How Did the Giraffe Get It's Neck?

Conversation
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HI Mark
Can you give me a more detailed explanation of of how section 4 is opposite of what scripture teaches? Thanks.

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  • Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation, spanning approximately 4,000 years from creation to Christ.
  • The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of creation.

The first two points have to do with time. God is outside of time. There are many passages that elude to this, I will share a couple.

2 Peter 3:8 - But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years , and a thousand years are like a day.

Revelation 1:8 - “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is , and who was, and who is to come , the Almighty.”

Before Jesus came, prophets brought the word of God to the people. There are many, many accounts of fulfilled prophecy which could not be written without God directing the writing and moving freely throughout time. Revelation is the account of the battle that was won against the devil, with Jesus the victor and the creation of a new heaven. To flat state that a day in Genesis is 24 hours is just assigning an assumed value without any biblical support.

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The gap theory has no basis in Scripture.

Nor does the AiG theory of 24 hour days.

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The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.

I would argue that this is a contradiction based on fossil dating and has zero biblical support. I read the story of Noah (as I read the Old Testament) as the story of God’s chosen people the Jews. I have read it many times, it is ambiguous as to whether it was a global flood or localized. To argue one way or the other based solely on scripture is in my opinion false, we don’t know and therefore must rely on scientific input.

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The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into secular and religious , is rejected.

I’m not sure I understand this fully. I agree that knowledge and truth are not owned by either group, but I don’t understand the rejection…I guess of the view…well, it seems like a childish rebuke and I would challenge anyone to find me a scripture that says that secular knowledge is any different from religious knowledge or truth.

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I don’t understand how this is different than what Penrose does in putting forward the notion of his cyclical model because he doesn’t like the fact that time had a beginning and physics can’t describe the beginning of the universe. He invented a fix. That’s religious interpretation of science.

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Well a lot of scientists would dispute Penrose, calling it bad science. So we are being consistent here.

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You expect them to, having a small staff and being around for a few decades? I actually don’t know how long the organization has been around, but it’s quite silly to make that comparison.

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It’s important to get the facts right, and it is decidedly NOT a fact that time had a beginning. Also, Penrose isn’t ignoring any evidence, he’s giving a model in an attempt to account for the evidence.

If that was all AIG were doing, coming up with models to account for the evidence (all of it), we would not have a basis for complaining.

To be sure, Penrose’s model is speculative, and there are other scientists who disagree with it and propose other models of their own. Some models have beginnings, some models do not.

No, he came up with a mathematical model, which is supposed to describe the physics of the universe’s history that gave rise to the universe we currently see. It also makes testable predictions. Again, there are cosmologists who think the model’s predictions have failed, and I don’t have the qualifications necessary to assess whether that’s correct. But there isn’t anything like “religious interpretation” going on here. It’s straightforward scientific proposing of testable hypotheses that predict patterns in data.

Nobody in the cosmological community is taking it as axiomatic that these hypothesis must conform to a preconceived conclusion.

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I wasn’t suggesting that AiG produce a similar output in volume as the mainstream Earth sciences, that would obviously be unreasonable. Yet, even with a small staff a decent research organisation should be able to output valuable scientific findings in several decades. If they don’t, you have to wonder why that is, and why they aren’t simply wound up. What value do those who fund them get for their money?

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They have produced a lot of publications in creationist journals. This is in contrast with the DI, which has had famously low output. Creationists do publish a lot.

@Joel_Duff might add to this.

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Yes I know that they publish in their own journals, but generally that output is not considered to add very much of value, if anything, to the Earth Sciences.

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I believe the request was for “valuable scientific findings”, not just publications. Is there even one valuable scientific finding in all that output?

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That’s literally what they do

The preconceived conclusion IS that time doesn’t have a beginning. Otherwise why would he attempt it? He said that idea made him depressed.

Creationists could make testable predictions with more information about how climate change has affected and will affect carbon dating. The science isn’t quite there yet.

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I agree.

The issue is that they have not been successful at the standards we expect of ourselves, and they have not been transparent about this.

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Coming up with models to fit only one conclusion, and rejecting everything that doesn’t, yes.

To roger Penrose’s model, sure. But you’re missing the former half of the sentence. There are plenty of cosmologists who posit beginnings in their models, and there are plenty of others that don’t. Because it’s not a foundational assumption in the field of cosmology that any cosmological model must produce a specific result.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Climate change affects carbon dating?

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What would that have to do with Creationism? As the article says it may skew the ages of any new organic material being created today just as nuclear testing skewed results of organics created after 1950. It won’t do a thing to carbon dating on things before 1950 back to 50,000 years ago.

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Interesting, but I don’t really see it’s relation to creationism?

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Tu quoque fallacy.