Re: [asa] Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules

I understand that several months ago there was a debate on a Christian
television channel between Hugh Ross and Walter Kaiser on one side and
AiG's Ken Ham and Jason Lisle on the other side, in which Ross got Lisle
to admit that he didn't believe his own dissertation.

Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Dave Wallace wrote:

>
> See
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/science/12geologist.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
>
> KINGSTON, R.I. — There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page
> dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral
> degree in geosciences here at the University of Rhode Island.
>
> His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that,
> as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years
> ago. The work is “impeccable,” said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and
> professor of geosciences at the university who was Dr. Ross’s dissertation
> adviser. “He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a
> conventional scientific framework.”
>
> But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth
> creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the
> creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.
>
> For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one
> “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the
> paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely
> appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different
> view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”
>
> He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a
> department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions
> different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that
> to anybody else?”
> ...
>
>
> Seems impossibly schizoid to me. If I were doing something like this then
> I'd internally have to hold to something like an appearance of age theory.
> To be fair though I don't think the university should withhold a degree from
> him although I don't like it.
> Dave
>
>
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Received on Mon Feb 12 11:04:06 2007