According to Wikipedia, Kangaroo Island has an area of ~1700 square miles, and a maximum width of 33 miles.
87×37 is more than 3000 square miles, and 37 is more than 33. There is absolutely no way that the plateau can be as large as you say it is, even if it covers the enture island (which it doesn’t).
More rewording is needed.
Great! I challenge you to engage with the evidence itself, not what any YEC or anyone else says about the evidence.
Kangaroo Island off the southern Australian coast. A dissected plateau covers an area of about 1700 square miles. The surface is estimated to be of Pliocene (5.3-2.5 mya) age.
With all the corrections, this doesn’t seem to support YEC very well.
I find this stance curious for several reasons.
First, as I mentioned in the other thread, to the best of my knowledge there are no independent corroborative methods to date the Earth, solar system and universe to correspond to the approximate ages YECs claim based on Biblical chronologies. Were I a YEC, this would raise immediate red flags. But for some reason it doesn’t seem to bother YECs.
Second, in the context of the Noachian (global) flood, this event is a physical impossibility for various reasons. Just the heat problem alone precludes it from ever occurring under a conventional physical model. Solutions from YECs typically involve appealing to alternative physics or arbitrary miracles which again should raise all sorts of red flags, but somehow doesn’t bother YECs.
Finally, you’ve claimed you’ve done a lot of research, yet in this thread proceed to bring up a 50+ year old YEC argument re: continental erosion. Despite the fact this claim, like many YEC arguments, was addressed decades ago.
Without going into the details (because that would be too much like an argument 
), this is a fine example of not engaging with the evidence. Specifically, cherry picking a few details while ignoring all the others. Note those sea level changes in the CRI source are originally from oilfield geology - which does not support a Young Earth.
CRI is an apologetics ministry, which specializes in misconstruing the evidence to support a particular type of apologetics. It is not in their interest to publish anything which attempts to consider all the evidence. “Engaging with the evidence” generally requires putting the science to some practical use, such as how oil and mineral companies use the data. CRI may be very good at what they do, …
… but what they do isn’t science.
I know I am belaboring the point, ALL of Flood Geology is contradicted by the Laws of Physics and the Heat Problem (briefly, a Global Flood should be deadly to all life on the planet, but here we are). It doesn’t get much less scientific than that.
I think though, that none of this really matters to you (or to YEC in general). I do not see how it is possible to make it matter to you; it necessarily requires you to do some of the work of learning it for yourself. There is very little penalty for your beliefs, no cost, no way that it might cause you direct harm, that might cause you to rethink your position. There are indirect harms, where misunderstanding science can cause great societal harm, and that might cost us all in the long run.
This matters to me a great deal. It matters to all of us working in the science, and indirectly to everyone who might benefit from the science. To name a favorite example: Evolution matters to cancer research because cancerous tumors evolve inside the body, learning to defeat the natural immune response as well as chemotherapy treatments. You must have seen those ads on TV for “personalized” anti-cancer therapies? These treatments are a direct result of this evolutionary understanding of cancer.
So … maybe a better question … What matters to you?
Note that they don’t record a single rise and fall of sea level at all. The record shows a succession of low stand, high stand, another low stand, another high stand, etc., over and over. Just like the pattern of magnetic reversals, there’s no way to fit this into the biblical story even if you ignore the time scale.
I would suggest that considerably more work is needed before the dialogue can make meaningful progress.
From this it seems likely then that your source was Eroding ages by Tas Walker.
You have seen fit to describe some comments on this thread as “ridiculous”, so I have no hesitation about labeling Walker’s description of Kangaroo Island as ridiculously inaccurate. He states:
The land is virtually the same as when it was uplifted—erosion has hardly touched the exposed surface.
From this, it is clear to me that, like Batten and yourself, Walker has never looked at a topographical map of Kangaroo Island.
I would note that Walker in term cites his claims to Roth, Ariel, Origins: Linking Science and Scripture – giving a growing impression that the YEC community is developing quite the cottage industry of fantastical Kangaroo Island fan fiction.
It doesn’t help Jeff. This “word” has clearly given you a highly mistaken view of reality. So I would suggest you ignore words such as “extremely flat” and “plateau” and look at a topographical map of Kangaroo Island. I linked to one above. Here it is inline:
Here is an enlargement of the “plateau”:
Can you really state, based on the island itself, not on inaccurate and/or misunderstood words made about the island, that there is any obvious problem with its level of erosion?
An addendum to my earlier comment (mods, please post this after it).
I was able to track down Roth’s description of Kangaroo Island, via Google Books:
The problem being that, as the above topographical map demonstrates, Kangaroo Island is only flat in the lowlands, where the paleoplain has already been eroded away.
(Note to mods – this is meant to be my third post – after the Kangaroo Island map post and the Roth quote post.)
On the hypothesis that this, like Jeff’s Kangaroo Island claim, was a “a copy/pasted phrase”, I did a quick Google search.
What I found was two articles by Michael Oard: Antiquity of landforms and It’s plain to see. Both cite Nott, J. and Roberts, R.G., Time and process rates over the past 100 Ma: a case for dramatically increased landscape denudation rates during the late Quaternary in northern Australia, Geology 24:883–887, 1996 as the source for this claim.
The trouble is that this article does not describe a “flat to undulating plateau” Jeff.
The plateau is described as:
The geomorphology of the region is dominated by the 200–300-m high Arnhem Land plateau, composed mainly of Mesoproterozoic Kombolgie sandstone (Needham, 1988), which is highly resistant to erosion, except along fault lines, lineaments, and joint planes. Structural control of drainage has resulted in plateau dissection by a trellis pattern of deeply incised gorges, separated by flat-lying interfluves that are largely devoid of soil and vegetation cover; these factors promote the rapid surface runoff of rainfall and any weathered detritus (Roberts et al., 1991; Needham, 1988). An escarpment carved from the Kombolgie sandstone separates the upland plateau from broad undulating lowlands, often called the Koolpinyah surface, that extend west to Darwin. The largely horizontally to subhorizontally bedded Kombolgie sandstone unconformably overlies tightly folded metasedimentary and intrusive rocks. In the study area, this angular unconformity occurs at the base of the Arnhem Land escarpment and coincides in elevation with the Koolpinyah surface. This lowland plain therefore represents an exhumed land surface of preMesoproterozoic age that continues to be exposed, albeit extremely slowly, with retreat of the escarpment. In contrast to the Kombolgie sandstone, the metasedimentary rocks are deeply weathered and highly susceptible to surficial erosion (Wyrwoll, 1992), resulting in an undulating topography of low relief. The lowlands are mantled in places with a relatively thin cover (,50 m) of Cretaceous marine sedimentary rocks, and patches of dominantly Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous terrestrial sedimentary rocks occur on top of the Arnhem Land plateau (Needham, 1988). At one location on the plateau, however, a relatively shallow valley is filled with Cretaceous sedimentary units that grade from marine to paralic facies at the base to terrestrial sedimentary units above (Skwarko, 1966; Walpole et al., 1968; Nott, 1995b). This sequence is ,50 m thick and is ;300 m above modern sea level. The preservation of such sedimentary sequences on the western edge of the Arnhem Land plateau, and along its eastern edge (Krassay, 1994), implies that the plateau surface is at least Cretaceous in age and that its overall topography has changed little since the earliest Cretaceous.
It is the lowlands not the plateau that is “undulating”. The plateau itself is dissected “by a trellis pattern of deeply incised gorges”.
Topological map of the area:
The trouble being that neither of your two “plateaus”, neither Kangaroo Island nor western Arnham Land, “remained flat” – so they cannot provide any evidence of a problem with mainstream geology.
If you want to claim that there is a ‘problem’ here, then you need new examples (and I would strongly recommend that you check the facts of any new examples for yourself, rather than relying on the grossly inaccurate claims of YEC sources).
First off, you are making a uniformitarian argument here, even though YEC is dismissive of uniformitarianism. The real problem there is that you are presenting a limited understanding of geology, uniformitarian or otherwise. There is no single rate of erosion, a basic fact of geology and of readily observed everyday life. Erosion widely varies by the material of the rock and by the environment it is exposed to, such as pH of precipitation, profile, freeze/thaw cycling, mechanical abrasion of waves and ice, biological activity, and more. If you are going to have big boy discussions, you have to dig deeper than apologetic websites, because such details matter.
There is no geological expectation that Kangaroo Island should be eroded away, but erosion is certainly a process which has left its mark on the island. Part of the reason the island is relatively level is not in spite of erosion but due to erosion. Sedimentary rock is due to erosion to begin with, and much of the island is topped by Pleistocene aeolianite rock, wind blown sediment which filled in and deposited relatively level.
The geological history of Kangaroo Island is coherent and supported by radiometric dating, magma intrusions, geomagnetism which align basalt flows with global data for pole location, fossil evidence such as trilobite species and microfossils, glacial markings, and stratigraphy. The geology is incompatible with YEC timelines.
Some online resources for the geology of Kangaroo Island:
2016 - Kangaroo Island Coastal Landscapes of South Australia, 2016, pp. 355-386
2002 - Natural History of Kangaroo Island
1976 - A New Palaeomagnetic Investigation of Mesozoic Rocks in Australia
1982 - The Jurassic Wisanger Basalt of Kangaroo Island, South Australia
So when the first piece of evidence provided is examined, it transpires that the supposed large, flat, uneroded plateau is neither as large, nor as flat, nor as uneroded as the YEC authors describe it.
What will the response be from some-one “highly opposed to exaggerated claims”?
I am continually amazed at the power of YEC claims to drive intelligent people into a frenzy of rebuttal. Stop. Think. Don’t take the bait. ASK better questions.
I’ve been tied up on other projects more than I would have anticipated but I’m glad to see that the discussion has moved forward without me.
And now that that topic has been discussed for a few days, what do you think? Do you have any rebuttals to the explanations that Kangaroo Island and the aforementioned areas of Australia do not support the YEC argument posed? As many have stated these are very old YEC arguments which are demolished by not a lot more than high school earth science basics. (I assume you don’t agree with that summary so I do hope you will explain why you still consider the argument valid.)
By the way, I was surprised that you dismissed my mention of the AIG “top ten” evidences list from 2014 as “outdated” but then you went on to propose we discuss a YEC argument which is at least a half century old (in general if not in all particulars.) I’m still curious if you find AIG’s top ten list no longer to be good arguments.
Meanwhile, even though I’ve enjoyed reading the Kangaroo Island discussion I’m still frustrated that I can very rarely get most Young Earth Creationists to address the “big picture” issues that are far more formidable in undermining YEC ideas, e.g., the heat problem. Indeed, the FAILURE of Young Earth Creationism in many decades of publishing to even begin to address the biggest failures in “creation science” explanations is glaring. (It was bad enough in 1960 when The Genesis Flood was published. It is far more embarrassing today, especially after so many years of our being told that “old earthism is about to collapse under overwhelming evidence” and “the paleontological record and the evidence for the Theory of Evolution is so sparse and will always remain so.”)
Sometime in the future when you have time, I would be very interested in what you consider to be the “best arguments” against YEC—and why you consider them the best. And then what evidence you believe defeats those arguments.
You referred to your mention of Glenn Morton in post #2 of this thread so I will quote from it:
I sometimes listen to Todd Wood’s podcasts and he says something similar----but somehow he never quite gets around to giving us details about out all of that “compelling evidence for The Flood” that is not simply evidence for the ubiquitous impact of water on our planet. As I’ve mentioned previously, I have a lot of respect for Dr. Wood because I think he shows a LOT more honesty and respect for the scientific method compared to most YEC activists I’ve known and read, so I’m always eager for him to give me something meaty to sink my teeth into. But as in your statement:
… Wood is always assuring us that the avalanche of compelling evidence is just around the corner. And for someone like me who kept hearing that back in the 1970’s from Morris and Gish [Whitcomb not nearly as much], I’ve grown a bit tired of waiting “for the big reveal.” Meanwhile, I see exponential growth in the CONSILIENCE evidence for an old earth. Indeed, a visit to various YEC websites today is very similar to 30 years ago: It is always some arcane detail of some radioisotope found in a South African diamond mine or some mystery of some unexpected new arachnid species----or the alleged amazing unexplained mysteries of Kangaroo island----that is allegedly a slam dunk evidence for a young earth. Nothing big picture. Nothing that challenges the massive consilience of evidence.
And to say so again, I’m fine with a slow pace and there is certainly no rush to settle any of these matters quickly. And I’ve already learned a great deal from the posts of the many scientists on this thread who know far more about the geology and paleogeography than I ever will. (So as I often remind PS readers, these discussions are NOT just for the participants but for the educational value of all readers, including the many “lurkers” who may never choose to post here.)
This point is so important that I can’t help but emphasize it yet again.
Really? Speaking for myself, I did not find any of the YEC evidence presented so far to be at all “good”, let alone compelling. Others have dissected that evidence and unless you have a formidable rebuttal for those arguments, I feel like we are back to where we started. Indeed, with the Kangaroo Island subtopic, I get the impression yet again that YEC authors/speakers have been gaslighting their audience. If that assessment is unfair, I’m invite correction. I do not apply the gaslighting charge casually, even if my delivery may sound more casual than I might wish. (My appearing to be causal in calling something gaslighting is probably because I’ve found it so common in YEC literature that it has felt routine for me. Should I be more hesitant in my conclusions? Perhaps. But after a while, one cannot help but think that many YEC arguments are at least very sloppy and poorly researched, even if not necessarily outright dishonest. Yes, I can’t know the inner motivations. Nevertheless, one’s patience can certainly run low after a while.)
Indeed, that often involves simply calling something a miracle involving divine intervention. And I’m fine with that----because it makes my main point for me about “creation science”. It isn’t science at all. The moment one resorts to miracles, it simple isn’t a scientific discussion. It is a philosophical/theological discussion. And if someone honestly believes that all of the problems of Young Earth Creationism can be solved by God intervening and “fixing” the problem—right down to filling the earth with misleading geologic formations and deceptive fossils—then there’s really nothing to discuss because nothing about that can be investigated by scientific methodologies.
Well said. While science amassed more and more evidence and explanations, “creation science” remains dead in the water—especially when I compare the 1960’s version with today’s. Nobody is using “Young Earth Creationism” apologetics and what gets published in the alleged “creationist peer-reviewed journals” to find new oil fields, develop new anti-virals, or predict the next paleontological discoveries. Because “YEC science” has no explanatory or predictive advantages, it is even more on the sidelines today than in the 1960’s. (In the past one would occasionally hear of some new oil exploration start-up company which would promise investors that “we are using the truths of the Bible to find new oil fields” but to my knowledge none of those have panned out.)
And after reading the post to which you referred, I"m still baffled at WHAT about that “current state” has encouraged you.
And based on the posts which followed, I fail to see how that focus helped your argument at all. Instead, it left me with the strong impression that the sources you cited are gaslighting you. [Yep. There’s that word again. Yes, old geezers lack filters sometimes and we just blurt it out.]
Yes. The Kangaroo Island discussion didn’t seem to have much of a payoff for YECism. To say the least.
And this was my situation as I came into the 1990’s.
Sigh. Very true.
This was my growing frustration in my experience inside the YEC community in the 1960’s. The 1970’s. The 1980’s. The 1990’s. I know: Really exciting things are just around the corner. They always have been. (Not quite here yet.)
Of course, that is why you will RARELY IF EVER find a webpage on a YEC website where a moderator has brought together scientists of opposing views on the age of the earth where the different views can be explored. (One that I did recall and tried to find for this post doesn’t appear to be available anymore.) Instead, echo chambers are the rule. In fact, years ago when I used to simply post my honest questions on YEC Facebook pages (for example), even my “neutral” questions rarely survived more than a few hours. The tribal narrative was strictly protected—especially if a link was included to a non-YEC website. That only reinforced my suspicions that I was being gaslighted. And my concern today is that gaslighters in the YEC community continue to be unfair to sincere inquirers like you who simply want to learn from them. You and other readers of YEC insights deserve better. Sincerely.
At this point etiquette would probably require that I apologize for a very long post—but I come from a generation in which skimming material and selective reading was routine. We assumed that readers would pick and choose what they cared about. In my case, it can also be explained by my being old and set in my ways. Crotchety even. That said, I always appreciate your being “peaceful” in the Peaceful Science tradition so . . . . . peace be upon you.
Nor remotely as old. [I mean not as old as the creationists claim, falsely, that mainstream geology considers.]
So… coming back to PS yesterday, I was considering trying to find time to go back and re-engage with the rebuttal posted on the dinosaur footprint.
Then I noticed a LOT of posts directed to me. Maybe we needed the “Take a number” approach.
So to summarize, after reading each of this new set of posts (I’m now trying my best to read all of them), I now have a new set of topics as well:
“Biblical chronologies, scriptural reference to the Noachian flood, the heat problem, philosophical discussions on miracles, plateau dimensions and topography, alternative physics (accelerated decay I’m assuming), references to the oil industry, the solar system and universe, evolution, TV ads, ‘great societal harm’”
Wow. Maybe I need to table that dinosaur footprint rebuttal for a bit.
What’s interesting Dan, is early yesterday (even before seeing all of these), I was pondering why I’m getting so many responding to me.
Perhaps many of you share the same sentiment as Dan does: “great societal harm”
Are there many others who would agree to that? I’m honestly curious. That sounds pretty serious.
Good question. Why not give in to that “Why bother?” voice? I’ve got much better things to do with my time.
The answer is simple: I want to honor God’s Word as best I can. I want to encourage others to fully accept the most straightforward reading of the Bible. I see this is a place that discourages that quite a bit. I hate to see that, and I want to help others in their faith in The Word. That is why I’m here.
…and that comment will start up a whole new series of posts.
I may never get back to those dino footprints…
According to Britannica here: https://www.britannica.com/place/Kangaroo-Island:
“Kangaroo Island, third largest Australian offshore island, located at the entrance to the Gulf St. Vincent, South Australia, 80 miles (130 km) southwest of Adelaide. Its formation is that of a low cliffed plateau (structurally a continuation of the Mount Lofty–Flinders ranges on the mainland) measuring 90 by 34 miles (145 by 55 km) and rising to nearly 920 feet (280 metres).”
[emphasis mine]
That pretty closely matches what I said, other than the added “low cliffed” on the plateau. An exaggeration? No.
Here’s what I’ll say about plateaus: Kangaroo Island is just a small example. Possibly not the best to lead off with (the southern portion of Africa would be a better one to start with).
But note this: The idea behind the topic is the trend with plateaus, as described in both of the videos in the OP. He has a section in each video where he addresses this topic; and does a much better job than I did.
To the listeners here: If you have not done so yet, go listen to both of those videos where he discusses plateaus.
That’s simple. Posts that include obviously false claims tend to attract responses debunking those claims.
Two more posts in which you manage to avoid any discussion of the evidence. One could speculate on why that is, but it’s a mystery. Why are you here?
No. I’m afraid you need to present your claims and the evidence for them here if you want to have a real discussion.
Why? And wouldn’t that lead directly to heliocentrism and flat-earthism? Yet, presumably, you reject those particular straightforward readings. More importantly, we have a conflict of basic epistemology. Accepting a particular reading of the bible over all observation of the world is antithetical to science. Given that priority, there is no reason to talk about evidence, because it doesn’t count for you. Again, why are you here? If it’s to convince everyone that your reading of the bible should trump all else, you need to argue for that directly rather than indulging in vague handwaving in the direction of geology.
I share that desire. In fact, toward that end I spent many laborious hours cultivating skills in Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek, as well as learning a lot about Ancient Near Eastern cultures (and their languages, though I have only just enough training in Ugaritic, Northwest Semitic, Syriac, etc. to understand just the little I need to know for dealing with cognates and etymologies.) [In other words, I’m far from a world-class expert in those fields but I used to work with the people who were, and I picked up a few things.]
I’m glad you emphasized that wording with italics because you’ve put your finger on a huge problem with cherished traditions. Will you agree with me that “straightforward reading” can be a HUGELY subjective thing?
Whether it be Genesis hermeneutics or Biblical theology, have you ever noticed that all sorts of “tribes” of Bible readers loudly claim that theirs is the most straightforward reading of the Bible? And for many of them, it just happened to be the tradition of which they are the most familiar. That can mean being raised in that tradition or it can mean being exposed to that tradition first when the person was introduced to a Christian community—such as the student fellowship they joined in college. Or the local church where they attended Sunday School. The path is not my primary point here but rather the fact that familiarity can make something seem “natural” and “straightforward.” Even “obvious.”
And here’s what happened to me: When I started studying Hebrew under a Holocaust-surviving professor who was also a rabbi, I realized that my “straightforward reading of the Bible” as I dissected the Hebrew text of Genesis started seeming a whole lot different than the KJV “straightforward reading” of my youth. For example, I suddenly realized that ERETZ has traditionally been translated as EARTH in English—and that EARTH in 1611 had a primary meaning in English much close to ERETZ than the primary meaning of EARTH in English today. (Modern Bible readers tend to place the interpretation of “planet earth” and “spherical earth” on the word EARTH while in 1611 the word was more about the ground/soil/dirt and “LAND being the opposite of sky.” And that is why a farmer in 1611 might have described himself as a tiller of the earth while today SOIL would be the more likely word choice.)
Long story short, the more I learned about the Hebrew text—and especially after I delved into the Greek exegesis of 1Peter 3:20-21—my straightforward reading of the [Hebrew/Greek/Aramaic] Bible . took me in a whole new direction.
[Using the search function of Peaceful Science, you can find some of my extensive posts on the exegesis behind ERETZ and EARTH and the implications for the Noahic Flood. You will find detailed posts on how simply a better English rendering of three words in the early chapters of Genesis can lead to a very different “straightforward” reading of the Biblical text. (Those words and their alternatives are Earth/Land, Heavens/Sky Mountain/Hills. I used to give students a search-and-replace assignment to drive this point home.) ]
Let’s return to your statement for another round:
So, will that mean that you encourage others to read the description of the sky and conclude that there is a solid dome which connects to a flat earth at the horizon (much like an upside down bluish-tint glass bowl?..or maybe a bronze one, depending upon your “straightforward reading?”)
That has not been my experience. Now there are lots of people on PS who (strongly) disagree with my particular Bible-affirming worldview as well as my “straightforward reading” of the Bible, but in all of my years here I can’t recall any discouragement of my hermeneutical efforts----whether straightforward or not. In fact, I think we have had a lot of interesting (and peaceful) discussions.
I have no problem with that goal. Indeed, it was when I worked through my Young Earth Creationist traditions with a lot of exegetical studies and learning about Ancient Near Eastern genres and cultural elements that I developed a much greater appreciation for what the Biblical texts are saying (instead of what the early pioneers of “creation science” from George McCready Price to Morris/Whitcomb to Gish et al said the text was “straightforwardly” saying!)
And I’m glad you’re here. I appreciate your motivations about the Bible because I too find the Biblical texts quite amazing. My goal is to “straightforwardly” read them on their own terms (rather than imposing our own modern cultural terms and linguistic straightjackets upon them.)
And, hey, I can appreciate that you’ve got a big pile of responses to deal with. So, as always, take your time and I will appreciate and enjoy the discourse.
I consider the effort to grapple with these issues to have a big payoff. You see, for many decades of my life I had a growing frustration between the “mismatch” between what I observed in what many have called “God’s Book of Nature” (e.g., the geologic strata and the fossil record) and “God’s Book of Special Revelation” (the Bible.) But the more I learned about the Hebrew and Greek texts on their own terms and the more I learned about the earth through the study of chemistry, physics, geology, paleontology, and other fields, the less tension I saw. Indeed, I realized that the Bible was and isn’t intended to be science textbook at all (to put it mildly.) Frankly, if we could time travel back to interview the authors of the Biblical texts, I think they would be quite surprised that some try to read their texts as scientific declarations.
Again, most participants on PS probably strongly disagree with me on many of my conclusions but we get along relatively “peacefully.” And many will insist that Genesis DOES describe a global flood—including friends from my academic years like William Lane Craig—but for years now I have favored a regional flood viewpoint [which involves no conflict with the geologic record because there are lots of regional floods today, such as the Great Lakes (!)]
Hey, perhaps new exegetical clues will someday cause me to revise my interpretation of Genesis 6-9. But I have no hesitation in including the geological evidence in my “grand view” of such topics because I consider the earth’s crust to be just as “truthful” among God’s revelations as the Biblical text. Indeed, I can point to scriptures which regard the universe as another of God’s revelations—so I am bound and determined to “read it” with an open mind. [YECs have traditionally characterized science as “man’s ideas” and the Bible as “God’s ideas”—but they ignore the fact that BOTH the universe and the Biblical text are subject to human observation and interpretation. And though this is very difficult to quantify meaningfully, have you ever considered that there is a lot more agreement among scientists about what the evidence tells us about the age of the earth than the agreement from theologians about what the early chapters of Genesis mean? Of course, whenever someone like Ken Ham recites his favorite trope where he belittles “man’s ideas”, he is referring to any and all ideas which disagree with his. In fact, I’m convinced that he reviles Christians like me a lot more than the “atheist scientists” he often complains about.]
So . . . there you have it. I believe we both want to honor God’s Word and to read it in a straightforward manner. You no doubt disagree—but at the same time I think it likely that we probably agree on the big theological ideas and the Bible’s purposes.
So you’re going to ignore two of those exaggerations and make excuses for the third one.
