There is a good bit of information in that statement …

Comment on An appeal to our leadership by Carl.

There is a good bit of information in that statement which could serve as clues and guidelines as to the geologic history of this earth for those scientists who would accept it.

There is no imaginable way that these conditions could have existed within the last 10,000 years. Mountains in the east are smooth and well eroded; they are old. Mountains in the west are jagged; they are relatively young and still growing because the collision between the North American plate and the Pacific plate. That’s why we have more earthquakes California than in New York. We have volcanoes around the Pacific rim for the same reason. We can now measure the movement of the various plates, and it is very clear why we have mountains in some places but not in others.

If you get a good book on the geology of land formations, you will find that it contains many convincing explanations that agree with the things that you see around you. The description that you have quoted has not contributed to scientific study. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.

Carl Also Commented

An appeal to our leadership

More generally, I think Bob Ryan is correct is in his observation that you don’t want to allow someone working within a young earth creation model …

What “young earth creation model”? There are significant objections to the standard model, but I have never heard of any young earth model. I’ve tried to get Sean Pitman to present such a thing, but he hasn’t as yet. He just has a collection of objections. The old GRI Web site made a very clear statement that no such thing exists. Unfortunately, the new site is much less honest.

you don’t seem to appreciate the extent to which the mainstream model is also dependent upon supposition and speculation.

There’s a big difference between speculation based on data and speculation based on our imagination of what might have been. Radiometric dating is not very speculative. It isn’t always accurate, so you check it against other data. It’s good enough that the GRI Web site says the following:

4. How can creationists explain radiometric dates of many millions of years?
Creationists do not have an adequate explanation. Some possibilities have been proposed, but they are not compelling because they do not explain why the lower layers generally give older dates than the upper layers.

Scientists look at the dating data and conclude that the lower layers are older. There’s some speculation involved, so they check against other things. What kinds of fossils do they find down there, etc? They find many extinct species. That makes sense.

Now, let’s speculate about how the earth had an atmosphere with a huge amount of water, so much, in fact, that when it rained, there was enough to cover the mountains. An atmosphere much wetter than what we have now, but it never rained? Can we check that? Have you ever heard of any evidence to support that idea?

So it rained until the mountains were covered, and the water disappeared. Where did it go? Not back into the atmosphere, because it isn’t that wet any more. Under the ground? Maybe it just formed the present oceans. But, how did the oceans get salty so fast? The Flood was only 4,000 years ago. Where’s some evidence?

Let’s try a scientific approach. It turns out that there was a massive flood of the Black Sea about 5500 BC. It’s described in the book “Noah’s Flood” by Ryan and Pittman (not Bob and Sean). The geological evidence shows that the Black Sea was a land-locked lake about 300 ft below sea level until the oceans rose following the last ice age. Water spilled over at the Straits of Bosporus and filled the Black Sea, probably displacing a significant population. Maybe that has something to do with the story of the Flood. There’s some speculation, but it comes at about the right time and it’s based on evidence. Read the book and see what you think. It’s written for a general readership.


An appeal to our leadership
@Erik:

Erik,

Ellen White was quite human and wrote many things that are not correct, some of which are so obviously wrong that they are no longer printed. For many years, the White Estate attempted to prevenet access to some of these documents. Prophets are primarily leaders, not infallible sources of information. While I have never doubted that she honestly desired to know the truth, there are many things about her work that are hard to understand.


An appeal to our leadership
@Jonathan Smith:

It seems that your posting includes a number of misconceptions about evolution. Here’s a link that addresses some of them:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php


Recent Comments by Carl

Panda’s Thumb: ‘SDAs are split over evolution’

These layers should have been washed away many times over by now. That’s the problem.

Well — maybe. I’d say the real problem for your position is that no one has proposed a comprehensive model that can explain the evidence of geology within about 10,000 years. That is such a huge problem that I don’t know why we are talking about anything else. The evidence for life beyond 10,000 years is massive as compared to the few objections that Sean has collected.


Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
Sean,

I understand better how you have reached your conclusions. You have a powerful bias that the Bible must be literal history, and that predisposition has driven much of your scientific thinking. What still mystifies me is that you attempt to take the open issues of science and use them as an argument that a short history is equally as believable (I think you claim more believable) as a long history. That is one huge leap.

I’ve read parts of your personal Web site, and it seems to me that you have failed to establish your points. In what you have written, I have found no compelling evidence to believe a short history. You do well in raising doubts about the standard model, but doubts on one side are not a convincing argument on the other side.

You do not have any detectable theory of how the earth could possibly come to be as it is within about 10,000 years. Your discussion above again misses the major issue. The evidence that is at odds with a short history is much greater than the evidence that is at odds with a long history. You have come nowhere close to showing otherwise. Ten thousand years is a very short period of time.


Report on LSU constituency meeting
Here’s a link for Hammill’s interesting report:

http://spectrummagazine.org/files/archive/archive11-15/15-2hammill.pdf


Report on LSU constituency meeting
@BobRyan:

Not found in Adventist literature.
Not found in Quiquinium voted documents.
So “general” as in you and a few of your closes friends?
How is that “general”?

The Consultant Committee on Geoscience Research was terminated and a new emphasis was instituted for staff activities. Research tended to concentrate on selected areas where the data were most supportive of the 6,000-year biblical chronology of Bishop Ussher. Before long, the tacit policy arrived at in the 1950s during the General Conference presidency of W. H. Branson (to the effect that the 6,000-year chronology need not be emphasized in Seventh-day Adventist publications) was abandoned. (Richard Hammill, AAF Spectrum, Vol 15, No. 2 p 41)

I did not know Dr Hammill personally, so, no, this wasn’t cooked up among my closest friends.


Report on LSU constituency meeting
@Art Chadwick:

The theology department has preceded the sciences by some year in losing confidence in the Scriptures and in promoting belief in naturalism.

Here again is the suggestion that we must interpret Scripture literally or else we are “losing confidence” in them. I think it often works the other way around. By insisting on literal details, we can miss the most important point and make it more difficult to believe.

The tragedy of this Web site is that it thwarts the creative thinking that we need for dealing with modern science issues. It’s not an easy problem, and the success of this site will drive many thinking people into seclusion. That’s where we’ve been for decades.

In the 1950s, there was a general understanding that Adventist literature would not emphasize a 6000 year history. President Robert Pierson brought that to an end and set us on a path to avoid any science that we did not like. The result is that many Adventists are very suspicious of science and scientists.

If truth has nothing to fear from examination, which sometimes seems to be a Adventist assumption, I say it’s time to stop trying to fix LSU. Students are pretty good at figuring out who to believe. So, if you’re afraid to think out of the box, go where you’ll be told what to think. If you want think it out for yourself, go where the box has been opened.

I have little doubt that Geanna, Adventist Student, and many others will figure things out with or without the “help” of the reformers sponsoring and speaking on this site.