quote:I occasionally comment on the blog of Thinking Christian. The writer is a conservative evangelical sympathetic to ID, but does sometimes indicate some ability to look at evidence, thus leading to above-average arguments.
I had saved copies of both of these, but managed to track down the sources via my download history. Oddly enough, right now I'm having all kinds of "problem loading page / server not found" problems for all kinds of sites - Thus I can't check if the above links are still good.
Moose
Edited by Minnemooseus, : Add authors and article titles.
quote:What gives them this impression that they are far from alone, and how did this strange and sorrowful state of affairs arise? The answer seems to lie in the seminary experience shared by all our pastors, liberals and literals alike. Even some conservative seminaries staff their courses on the Bible with professors who are trained in textual criticism, the historical methods of biblical scholarship, and what is taught in those courses is not what the young seminarians learned in Sunday school, even in the more liberal churches. In seminary they were introduced to many of the details that have been gleaned by centuries of painstaking research about how various ancient texts came to be written, copied, translated, and, after considerable jockeying and logrolling, eventually assembled into the Bible we read today. It is hard if not impossible to square these new facts with the idea that the Bible is in all its particulars a true account of actual events, let alone the inerrant word of God. It is interesting that all our pastors report the same pattern of response among their fellow students: some were fascinated, but others angrily rejected what their professors tried to teach them. Whatever their initial response to these unsettling revelations, the cat was out of the bag and both liberals and literals discerned the need to conceal their knowledge about the history of Christianity from their congregations.
The various seminaries often do not gloss over the problematic aspects of the Bible etc.
Please give the Dreamcatcher topic a try, if anyone wishes to debate this theme.
quote:This is an old video from 1991 but it does an excellent job of explaining punctuated equilibria. That's because it features Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould.
There are two important lessons for creationists in this video. Let's hope they learn them.
1. The evidence for punctuated equilibria is based on thousands and thousands of fossils covering millions of years. It required a complete fossil record. It has nothing whatsoever to do with gaps in the fossil record. It's the exact opposite of gaps!
2. Evolution is observed when a single species splits into two species and that takes place over a relatively short period of time. "Relatively short period of time" does not mean that the new species poofs into existence. It means 50,000-100,000 years.
Whenever your creationist friends start lying to you about punctuated equilibria you can ask them to watch this video. You'd think that would stop them from spreading misinformation but then you realize that this video is 20 years old.
Facts don't seem to matter to creationists.1
1. In the interests of fairness, I should note that there are a great many evolutionists who also don't understand punctuated equilibria. I'm really posting this video for them and not for the creationists.
Something to go on your hard drive, next to the authoritarians book.
Moose
Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith
"Yesterday on Fox News, commentator Glenn Beck said that he believes President Obama is a racist. To be fair, every time you watch Glenn Beck, it does get a little easier to hate white people." - Conan O'Brien
"I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose
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