@Bob Helm: The issue is that she did not try …

Comment on Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution? by pauluc.

@Bob Helm: The issue is that she did not try to place her visions of heaven and unfallen worlds into a scientific paradigm of a big bang, an expanding universe that is expanding at an increasing rate and creating space as it expands into nothingness. I am not supposing she was stupid but she was a product or her times not the late 20th century where the Adventist church is facing a secularism based on science as the basis of philosophical naturalism.

Do you suppose she even thought about where these planets were relative to the reach of the naked eye the Hubble telescope or radiotelescopes? Do you? Are the inhabited worlds within our solar system, within our galaxy or even within the expanding universe that we attempt to understand. Is Gods throne-room even a place within our physical universe? If we sent a space probe through to Orion would we be able to eventually end up where God dwells and the place from which the heavenly city will descend. That cube of 2,330 Km in each dimension that when present on our earth would extend well beyond our atmosphere.

The essential question is how do we reconcile what we understand physically through empirical science with our understanding of God and revelation. You know by now how I do that by considered that spiritual claims are understood spiritually by an act of faith. And our physical universe can be understood by a process of explanation by natural law and process. Science and religion differ in both objective and method. As Sacks would say religion is about understanding the meaning and why science about understanding the how. Haught models it as layers of understanding and meaning. We can understand why things happen by natural process but that does not give us the ultimate significance. Even if an event can be understood mechanistically as occurring by natural law that does not detract from understanding it as an act of God done to His Glory and to His good purpose. From this perspective the creation is an act of God even if there is a process involved. I would see process in the creation of life and the universe over long periods of time. That there was process does not detract from its attribution to God. You iike Sean seem to see some process only in the creation of the physical universe up to the point of the crucible for life.

pauluc Also Commented

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Bob Helm: With that said, I find your views to be spiritually dangerous and often scientifically weak. I detect a lot of smoke in your posts, but very little light. I hope you will continue to ponder these issues and try to have an open mind.

You are most welcome to your opinion and I know you would like nothing better than that anyone who takes Christianity and the Bible seriously but not literally to just go away. It is much better not to know of any possible problems with one current views. It very hard to get to the science when we cannot even agree on what is science. What passes as science on this site is so completely dismissive of its methodological basis and history and is entrained in a specific supernatural world view that allows arbitrary acceptance of any observation as miraculous. I think Roger’s paper may well be relevant to Adventist that believe that Christianity has and must respond to a careful study of physical reality by reconsidering its interpretations of the word of the Lord, but as Sean has indicated you are exception to that characterization. I still do not really understand why you should be interested at all in any science. It seems a bit messy to worry about facts. It really seems an unnecessary bother to argue whether the precambrian/cambrian boundary or the upper cenzoic (is that really what you meant?) as the evidence of a divine intervention.

Dont worry I do have an open mind which is why I still peruse this site to see how more knowledgable fundamentalist Adventists think. I wont worry you further.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: So, you do see the need for a police force and a military to maintain civil society, but somehow Christians should not provide what is an otherwise necessary part of that civil society? I’m with Abraham Lincoln on this one when he noted the inconsistency of such a position – like Orthodox Jews paying others to turn their lights on for them on Sabbath

On that logic you should not have any issue with working on Sabbath in any profession serving 24/7. Be that computer support, utilities firefighters. Those giving up those jobs because of inability to have sabbath observance were all deluded. They as Christians should be prepared to “provide what is otherwise a necessary part of civil society”

You cant have it both ways. You cant because of a moral postion claim that Adventists should have exception from working on Sabbath and at the same time deny me the right to consider immoral some occupations that may be very utilitarian in a world full of selfishness and the human acts of evil that comes from that.

Lets for a moment step back from lala land. Where are we and where did we come from on this thread?

1] You posted a rehash of all your usual arguments in response to an article about the more mainstream Adventist positions that may impact the way Adventism reacts to conventional science. All very straight forward.
2] The contention was that Adventism has accepted process for the orgin and evolution of the inanimate world. The birth and death of galaxys and stars and planets in black holes supernova and impacts of spiralling planets. This is where it gets really strange.
3] You contend that Adventism has always accepted the conclusions of that process but then expand on your view of the process which involves a little bit of order and natural law but large amounts of magic. God waited a few billions years until the interstellar material generated by the big band condensed into planets onto which God created life mature and complete. This included Heaven the place of his throne-room which he populated with physical being angels which it is implied have both mass and composition and metabolism.
4] When it was suggested that the same processes and natural law resulted in life on this planet this was claimed inconceivable and would never be done by any process involving life and death. Instead the life we see now is in reality designed to live for ever and has be chemically changed because it is deprived of a particular form of nutrient from a tree that existed on the Earth some 6000 years ago.
5] The inconguity of practicing medicine by the principles of process of natural law and the technology resulting from both the processes of the innanimate and the animate world rather than accepting the much more important process of divine intervention seems to be completely obsure.
6] When someone says that the process of life and death that gave us the physical substance of our universe is also the basis of the creation of life here he must be animal hating sadistic psychopath who cannot belieive in a God of love and grace and is lying when he says that non-violence characterizes the children of the heavenly father for one must always recognize that peace and freedom are only obtained over the bodies of 1/3 of the angels of heaven and the eternal physical and violent struggle against those who would practice violence.

I really cannot understand you Sean. Your ways are way beyond me. I am just sorry that Bob seems to be drawn into your twighlight zone.

Grace


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: sorry but your curious amalgam of magic and biology is not really comprehensible to me as a biologist or as a Christian . it. is neither logical or biologically feasible


Recent Comments by pauluc

Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results

Sean Pitman: Repeated waves of sediment could be carried by tidal actions as well as massive repetitive tsunami-type waves which traversed the entire globe over and over again. Each one of these sediment-baring waves would have laid down another layer quite rapidly – and from different directions given that multiple separate impact events took place during this time (accounting for the different types of sedimentary layers coming from different regions of the globe). This also means that there would have been periods of time when the freshly-deposited sedimentary layers would have been exposed to air (allowing for raindrops, dinosaur eggs that were very hastily laid, sometimes on multiple layers within the same hatch of eggs, and the like to be finely preserved). As the next wave started to return to such an area, the water level would have gradually risen at first, filling in these delicate trace fossils without destroying them. Also, underwater turbiditic flows of sediment are known to be able to cover and preserve fine details along the surface of the underlying soft sedimentary layer.

And of this hypothesis there is scarcely a scrap of experimental evidence and simply is a product of the your superior knowledge and intellect alone. Tell me a few parameters that would persuade me that it is feasible both to have delicate tracks in water shallow enough for a salamander or similar to make foot tracks. What do you think was the distance over which the sediment was transported before deposited. How much sediment was there in the water? So how much water had to traverse a given point to build up 13 feet of compressed sediment every day for a period of 1 year or you can tell me the time over which this occurred. Where is your computer modelling for such a claim. Which of the meteor strikes specifically do you believe caused the flood catastrophe. Presumably that in Yukutan, Wolf creek in Australia and major Russia crates would be included but what about the sediment in which they impacted. Can you provide evidence that all these impacts occurred in the the precambrian rock and the crater was filled with a uniform sediment. Or perhaps you can tell me other asteroid impact sites that show exactly the geological features you would suggest based on a precambrian layer impact. Perhaps their lack of visibility is actually the proof. A time honoured tradition.


Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results

Bob Helm: We are talking about a tectonic event so violent that it split the single antediluvian supercontinent up into today’s seven continents. How could a tectonic event of that magnitude fail to deposit 5000 feet of sediment? It boggles my mind that you find that astonishing!

I am not sure you appreciated my point. I appreciate that a flash flood can deposit a lot of sediment. My concern is that Leonard brand has shown that the coconino layers whether eolian or underwater sediment have tracks made by moving animals. Tell me how tracks could be made in a tectonic event with the violence you describe such that 13 feet of sedement would have to be deposited in layers every day? Please tell me where you can find deposition in flash flooding with preservation in the sediment. Track requires slow deposition of the sediment to allow for preservation of the tracks without disturbance. What is astonishing that you would expect track preservation and sedimentation at a rate of 13 feet a day. How do you imagine any well formed layering of sediment can occur in a deposition of 1 inch every 10 minutes. What volume of water do you think you need for an inch of sediment over areas of thousands of square kilometers. Where the scientific model for the flood that provides that sort of detail. After deposition you of course have to have a new source of water bearing sediment thousands of kilometers away. What is the flow rate of the water carrying 13 feet of sediment per day from a very conservative 1000 kilometers away?

Consulting the USGS http://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/0998/report.pdf
the Colorado river at GC caries 3-13% sediment between 1925-1941

This means that to deposit 13 feet a day you would require water to a depth of between 100-433 feet and to replace this on a daily basis assuming that there will be complete sedimentation of that water in 24 hours.

If it comes from 1000 kilometers away that will correspond to 11.5 meters per second. This is 25 miles per hour. It is much faster than a tsunami once it hits land and nothing like a gentle tidal recession.

Of course if you accept miracles as the best explanation there is no problem. Got deposited this 5000 feet of sedimentary layers. Doest explain why some is shale some lime stone some sandstone. Why so much difference in a 1 year deposition.


Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results

Bob Helm: Third, I’m not sure what you consider “obvious scientific data,” but I have no desire to reject what is truly obvious in science. However, when certain assumptions in science do not make sense to me, I am willing to think outside the box and go against the dominant paradigm. That is not anti-science; that is how science advances.

Not really. science advances when a person does the experiment and reports the results in the peer reviewed literature where at a minimum it has been critiqued to reviewers and the editors of the journal. Whatever critiques of the science I may voice outside those channels and however many novel ideas and thinking outside the box I may do they are ephemoral unless they are accompanied by an hypothesis or the proposal of an explanation that makes sense of what we think does not makes sense, and translates into an experiment that derives new data.
That is science as understood by scientists.


Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results

Sean Pitman: As I’ve explained to you before, the evidence that is actually in hand does not really suppose the “eolian” origin of any of the layers within the Grand Canyon. The Coconino sandstone, for example, shows many features that are much more consistent with deposition by water.

Of course you may be right. Brand has pointed out that track in the Coconino sandstone as evidence for the deposition of this presumed eolian formation in a water environment http://www.grisda.org/origins/05064.htm
He has published these observation in the peer reviewed literature in
1979, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
1991 Geology
1992 Geology
1996 Journal of paleontology
1996 Ichnos

Indeed these are his most cited published works according to Scopus. That the observation of track prints marine environment may have been deposited in an underwater water environment does nothing to explain why the 5000 foot sediment found at the Grand Canyon was established during the flood. I may not be able to think for myself but I have walked along the sea shore and found that footprint fast disappear on the seashore where there is wave activity and fare little better in shallow esterine environments. That there could be the postulated average daily deposition of 13 feet of sediment during a violent flood is I am afraid to say something I cannot imagine. It seems logically inconsistent that you could have both preservation of underwater track and a short deposition time in a violent flood.


Scientists and the Temptation to Bias Results

Sean Pitman: But, you don’t care about such evidence since you believe that other forms of radiometric dating are so reliable – despite the many assumptions associated with what the original “parent/daughter” ratios were and any changes in these ratios over vast periods of time not related to radioactive decay (i.e., various forms of contamination or loss of various isotopes over time).

I use my brain and my senses. I do not accept that radiometric dating is without its issues but that is not something that those in the field do not acknowledge. I however have been to the bottom of the grand canyon and as a layperson observed enough limestone rocks to question a 6000 year chronology. I find it astonishing that you would believe that more than 5000 feet of geological column including limestone and a couple of eolian depositions would be placed there in one year. I am with Kurt Wise on that one. If you accept the literal reading of the bible then it is best explained by God did it by miracles not by process. If you accept one miracle for life then why not for the substance of the earth complete with embedded fossils. That is the most logical approach but it is not scientific as almost all philosphers of science would define it as based on natural process. You cant have both literal reading of the bible and a scientific explanations by process. Gap theorist to me are neither fish nor fowl. They are stuck between acknowledging old ages for some of the creation because of the science and incredibility of all geology being recent but affirming a recent creation of life and sustaining it all by a slippery biblical literalism that is not faithful to the Fundamentals.

I accept a God of process as the best explanation which does involve accepting standard chronologies. Having done so I have to say I was a little skeptical of Mary Schweitzers original observations on fossils. That she has now presented her data in the only place that counts the peer reviewed scientific literature I think it is likely she is right. But I accept her observations but interpret it like she does as indicating preservation over much longer times than previously understood.