The making of a thinking Creationist part three - the epiphany!
To catch up if you did not read parts one and two. Anyone who loves shredders should check out the White Cross youtube in part two when Rex Carroll does one of his solos.
Part one
Part two
"The Radarzoic Period
In 1977 I was a hard-drinking and drugging and living party animal who was born to run I was restarting my career as a rock singer. Then I got someone pregnant. Then I got married.
In 1978 I was ready to dump the wife and try something else. Then she got saved. Then she began praying for me. Then the pastor came to talk to me. Then I got saved. Then God began working on me.
In 1979 I was a Christian. I began talking with the pastor and assistant pastor and learning more. I began bringing kids and teens and some adults to church in a church bus. I began singing in choir.
By 1980 I was a pillar of the church, with lots of other young married couples as friends. I had become more successful at work and was moving from Union to management. We signed a land contract with friends to buy a house just three blocks from my work."
Yes, the idea that evolution and millions of years and all that was so integral to my worldview that it was difficult to conceive of anything else. But I had to put on my empirical hat and study the issue. It seemed to me that if I was a Christian, I ought to know the Bible and I should know what is history and what is poetry and prophetic and literal and figurative!
First, was the Bible clearly literal in Genesis or not? That took some studying. It frankly took me a few years to compare scripture to scripture and check out the original language and the usage of that language and to consider various claims like the "Tohu a bohu gap" and the day-age claim. But a careful reading of the passages right from the beginning told me that I needed to assume literal until shown otherwise. So even as I gathered information, the Genesis account as literal history was my working hypothesis. I was not entirely sure, but I was willing to start there.
Second, my many years of schooling. All my science classes in grade school and high school and college assumed Darwinism to be factual. There was no real discussion of the issue. So there had to be all sorts of evidence to back that up, otherwise why the party line everywhere saying the same thing? John Whitcomb and Henry Morris made some terrific points in The Genesis Flood, but surely the other side had all sorts of arguments? So I resolved to find them and consider them.
Third, there was my personal experience. I had done enough traveling and rock climbing and fossil hunting and tromping to know something about rock layers and fossils.
So I put all these things into the blender and set it to puree. I set about to use Bacon's scientific methodology to come up with a reasonable conclusion. However, there were major problems:
1) No one could go back in time to see the beginning of the Universe or of the Earth or of life. The Book of Genesis had an account of these things but was the Bible true? No Mr. Peabody to jump into a Wayback Machine to go see. So Origins science is historical science but one cannot OBSERVE past events. That was a difficulty.
2) Darwinist Evolution was considered to be factual, but no one was observing it happen now and there was no neat linear progression of life forms in the fossil record. Darwinism was too slow to be observed now, but too fast to be contained in the fossil rocks? Huh? Punctuated Equilibrium? Hopeful Monsters? This sounded more like science fiction.
4) The fossils! As I thought on fossils, I realized they were mostly rapid burial situations or they would not exist. Tracks were found. Fish eating fish, whales giving birth...fossils were primarily made by catastrophic and sometimes instantaneous disasters.
5) The lies! The Horse Evolution chart was a phony and the Haeckel Embryo Chart was a complete fabrication. The Peppered Moths were actually glued on to trees to try to make an invalid point, since we still have both light and dark varieties. I didn't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but what was going on?
So I read and read and studied and watched videos and lectures and read some more. What did Isaac Asimov think? Anthony Flew? Darwin himself? Various Huxleys? Modern scientists of all stripes. All these men with the same information, some of them twisting it, some of them not, some of them sure of themselves and some speculative. Finally I found one common denominator and I realized that the secret to understanding Origins Science was this: Worldview!
Worldview trumps reason and evidence and morality
For some, evidence had led them to take on a worldview. For others, they started with a worldview and fit the pegs into their assigned holes whether round or square. For in the world of Origins Science there are more people saying metaphysical things or basing their views on metaphysical opinions as opposed to a very few concentrating on evidence. Why were the Darwinists still Darwinists when it became apparent that DNA was designed (prompting a co-discover and several other scientists and academics to speculate that aliens from another world had seeded the planet with life)? Worldview.
I am probably one of the few people you have heard of that has read every Michener book ever published and, as far as I know, every Dickens and every Conan Doyle and most of the output of dozens of other authors. I love historical fiction and mystery and also science fiction and therefore do not just read the Bible and all sorts of technical publications (although I do those things) and great mystery writers bring forensic principles into their writings. Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was a master at deductive reasoning. Patricia Cornwell, being a coroner, brought forensics nicely into her books. Scott Turow's legal background and knowledge of Chicago politics has made a believable world based in Kindle County. James Patterson's books are page-turners that convert well to movies. Where do I stop? Grafton, Christie, Crichton, Clancy, both Kellermans...and the quite underrated Wilkie Collins (You have not really read mystery until you have read The Moonstone). Don't get me started on science fiction or fantasy and they are not applicable.
The point of being familiar with mystery stories and forensic techniques is the application of these skills to the evidence that we can observe. Empirical science can tell us how organisms reproduce and live now, what systems operate within them and how, things like that. But one must use logic and utilize the ability to deduce to read the rock layers and the fossils and make judgments about these kinds of evidence. Rocks do not talk and fossils do not walk.
I have spent now thirty years studying the matter of origins and within a few months of the beginning of that study I found that I had become a Young Earth Creationist. Scientists like Morris demonstrated to my satisfaction that the sedimentary rock layers could not possibly have been a result of long ages but rather were a result of the Noahic Flood. As I reviewed the evidence, I found a common theme. The Bible account fits the evidence nicely without all sorts of complicate explanations. The Darwinists have to bend time and space to explain things without really succeeding.
For instance, once DNA was discovered we knew that all life had a coding mechanism. A creationist says that this is a feature of a well-designed organic machine. Darwinists have written millions of words trying to come up with a plausible means of a natural cause for DNA with no success. In fact, now we know that the cell is incredibly complex with countless systems all operating at the same time. All of life is a testimony to design, as cells are continually repairing themselves and the cells that are part of an organism all know they are working in unison or act as if they know, while the symbiotic organisms may be separate but know to work in concert. You are a living planet, with bacteria all over you and in you, most of which are either harmless to you or important to your survival. We have discovered that life appears all over the planet and I do mean everywhere. There is life under your feet, way underground, at the bottom of oceans, miles overhead...the odds against even one simple cell happening by chance are too big to be considered possible and yet we know there are trillions of living things around us!
Common sense and Occam's Razor tell us that God created the Universe and all things, including all life. However, Darwinists have changed the scientific method to exclude supernatural causes and decided that the Law of Biogenesis cannot be a law anymore and not for scientific reasons but just because their belief systems require life coming from non-life.
We will talk about a LOT of specifics but the primary evidence that a Darwinist has going for him is imaginary - either the hope that someone will discover something or the just-so story they have used to explain away the obvious design features of life that can be found over 30,000 feet in the air and more than 30,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.
Source OurAmazingPlanet.com, Exploring the wonder and beauty of planet Earth through exclusive news, features and images.
More to come...By the way, the website above is one of those Darwinist propaganda/believe in global warming sites but the picture was too cool to pass up.
Part one
Part two
So it was early in my Christian life when I discovered Henry Morris and Creation Science. Here is the timeline again of my conversion and beginnings of life as a Christian:
In 1977 I was a hard-drinking and drugging and living party animal who was born to run I was restarting my career as a rock singer. Then I got someone pregnant. Then I got married.
In 1978 I was ready to dump the wife and try something else. Then she got saved. Then she began praying for me. Then the pastor came to talk to me. Then I got saved. Then God began working on me.
In 1979 I was a Christian. I began talking with the pastor and assistant pastor and learning more. I began bringing kids and teens and some adults to church in a church bus. I began singing in choir.
By 1980 I was a pillar of the church, with lots of other young married couples as friends. I had become more successful at work and was moving from Union to management. We signed a land contract with friends to buy a house just three blocks from my work."
The books and tapes from the Institute for Creation Research got me thinking. I had figured that the Genesis account was somewhat allegorical and had not given it much thought while God was busy trying to change me from the inside out. There was a lot of work to do and there still is. Never had it occurred to me that all these science textbooks and all these teachers from my school days could be wrong.
Yes, the idea that evolution and millions of years and all that was so integral to my worldview that it was difficult to conceive of anything else. But I had to put on my empirical hat and study the issue. It seemed to me that if I was a Christian, I ought to know the Bible and I should know what is history and what is poetry and prophetic and literal and figurative!
First, was the Bible clearly literal in Genesis or not? That took some studying. It frankly took me a few years to compare scripture to scripture and check out the original language and the usage of that language and to consider various claims like the "Tohu a bohu gap" and the day-age claim. But a careful reading of the passages right from the beginning told me that I needed to assume literal until shown otherwise. So even as I gathered information, the Genesis account as literal history was my working hypothesis. I was not entirely sure, but I was willing to start there.
Second, my many years of schooling. All my science classes in grade school and high school and college assumed Darwinism to be factual. There was no real discussion of the issue. So there had to be all sorts of evidence to back that up, otherwise why the party line everywhere saying the same thing? John Whitcomb and Henry Morris made some terrific points in The Genesis Flood, but surely the other side had all sorts of arguments? So I resolved to find them and consider them.
Third, there was my personal experience. I had done enough traveling and rock climbing and fossil hunting and tromping to know something about rock layers and fossils.
So I put all these things into the blender and set it to puree. I set about to use Bacon's scientific methodology to come up with a reasonable conclusion. However, there were major problems:
1) No one could go back in time to see the beginning of the Universe or of the Earth or of life. The Book of Genesis had an account of these things but was the Bible true? No Mr. Peabody to jump into a Wayback Machine to go see. So Origins science is historical science but one cannot OBSERVE past events. That was a difficulty.
2) Darwinist Evolution was considered to be factual, but no one was observing it happen now and there was no neat linear progression of life forms in the fossil record. Darwinism was too slow to be observed now, but too fast to be contained in the fossil rocks? Huh? Punctuated Equilibrium? Hopeful Monsters? This sounded more like science fiction.
3) The rock layers are not what we were told! It turned out that the "standard geological column" is virtually non-existent and that layers cross and change and duplicate and are flip-flopped or almost shuffled like cards! So geologists were being taught and then teaching lies.
5) The lies! The Horse Evolution chart was a phony and the Haeckel Embryo Chart was a complete fabrication. The Peppered Moths were actually glued on to trees to try to make an invalid point, since we still have both light and dark varieties. I didn't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but what was going on?
So I read and read and studied and watched videos and lectures and read some more. What did Isaac Asimov think? Anthony Flew? Darwin himself? Various Huxleys? Modern scientists of all stripes. All these men with the same information, some of them twisting it, some of them not, some of them sure of themselves and some speculative. Finally I found one common denominator and I realized that the secret to understanding Origins Science was this: Worldview!
Worldview trumps reason and evidence and morality
For some, evidence had led them to take on a worldview. For others, they started with a worldview and fit the pegs into their assigned holes whether round or square. For in the world of Origins Science there are more people saying metaphysical things or basing their views on metaphysical opinions as opposed to a very few concentrating on evidence. Why were the Darwinists still Darwinists when it became apparent that DNA was designed (prompting a co-discover and several other scientists and academics to speculate that aliens from another world had seeded the planet with life)? Worldview.
I am probably one of the few people you have heard of that has read every Michener book ever published and, as far as I know, every Dickens and every Conan Doyle and most of the output of dozens of other authors. I love historical fiction and mystery and also science fiction and therefore do not just read the Bible and all sorts of technical publications (although I do those things) and great mystery writers bring forensic principles into their writings. Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was a master at deductive reasoning. Patricia Cornwell, being a coroner, brought forensics nicely into her books. Scott Turow's legal background and knowledge of Chicago politics has made a believable world based in Kindle County. James Patterson's books are page-turners that convert well to movies. Where do I stop? Grafton, Christie, Crichton, Clancy, both Kellermans...and the quite underrated Wilkie Collins (You have not really read mystery until you have read The Moonstone). Don't get me started on science fiction or fantasy and they are not applicable.
The point of being familiar with mystery stories and forensic techniques is the application of these skills to the evidence that we can observe. Empirical science can tell us how organisms reproduce and live now, what systems operate within them and how, things like that. But one must use logic and utilize the ability to deduce to read the rock layers and the fossils and make judgments about these kinds of evidence. Rocks do not talk and fossils do not walk.
I have spent now thirty years studying the matter of origins and within a few months of the beginning of that study I found that I had become a Young Earth Creationist. Scientists like Morris demonstrated to my satisfaction that the sedimentary rock layers could not possibly have been a result of long ages but rather were a result of the Noahic Flood. As I reviewed the evidence, I found a common theme. The Bible account fits the evidence nicely without all sorts of complicate explanations. The Darwinists have to bend time and space to explain things without really succeeding.
For instance, once DNA was discovered we knew that all life had a coding mechanism. A creationist says that this is a feature of a well-designed organic machine. Darwinists have written millions of words trying to come up with a plausible means of a natural cause for DNA with no success. In fact, now we know that the cell is incredibly complex with countless systems all operating at the same time. All of life is a testimony to design, as cells are continually repairing themselves and the cells that are part of an organism all know they are working in unison or act as if they know, while the symbiotic organisms may be separate but know to work in concert. You are a living planet, with bacteria all over you and in you, most of which are either harmless to you or important to your survival. We have discovered that life appears all over the planet and I do mean everywhere. There is life under your feet, way underground, at the bottom of oceans, miles overhead...the odds against even one simple cell happening by chance are too big to be considered possible and yet we know there are trillions of living things around us!
Common sense and Occam's Razor tell us that God created the Universe and all things, including all life. However, Darwinists have changed the scientific method to exclude supernatural causes and decided that the Law of Biogenesis cannot be a law anymore and not for scientific reasons but just because their belief systems require life coming from non-life.
We will talk about a LOT of specifics but the primary evidence that a Darwinist has going for him is imaginary - either the hope that someone will discover something or the just-so story they have used to explain away the obvious design features of life that can be found over 30,000 feet in the air and more than 30,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.
Source OurAmazingPlanet.com, Exploring the wonder and beauty of planet Earth through exclusive news, features and images.
More to come...By the way, the website above is one of those Darwinist propaganda/believe in global warming sites but the picture was too cool to pass up.