ICR's ACTS AND FACTS

The material below are notes on the March 2004 edition of ACTS AND FACTS.

Note the specific predictions and claims being made.

It makes me wish I had kept all those ACTS AND FACTS I was collecting 20
years ago.

Burgy

ICR Mar 2004

Notes on ACTS & FACTS -- from ICR, March 2004

1. Very unhappy about the book banning at the Grand Canyon Park Service
bookstore.
        I am in sympathy. It gave them lots of ammunition.
        It was in violation of Mill's ON LIBERTY. It was a silly thing to do.
        Seven professional scientific societies came out against it.
        I assume ASA was not one of these.
        NCSE was one. names of the others were not mentioned. '
        The author, Tom Vail, will be running rafting trips there in May.
Imagine the discussions.
        
2. ICR continues with multitudes of public meetings promoting the YEC
view. A number of speakers now go forth under the ICR banner -- into
every state of the union. I do note that they tend to appear in the
smaller towns and seem to shy away (not always) from the large cities.

3. There is a report on accelerated decay of U-238 by Eugene Chaffin.
        Part of the R.A.T.E. project
        The decay half-life of U-238 varies widely depending on "well depth."
        A small change in well depth changes it by "more than an order of
magnitude."
        See complete paper at www.icr.org/research
        Donations to R.A.T.E. are now above and beyond expectations
         A major report/announcement will be made in San Diego on 11-5-2005

4. ICR makes the flat prediction that "we will never receive messages or
entertain intergalactic (sic) visitors from deep space simply because
there are no such civilizations out there." As far as the Bible is
concerned, they assert, Ps 115:16 and Acts 17:20 teach without question
that the earth is uniquely the abode of humanity, and all research has
shown that when it comes to organic life outside of earth -- there is
none.

5. Henry Morris has written a new book, MIRACLES, which has a forward
written by David Jeremiah and a favorable blurb from John MacArthur.

6." Every staff member of ICR is absolutely committed to the words of God
as absolute truth." I take that to mean inerrancy, although they don’t
use the word.

7. In Newsweek, 12-8-2003, Mary of Magda was said to be "actually Jesus'
intimate female partner." At least that's what ICR says that Newsweek
says. They call that a "blatant contradiction to God's Word." I find no
mention of it, one way or the other, in scripture. In what way is it a
contradiction? And did Newsweek “say” it, or simply report that someone
said it? I suspect the latter.

I once published a review of an ICR book in PERSPECTIVES that, in trying
to be neutral, had a sentence or two of approval. For years the ICR
promotional material for that book included my line in the book’s blurb,
citing it as “as coming from PERSPECTIVES.” Eventually, however, they
pulled it.

8. Bill Johnson has an article (IMPACT # 369) showing that American
Indian legends are evidence of the historicity of Genesis. Usual stuff.
Persuasive to the faithful, I suppose.

9. Henry Morris has an article attacking the string theories of Dr.
Leonard Susskind of Stanford University. Henry claims that the
implications of the Bible are that our universe extends spatially without
end in all three of its dimensions and eternally forward in time.

10. Finally, John Morris trots out the same old tired arguments that
attack the idea that "evolution is as well proved as gravity." In doing
this, his claim includes "... there is another, more scientifically
robust way to understand history, i.e. that each basic type of life
appeared abruptly, without having descended from some other type, and
remained substantially the same ... until either becoming extinct or
surviving into the present."

The claim of "scientifically robust" is particularly interesting.
Whatever else the YEC claims may be, "robustness" seems to not be one of
them.I'm not sure that even "philosophicaly robust" would be appropriate,
although I might apply that term to Gosse's theory.

JW Burgeson, 3-3-2004

www.burgy.50megs.com/h4h.htm (A Habitat for Humanity story)

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Received on Thu Mar 4 10:23:16 2004