[Excerpts from Chris Ho-Stuart’s responses to a poster on aus.religion.christian]:

Many Christians are struck by the “fine tuning” of the universe, the balancing of fundamental forces in such a way to permit or perhaps even made inveitable the emergence of complex phenomena like life.

Creationists do not generally recognize this. They frequently describe the universe as always tending to disorder (using a confused and inaccurate understanding of laws of thermodynamics).

The Earth most definitely and unambiguously has an appearance of great age.

The truth is that creationists start from a prior assumption that evolution cannot add up; it is a religious commitment. Some are more honest about this prior commitment than others.

There are a number of creationists who have the honesty to recognize that the creationist position is one of religious faith; not of inference from evidence; and that creationists have a problem in finding models to account for the appearance of age, and long histories, in the universe.

Danny Faulkner, whom you have cited previously, comes close to such honesty. He is an astronomer. There is no credible creationist explanation for the universe. We see stars and galaxies that are many billions of light years away. How can this be?

The bible, of course, does not say.

There are attempts by some creationists to present a model which could explain the evidence in a way that is consistent with creation a few thousand years ago. None are remotely sensible; and most definitely none are based on any empirical studies. They can only be obtained by a combination of two things. (1) prior commitment to a young universe, without any empirical basis (2) avoidance and misrepresentation of details of the evidence, which are never ever consistent with any of the creationist cosmological models.

Another creationist who verges upon honesty in these matters is Kurt Wise. He is a young earth creationist, and has good qualifications and a PhD in paleontology.

Have a look at this interview with Kurt Wise, available at Answers in Genesis. <http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1318.asp>

Look especially at the second “A High Regard for Truth” <http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3121.asp>

“Apart from evolution, Dr Wise says that one of the things that has really bothered him is finding creationists who fall into the trap of dismissing justified criticism. He said he has presented data to point out areas that some of them needed to change, and it was either fobbed off or was still being repeated next time he saw them.”

But read the whole interview also. I don’t agree with it, or with Kurt Wise, not remotely. But Wise is good at clearly setting out the plain foundation of creationism. It is the bible.

There is also a good article in Harpers with a lot about Kurt Wise, on-line here

<http://a-s.clayton.edu/criticalthinking/Harper’s%20Mag%20on%20creationism.h tm>

Again, it is sympathetic. I think Wise is a completely naive, and that he has made no progress towards his stated goal of developing an adequate creationist model. But at least he does recognize that evidence is there and needs to be explained; and that so far, there is no comprehensive creationist explanation.

As usual, I note that you do not cite or reference the creationist scientists of whom you speak.

Cheers — Chris