> Oh well,
>
> At the risk of falsely aligning myself with the ideas of Allen Roy, I
> must say that it is CLEARLY RIDICULOUS for ASA members to say that "YEC
> is a new and USA phenomenon". Obviously, it is ONLY(!!) after Darwin
> (and a long time after Darwin) that the YEC viewpoint has been actively
> "discredited" by the "scientific community".
You are wrong. There are a large number of people who from 1810, if not
before, who strongly criticised those who took a YEC view. From 1820 the
Christian geologists Conybeare, Buckland Sedgwick and others criticised the
"Scriptural Geologists" of the period both on theological and scientific
grounds.
>
> Come-on guys! For how long have we "known" the laws of radioactive decay
> in order to "Date Fossils"?
> It was surely not before the year 1900 and the date "1800" was based
> upon notions that had nothing to do with modern science and radioactive
> decay. This is one of the major issues with SINCERE YECs. (i.e. How
> sould the "scientific dating" begin well before the background physics
> was in place?) For how long have the QM "laws" for such decay been
> known? How old is QM? As my granddaughter says: "Get Serious!!!!!"
By 1800 astronomers calculated that light must have taken millions of years
to come from some stars to the earth. Thus the physics was in place.
From 1770 to 1800 geologists throughout europe had worked out that the earth
was considerably older than they originally thought, from among other things
the number of layers in the earth's surface e.g William Hamilton on the many
layers of Lava in Vesusvius in the the 1760s . In fact geologists began with
the assumption of a young earth and then had to modify that in the face of
the evidence.
During the 19 century there was no way of giving more than guestimates of
the earth's age but all reckoned it to be millions of years. As has been
told hundreds of times there are dozens of geological arguments why the
earth is old and precise ages only came in as radiometric age-dating was
developed.
Radiometric methods were only developed after 1908 with Boltwood and in no
way alter previous understandings of great age or the order of strata.
>
> The TRUTH is as Allen states!: It is only in VERY VERY RECENT times that
> science has arisen to dispute the claims of YEC. Does it invalidate the
> truth of ASA to be honest about some of the real FACTS! ----- To admit
> that YEC PRECEDED what ASA stands for today? ----- Must we LIE to make a
> point? (And then accuse the YEC of being "liars"?)
Well I suppose 1700 is very very recent in geological terms!
And finally Bratten's chapter sent in by Allen is a dodgy piece of
scholarship and ignores the variety of viewpoints in the early church. I
looked at all of Bratten's book on the web and was appalled at its
shoddiness and inaccuracy. A better treatment is that put out by the PCA
which is available on web.
Perhaps many of us get impatient with YECs because their arguments
scientific , historical and theological are simply bad.
YEC did start in the USA with Price and Morris but it is now wolrdwide . It
is not the traditional view of Christians and until recently nearly all
evangelicals believed in an old earth, consider those from the 19th century.
Michael Roberts
>
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