Re: [asa] YEC and ID arguments

> "I have read vast amounts of YEC and ID literature of all sorts. As I
> unravelled any scientific argument in them (had to be geology as that is
> my field) I
> found that they were ALWAYS marked by inaccuracies..." - Michael Roberts
>
> 'They,' as the quote makes clear, refers only to YEC or ID arguments in
> geology (with absolutist language any argument, ALWAYS to boot!).
> Wouldn't it be nice if YEC or ID had to do only with geology...or with
> natural science only, for that matter? As if it/they had nothing to do
> information theory or psychology.

Michael is focusing on geology, since that's his area of expertise.
Within this baliwick, YEC and ID (not sure what this means for geology
since it's not well-defined generally) come up wanting -- and fatally so.

> Please excuse if the 'blinded by one's worldview' brush paints both ways,
> in the sense that TE, ID and YEC all have ideological components - none is
> entirely neutral, i.e. just the facts without hermeneutics.

If you can provide hermeneutical criteria that will outweigh the empirical
evidence (from God's Creation itself!) then I'm all ears. No
interpretation is entirely neutral, one making such a claim is intoxicated
by the puerile, but the empirical evidence points very very clearly
towards a Giga-anna Cosmos and Earth and common descent of the biosphere.
Both a non-evolutionary special creation of life forms and a kilo-anna
Cosmos is laughable -- modulo of course a deceiving evil despot deity who
will fake the evidence to deceive us poor slobs who dare to study the
evidence.

>
> Ifffff a person could make a case against evolution outside of Michael's
> discipline of choice, does anyone think he could get outside of his
> worldview to openly consider it as even a possibility?

"Iff" means "if and only if". What does "Ifffff" mean? Also, what do you
mean by "evolution"? Certainly you are not throwing this about as a
rhetoric term as per hoi poloi?

>
> Sometimes, it really seems necessary to be defend ID and even YEC
> against TE's when they over-speak themselves (as rarely as that may be)
> in support of evolutionary universalism.
>
> G.A.
>

And you "overspeak" yourself all the time in your insistence upon applying
the generic term "evolution" from the specific meanings of cosmic and
chemical and biological evolutions (all very different of course to anyone
who's studied science) to social and cultural phenomena. Of course,
academe makes puts the latter in separate category -- cultural evolution.

The use of the term "evolution" could also apply to the "evolving" of
carbon dioxide when baking soda and vinegar are mixed. Perhaps an
hermeneutic should be applied for this phenomenon as well?

R

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