Wednesday, April 27, 2005
AiG Conference
I went to an AiG conference last weekend. It was a great conference, but not for the reasons I expected.
First of all, I have a lot of respect for Russel Humphreys. I didn't before the conference. I appreciated the fact that he was humble about his own findings, and, specifically regarding his speed of light study, was very tentative about them. Reading Hugh Ross's assessment of the situation had led me to believe that AiG did not put any disclaimers on the material, but in fact they do. In addition, in a personal conversation with Russel after the conference, I asked him how many evidences he had collected for a young earth. He told me he had collected around 200, but only wished to disclose the ones that had been well-researched, which he publishes on ICR's web site.
Second of all, my favorite talk was on racism. I had thought about skipping that topic, because I thought it was going to be very boring. But instead, I learned many fascinating things. One of which was that the reason my parent's generation is so bigotted is probably because bigotry was taught as a fact of biology. Now, neither I nor AiG think that evolution is the source of racism. The existence of racism in biology textbooks simply tells me why its so engrained in them that they can't seem to let it go. So what was AiG's point? It was that the Bible contained the truth all along. When the Church abondoned God's word to follow secular science, when secular science changed, the Church was left holding the bag, and was no longer a light to the culture. It wasn't about racism per se, but about the Church compromising to contemporary culture. When people try to rectify the Bible with personal beliefs and modern science, it is always the Bible which winds up changed. As believers, we are to put the Bible first, not last.
The third thing, which is mostly trivia, is that the Ice Age ended around the time of Abraham. Job, which was written roughly at the same time, takes place in the middle east, but has an unusually high number of references to cold, ice, and snow. I thought that was interesting.
I also bought some videos there, which is unusual for me, since I usually buy books. Anyway, I've really enjoyed the Creation Astronomy video, and look forward to the research Jason Lisle will be doing with AiG. I also enjoyed Tas Walker's biblical geology video, and am doing some more research on my own in that area.
First of all, I have a lot of respect for Russel Humphreys. I didn't before the conference. I appreciated the fact that he was humble about his own findings, and, specifically regarding his speed of light study, was very tentative about them. Reading Hugh Ross's assessment of the situation had led me to believe that AiG did not put any disclaimers on the material, but in fact they do. In addition, in a personal conversation with Russel after the conference, I asked him how many evidences he had collected for a young earth. He told me he had collected around 200, but only wished to disclose the ones that had been well-researched, which he publishes on ICR's web site.
Second of all, my favorite talk was on racism. I had thought about skipping that topic, because I thought it was going to be very boring. But instead, I learned many fascinating things. One of which was that the reason my parent's generation is so bigotted is probably because bigotry was taught as a fact of biology. Now, neither I nor AiG think that evolution is the source of racism. The existence of racism in biology textbooks simply tells me why its so engrained in them that they can't seem to let it go. So what was AiG's point? It was that the Bible contained the truth all along. When the Church abondoned God's word to follow secular science, when secular science changed, the Church was left holding the bag, and was no longer a light to the culture. It wasn't about racism per se, but about the Church compromising to contemporary culture. When people try to rectify the Bible with personal beliefs and modern science, it is always the Bible which winds up changed. As believers, we are to put the Bible first, not last.
The third thing, which is mostly trivia, is that the Ice Age ended around the time of Abraham. Job, which was written roughly at the same time, takes place in the middle east, but has an unusually high number of references to cold, ice, and snow. I thought that was interesting.
I also bought some videos there, which is unusual for me, since I usually buy books. Anyway, I've really enjoyed the Creation Astronomy video, and look forward to the research Jason Lisle will be doing with AiG. I also enjoyed Tas Walker's biblical geology video, and am doing some more research on my own in that area.
Permanent Link posted by crevo @ 8:08 PM 
