Thank God for Evolution!

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I’ll get right on that. Which university would you recommend I apply to? What are your qualifications?
No need for a university - any introductory text on geology thoroughly and honestly studied should enable you to see through Berthault’s claims.

Since we have descended to the fallacy of the argument from authority, my scientific qualifications are a lot better than yours.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
It is a fact that one of B]your
little web pages insults Cardinal Schönborn and that you could learn some manners.

Neil Anthony, thank you for your reference to Alec’s brilliant expose of Cardinal Schonbrun’s assumptions. There is nothing ill mannered about his article. It is measured, substantiated, and polite, particularly in comparison to some of the posts on this forum! And it will help me in the preparation of my keynote address for the Epic of Evolution Conference.

Petrus
 
Alec, Michael Dowd notes that “the New Atheists and Young-Earth Creationists are both playing vital, necessary roles in furthering the evolution of religious perspectives. The New Atheists are assisting the evolution of religion by ridiculing trivial, uninspiring notions of God; the Young-Earth Creationists are doing their part by ridiculing trivial, uninspiring notions of evolution.”

Petrus
That is a very interesting perspective - I haven’t read Michael Dowd - can you suggest a good starting point?

I must say that I agree to the former argument fully, but I wonder about the latter one. YECs don’t really ridicule trivial, uninspiring notions of evolution - what they ridicule is their toy notion of evolution which overlaps hardly, if at all with the scientific notion of evolution. In science , we try to discover the truth about the way evolution works and we don’t worry about whether the answers are trivial or inspiring so long as they are correct.

I’ve looked Dowd up on Wikipedia. I see that they say he is influenced by Brian Swimme - if that is so that is a big red flag for me as I have no time at all for Swimme.

Alec
 
I’ve looked Dowd up on Wikipedia. I see that they say he is influenced by Brian Swimme - if that is so that is a big red flag for me as I have no time at all for Swimme.
Alec
Alec, I don’t know about the Swimme-Dowd connexion. Here is the link: thankgodforevolution.com/

What is your particular beef with Swimme?
 
Alec, I don’t know about the Swimme-Dowd connexion. Here is the link: thankgodforevolution.com/
Thanks
What is your particular beef with Swimme?
Have you read him? For example, his book called Universe Story? It is almost unreadable for its fanciful notions about physics and cosmology, its anthropomorphising of the universe, and its confused and breathless style. Reading it is like chewing carpet tacks - I’d rather be chained up and forced to listen to Vogon poetry. His main idea is a new-age notion of the universe as an active agent. He writes in clotted English that appears to be created from the detritus of others’ sentences cobbled together with sealing wax.

“In the beginning space foamed forth to create a vast billowing event of the expanding universe” I kid you not. What was his editor thinking of?

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
Have you read him? For example, his book called Universe Story? It is almost unreadable for its fanciful notions about physics and cosmology, its anthropomorphising of the universe, and its confused and breathless style. Reading it is like chewing carpet tacks - I’d rather be chained up and forced to listen to Vogon poetry.
No, Alec, I haven’t read him, but I like the Vogon poetry comparison. I’ll check out “The Universe Story.”

Does he take a pantheistic perspective – is that how his anthropomorphizing of the cosmos works?

Petrus
 
While I like the Mass in the vernacular, the opponents of Vatican II might have a point there.
Inthecloud, why not have it both ways? In my parish we usually have the Mass in English, but sometimes the priest says part of the Eucharistic prayer in Latin. And our Schola Cantorum sings entire Masses in Latin, whether Gregorian chant, or Renaissance polyphony, or baroque or classical. Our choir director is a specialist in polyphonic music, but we do other things as well. It’s all great!

Petrus
 
Neil Anthony,

I have previously posted a link for you to Index to Creationist Claims. This is a catalog of links related to numerous Young Earth Creationist claims.

If you spend some time here at TalkOrigins, you would be able to get access to numerous articles, with references, that you might find useful for further study.

In particular, you have made repeated mention of the (alleged) circularity of “fossils dating the layers”, etc etc. Have a look at this article from TO and see if it doesn’t give you some additional food for thought. talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html

Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D., has several useful articles, in particular, this one related to stratigraphy and Berthault.

“The Age of the Earth” by Brent Dalrymple is a very good resource for learning and understanding the science behind the modern consensus on how old the earth is. I recommend you order a copy from your favorite bookseller. If Peter Wilders had someone like Dalrymple on his video it would have been more interesting.
 
I agree, TLM for the classical music lovers like me and the traditionalists. But the Ordo Novo Mass should be improved.
BTW opinion on Karl Schmtiz Mooremann?
 
I agree, TLM for the classical music lovers like me and the traditionalists. But the Ordo Novo Mass should be improved. BTW opinion on Karl Schmtiz Mooremann?
Regrettably I never had the chance to meet Karl, but I know various of his friends, and they speak of him as a great man. He was a superb scholar of Teilhard de Chardin (a theologian whose work I too admire greatly), and a pioneer in the contemporary revitalization of the dialogue between religion and the sciences. Phil Hefner and I were speaking about Karl just a couple of weeks ago; here’s a link to Phil’s lovely and heartfelt testimonial to him:
usao.edu/~facshaferi/KARL.HTML

Petrus
 
Brian Swimme is new age fluff. Brian Swimme on what is god? (notice they put a lower cap on God. Swimme turns God into some cosmic cocktail. 😦 Don’t forget he has a video on science and religion. :rolleyes:
meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=swimme&topic=whatsgod
http://meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=swimme&topic=whatsgod

I honestly detest when people think that they can tell me the meaning of life. I want to yell, “GET A LIFE!” Consciousness prevailing the universe and process theology: Whitehead cotten candy for entertainment. Fluff and hot of the hat pops a pink bunny! 😛 Here is his meaning of life transcript:
meaningoflife.tv/transcript.php?speaker=swimme
http://meaningoflife.tv/transcript.php?speaker=swimme

Celebrating the Epic of Evolution:rolleyes:
epicofevolution.com/celebrate.html
epicofevolution.com/celebrate.html

As I said before I’m sick and tired of mixing science with theology. If you need a spiritual lift spend your time feeding the poor or hand out blankets to the homeless. 👍 If you don’t know who you are then look in the mirror and smile. Kiss yourself on the shoulder and pat your back. And thank God for the breath you inhale.
 
Brian Swimme wrote the forward to **The Huam Phenomenon **by Teilhard de Chardin. It’s mixes science and theology. I’ll pass on the pea soup. It is defintately not a science book nor theology that would suit my conscience.
 
hecd2 posts:

My comments inserted in red.
You want facts?
It is a fact that there are no new experimental results in the Russian papers. Error: an experimental program is currently in progress
It is a fact that his Chinese and Russian papers are unpublishable in Western high-impact journals – they are indeed codswallop: The suggestion that the Russian Academy of Sciences publishes “codswallop” is libellous
It is a fact that he was not the first to do flume studies to investigate deposition of sediments: He has never said he was. In fact he used the CSU laboratory because it was fully equipped for such experiments done in the past.
It is a fact that when he published in the 1980s and 1990s it was already well known by geologists that certain kinds of sedimentation can happen rapidly. ** He is fully aware of this. Flash floods for instance? He even uses these as examples. See the reports of his experiments. **
It is a fact that Berthault has attempted to extrapolate experiments in water a few inches deep to explain the deposition of hundreds of meters of sediment. **This is your opinion. It is not a fact./**COLOR]
It is a fact that there are features in the Tonto Group which preclude the possibility that it was deposited in a single violent flood. This an interpretation of an observation, based ‘inter alia’ upon the principle of superposition invalidated by experment.

etc. etc

None of these facts address the Berthault experiments because they are unsupported by experimental evidence. None demonstrate an error in his peer-reviewed results published by the French Academy of Science and Geological Society, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The experiments challenge the principles of stratigraphy. The logical way of refuting the results of experiments that conflict with your ideas is by producing experiments proving you are right. A simple way of ending the discussion is to show experimentally how sedimentary deposits transported by a water current superpose successively. Berthault has shown by empirical laboratory evidence that the opposite is the case.

Peter
 
Wildleafblower, what is your objection to this website? I met site developer Cathy Russell over lunch last week, and she seems to be a scientist of integrity, as well as a sincere Christian. Can you point out aspects of the website that you regard as objectionable? I’ve only skimmed the site, but apart from her mention of Brian Swimme (which – pace Alec – is in itself no crime), I can’t imagine what a Catholic might object to.

Petrus
 
Thanks

Have you read him? For example, his book called Universe Story? It is almost unreadable for its fanciful notions about physics and cosmology, its anthropomorphising of the universe, and its confused and breathless style. **Reading it is like chewing carpet tacks **- I’d rather be chained up and forced to listen to Vogon poetry. His main idea is a new-age notion of the universe as an active agent. He writes in clotted English that appears to be created from the detritus of others’ sentences cobbled together with sealing wax.

“In the beginning space foamed forth to create a vast billowing event of the expanding universe” I kid you not. What was his editor thinking of?

Alec
evolutionpages.com
LOL. I had just about given up on this thread as the finger pointing and giant cut and paste posts get wearisome. But these two phrases (that I bolded) made me smile!
 
Just one question and one question only.

Regarding the experiment in the sluice showing the deposition of the layers -

does this happen or not?

Yes or no.
 
No, Alec, I haven’t read him, but I like the Vogon poetry comparison. I’ll check out “The Universe Story.”

Does he take a pantheistic perspective – is that how his anthropomorphizing of the cosmos works?

Petrus
To be honest I think it’s his execrable writing style that I most object to:

“The universe venture was under way. Had the originating powers not gushed forth a world-creating space and time, our cosmos would have existed a quintillionth of a second, just a p(name removed by moderator)rick event that would have instantly snuffed itself out. The cosmic adventure of fifteen billion years has depended upon the ever-fresh unfurling of nascent space.”

“IN THE PRIMORDIAL fireball that followed the creation of the laws, nothing was sufficient untoitself. Just as the interactions were established, the latent heat released by the phase transition generated a vast storm of particles, which glimmered briefly, then dissipated, to be replaced by a new world of particles. Each thing was an emergent thing, a concentration of an energy that had been given, a contingent evanescent being that had only recently appeared in the world of existence, freshly, for the first time”

How much of that sort of prose can a body take? To be honest I didn’t make it to the end of the book, so am not sure about his philosophy. He could be a pantheist (no mention by him anywhere of a transcendent God), or a Deist. I’d plump for the former given what he’s said in some of his interviews. And I personally don’t think the idea of the universe as an agent with purpose is very helpful, so I don’t like his work from that perspective either.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
Thanks

Have you read him? For example, his book called Universe Story? It is almost unreadable for its fanciful notions about physics and cosmology, its anthropomorphising of the universe, and its confused and breathless style. Reading it is like chewing carpet tacks - I’d rather be chained up and forced to listen to Vogon poetry. His main idea is a new-age notion of the universe as an active agent. He writes in clotted English that appears to be created from the detritus of others’ sentences cobbled together with sealing wax.

“In the beginning space foamed forth to create a vast billowing event of the expanding universe” I kid you not. What was his editor thinking of?

Alec
evolutionpages.com
I may save this just to reread your adjective, adverb laden masterpiece of literary glitter. What a triumph of wordiness! I love it…hehe, seriously…
 
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