Re: [asa] proving god

Burgy-

I always admire the attempt to find harmony between scripture and natural history. However, this one is problematic.

Quite a few scientific technical errors; Don W. pointed out several of them. They are highly distracting to the reader that knows better.

Ignores anthropic principle for the 'gee whiz' effect of amazing coicidences, then jumps (leaps!) to "proof" with nothing to support it. That's totally bogus, by far the biggest philosophical problem, and this won't convince anyone who knows a bit about the a.p. or logical arguments.

My biggest problem with it, however, is the treatment of scripture. The author seems to hold to some kind of concordist view that the days of Gen 1 represent long periods of time. I'm not a holder to the concordist interpretation, but I can understand why some wish to hold on to some type of concordist viewpoint. Those that do usually do so due to what they describe as a high view of scirpture, which I can respect even if I disagree with it. Maybe that describes your friend, maybe not. His treatment of it bothers me, however, because it doesn't seem that the text was taken very seriously. Several broad sweeping generalizations about how natural history and the days of genesis are "in close agreement" are given while ignoring the complications that arise from the order of events listed in the text. For example, in the text Earth is already in existence prior to day 1, so it doesn't come after "let there be light" on day one. The fact that the sun/moon/stars aren't unt!
 il day 4 is ignored, likewise that plants are created on day 3 before those things, and further birds are created on day 5 before land animals on day 6. None of these examples fit with natural history. I can't understand how someone can be a concordist on the grounds that they hold a high view of scripture, yet at the same time not seem to read the text closely enough to see what it really says - instead simply glossing over it with sweeping generalizations.

Best,
Charles

_______________________________
Charles W. Carrigan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Geology
Olivet Nazarene Univ., Dept. of Physical Sciences
One University Ave.
Bourbonnais, IL 60914
PH: (815) 939-5346
FX: (815) 939-5071
ccarriga@olivet.edu
http://geology.olivet.edu/

"To a naturalist nothing is indifferent;
the humble moss that creeps upon the stone
is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain:
but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world,
the mossy covering which obstructs his view,
and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone,
is no less than a serious subject of regret."
          - James Hutton
_______________________________

>>> "j burg" <hossradbourne@gmail.com> 11/24/07 3:17 PM >>>
I'd like comments on an article written by a friend of mine, a chemist.

I take issue with the idea of "proving," but are there other debatable
points?

burgy

 SCIENCE HAS FINALLY PROVED GOD!

In the past several generations science has found that the
DNA in every cell of the human body has a complete blueprint
of the individual involved. It was recently announced that
the DNA sequence in chromosome 22 has been 97% deciphered
and that it contains over 34 million segments. What a
complicated system - and chromosome 22 is one of the smaller
of the 24 chromosomes that we all have! More recently
science has also found that this same system of DNA also
applies to other animals and even plants! The recent
"cloning of the sheep - Dolly- was basically "proof' that
the system works. DNA from an adult cell was transferred to
an egg, which then developed, into an identical "Dolly".
Subsequently, researchers have succeeded in cloning other
mammals such as mice.

Do we accept Science's theory that it all started with a
"BIG BANG" about 15 billion years ago? Reading between the
lines in Genesis, and granting that the "time line" of
Genesis was different from our way of measuring time today,
then the idea of having our "world" develop in six
"days"(periods of time) brings the Biblical narrative and
the Evolutionary theory into close agreement. When God
inspired the writing of the Bible some 6000 or so years ago,
man certainly was not intellectually developed enough to
understand more than was presented in Genesis.

If we look at the evolutionary idea where 15 billion years
ago it all started with a Big Bang, everything was certainly
"formless and empty" at that point in time. The scientific
approach says that life slowly evolved. The Bible says that
the first step was the separation of light from darkness.
Science says that after the Big Bang, the matter that was
going away from the place of the Bang, slowly coalesced into
stars and planets. When the earth formed, it eventually
started rotating
once a day! When parts of the earth face the Sun - around
which we are in orbit ~ it is Day. When
we don't face the sun - it is night.

On up the line, the biblical and scientific explanations go
hand in hand. The forms of life started with plant life,
then animal life, and finally- the most complicated - MAN -
evolved!!!

If we were given the job of designing an earth where human
and other life could survive and flourish, man - even the
best genius that could be put on the job - could scarcely
have covered all of the bases that have been covered to make
the earth a habitable place for life. To whit:

I. Life forms need an environment of approximately 0-100F to
survive. We have it. How does it happen??
A. The 24 hour day allows warming during the day and cooling
at night.
B. Exposure to the sun on some of the other planets that we
have observed has resulted in environments that reach
several hundred degrees. We could never make it there!
C. About 70 % of the earth's surface is water. Each day, the
water is evaporated to absorb heat. Each night the
evaporated water condenses to form clouds and release heat.
Water is a unique substance. Nothing else on the earth has
as great a capacity for heat transfer. Was this an
accident???
D. With 70% of the earth's surface in water; we have a
tremendous heat reservoir which contributes to moderating
the temperature of the earth.
E. The earth's atmosphere contributes to making the earth
habitable in many ways:

1. The universe is full of bits and pieces of the matter
that were released by the Big Bang. Many of these come
earthward each day. When they get to earth, we call them
meteorites. There have been a few real big ones in
geological history - like the one that hit some 65 million
years ago and wiped out all of the dinosaurs - and probably
most of the other life that was around at that time!!
Fortunately for us, most of the meteorites are small enough
to burn up in the atmosphere.

2. The atmosphere is about 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen with
a fraction of a percent carbon dioxide tossed in for good
measure. All animal life depends on oxygen for its
existence. Plant life depends on carbon dioxide. Was it just
by accident that animals take in oxygen and release carbon
dioxide, while plants take in carbon dioxide and release
oxygen??? What a neat arrangement! ! !! Accident??

3. The radiation from the sun is loaded with harmful
ultraviolet radiation. The upper atmosphere has just enough
ozone to absorb the ultraviolet radiation before it reaches
us and does its dirty work.

4. Evaporated water is present in the atmosphere. Were it
not for this water, animal skin would get hard and flake
away. We all know how much more of a problem we have with
dry skin in the arid west as compared with more humid areas.

II. Our sun has been supplying heat to the solar system
ever since it coalesced and became a "sun" some time after
the Big Bang. There are billions of other "suns" out there
in the universe. Every time we make a bigger telescope, the
more universes we can see and the more stars there are! At
this point science says the universe is still expanding at
an ever-increasing rate and we estimate that the Big Bang
was 15 billion years ago. That means that our sun and most
of the other stars have been releasing heat for almost 15
billion years! Why haven't they run out of fuel???? A few
have. Every once and a while, we observe a Supernova - which
is postulated to be a star that has run its course and
finally burned out. How have the stars - and our sun -
lasted so long?? In this past century a genius named
Einstein figured out that it is possible for mass to be
converted to energy at the rate of E=MC squared. This is a
fantastic ratio. A piece of uranium the size of a pea can
fission and produce as much heat as a ton of coal. That is
what is happening in the suns of our universe. It might also
be happening in the core of the earth - but we don't really
know yet.

III. Our civilization has developed and grown over the past
several hundred years because of fossil fuel and minerals
that man has been able to locate and mine for our use. One
of these days these fossil fuels and minerals will run out
and we will have to develop substitutes. Many of our mineral
items have been replaced by new man-made materials. Our
biggest shortfall in the next fifty years will be fossil
fuel for heat and electricity. Nuclear power - invented in
the USA and now in decline in the USA (because of some of
our misguided environmental evangelists) is the only source
of power that has been found so far that can take up the
energy slack that will certainly develop when our fossil
fuels run out. Wind power and water power are "Green" but
quantity-wise will not make the grade.

IV. So how did science prove GOD?????? Science believes in
chance variation. If man developed by chance from
rudimentary particles and molecules - which slowly evolved
by chance - and man's individuality is governed by the DNA
system which gives each individual 24 chromosomes - each of
which contains MILLIONS of pieces of information in each
cell that describe the individual - then there must have
been a super-intelligence guiding the development of man -
GOD!!!!!

Then to ice the cake, we now find that there are millions of
other species on earth - both plant and animal - which are
controlled by the SAME DNA system. It might be that somehow
in billions of years man developed under this system. Man
has changed very little in the past few millenia that we
have fossil evidence of, so man is not changing rapidly.
BUT, if man did somehow evolve slowly in an evolutionary
way, science would certainly agree that the same system
could not have evolved in an identical way millions of other
times! Only GOD could have done it - on his chosen EARTH.
Man has been looking for extraterrestrial life for several
generations - without success. I don't think there is any
unless GOD decided to put another earth somewhere
else!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Francis Hutto, 2000

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Received on Sun Nov 25 02:16:05 2007