We have previously discussed the struggle that creationists have with the daily disclosures of scientific research, particularly the discovery of fossils and other items that are dates in the millions rather than thousands of years. It is hard to maintain that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old given the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, Canadian Edgar Nernberg has shown just how easy it is to live in denial. Nernberg was not just confronted with a fossil from over 60 million years ago, but he actually found it in his basement. However, Nernberg does not think God is trying to tell him something. He maintains that “There’s no dates stamped on these things” and it proves nothing if you just reject isotopic dating and basic geology.
The University of Calgary will unveil the five fossils this week and the results of the dating process. These fish lived just after the dinosaurs were wiped out on Earth and are important evidence of the explosion of new species in the aftermath.
Nernberg to this credit recognized the find right away and preserved the fossils. Indeed, he is seeking cast of one of the fish so he can put it on display at the creationist museum.
dave…what periodicals have you published?…I would be interested in reading your publications and peer reviewed scientific papers…do you have a ph.d?
Thanks, David, for the clarification. I misunderstood you.
can you imagine if there is no god? What mercenary would fight for you? Would china loan you as much as it will take?. Why would people die? The ony reason americca has a volunteer force is because the fifteen ppercent cling tto bibles and guns and suppuupply fifty percet of the troopps. Go into the new brave world of no god on your own pal….
Davidm,
“Most scientists do not acknowledge that there ever was any Creator. Their a priori assumption is that there was not a Creator.”
Most? Perhaps the loudest voices, or the voices the media chooses to highlight, are those of atheists in the sciences. Of the scientists I have known, most would be classified as old-earth Creationists/theists (i.e., God, the Big Bang, and evolution are not incompatible).
Here’s the Pew Forum that indicates that 51% of polled scientists believe in some kind of higher power. Seven percent refused to participate (fear of reprisal?). Forty-one percent were atheist. More men than women were atheists, and, the over 65 crowd had the most atheists. http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
Prairie Rose wrote: “… the Pew Forum … indicates that 51% of polled scientists believe in some kind of higher power.”
Checking a “belief in God” on a poll is not the same thing as allowing a scientist the idea of a creator in a scientific theory. The philosophical model in science is that God cannot be tested; therefore, no theory of a creator is allowed in science. That’s just the way it is. Any scientific theory of a creator is immediately censored because the purpose of science is to describe how things work by currently observable natural laws. The assumption is that there was no creator, and all the effort is made with this assumption and to explain all empirical data based upon currently observable natural laws.
My scientific background and publications are in the field of ecology and evolution. That’s the way science works in that area of biology. I think it is pretty much the same in most of science. However, a lot of scientists do not deal with questions about origins at all. For example, a physiologist might be looking for a cure for a disease and have no reason to investigate origins and evolution. Such a scientist might indeed believe in a creator, maybe even be a theistic evolutionist and check that poll for creator, but it does not have much effect upon his particular scientific field. For him, the concept of a creator is not a scientific question.
I have received an email from a Vatican scientist, who is also a Jesuit Brother, and is an astronomer, with a doctorate in physics, he resides in Rome, at his communities Mother House… this learned religious, (who is also a brilliant scientist) subscribes to the belief that the Earth is very, very, ancient, vastly more ancient than 6,000 years. He contacted me, from Switzerland, and we exchanged emails, concerning this very subject…pooh-poohing, radiometric dating as a mere parlor game is foolish to say the least…I don’t have a problem with literalists, subscribing to the belief, that the earth is approx. 6,000 years old, I do have a problem with these same people mocking the scientific efforts of geologists and physicists who work in this field and believe they are just “blowing smoke” and are themselves clueless, or deluded at best…personally, I believe the earth is very, very ancient, that it formed, over eons of time, slowly, inexorably, over eons of time… possibly some passages in the book of Genesis were written allegorically, as man was unable to grasp the notion of geologic time as we do today,…the Precambrian, the Devonian, the Triassic and Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of the Mesozoic era…all the way through to our Cenozoic era, through the Quaternary time period, when mammals ruled the earth and ultimately man, with his highly developed brain, with “associative areas”. I also am of the belief that before man transgressed, that animals were not predatory…snake did not kill through envenomation…and the oceans were not teeming with man-eating elasmobranchs and lethal gastropods, ie the “cone snails” and deadly Cephalopods, like Hapalochleana maculosa…why, even the ungulates that cheweth the cud, can be a source of extreme danger, even if unmolested. How do I reconcile these two opposites?…I embrace the mystery…and recognize that whatever process that life took to develop, it was instituted by God…the Creator, the Trinity, He who is Alpha and Omega…remember what God said in the book of Genesis…”Let Us go down and make man in Our image…
Good for a laugh. It’s always interesting to observe how some blindly cling to these arbitrary 60 million/billion year old dates these “scientists” attach to things. It’s also interesting to observe the lack of knowledge some of these people have in regard to dating things. I still see people use carbon dating to establish million year old dates. Take the Uinkaret lava flows. Scientists dated the flows to be anywhere between 10,000 years to 117 billion years. One problem – there are Indian artifacts that date the lava flows to only be 800 to 1,000 years old. OOPS. These people could be off by a factor of millions of years but their confidence in these arbitrary astronomical numbers is worth a laugh or two.
The “Lord” works in mysterious ways.
Or not.