues:
-------------------------
But to teach that in 1999 we should interpret
the data the way they do because at some future date (maybe generations
from now, maybe never) they will be proven correct is asking too much.
God
doesn't give us shortcuts in many of the activities that make up our
lives.
By revealing Himself to us He has done something that is simply
impossible
for humans. But just because He did for us a thing that is totally
impossible doesn't mean that He will give us shortcuts for the work He
commissions us to do.
---------------------------
Agreed.
Burgy
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