Re: NBC Program/creationist or not?

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Date
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You wrote: 
(After quoting creationist Ken Ham's negative review of the
NBC special):
>
>        Well there it is. Creationists don't buy
>the Texas footprints any more than Paleonet
>members. ... a number
>of Paleonet correspondents apparently jumped
>the gun by labeling the program as Creationist
>without knowing what the Creationist
>doctrine really is. If we are going to fight
>them successfully in the battle over science
>teaching in the classroom, perhaps it behoves
>us to study their books, newsletters, and
>pamphlets more carefully and get our "Facts"
>straight. 
>
>Tom Kellogg
>Dept. of Geology
>University of Maine
>Orono, ME  04469
>
Actually, I am not surprised that Ham panned the NBC program.  As he 
noted, although they used Carl Baugh, Don Patton, and other creationists 
to try to undermine conventional science, their thesis (that man lived 
many millions of years earlier than we thought is actually COUNTER to 
classic creationsit doctrine, which holds that man AND all other life 
froms are RECENT creations (in the last several thousand years or so).

Tom is also right that scientists should monitor creatioinst writings and 
understand their arguments before remarking on them.  On the other had, 
those who called the NBC show "creationist" were not too far off, because 
it did prominently feature some creationists--or at least 
quasi-creationists.  Like most other "isms", creationism has some 
diversity within its ranks, and not all creationists believe exactly the 
same thing.  For example, even within the "strict" or "young-earth" camp, 
there are differences on exactly how old they think the earth or universe 
is (some insist on less than 8 or 10 thousand years, others allow more 
time than this (say 20 or 30 or even 100 K years), but still much less 
than the conventional 4.6 billion years.  

Ironically, the creationsits prominently featured (Carl Baugh and Don 
Patton) are considered disreputable even by other strict creationists.  
And I wonder if they even knew their "evidences" were going to be used to 
promote the idea of humans in the prehistoric past rather than young-earth 
creationism.  For more information on Baugh, Patton, and the Paluxy "man 
track" claims, please visit my web page at 
http://members.aol.com/Paluxy2/paluxy.htm

Thanks.

Glen Kuban
paleo@ix.netcom.com