Thoughts on a Presentation by Andrew Snelling

I recently had the pleasure of attending a talk by Andrew Snelling.Unlike my previous experience at a talk by John Baumgardner, I do not feel that this time the speaker was honest at all. John truly believed in the potential of his models, of a young earth, and of the plethora of PRATTs he machine gunned through during his talk. Mr. Snelling on the other hand is a showman if I ever saw one!The bulk of his talk was dedicated to giving repeated examples of supposedly invalid radiometric dates. Some I have heard before such as the dating of the Hawaii basalts and of "new" rock from Mt. St. Helens. The thing I noticed most about the way he presented it though was just that we as the audience were supposed to take away that there was some great mystery going on here. Everything was crafted specifically to inject doubt into the minds of the audience about the competence of mainstream geology. The pattern was to present some vague, undetailed inconsistency and say, "Now what does this say about the voracity of mainstream scientists doing mainstream geology? Hmmmm?"The last part of the talk was about Po Halos. He completely breezed through his assumption that halos are created via alpha decay even though there is some evidence that alpha decay has nothing to do with it. It was done in a sort of "hurry up, don't look over here" kind of way which rooted the idea of alpha decay as the cause of halos for the rest of the presentaion. Then he went on to describe how these rocks that contain halos would have to form fast in order to trap the short lived Po in time for them to decay and leave the halos. It was a very clever and VERY DECITFUL tactic of hiding some real consequences of what he was proposing. A ziron is supposed to form trapping high concentrations of Po, the rest of the rock is supposed to form around it, and then the Po decays leaving the halos. Given the short half-life of some isotopes of Po, it mean that basically this would have to happen instantaneously which of course is absolutly rediculous unless the whole of chemistry as we know it is turned upsidedown. Unfortunatly there was little time given to the audience for questions that would point this out. Much of the time for questions was quickly consumed by friends of the hosting organization parroting creo dogma. After John Baumgardner was ripped into by some audience members, it seemed as though they did not want any challanges raised against what amounted to a very dubious presentation.The audience was composed of primarily engineers, and physicists.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Misc Topics I guess would be the best. I pass judgement onto the mod promoting. I don't really care where it ends up.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Can I get some admin love?

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Given the recent thread discussing Snelling and his ICR counterparts, I was wondering if anyone has any comment about how Snelling and the like are still using some of this long refuted stuff. Even willing to put themselves in the crosshairs of some of our nations top scientists and engineers.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

It's pretty easy to take potshots at established facts and theories from the sidelines. You don't need to know anything at all about the subject to "question" claims made by scientists. In fact it's even easier to do so if you don't have your facts straight.It's a lot harder however to present a consistent theory which models the natural phenomenon and fits all the available data, well enough to overthrow present models. For this reason, such efforts really fail to impress me.Edited by DarkBoards, : No reason given.

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Forbidden

Thank you for reporting on the talk. I had read this post when it was first up.I have found that it is not especially frutiful to simply get to the end

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Everything was crafted specifically to inject doubt into the minds of the audience about the competence of mainstream geology. The pattern was to present some vague, undetailed inconsistency and say, "Now what does this say about the voracity of mainstream scientists doing mainstream geology? Hmmmm?"

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and become critical from this perspective about any of the particulars of YEC creationism.If one can not accept this kind of doubting it is hard for the generalizations to attach to any approach to an unconditioned mental state. This suggests, to me, that there will be many scientists not otherwise persuaded that simply will find YEC scientific creationism as completely lacking as they are day to day work bench materialists and the less likely. If one has some reason for doubting the presentation of "consensus" science then reading Biblical Creationism can open up the particulars that may be of some support within a general distrust and might lead one to different generalizations for testing within science itself. That is how I find reading post-revivial creationist thought helpful. I have not tried to do this with dating issues. One thing to notice in this particular topic is that among creationists there was some discordance within pre-revival creationist circles on this very topic (This was documented by Numbers in his book The Creationists) Some of the difference say, between Baumgardner and Snelling may be due to which side of that axe each is sharpening or trying to make a fine point less humped up at.It is very unclear to me if it is supposed to be the creationists or the "evolutionists" who will have to break up the distrust.There is no doubt that scientists need do nothing offensive, but the defense of science humanistically may require that scecular science ceed(stop) enabling the doubt such as to dissiapte it into skepticism in the future. Seeing that Dawkins and Wilson and Eldridge have offered at best a temporary olive branch for the sake of a larger whole it is possible that creationism will change less conservatively but personal experience (private) suggests to me otherwise.Edited by Brad McFall, : word

What do you consider the difference is between pre and post revival creationists?When was the "revival" and what did it consist of?Obviously Snelling and Baumgardner are collegues but I thought it was curious to note the difference in both their style and percieved level of personal belief.Baumgardner obviously believed in what he was presenting. Snelling obviously believed he could convince people of what he was presenting. There is a gaping difference IMO.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Henry Morris wrote before his death,

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There has, indeed, been a remarkable revival of strict creationism (as distinct from theistic evolutionism or progressive creationism) in the past three decades

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.The Revival of Modern Creationism (II: ICR, For Such a Time as This) | The Institute for Creation ResearchOn reading this I was able to distinguish scientific creationsim and creation science. M.Ruse denies or fails to find this difference and Gould failed to make these seperations since "Arkansas" and talking with Bill Clinton on a plane as far as I can read out his last great work.Morris said later in the article

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There had been a few attempts earlier to establish an organized witness for scientific creationism, but these had floundered.

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Thus, I felt that "creation science" was a term covering a more general commendation of attempts that may be traced before and after the 60s while "scientific creationism" refers to distinguishable (subjectively albeit) threads of specific thoughts that have survived. This is not to say that creation science is not important but that it may refer to less organized versions.I think there is difference between John and his father. The later generation having LIVED THROUGH the period of revived organizing may feel more at ease presenting their positions less apologetically or neutrally. Alas, even though I had for a time thought I might actually work with Ken Ham and or move to San Diego, I find the basis of my own contention to be lack of higher thought in evolutionary circles rather than the poor state of insitutionalization of Bibilical Creationism that prevents me from speaking with a more creationist centric voice.Here is a possible source of Dr. Morris's use of the word "revival";

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Edited by Brad McFall, : evo source as well

Where was this talk?I think Snelling is very careful about where he presents his goofy ideas. I'd like to see him give a talk at a GSA (Geological Society of America) meeting or to geology students at universities around the country.You stated the audience was mainly physicists and engineers - who likely know very little about geology. Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

I've actually been considering inquiring at work to see about inviting several of these creation scientists to speak here - to professional geologists.

The talk was at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque where I live.I don't think SNL staffs many geologists but I could be wrong.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Ah, so then this "revival" of which you speak was the creation of "creation science" in the wake of Epperson vs Arkansas (1968), which led to the striking down of the "monkey laws" that had banned the teaching of evolution in public schools since the 1920's.Before this "revival", creationists, secure in having defeated evolution decades before, compiled and published their "scientific evidences" for their literalist beliefs (ie, young-earth, Noahic Flood, no evolution) for their own consumption. As such, these works were filled with blatant fundamentalist Christian wording and Biblical references, as one would expect.But Epperson vs Arkansas changed all that. Now it was no longer lawful to ban the teaching of evolution for purely religious reasons. So the creationists created "creation science" (AKA "scientific creationism") as a deliberate deception to circumvent the courts. They took those blatantly religious "pre-revival" writings and superficially changed them by removing all the explicit religious references and presented them as "purely scientific" and thus claimed falsely that they were opposing evolution on purely scientific grounds and for purely scientific reasons.So this "revival" was simply the start of the "creation science" deception.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

Well, for me it really has NOW, to do with "the Lemon Test" and after hearing what our now Chief Justice had to say about it awhile back I STILL think it was about that.But look, NO, I do not think it was "creation science" per say but "Biblical Creationism" that emerges BETWEEN creation science and scientific creationism. After Ruse completed his book "on design" it was clear he would *never* come **********to********notice this difference that is held to/*******for********* an average reader who may have been informed by NUMBERS' presentation in "The Creationist" pre and post "revival."As to "law" it seems to me rather that if a Legislature simply purports TO ADD information to a curriculum then unless there is something wrong and illegal "with information", that information, then there should be no reason to keep that information out.I think EvC value adds to BOTH creationism and Evolutionist thought so if EVC were what the Lousiana Legislature added then I can see little law against it. We have a thread discussing if it might not be a good thing for students to have access to EVC. Even Will Provine thinks it is important to get "everything" out on the table etc and he holds NO purpose for any final cause whatever.I will be very surprised if the outcomes of ICR's GENE project and the baramin definitions of hybrid connotations on kind is not even going to be a degree better in the decades to come, so no, I do not think this was a "deception." Instead as an evolutionary thinker, I ALLWAYS have to query my own mind if some other species "is not" being deceptive genetically.I think it is all the other way, sorry.I feel that scientific creationism can be noticed AFTER the distinction of theistic and progressive creationism is revealed but that creation science may apply in the amalgam.Edited by Brad McFall, : correcting sloppy typing that I thought was immaterial

Then you have no comment, as evidenced by your non sequitur.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.