Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Creationist and professor doesn't believe his own work
(By WARREN FISKE, The Virginian-Pilot, May 29, 2007)

LYNCHBURG - Marcus Ross was 9 years old when he realized his two passions, dinosaurs and a fundamentalist Christian belief, were colliding.
"I recall very specifically sitting in our little playroom and thinking that the dinosaur books tell the dinosaurs are millions of years old, that the Jurassic Period was 150 million years ago," he says.

"But when I read the Bible and went to church, no one talked about millions of years ago. The talk was about God creating everything in six days and it didn't happen very long ago."

So, "in a very kiddie kind of way," Ross began pondering a riddle of religion and science that would mark his life. The answers he now offers have charged an explosive debate in universities and laboratories across the nation.

Ross, 30, is an assistant professor of geology at Liberty University, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died May 15. He also is a young-Earth creationist who tells students he believes the planet is 6,000 years old.

He earned a doctoral degree in geosciences from the University of Rhode Island last year after completing a dissertation on mosasaurs, a marine reptile that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era 65 million years ago.

David Fastovsky, Ross's dissertation adviser and a professor of geosciences, describes the 197-page work as "impeccable."
But Ross doesn't think the premise of his own work is true.

He said he never believed the timelines and wrote a dissertation he thought was fundamentally wrong. "If naturalism is true, I think my thesis is dead on," he says. "But I don't think that it is."

Ross said he hopes to bridge the often-warring worlds of science and religion by establishing geological proof the Earth was created around 4000 B.C. - a date he traces back through the Old Testament.

"My goal is to incorporate the Bible as part of the data in the natural world," he said. "That's the biggest difference between me and my secular colleagues. They say the Bible is not data and we can't use God to explain anything."

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Michael Dini, a professor of biology education at Texas Tech University, said Ross should not have been awarded a doctorate. "Anyone who uses religious scripture or theological doctrine as a litmus test to gauge the validity of a scientific theory is no scientist," he wrote in an e-mail. "Is this discrimination? Yes! It's discrimination against bad science."

Dini, in 2003, made news by refusing to write letters of recommendation to graduate schools for students who would not offer a "scientific answer" for how the human race began. Writing recommendations "is a favor I grant only to those I respect," he said.

Ronald Numbers, a professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Wisconsin, said Ross is the latest in a growing list of creationists who have tried over the last 40 years to get a foot hold in science.

"Their biggest goal is to be recognized as fellow scientists," Numbers said. "They're breaking all the rules when they say, 'God did it.' "

Numbers said it's particularly tough for a creationist to get a doctorate in geology. "First of all, the science is hard," he said. "Secondly, the evidence overwhelms you. You can't escape dealing with the age of the Earth if you're a geologist."

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And so the bearded professor with piercing dark eyes and a corny sense of humor dwells in what he calls "two paradigms," speaking with equal expertise about geosciences and Genesis and seeking a nexus. An hour apart at Liberty this spring, he taught one class on technical geology and another on creationism.

Science tells Ross that the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago in a spectacular supernova explosion. Ross believes God created the Earth in seven days in 4004 B.C., a date many creationists reached by tracing biblical events backward.

The flood, according to Ross, occurred around 2300 B.C. and likely destroyed dinosaurs. He says the impregnation of broken fossils into rocks suggests the bones were slammed by a cataclysmic force of water.
Widely accepted methods of dating fossils may be flawed, according to Ross and other creationists. They say scientists derive dates from carbon-14 and potassium-argon testing based on an unproven assumption that the rate of decay remains constant over time.

Ross acknowledged there's no solid evidence that the rate was once faster, but put the burden of disproof on the other side. "Give me a reason the rate can't change and we'll talk about whether that reason is a good one," he said.

Robert Bodner, a professor of geochemistry at Virginia Tech, said Ross' argument relies on faith, not fact. "The rate of decay is constant, just like the speed of light," he said. "There is no reason to expect the rates of radioactive decay would change through time."

Ross accepts Old Testament claims that Adam lived 930 years; Noah, 950; and Methuselah, the oldest man in the Bible, 969. He noted that biblical lifespans decreased after the flood. "It may be the effect of inbreeding by Noah and his family," he said. Perhaps, he adds, a weakening of the Earth's magnetic shield could have shortened lives.

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Academia, however, has few landing pads for a scientist with Ross' beliefs. Liberty, where he has taught for two years, is among a handful of Christian colleges that teach young-Earth creationism. It's not offered at Regent University in Virginia Beach, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. Regent does not have a geology department.

spendius wrote:
Hitler was like that. He insisted that teachers toe-ed the Party line too. He also devasted Europe and his own country particularly.


Is that what you think happened?

Present your case," says the LORD.
"Set forth your arguments," says Jacob's King.

22 "Bring in your idols to tell us
what is going to happen.
Tell us what the former things were,
so that we may consider them
and know their final outcome.
Or declare to us the things to come,

23 tell us what the future holds,
so we may know that you are gods.
Do something, whether good or bad,
so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.

24 But you are less than nothing
and your works are utterly worthless;
he who chooses you is detestable.

The request I made for some guide to the social consequences of anti-ID is in The Bible. Isaiah Chap.41 v 22 to 24.

The last two posts are straw man erections. Again. It seems they have no other way of doing when they can't answer the crucial questions which have been continually put to them.

Canada's first museum of creation opens in Alberta

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Compared with the $27 million (13.6 million pounds) Creation Museum that just opened its doors in Kentucky, Canada's first museum dedicated to explaining geology, evolution and paleontology in biblical terms is a decidedly more modest affair.

The Big Valley Creation Science Museum, which opens next week, was built for C$300,000 in the village Big Valley, Alberta, population 308, a two-hour drive northeast of Calgary.

Source at Reuters UK.

I heard Harry Nibourg, the museum's owner, interviewed on CBC today. It was a hoot. He explained that there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, but that they were juveniles, and so they didn't eat much, and slept all the time. (That's important because Genesis Chapter 7 clearly states that God told Noah to load food for all the critters--but it just slays me that anyone would claim that a juvenile weighing 60 or 70 tons wouldn't eat much. Furthermore, they were allegedly at sea for a year--nevermind the fodder for the juvenile dinosaurs, who shoveled the **** ? ! ? ! ?)

Hilarity, of course, ensues . . .

He cannot add "faith" to his methodology and remain scientific

Canada's first museum of creation opens in Alberta

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Compared with the $27 million (13.6 million pounds) Creation Museum that just opened its doors in Kentucky, Canada's first museum dedicated to explaining geology, evolution and paleontology in biblical terms is a decidedly more modest affair.

What makes you think "people don't realise" that the ark story is mythological and served other purposes in other places. You have to believe your own assertion that "people don't realise" in order to have something to say.

It's like a plague. The insanity plague.

Who's in charge of the DDT?