The Grand Canyon was carved by Noah's flood

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Have I told people lately how much I hate these Young Earth Creationists nutty make believe ideas lately. Can I just have one freaking leader who will act decicively and is a reasonable man when it comes to issues of science. I do not like creation myths and I really do not like seeing ignorance perpetuated by any US political entity.

Creationism is ignorance, if you disagree with me then I would be more than happy to set on the path of learning about geology and having a more informed point of view on the matter.

Floods create massive structureless clumps of sediment that are unsorted, this is not what we see in the real world, the bedding in the Grand Canyon cannot be formed in a flood.

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I am reminded of this cartoon

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I'm Christian as well, but when the government approves the selling of religious fundamentalism instead of facts and truth, I get a little worried.
 
As in I dont like the way the article was written or I don't like the way that they dismiss creationism?
 
Look at it this way if he gets re-elected maybe our children won't have to go to science class because all science will be removed from the country.
 
Oh BVS I am sure that it wont go that far, fire can tell the difference between Good Science and Evil Science.

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Before we all get too bunched up here....


This case involves allowing the National Park Service to sell one (among many) book, entitled Grand Canyon: A Different View at a few stores in the Grand Canyon. Purchasing the book is the choice of individual citizens. It is not a matter of government mandated indoctrination.

Yes, the views expressed by the book are out of line with mainstream scientific and theological understanding. I would think that modern understanding of free speech would allow this book to exist and die on its merits. By attempting to censor it, you only draw attention to it.
 
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nbcrusader said:
Before we all get too bunched up here....


This case involves allowing the National Park Service to sell one (among many) book, entitled Grand Canyon: A Different View at a few stores in the Grand Canyon. Purchasing th ebook is the choice of individual citizens. It is not a matter of government mandated indoctrination.

Yes, the views expressed by the book are out of line with mainstream scientific and theological understanding. I would think that modern understanding of free speech would allow this book to exist and die on its merits. By attempting to censor it, you only draw attention to it.

:up: Thanks for putting things in perspective, NB.
 
nbcrusader said:
Before we all get too bunched up here....


This case involves allowing the National Park Service to sell one (among many) book, entitled Grand Canyon: A Different View at a few stores in the Grand Canyon. Purchasing the book is the choice of individual citizens. It is not a matter of government mandated indoctrination.

Yes, the views expressed by the book are out of line with mainstream scientific and theological understanding. I would think that modern understanding of free speech would allow this book to exist and die on its merits. By attempting to censor it, you only draw attention to it.

Fine, I don't care how much attention gets drawn to the book, I don't want my government in the business of distributing books like this. It has no merit on a scientific or educational basis.

It's not a free speech issue - no one's saying it shouldn't be published. And I'm all for letting the book exist and die on the merits. But the government giving the book a major assist is NOT consistent with letting it die on the merits.
 
Hate speech is protected by the first ammendment, it too will grow or die on it's own merit but I don't my government selling it.
 
Diemen said:
So there's no apparent problem with government agencies selling religious fundamentalism,

We don't mind "Jihad" as long as it fits our version.

Down with the non-believers, agnostics, seculars and liberals.
 
strannix said:
It's not a free speech issue - no one's saying it shouldn't be published. And I'm all for letting the book exist and die on the merits. But the government giving the book a major assist is NOT consistent with letting it die on the merits.

Major assist? It is sitting on a dusty shelf in a couple book shops in Arizona....
 
Just another example of people with little to no understanding of science pushing their silly views on everyone.

Lame.
 
strannix said:


Fine, I don't care how much attention gets drawn to the book, I don't want my government in the business of distributing books like this.

Be careful here. From what the article says, the bookstore is simply carrying the book, not distributing it.

Unless it's out and out hate speech, I don't think the NPS should be censoring what I have access to. And even then, as a goverment agency, I have my doubts about any kind of censorship. This kind of thinking can be used against what you believe in, too. Always keep that in mind.
 
shart1780 said:
Down with equality, up with selective censorship!
:rolleyes:

Would you call it equality if the government pushed for a book to be placed in meteorolgy centers that explained how rain is really just God crying?

Look I don't care if individuals have absurd theories and want to make books, go for it. I just don't want my government taking a role in getting them on the shelves.
 
In that book are they teaching that as a fact? No?

The book is basically just showing other people's views, it's not teaching them as fact.

I don't believe in evolution but the governmant teaches that as a fact, not a theory. Is that not pushing their antithesis of religion on me?
 
Evolutionary Biology is not the antithesis of religion. It is a fact supported by observation and experiment, how it works is the theory. The mechanisms of life do not exclude the possibility of God, any higher power would never allow mankind to come into being with such intelligence and expect us not to use it.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
Evolutionary Biology is not the antithesis of religion. It is a fact supported by observation and experiment, how it works is the theory. The mechanisms of life do not exclude the possibility of God, any higher power would never allow mankind to come into being with such intelligence and expect us not to use it.

It's the antithesis of what I believe, just as that book is the antithesis of what you believe. What's the difference?
 
It really is not, you may have been told that evolution is totally contrary to your religious beliefs but it does not have to be. Many christians understand evolution but may see it as the way that God operates in the universe, his hand guiding the creation of mankind.

The difference between a literal account of genesis and an evolutionary explaination for life is a matter of objective analysis. If one studies the earth itself and its history there is no evidence for a global flood, one finds fossils in sedimentary rocks in very specific bedding arrangements with very particular sedimentary sorting. This cannot be formed in a flood and fossilization takes a lot longer than 6000 years. We can go all the way back to when life first emerged 3.7 billion years ago where we find banded iron formations - oxidized iron which requires free oxygen in the atmosphere. This is all consistent with the first organisms coming into being, our understanding of the history of life on this planet - the facts of the matter - are totally inconsistent with literal genesis style creation.

Genetically we can trace the migration of human beings and construct a "family tree' using human mitochondrial DNA. This can demonstrate major movements at least 100,000 years ago. This is all the result of scientific inquiry based on fact. Archbishop Ussher was totally wrong and his flawed 4004 BC date for the creation of the universe is utterly and completely wrong.

Evolution is a fact - species accumulate mutations over generations and given enough time those many minor changes can allow for more major changes. We know that this occurs - one can see it in action with resiliance to pesticides in insects. If you have an insecticide that kills off 99.9% of the pest then after each sweep there may be 0.1% that survive, but the offspring from this 0.1% will all have resilliance. Now this is a very crude example but it works. Mutations, sex and population pressures all ensure that life is rarely static.

It is a matter of evidence and objective inquiry versus acceptance without question. Understanding how the world works - perhaps comprehending the works of God as they are - is surely what any higher being would have endowed mankind with our advanced faculties to do. It is not a matter of faith to cling to falsehoods, understanding the world as it is is not compromise.

Theistic evolution would be synthesizing our current knowledge of evolutionary biology with the belief in God. One need not be a literalist and dwell in darkness when the light of knowledge and reason is out there, all that you need to do is open that door and expand your mind. Your appreciation for the world is a lot greater when you understand it's complexities.
 
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I believe in evolution to a point. I believe creatures can grow and adapt to certain enviroments, but I don't believe they can completely change forms. I don't believe a fish can become a lizard can become an ape can become a human. I don't even think that's possible.

I believe the world was created in seven days.
 
You are exactly right, a fish cannot turn into a lizard and then turn into an ape and then turn into a human, that idea is not evolution at all. You have a common misconception of evolution by means of natural selection. Creatures do not magically change from a fish to a lizard in their lifetime (magic), a horselike creature doesn't reach high and grow a long neck to become a giraffe (llamarckism). It is a process which occurs over the generations, and has to do with how sucessfull organisms are at reproducing and spreading their genetic material.

The principle is that between generations of organisms there are differences. You yourself are different than your parents, there is a transfer of genetic material between both parents and the permutation that results is you, in addition there are sometimes mutations in the genetic code which add furthur difference.

Now these differences are usually very minor, however sometimes a particular difference in an organism may offer an advantage to its survival and its relative reproductive success.

For example a lion may have a mutation which allowed for a greater degree of muscle strength which allowed it to move slightly faster. Now with this mutation which other lions dont have this animal would suceed at catching prey and would also have a greater opportunity to reproduce. When it has sex the same mutation which gave it stronger muscles could be passed down into its offspring giving them an advantage until the change becomes more and more prevalent in the population at large. Eventually all the lions in the pride (after enough generations) would have this mutation and they would all be stronger.

So you see the one fluke change in the DNA of the organism allows it a slight advantage in reproduction. That is the point of evolution, natural processes will favour certain traits depending on the biotic and abiotic conditions amd those traits may be passed to their offspring.

Over time, millions of years, these changes accumulate and new species may appear from these mutations.

The earth is older than 6000 years, The most obvious reason is that in the sky there are stars hundreds of thousands of light years away, there are galaxies and quasars even furthur away still. The radiation emitted by these things takes time to reach earth, they all travel at the speed of light (299 792 458 m / s) and can take longer than 6000 years to get here. The universe is at least billions of years old.

The solar system can be dated using the sun and tracing its point on a HR diagram, to work out its age which is around 5 billion years.

The planets, asteroids and comets in the solar system are loose particles left over from the formation of the Sun. Originally the gas and dust that would become the Sun was the core of a cloud much larger than the solar system, probably several light-years across. (One light-year is equal to approximately 6,000,000,000,000 miles.) The core was slowly rotating at first, but as it collapsed it spun faster, like a spinning ice-skater pulling in his arms. The rotation prevented the material at the core's equator from collapsing as fast as material at the poles, so the core became a spinning disc.

Gas and dust in the disc spiraled gradually in to the center, where it accumulated to form the Sun. But because dust is denser than gas, some of the dust settled to the mid-plane of the disc. These dust particles stuck together to make clumps, then clumps stuck together to make rocks, then rocks collided to make planets. In the case of the "gas giant" planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the rocky cores were massive enough to also attract some of the gas. The outer layers of these planets are made up of hydrogen and other gases.

So the Sun is the collapsed core of an interstellar gas cloud, and the planets, asteroids and comets are small lumps of dust or ice chunks which stayed in orbit instead of spiraling into the Sun. The planets all formed within a very short period, probably a few million years.

The earth itself is billions of years old, using radiometric dating one can determine the exact age of volcanic rocks and use these to construct the relative ages of rocks above and below them in the strata.

I shall post more when I have finished cooking dinner - please consider these things, an inquisitive mind is no threat to your beliefs.

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I suggest that you look over this site, it provides information in relation to the matter.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html
 
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