Re: RATE Vol. II

I have been silent on this list for some time, partly due to a holiday in
Turkey, including Cappadocia.

I think Randy's last two paragraphs are pertinent. Though H Morris's comment
on being scrupulously honest is ironic in the extreme. When I read the Gen
Flood in 1971 his granddad's lack of it was most apparent and that is the
mark of every every YEC book I have read since. No wonder some accuse YECs
of "lying for Jesus". This clearly raises the temperature, but this is at
the core of all YEC claims.

It does make me wonder if this lack of ethical concern spills over into
other areas as well. I have often noted how much certain YEC activists lack
love.

Perhaps we should flag up this problem of YEC at the risk of offending the
brethren.

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@adelphia.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 2:25 AM
Subject: Re: RATE Vol. II

> Until now I had been urging Roman to get a dialog or analysis of RATE for
> PSCF. He has actually made progress and has tentatively scheduled it for
> an issue within the year. However, having read the RATE II book, I'm
> having serious second thoughts. Though I have read and critiqued creation
> science material for decades, I was shocked by the degree of selective
> logic. With less justification than any work of science fiction, some
> 'scientific' constraints are considered real and others are dismissed
> without explanation. Logic is so inconsistently applied that I'm afraid
> any attempt at direct refutation is futile.
>
> Here's another example. Having noted that the heat dissipation problem is
> so great that a mechanism other than convection, conduction, or radiation
> is required as well as something that is selective to cool radioactive
> material and not water, they go on to state: "Of course, the concept of a
> complex cooling rate being dependent on temperature is not unusual. We
> know, for example, that Planck's radiation cooling law is a function of
> the absolute temperature to the fourth power. If such a relationship were
> to be applied to volumetric cooling, hot objects would cool orders of
> magnitude faster than cool objects." Never mind that, as George pointed
> out, the cosmological expansion leading to volumetric cooling doesn't
> apply to bound particles (nor does it get turned on for a year and then
> off again), there's no basis for applying a radiation law to it. Yet,
> "the RATE group is confident that these issues will be solved...", so much
> so that they don't need to be mentioned in the lay version.
>
> The book is filled with phrases like "could have" or "we might suppose" to
> reconcile many types of problems. Any attempt to refute these quickly
> becomes tedious and would inevitably be met with counter-illogic. The
> books' authors anticipate criticism and dismiss all criticisms in advance.
> p. 768 "The viability of the concept of accelerated decay has not yet been
> demonstrated to the satisfaction of many even within sympathetic
> creationist circles...[the Rate team] does not expect the findings
> currently in hand by themselves to be adequate yet to precipitate a
> full-fledged revolution in thinking about the age of the earth."
> Nevertheless they can confidently tell the lay community that science has
> affirmed the young age of the earth.
>
> Ironically, an appendix by Henry Morris Jr is devoted to the need for
> ethics and peer review of creationist literature. Peer reviewers are to
> be drawn from the creationist community, for example. He notes:
> "Christian men and women of science should follow even a higher standard
> in this connection than their secular colleagues...They must, therefore,
> be scrupulously honest in reporting the results of their research."
>
> Past experiences by many people over many decades show that scientific or
> logical refutation of these claims won't sway anyone. The answer is
> known. Perhaps the most effective approach we can take is to show the
> inconsistency and self-contradiction and the misrepresentation being
> proclaimed.
>
> Randy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
> To: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:53 AM
> Subject: Re: RATE Vol. II
>
>
>> Various views on the age of the earth, including objections to an old
>> earth based on radioactive dating, have long since been given a fair
>> hearing. Just because some diehards can get enough money to publish &
>> promote material promoting YEC doesn't mean that it should be given
>> _another_ fair hearing. If we take that route then it never ends.
>>
>>
>> Shalom
>> George
>> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu>
>> To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
>> Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:01 AM
>> Subject: RE: RATE Vol. II
>>
>>
>>>
>>>> I suggest we devote one issue of PSCF to old earth evidence submitted
>>>> by
>>>> all the members with the best articles selected by Roman Miller. Make
>>>> it a special issue where we can order hundreds of copies each and hand
>>>> them out to whoever we think can best benefit from them. The numbers
>>>> of
>>>> new members we can recruit from that alone would more than make up for
>>>> any lost from taking a stance in the first place.
>>>
>>> A special journal issue with public access (print or online) could be a
>>> great idea, even if
>>> ASA is not ready to take a formal old-earth position. I am reminded of a
>>> scientific journal
>>> who devoted some extra space to Peter Duesberg's "HIV doesn't cause
>>> AIDS" idea a few
>>> years ago. As I recall, Duesberg and supporters contibuted a few
>>> articles, ands responded
>>> to ones from the other side, but there were many more from the HIV
>>> causes AIDS camp
>>> (reflecting their overwhelming numerical majority) and they were invited
>>> to write responses
>>> to Duesberg articles. The staff editorial for this issue, signed by the
>>> majority of editiors,
>>> said that they felt the bulk of the evidence supported an HIV-AIDS
>>> connection.
>>>
>>> The key is to take the wind out of the "we can't get a fair hearing"
>>> sail. Many would argue
>>> that the "ID is a valid scientific theory" camp got a perfectely fair
>>> hearing in Dover; they
>>> simpy didn't convince the judge. The claims of RATE II could be given a
>>> similar treatment.
>>> I wonder if ASA and ACG couldundertake a joint project?
>>>
>>> It would take an editorial team with the wisdom of Solomon to keep the
>>> scientific
>>> disagreements from becoming name-calling fests, but Christians, of all
>>> people, should be
>>> able to manage that.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
Received on Tue May 23 02:10:53 2006