Brother Jed and his companions made a trip to the University of Kansas today. At one point, we managed to get his older, portly companion on the topic of the age of the Earth. I was there with a grad student in Geology. It quickly became apparent, that despite Jed's companions claims to formal training in Geology are grossly exaggerated and he presented either gross ignorance or outright lies.
For example, one of the claims this person made is that uplift due to plate tectonics has never been observed. This was directly refuted by the Geology student with numerous examples and a quick Google search returns just such measurements from Papua New Guinea's Finisterre mountains.
He also claimed that convection zones in the Earth which drive tectonic activity must be square. A thorough search for this information returned no results. Searching scientific journals returned no results. Even a check against common sense shows how silly this claim is. Just try drawing a square (not rectangle) inside a circle. It requires that the material MAGICALLY change direction with no forces acting on it far from the core. Talk about miracles!
This person also attempted to invoke polystrate fossils (ie, trees cutting through many layers of deposited sediment) as indicative of a young Earth. What he neglected to mention was that these fossils are only found in places where you should expect frequent deposition rates (ie, near rivers or regions of volcanic activity). When actually dated, radiological dating confirms this prediction. Rather, Jed's companion hypocritically dismissed this, after having just previously argued against uniformitarianism.
Many of the other arguments he presented are so poor, that the major Young-Earth Creationist organization, Answers in Genesis, suggests they not be used. Among them that Jed's companion invoked:
- Plate tectonics is fallacious.
- There are no transitional forms
- Paluxy tracks prove that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
- Moon-dust thickness proves a young moon.
If many of this person's BEST arguments are refuted by even Creationist organizations and simply searching Google, I hate to think what this says of his intellectual honesty and scholarship concerning his other arguments. Nor is his character much better. When presented with contradictory evidence, this person did not provide a rebuttal, but instead chose to reply by calling us "Morons!" I was personally called a "moron" five times.
I never caught this person's name, whoever this Santa Claus look alike, fisher hat wearing jerk was, he's an embarrassment to an already embarrassing ministry. I seem to recall St. Thomas Aquinas having something to say on how disgraceful it is for Christians to show ignorance in science due to it suggesting that they are ignorant to truth in general. Perhaps Jed's companion should learn from him.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
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