One of the items Bob sells through his radio show and website is a set of audiotapes called “Genesis – Creation”. I felt that these tapes might be relevant to any Age-of-the-Earth debate that might materialize between Bob and I, so I ordered them. The relevance showed itself in less than 30 seconds.
Very near the start of the first tape, Bob says this:
Let me make an analogy. I realize Bob was recording the Genesis Creation tapes knowing the vast majority of his audience would be fundamentalist Christians who largely agreed with him. Assume I were to go to Japan, where Buddhism is the predominant religion, and I was invited to speak on the subject of God. Just as Bob did, I might consider my audience, and elect to say in my opening:
What was it in Bob’s opening statement that equates to my omitting Christianity in mine? It is this - He is clearly addressing a scientific question of the origin of the universe. He restricts the purely scientific options to one choice – the eternal existence of matter. But considering universe as we know it to have existed eternally is a scientific philosophy that has been abandoned for nearly a half-century by over 95% of the tens of thousands of physicists in the world. Why did he elect to summarily disregard the idea that these same scientists feel there is strong and growing evidential support for, the Big Bang? I would be most interested to see if he could specifically tell us why he chose to restrict the scientific options to a single view held by a small minority of the physics community and totally omitted any mention of the majority scientific view.
Very near the start of the first tape, Bob says this:
When I first heard that I immediately stopped the tape and cleaned out my ears. Then I started the tape from the front again. The same words were heard. I thought, “There has to be a mistake here.” But alas, after playing it over several times, the sad reality was clear.Either the universe was always here, or a creator made it. That is the only choice. Either an eternal God or eternal matter.
Let me make an analogy. I realize Bob was recording the Genesis Creation tapes knowing the vast majority of his audience would be fundamentalist Christians who largely agreed with him. Assume I were to go to Japan, where Buddhism is the predominant religion, and I was invited to speak on the subject of God. Just as Bob did, I might consider my audience, and elect to say in my opening:
Later when you hear a recording of my statement, what will you think? Would you feel I had been honest in my claim? Or would you recognize that I had been blatantly deceitful in summarily dismissing from consideration the Christian understanding of God?There are only two options. Either God as understood in Buddhism is true, or the atheists are right in saying there is no God. Those are the only choices.
What was it in Bob’s opening statement that equates to my omitting Christianity in mine? It is this - He is clearly addressing a scientific question of the origin of the universe. He restricts the purely scientific options to one choice – the eternal existence of matter. But considering universe as we know it to have existed eternally is a scientific philosophy that has been abandoned for nearly a half-century by over 95% of the tens of thousands of physicists in the world. Why did he elect to summarily disregard the idea that these same scientists feel there is strong and growing evidential support for, the Big Bang? I would be most interested to see if he could specifically tell us why he chose to restrict the scientific options to a single view held by a small minority of the physics community and totally omitted any mention of the majority scientific view.