Utterly Meaningless

Sorry, don’t see it. What am I doing wrong? I see HEM and then the Old Schoolhouse magazine. Ken Ham is mentioned on the TOS ad. Is that what you are referring to?

Clear your cache. It’s “I Believe in Dinosaurs.”

Your money’s no good here, Daryl! Send us your address and the size and color you want and we’ll get a shirt in the mail to you right away. Thanks for the mention, and keep up the good work!

Eldon
info@IBelieveInDinosaurs.com

Actually, fossil evidence if not the result of a global flood (mass and rapid burial) would have to point to an old earth. I don’t personally know of anyone who rejects that dinosaurs existed or believes that fossils are a prank. I consider it a real possibility that man and dinosaurs once walked the earth together. Perhaps, the many legends of dragons have a historical root; one of thousands of years versus millions of years?
If the REAL point of contention isn’t identified, how can science be defended? Understand what you mock (besides certain people) which is a global flood of Biblical proportions.

Yeah- I understand that YECs (for the most part) had to finally give up the position that dinosaurs weren’t real when the evidence was so overwhelming that even THEY recognized that it made their position untenable. I didn’t design the t-shirts. If I had, perhaps I would have put a picture of a double-helix on the front, along with the words “I believe!”

I know exactly what I’m mocking. I read a fair bit of SC literature back in the ’80s. It was nonsensical to a mere undergrad studying chemistry. It makes no more sense 20+ years later.

Call me irreligious. Call me a heathen, a mocker, or a Fool. I don’t believe the world is 6,000 years old. I don’t believe Adam & Eve ever existed. I don’t believe that a man built a big boat and filled it with animals to survive a global flood. I think 99.9% of scientists (because of the overwhelming scientific evidence) would agree with me.

Annette, you can cite whatever anecdotal evidence of a couple of Ph.D. who are YECs. It’s not mainstream science. Hell, it’s not even science. Just call it faith and get it over with. I won’t think any worse of you.

Did they find any fossil spaghetti?

If not, I think I might have a bowl in the back of my refrigerator…

Dragons of the Western variety (Oriental dragons are something else entirely) are historical all right; they derive from snake totems, not something I would expect a literal believer in Genesis to be heavily into.

If, and this is a big if, we are to be “literal believers in Genesis,” then we need to work from the original Hebrew, and not from the various English translations, and we need to translate Genesis literally and not impose an interpretive translation that fits with our biases.

Please refer to Genesis 1:21. The word that is commonly translated in that verse as “whale” or “sea monster” could just as easily be translated to “huge lizard” or even – gasp – “dinosaur.”

If one loses the notion of “the evening and the morning were the ” xxth “day,” representing a 24 hour solar day (which would be impossible for days 1 through 3, since the sun and moon didn’t appear until the 4th day.) One could read Genesis as describing evolution, with a little literary license. That being the case, the leviathans, which I propose we call dinosaurs, appeared in the epoch prior to the creation of more modern fauna, with man being at the tail end of the latter epoch.

Does this prove that a group of “creative mother gods” (literal translation of Elohim, a feminine plural) created the Earth. Nope. Just food for thought.

Daryl,
I never called you any names. 🙂 I think to say you mock creationism and ID are quite accurate. It doesn’t bother me. I just want you do so in a way that might convince me of your view or at least cause me to reevaluate what I think/believe. I can find a physical description of a dinosaur in Job. Dinosaurs shouldn’t have been a problem for any creationist.
Since we are doing hypothetical t-shirt wars, my t-shirt with a double helix and a picture of a file cabinet with a stack of file folders next to it would say, “DNA witness to creation – Information doesn’t create and organize itself” On the back it would say “God is the Code Writer”.

I have gotten a revelation this morning about my own position on origins because of our differing views on DNA. I see DNA as at one point, having to had an outside source for information, like computer code being written and organized by a computer programmer. Then I understood it’s not just that I have a view that the Bible is literal. It’s that I accept certain revelation as a fact–that someone is outside of it all, knows it all from beginning to end, and has supernaturally revealed things we cannot know. There is nothing scientific about revelation. It’s just truth and often it is still veiled truth. There are some historical evidences that I look at in my acceptance of certain revelations. For example, in Isaiah 44:28 thru chapter 45, a King is mentioned by name and spoken about in detail 150 years before he came to reign. In Ezra chapter one, the first few verses, the reigning King, same one mentioned by name 150 years earlier, seems to acknowledge his God-given task and accomplishes it. Historical evidences give credence that King Cyrus did perform the task he was given. It would be an acceptance of revelation for me to believe that the Bible spoke of and to this King before he was even born. However, there is historical evidence that Jewish scribes were quite meticulous about only copying scriptures rather than editing and adding to them. At any rate, I accept that you see that my foundations for what I believe about the observable world are based on supernatural revelation. I see that the foundation itself of creation science is what causes you to reject it as science. Understandable. It *is* faith that causes me to accept certain revelation. I do believe that there is someone who is outside of it all and has shared truths about the observable world.

Annette, you still have to have reason and science. It says somewhere in the Bible, in the letters of Paul (IIRC) that you need to have “discernment.” Otherwise, faith can lead to some funny stuff.

Christians have believed honestly and wholeheartedly, for example, “God revealed that I need to use my sexual favors as an incentive to lead people to Him.” But something keeps us from joining the “Children of God.” Or they might believe, “God revealed that He would heal me with a miracle, so I would be sinful and a doubter to indulge in medical therapy.” And you have Christian Scientists, or other honest believing people like my mom, who died of breast cancer because she was persuaded by her faith to ignore the difference between reality and fantasy. To take this to its most absurd, a Quaker once told me, “I was led by the Light to renounce God, because the truth about him is unknowable, therefore we should not presume to know anything about him.”

Those examples are silly, right? What makes you think so? How do you know the difference between “God revealed this to me” and “The devil is trying to get me to think this?” Why do you only accept “certain” revelation?

What do you use when you use “discernment?” I call it “reason.” The correct application of reason when dealing with reality is called “science.”

Speedwell,
Just so I know we are on the same page with our definitions, I’m referring to my WB dictionary:
Science: 1. a. knowledge of facts and laws arranged in an orderly system: “Science is verified knowledge; that is knowledge that can be validated and communicated to other people (George Simpson).
b. a branch of knowledge: biology….2. the search for truth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m on a search for truth, but I participate in discussing and learning about the different branches of science in relationship to my YEC views that I am always weighing against evolutionary theories.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reason: the ability to think and draw conclusions

Discern: 1. To perceive with the eyes or intellect; detect.
2. To recognize or comprehend mentally.
3. To perceive or recognize as being different or distinct; distinguish.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The examples of people not being able to distinguish error from truth are sad but all too typical realities of our day. I compare it metaphorically to people who become disoriented under the water (inner compass failed) and think they are swimming up to the surface, only to discover that they became confused about which way was up! Swimming till they taste dirt.

Since you brought up the Biblical Paul, 🙂 Paul gave three categories for man: natural, soulish (senses, sensual), and spiritual. Natural discernment is like the definition above which uses the physical senses and the mind. Spiritual discernment is different. Revelations and spiritual truth of the Biblical kind are not discoverable by human wisdom. Here is an example of spiritual discernment in action and its purpose:
“For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the soul and spirit, and of the joints and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the hearts.” Hebrews 4:12.
“But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses *exercised* to discern both good and evil.” Hebrews 5:14
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto them, because they are *spiritually* discerned.” ICor.2:14

A person who has their spiritual discernment exercised well, should be able to recognize charlatans, hypocritical liars, men out to line their pockets, negative attributes like selfish motives and in the converse, positive character traits.
Reasoning and science works great for the physical aspect of the world. But just as using microscopes on people to see their motives and characters wouldn’t work, spiritual discernment is what it takes to recognize error from truth in the examples you gave.
Dealing with reality successfully requires the exercise of spiritual discernment, otherwise a person could spend their whole life swimming in the wrong direction and not realize it till they taste the dirt.

The fossil record for dinosaurs is similar to the fossil record in general. Sudden appearance of species followed by stasis and a lack of transitionals.

Its certainly possible that the reason there are so few transitionals is due to the fact that fossilization is most likely to occur as a result of some catastrophe.

But, its also a fact that the g-school bio books portray the geological column incorrectly, showing the gradual appearance of more complex species over hundreds of millions of years. The truth of the matter is that the majority of phyla that we know today appeared in the cambrian layer. (and in the pre-cambrian, we find only fossils of single celled life)

Daryl says design is possible, but its not science. His buddy Eugenic Scott of the NCSE says SETI is science but ID is not because SETI is searching for a naturalistic intelligence while ID is not. (ID is not trying to identify the source of the intelligence)

Anyway there’s a great 30 minute video interview and Q&A on C-SPAN of Michael Behe for those that want to think critically and perhaps learn something. (Speedwell, Daryl, hint, hint)

rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/wj112105_behe.rm

Have a Great Thanksgiving, Gobble Gobble!