RE: Unwillingness to listen

From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Mon Jan 08 2001 - 17:41:23 EST

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    Allen, why is it not possible that I was faced with the false
    interpretations of the religous philosophy of YECism? Have you ever
    considered that YEC acts like a cult, not wanting their members to read
    dissenting opinions--like scientific journals?

    glenn

    see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
    for lots of creation/evolution information
    anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
    personal stories of struggle

      -----Original Message-----
      From: Allen Roy [mailto:allenroy@peoplepc.com]
      Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 6:12 PM
      To: Glenn Morton
      Subject: Re: Unwillingness to listen

        Glenn Morton wrote:
        "Having jumped back onto the list today, I am jumping into the middle of
    this, but that won't stop me. As a former young-earth creationist of some
    infamy, I can tell you why I didn't listen. I placed my interpretation of
    the Bible as the utmost metaphysical truth. By doing that, all contradictory
    data simply had to be wrong. Thus when faced with clear evidence and logic
    that my viewpoint was wrong, I did the only reasonable thing--I ignored the
    data or assumed that there was some way to discount and ignore it. There was
    also an emotional reason not to listen to contradictory arguments. They
    challenged my world view and made me extremely uncomfortable. Since I could
    not doubt my ultimate metaphysical truth--the YEC paradigm without thinking
    I would become an atheist which I didn't want to do--I would flee from the
    truth."

        No, you were not faced with clear evidence, you were faced with
    interpretations of data from within the religious philosophy of Naturalism.
    You had not been educated in the pervasiveness of the underlying assumptions
    within which all standard geologic interpretations are being done. You had
    not been shown the religious nature of Naturalism and its corollaries of
    Abiogenesis and Actualism (i.e. non-uniform Uniformitarianism) within which
    geologic science usually functions. You had been taught the falsehood that
    Science stands alone without philosophical assumptions.

        In geology, interpretation of sedimentary rock according to the
    actualistic assumption that there are ONLY 3 allowable depositional
    environments -- marine, non-marine and transitional -- automatically
    precludes interpretation within a global flood catastrophe environment.
    Thus all those "facts" of geology demand that there could not be a global
    flood catastrophe.

        Creationists START with the assumptions that God's natural laws are not
    violated and that there was a global catastrophic event as told us by God.
    Within these assumptions, Creationary geological science studies and
    interprets nature's facts.

        Yes, the Bible is the utmost metaphysical truth because we know we can
    trust the God of the Bible to tell us the truth. Naturalism is a
    metaphysical belief based on blind faith in the rationality of human
    imagination. Abiogensis and Actualism must be true because according to
    Naturalism, nature -- matter, energy, etc. -- is all there is. There is no
    God. There is no Creator. There is no one but us to tell us about the
    past.

        We have the choice to believe God and the Bible and interpret nature
    within it's assumptions, or we can choose to believe in Naturalism and
    interpret nature within it's assumptions. You were not fleeing from the
    "Truth," you were fleeing from false religious teachings.



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