Re: [asa] RATE revisited

That's a fair point, Don. It's not the grammatical usage that is the issue
but the implications of it. That's what needs to be addressed. More
generally, YEC is at core an issue of biblical interpretation, not a
scientific debate and I was just trying to say that we've focused solely on
the scientific aspects of RATE rather than the biblical interpretation. But
in a way, that may be the way it should be since the primary claim of RATE
is to have "discovered incredible physical evidence that supports what the
Bible says about the young earth."

Randy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Nield" <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz>
To: "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 6:49 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] RATE revisited

> Randy:
> I would be wary about getting involved with that. One problem lies in
> the disparity between that and the rest of the RATE research.
> My comments are based on Chapter 10 of "Thousands .. Not Billions" by Don
> deYoung, reporting research by Steven Boyd.
> The material can hardly be described as theological. Rather, it is very
> limited. It involves a formal use of a statistical method to show that the
> grammatical aspect of the word usage in Genesis 1:1-2:3 is typical of
> narrative passages rather than poetic passages. But nobody has questioned
> that. Indeed, the use of the waw-consecutive construction is enough to
> show that. Boyd then makes a huge non sequitur in claiming that the
> narrative passage has to be historical. Thus Boyd's research is actually
> irrelevant to the RATE research with radioisotopes.
> Don
>
> Randy Isaac wrote:
>> Most of you will have received your March 2008 issue of PSCF by now.
>> International recipients may take a little longer. The exchange of
>> letters with the RATE team was unfortunately constrained by space.
>> Therefore, we created a webpage to provide more indepth analysis. If
>> you're interested, the website is here. We hope to add material as
>> appropriate.
>>
>> In particular, I'd be interested in adding theological material. So far,
>> we focused only on the science. Yet someone should address the RATE teams
>> biblical interpretation. Their chapter on that topic contributed a
>> detailed statistical analysis of verb-form usage to show that Genesis 1
>> had to be interpreted as a historical narrative and therefore literal. If
>> any of you know good material to address that, please let me know.
>>
>> Randy
>>
>
>
> -
>
>
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Received on Tue Feb 26 19:57:04 2008