From: Donald Nield (d.nield@auckland.ac.nz)
Date: Wed Oct 29 2003 - 15:51:51 EST
Robert Schneider wrote:
> Donald Nield writes:
>
> > Michael Roberts wrote:
> >
> > > Ted
> > >
> > > That is not the question I asked. I want to know of a YEC who has
> written an
> > > honest YEC book without misinterpretation
> > >
> > > Michael
> >
> > How about Sarfarti's book "Refuting Evolution 2"?
> > Don
> >
>
> I have not seen Sarfati's "Refuting Evolution 2", but if he has not revised
> and corrected his statements on pp. 97-98 of the first edition, his book is
> not a good choice. On p.97-98 of his first edition, arguing that the Bible
> teaches the earth's sphericity, Sarfati writes:
>
> "Isaiah 40:22 refers to "the circle of the earth," or in the Italian
> translation, globo. The Hebrew is Khug = sphericity or roundness. Even if
> the translation "circle" is adhered to, think about Neil Armstrong in
> space--to him the spherical earth would have appeared circular regardless of
> which direction he viewed it from."
>
> Note that Sarfati does not cite any English translation, but an unnamed
> Italian translation with the word "globo" which the reader would naturally
> understand to mean "globe." Then he claims, without any support, that the
> Hebrew word "Khug" means "sphericity." It does not, as my article on this
> topic shows. "Khug" means "a circle drawn with a compass"; it never means
> or implies "sphere" in any biblical text. Any English version Sarfati
> would have consulted would have had the translation "circle." So, he refers
> to Neil Armstrong and says that the spherical earth would have appeared
> circular to him in space. But that is a statement that is designed to
> throw the reader off track. It is what Isaiah saw, not Armstrong, that
> counts, and the prophet saw the circular horizon.
>
> Then Sarfati plays the Jesus card and claims that Luke 17:34-36 implies that
> Jesus knew that the earth is spherical. How he could draw such a conclusion
> from this passage is beyond my ken. I think this is a good example of
> eisegesis at its worst.
>
> Then Sarfati states that "nearly all Christian scholars [since the fifth
> century AD] who have ever discussed the earth's shape have assented to its
> roundness," and cites the book by historian Jeffery Russell that debunks the
> historical falsehood that medieval thinkers believed in a flat earth.
> Unfortunately, I do not have Sarfati's book at hand, so I can't give you the
> title of Russell's book. But Jeff is a personal friend, and I ran this
> matter by him. His response: the Christian writers of the patristic and
> medieval period got their concept of a spherical earth from the Greeks, not
> from the Bible. But Sarfati does not let his reader know this, and leaves
> his readers to draw the conclusion that these Christian scholars got their
> information from the Bible. Now, I did not point this out in the footnote
> to my article, but I would have to say that I can think of only two possible
> explanations for his failure to provide his readers with this fact. Either
> Sarfati did not read Russell's book or read it carefully enough, so that
> citing it would be an example of sloppy or even irresponsible scholarship;
> or he did read it, knew better and was deliberately deceiving his readers.
>
> You will find my critique of Sarfati and other YECs on this topic in my PSCF
> article, "Does the Bible Teach a Spherical Earth?" at
> http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF9-01Schneider.html. There I also
> demonstrate that two other YECs, one of them Henry Morris, Sr., are wrong
> when they state flatly that the Hebrew "Khug" means "a sphere."
>
> Donald, if you check this section in Sarfati's second editon and find that
> he has revised and corrected the passages I cite, or has removed them from
> the text, please let us know. I shall have a better opinion of him if he
> has.
>
> Bob Schneider
I have copies of Jonathan Sarfati's (I apologise for the typo in spelling
Sarfati's name in my orginal post) books Refuting Evolution (1999) and Refuting
Evolution 2 (2002). The second book is a sequel to the first, rather than a
second edition. Thus the weaknesses of the first book have not been corrected.
What is interesting is that RE2 has an appendix on "Common arguments that should
not be used", with subsections "Some arguments creationists should avoid" and
"What arguments are doubtful, hence inadvisable to use?" and explanations of why
they should not be used..
In the first list are "Darwin recanted on his deathbed", "Moon dust thickness
proves a young moon", 'The Japanese trawler Zuiyo-maru caught a dead plesiosaur
near New Zealand in 1977", "Women have one more rib than men", "Woolly mammoths
were snap-frozen during the flood catastrophe", "The 2nd law of thermodynamics
began at the Fall", "Archaeopteryx was a fraud", "Dubois renounced Java man as a
'missing link' and claimed it was just a giant gibbon", "The phrase 'science
falsely so-called' in 1 Timothy 6:20 (KJV) refers to evolution", "If we were
evolved from apes why are there still apes today?", "NASA computers, in
calculating the positions of planets, found a missing day and 40 minutes,
proving 'Joshua's long day' of Joshua 10 and Hezekiah's sundial movement of 2
Kings 20."
The second list reads: Canopy theory, "There was no rain before the Flood",
"Natural selection as tautology", "The speed of light has decreased over time",
'There are no transitional forms", "Gold chains have been found in coal", "Plate
tectonics is fallacious', "Creationists believe in microevolution but not
macroevolution", "The gospel is in the stars".
Sarfati prefaces the lists by saying that "Christians should not become alarmed
when they find out creationist researchers have overturned their favorite
arguments. Rather, they should refocus on the main issue, the authority of the
Word of God, the 66 books of the Bible, not the theories of fallible humans
whether creationist or evolutionist. ... The authority of the Bible is the main
emphasis of Answers in Genesis. We don't try to 'prove' the Bible with science;
rather, we accept the Bible's propositions as true without proof, i.e. as axioms
or presuppositions."
RE2 is a response to two things:(1) the PBS-TV series Evolution (2001), (2) the
Scientific American cover story by John Rennie, "15 Answers to Creationist
Nonsense" (2002). A lot of the arguments in the book are not explictly for YEC.
For example, there is a chapter on Irreducible Complexity.
I suggest that it is important to distinguish recent AiG literature from other
YEC stuff.
I would like to think that Sarfati's sojourn in NZ broadened his view -- even if
only marginally ! :-)
Don
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