[asa] ID last night (Dr. Gary Ott)

Last night I attended this event near Portland Oregon:
http://swbible.org/eventdetail28.shtml

I was amazed at the huge turn-out. It is a large church with a large parking lot- and the parking lot overflowed. I had to park down the street.

It was mostly a presentation on ID- and the odds of life arising by itself- impossible, really (RE: Dembski).

I talked to the speaker afterwards, and asked how old he thought the earth was. He said he doesn't like to mention that in his talk (could be divisive in churches), but he prefers old earth. I told him that I think he's a Christian taking a stand for science in this church, and people will assume he's likely YEC and validate their opinions, which is probably a mistake because YEC is so wrong on science. (I had also attended part of a YEC special meeting the night before: http://www.creationnw.org/html/locations.html). I think, but I am not sure, the head pastor of that church is YEC (I used to attend there for a few years many years ago; even helped build the church as one of many volunteers).

He also again mentioned the odds of life arising, and I told him my opinion was that it was irrelevant, because it is statistics based on assumptions. One can calculate the odds of pulling an ace from a deck of cards, if you know about the deck (standard full deck, etc.). But one can't calculate the odds of life arising naturally if no one knows how it happened.

Someone also asked him about human evolution (Francis Collin's chromosome #2 evidence), but his answer wasn't clear. I told him my opinion that once you accept evolution of humans, you might as well accept it all.

In his speech, he mentioned Behe's irreducible complexity argument. Yes, he forgot to mention that Behe has no objection to human evolution from apelike creature.

In his speech he mentioned Dawkins and McGrath's response to Dawkins. Yes, he forgot to mention McGrath is opposed to ID being taught as science.

I did like how he started and ended with the big questions: who am I, where did I come from, where am I going, etc.

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Received on Mon Feb 9 13:08:36 2009