Glenn wrote
>I was doing some research this morning and ran into a couple of other
>factually wrong things passed off to an unsuspecting Christian laity as fact.
>
>David Wilcox,
>"After the Qafzeh people, there is no further evidence of AMH in
>Europe or Asia until about 50,000 years ago in the Levant and in
>Australia."~David L. Wilcox, "Adam, Where Are You? Changing
>Paradigms in Paleoanthropology," Perspectives on Science and
>Christian Faith , 48:2( June 1996), p. 93
>
>Anatomically modern man is found At Liujing, China at 68,000 years ago. But
>he writes for a Christian journal and couldn't be wrong.
>
Why not just write (as you do below[snipped]) "Secondly, the earliest
modern men are dated at 120,000 years and are found in Africa at Klasies
River Mouth Cave."
Am I missing something? Perhaps a subtle difference in terminology?
>ANOTHER EXAMPLE
>
>"Let's compare this chronology with the present archaeological
>and anthropological data. Some time before about 35,000 years
>ago, humans and civilization sprang up in the Mesopotamian flood
>plain, centered in Babel. Roughly 33,000 years ago, humans began
>to spread out over Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe. About
>12,000 years ago, large numbers of people began to settle in
>North and South America. About 11,000 years ago, migration from
>Siberia to the Americas ceased.
>"My guess is that Peleg lived about 11,000 years ago. This
>scenario and its dates remain tentative, of course."~Hugh Ross,
>"The Broken Tie That Binds," Facts & Faith, 10:3, Third Quarter
>1996, p. 6
>
>There was no civilization in the sense that Ross means, 33,000 years ago.
>Farming did not arise until around 9,000 years ago and the earliest evidence
>is from the Turkish Highlands not the mesopotamian river valley. (see Jean
>Guilaine, "The First Farmers of the Old World," in Jean
>Guilaine, editor, Prehistory: The World of Early Man, (New York: Facts on
>File,1986), p. 81)
Ross quotes a date for the beginning of farming that is much later than it
would have to be under your flood scenario, and you go to the literature
and pull out a figure that is later than his to refute him. I understand
you want to show he's not reading the literature -- at least not carefully
-- but this makes it look as though you're abandoning your claims.
...
>ANOTHER EXAMPLE
>
>"Evolutionists insist that the duck-billed platypus is an
>evolutionary link between mammals and birds."~Scott M. Huse, The
>Collapse of Evolution, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983), p.
>109.
>
>I have never seen this in print and Huse give no reference for this absurd
>statement. Don't say this guy is out of the mainstream of christian thought.
>Look at who published his book! And James Kennedy is apparently passing his
>book out like candy.
This is one of the points we come around to quite frequently in our
discussions. And we ought to. It causes great pain to me as a Christian
to know that reputable Christian publishers are letting these kinds of
inaccuracies appear in print under their names.
>
>What kind of credibility does this stuff give Christians among the atheists
>and members of other religions? In my opinion mistakes like these show the
>world that Christian scholarship is sloppy and haphazard. And when someone
>says "Hey, that isn't so" we ignore it and choose to say that such things
>distract from the real issue. And when we criticize the evolutionists, we
>should take the log out of our own eye.
>
The question we ought to be asking is how can we, not as TE's, EC's, PC's
or whatever, but as Christians who believe that all truth is God's truth,
persuade Christian publishers to check the facts in their books more
carefully?
Bill Hamilton
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William E. Hamilton, Jr, Ph.D. | Staff Research Engineer
Chassis and Vehicle Systems | General Motors R&D Center | Warren, MI
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