Subject: Re: was the universe/earth created in 6 solar days ?
Date: 24 Sep 1999 02:31:28 GMT
From:  (Ken Smith)
Organization: University of Queensland
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

Since I have lectured to students over many years about continuum
mechanics, and the movement of glaciers comes under this heading, I
was struck by some conflicting statements in Adam's post.

Adam Collings <> writes:
>Barry O'Grady wrote:
>> Adam Collings <> wrote:
>>
>> :Delite wrote:
>> :
>> :> On Sat, 11 Sep 1999 04:04:18 +1000, "Rick" 
>> :> wrote:
>> :>
>> :> >I would like any feed back ,
>> :> >was the earth truely created in 6 days 6000 years ago. My christain frinds

[deletions]

>A few of the more traditional churches have exchanged creation for evolution but all
>the churches I have attended believe in creation.

The term "creation" now means, to nearly everyone, the SEventh-day
Adventist ideas pushed by Henry M. Morris and his followers.
This needs to be distinguished from Christian theology, as in
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth
and all that is, visible or invisible, ..."

[more deletions]

>Even a literal view of the Bible needn't lead to these kinds of conclusions. For
>example the Bible uses the expression "To the ends of the earth" and so forth. This
>does not imply that the world is flat any more than expressions such as sunrise and
>sunset in a newspaper weather report implies that the meterologists believe that the
>sun orbits the earth. These are common figures of speech.

I've never been able to extract from a creationist just which
expressions in the Bible are "figures of speech" and which are to be
taken as literal scientific descriptions of reality.
It may come as a surprise to you that several million conservative
Christians in USA believe that the sun orbits the earth.
For them, the idea that the earth orbits the sun is yet another
example of people being deceived by Satan.

[more deletions]

>But useful anyway. For example, my thesis involves techniques that will, if
>successful, help glaciologists to do their work more efficiently.

Of course, the equations used in glaciology are assumed to be valid
for all time.
Does your work relate in any way to the annual layers deposited on
glaciers? These have been counted, and give ages in the hundreds of
thousands of years.
Or do you have some scientific explanation for these layers being
deposited over the past few thousand years?

>>
>> Barry
>> ==========
>> Please send me an email copy if you reply to this post.
>> Web page: http://www.acay.com.au/~barryo 

>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Adam Collings  ()  

Ken Smith
--
Dr Ken Smith <>