Teaching Christian Apologetics in a MegaChurch (McLean Bible) with TE's, OECs, YECs

[Chris_Falter]

@stcordova

Also, Ken Ham tried to get an invitation to MBC, but none has ever been sent his way, nor are there are plans to do anything of the sort – and I certainly would vote against it as long as I serve as a volunteer leader of that ministry because I don’t want to make origins a moral issue or theological issue, but rather a question of what the reconstruction of history might be possible independent of the Bible.

+1. This is wisdom.

Warfare rhetoric

@stcordova

Lon Solomon himself was a chemistry student and one of his sons is a medical doctor. So where is the warfare rhetoric there?

I’m not saying that Len Solomon uses warfare rhetoric. I’m saying you use it when you assert a conspiracy theory among scientists. Allow me to remind you of your conspiracy rhetoric:

@stcordova

we can bring to light facts that have been suppressed in academia and the mainstream

I am not doubting your sincerity when you make this statement; I am questioning your accuracy.

Misplaced confidence

I see you relentlessly telling PdotdQ that he does not understand reference frames in his own field of study, astrophysics. And here’s your expertise in that field of study in your own words:

@stcordova

There is stuff on relativity I don’t quite get. The stress energy tensors were a little challenging.

I want to understand the comparison of the Hamiltonian in Classical mechanics vs. the Hamiltonian Operator in the Generalized formulation of the Schrodinger equation. I’m not that comfortable with the Bra-Ket notation.

@stcordova

I never learned [the tautological one-form]. What class is that in?

Someone here knows particle physics. I’m not at all familiar with that field.

@stcordova

I’d like to go back and re learn QM, which I never really learned well.

@stcordova

My physics background is as an re-treaded engineer getting some familiarity with the terminology. There are a lot of engineers working at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab, and they offered physics courses for them since they worked on Space probes and systems, but they weren’t really physicists like you [PdotdQ]. That’s the sort of coursework I studied which has nowhere near the depth you’ve gone into.

@stcordova

I spent an hour looking at the paper you [PdotdQ] provided and I can see that it would take me 5 years of study to work through it.

@stcordova

I’m not familiar with [how the different temperatures in radio astronomy work] at all

You have also earned many rebukes for your poorly informed assertions:

@PdotdQ

I have to caution that a lot of the arguments you cited are out of date . For example, CMB lensing has been detected, so have distortions of the CMB due to the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect.

@PdotdQ

that is an outdated result, using the WMAP satellite from ~15 years ago instead of e.g. Planck or newer ground-based observatories such as POLARBEAR. WMAP does not have the sensitivity to detect CMB gravitational lensing.

@PdotdQ

on your complain about redshifts in quasars: that quasar exhibit no time dilation is data coming from a study by one person that is never independently confirmed/repeated . Not one group , but one person ! You mentioned above that you think that CMB lensing is a “statistical phantom”, despite their many detections, even one at 40σ40 \sigma . I apologize, but I have to call you out on your double standard here : If there is ever a statistical phantom, don’t you think it is more likely to come from a study by a single person that is never independently repeated?

@PdotdQ

Sal, I don’t know where to start with this, but I think you need to look back into your textbooks. The physics you are writing does not make sense at all, and it seems that you are not criticizing the current understanding of cosmology, but your own misunderstanding of the current understanding of cosmology.

@evograd

much research has been done since that clearly show that factors like saturation and selection over long timescales mean that these low estimates of RNA virus origins (from tens of years to thousands of years) are significant underestimates…
I was very surprised to hear Sanford mention it in his talk [that you cited] as though 50,000 years was an accurate estimate.

Attack on the Integrity and Intelligence of Mainstream Scientists

@stcordova

Good science means getting rid of bad science, and there’s a lot of it in evolutionary biology… I’m advocating good science.

You’ve totally misrepresented what I’m saying.

Here’s some of the “good” science I’ve seen you advocate here on PS:

• Cahill’s aether conjecture
• Sanford’s erroneous citation of a paper estimating RNA virus origins.
• Judson and Ritter’s 1964 estimate of the age of the geological column, which has since been overtaken by plate tectonics and the identification of processes that add mass to watersheds.

In other words, what you think is good science and what the overwhelming majority of scientists think is good science are completely different.

If your understanding is indeed off the mark, then my critique hits the bull’s eye. The only way my critique could be a misrepresentation is if your constant citations to outdated and refuted papers is indeed good science.

Double Standard in Presenting Evidentiary Bases

Another point: you are determined to point out every place where consensus science has not yet figured everything out. At the same time, when you are honest here on the forum, you admit that the view you are advocating to your class is vastly weaker than that of consensus science:

@stcordova

The YEC/YCCs like myself do not have a good empirical nor theoretical case. We only hold to it by faith and a few anomalies.

Shouldn’t this be the headline in your class, rather than a footnote buried off in a forum that none of your students will read? You go at consensus science hammer and tongs in your course materials, and yet the view you promote as an alternative is on an overwhelmingly weaker footing that you fail to mention.

I read your slide presentations you prepared for you class, Sal. Nowhere in that class material do you even hint at the debility of what you advocate to your students.

I also saw nothing like this in the material you prepared for your class, IIRC:

@stcordova

ID doesn’t make predictions (contrary to the usual claim) and I don’t think ID is science.

In those slide presentations, you are not giving the class the full truth, because you do not mention these critical perspectives on the YEC and ID positions

Again, this is based on my recollection of what I read a couple of months ago. If I overlooked something in your course materials, please feel free to point it out.

My $.02,
Chris