The UmBlog

David Montgomery is a geomorphologist at the University of Washington and has written a great historical explanation that any honest young earth creationists should read. Angry atheists should read this as well since Montgomery is a great model of irenic persuasion. He surveys throughout the book several flood myths , and notes their connections to historical events. He also notes how the myths change depending on the location around the world. For example, China does not have a world flooding story with a character like Noah who saves the animals. China's floods come from it's great rivers in deep valleys, not like Mesopotamia's great rivers through broad plains. Nor did China experience a great sea rising like the Black Sea's . He also goes into the development of the science of geology. It's an historical development that developed in the West alongside the influence of the rising Protestant church. As different hypotheses formed about how rocks formed ...

This is more of a debate with my young earth creationist self, but I need to post it here in case I forget this topic. Genesis 3 ends with Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden of Eden . Gen. 3:23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Adam and Eve Are Driven out of Eden by Gustave Dore. Picture portrayed over passage in Genesis. And he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen. 3:24). (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) If Adam and Eve are the reporters of this story, would they have known what a sword was? Wouldn't a flaming stick have the same effect? So isn't this anachronism enough of an indication that this story was writte...

This is not the first book I've attempted by C. John Collins , but at least I finished this one. It is not that his books are bad, it's that they are like pound cake , too rich. Pound cake has a pound of butter and a pound of sugar to go with a pound of eggs and a pound of flour. Too much of something that rich makes me sick. I need to eat it in small portions when its richness can be appreciated. Normally, I can digest in a night or two a book just over 150 pages. Collins's book did not let me do that. I had to put the book down and process after every few subsections in his chapters. Part of the reason I chose to study for a degree in biology was that even as a boy, I was really concerned with the challenge Darwin presents to those who would take Genesis as a somewhat reliable guide to the earth's and life's origins. He writes partly in response to Francis Collins and the work of the group Biologos which seeks to harmonize origins science with Christianity. C. J...

Stephen Meyer hopes this book has the impact that Darwin's Origin of Species has had on the world. I don't think Signature in the Cell stands alone in the way Origin does, but in concert with all the other books ( Darwin's Black Box by Behe) from practicing scientist supporting Intelligent Design, it is a major player. Will intelligent design be the next scientific revolution as Kuhn describes them ? I hope so. Scientifically, Meyer's arguments are tight, but the philosophical hurdle may be too much for predominantly agnostic and atheistic scientific high priesthood. According to one worldview, mind is the primary or ultimate reality. On this view, material reality either issues from a preexisting mind, or it is shaped by a preexistent intelligence, or both. Mind, not matter, is, therefore, the prime or ultimate reality - the entity from which everything else comes, or at least the entity with the capacity to shape the material world. Plato, Aristotle, the Roman Stoic...

Since not every reader visits this blog and notices the shared feeds section at the top, I'd like to share some of my favorites of the past week. Sunday 1-At An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution , Steve Martin attempts to define the nuances of the word "evolution" to his fellow Christians. He begins Much of the confusion in the evolution debate lies in the meaning of the word “evolution”. Since it can have several different meanings, and even the scientific definition of evolution can include several distinct components, it is not surprising that many confusing and confused arguments are articulated. Certainly the conversation is very difficult when conversation partners discussing evolution do not share the same definition, conflate several of the definitions, or elevate one component of evolution to be descriptive of the whole. Monday 2-At Evolution News and Views , Catholic evolution proponent and professor at Brown U. Ken Miller is challenged for claiming to much. Th...

I came across an interesting article by apologist Paul Copan who is a former young earth creationist, now an old earth creationist. He takes on Biblical arguments against an old earth reading and concludes For these and other reasons, a high view of Scripture does not require holding to 24-hour days in Gen. 1; there is greater flexibility, which leaves wide open the possibility of an old-earth view. Furthermore, other plausible approaches-such as Sailhamer's "textual creationism" ( "day" as 24 hours) or the literary framework hypothesis-allow for an ancient universe as well. Previous posts on creation .....

I r ecently blogged a humorous criticism of Intelligent Design, but now I feel bad. I recently finished watching with my kids a DVD produced by the Discovery Institute called Unlocking the Mystery of Life . My kids really liked it, but this biology major kept falling asleep. However, the difference between evolution and meteorology is the coding. There isn't an alphabet in the clouds but there is in DNA. That alphabet is specific and intelligent and points to a writer very clearly. There is no push back from these scientists in trying to uncover how the writer did it, in the same way that sculptors shouldn't figure out how Mt. Rushmore was made . Oftentimes, knocking down strawmen is much more fun.

I enjoy the work of Intelligent Design folks, but I also appreciate this philosophical tweak of them by analogy... Once again, the proposed material mechanisms of meteorology might be adequate for making extremely short-term predictions. But the inability of atmohsphereic scientists to make accurate long-term predictions based on these mechanisms clearly demonstrates that natural processes alone are incapable of producing complex weather systems. Anything more than about 15 days out has all of the marks of being designed by an intelligent agency. Astronomers don’t seem to have a problem making long-term predictions based on the known laws of nature. In fact, I have a program on my computer called Starry Night that can determine, with absolute precision, the exact location of any heavenly body at any point in time - backwards or forwards! And not just natural objects like planets and moons, but man-made satellites as well. But the long-term behavior of earth’s atmosphere, on the ...

I don't "bookmark" sites anymore. Usually I will add their feed, unless they are old school. This site is old school but worth returning to at some point, Contend for the Faith . I appreciated the book report on Sailhamer's Genesis Unbound which presents historical creationism.

cool creationist site at Who is your Creator?

about every 1000 days a corpse flower will bloom. it's from Sumatra though. fortunately, my alma mater, UConn , has one, and it bloomed this weekend. my son and i had a free day together so when i saw it announced in the local paper i thought what more fun can be had then taking my boy to go see a giant flower that smells like rotting flesh at the beautiful campus in Storrs, Ct. we packed a lunch and drove the hour north. there was a line only ten people long. it definitely was giant, taller than me, they provided a stepladder to look down into it, but it didn't stink too much. bummer. it's rotten smell attracts flies in search of carrion to walk around on it in frustration and pick up pollen to bring to another blooming corpse flower. too bad so many people can't appreciate a creator for this amazing design and instead appreciate the lottery called evolution. we then toured the campus, watched frogs and bluegills and a turtle in a pond while we ate our lunches and end...

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true." Robert Wilensky

forget labradoodles, how about cogs and dats and kuppies and pittens? click the title for the article... Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, claims her cat's offspring has been born with dog traits last Friday, three months after mating with a neighbour's dog in the Brazilian city of Passo Fundo. so if this isn't a hoax...who benefits more from this genetics violation? the creationists or the evolutionists? IT IS A HOAX!

i came across this creationist blog . it's interesting. has another noah's ark discovery claim.

Free Creation Science Videos is a great source of Young Earth video presentations.

A Physicist's Perspective: Michael Behe: "The Argument for Intelligent Design in Biology" I guess if you don't want to read Behe's Darwin's Black Box then you could read this short blog report on a recent Behe lecture. Behe posts here.

Who doesn’t like the underdog? The fans of the overdog I guess. My concentration in UConn's biology program was Ecology and Evolutionary biology. I have been reading creationist stuff, young earth and old earth stuff since elementary school. So this well preserved soft tissue from a T. rex femur sure make the Young Earth creationists look good, and they know it. Pictures. However, not even all Christians can cheer for the Young Earth guys on this one. Rich Deem has an excellent Old Earth Christian site in which he attempts to explain how this isn’t a victory for the Young Earth crew. How old is my earth? I don’t know. It seems pretty young to me today.

After reading this post (click the title of this entry to go there) I decided to order the book recommended, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?, Collins.