RE: paleonet Faith and skepticism

[Ed Venit <epv@xxxxxxxx>]

Sure, and the total biomass of all the world's animal species x2 is 
unlikely to fit in an ark of known dimensions.

--On Wednesday, February 16, 2005 11:47 AM -0700 "Leo, Sandy" 
<atleo@sandia.gov> wrote:

>
> Folks -- just some passing thoughts. I also had a problem with the
> "creation of man/woman" section in Genesis. And had an even larger
> problem with the story of Noah & the survivors. We are all Jews, right,
> since the Jews were the only people in the Ark? But just a little bit
> further in the Bible, the Egyptians are introduced. Where did they come
> from? Another non-Jewish ark? Myself,  I have never had any problems with
> "out-of-Africa"  theory of evolution. But perhaps the creationists do.
>
> I will continue to try to figure out why I should take the Bible as
> absolute truth. But have little faith that I will resolve my quandary!
>
> -- Sandy Leo
> A Californian Stratigrapher & a firm believer in the the theory of
> evolution
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> From: paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk [mailto:paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk] On
> Behalf Of Kenneth A. Monsch
> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 2:16 AM
> To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: paleonet Faith and skepticism
>
>
>
> To those who are still interested,
>
> This thread is turning out to be pretty long. I won't have much to say
> about Peter's last message. Bill C. has already answered to a few of
> Peter's points. What I do agree on with Bill is that a deity cannot be
> part of your scientific paradigms, but from this doesn't follow that
> believing in God is invalid (hard to imagine for some, but I'm not the
> only one who can argue that this is possible). Just keep Him out of your
> scientifc theories. When you say "a human has an appendix because God put
> it there, or 'designed' it this way" you have obviously left a framework
> of scientific thinking. Peter said in his last mail that since
> creationists don't trust reason, it's very hard to get anything across to
> them. The problem is aggravated by this that they THINK they are
> reasonable, because they are convinced they do science! Sigh. But by
> educating the masses, we can at least reach the ones who are undecided,
> who still have a door ajar to reason. Or we should start at school, where
> children are still shaping their own opinions. The problem, creationists
> seem to be aware of it. Think of the 'evolution is only a theory'
> stickers. But let us not give up. Just a last point for Bill C.: the
> Bible is not a scientific book, and shouldn't be regarded this way. For
> religious books, 'discrepancies' such as the two creation stories can be
> explained and still accepted. If two scientifc works say different
> things, often it is thought that one must be wrong and the other must be
> right (though sometimes the truth may prove that neither is completely
> right!). A discussion about this could go on and on and on needlessly, so
> I'll just concentrate on one point. One Genesis story says that both A
> and E came out of the dust. Another says that A came out of the dust, and
> that E came out of A. So eventually E still came out of the dust, right?
> (Don't worry, I don't believe in these stories in a literal sense!)
>
> Ken
> *************************************************************************
> **
> Dr. Kenneth A. Monsch                           tel +48-71-3754017
> Department of Vertebrate Zoology            fax +48-71-3222817
> Institute of Zoology
> University of Wroc³aw
> ul. H. Sienkiewicza 21
> 50-335 Wroclaw
> POLAND