To very quickly explain one obvious problem, the YEC interpretation of the helium data by the RATE team assumes that helium diffusion is independent of pressure. We know from direct experiments this is false. High pressure, like these rocks were subjected to under the earth, slows helium diffusions dramatically.
Of course, we are not going to litigate this now. That has already been done. There is a large amount of data that shows how the YEC helium contradiction is not really a contradiction at all.
So, we have offered an alternative explanation for the results. One that does not invoke any new laws of physics or require miraculous intervention (like accelerated nuclear decay). Pretty cool, right?
Actually it does, because one can follow the reasoning behind the research, make the minor corrections and test to see if it makes sense. Then, one can make a choice. You’ve made yours, I’ve made mine. I choose to believe what the bible says regarding creation - it was all done within the space of six human understandable days, after all how much more clear ly must it be spelled out - evening followed by morning, day 1,2,3,4,5,6? So whatever else one encounters in the physical world I interpret via what I believe to be the authority on our origins - the bible. I put my faith in what I believe is a historical document that relates to us at this time what happened in the past. Whatever scientists have to say about it has to be viewed in the light of the biblical text. In this case, it just doesn’t cut it for me. YMMV.
Swamidass,
Yes, I’m sure that Reasons to Believe have dealt with it extensively. In a similar vein my friends at creation.com and answeringenesis have also dealt extensively with why Reasons to Believe are on the wrong track.
Take a few simple things - the universe arising out of nothing, stars forming all by themselves out of clouds of gas with no outside help [ check the scientific theory on that if you haven’t done it yet ], planets that form all by themselves from clouds of dust in contradiction of Newtonian mechanics etc, life arising out of dead(non-living) materials all by itself via random chemical and physical processes, darwinian evolution from one single cellular organism to all of what we see around us today. And so by the way, all of this in contradiction to what the word of God has to say on how it happened. God said he created it and commanded it into existence in six days.
I’d rather go with those who do not believe in such miraculous self-creation that also contradicts what the word of God has to say about our origins.
Your choice.
Respectfully: There’s really no contradiction here, if you look at the verses you’re citing in context and don’t come looking for a fight. Jesus was drawing a distinction between the time of Moses on the one hand (v.5), and the beginning of the human race on the other (v.6). The two verses you cite, Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:2, are clearly not referring to the very beginning of God’s creative activity, when the Spirit of God hovered over the water in the darkness. They are referring to the moment when mankind was created. We now know that God created mankind many billions of years after He created the universe, but we can still easily affirm the truth of Jesus’s words: When mankind was created, they were male and female. Nobody believes that humans were at one point created unisex.
This is a manufactured controversy, my friend. There are plenty of real issues to discuss here, but I don’t think this is one of them.
Sure there is, I gave you links to nice piles of facts. I wasn’t going to retype them for you. I suspect you don’t really care about them anyway.
It doesn’t really concern me that you don’t accept the facts. Believe what you like. But it is kind of silly to tell someone who does accept the evolutionary model, “Evolution is stupid because it is basically saying that a female human had to magically evolve female sex organs and a male human had to independently evolve male sex organs in order for them to hook up and make human babies.” Yeah, that is stupid. It is also not even close to what the theory says happened. It’s not really the “gotcha” moment you evidently envision it as, because there is a coherent story for the evolution of sexual reproduction that makes good sense within the framework.
As AMW pointed out, I also believe God created humans male and female at the beginning of humanity. Without getting into the thorny exceptions, we can generalize that humans have 23 pairs of human chromosomes and pair 23 is either an XX or XY. For as long as humans have existed (until very recently if you want to include in vitro and the like), they have reproduced sexually. Nobody is arguing about this. Scientists don’t disagree with Jesus on human reproduction.
Prode, as I’ve said before, I’ve no problem with your young-earth approach to the Bible in and of itself. If you believe that you need to maintain this position in order to remain faithful to Scripture, and that you need to reject the conclusions of science in order to do so, then that’s entirely up to you. I don’t agree there – I’m satisfied that the Bible does allow us considerable flexibility in how we understand Genesis, and that discussions about the age of the earth or creation versus evolution completely miss the point, but I’m not going to argue there.
However, it’s one thing to reject the conclusions of science in order to maintain your position. It’s something completely different to claim that science supports your position when it does not. That is dishonest, and does not honour God.
If you want to claim that you have scientific evidence for your position, you can not just come up with any interpretation that shoehorns the data into your conclusions. Your interpretation must conform to the rules of the scientific method and must meet its standards. And these standards demand levels of mathematical and procedural rigour and precision, and of peer review and reproducibility that the RATE team’s work on helium diffusion in zircons simply does not meet.