This is your day to call in with your most difficult questions about science, evolution, and the Bible. If you are confused about the Bible and science, if you hold to an old earth creation view, or if you are a devoted Darwinian evolutionist, your calls to Dr. Sarfati are welcome. Listen live here 2-4 pm EST, and call into the show at (866) 348 7884 with your questions and comments.
Hour 1:
Dr. Brown’s Bottom Line: The more you look at science rightly the more you understand God is the glorious, amazing, infinitely wise Creator.
Hour 2:
Dr. Brown’s Bottom Line: Let us step back from the controversies and the disagreements; and with awe let us worship God the Creator.
SPECIAL OFFER! THIS WEEK ONLY!
This week only Dr. Brown is offering Jonathan Sarfati’s classic book, “Refuting Evolution?”, plus a CD copy of Dr. Brown’s two hour Line of Fire interview with Dr. Sarfati for the special discounted price of just $20 Postage Paid!
Call 1-800-278-9978 or Order Online!
Other Resources:
As far as my views on young earth/old earth, I consider myself a young earther, but with some qualifications. For one, I am not so set on 6000 years the way many young earthers are. I read a commentary once I believe by Gordon Wenham in which he cited a paper done [unfortunately, it was in French] by a person who had background in both astronomy and in ANE languages. Although I couldn’t read it because I can’t read French, Wenham summarized it nicely stating that the author had taken the predeluvian ages in both the Bible as well as the Sumerian kings list, and compared them not with the sun or the moon, but with the periods of Venus. Wenham himself said that he came up with some “interesting coincidences.”
The problem is that, although we today speak of solar years, that was not always the case. Years could sometimes be measured by the moon, and this study raises the question as to whether there may have been other heavenly bodies used to measure years. It may have been that several difference places used several different heavenly bodies to measure years, and the sun and the moon eventually won out due to their convenience. If that is the case, then it is possible that the earth is younger than 6000 years, and it is even possible that it is older, depending upon which heavenly bodies are being used.
The only objection I have ever heard is that Moses is writing this, and he would not use these calenders since the Israelites of his day did not use them. The problem is, Moses himself says that he is using sources, mentioning that some of these things come from the “book of the generations of Adam” [Genesis 5:1]. Thus, if he is citing a book, he would just be using the dates of these written records as they are since this time would be quite a ways [even by young earth standards] from his time.
Nevertheless, I agree that reading billions of years into the text is gross eisegesis. The methodology used to get 6000 years may be fallacious, but even worse is the methodology to try to get billions of years.
The only other dispute I have ran into with young earth creationists is the issue of dinosaurs in the Bible. I would simply say it is unnecessary. The Bible is not a taxonomic catalog of every animal that has ever lived. It also doesn’t mention a Tasmanian devil or a kangaroo. Does that somehow pose a problem for the Bible? Of course not. The Bible never claimed to mention every animal that has ever existed. I am aware of attempts to find dinosaurs in the book of Job, but there are major league problems with that identification [how can a dinosaur lay under a lotus plant? (Job 40:41-42)], and there is no philological evidence connecting these words [Behemoth and Leviathan] to dinosaurs. It is therefore speculative at best. When something is unnecessary, difficult to fit with the text itself, and speculative, it is quite weak. That is why, although I allow for the possibility that the Biblical authors may have known about and even seen dinosaurs, it is unimportant speculation to try to say that they are found in the Bible.
If a man reads the Bible but doesn’t come to the cross, doesn’t receive the knowledge of sin which he can receive from the Bible, if he should put the cross behind him, finding it too uncomfortable for him, (in his opinion) he will be as a drunken man, making no sense at all.
Have we ever tried talking to a drunk? Do they ever listen? Do they ever make much sense?
A drunken man must learn to put off the strong drink in order to be well again, and those who have heard of the cross must learn to cling to it in sincerity and truth in order to be well and remain whole.
Though I want to say so much more I will not make further comments on the thread unless they are on-topic.
This is a very important topic that has the potential to build or tear down the faith of some people – depending on whether it is scientifically faithfully/correctly represented and understood – and it needs to be discussed uninterruptedly.
Sorry for taking things slightly off-topic, guys. Deception turns my stomach and I had to say something.
Greg,
I noticed that you ignored my previous post. I don’t think anyone is dismissing you over your views of creation. Scripture commands us not to eat with sexually immoral people or murderers. That would include people like you who promote those things. Doing this is NOT “Hyper Literalism”.
Doug
Nicholas Petersen,
Thanks for the link. I’ll try to spend a bit of time thinking over the information. Overall I am impressed with the number of independent evidences that can be used to prove an old earth. That is why I have come to that conclusion. I would also agree with Dr. Brown that the Bible can be reconciled with an old earth.
Doug
Doug:
As I said, no one would derive an old earth from the Bible. That’s why no-one ever did. Only with the rise of uniformitarian geology during the Endarkenment were old-earth views pushed as dogma. And only then did conservative theologians invent schemes to try to re-interpret the Bible to fit with this outside dogma, such as gap theory, day-age, local flood, framework hypothesis. But they were departing from the way that the church fathers and Reformers had understood Genesis. See documentation in Church of England apologises to Darwin: Anglican Church’s neo-Chamberlainite appeasement of secularism.
Adam: there is no evidence that the word “year” meant anything different back in Genesis. Some try (unnecessarily) to get around the >900-year lifespans by claiming that the years might have been months. But then look at the age of begetting—it’s someone implausible that Enoch was only 5 (~65/12) when he fathered Methuselah.
About Behemoth in Job, it’s not a matter of trying to find dinosaurs in the Bible, but trying to identify what this was. Job was clearly meant to know what it was, otherwise it would have been a pointless lesson by God. Yet if doesn’t fit the usual candidates proposed by long-agers: hippo or elephant. Neither of these have tails anything like the massive cedar tree. But sauropods had huge, stiff, tails, so the identification makes sense. however, those committed to millions of years dogma can’t use this. See Could Behemoth have been a dinosaur?
I never have been to interested in teh new earth vs young earth…. but i do see and acknowledge that many ppl’s faith can be grown or destroyed based upon it.. so it is important.
Thats for the Behemoth link. I always thought that the “dinosaur” issue was an issue.
Anyhow… thanks for all the knowledge ppl.
And thanks GReg for keep it lively. lol j/k
Jonathan Sarfati,
Adam: there is no evidence that the word “year” meant anything different back in Genesis.
Since when is taking antediluvian chronologies from two different records, comparing them with the periods of another planet, and getting “interesting coincidences” not evidence? In fact, I thought I had stored the actual article Wenham references for when I can read French, and I had. This is it:
Barnouin, M. Recherches Numeriques Sur La Genealogie De Gen. V. Revue Biblique 77 (1970) pgs. 347-365
Again, precisely how that is not good evidence, I don’t know. You may be thinking that he is drawing the wrong conclusion, you may think that he is wrong, or you may say that it is totally coincidental, but it is certainly not true that he doesn’t have evidence! Even Wenham was willing to acknowledge that the evidence he brings forward is quite interesting.
Some try (unnecessarily) to get around the >900-year lifespans by claiming that the years might have been months. But then look at the age of begetting—it’s someone implausible that Enoch was only 5 (~65/12) when he fathered Methuselah.
Yes, that is a bad argument. Another problem with it is that there is a Hebrew word for month, חדש, that is found in the same sentence as Noah being 600 years old [Genesis 7:11]. Not overly likely that the author of the source Moses is using here is meaning “month” when he uses the word “month” right along side “year.”
About Behemoth in Job, it’s not a matter of trying to find dinosaurs in the Bible, but trying to identify what this was. Job was clearly meant to know what it was, otherwise it would have been a pointless lesson by God.
Well, Job clearly knew what it was, but we may not. There are many Hebrew words that we have only learned in the last 200 years due to the discovery of cognates such as Akkadian and Ugaritic. Clearly, the people who originally read the text knew what those animals were, but we are only finding out as our knowledge of Biblical Hebrew grows. Also, I totally disagree that the identification of the animal is crucial to the message of Job. What ever Behemoth is, very clearly it is stronger and more powerful than Job. The point is clearly to make Job see that he needs to stop trusting in his own strength and power, because he is limited and finite. He is not big enough to judge the almighty, because God is able to do all of these things that Job cannot do. Therefore, he needs to trust God in the midst of all that has happened to him. Not knowing what this animal is doesn’t affect that message at all.
Yet if doesn’t fit the usual candidates proposed by long-agers: hippo or elephant. Neither of these have tails anything like the massive cedar tree. But sauropods had huge, stiff, tails, so the identification makes sense. however, those committed to millions of years dogma can’t use this.
The problem is, as I already said, saruopods don’t fit the data either. Note the following:
Job 40:21-22 “Under the lotus plants he lies down, In the covert of the reeds and the marsh. 22 “The lotus plants cover him with shade; The willows of the brook surround him.
How could a saruopod lay underneath a lotus plant so that it covers him with shade? Those animals were massive, to the point where they would dwarf a lotus plant. I think it is best, at this point, to say that we don’t know what the Behemoth was, rather than speculating things that don’t fit the data.
Also, while I reject these things, I also do not hold to the “millions of years dogma.” In fact, if Barnouin is right, then we are probably dealing with an earth that is even younger than you think it is. Disagreeing with certain things you believe does not make me a believer in “the millions of years dogma.” It simply means that I believe you are overstating your case to argue these things. Evolutionary theory “millions of years dogma” is denied whether the Bible teaches that the earth is around 10,000 years old, 6,000 years old, or 4,000 years old. Ask Richard Dawkins if he would accept the earth being 10,000 or 4,000 years old. He would probably laugh at you every bit as hard as he would if you asked him about what he thought about the earth being 6,000 years old.
Yes, we need to be careful to not capitulate to the notion that the age of the earth is large out of political correctness, but these issues I brought up have nothing to do with the age of the earth. These statements are not contradictory:
Behemoth was not a dinosaur.
The age of the earth was not 6,000 years.
The age of the earth is not billions of years old.
If I simply hold all of those together, there is no problem at all.
Adam, thanks for sharing what you are working on, in conversational implication.
Really quickly, if you care to (no problem otherwise): can you share two examples with us from the original source texts? One from Hebrew, and maybe one from an Aramaic text (or another). Just two short example texts.
In any case, I wish you many blessings in your endeavors, may God guide you through that process.
Dr Sarfarti
I hope you are still here to answer questions. I live in the UK. (yes, we’re to blame for evolutionary thinking!) Could you recommend a book, DVD or audio podcast for use with my children? I have used some of the AiG stuff, but our eldest is now over 10 years old, and I need something more advanced. Apologetics, humourous animal films, bible stuff or science textbooks (I’m already looking into Jay Wile’s stuff).
PS why do people always think that it’s a trupmp argument that the majority of scientists think X or Y? Have they never heard of Semmelweis?
Oops ‘trump’. Note to self: put on glasses before posting messages.
Dr. Safarti puts forth a theological case for the importance of a young earth. He states that there is a problem with death preceding sin by millions of years. He states since God’s creation was “very good” that this causes a theological crisis. How could a very good creation contain death? There is nothing wrong with posing questions. I do have a problem with the idea that it is an air tight case and that there can be no Christian who can come to an opposing view because they have been taken in by uniformitarianism or some other non-Biblical reason. By that logic then the serpent could not exist in the Garden of Eden because it was a fallen creature. Was the creation not good because of the evil serpent? Dr. Safarti’s theology seems to me to have an over emphasis on the relationship of sin and animals’ death. The Bible has an emphasis human sin and death. It is only by extrapolation that he arrives at impossibility of animal death because of death. Not that he can’t make such an argument, but only that it must be seen as such. Now he may argue that his critique is a natural outworking of old earth positions, and as a result valid. But this seems to me to support an argument arising more from framing a response to an opponent and not addressing the issue of the relationship of death from a Biblical view. The point being again, that the Scripture has an emphasis on the death of human beings as a result of death, and is silent regarding the accountability and responsibility of animals, let alone their redemption.
P.S. Here is an errata in three line. I meant to say sin and not death:
Scripture has an emphasis on the death of human beings as a result of SIN, and is silent regarding the accountability and responsibility of animals, let alone their redemption.
“Van, it says a lot that you would rather take potshots at a safe distance rather than actually conversing with the brilliant guest on the show today…. I could refute a lot of what you just said. But the fact you post it here instead of talking to Dr. Sarfati yourself tells me it is not worth my time.”
Of course if you could refute anything I said you surely would have. However since no one can refute what I said, your claim is simply what we call hot air. I wouldn’t waste my time talking to “Dr.” Sarfati because he readily admits that he won’t accept any kind of evidence that he is wrong, even though that evidence is overwhelming, which is why your own Christian colleges and universities teach evolution as fact. One proof that he is wrong is in the fact that Sarfati will not be receiving a Nobel Prize for science for debunking evolution and neither will any other creationists – ever. Sarfati’s audience is the general public, not the scientific community and not even the Christian academic community which goes to great lengths to distance itself from people like Sarfati, William Dembski, Michael Behe and the rest of the creationists. You creationists can’t even make your case with your own Christian colleges yet your want to cram your religious dogma down the throats of our public school students. It must be frustrating and frightening for you to lose to the scientists, lose in the courts and lose even in your own schools. No one is more afraid of the truth than a creationist.
It’s very revealing that Dr. Brown admits he knows nothing about science or in particular evolution. Had he actually learned something about science he wouldn’t have wasted so much of his life in intellectual servitude to false beliefs. One thing about science is it is our best defense against believing what we want to.
Adam: Thanks for sharing your creation views.
A few things:
(1) You stated: [The only other dispute I have ran into with young earth creationists is the issue of dinosaurs in the Bible. I would simply say it is unnecessary. The Bible is not a taxonomic catalog of every animal that has ever lived. It also doesn’t mention a Tasmanian devil or a kangaroo. Does that somehow pose a problem for the Bible? Of course not. The Bible never claimed to mention every animal that has ever existed.]
I quite honestly think some bur got stuck in your foot on this issue that was totally of your own misunderstanding or faulty interpretation. Creationists did not propose the identification of the behomoth with a sauropod because they were frantically looking for it, but rather, because the identity of this creature screams out sauropod, while it miserably fails any other living creatures on certain points. On this Sarfati is completely right when he says: “About Behemoth in Job, it’s not a matter of trying to find dinosaurs in the Bible, but trying to identify what this was.”
I.e. none of us have hung much on this hook, we’ve proposed it because the identity seemed obvious, that’s all. Of course if that is true, it helps our (YEC) case, but we can live quite fine without it. So if you have a problem with the identity, no problem! If you have a case that holds any water, we would love to have you make this case in one of our journals (Journal of Creation, for instance, or CRS’s CRSQ).
So let’s turn to the case you have made thus far:
1) ‘how can a dinosaur lay under a lotus plant?’ [Job 40:21-22]
First, the word is צֶאֱלִים which is a hapax legomenon, as is common in Job. Second, the fuller description of these verses clearly communicates two things: 1) this creature *does* abide in marshes, 2) nonetheless, he is so mighty that the Jordan river raging right in his face doesn’t even sway him. So without going into it all, is that an elephant (but Elephants do not have Cedars for tails)? If so, then there is no problem with the lotus plants. Both are massive creatures that are described as emerged deep enough in marshy waters to have their faces closer to the surface. And don’t the sauropods have special breathing holes at the top of their skulls?
Bottom line is this: there is no getting around that the Bemoth was described as a massive and powerful creature. Your lotus plant objection only works if you counter that the correct animal was small enough to fit under such plants (but that ignores the possibility of being immersed in waters), but the text quite clearly precludes that possibility. *Behomoth*, by his very name, was *huge*! Can’t get around it.
Concerning the question of how to define ‘year’ / ‘years’ in the Genesis genealogies:
[The problem is that, although we today speak of solar years, that was not always the case. Years could sometimes be measured by the moon, and this study raises the question as to whether there may have been other heavenly bodies used to measure years. … and compared them not with the sun or the moon, but with the periods of Venus]
And of course the Hebrew calendar was lunar based. But sorry, this ‘Venus’ (?!) suggestion as an alternative year marker? My sniffer tells me this would be an extremely far out suggestion, one we don’t have to wait till we learn French to decide on. ;0) Show me any ancient peoples (Stonehenge, Mayan, ANE, etc) who didn’t have either a lunar or solar based year. Also, the flood clearly shows the rough number of days that were in a year. Noah was 600 when it started, and it was clearly 1 year (a number of days over) once they got out, and this was said to be in the 3 hundreds of days (370 something?).
But with regard to the genealogies in general, let me agree with you that there are definitely some difficult questions. This excellent article covers these problems: http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j19_2/j19_2_83-90.pdf. But in the end, you just can’t get around that in all of these cases, real history was being referred to, and that this is what the author actually intended to convey. Not saying you deny that, just saying, the challenges lead towards ultimately actually denying that these accounts even are true in what they clearly meant to assert, which is something I’m glad to see (see article above) has some very good answers to.
But anyways mate, just thought I would share my response on those two objections, but you are to be commended to have young-earth-biblical viewpoint at all, it is particularly hard to do that in biblical graduate programs (of all things!), I know that first hand.
Hello Van!
I’m glad you’re still with us. Can I ask you two questions?
First, I understand why you think we are crazy. I know our views look totally foolish to you, I understand why you would see things that way.
Question 1)
You stated: “One proof that he is wrong is in the fact that Sarfati will not be receiving a Nobel Prize for science for debunking evolution and neither will any other creationists – ever.”
But did you know that evolutionary research itself has never received the Nobel Prize as well (to my knowledge)? So it is disingenuous to expect creationists to get the prize “for debunking evolution,” indeed, highly disingenuous.
But on creationists and the Nobel in general: Did you know there *is* a biblical creationist that should have won the Nobel prize? The inventor of the MRI.
http://creation.com/the-not-so-nobel-decision-raymond-damadian-mri
[In 2003, the Nobel Prize for Medicine went to the breakthrough field of diagnostic MRI scanning. It was shared by two scientists. But, to the stunned disbelief of virtually all who worked in that field, these did not include Raymond Damadian, even though the terms allow for up to three people to share the award.
Dr Eugene Feigelson is Dean of the State University of New York College of Medicine in New York, the institution where Damadian’s pioneering work was done. He said, ‘… we are so disappointed, and even angry … all of MRI rests on the fundamental work that Dr Damadian has done here.’
There is no doubt that the two scientists who were honoured, Dr Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield, did contribute to the field. Lauterbur developed techniques for producing images from scans, and Mansfield refined the techniques to make them more practical. But there is absolutely no question that the pioneering breakthroughs were Damadian’s. He was the first to point out, in a landmark 1971 paper in Science (based on experiments involving lab rats), that MRI could be used to distinguish between healthy and cancerous tissue. Lauterbur’s own notes indicate that he was inspired by Damadian’s work.
As an experimentalist, Dr Damadian had to overcome the scoffing of theoretical physicists. Against much opposition, he built the first working MRI scanner. The first MR image of a live human skull was made with this machine on 3 July 1977. The prototype is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Medical Sciences. In 1972 Dr Damadian filed the first patent for MRI scanning.]
Question #2) (for Van, if you are willing to take the challenge)
You stated: Of course if you could refute anything I said you surely would have. However since no one can refute what I said, your claim is simply what we call hot air.
But first, Sarfati did respond, did you miss it?
Van rehashes the same boring old atheopathic canards refuted in Galileo Quadricentennial: Myth vs fact and the flat earth myth. Note that the leading flat-earther is one of his fellow evolutionists!
Second, I am working an a site dedicated to answering such claims with regard to the bible’s cosmology: http://www.hebrewcosmology.com.
But I have one last question for you:
If our views are so foolish, then please tell me where my thinking was wrong in this one page article I wrote called Erosion! The Ultimate Fact Check on a ‘Billions of Years Old’ Earth. If it’s so foolish, surely you can set the record straight very easily?
Can Nicholas help with my book query, if Dr Sarfarti is busy? He seems very knowledgeable on the subject.
Hello Anthea, greetings in the Lord.
You noted that your nation birthed Darwin, but it also birthed A. E. Wilder Smith and many other terrific creationists! Way to go teaching your children.
For your book query, are you looking for textbooks per say, or more just general good creationist resources? It’s hard to answer not knowing that, and on the textbook area I am pretty unknowledgeable, but here goes:
For textbook material, you might check out: http://usstore.creation.com/catalog/books-education-resources-c-4_8.html
For DVDs, on Astronomy: these two are terrific: http://creationastronomy.com/. Then see the all time famous Starlight and Time by Russ Humphreys, of which the DVD is all online now! You can see them referenced on my little incomplete website, along with a few other terrific videos:
http://creationontrial.com/ (4 videos altogether)
While on that site, this article by John Baumgardner is terrific:
http://creationontrial.com/articles/The-Los-Alamos-Origins-Debate.pdf
A bunch more could be suggested if I have a better idea which genre you’re looking for, and for what purpose (more long-term educational material?) I just asked some friends in a query, so I might post some more suggestions in a bit.
Van,
This is my first time looking at the comments here, but could you explain why you put “Dr.” in quotes when referring to Dr. Sarfati, since he has an earned Ph.D. in Chemistry from a recognized university? Thanks in advance for your response. And if you meant to mock — which appears to be your intent — then you disqualify yourself from being taken seriously when you do so. Just a word for the wise.
Anthea,
For fuller academic type materials, following are some math and science curriculum taught from a young earth perspective, by Dr. David Shormann:
http://www.diveintomath.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2rKBNmUY9C8#t=241
I haven’t used these materials, but David is on a creationist forum I am part of which is how I know of him and his materials, they look pretty cool.
BTW: in general, I assume you are subscribed to a creation magazine by either AIG or Creation.com/Creation Ministries International?
http://creation.com/creation-magazine
And for more in-depth, you can subscibe to the journal, which I have been for many years:
http://creation.com/journal-of-creation-formerly-technical-journal-tj
Dr. Brown, are you reading this? If so, I would love to get you a subscription to this journal! Not like you need the money savings, it’s low cost, but it would be my honor to get a subscription for you. Just need an address, if you would like 😉
Hi guys, sorry for posting another comment so soon, but the link to the video preview for that curriculum I just posted should have been this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WTNZ6IO_YUQ
Hello Nicholas
Thank you for your kind attention. You have added great links, for resources that I had not seen. Any further suggestions are most welcome, and will be hungrily and humbly received.
What I am looking for are the following:
1. Nature study DVDs, in the style of David Attenborough (serious) or Steve Irwin/Deadly 360 (funny serious)
2. Books about the reliability of the Bible for age 10 plus
3. Lush,pretty, ‘Cor-look-at-that’ coffee table books about Creation
4. Grand Canyon DVD or book about layers of rock and stuff
5. Textbooks or living book recommendations
6. Biogs of scientist or adventurers
For your information: So far we have used the Answers magazine — I have a subscription — and a variety of DVDs, mostly Buddy Davis. (To be honest, he’s on my intellectual level, and those cheesy songs are great … “It’s designed to do what it does do, and what it does do, it does do well” etc.) We also worked through ‘The Mystery of the Disappearing Mountain’ in summer of 2012 and learned about geology. We also saw the DVD about Mt St Helens. When our son was little and into dinosaurs, we saw some DVDs about that. My husband and I are getting into apologetics/evidence for faith materials, so he showed our son a Josh Macdowell Youtube film.
For our science, we have used a blend of Living Books and Abeka textbooks. I am thinking of switching to Jay Wile’s textbooks because I love experiments and he is trialling some new materials for younger children.
Thank you again.
PS Because I am in the UK, you might get a reply ages after you have posted your comment. (Not Long Ages afterwards, however!)
Doug MacLean, you have missed some of my points. First, human death alone is enough of a problem for long-age beliefs. That’s because undoubted Homo sapiens fossils are “dated” to long before Adam, unless the biblical timeline is stretched way beyond breaking point. Here is a detailed paper on the problem, and since then, even “older” fossils have been discovered Pre-Adamites, sin, death and the human fossils. Many long-agers, such as John Lennox and William Lane Craig, are oblivious to this problem.
So the question about animal death before the fall is in one sense ignoring a bigger problem: human death before the Fall. However, Romans 8 indicates that Adam’s sin had cosmic effects that include animal death and suffering. One effect was the change in the original vegetarian diets God prescribed in Genesis 1:30. Isaiah 11 and 65 allude to Eden and state “they will no more hurt or destroy”. See The carnivorous nature and suffering of animals.
Doug MacLean, about the timing of the Fall of Satan and Man, I’ve already explained that in “Timing of the Fall” in Why Bible history matters. A forthcoming book I’ve finished writing refines and elaborates on that. Satan fell after Creation Week, but his fall didn’t have the cosmic effects that Adam’s fall did.
Hello Van!
I’m glad you’re still with us. Can I ask you two questions?
First, I understand why you think we are crazy. I know our views look totally foolish to you, I understand why you would see things that way.
Van: It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not a scientist and neither are you. However it should worry you that the people who do matter such as scientists and Christian Academics do in fact think you’re insane.
Question 1)
“You stated: “One proof that he is wrong is in the fact that Sarfati will not be receiving a Nobel Prize for science for debunking evolution and neither will any other creationists – ever.”
But did you know that evolutionary research itself has never received the Nobel Prize as well (to my knowledge)? So it is disingenuous to expect creationists to get the prize “for debunking evolution,” indeed, highly disingenuous.”
Van: Well Dr. Sarfati will never change what is taught is your own private Christian colleges and universities either. Your own colleges and universities go to great lengths to distance themselves from any kind of creationism, young earth, old earth or their poorly disguised cousins Intelligent Design and Information “Theory.” I put theory in quotes because none of these things qualify as real theories. I knew in advance you would mention Damadian because all you creationists get your answers from the same apologetic websites. I’ve seen every answer you would make hundreds of times before which is why I know how to deflate, debunk and defeat them. You’re welcome.
Van rehashes the same boring old atheopathic canards refuted in Galileo Quadricentennial: Myth vs fact and the flat earth myth. Note that the leading flat-earther is one of his fellow evolutionists!
Second, I am working an a site dedicated to answering such claims with regard to the bible’s cosmology: http://www.hebrewcosmology.com.”
Van: So do you deny that the Church hid the findings of Copernicus for 70 years after he died? Do you deny that the Church burned Bruno at the stake? Do you deny that the Church held Galileo under house arrest?
“But I have one last question for you:
If our views are so foolish, then please tell me where my thinking was wrong in this one page article I wrote called Erosion! The Ultimate Fact Check on a ‘Billions of Years Old’ Earth. If it’s so foolish, surely you can set the record straight very easily?”
Van: If your views are not so foolish then why don’t any of your own Christian colleges teach them? Humiliating isn’t it? I can’t believe people are still parroting Kent Hovind’s ridiculous claims. Old mountain ranges have been eroded flat. However there are also forces creating new mountains all the time. A good example would be the Himalayas which are still rising. Explain that please. Rates of erosion are high because of more mountain building and higher mountains than usual in the past. Erosion slows as mountains lose elevation. Do you really believe that our continents are only affected by erosion and no other forces have any effect on them? What’s so funny about your claims is that the reasoning behind this claim contradicts the reasoning behind another creationist claim which is that volcanoes build too much material for an old earth. So which is it? It looks like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and no amount of erosion is going to help you out of this one.
Now I have two questions for you:
What evidence would make you reject creationism?
What evidence would make you accept an old earth and evolutionary theory?
Now I answered your questions. Please don’t ignore mine. And please don’t ignore the objections to your claims and go on repeating the same claims as if no objections to them have been raised. Other creationists do that all the time including Dr. Sarfati. Don’t be like them.
Dr.Brown:
Van,
This is my first time looking at the comments here, but could you explain why you put “Dr.” in quotes when referring to Dr. Sarfati, since he has an earned Ph.D. in Chemistry from a recognized university? Thanks in advance for your response. And if you meant to mock — which appears to be your intent — then you disqualify yourself from being taken seriously when you do so. Just a word for the wise.
Van: Academic qualifications don’t prove a thing. It’s what you do with them that matters. Sarfati has proved that he has little regard for his degree or science. The tone of someone’s remarks has no bearing on whether they should be taken seriously or not. I happen to know that creationists take me very seriously and well they should. I’m a constant reminder of just how implausible their beliefs really are.
Much of what Sarfati said just made me laugh out loud. His claim that a global flood [for which there is not a shred of evidence] sorted things out the way we observe them now is absurd. Has this guy ever seen the aftermath of a flood? Someone should take him to the site of a recent flood so he can see how ridiculous it is to claim flooding water sorts anything.
A young lady called the show and bragged that she was a science student, that she loves science and is so glad that science is based on facts rather than theories. Huh? Spoken like a true creationist. To creationists a theory is something someone came up with after drinking all night. However in science a theory is an explanation of the facts. The Theory of Evolution explains the facts of evolution such as the fact of common descent. That’s right creationists: common descent is a fact, not a theory.
I will listen to the Sarfati-Brown conversation shortly. Meanwhile Van may wish to see what happened during comments a couple of years ago:
http://www.lineoffireradio.com/2011/08/09/spiritual-truths-from-genesis-one-and-thoughts-about-the-age-of-the-earth-and-dr-brown-interviews-young-earth-creationist-scholar-jonathan-sarfati/comment-page-2/
Whenever a young Earth creationist states that they love ‘science’ they either do not know what they are talking about (because what they are loving is pseudo-science) or else, if the person presents themselves as an expert, they have secretly REDEFINED the word science and they really mean viewing reality thorough ‘biblical glasses’ (as the CMI is today advocating when highlighting an article about supposedly ‘young’ polar ice sheets).
Ashley
I note that Dr Sarfati has not refuted the comment by Van: “the notions that the Earth is flat, never moves and is orbited by the sun are much more obvious in the Bible”. He just posted a link saying that the early and medieval church did not teach that Earth was flat. The CMI article flagged scarcely examined any Bible VERSES (and Isaiah 40:22 does not rule out Earth being a flat circular disc).
You would never guess that Sarfati did not refute this from reading THIS blogger:
http://www.piltdownsuperman.com/2013/10/audio-saturday-dr-sarfati-and-line-of.html
Hello Dr Sarfarti
Did you have nay thoughts on the questions I posted on Oct 5th, comment number 61? I am glad to see that you are still commenting, despite the patronising way some people have addressed you.
It’s to Dr Brown’s credit that he has Christians on a range of topics as guests on his show, and he tries to reflect the views of believers on all sides of a (non-salvation) issue.
BTW, if anyone objects to the cheap sarcasm of the poster Van, then we should “examine ourselves” to see whether we have made snotty asides about people who don’t agree with us.
Van,
Thanks for taking the challenge, by actually briefly addressing THE EVIDENCE, which is the only thing I care to talk about here.
(for the other 80% of your response, it was just a rehash of ‘we can’t think for ourselves, let’s have someone else think for us’ – so much for the appeal to reason by the atheists):
Van presents a worthwhile objection:
[Old mountain ranges have been eroded flat. However there are also forces creating new mountains all the time. A good example would be the Himalayas which are still rising. Explain that please. Rates of erosion are high because of more mountain building and higher mountains than usual in the past. Erosion slows as mountains lose elevation. Do you really believe that our continents are only affected by erosion and no other forces have any effect on them? What’s so funny about your claims is that the reasoning behind this claim contradicts the reasoning behind another creationist claim which is that volcanoes build too much material for an old earth.]
A core part of my argument probably needs to be worked into my article, which was left out because in writing this originally, I had to fit it into 3/4 of one page (with no exceptions, it was one page in a bulletin).
The key is that, even with the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest, we find fossil bearing strata in it even up to the highest layers. Since these layers are dated to tens of millions of years old according to the evolutionary/uniformitarian paradigm, there is therefore NO WAY those layers could have lasted for tens of millions of years, they would have been eroded away in the process of erosion we see occuring even at today’s slow rates.
Here is a refresher from the article:
[This situation gets only worse when we look at the erosion rates of mountains, which are much greater than .06 mm a year. One estimate of the erosion rate of Mt. Everest (with an evolutionary age of 50 million years) is 2.7mm per year (which itself is a highly conservative [low] estimate according to some).[2]
Fact check: 2.7 mm * 50,000,000 yrs = 135 km (83 miles).
Mt. Everest is a whopping 5.5 miles high, but has it really been completely eroded 15 times over?! And where are those 83 miles worth of disposed sediment?!]
So if Mt. Everest is 50 million years old, at that very slow rate of erosion, only 2.7mm per year, the entirety of the mountain should have been eroded over 15 times!!! Any fossil bearing strata on Mt. Everest, that are tens of millions of years old supposedly, could not possibly have survived.
So yes, I am aware of the standard answer to this objection: Mountain uplift. But that cannot answer the problem of the fossil bearing strata having survived this supposed erosion-then-replacement-by-uplift cycle. This along with hundreds of other major objections is a terrible challenge to evolutionary dating. There is really no answer that can be given, so why not dump that faulty model? The evidence shows that it’s not true or viable.
Van,
A flood can sort out a lot of things. I first found out what water can do to separate materials when I was in grade school.
The teacher had a mason jar of various shades of color and textures of material, sand, dirt, silt, whatever, and these were layered one upon another, and one student asked her how she did that.
Then she shook the jar and I thought it was all messed up, so much so that we wouldn’t see it the way we had, anymore.
But when everything settled down, it looked as it did before.
All around the globe we see layers of differing material, so similar to what I saw in a mason jar.
Nicholas
The Himalaya, ‘young’ by Earth standards, are still growing (as well as eroding):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17191400
The marine fossil bearing layers might extend quite deep if they rose up from below by subduction and orogeny – rather than that the fossils somehow arrived there via a colossal flood (despite Everest being nowhere near the coast either now or 4,300 years’ ago).
I also found THIS (which I’ve just noticed that you are referring to in your latest comment):
http://creationontrial.com/articles/Erosion-Ultimate-Fact-Check-on-Billions-of-Years.htm
It appears you are making misleading claims regarding the influence upon landscapes of erosion (misleading because your article totally ignores tectonic uplift):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tectonic_uplift.
Also, eroded material is not destroyed but recycled. (Unless you are a magician.)
Van pointed out that the Himalaya are still rising, but your response to simply IGNORES the importance of this and wrongly claims that high altitude fossil bearing rocks should have been eroded away after c 50 million years. If a flood brought the marine fossils there, then yes the fossils should have disappeared with the eroded upper rocks that contained them. But it didn’t – and they haven’t.
I suggest that it is you who needs to check FACTS. You could start by reading online rebuttals of YEC claims to see whether those claims actually stack up. Have you done so?
RAY: planet Earth is not enclosed in a jar. Is it?
Dr Brown
I have asked you THREE times why you are failing to moderate my posts – by email, from your website, and on your Facebook page.
You have until 11 pm UK time on 8 October to either approve my posts, fail them, or otherwise reply to my enquiries. Why am I on pre-moderation AT ALL when I have not posted here since 2011, and all my posts were approved THEN? And how come other people’s posts ARE appearing when mine are being held back?
IF YOU CHOOSE BLATANT DISHONEST RUDE CENSORSHIP INSTEAD YOUR BEHAVIOUR WILL BE EXPOSED BY EMAIL (I HAVE ON-SCREEN PHOTOS OF MY POSTS) AND AT THE BCSE COMMUNITY FORUM.
If however you behave honestly and fairly, NO such thing will happen.
The choice is yours.
John Heininger and Nicholas Petersen have received emails about your behaviour. They have received photos of my replies to them that YOU appear to wish that they will NOT see.
I have now listened to Sarfati’s evasive answers on your programme. He is a clever man for sure.
A H-R
It’s amazing that an obsessive apostate like A.H.-R. has such a strong entitlement mentality that he thinks he has some right to post on others’ sites, then makes threats if he doesn’t get his own way.
This is quite notable for refuting the atheistic revisionism of the history of Christianity and science: The Dark Age Myth: An Atheist Reviews “God’s Philosophers”:
…
About once every 3-4 months on forums like RichardDawkins.net we get some discussion where someone invokes the old “Conflict Thesis”. That evolves into the usual ritual kicking of the Middle Ages as a benighted intellectual wasteland where humanity was shackled to superstition and oppressed by cackling minions of the Evil Old Catholic Church. The hoary standards are brought out on cue. Giordiano Bruno is presented as a wise and noble martyr for science instead of the irritating mystical New Age kook he actually was. Hypatia is presented as another such martyr and the mythical Christian destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria is spoken of in hushed tones, despite both these ideas being totally untrue. The Galileo Affair is ushered in as evidence of a brave scientist standing up to the unscientific obscurantism of the Church, despite that case being as much about science as it was about Scripture.
…
It’s not hard to kick this nonsense to pieces, especially since the people presenting it know next to nothing about history and have simply picked up these strange ideas from websites and popular books. The assertions collapse as soon as you hit them with hard evidence. I love to totally stump these propagators by asking them to present me with the name of one – just one – scientist burned, persecuted, or oppressed for their science in the Middle Ages. They always fail to come up with any. They usually try to crowbar Galileo back into the Middle Ages, which is amusing considering he was a contemporary of Descartes. When asked why they have failed to produce any such scientists given the Church was apparently so busily oppressing them, they often resort to claiming that the Evil Old Church did such a good job of oppression that everyone was too scared to practice science. By the time I produce a laundry list of Medieval scientists – like Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Peckham, Duns Scotus, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead, John Dumbleton, Richard of Wallingford, Nicholas Oresme, Jean Buridan and Nicholas of Cusa – and ask why these men were happily pursuing science in the Middle Ages without molestation from the Church, my opponents usually scratch their heads in puzzlement at what just went wrong.
…
About the Bible verses, see Is the ’erets (earth) flat? Equivocal language in the geography of Genesis 1 and the Old Testament: a response to Paul H. Seely and the further exchange Is the ’erets (earth) flat?.
Ashley,
Though the planet earth is not enclosed in a jar of water, what in your opinion might happen if different types of rock, soil, silt, etc, were put into it and shaken?
Might they settle just as we see in differing layers of material on this earth?
Did you ever take samples of different colored material from different layers of material, put them in a jar of water, give it a shake and observe how they settled out?
Would they settle in the same order in the jar as they are seen on the planet itself?
See Experiments Show Sedimentary Layers Are Not Age Layers.
This Van person is resorting to a version of the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy (aka stipulative definition) that I have called the ‘no true scientist’ fallacy, which is equally circular:
A: No true scientist believes in biblical Creation or doubts goo-to-you evolution.
B: Not so, because Prof. X is a scientist by any normal criterion, with an earned Ph.D. in biology, a world expert in his field and with 106 refereed scientific publications and five patents, yet he believes in biblical Creation and is sceptical of goo-to-you evolution.
A: As I said, no TRUE scientist doubts evolution!
“then makes threats if he doesn’t get his own way.” (Dr Sarfati.)
My ‘way’ was simply fair treatment, as has been meted out to OTHER contributors, Jonathan.
I am grateful that my posts have now belatedly appeared. I will record the fact here:
http://forums.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2762&start=105
In response to Ray, shaking a jar full of water was no scientific analogy for ‘Noah’s Flood’. You would need a very large jar (or tank) if it contained rocks as well as soil and water. Yes, I am sure the material would settle out at the bottom when shaking stopped. Probably approximately sorted by grain or stone/rock size. But ‘Noah’s Flood’ was not a worldwide ocean being shaken up and filled with soil and rocks – not in my Bible anyway. It was a claimed temporary inundation of all dry land (from above and below and probably from the side too).
Hello Ashley, I appreciate your challenge.
You stated: “The Himalaya, ‘young’ by Earth standards, are still growing (as well as eroding)”
Actually the uplift rate appears to not be matching the erosion rate (Dr. John Baumgardner has made this point here (bottom of Geological Time section)), which is a big problem, but it’s not the main thing I am focusing on. We have no contest on mountain uplift in general, as I clarified to Van. The problem is this uplift-erosion cycle would completely destroy the supposedly old strata (marine fossil-bearing and otherwise) that are dated to tens to hundreds of millions of years old. So even if we allowed the uplift rate to actually “catch up” with the erosion rate, that will still make the layers below our feet all very young, ‘recently’ replaced, because the older stata would have been eroded away and replaced long ago.
Just to get an idea of the magnitudes we are talking about here, here’s my fact check again with regard to Mt. Everest:
2.7 mm * 50,000,000 yrs = 135 km (83 miles).
83 miles of erosion is enough to replace Mt. Everest *completely* 15 times! At that rate, Mt. Everest would have to be ‘recyled’ every 3.3 million years!
With regard to the continents: with 0.061mm being the average continental erosion rate, but over 500 million years in this case, to correspond with the purported age of the Cambrian explosion:
0.061 mm * 500,000,000 yrs = 30.5 km, or 19 miles!
Most places you can go on the land surface of the earth are under 1 mile in elevation from sea level (here’s a nice earth elevation histogram). This meager rate of erosion of 6 percent of one millimeter would have washed into the sea everything we see currently not just once, but TWENTY TIMES over in the time since fossil-bearing strata supposedly started forming, and yet there are all of those strata still. There they are. Why are they there still? It’s a puzzle, isn’t it? Perhaps those strata are actually testimony of a massive world-wide flood catastrophe that occurred only 4,000 years ago? Which is why all these strata have not been washed into the sea yet? But even to consider such a heretical notion would take a massive paradigm shift, and also get one kicked out of acceptable social structures, so why do that?
Ashley: [Also, eroded material is not destroyed but recycled.]
Well, Ashley, you just touched on one of our Top 10 Reasons for a Young World (see Reason #3: Not enough mud on the sea floor). I would guess you just pulled that assertion out of the hat. I don’t blame you for it, but this is actually a huge problem. SO big that it would take only the very “small” amount of time of 12 million years (being generous with the numbers in fact) to reach the current level of mud in the oceans.
Our oceans are still relatively unclogged. You can see Dr. Humphreys talking about this here, at the 9:10 mark. He says the rate of subduction currently is about as fast as your fingernail grows. Being quite generous, you end up with much more sediment coming in per year than what is subducted.
Nicholas Petersen
I see someone else has given a satisfactory answer to your question and also pointed out that, “…you are making misleading claims regarding the influence upon landscapes of erosion.” And true to form for a creationist you completely ignored my questions and challenges. Obviously you did not confront me so you might learn something but only to preach your religious nonsense to me. Forget it. I’m not interested in reading misleading claims or in becoming a creationist.
Dr Sarfati
Is posting on blogs and promoting books on Christian radio your idea of doing scientific research? Perhaps you would like to step up to the plate and answer the questions another creationist on this site didn’t have the courage to answer. They are:
What evidence would make you reject creationism?
What evidence would make you accept an old earth and evolutionary theory?
I’m pretty sure your answers, if you are brave enough to even give honest answers to them, will enlighten us all on your true views of science as well as your knowledge of the subject. FYI Dr. Sarfati, scientific method requires that no finding is the final word and all findings are open for further revision and even outright rebuttal. Are your beliefs about the Bible open to further revision and even outright rebuttal? You may or may not be a real scientist, I don’t know. But I do know that your arrogant attitude tells us you aren’t a real Christian.
Van,
If you post one more personal attack — against anyone — you’ll be banned from commenting here. We don’t allow it, and you are dragging a solid discussion down that is taking place here with your invective.
Nicholas
Although the Himalaya range is comparatively young by Earth standards, the marine fossils found high up there are much older. Those who have studied them say that they comprise 400-million-year-old fossils of sea creatures and shells that were deposited at the bottoms of shallow tropical seas.
You also appear to be trying to label newly exposed rock (following erosion) as ‘young’. It doesn’t work like that. It ‘new’ old surface rocks that’s all.
If you only read young Earth creationists you are unlikely to get the full picture.
You refer to ‘problems’ but I do understand why what you mention is a ‘problem’ demanding a ‘young Earth’.
I read through this a while ago.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/101_evidences_for_a_young_age_of_the_Earth_and_the_universe
I look forward to seeing whether Dr Sarfati will respond to Van’s scientific questions. In the meantime, this is pertinent I think:
http://creation.com/rocks-to-reincarnation
“The Bible, as God’s written word, should be non-negotiable. Its teachings are propositional truth, and must be the foundation for all our teachings, including about the Flood. This applies not only to explicit statements, but to anything logically deducible from these statements. In fact, Jesus Himself endorsed the Flood as a real event, the Ark as a real ship, and Noah as a real person (Luke 17:26–27), so how can any of His professing followers deny it? No scientific model that overrules these clear teachings is acceptable”.
This, apparently, is the ‘ministerial’ use of science. By contrast Sarfati’s frowns upon a ‘magisterial’ use. It sounds like he’s suggesting science is the servant of APOLOGETICS.
Ashley