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Goodbye Jesus

YEC and phd in one


RedFox

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At my university, I go to the xian groups sometimes to see what they say. One time they invited a Ph.d in nuclear chemistry from a neighboring school to give a presentation on the age of Earth. I hoped it would be somebody sane.

 

At the beginning of the meeting, the xians sang some songs as usual. I saw someone standing at the side of the room who wasn't singing and hoped that he was the one. But it turned out that someone who had been singing was the Ph.d.

After the singing was over, he started his Powerpoint show. At first, it seemed sane as he described historical attempts at determining the age of Earth and some modern methods. But he started to talk about werid things.

 

After he talked about how most scientists think Earth's magnetic field is made by Earth's rotation swirling up the liquid iron outer core, he told us of werid stuff. He said to the effect that somebody thought of determining the age of Earth by using magnetic field decay, so that somebody went off to the deep end by saying that god made the planets out of water and magically turned that into rock and that somehow made magnetic fields that decayed in such a way it would give an age that YECs would like. He also said that construct was used to predict the strength of Uranus's magnetic field before Voyager 2 measured it and got it right. An article at talk.origins debunked that by saying that it'd be easy to guess the order of magnitude of Uranus's magnetic field strength by comparing the values for planets smaller and larger than it, like Earth and Saturn.

 

Then things became more werid when he started talking about radiometric dating. He gave examples of people finding that the rate of radioactive decay varying and said that it totally undermined all dates ever gotten with radiometric dating. I thought he was a nuclear chemistist Ph.d. From what I read, they study factors that may affect their measurements and take those things into account. So I think he was oversimpifying it to benefit his YEC beliefs.

 

Then at the end, he said that the Earth was 9000 years old and that he was open to any new evidence and could change his beliefs.

 

There were lots of little kids there because he also writes homeschooling materials. I looked for and found some reviews and samples of it. Lots of them were glowing reviews because of the clear writing. There was one that said the kid didn't like the stuff because of the god stuff in it. In the samples, the writing was clear, but the introductions had god stuff that assumed there was a lord who made everything. I also tried to find the presentation online, but to no avail.

 

Before, I thought all people involved in nuclear chemistry, especially Ph.ds would know something about radiometric dating and not try to force their religous beliefs onto it, but the YEC one who dissed it was a surprise for me. :eek:

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Even people with PhDs can be crazy, fallible, or disreputable. They're just as human as the next guy.

 

They just have a greater body of knowledge.

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By the way, don't most of those braindead YECs like to claim a degree et cetera? And has anyone ever met a YEC who actually had a degree in the field he babbled about?

 

Let's tell it like it is - considering the billions of lies the death cultists tell in any given year, should we be surprised if they lie about their education? :shrug:

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Was the speaker by chance Dr. Robert V. Gentry?

 

His name is Jay Wiles and he's from the University of Rochester. I wondered if he made up his claim about having a Ph.d, but my former xian roommate found his name on the university web pages. I tried to find it again and couldn't find it. He's not there anymore. Now he writes homeschooling stuff.

 

Here's a page on him and his xian stuff.

 

The link to the list of stuff he talked about includes both stuff about why he's a creationist and why many scientists are not and stuff about teaching critical thinking. :eek:

 

His homeschooling site with some samples: http://www.apologia.com/. I saw god stuff in it. :eek:

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Wow - a YEC guy w/ actual credentials - how do you get through nuclear chemistry and still believe that Carbon 14 dating is unreliable?

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This guy must be a master at doublethink ;)

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