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Name: Terry
Country: United States
State: Oregon
Birthday: 5/13/1958
Gender: Male
Interests: Reading, Surfing (a long time ago), spending time with friends in good conversation, watching good movies-- old and new, music--old and new.
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/9/2005
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| I recently received an email from a college student who attends a local College near him, about the Grand Canyon. It seems he got into a lengthy discussion with his Psychology teacher about the Grand Canyon formation . He felt rather weak with his arguments asserting that the Canyon demonstrates a young earth, not an old one. He ask me if I could send him some fodder and here is what I wrote..........
The short answer is yes, but the long answer is better and I will need to dig a bit. There is a theory regarding the Grand Canyon that includes something called 'soft bed deformation' . It is a theory regarding the sedimentary units that are laid down and how they could erode to form the canyon. Remember that we are not looking for evidence in particular to prove the creation of the world by the God of scripture, but things that merely support what we already know as true. This applies to Archeology as well. Studies in the field of Archeology for example don't prove that the city of Ai ever existed, it only helps us find it. When studying the Grand Canyon just remember that the chief thing to keep in mind is that it is a grand display of how much God hates sin. The flood has left it's mark like a cosmic train crash, so powerful in it's exertion that it still gives us chills as we gaze out over the layers and layers of sand washed away by a torrent force. There is a question on how the canyon was formed that deserves more information. Why did the river erode downward while at the same time maintaining the meandering form of a slow and mature erosional pattern? Or to put it another way, why isn't it just a wash out? Here is another question--With the change of environment depicted in the Grand Canyon; why the unaltered, level deposition of sediments when at the same time plate tectonics was of such eprogenic proportion? (eprogenic means large and massive movements--something like that). I believe Steve Austin has done work here and compared it to the deposional patterns of Mt. St. Helens. Rapid deposition as well as soft beds could easily account for a rapid downward carving of the Grand Canyon. Another thing to remember is that the many different environments that are expressed in the Glen Canyon Formation alone means that some time must be present in the deposition. There are in the Grand Canyon fairly dramatic layer changes from desert to gully washers.
Look up the Windgate Sandstone for instance. An aeolian Sand dune formation of a large desert. (at least that is what I was taught back when the earth was cooling)- sitting conformably on the Chinle formation which is full of petrified wood, and above the Windgate is the Moenave formation which is rich in dinosaur fossils. Thus in-between is a vast lifeless desert formation made up of well rounded, well sorted , clean quarts sand dunes. This means that dry and wet spells were present. However, I still think that it all happened in the time frame of a creationist, young earth, but we simply have to let the facts speak and the rates of deposition and erosion are not constants--never were. Uniformitarian principles lead one down a dead end. Also, one more thing--just because some scientists think that the intervention of God into the equation will necessarily lead to using Him as a scapegoat every time we get in a fix, does not mean that should limit us. If in fact God has intervened, this does not ruin the science or the method of discovery. This is the short answer. Better heads can be found below. Read them with the mindset that we know what happened, we just don’t know exactly how, or if the how will ever be apparent. But, I really think that with the right paradigm we can discover much more than with the reactive and biased paradigm of an angry conscience, which I think all atheistic science tends to produce. Truth is light and light is the key to discovery. This is the short answer…. Others can certainly give you a better long answer.
Kurt Wise, who studied under Jay Gould, Faith, form and Time. Kurt has no love loss for sloppy Creationist science. Or Icons of Evolution- Jonathan Wells, or Unraveling the Origins of Controversy, David De Witt
here--Austin, Steven A. 1986. Mt. St. Helens and catastrophism. Impact 157 (July). http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-157.htm http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=261
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| Put on the Whole Armor of God Ephesians 6:10-17 Beloved, as we come to worship our great God, the Apostle Paul reminds us of two important things in this text; our integrity and our service (protection and power). The first three pieces of armor here picture our integrity- the belt of truth, the breast plate of Righteousness and having our feet shod with the gospel of peace. These picture the man of God standing in the righteousness of Christ. Our integrity is under attack daily. If you falter here you will not be effective in your service. Worship is our service to God , but worship at the same time prepares us for greater service. Are we inadequate today? Are we inferior today? Remember that inadequacy and inferiority are not feelings, but judgements. We judge ourselves to be inferior. Therefore, it can be dealt with. In our worship today, investigate your judgement. Confess your sins and believe God for His adequacy which he clothes you with. God can make us stand. In His strong name we stand. Today we shall put on the belt of truth by being here, publically, corporately declaring God’s name among the assembly. Our breastplate covers us in assurance of His righteousness. and we resound with strong Amens! We have our feet shod and ready, thus instead of fleeing His holiness in inadequacy, we adore. As we come to worship today, let us then come in integrity and so worship God acceptably. Let us be ready to make a stand. Christians, when we stand to sing, when we stand to hear the scriptures read, when we stand for doxology; let us do so as a declaration of the realization that our worship dispels darkness, quenches fiery darts, and causes the devil to flee back into the darkness of cowardice and fear. For God is indeed among us, and we must be properly clothed. He calls us to worship so armor up and let us worship our great God. Amen! | | |
| A Minor Courtship Moment I was wondering about the notion that the Father has to like the boy who may be seeking to court his daughter. I haven’t read much on this point. Of course the answer is yes, but then again no. Yes, in the sense that he is a nice young man, falling into the basic paradigm of decent and not dirt bag. But, then again what if your daughter has admired something in this young man which she is attached to precisely because it is not a strong point of the fathers. Maybe the dad is a book worm, bookish, and boring conversationalist. Whereas, the suitor is mechanical, savvy with the automotive fields and outdoorish. She may admire these traits because she knows how difficult it is for her own father to master them. Conversely, the Dad may be a very capable man around the house, Mr. Fixit personified, but not much of a reader or conversationalist for that matter. I know that the mix of personality and other traits are endless, but I simply remind myself that in one sense I don’t have to like him in every way because I am not marrying him, my daughter is. She is not a mirror of me, she carries with her the traits of both myself and my wife, and she is venturing out into different relationship dynamics that I might not be very use to. I better like him, but I am not marrying him. Maybe the better question is....Does she like/respect both of us? By the way, my father in law liked me but thought I was odd. I needed to grow up. So, now he simply knows he was right all along. | | |
| I was thinking again, I guess I need to get this down to remember it. It has to do with the whole environmentalism issues that face us and will be facing us. We as Christians are to be engaged in these debates. We need to be and I think we have been to some extent. But I have not seen much of the kind of thinking that gets mocked, and I think that is precisely the kind of thinking we need to start putting into the arena. We tend to simply comment on the current dialogue and voice opinions and comments and rebuttals to the paradigms we work with regarding natural resources and environmental impact and waste management. But we are not acting Christian in the debates, we are assuming right along with everyone else that the planet is simply a bundle of meaningless matter that only holds meaning as we give it to it. But, as Christians we should realize that when we see birds flying across a fruited plain it is beautiful because a God sustains it now and does so for a progressive tangible purpose. I suppose what I’m getting at is the tamed and saccharine unbelief which we use in our public discourse regarding the environment. If we would speak articulately about the responsibilities of stewardship based on obedience to the risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ, we would hear some hoots from the peanut gallery. Even if the end of both is the betterment of the planet, it is not the same end, it is still a matter rebellion at heart for the environmentalist to clean the lake up even if Jesus would approve. A rebellious teen can clean his room but still have a heart issue with his folks. As Christians we need to do more than simply help folks like Al Gore clean his room. | | |
| Recently I have been working through Aristotle’s Rhetoric book , as my daughter Julie once said, "Aristotle is exhausting". So right she is, there are no pictures, no plot. But, I must say I’m learning a great deal about the blatant pragmatism that his teaching has on our current cultural frame of mind. Our public discourse is driven by the spirit of rhetorical pragmatism. What I mean is his approach is a pure word crafting that lacks a moral compass. He is an expert at figuring out what to say to win the argument–period. No conscience concern for ultimate truth. This is precisely why, according one guy I recently read, Socrates so distrusted rhetoric in the practical sense. He saw it as an art of trickery. We set up our stance in a debate or even in the nightly "new-room" with a spin predicated on a ‘means to an end’ sort of mentality. News, as Neil Postman so well warned us, is not news at all, it is entertainment that is using the news as it’s medium. Even as we plunge into financial ruin, we cannot turn back the wheel and find some other sort of medium to express our rage, fear or possible wisdom. What Postman made clear was the fact that "television is not entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience" (Amusing Ourselves to Death, pg 87). How do the means justify the ends here and now? How are we going to view the current crisis, if the only venue is the format of entertainment? Lately, I’ve been a little short of jokes. | | |
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