OEC may seem convincing, but I would urge a reconsideration based on evidence alone.

As a YEC’er, one must hold that the arguments in [i]The Privileged Planet[/i] are garbage. Oh, the irony.

This is not the first time I’ve pointed out this little bit of cognitive dissonance.

For me, I can’t find a good reason to doubt the word of the majority of professional geologists. They are the experts, and I am not. They have no axe to grind, and are not involved in the kind of metaphysical debates as are some biologists. So, I can’t believe in a young earth and worldwide flood.

Though I think it matters that we come out right or correct in all things we believe, I have many friends who are YEC, global flood folks. They are very, very good people and seem to get along just fine in life with these beliefs.

Whatever theories we may hold, science should welcome skepticism and even be willing to ponder outrageous ideas.

An Old-Earth view of physics and geology is in light years better shape than Darwinian evolution, however, it still should not be given a free pass. Skepticism is a good thing.

The question Jerry poses are reasonable, but one might look at Sullivan Mountain in Walter Brown’s writings and the bent sedimentary rocks with marine fossils embedded in the sedimentary rock and decide whether Brown has a better explanation for bent sedimentary rock than someone else.

I also pointed out basic thermodynamics is at variance with prevailing explanations for volcanoes. This is well documented in peer review. I encourage the reader to see my debate with Darwinist Geologist Joe Meert.

That said, the topic of this thread was Old-Earth Creationist Richard Smalley. I would appreciate a few more comments on him as this thread is in tribute to him.

Sal

The evidences you cite have large timescales assigned to them, but are not themselves evidences of large timescales. Just because I disagree with the assumed timescales, does not mean I disagree with the geology.

I suggest you start explaining the Atlantic ridge, the nature of the Atlantic ocean floor, mountain and island formation, and all the volcanos in the world as starters. A very slow but relentless process is visible all around the world.

Geology has a very coherent theory that explains nearly all of non organic world around us and geologists admit there are many things they don’t know but these have little to do with the age of mountains, rocks, ocean floor etc. Hey, they admit they do not know for sure what caused the Grand Canyon.

I do not see many around here supporting a challenge on geology as taught in the schools. The reason is that it wouldn’t pass the laugh test whereas the attack on Darwin has hit home with millions who would think absurd that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

i’m not trying to debate a YECer. That’s about the biggest waste of time I can think of. My main point is that by being a YECer, you have the ability to test your claims. It seems to me that you believe the world was covered in water at some point, perhaps the flood described in the Bible. Off the top of my head, I can think of all sorts of predictions you’d expect to find, and I can think of all sorts of things that would falsify a WW flood. I’m leaving it at that. If you wanna pursue the actual scientific method in testing your belief in a flood then you’re lucky that you have the ability to do that. (unlike a I.D.ist)

Gould on David Raup:

Lyell encapsulated his philosophy in a doctrine later called “uniformitarianism”—a complex set of beliefs centered on the catechism that “the present is the key to the past.”….Lyell viewed this principle as a methodological reform to eliminate fanciful (and quasi-theological) “catastrophic” causes and to render the full magnitude of past change by the slow and steady accumulation of ordinary small changes (deposition and erosion grain by grain) extended over vast times.

The idea sounds so sensible and right-minded. Even the greatest modern revolution in geology, continental drift and plate tectonics, embodies the uniformitarian view in its vision of the efficacy of continental motion at a few centimeters per year extrapolated to great cumulative change over the immensity of geologic time. And yet, from two different standpoints (theoretical and empirical), Lyell’s credo makes little sense, and its status as dogma can only reflect our social and psychological preferences. First, what is the probability that our tiny slice of observable time should include the full range of potential processes that might alter the earth? What about big, but perfectly natural, events that occur so infrequently that we have only a remote chance of observing even one occurrence in historical time? Second, how can Lyellian gradualism account for the fundamental fact of paleontology–extensive, and appparently rapid, faunal turnovers (“mass extinctions”) occurring several times in the history of life? (Traditional explanations over at least a few million years and attributing them to over intensification of ordinary causes–changes in temperature and sea level, for example–but the arguments have always seemed forced.)
…
Yet, until recently, extinction received much less attention than its obvious prominence warranted. In an overly Darwinian world of adaptation, gradual change, and improvement, extinction seemed, well, so negative–the ultimate failure, the flip side of evolution’s “real” work, something to be acknowledge but not intensely discussed in polite company.

This odd neglect has been reversed in the last decade…the primary architect of this shift is my brilliant colleague David M. Raup….Dave Raup is the best of the best.

Legend has it Raup wrote the letter of recommendation for his YEC student Kurt Wise to Stephen J. Gould. In that sense the YECs are in debted to Raup. Raup was also at ID’s famous Pajaro Dunes conference (seen in Unlocking the Mystery of Life).

As Gould said, paleontology is making “catastrophism respectable” again.

Further in regard to Natural Selection, we have some rather odd perplexities like Sharks, Cockroaches, coelacanth fish, ginko, and horsetails, certain bacteria, etc. that haven’t ever seemed to evolve much that survived these cataclysms. So we can’t take Darwinian principles and explain in plausible detail why ape like creatures became human, but cock roaches remain cockroaches even though both we and cock roaches live in practiaclly the same happy environments, sometimes in the same houses.

Further, we have rather odd survivors of the cataclysms. Why would entire plant species die out immediately and not certain mammals? Raup calls it Wanton Extinction, and defines it as:

selective extinction, where some kinds of organisms survive preferentially but not because they are better adapted to their normal environment

The notion that slow, gentle pressure produces extinction is part of the Darwinian paradigm….This idea is appealing and has been learned by generations of biology students. But its verification from actual field data is negligible.

Probably the most strange issue is the creatures that survived cataclysms. Why would certain land creatures live while entire species of plants over vast streatches of land wiped out instantly in the same cataclysm that wiped other species of plants? The little critters seemed fortuitously protected.

If here, why not elsewhere? The world is full of evidence of floods, like the “bathtub rings” of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert (home of the annual Burning Man festival). Of course Science™ “knows” that these were all just “localized floods”. But how many localized floods (covering thousands of square miles each) does it take to add up to a global catastrophe?