From: Walter Hicks (wallyshoes@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat Oct 04 2003 - 13:43:17 EDT
Michael Roberts wrote:
>
>
> Suggestion of apparent age of the earth are abhorrent as if God did that
> then he is a liar and unworthy of worship. Period.
Thinking about what God may or may not do is always presumptuous. However, being
made in His image, maybe we can learn from those things which we ourselves do.
Recently, we all received a post from the inventor of a sophisticated AI
program. The AI are inserted into a program which has many separately generated
parts. Beyond any doubt, the programmer did not start with a blank sheet of
paper and generate the program one step at a time. He starts with certain
building blocks and inserts the AI into them. It is not "apparent age" ---- it
is a real program whichever way he does it.
It is not for you or I to tell God how He has to do things. Given a non zero
probability that God really did it that way, do you really feel comfortable
calling Him a liar and unworthy of worship?
Scary.
>
>
> I wonder about naive YECs except for young children and the semi-literate.
> The average person in a US or UK church who adopts YEC knows that it is
> opposed by the vast proportion of scientists and also by many evangelical
> scientists. Surely if they have graduated from high school they have the
> ability to look into the whole issue and discern truth from falsehood. After
> all they also have to decide for themselves whether Jesus is Lord, Saviour
> and divine and whether or not the Virgin Birth and Empty Tomb are true and
> the atoning death. They will know that many deny these doctrines. Are they
> simply being led by the nose as some seem to be arguing for when they say we
> should soft-pedal with them. They are responsible for swallowing false
> teaching.
To truly understand an occurrence like that, one has to _try_ to understand it
-- and not just shrug at it. I know some that are so incline and think that it
can be summed up in one word: "evolution". The common perception of the theory
of evolution is that it starts with "random mutation" as the source of change.
To accept that is to reject God, so instead they reject conventional science.
Why is that so mysterious? What we need is a strategy to fight it. Until the
word "random" gets removed from the popular notion of evolution, the problem
will persist.
In my dissertation, I derived all of the properties of a complex fusion plasma
starting from a "random" distribution of particles and using nothing but the
electromagnetic laws and complex variable theory. The point is that the laws
determine what happens and any randomness is irrelevant. If we truly understood
God's laws, I am certain that it would be a similar story. We could at least
postulate this to be true while searching for the mechanism.
I understand that in England, YEC is growing. If so, then thanks are probably
owed to Dawkins.
Walt
-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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