Re: Flood Model [was Early Cambrian explosion]

Steven H. Schimmrich (sschimmr@ursa.calvin.edu)
Tue, 09 Feb 1999 17:36:45 -0500

At 04:10 PM 2/9/99 -0800, Art Chadwick wrote:
>
> At 04:56 PM 2/9/99 -0500, Steve wrote:
>
>> I stand by my position that any reasonable person can see that you
>> appear dishonest when you knowingly don't mention anything critical of
>> your idea and then turn around and tell people that THEY have to do the
>> literature search and look for any critical papers themselves!
>
> I have dealt with your counterarguments for several years on this
> listserve. In all of that time I have never seen you give a single piece
> of contrary evidence to whatever point you were trying to make. Correct me
> if I am wrong. Of course, you may not know any, but if that is the case,
> you have not done your homework.

Two comments:

- I don't propose new ideas on this listserve, only react to posts which I
think are in error or misrepresent mainstream geology.

- I'm not the one making extraordinary claims which seek to overturn all of
modern geology (all of modern science actually). Extraordinary claims
require a very rigorous and critical examination of the evidence.

>> Think twice about working like that Art, it will result in people
>> not believing your work without extensive fact checking. Science operates
>> on trust and you don't want a reputation as someone who isn't trustworthy.
>> It's also not a good Christian witness to non-believing geologists.
>
> I could not agree more. Complete honesty demands multiple working
> hypotheses be used in all research. However, I know of no scientists who
> do so sucessfully, because it is too much work. That is a tragedy for
> which we all pay, but the enterprise still succeeds because the property of
> the community amounts to multiple working hypotheses, so long as the
> community is open to all ideas. However I do not labor under the illusion
> that any scientist has tested every conceivable idea before publishing a
> paper. Do you?

Of course not. But lets not cloud the issue. What we're talking about, in
my opinion, are ideas that are rooted in a particular religious belief system,
not ideas which suggest themselves by a fair reading of the observational data.

- Steve.

--   Steven H. Schimmrich, Assistant Professor of Geology   Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies   Calvin College, 3201 Burton Street SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546   sschimmr@calvin.edu (office), schimmri@earthlink.net (home)   616-957-7053 (voice mail), 616-957-6501 (fax)    http://home.earthlink.net/~schimmrich/