Burgy wrote:
>Dick wrote (about PJ): "Something he knows to be true he suppresses, and
>he professes in an area (science) where he has no expertise - and does it
>in the name of Christianity!"
>
>I agreed with most of the rest of your post -- but not this part. How can
>PJ "know" something to be true in an area where he has no expertise?
This article appeared today in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28782-2002Apr10.html
Here is the beginning of the article:
"Astronomers have identified a pair of collapsed stars that may be composed
entirely of an exotic new form of matter.
If confirmed, the stars would provide unexpected insights into how the
universe is put together at the most fundamental level and how it evolved
in the fractions of a second after the big-bang birth of the cosmos.
At the very least, the discoveries imply that long-standing theories
governing how suns die need a major overhaul to explain the existence of
such stars, which have been dubbed "quark stars" because they appear to be
composed completely of quarks."
I'll be honest with you, Burgy. I can't wrap my mind around a
"quark." Notwithstanding this statement from the article: "Neutrons are
made up of three quarks, two "down" quarks and one "up" quark. On Earth,
free quarks do not exist, but RXJ1856 (the name of the collapsed star)
implies the existence of an entire star made up of free quarks, called a
"strange quark star."
To an astute individual such as yourself, or George Murphy, this may all
make perfectly good sense. George probably puts "strange quarks" on his
cereal in the morning. But I confess ignorance in quantum mechanics and
astrophysics, and could not give any comment pro or con on the validity of
these conclusions drawn by astronomers.
If the subject is genetics, I do have a layman's knowledge of DNA, RNA,
nucleotides, genes, classical pseudo genes, processed pseudo genes,
retroposons, etc. That is to say I know enough to read the literature,
follow the arguments, and comprehend the conclusions. I do not know enough
to critically analyze an article on genetics in Science, or Nature, or Cell.
On the subject of the relative age of the earth in everyday terms we humans
use, such as 365-day years, then I know that answer from an overwhelming
amount of data from myriad sources and from every realm of science. Anyone
who has graduated from High School has been exposed to enough information
on that subject that they should have no doubts.
So my comment is this: How can PJ be silent on a simple matter of science,
like the age of the earth, and at the same time have such a command of the
intricacies of biology and genetics that he can contradict the experts in
those fields?
I attended a talk last week given by Francis Collins, who you may remember
is head of the human genome mapping project. Johnson may enjoy debating
Provine, but I don't think he would enjoy a debate with Collins.
>On another topic, since I correspond frequently with an olf friend, I'd be
>interested in what you wrote to the KJV-only guy. Actually, I'd be
>interested in any comments about this from list members -- particularly
>problemmatical passages of the KJV (ones which appear to conflict with
>other KJV passages).
The sacred texts have been placed in human hands, and even though great
care was exercised in copying the scrolls, nevertheless the Authorized
Version (KJV) has errors in it, as do all versions.
Gesenius observed the original text of the Old Testament has "suffered to a
much greater extent than former scholars were inclined to admit." He
categorized transcription errors as either unintentional or intentional:
The causes of unintentional corruption in the great majority of cases
are--Interchange of similar letters, which has sometimes taken place
in the early `Phoenician' writing; transposition or omissions of
single
letters, words, or even whole sentences, which are then often
added in
the margin and thence brought back into the text in the wrong place;
such omission is generally due to homoioteleuton, i.e. erroneous
repetition of letters, words, and even sentences; its opposite,
haplography; and lastly wrong division of words, since at a certain
period in the transmission of the text the words were not separated.
--Intentional changes are due to corrections for the sake of decency
or of dogma, and to the insertion of glosses, some of them very early.
The example I gave of an obvious scribal error was by comparing two almost
identical texts in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles.
2 Samuel 10:18: "And the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew the men
of seven hundred chariots of the Syrians, and forty thousand horsemen, and
smote Shobach the captain of their host, who died there."
1 Chronicles 19:18: "But the Syrians fled before Israel; and David slew of
the Syrians seven thousand men which fought in chariots, and forty thousand
footmen, and killed Shophach the captain of the host."
One translation errors in the KJV is the word "slime" in Genesis 11:3: "And
they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them
thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for
morter." Southern Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, sits on top huge
reservoirs of oil. In places the oil pools on the surface in tar
pits. This is what Noah used to pitch his boat inside and out. And the
ziggurats were built with bricks stuck together with "asphalt" (NLT),
"bitumen" (RSV), or "tar" (NIV). Same stuff.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 11 2002 - 16:43:33 EDT