From: Walter Hicks (wallyshoes@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Oct 08 2003 - 14:45:42 EDT
Ted Davis wrote:
> I really have little to offer on this age of the earth conversation, it's so
> settled in my mind that it would be almost impossible for me to consider a
> "young" earth position--probably as difficult as it would be for me to
> consider a geocentric position. However, I think it interesting and
> instructive to quote from Bernard Ramm's The Christian View of Science and
> Scripture (1954, citing my copy of the 1962 printing).
>
> The context is Ramm's discussion of geology, the immediate context his
> discussion of George McCready Price's "flood geology" view--which had been
> endorsed more or less by several evangelical scientists and biblical
> scholars in the mid-twentieth century. Price had been willing to accept at
> least the possibility of an old universe and solar system, but not old forms
> of life. The view he supported is now essentially that of "scientific
> creationism," namely that living things were created separately on six
> literal days just a few thousand years ago; and that the biblical flood had
> been responsible for producing all or nearly all fossiliferous rock.
>
> I think what Ramm said then, is still applicable (pp. 181-2):
> "What geologists have spread out over three billion years all took place
> during a flood of little more than a year's duration. Somebody is very
> sadly mistaken if the range of possibilities is from one year to three
> billion years. [paragraph] The so-called strength of Price's work is his
> effort to poke holes into the uniformitarian geology of Lyell as it is
> taught in standard books on geology. We must be careful of a logical
> fallacy at this point. To show the logical fallacies of another theory does
> not automatically prove ours to be right. ... Suppose that 80 per cent of
> the geologic record makes clear sense when interpreted from the Lyellian
> point of view, and that 20 per cent remains a problem for uniformitarian
> geology. We have our choice of taking the 80 per cent as established and
> going to work on the 20 per cent; or, of taking the 20 per cent as
> normative, and trying to dissolve the 80 per cent. Price adopts the latter
> procedure. The author does not know what the actual percentages are, but he
> is sure that he is generous to Price in the choice of the above percentages.
> If by analogy Price's principle were followed *in other sciences* it is
> obvious that chaos would resut. ... Price is popular for one reason
> alone--that he has stridden forth like David to meet the Goliath of modern
> uniformitarian geology and that even though the giant has not fallen Price
> has been slinging his smooth stones for more than forty years."
>
> ted
I think that a greater concern for a world wide flood is not as much the fossil
record as is the living record in Australia. There are animals there that are
not found anywhere else in the world. How can this be explained by a universal
flood around 5000 years ago? Did the kangaroos hop & swim from Ararat to
Australia. Also there are marsupial fossils in Australia and nowhere else. What
sort of coherent story can be generated for all of this?
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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