sentiententity wrote:I'm not here to "win" or "lose" arguments
Yeah...sorry about that. I realised after I'd pressed "fire" on the post button that it came over a bit as if we were in a pissing contest. Not intended.
No worries
sentiententity wrote:
Must admit, I am not certain what you believe. If we were having this conversation in the street after you'd approached me with a bible and a clipboard, I'd have you down as a classic died-in-the-wool evangelical fundamentalist. Since we're here, I can't get my head around the juxtaposition between believing in miracles and (I know you only implied it, rather than stated it outright) creationism, etc, and Peak Oil, which is a scientific subject and relies on geology which has shown that the earth is millions of years older than claimed in the bible.
I suppose I am an interesting mix, and you're not the first to comment on that! I've studied and worked as an engineer for 15 years, including software, silicon design and now renewable energy - needless to say I have a mind that likes to think in logical ways.
However, I am also an "evangelical fundamentalist" as you put it, in that I base my faith on the Bible, and try to avoid inventing any of my own bits. My view is that to have integrity as a Christian I have to accept the whole Bible or none of it.
As far as Creation goes, I don't see it as a critical point for whether someone chooses to believe in God or not; I think it's more likely that people choose about God first, and then their view on Creation follows on from that.
But seeing as you ask... first I should say that I'm not keen to get into a debate on Creation, because as I've said, my view comes from the basis that supernatural events happen, and I recognise other people disagree on that. Here's how it fits in with my "logical" mind.... The first thing is that just because we see slow geological and hydrological processes right now, that does not mean they have always been slow. Recent examples include the volcano that caused a glacial flood in Iceland in 1996 and Mt St Helens eruption. Mt St Helens in particular laid down mud and cut canyons in a way that surprised scientists, and a lot of creationists draw similarities between the landscape left there and other landscapes which are supposed to have taken millennia to form, rather than days. There's also the research last year suggesting that a megaflood formed the English Channel within a few months:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 140833.htm
I imagine the Biblical Flood would have been an event orders of magnitude greater:
Genesis 7:11-12
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month?on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Note that the primary cause is the "springs of the great deep", i.e. something geological in origin. So I see a supernatural event that involved massive movements of the Earth's crust and many thousands of cubic miles of water, which could reshape the surface of the Earth in a matter of days.
Obviously there's more to it than that, but I give the above as an example of the way I see it. If someone starts from the perspective that God exists and intervenes in the world, then Creation, Flood, etc. are all possible. If someone starts from the position that God does not exist, then they are impossible.
This is why I'm not interested in getting into discussions over these issues - because they are more likely to stem from a preconceived belief in God (or lack of it), than they are to influence any belief in God.
As you mention Peak Oil fitting into all that, it still works for me. The crucial point is that oil was made only at specific points in history that are not going to be repeated in the present day, or at a rate fast enough to replenish reserves. It doesn't matter to me if the formation occurred in a special climatic/geological period millions of years ago, or occurred during the supernatural event of the Flood, when the whole world was being altered. It's still a one-off event. Also, PO is now reaching the point where anyone can see the problems from looking at prices and lack of supply growth - I think arguments over geology are less important to persuade people oil is peaking these days. That's just my opinion though.
sentiententity wrote:I feel like a broken record here. I never asked for proof (why the scare quotes by the way?)...just evidence.
Aren't proof and evidence just different levels of the same thing? Perhaps a poor choice of words on my part. But do you
really want evidence, or would you prefer to find a lack of it? Not sure what you mean by "scare quotes" - perhaps some internet etiquette I'm not aware of?
