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DMD Publishing Co. is the home of Glenn R. Morton, a Christian petroleum geologist who nearly lost his faith completely after years of involvement with young-earth creationism, flood geology and other religiously-inspired pseudoscence.
In order to get closer to the data and know it better, with the hope of finding a solution, I changed subdivisions of my work in 1980. I left seismic processing and went into seismic interpretation where I would have to deal with more geologic data. My horror at what I was seeing only increased. There was a major problem; the data I was seeing at work, was not agreeing with what I had been taught as a Christian. Doubts about what I was writing and teaching began to grow. Unfortunately, my fellow young earth creationists were not willing to listen to the problems. No one could give me a model which allowed me to unite into one cloth what I believed on Sunday and what I was forced to believe by the data Monday through Friday. I was living the life of a double-minded man--believing two things.
By 1986, the growing doubts about the ability of the widely accepted creationist viewpoints to explain the geologic data led to a nearly 10 year withdrawal from publication. My last young-earth paper was entitled Geologic Challenges to a Young-earth, which I presented as the first paper in the First International Conference on Creationism. It was not well received. Young-earth creationists don't like being told they are wrong. The reaction to the pictures, seismic data, the logic disgusted me. They were more interested in what I sounded like than in the data!
Rather than dealing with the problems thrown up by the data, Creationists resorted to name calling; 'like your father, Satan' (Carl R. Froede--I am proud to have this one because Jesus was once said to have been of satan also.)
. There's lots of interesting stuff to read here, though some of his attempts to reconcile the data with Genesis smacks of special pleading. (via Ken MacLeod).
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at 18:48. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:43.
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Comments
1: Posted by: Larry Lurex | October 8, 2003 3:31 PM
Pity the honest scientist. I think Occam's razor swings into effect here, as the best way of interpreting the data. There are, after all, lots and lots of rocks with an endless amount of striation in them. Some geologic features almost seem to scream "I'm ancient, I am!"
As Bertrand Russell once observed, we could all have been created five minutes ago, complete with all our memories and the holes in my socks. But it seems unlikely, and given that the world is open to more or less logical explanation it seems a pity to not try and understand it. It is always possible that some form of deity deliberately created the world into fooling mankind into think it was ancient, but then, who is regarded as the father of lies and deception?
Sorry about that. I need to rant today. I've been reading about bloody Barry bloody Legg. Yes, Lady Tesco's mate.
2: Posted by: A Voice of Sanity | September 2, 2008 5:43 PM
Among the Maori of New Zealand, whanau (family) are of the utmost importance, not only the living, but also those who have already passed on. At hui, (gatherings) one often represents a multitude, living or dead.
Whakapapa (genealogy), is at the very core of Maori life, and as such, Maori have a huge familial universe.
Having no written language, it was a matter of pride for the Maori to remember their ancestors. Some were able to memorize the list of their forefathers for some thousands of years. The genealogy of the bible is instantly recognizable to a New Zealander and the list of 'begats' simply represents the best knowledge at the time the OT was first committed to paper. It cannot be a complete list since there are limits on human memory. Therefore the computations of the age of the earth based on the OT are obviously limited by human memory and all such ages are false.
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