From: Jeff Erickson (jefferick@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 30 2002 - 22:55:27 PDT
Message-ID: <20020531055527.55300.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 22:55:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Erickson <jefferick@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Dan's comments
I was a little surprised at some of the responses
that followed Dan Defoe's comment on a recent pinhole.
A philosophical quote was cited; a philosophical
comment followed. What's the big deal? Are only
certain philosophical expressions acceptable? Or is
there an underlying belief that one can't be a Bible
believing Christian and also a scientist? Maybe we
have forgotten that such scientific heavyweights as
Kepler, Newton, Pasteur, Linnaeus, Faraday, Pascal and
Maxwell, to name just a few, shared this very
perspective. Since these guys established so many of
the foundational laws, discoveries, and procedures
upon which we operate today, I'd say their 'science'
was pretty good.
On a related point, the comment was made that
creationism is a philosophy, and the implication made
was that it therefore had no place in a serious
scientific discussion. That is a convenient and glib
response that reflects a reluctance to examine, or
even acknowledge the existence of, a broad body of
evidence to the contrary. If you examine the evidence
that is cited in support of the creationist
perspective and decide that for whatever reason you
don't buy it, you'll get no argument from me. At
least you looked. Yet many scientists today are
examining the growing body of scientific knowledge
from astrophysics to molecular biology and concluding
that the evidence is more consistent with a
creationist model of origins than it is with an
evolutionary model. I think that if we are going to
engage in commentary on this topic, which is tiresome
to some yet fascinating to others, then we need to do
our homework. Many in the scientific community are
familiar with the writings of Gould, Dawkins, and
others. For those interested in evaluating the
scientific basis for creationism and deciding for
themselves, I would recommend the following books:
"Darwin's Black Box," by Lehigh Univ. molecular
biologist, Michael Behe.
"Darwin on Trial" or "Reason in the Balance," by
Berkeley Law Professor, Phillip Johnson.
Finally, I need to say that I think the personal
attack on Dan and his teaching was unprofessional to
the extreme. Such concerns should be handled person
to person and not beamed over cyberspace. Jeff
Erickson
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