Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Even though Mr. Duran wrote that he wanted to "clarify why creationism isn't a science," he did not provide one fact to disprove creationism. He did, however, deride my quoting "authority figures," although he himself quoted or referred to his own "authority figures": Darwin, Einstein, Mendel, Cantor, Cohen, and others in his letters.

He credited evolution as being responsible for the design of the eye, but does he know that his "authority figure," Charles Darwin, wrote the following in "The Origin of Species": "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances ... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree"?

Mr. Duran is concerned that "through history ... appeal to authority figures for answers to questions without careful analysis of their assertions had lead [sic] to silly dogmas passed down through generations of students." Yet he fears students and teachers being able to question and carefully analyze the "dogmas" of evolution.

If he really believed in "careful analysis," he would want students to consider the vast multitude of evidence that contradicts the "silly dogmas" of evolution. Since he admits that he is "extremely ignorant about many things and in fact [has] no idea how to remedy this personal lack of knowledge," why is he so dogmatic that creationism is a "waste [of] precious mental effort" and a "discredited idea"?

Since he quoted from "authority figures," is "this ... always a good clue that [his] arguments aren't based on facts culled from nature itself"? Is this a double standard? Apparently, he thinks that a person cannot even use a neutral dictionary as a source! What will we be debating next? What the word "is" really means?

Mr. Duran questioned the veracity of the Bible by implying that fitting "all the animals" in Noah's Ark was impossible. He erroneously thinks that "all the animals" went into the Ark, but that is not what the Bible says.

In Genesis 6:19-20, the Bible says that Noah was supposed to take two of every kind of bird, land animal, and "every kind of creature that moves along the ground." It is significant that "kind" is used several times. For example, wolves, dingoes, coyotes, etc., are all part of the dog "kind," or canine family.

Noah needed to take one pair of canines, not all of the species on earth today. Similarly, he did not have to take lions, leopards, panthers, jaguars, and saber-toothed tigers; he just had to take one pair of the feline "kind."

Calculations have been done to show that there were only about 8,000 actual "kinds" of animals, including extinct animals. So only about 16,000 animals needed to be on the Ark. Animals would have occupied only about 13 percent of the Ark! There would have been plenty of space left over for food, supplies, and Noah and his family.

I'll demonstrate that it was possible to fit many animals into Noah's Ark. Mr. Duran obviously does not realize how huge the Ark really was 450 ft. long, 75 ft. wide, and 45 ft. high (4-plus stories).

Using "junior high school mathematics," I calculate this to be almost 1.52 million cubic feet a capacity of approximately 522 standard railroad stock cars! Each stock car can hold about 240 sheep; so the Ark could have carried about 125,280 sheep-sized animals. Noah likely took younger (smaller) animals rather than older (larger) ones. The average size of a land animal is less than the size of a sheep; in fact, only 11 percent are larger than sheep.

Mr. Duran's contention that "careful measurements can reveal nature's secrets, and measurements are far more useful than personal opinions, no matter who or what the source" should be more appropriately applied to the computation of the capacity of the Ark. Are his "careful measurements" only ones that agree with his personal bias?

(By the way, when I gave examples of dating methods that give inaccurate dates for items of known age and that do not agree with each other, he implied that my examples are just "personal opinions" because, once again, they do not fit with his evolutionary bias. Notice that Mr. Duran did not try to prove the accuracy of dating methods. Actually, he tacitly agreed that some measurement methods are invalid while he ludicrously accused me of "switch[ing] the topic.")

People often wonder if there was enough water to cause a global flood. The Bible says that God broke open all the fountains of the deep, and that act would have released massive amounts of underground water. Based on the destruction that massive flooding can cause today, we can theorize that a catastrophe the size of a global flood would have caused massive tectonic activity, earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, etc.

Today, the earth's surface is 71 percent water; if the mountains and the ocean basins were leveled out to make the earth's surface more even, then there would be enough water to cover the whole earth to a depth of 1.7 miles.

There is evidence to suggest that the mountains were not very high before the flood; so there would have been plenty of water for a global flood to cover even the mountains. Sea creature fossils have been found on top of many mountains, including Mt. Everest; this is good evidence that water at some time covered even the highest mountains.

Mr. Duran stated, "The church ...relied on Aristotle's claims ...." This shows the danger of church leaders mistakenly relying upon the opinion of fallible scientists instead of what the Bible clearly states. Regretfully, parts of the church today are making the same mistake by trusting fallible scientists and their theories about evolution more than the infallible Word of God.

Evolution is just as much a religious philosophy as Christianity because it attempts to explain where we came from (slime), who we are (talking apes), where we are going (nowhere), and how to live ("If it feels good, do it!" and "survival of the fittest"). It even has a holy book, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life."

Religion has always been in our classrooms because where there are people there will be religious philosophies, but today Christianity has been replaced with atheism and evolution. Is it any wonder that students murder, rape, and steal when they have been taught that they are nothing but glorified pond scum and can act upon any instinct that they have?

Contrary to Mr. Duran's "personal opinions," Christianity is not unreasonable or illogical. We have answers for people who ask questions!

Jeremy Conley

Peachtree City