Putting crackpot ideas on front page
The following is a Counterpoint column:
By Art Murphy
I am sitting here drinking my morning coffee reading the Aug. 20 edition of the News & Record, wondering why I ever sent the check to renew my subscription. Among all the major issues facing the state, nation and world today, the editor has taken valuable front-page space for a story about a "Creation Discovery Center" in Florida. This center and others like it, tries to foster what my Methodist minister father used to call "crackpot ideas" on an unsuspecting public.
We should be clear; there is no debate on the age of the earth. Science through scientific processes has demonstrated the age of the Earth to be in the range of 4.5 billion years, not 10,000. No amount of wishful thinking or mis-reading of the Bible will change that.
Second, when Darwin published, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," the question in science at the time was not whether speciation occurred, but how. Darwin and Wallace (how many of your readers know this man?), through brilliant insight, later fortified by carefully collected evidence demonstrated the mechanism, "natural selection." Natural selection as a process is not questioned by biologists or any serious scientist in the world today, and no amount of polling by Gallup, or statements from a president, who was a marginal student at best, will change that fact.
If our country does not stop this silliness, we are going to wake up one day and read that not a single Nobel Prize in science or medicine will have been awarded to an American. Those prizes will be awarded to scientists in nations that support serious, professional science that is used for the betterment of mankind, not to American pseudo-scientists who confuse proven science with their personal religious beliefs. Even today, many of the Americans who are awarded world recognition are individuals who migrated to the United States because of the scientific freedom and rich, serious, intellectual climate. However, these scientists may soon depart for Europe, Korea or China because these countries are more hospitable climates for science, leaving the United States in the scientific dust. "Ye shall reap what you sow."
The writer lives in Greensboro.
Comments (6)
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Not Darwin or any other credible scientist can explain why the Sun keeps burning after billions of years using the basic science of fire
Posted on September 3, 2005 8:24 AM
Heels,
Here's a couple of links for you to answer your querry. Indeed, scientists have had that answer since I was in High School and that was in 1981:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/961107a2.html
http://theunjustmedia.com/the%20creation%20of%20the%20universe%20rhythm_of_the_atoms.htm
Also, Darwin didn't concern himself with physics. That wasn't his area of study.
Posted on September 3, 2005 9:05 AM
Isotopic dating methods pretty much prove the Earth is older than most religious scholars wish it to be.
Believe scientific methods, or books written way back then?
I choose science.
Posted on September 3, 2005 11:12 AM
mr.murphy.....
" the age of the Earth to be in the range of 4.5 billion years, not 10,000 ".........are you stating that Christians are saying the earth is only 10,000 years old ? i suppose some Christians may believe that ( though i can't understand why ), but scripture does not lead to that conclusion. personally i believe it is entirely possible and plausible that between gen.1:1 and gen.1:2 could have been billions of years. i find nothing compelling in genesis account of creation to cause me to believe that God created the earth and then twenty four (24) hrs. later continued His creation, perhaps He created the earth and it "was without form and void" and then took a 4.5 billion years break - then came back to complete His task. the hebrew word for 'without form'is 'tohuw' which means formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness, nothingness, empty space - the hebrew word for 'void' is 'bohuw' which means emptiness, void, waste - so it seems to me the first act of God's creation in gen1:1 could possibly be the "big bang" that scientist refer to which validates the scripture,not challenge it. science and scripture do not need to be exclusive of one another.
Posted on September 3, 2005 11:47 AM
The author of Genesis employed figurative language to describe the seven 'days' of creation. 'Yom' is the Hebrew word for day, and is used to designate each of the seven 'days' of creation as well as the entire period of creation.
Genesis 2:4
These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the *day* that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Therefore, it is absurd to state that a creation day was 24-hours long.
Posted on September 3, 2005 2:09 PM
It is amazing to me how so many people hate Charles Darwin when all the man did was show that certain birds changed due to their environment. Christian Fundamentalists seem to believe Darwin was explaining creation itself. He was not. Evolution is a scientific fact, deal with it! True faith in God should not be shaken by science, only strengthened.
Posted on September 14, 2005 11:07 AM