Hi Bob, you wrote:
>Dick,
>
>I think you are being naive if you think Christians in science don't pick and
>choose what fits and what doesn't fit. But it's more subtle than that. I
>believe we all tend to hold higher scientific standards for our competition
>than we do for our colleagues with whom we agree. We criticize the
>opposition's research more avidly than we do that of our colleagues. I don't
>know about you, but when I read SCIENCE and NATURE, I look through the table
>of contents to see if there are articles that will convey something positive
>about areas that I am interested in, and ignore others that might contain
>information that is dissonant.
Others on this list can speak for themselves. All I can say is that when I
hit on a method of apology in 1986 that looked good, and it was published
in The Washington Post, it was a painful experience to discover I had made
a major mistake. At that time I believed that Adam was a late entry into
the human race, but all of mankind were destroyed in the flood, leaving
Noah and his sons to restart the human race.
Sounded good, but it didn't hold up when I tried to substantiate
that. Sure it is hard to change your mind. Took a year and a half to come
to grips with that. But the apologetic technique I hold to now, and
advocate on this list, runs with the data not counter to it.
No, I don't know exactly how Noah could have started his voyage in
Shuruppak and land in the foothills of Armenia (Ararat). From the
standpoint of sheer physics, it seems more likely the boat grounded in a
shallow estuary in the Gulf. (See Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic by
Robert Best - http://www.noahs-ark-flood.com ). But Best agrees that the
flood was local to southern Mesopotamia, was around 2900 BC, that Noah was
king of Shuruppak, and there were flood survivors. All points I made in my
book published three years earlier.
My point that Adam's entrance was in the stream of humanity, not at the
apex, was echoed in Held and Ruest's article. "Genesis Reconsidered"
published in PSCF in 1999. No one was saying that when I started getting a
little press. But where would I be had I drawn the line in 1986? I would
be no better today than the YECs: wrong on science, wrong on history, and
even wrong on Scripture!
We have a guideline, "For the word of the Lord is right and all his works
are done in truth" (Psa. 33:4). That has worked for me.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
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