My reivew of Chapter two of The Dawkins Proof

This part one of two for this chapter.  My friend Patrick disagrees with me about this book and I want him to  have room to place his comments next to this post.  He wanted to comment on my review of chapter one but his comment was too long for Blogger to allow.  He then did his commenting on a Wordpress blog post of mine.  I hope that by breaking up my review of chapter two, he will have room to comment here.

Patrick and I are friends and in no way in a teacher-student relationship, but this is my blog and he is 'just a commenter'.  I worry that there may be an asymmetry in our power here and that may affect the discussion. Still, he has agreed to use this forum.  If a perceived imbalance of power occurs, I hope we find a way to work it out.

Still to come: Part two of chapter two -this is becoming too long and my review are likely to become much shorter.  Review of chapter three (this one is about evolution so I suspect it will be long as well), then a 'tangents' post.  Patrick and I, over the course of our arguments, leave the book behind on occasion and I want a place to keep these digressions without losing focus on the book.

This pattern should continue to the end of the book: three chapter review posts and a tangents post...

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This chapter is titled Powerful arguments.

Barns starts by arguing against Dawkins' claim that Christian areas of the US are more violent or have more crime. He feels that the standards Dawkins uses may not show what Dawkins thinks they show. Barns, without defending or offering any counter claims has, for the moment, clouded the issue enough that I cannot rebut him. I do have a copy of The God Delusion and will have to see what else Dawkins said on the subject.

“Oppressed Atheists”

In The God Delusion, Dawkins claimed that atheists in the US are oppressed.  Barns disagrees and offers counter evidence of Christians being persecuted.  His first example is of Dr. Michael Dini, a professor of biology, who required his students to affirm that they supported evolution.

Barns asks, “But what if the origin of human species did involve God?  That idea was ruled out of the question by Dini...”

This is an example of Barns mistaking his version of Christianity for all of Christianity..  Dini himself is a devout Christian.  From the New York Times.

“Another student, Brent Lawlis, 21, from Midland, Tex., said he hoped to become an orthopedic surgeon and had had no trouble obtaining a letter of recommendation from Dr. Dini. ''I'm a Christian, but there's too much biological evidence to throw out evolution,'' he said.”

and:

''He's [Dindi] a devout Catholic,'' said Greg Rogers, 36, a pre-med student from Lubbock. ''He's mentioned it in discussion groups.''

Mr. Rogers, who returned to college for a second degree and who said his beliefs aligned with Dr. Dini's, added: ''I believe in God and evolution. I believe that evolution was the tool that brought us about. To deny the theory of evolution is, to me, like denying the law of gravity. In science, a theory is about as close to a fact as you can get.''

Perhaps Barns is worried about scientifically illiterate Christians.  He seems to be defending the perpetuation of ignorance, rather than Christianity itself.

Barns then looks at  Richard Sternberg who published an article favouring the theory of ID.  Even before we dig into the facts of the case, note that ID proponents claim their work is not religious so I am not sure how attacking it is an attack on religion. Barns is probably correct in connecting ID to Creationism; that is, he is not lying but ID proponents are.

Barns repeats Sternberg’s claim that “attempts were made to force him out of his position” as editor of the journal.  And yet, he had already handed in his resignation letter six months ago. See Expelled Exposed.  His actual work in choosing who would review the article is also in question.

I found this comment of Barns interesting. “No doubt Souder is a supporter of ID - he would hardly be pursuing investigation of this issue if he were an opponent.”  I don’t know; I think many people are able to recognize injustice even when it is done by members of one’s own group.

In Wealthy Theists, Barns looks at Dawkins’ discussion of the .“Templeton Prize”

“Yet he never mentions funding awarded to atheists.  The expenditure of the Templeton Foundation is insignificant compared to the vast state of funding given to university scientists.”

After connecting Intelligent design to Creationism, Barns should be careful of discussing the Templeton Foundation.

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

"They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said.

Back to Barns and funding for atheists: “According to Dawkins, these scientists are largely atheistic and they are free to use that funding(...) to pursue their science based on an atheistic philosophy.”

First, clearly, funding to universities is not the same as funding for atheists or “atheist philosophy”. Secondly, what precisely is ‘atheist philosophy’? Is there any science that feels required to add “...and with the grace of God,...” to every conclusion?  Newton was famously devout but his equations and laws do not require any action from God for them to work. Atheists and theists alike can use them.  Even Dawkins admits to not being completely an atheist and would agree that no scientific experiment disproves God.  I think he would say, “God is never disproven but neither is he ever required.”

The Dawkins Proof Delusion

I think Dawkins’ views on evolution are, as my limited understanding allows, correct. While I generally agree with his views and talking points for atheism, I am not in nearly as complete agreement and I do see that he is not always consistent. For example, he once suggested that fantasy books might lead children into irrational thinking but also, I think, wrote a glowing forward to Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass.

Barns' The Dawkins Proof is an attempt at rebutting The God Delusion.  One major problem he has is that he is one the types of people that Dawkins chides mainstream Christians for accepting.  That is, Barns is a creationist, and so at least one of his foundational claims is already torn away.  I would have significant trouble attacking the views of a Roman Catholic or member of the United Church of Canada as their views, in many respects, match mine -and, as far as evolution is concerned, Dawkins' as well.

Below you will find my general complaints about and thoughts about the book and a more specific review of Chapter one (Nothing Beyond the Natural Physical World).  I will post my comments on later chapters as I prepare on them.  I hope to better organize these thoughts but I was concerned the friend who suggested I read the book might get tired of waiting.  If you really want further introduction, look at a previous post.

Barns has a number of recurring problems:

1) He is a lumper: He counts all Christianity as having the same views -including, apparently Creationism.  I am not sure if he is a YE or OE Creationist.

He discusses “The Christian Viewpoint” but there is no “The Christian Viewpoint”. My particular interest is in evolution and there are Christians who are Evolutionists, Old Earth Creationists, Young Earth Creationists and even Old Universe- Young Earth Creationists.  There are Christians who feel Saturday is the Sabbath and those who do not keep it holy are breaking a Commandment....

2) He has a good definition of evolution but doesn’t understand what it means.  Only a few pages after he gives a definition he seems to have forgotten it.

3) He doesn’t define things.  I am specifically referring to ‘Mind’ and ‘rational thought’ or maybe ‘logical thought’

Regarding “Rational Thought” and “logic”: He thinks that because the concepts of logic or rational thinking are  immaterial, atheists cannot believe or use them and still be consistent in their atheism.

Are imaginary numbers “immaterial”?  Their name alone suggest they are not real, yet they have real usefulness in mathematics.

4) He thinks ‘physics’ explains all phenomena - or that atheists do or think it should.

SMBC’s take on physics, chemistry, and biology :

Three Body Problem at Wikipedia

5) His evidence and claims for God come exclusively from the Bible.  That can be a valid source but it needs both internal and external confirmation.  In other texts, internal confirmation requires two parts. First a quote from a character, “I am strong”. and second, a described instance of the character being strong.  In the Bible, God is described as perfect and merciful but also as driving Adam and Eve out of Eden in a rage and destroying most of humanity.  Considering that he made Adam and Eve, the fact that he became angry with their actions is a logical as me being angry with a wood carving I made and found wanting.

External confirmation relates to finding supporting evidence for the Bible’s claims in other sources.  This kind of confirmation can be challenging.  Yes, Egypt is mentioned in the Bible and in other sources, but London is mentioned in Harry Potter and in other sources.  No, it is the extraordinary claims that need support and in many cases such support does not exist.

These two forms of confirmation are entirely absent from The Dawkins Proof.

6) Three levels of defense: I don’t think Barns successfully meets the first level much less the next two.  These levels are (weak): show atheism is wrong, (middle) show religion is right, and (strong) show (my form of) Christianity is right.  As we can see from my final parenthesis, there may be four levels here.

Barns is a creationist and writes as if he is describing the Christian view when a large number of Christians, possibly a majority, accept evolution.  Indeed, the most famous Christians-who-are-also-respected-scientists seem to be Catholics. I am referring to Kenneth Brown (possibly least famous of the group but notably an expert witness as the Dover Trial), Guy Consolmagno (Vatican astronomer, an interview with him is at the bottom of the link) and Francis Collins (Genome Project leader) and their views of the natural world are practically those of atheists.  Here is my example:

When we look at the phenomena of lightning strikes, we cannot say that all lightning is always unguided and always controlled by local meteorology.  All lightning that has been artificially created or that has occurred in locations with observational equipment has appeared to follow rules.  Two views that have no practical difference are 1) Atheistic - lightning is an entirely natural event and entirely explainable within materialistic viewpoints and 2) God made the universe so lightning can happen and can choose- but might not- to influence when and where it strikes and if He has done so, has done so within the expectations of modern meteorology. God is not necessarily absent but neither is he necessarily required.

1) Nothing beyond the natural, physical world

“Non-material things such as God, spirit, mind, Laws, justice do not exist...”

This is a recurring theme for Barns. Somehow he equates the existence of laws or mind with the existence for God.  Laws are immaterial, sure, but no-one claims that legal-type laws (not scientific laws) have real existence.  They are agreements between groups of people but are not the same around the world or even viewed the same way by people even inside of one country.

Scientific Laws do exist but seen as descriptions of reality, not controls that existed before reality.

A huge problem for Barns here is “mind”.  He offers no definition for the concept I am uncertain what exactly I need to argue.  I do understand the idea of mind/body dualism but think it is known to be flawed.  We, Barns and I, need to read Wikipedia and Mirriam-Webster on the subject, but although I am not an expert, and perhaps nobody really is, it is clear that brain damage or various drugs affect mind.  I loved “sleights of mind” a book about stage magic and directing consciousness -this is not mind exactly, but most people don’t understand their own consciousness either. Added later. More from a friend on mind/body dualism. Added even later(!): Brain decoder can eavesdrop on your inner voice

He states: “...nothing special about human life.”

Yes, I agree with this scientifically but as a human would protect the life of a human over that of my cat, for instance.

He states “...no concept of “ought”. “

Why not?  I may get into this more when discussing Barns’ misunderstanding of evolution, so briefly:

Game theory shows how various strategies, often tested in game playing, can improve success.  It seems obvious that selfish people or cheaters will succeed over altruistic, honest people, but many iterations of game theory show this is not so or not always so.  Behavior can be built into genes.  The best way to live a long, healthy life is to be honest and altruistic.

He states “there is no such thing as “mind”.”

See above.

“What is God like?”

Barnes offers quotes from the Bible, which are clearly evidence of nothing.

From my introduction:

His evidence and claims for God come exclusively from the Bible.  That can be a valid source but it needs both internal and external confirmation.  In other texts, internal confirmation requires two parts. First a quote from a character, “I am strong”. and second, a described instance of the character being strong.  In the Bible, God is described as perfect and merciful but also as driving Adam and Eve out of Eden in a rage and destroying most of humanity.  Considering that he made Adam and Eve, the fact that he became angry with their actions is a logical as me being angry with a wood carving I made and found wanting.

External confirmation relates to finding supporting evidence for the Bible’s claims in other sources.  This kind of confirmation can be challenging.  Yes, Egypt is mentioned in the Bible and in other sources, but London is mentioned in Harry Potter and in other sources.  No, it is the extraordinary claims that need support and in many cases such support does not exist.

These two forms of confirmation are entirely absent from The Dawkins Proof.

“It is not surprising, then, that all cultures are theistic in some way.”

It is not clear where this assertion comes from.  Here is a valid idea of why cultures start with some degree of theism:   Some few hundred years ago, there was no explanation for disease and afflictions like Bell’s Palsy, rainbows, rainfall and weather patterns, or lightning.  Many gods from many different cultures have been given the power to use lightning.  Now, we cannot say that God does not personally control all lightning bolts but we can say He is unnecessary. See also: "I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence."- Doug MacLeod

Indeed, it is not at all surprising that cultures start with a theistic bent, but that is evidence of nothing.

Just a theory - misused words in science

Scientific American discusses 7 words used by scientists that are often misused or misunderstood by lay-people.
From "Hypothesis"

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for something that can actually be tested. But "if you just ask anyone what a hypothesis is, they just immediately say 'educated guess,'" Allain said.

The key difference seems to be a hypothesis is not merely "an educated guess" (three words) but "an educated guess that can be tested." (four more words).

Richard Hoppe, at Panda's Thumb, gives an example that explains the difference.  First, he quotes Professor Behe that an experiment testing an Intelligent Design claim could be tested- sounds like a hypothesis, right?  But then Hoppe notes that Behe states we can know nothing about the Designer and Its abilities.  He then imagines the experiment runs its course and bacteria flagellum appear...

. Does that mean that evolution works and ID is “disproven”? Not at all. After all, since we know nothing about the skill set and intentions of the putative designer(s), it’s possible that the designer(s) somehow ‘watched’ our culture, and sometime during the course of the generations ‘reached’ in and poofed a flagellum into existence on one of the bacteria.

  We can see that Behe claim is more of an "educated guess" than a hypothesis as it is not testable  - the results would always be inconclusive.

I honestly do feel that it was an educated guess rather than a wish, hope or dream, which terms my cynical side wanted me to use.

Anyway, the other terms and their misuses interested me as well.

The Dawkins Proof

 I have used this blog chiefly to criticize the arguments of a creationist ex-coworker living in Busan.  Another creationist ex-coworker (and pretty-good friend), who I met in Gangneung, Gangwon Province has asked me to discuss a book by Richard Barnes, The Dawkins Proof.  This book attempts find errors in  Dawkins' The God Delusion.  I have not read it completely yet but I will review the book here and discuss it in the comments with my friend.

Firstly though, I need to address the connection between the evolution v creation debate and the Christianity v atheism debate.  More properly, the latter debate might be religion v atheism, rather than Christianity alone.

Atheists famously think of themselves (we think of ourselves) as akin to cats: difficult to herd.  I feel that all atheists are evolutionists but there may be scattered exceptions.  The reverse is not true or even close to true:  By no means all evolutionists are atheists.

Ironically, the huge variety of claims and beliefs of people and groups that call themselves Christian means that they may better exemplify catlike behavior.  The leaders of many Christian denominations have publicly announced that they see no conflict between evolution and (their form of) Christianity. Others are Young Earth creationists, Old Earth Creationists and IDists.

 Although I am an atheist, it is not something I normally go out of my way to argue.  This is a choice I have made and am knowledgeable enough that I am satisfied with my choice but I am not certain I am knowledgeable enough to argue the point.

On this blog, I normally stick to arguing evolution and have worked to avoid religious arguments. I guess, as a half-hearted excuse, I can point out that Barnes' apparent understanding of evolution is appallingly bad.  Certainly the claims he makes in that area makes me question his claims in other areas.

More to come after I read the book.
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Updated: I am slowly reading the book and still intend to discuss its contents.  My favorite science radio show, Quirks and Quarks, aired two segments that discuss religion and science.  I wanted to make note of them, particularly as this show has in the past offered strong science content without any political content and religion is often argued in the  political sphere.  Scroll down to find the segments.
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This is probably the wrong place for this video, but Barnes does seem surprised that anyone could find the Bible's teachings to be child abuse.  He needs to see it.

religion and evolution

Quoting Ray Comfort:

“Bill Nye is living in the same dream-world as Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins and their cut-and-paste clone believers,” Comfort told WND. “These devotees believe in the fairytale of evolution and quote Einstein (who wasn’t an atheist) and Mark Twain (who wasn’t an atheist) as though they too denied God’s existence, when they didn’t.”

Via the Sensuous Curmudgeon.

I rewatched the Bill Nye video -no hardship there - and noted that Nye never mentioned 'Christianity' or 'religion'.  He did talk about creationism but creationism is by no means all of Christianity.  Comfort is not alone in conflating the two concepts, and I have to wonder, because he surely has been corrected before now, how he can state  that evolution = atheism and still expect to retain credibility.  If his mission is to convert atheists to his religious beliefs, one would imagine that he would be forced to be more honest. Perhaps his mission is merely to literally preach to the converted and continue to receive their money.

At Ask the Atheist, the question “Does belief in evolution lead to atheism?” was debated and I definitely see evolution guiding seekers that way (toward atheism) but noted religious leaders and scientists-who-are-also-religious suggest otherwise.  At the Clergy Letter Project, more than 12,000 Christian Clergyfolk have signed a letter stating that the theory of evolution does not contradict their Christian beliefs.

I think this is the appropriate place to discuss a problem with many of the scientists placed on lists of believers and hence creationists.  I actually see two problems, but one is simple to point out and move on from.  Many scientists are Christian but also evolutionists.  Others, like Einstein, have very peculiar ideas about religion and cannot easily be considered Christians or Jew or be fit into any organized religion.

The second problem is timing.  da Vinci might have been a creationist - and I don’t think he fits a model that most creationists would accept - but he also died long before evolution was even considered.  Similarly, Lord Kelvin estimated the age of the Earth (to 20-400 million years of age) before radioactivity was discovered.  I am certain that the age he settled on was the result of serious and rigorous work.  However, his result can’t be seen as a refutation of later estimates because he was unaware of a key discovery.  Newton was a creationist but this can’t be held as a refutation of evolution because Darwin proposed his theory long after Newton died.

Quote mining

One lesson that university professors tried to teach me and that didn’t really sink in until I left university, was the importance of defending every point I made in a formal essay.  You can’t write common knowledge without attributions or citations.  Controversial claims require even more careful citations.

But there are ways to “game” the citations.  An obvious way is to attribute the claim to an non-existent author or scientific article and hope no one researches the citation.  This is risky and there is a more plausible-seeming trick. Find a quote from a scientific article that is close to what you want and changing it as little as possible until it fits your ends.  Or find a quote that means one thing in context and another out of context.  This is quote mining.

The classic example of using a quote out of context is mis-use of the full title of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection.  The sub-title is “ or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”.  Hmm, “favoured races”, that sounds like something Hitler would say.  People have used this title to claim the book defends racism in humans.  The fact is, the book does not describe humans at all, but does use ‘race’ as we use ‘breed’ (of dogs, for example) today.

The Quote Mine Project at Talk Origins looks at several mined quotes that have been slightly altered or taken out of context to cast doubt on the theory of evolution that does not exist.  At the link in this paragraph (or here), John Wilkins states,

[I]t is worth observing too that not only were these quotes taken carefully out of context, but that they must have been deliberately done so. After [unearthing the context] I could not find there is [any] way these could have been taken accidentally or in ignorance out of the context.Several of them turn out to be railing against creationists. More than a few turn out to be making the exact opposite point [than the bare words seem to indicate] and at least one was reporting secondarily on the ideas of others in order to rebut them. Once is a mistake, twice is carelessness, three times could be stupidity, but the sheer volume of these is a deliberately planned campaign of disinformation.

One of my goals on this blog is to point out common creationist errors that continue to this day, so let me describe five examples.  The first, at the Norwich Bulletin, Cal Lord, and only a few days old, misquotes Nobel Prize winner, George Wald:

I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible.

This quote does not exist but was used on August 30, 2012 and elsewhere.  Many, many places elsewhere and it is precisely the sort of thing everyone should want to remove.

Creationists, tear down this fabricated quote!

Second, and far more widely abused, is Darwin’s quote on the evolution of the eye.

From chapter 6 of On The Origin of Species,
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. (Darwin 1872)


The quote is halfway down the page or about halfway through the chapter.

A creationist coworker struggled to put special meaning into the word “seems”.  I take it to mean something along the lines of “appears to be but may not be”, but ...well, I can’t remember his exact words and it would be rude claim too much fidelity when I found his claim ridiculous.  It seemed to me that he claimed  that up until the time Darwin wrote that sentence, we did in fact find eye evolution absurd, but immediately afterward found a workaround.  I must have this wrong but this was what I understood.

The problem for creationists is that in reading even one sentence , even one word further, suggests that this was a rhetorical point, much as one asks a rhetorical question just before answering it.

The next word is “Yet” and like “on the other hand” or “but” or “however” it shows he might not hold the position he eloquently described.

Alright, here is the sentence starting with “yet”:
Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.

He goes on to describe several of those steps and examples of precursors to the mammalian eye that exist today.

The offending quote, suggesting that Darwin did not believe that a modern eye could evolve can be found in many places.  Here are some:

Huse, Scott. 1996. The Collapse of Evolution and quoted on Wikiquote.
Evolution of Truth mostly states that Darwin was only offering an example of what could show his theory to be wrong, but their response is bizarre.
The Christian Courier accepts the quote.
mtgriffith is happy to accept the quote and cites its use back in 1975.

Silvestru's Global Flood: Part one

This was becoming a long blogpost.  To make commenting on specific points easier, I have broken my discussion of the video below into a few different blog posts. This is the first post and mostly discusses the whole video in general.

In early September, 2011, my coworker posted on a Facebook group comments and a link to a video of Dr Silvestru discussing how he feels the global flood occurred.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-BaMAt4dnE

The relevant part of the video is more than an hour long and it took me some time to watch it, take notes and research, to the extent I was able, his claims.  Although my coworker’s post mostly matched the aims of the Facebook group, discussion was squashed by the time I was able to add my comments.  As an aside, I do not exactly feel that my coworker was being restrained or censored so much as the limitations of Facebook Groups made his discussions unwieldy.  He might reasonably feel his views were censored by a philosophical group that should be anti-censorship, but I hope he can also see that Facebook’s everything-on-one-page format becomes annoying when multiple threads are simultaneously drawing comments.

Perhaps inviting people to an off-site location, on a Google Group or the like, would have been wiser and allowed me to post this critique somewhere.

Anyway, by the time I began writing this critique, the discussion is no longer ongoing at that Facebook page and I am not sure where to put this.  That’s part of the reason I have been coy about naming my coworker.

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One reason Silvestru's arguments are hard to rebut is that neither I nor his target audience have the background to really understand or debate his claims.  I believe that my unnamed coworker is in the same position.  Some of his arguments, though possibly not difficult to learn to follow, appear arcane enough that I have passed on the business of trying to learn the necessary background.

I think Carl Sagan described what I think to be a similar phenomenon in discussing the work of von Daniken.  I used “I think” twice as I going from memory and cannot find his exact quote.  He said something like,

“With my fellow astronomers, I felt the astronomical aspects of his claims were weak, but the archaeological claims appeared strong.  Then I spoke to archaeologists and found they felt the archaeological claims were weak but the astronomy looked strong.”

I feel there is something universal here.  Generally, if we do not have extensive knowledge in a field, we are inclined to accept the claims of others.  Sagan wasn’t an archaeologist, so he provisionally accepted the validity of the archaeological claims.  Silvestru’s audience, myself included, are not knowledgeable about geology, so it is easy to accept his claims.  Even if we do not, it is hard to determine if and where his errors or misrepresentations are.

Near the beginning and at the end, he mentions large and dramatic events that I can agree happened.  He starts his talk by mentioning large-but-local floods, and suggests there was a 1,000 year long ice age.  At the end of his talk, he shows a chart with three extinction events.  I am not sure that he did, could, or even should tie them into the main theme of his talk.

Why shouldn’t he tie them into his talk?  As an evolutionist, I think that the problems regarding the story of the Flood are too big and diverse to ever be answered, but that same size means that Flood proponents should focus on segments or individual issues and offer some in-depth solution to each...eventually bringing them into a whole, a ‘modern synthesis’ if you will.  Silvestru does first step; he focuses on a possible explanation for the Flood without looking into the Ark or it’s contents.  Silvestru isn’t a naval engineer or biologist and, to his credit, he doesn’t try to be.

At some point though, he needs to dig into the larger picture.  I would, someday and from someone, like to see a Young Earth Creationist timeline that includes the Age of the Earth, the Flood, the rise and fall of the tower of Babel (and an explanation for why the endeavor was stopped, but manned journeys to the moon and unmanned journeys much further have not been), about when Silvestru’s one-thousand-year Ice Age (I presume this is Veith's 600 year-long ice age as well) occurred and how and what caused the other two extinction events Silvestru touches upon.  Also, when did the huge-but-local flood occur in the US (come to think of it, he may have said it happened at the end of the Ice Age).

Somewhat related, I would also like some connection to other reasonably well-dated events, such as construction of the pyramids, which I think occurred both before and after the Flood.

Should a reader choose to look into this, I can definitely accept error bars or +/- or the like.  I do understand that exact figures are hard to find dealing with events thousands of years in the past and would not imagine using uncertainty (or uncertainty only) as a reason to attack the claims.  Still, I do feel that such a timeline would immediately show the problems with the Biblical narrative.  Some events could be simultaneous, like the building of Babel and an Ice Age mostly affecting Europe and other Northern locales, but I think that agreed upon dates for Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Indian, Chinese and other civilizations would make the gap between Flood and recorded history very busy.

Either as a discussion of one of Silvestru’s first points or as big-picture aside, I need to mention uniformitarianism  vs catastrophism.  I am by no means an expert, but I think creationists (as catastrophists) overly simplify the uniformitarian view, both original and as it is understood today.  Uniformists accept gradual, slow change through local and entirely natural forces.  This might typically mean erosion and storm damage, for example.  However, it doesn’t deny the effects of earthquakes, large floods, volcanoes, or even meteors.  Uniformists do accept that some catastrophes do happen.  I suppose that if the flood was caused by entirely natural forces, as Silvestru tries to show, it could even fit into the uniformist view.  Let’s bar the Flood for the moment but still note that, for example, the Uniformist view allows both slow and fast burial of fossils.

Now, onto the video.  At 51 minutes, Silvestru states “The Genesis Flood happened after the natural laws were set and should therefore be explainable by existing scientific methods."

Note that I try to quote accurately,

but I do not promise 100%.

I do promise not to distort quotes deliberately.

 I find this to be bad theology.  If the Flood can be explained by natural laws, I see two problems.  First, there is no need to add God to the narrative.  Because Silvestru has kept his focus narrow (and I do approve of his focus), he does not defend the building of the Ark or any of the biological claims.  Perhaps there was a Flood, life survived on high mountains (Silverstu will later offer a depth of 3km and does not go into detail about mountains growing after the Flood), and people of the Bible saw the evidence of the Flood and added it - with embellishments - to the Bible.

 A second problem works like this:  God created the world and built in the Flood so that two thousand years after He (pardon the crude description) hit the ‘start button’, calamity would strike.  If he didn’t know humanity would become so evil they needed wiping out, then we should see unnatural causes for the Flood.  If he did know, even before he started, he is no better than a three-year-old frustrated with his toy for not working right.

 Silvestru asks the rhetorical questions “Where did the water come from and where did it go?”  Admirably, he goes out of his way to reject two other Creationist explanations: the Vapor Canopy and Walt Brown’s Deep Earth water deposits of water.

 His mechanism is described from fifty-four minutes to one hour, although he adds to that description somewhat through his talk.  It seems that when plate tectonics started, it started fast and brought a lot of hot mantle to the surface.  The description sounds reasonable as he describes it, but I don’t think I could do it justice.  Even if I want to give it the best and most positive possible description, even if it is entirely true; my description and eloquence would fail.  Let’s just say that the ocean floor becomes quite hot.  This causes it to expand and rise one mile and super-heated water to evaporate and rain heavily around the world.  For more detail, watch the video.

 In twenty to forty days, Silvestru claims, the ocean floor raised one vertical mile and either at the same time or soon afterwards, the continents sank by a mile.  Again, I haven’t even tried to understand the evidence for this, or even looked for it.  As I heard it, it seemed reasonable that if part of a sphere swells, another part of the sphere should dimple.

Now on to specific points, some of which I can argue against, some of which, I cannot.  To facilitate commenting, I have broken up the rest of the video into several blog posts.