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Re: Unorthodox science projects

Fernie is here illustrating a point on the spectrum of religious thought,
called Biblical Inerrancy.

This goes (roughly speaking) like this: since the Bible is written by
prophets thought to have been guided by a Divine hand, then every word
must be taken as literally true.
There are numerous examples often seen as errors in a scientific mindset,
that make this position difficult to support.

It is a poor argument that if the Bible has errors, then Christians are
mistaken in their faith.

One can easily find other folks describing themselves as Christians,
who see that an historic figure, who announced himself as the Son of God,
described a New Covenant, which featured love and forgiveness.
These people will often see that even Divinely inspired writing sees dimly
through a veil, and will not demand of themselves to believe that every word
of the Bible, nor any other work of a human hand, is without a flaw.

Brian Whatcott



At 10:09 AM 4/25/2004, you wrote:
can anyone here seriously contend that we can have all the variations
necessary for the human species as we see it today come from Noah's family
alone?

everyone here is WELL aware of what starts to happen when families
reproduce...defects start popping up in the offspring.

and if you say yes it can, then you must agree that it would take Millions
of years, not the so called thousands the bible apparantly states.

Fernie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bernard Cleyet" <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 3:07 AM
Subject: Re: Unorthodox science projects


> I suspect a large fraction of the genes are to provide for just living
> i.e. metabolism, protein synthesis, et cet. That's why we have so many
> in common with all life. I'd have to search, but my impression is that
> we differ form Chimps less than 1%. That should make variation among
> "us" even less. Some where I read the diversity within a "racial"
> group is more that the variation between the averages of the groups.
>
> this is interesting:
>
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031219072314.htm
>
> John Denker wrote:
>
> >Fernanda Foertter [Advanced Physics Forums] wrote:
> >
> >
> >>millions of genes...even 1% diversity is much more diversity than
> >>Noah and his family could ever provide.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If you are going to argue against unscientific and
> >unorthodox beliefs, you ought to take care to offer
> >scientific arguments.
> >
> >"millions of genes... 1% diversity" is not a scientific
> >calculation; it's just throwing numbers at the wall to
> >see if they stick. And these numbers don't stick.
> >
> >Suppose Adam had 3 million genes, and was heterozygous
> >at every locus. That makes 6 million alleles. I
> >don't think it happened that way, but you can't prove
> >it didn't. Similarly in the extreme his wife could
> >have had 6 million completely different alleles. Each
> >of his three daughters-in-law could have had another
> >6 million, for a total of 30 million alleles on the
> >ark ... ten per locus ... one thousand percent diversity.
> >
> >So even if the original endowment was a factor of ten
> >less than the extreme values in the previous paragraph,
> >and even if 90% of the endowment has been lost by
> >accident since then, there could still be vastly more
> >than enough to account for 1% observed diversity at
> >the present time.
> >
> >If you could point to a particular locus where there
> >are more than ten alleles, you might have an argument.
> >But even then it would be a pointless exercise. It
> >wouldn't be convincing to anyone who didn't already
> >agree with you.
> >
> >In any case, could we please make an effort to stick
> >to scientific reasoning, with clearly-stated premises,
> >real facts, and careful logic, leading to clearly-stated
> >conclusions?
> >
> >
> >
>
>


Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!