RufusAtticus

If Hovind is what goes for education at your school, your parents should ask for their money back.

-RvFvS

Tricia

My parents don't even know if they are YECs or OECs because they don't care. unfortunately I can't really talk to them about that subject, so I am left to school and the internet for my resources in discovering what it is exactly I believe.

~Tricia

KeithHarwood

Here is another answer to your question.

It isn't a matter of believing. The oldest rocks on Earth solidified about 4,500,000,000 years ago.
There are rocks of all ages younger than that up to the ooze on the bottom of oceans that hasn't turned into rock yet. We just have to accept that. If we do anything else we are just kidding ourselves. There is absolutely no evidence that the Earth is any younger. The YEC arguments that say there is are just plain silly.

For example, they point out that Niagara Falls are only 10,000 years old. Well, deeerrr; the Falls formed after the Earth, not the same time as.

(What's even sillier is that they use this as evidence that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Hey guys, what about that spare 4,000 years? Where were the Falls before the Earth was created?)

But suppose there was some controversy about when the Earth formed, say there was evidence that it really was a few thousand years old. How would we answer your question then?

Most scientists would just say they didn't know. That's the only honest answer. Those who were working in the field give three answers, `my estimate is right and I'm refining my methods to get a more accurate value', 'my method is right and I'm repeating their observations to find out where they went wrong' and `they are all a bunch of chimpo quonkers and I'm looking for new methods to get the value'. (You may get all of those answers from the same person.)

There's third group of scientists, though. Those who need to know the value but are not involved in determining it. How would they answer? They would say, `these are my results; if the Earth is this age then my results mean one thing, if it's that age they mean another.' And, of course, when better values come along, as they will, his results get re-interpreted in the light of the new values.

While this is a fictitious case, such debates go on all the time in science; it's how science works. Here's an example you might come across in YEC literature.

You'll find it said that a scientist calculated the age of the sun as ten million years. That is perfectly true. The scientist's name was William Thomson, but he's better known as Lord Kelvin. He was the finest British physicist in the 19th Century. He knew, as all physicists know, that when you compress a gas it heats up. Now the sun is just a ball of gas compressing itself by its own gravitation. How long can it shine at its presetn rate. Kelvin came up with the answer of ten million years. But he knew, as geologists had known since before he was born, that the Earth was at least hundreds of millions of years old and, from the fossil evidence, the sun had been shining all that time. That is a big, a major discrepancy. The conclusion was that gravitational infall (that's what it is called) is not the source of the sun's energy. There must be something else. It took fifty years to find it, but find it they did. It started off when a man named Becquerel noticed that some photographic plates were fogged. It might seem a long haul from fogged plates to how the sun shines and it is; that's why it took fifty years.

Now I want you to notice two things about this. Firstly, how dishonestly the YECs present it. They treat the ten million years as if it were the only estimate of the sun's age that had ever been made, as if scientists has ignored the discrepancy and as if it had never been resolved. None of those things are true.

Secondly, notice how the problem was resolved. When religions have problems like this the only way they can resolve them is by persecution, bloodshed or schism. They have no other means. But science does have other means. Scientists can go out and get more information, they can try things out, see what works and what doesn't and discard that which doesn't. And that is why any field of science in general, and evolution in particular, is not a religion.

Edited to get Kelvin's name right. I often confuse him with J. J. Thompson, another British physicist. This one, among other things, discovered the electron.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: KeithHarwood ]</p>

Quetzal

Yeah, I see your dilemma. It's tough getting bombarded with something at school about which you're not sure and then not being able to talk about it at home. I can relate.

Listen, you're more than welcome to come here and post any questions you've got. I know it's not the same as real life, but it might do in a pinch. If you don't want to ask it on a message board like this one, just PM one of the regulars who're really knowledgeable in the particular subject area. Hey, what could it hurt?

KeithHarwood

Tricia, I really can't understand this.

These people claim to believe in God, but they deny themselves, and you, knowlege of the awesome splendour of His creation.

Not only that, they deny you the intellectual tools you need to find the knowlege for yourself.

It reminds me of the practice in some desperately poor countries, of parents chopping the feet off their babies so that they can have a successful career as beggars. They think they are doing the best for their children, but they are still crippling them.

The most important reason for going to school is to learn how to learn. You'll never get that from a Hovind tape, anything but. So, if its your native nous that has brought here, well I take my hat off to you.

Oolon Colluphid

Tricia, I second Morpho's idea. I'll be pleased to try and answer any questions that your 'biology' lessons raise. And I promise not to lie or fudge. My e-mail address is darwinsterrier@hotmail.com, or you can pm me. I'm sure others here feel the same.

I can safely say that nothing in those Hovind videos is true. Sure, they sound persuasive, that's the point of rhetoric. Not one of his claims is less than farcical when tested against the real world (which is what science is about -- not just saying something, but checking it!). Here are two genuine facts to get you started: the earth is very very old, and all life is related by descent from a common ancestor.

Let us know any questions the videos raise in your mind.

Best wishes, Oolon

Peez

Hi Tricia,

I just want to say that I admire you for having the curiosity and integrity to search out the answers to your questions. As a biology professor at a university, I would be more than happy to try to answer any questions that you may have. You might find a good biology text book useful, let us know if you have trouble finding one. Don't settle for an easy answer, be true to yourself!

Peez

RufusAtticus

Trisha,

I'm also here to answer any questions that your education might raise.

email: rac@uga.edu

-RvFvS

Tricia

yayness. I'm glad you guys said that, because I do have a lot of questions, and I've only watched about an hour of it. Here they are:

Ok, Hovind said that a Big Bang occurs every 80 to 100 billion years. If we've only been here for 4billion years, how would we know that?

Next he said that for the Big Bang all matter came together in a teensy dot and then exploded into the universe. Where did everything come from to gather in that dot? He said everything came from dirt, and dirt came from nothing.

Where does energy come from?

if the dot that had all the matter was swirling in a circle,let's just say clockwise, why are two planets spinning backwards? (Uranus and something else, but I forgot, )

that's about where I am right now, so I'd be much obliged if you could answer those questions.

~Tricia

If you'll do that in sort of layman's terms, I can share it with my class.

hezekiah jones

Who said that, Dr. Hovind, or Mrs. Hovind? Sounds like Dr. Hovind needs to talk to Dr. Ruth.