excreationist

But if you're asking the question at the seminar, you'd probably have to wait to be given a microphone, then after the question (or in the middle of it) it would be taken away from you.
Well anyway, God created things just through speech. And since the Bible says the world is about 6000 years old, all life would be like how it is now, except that it was very good - so no probably no carnivores and no mutations (like crooked teeth). 6000 years isn't enough time for all life to evolve (even evolutionists would agree). But it may be enough time for some "kinds" to specialize - e.g. how the dog/wolf, cattle and chicken "kind" spread into lots of different breeds after only a few thousand years since Noah's flood.

Icky

"The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
~ Assyrian Stone Tablet, c.2800BC

John Solum

Well, I wasn't able to make it too Grand Rapids to hear Ham's talk. Grand Rapids was too far away from Ann Arbor for me to be able to make the drive.

However, there's another AiG talk on Feb 3 and 4 in a town called Swartz Creek that's near Flint, MI, which is only about 45 minutes from Ann Arbor. So I guess I'll be celebrating my birthday (which actually isn't until the fifth) by listening to Carl Kerby talk about " The 'Simplicity' of Christ vs. the 'Subtilty' of Satan", "Genesis: The 'Bottom Strip' of our Faith", "What is the 'Best' Evidence that God Created?", and "Dinosaurs, Fossils and the 'Real' Lost World". If I have to choose, I'll go to the talk on dinosaurs on Monday since I assume that's the talk that'll be most related to geology, and I am after all, a geologist.

Based on my conversations with everyone here, I've decided to ask the following questions:

1) During his talk about dinosaurs if he makes claims like " Tyrannosaurus Rex bones with red blood cells have been found" I'll call him on that.

2) I've modified my "soul-destroying terrorists" question. I'll ask if he agress that people who accept evolution or even worse, teach it, are either soul-destroying terrorists or blinded by Satan, and that if he believes that how does he explain the fact that many of the members of the faculty at Calvin and Hope colleges don't accept Young Earth Creationism and do accept evolution. I want to explicitly mention Calvin and Hope because they're well known and respected Christian schools in Michigan. If Kerby tries to dismiss them, I hope that won't sit well with his audience.

My objectives will be to try to let the audience know that things aren't as cut and dried as YEC speakers like to say they are. I want to ask a couple of awkward questions and convince the audience that they ought to do some research on their own, and that they shouldn't accept Kerby's claims at face value.

And now, on to bigger and better things:

excreationist:
No, that means that evolution doesn't have any moral implications. It's as inappropriate to try to say the theory of evolution indicates that they're aren't any morals as it is to make a similar statement about the theory of gravity (I know that analogy is made all the time, but I still like it).

Corey Hammer:
I like you're thinking, but I agree with excreationist that I wouldn't be able to follow up on it. I don't think I'll be able to respond to the response to my question.

Kosh

Icky, are you sure of the attribution? It sounds
exactly like the one I read from Martin Luther!
Unless he plagerizing!

Seems both accounts can't be right, unless it was in the Bible!

Oolon Colluphid

Kosh, it’s hard to say. According to <a href="http://www.geocities.com/fuzzy_ferret_foo/lit/ironic.htm" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://research.amnh.org/astrophysics/tyson/speeches/SpaceCenterDedication.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~odyssey/Quotes/Life/Politics/History.html" target="_blank">here</a> ("probably apocryphal, but funny"), it is Assyrian and 2800BC. <a href="http://www.chemistrycoach.com/books.htm" target="_blank">This site</a> even gives a bit more: “Translated from an Assyrian tablet engraved in 2800 BC, reported in The Sciences, July/August 1994”.

And this Google search didn’t bring up Luther in connection with it as translated. But without knowing the exact words of the ‘Luther version’, I can only say that it looks dodgy. The ascription is pretty well identical in many pages listing it, and one calls it Sicilian rather than Assyrian – a nice transcription error. Also, unless it’s a fairly free translation, it somehow doesn’t sound right for 2800BC. A complaint about every man wanting to write a book -- engraved on a stone tablet?! Did they have paper? How many people could read and write – enough to count as “every man”?

Looks like a job for Writer@Large...

TTFN, Oolon

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Seth K

It is. Many of the prophets wrote pretty similar passages bemoaning how Israel was sliding downhill into moral degredation. The prechers going on about America's moral decline are just playing the same game, following their biblical precedent.

excreationist

Maybe you could make it next time....

Ok, but don't expect the audience to respect you more for being a geologist - they'd just think you are more heavily indoctrinated than most people. It is better if you gave the impression you were very open-minded and semi-Christian.

<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/Search/default.asp?qu=rex+blood" target="_blank">Search for rex and blood in AiG</a>
<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2987.asp" target="_blank">'Blood Chemicals' found in dino bone</a>
"If the find is confirmed, and is not from contamination, this would be powerful evidence that the bone is not millions of years old at all." Reference: Science News, Vol. 148, November 11,1995 (p. 314).

You could look up the reference for yourself. Note that they're saying that it could be contamination and even if it confirmed it is only "powerful" evidence rather than evidence which shows the dinosaurs undeniably lived in recent times. The speaker might have that reference in their notes (I remember asking another speaker about a reference and they gave me references). So basically they'd give you a reference (probably) and the hot-shot indoctrinated geologist would be speechless and then they'd go onto the next question.

Well it isn't very hard for Christians to be persuaded that other Christians can be misled by false doctrines. In fact, in the past there were a lot of massacres between protestants and Catholics just over church doctrine. "Soul destroying terrorists" refers to humanists, in particular anti-religious humanists - not Christians who believe in evolution! If the speaker isn't aware of the Ken Ham article then he would point that out, otherwise he'd probably ask you for details about where you got that quote from.

Well I think that saying you're a (evolutionist) geologist and asking such easily answered questions will just show to the audience that highly-qualified evolutionists are no match in debates against knowledgeable creationists, therefore creationism might be the truth.

I think the best approach would be to imply that you're a Christian, though not necessarily say that you are. If they ask, I think you should just play dumb and try repeating the question.

The question would be like this:

"I'd like to read out some verses from Proverbs."
[have your Bible in hand with bookmark, maybe use <a href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?search=rod&SearchType=AND&version=KJV&restri ct=&StartRestrict=PROV&EndRestrict=PROV&language=e nglish" target="_blank">KJV</a> since it sounds like a redneck Bible]
"Proverbs 23, verses 13 to 14. Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell."
"And Proverbs 26, verse 3. A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back."

"There are some other verses like this one, but I'll just get on with the question." [have the other verses underlined in pencil]
"I was talking with an evolutionist who says they're a Christian and he says that the verses about beating kids and fools with rods is just a metaphor. But I reckon it is literal. So what do you reckon, Mr. Kerby?"

So basically you'd portray yourself as a bible-believing red-neck. You'd wear out of fashion church clothes. And when they ask if you're a Christian, pretend not to hear or maybe say "by God I am" or something.

The good think about this question is that it creates really big divisions. There are obviously people who believe that that part of the Bible must be taken literally. There are others who are against physical abuse of children. So it would be difficult for the speaker not to alienate some of the Christians. He might say that that verse is literal - like in the case of the cane at school, but it shouldn't be abused. Then just agree and saying "I thought so. Thanks Mr. Kerby!"

I think that is the best you can do - imply that creationists are child-beating readnecks and get the main speaker to agree with you. (so your attack is from within rather than appearing to be an outsider)

I think your origins determine your obligations. If God made and owns you then he determines your moral obligations. If you weren't created by God then it is up to you to decide what is right and wrong. Evolutionary psychologists (EP = Evolutionary Psychology) talk about how evolution is responsible for some kinds of primitive morality though.

John Solum

I'd like to point out that the quote is from the AiG article, and not Science News. I haven't read the Science News article, and their online archive only goes back to 96, but I have read a couple of other papers:

Schweitzer, M., and Staedter, T. 1997. The real Jurassic Park: the blood of a Tyrannosaurus rex won't bring the dionsaur back to life. But it could come close. Earth, vol. 6, p. 54.

and

Schweitzer et al. (there are 9 authors). 1997. Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone. PNAS, vol. 94, pp. 6291-6296.

So he could give me a reference, but that wouldn't justify his claims, and it wouldn't leave me speechless.

1) The entire dinosaur was not unfossilized. It'd be inaccurate to portray the bones as "fresh." Some regions deep in the leg bone of the dinosaur were not mineralized while the rest of the bone was. The mineralized regions sealed off the nonmineralized regions where the heme compounds were found, preventing groundwater from entering those areas. That provides an explanation for how the nonmineralized portions of the bone were preserved.

2) What Schweitzer and her fellow researchers found were not fresh red blood cells, but "heme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products." (Schweitzer et al., 1997 p. 6291) They found some proteins that are constructed in a particularly robust way. Since I'm not a biologist or a paleontologist, I'll just quote Schweitzer's description:

(Schweitzer and Staedter, 1997, p. 54)

Schweitzer et al. (1997) also state that hemoglobin crystallizes "fairly easily", and that combined with the stability of the porphyrin ring, this may have aided in the preservation of the materials they found in the bone. They also suggest that the compounds may have become "complexed with apatite" (p. 6291), further enhancing their stability. Apatite is a very stable mineral, so stable in fact, that it's one of the candidates for containing high level nuclear waste (along with zircon). It's also fairly common in the body, teeth are made out of a form of apatite. I don't know how likely this scenario is (I don't know how readily proteins compound with minerals, maybe one of the biologists here could shed more light on that??), but it sounds plausible to me.

Here's my summary:

Particularly robust proteins were found in small unusually well-preserved portions of a dinosaur leg bone. Plausible explanations for the formation of the nonmineralized portions of the bone and for the preservation of the proteins are known, so it's inappropriate to portray the bone as a mystery or somehow incompatible with an age of tens of millions of years.

I'll respond to the rest of your post later, I've got to go experience the joys of freezing rain now.

excreationist

John Solum:
"I'd like to point out that the quote is from the AiG article, and not Science News."

Yeah I knew that! That was very clumsy of me though... I was just showing a quote from the AiG article, then quoting a reference that they quoted. (Since you were looking for a reference)
I think AiG is saying that it is amazing that a dinosaur that has any part of it unfossilized.

I don't think you're going to sway anyone in the audience. Most of them wouldn't even have a clue what you're starting about. And of course some evolutionist "expert" will try and prove that the bones are old. Their bias doesn't allow them to see the Truth of Genesis and the recent creation of the world and its creatures.

If you're going to attack what they creationist is saying, you should at least do it in a way that the audience can understand. e.g. <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html" target="_blank">talkorigins.org - Problems with a Global Flood</a>
In particular, the Green River formation. I made <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=42&t=000600&p=" target="_blank">this thread</a> all about it. <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000996&p=" target="_blank">here</a> I was trying to get creationists to reply.

Anyway, I think the dinosaur bone would not only be a waste of time (be neutral for the audience) but probably make them feel distanced from evolutionary theory and therefore come closer to creationism.

sbaii

I guess that's enough of an introduction. I've never been to a talk by Ken Ham before, and I found out that he's coming to Grand Rapids, Michigan soon.

<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/details.asp?Event_ID=45" target="_blank">Ken Ham in Grand Rapids</a>

I'd appreciate it if any of you who've been to his talks could tell me what he's like. Can you ask questions? If so, can you ask them personally or do you have to give them written on a card to the moderator? Grand Rapids is on the other side of the state from me, but if there's a chance I can ask Ham a couple of questions I'd try to make it to his talk.

thanks in advance,

John[/QB][/QUOTE]
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I heard Ham speak in 1993 at the Christian Home Educators Conference in Southfield. I don't recall a Q&A period afterwards but he might pass out cards for questions and if he doesn't like it, he'll just pass it by. His talk on Genesis and the Flood is truly an example of overwhelming the audience with a ton of bs. He quoted from a text on natural history that was at least 250 years old.He brings about a thousand slides to show in one hour. The crux of his argument then was that if Genesis and the FLood story was not literally true, then the whole Bible was false and Christianity could not stand.