Subject: Re: Creationism (was Re: "With All That You Acquire, Acquire
Understanding")
Date: 27 Jan 2000 01:27:13 GMT
From:  (Ken Smith)
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

"Darren R Middleton" <> writes:

>Ken Smith wrote in message <>...

>Snip

>>I'll let Ian Plimer speak for himself.
>>But I am very interested in any evidence you can produce that I have
>>made "less than accurate statements concerning creationist
>organisations",
>>and the names of these organisations.
>>And since you claim I have made these "often", it shouild be easy to
>>provide some evidence.

>G'day Ken,

>I'm sure you'll be able to dig up the posts concerning AIG and their name
>change...
>I'll let you dig up the thread.

Sorry, that is not a satisfactory reply.
Can you provide an extract from one of *my* posts which contains "less
than accurate statements concerning creationist organisations",
presumably AIG?
I can't remember posting anything about their change of name.

>BTW, what exactly is your position concerning creation?

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,
and all that is, visible or invisible.
Is that what you want?

Or are you using "creation" in its scientific sense?
If so, let me refer you to "The large-scale structure of space-time",
by Hawking and Ellis.  In the Preface they remark that the book is
about two predictions of general relativity: black holes, and a
singularity in the past which can be interpreted as the origin of the
universe.
I'll dig out their exact words if you're interested.

Or by "creation" do you mean "special creation"?
If so, there is no scientific evidence for it, and virtually no
theological evidence.

>What is your position on common decent and the origins of life for
>example?

On the origin of life, in common with most scientists, I suspend
judgment - there's not enough evidence one way or another.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that many of the molecules
important to life can form from non-living things.
I haven't kept up with the latest information about biological
molecules in space, but there are plenty of them out there.

And the evidence I have looked at for common descent seems adequate to
me.
One thing which those of us who did our scientific training in the
early 1950s remember is that shortly after Watson and Crick's paper
on the structure of DNA apppeared, there was much interest in whether
all organisms shared a common genetic code.
A number of people predicted this, on the basis of common ancestry for
all present forms of life.
This has been confirmed far beyond any reasonable doubt.

But if you want a prediction of common descent from Darwin himself, in
his "The Descent of Man" he predicted that Africa was the place where
fossil ancestors of humans would be found.
His argument was that since chimpanzees and gorillas are the closest
living relatives of humans, and that these live in Africa, that is
where we should look for ancestors of homo sapiens.
This century has seen his prediction fulfilled.

>I'll await your response with interest, since I can't remember you
>articulating it on arc (I may of missed it).

>Regards
>Darren Middleton

Ken Smith