The Wall Street Journal's creation compromise author on RSR
This is the show from Tuesday, April 13th, 2021
SUMMARY:
Last month the Wall Street Journal published the article, A Compromise on Creationism, Mainstream scientists shouldn’t completely shun organizations friendly to the belief[/url]. Bob was frustrated interviewing the author, Dr. Joshua Swamidass, associate professor of laboratory and genomic medicine and biomedical engineering at St. Louis' Washington University. It seemed that Dr. Swamidass talking on the radio to a creationist repeatedly denied the overt recommendations he had made in print just a month ago. We lay out these particulars below including for example Joshua's argument that in Mark 10:6[/url] when Jesus quoted Genesis chapter 1, that at "the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female'", Swamidass claims that the Lord was not reminding us of when God created mankind and when He instituted marriage (i.e., from the beginning of the creation itself), but rather, that Jesus was somehow rebutting something like transgenderism or homosexual marriage. Again, please see below and see the conclusion of the interview at rsr.org/swamidass-2.
Today's Resource: Evidence Against the Big Bang
When people wonder what evidence exists for the Big Bang, many ask Google. And not surprisingly, when folks search for: evidence against the Big Bang, Google sends most of them on over to Real Science Radio's List of Evidence Against the Big Bang. Yet this is surprising: When NASA urges you to trust the theory because of its confirmed "predictions", folks who Google: big bang predictions, also find RSR's article ranked #1!
This video can help prepare you for the coming revolution in cosmology. The nine pieces of evidence presented herein are bringing people out of the failed science of the 1900s and into the 21st century demanding truth regarding both the origin of universe and ultimately, the origin of ourselves.
And now, let's leave out the word "predictions" and leave out the word "against". Increasingly, when scientists and others just Google: big bang evidence, the search engine is sending them on over to RSR's evidence AGAINST the Big Bang! So whether you are a creationist or even if you're dug in still defending the old scheme on the origin of the cosmos, you'll want to watch this video to catch up with the latest amazing science on the big bang!
ENDORSEMENTS
Former NASA Cassini Saturn mission lead ground systems administrator David Coppedge:
"Great work on the Big Bang video! It's excellent. You did your homework and the information is presented clearly at the right level for most people. I like how you preemptively close off comeback arguments from materialists."
Coppedge is a board member of the group that produced the Privileged Planet video.
Australian physicist, cosmologist, professor, and award-winning co-creator of the world's most precise clock, physicist Dr. John Hartnett:
"I recommend that you buy and watch RSR's Big Bang video! I find it to be excellent. During RSR's on-air debate with Lawrence Krauss, this leading big bang proponent said that, 'All evidence overwhelmingly supports the big bang.' So RSR began assembling a list of peer-reviewed evidence against the paradigm which led to this great video!"
Evidence Against the Big Bang - Blu-ray, DVD or Video Download
* About the RSR Swamidass Interview:
- James Tour: Bob was wrong to insist on Part 2 of this interview that world-class scientist Dr. James Tour is a young-earth creationist. He's known for stating that he doesn't want to be labeled as an ID advocate. (The intelligent design movement has a secular message.) Dr. Tour kindly replied to an email from Bob:
And Dr. Tour added:
With some websites claiming incorrectly that Dr. Tour is not a creationist, it is good to have this authoritatively, in writing from the man himself, who clarifies: "I am a creationist."
- Frustrated for These Reasons: At the end of tomorrow's broadcast, Bob was dismissive of Dr. Swamidass asking him, "Why are you frustrated?" But to answer, as Bob does in the introduction of Part 2, the reasons are:
1. "That's Not What I Wrote"
2. Eunuchs (believe it or not, and)
3. Thorns.
- Thorns: The Genesis thorns demonstrate the old-earth mishandling of God's Word. Taking Moses at his word, there were no thorns until after Adam sinned. Why? Thistles, thorns (i.e., blooms which fail to open), and even weeds, are part of the curse of the ground that resulted from the Fall. That teaching provides a powerful transdisciplinary (paleontological/theological) young-earth argument. Old-earth Christians claim that various rock layers, even those containing fossilized thorns, formed a hundred million years before the age of man. So, either 1) the rock layers and fossils actually are young or 2) Genesis is wrong and thorns preceded Adam's fall. Old-earthers including Joshua don't like either option. So what did Dr. Swamidass claim on today's broadcast? That the thorns had been there all along, but they were outside the Garden of Eden, all over the earth, for a hundred million years or more. So when God said, "Because of your sin now there will be thorns", God meant only that now there would be thorns also inside the Garden of Eden.
Of course that's absurd and impossible with any sincere reading of the text. Why? Because God immediately kicked Adam out of the Garden. Yet He said that the thorns would cause Adam to sweat and toil as he works the ground. So because Man's sin corrupted the perfect creation, the thorns that God is talking about are those that would now grow in the fields all over the earth. From Genesis 3 when God said to Adam that because he had sinned...
That story cannot be understood, unless you're willing to twist it beyond recognition, to claim that thorns had been outside of the Garden all along but Adam's fall resulted in thorns only then growing also within the Garden. Christians who reject the Bible's teaching of a young earth bring violence to the text.
- God Made Us at the Beginning of Creation: Old-earth Christian Dr. Swamidass made another bizarre argument that the RSR crew is still having difficulty following. In Mark 10:6 Jesus quoted Genesis chapter 1 to remind the rabbis that at "the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female...'" This also tells us that therefore, mankind was not made, as taught by old-earthers, billions of years after the creation, but at the beginning of the creation. But Swamidass claims that the Lord was not reminding us of when God created mankind, and when He instituted marriage (i.e., from the beginning of the creation itself). Rather, this old-earther claims that Jesus was somehow rebutting something like transgenderism or homosexual marriage. Really? Talk about an anachronism.
So Swamidass brought up the Matthew 19 parallel passage, where a couple paragraphs later, Jesus does go on to talk about celibacy and in that context he mentions eunuchs. But it's taking that totally out of context to claim that the Lord was talking about eunuchs when He reminded the rabbis that God made us at the beginning of creation. By the way, the word creation is not a verb. It's a noun. The creation is the universe. When we trust in Christ we become a new creation. The "whole show" as often said, is called, the creation. The word "creation" summarizes everything that God made. So, God made us at the beginning of the creation. That doesn't mean on Day One of creation week. That means, when you look at the universe, at the whole show, that God made us at the beginning of that creation, just as Jesus said. He was quoting from Genesis chapter one which starts, "In the beginning, God created". So Jesus was reminding the rabbis of when God instituted marriage, that God did that at the same time, in fact, on the same day, the sixth day of creation, when He made man, at the beginning of the creation of God. He wasn't arguing against eunuchs, or for that matter, homosexuals, marrying. (That perverse idea was so against Scripture that it wouldn't even have entered His mind.)
- "That's Not What I Wrote": Dr. Swamidass' Wall Street Journal article, though he is a Christian, is part of the cancel culture against Bible-believing Christian colleges. His message to Bob Jones University, etc., You better change the way we're telling you to change, and stop teaching evidence for biblical creation in your science classes, or else we'lll call for medical schools to reject your students; for your school should lose its accreditation unless you are willing also to have faculty members teach against a recent creation. For that later part, he used the euphemism, "academic freedom". Actually, it's cancel culture and the theft of liberty, and that by one of our own.
In his discussion with Bob Enyart, Joshua did what Calvinists often do in debate. Instead of defending their position, they claim that their opponent just doesn't understand Calvinism. Swamidass was pretending that he had not just written in the WSJ that Christian schools should lose their accreditation unless they compromise on creation science. He used a couple methods to dodge responsibility for the cruelty he had just advocated for.
First, he tried to deny making his own proposal by claiming that any such changes would not be up to him personally but up to the accreditation organizations. No kidding. That's deceptive. We're talking about his proposal. Not theirs.
Then, he argued that a certain practice was not his practice, but that of the accreditation organizations, even though he supported the practice.
Next, toward denying the proposal he had just published, he obfuscated by pretending to agree with Enyart and with creationist colleges generally, to show how reasonable and tolerant his old-earth side really is. In fact, there's hardly any disagreement at all. The way Joshua did this was to interpret the word creationist differently when he uses the term, and when creationists like Bob use it. When Joshua used regarding these Christian colleges, it meant scientific creationism (which is young earth creationism). When Bob said that Swamidass wanted to force Christian colleges to stop teaching creationism in their science classes, he objected claiming that he had written no such thing and that Enyart had misunderstood the article. How could Swamidass justify uttering such a blatant falsehood? Because Bob didn't say each and every time, "scientific creationism", but often, only creationism. That's what's called obfuscation. He did the same with the thorns and the eunuchs. Anything to win an argument. And if you can trick the audience into thinking your old-earth view shows you to be the reasonable one, so much the better.
His WSJ article was about whether the top U.S. accreditation board, abbreviated CHEA, "should continue to recognize a young Earth creationist" [accreditation] organization. He then describes the nation's young-earth Christian accreditation group, called Tracs. And adds, "As a medical doctor and research scientist, I reject young Earth creationism… I perceive a readily observable fact: Earth is billions of years old." [That's sure not so readily perceived, for example, when you break open dinosaur bones and find blood in them.] Joshua then argues that the top accreditation group should hold creationist colleges like Bob Jones University to what Swamidass calls a, "higher standard" on science. Then, "A committee … could... develop... recommendations for the institution to adopt. Absent some... compromise, a renewal of [accreditation] should be... denied." And, get this, "deviations from national norms in a science curriculum need to be... tracked and reported." And, "Credit from courses that include creation science should not be used toward science degrees. Nor should they be eligible for transfer to secular institutions."
Dr. Swamidass then proposes that for a creationist organization to be "recognized, it should also give more space to [that is, tolerate, hire, etc.] faculty who disagree… A reasonable process would... require creationist institutions to... align with national norms, [they] should defend the academic freedom of [faculty; that is, of] those who dissent from scientific creationism."
On Real Science Radio, just a month after writing his article, Joshua Swarmidass simply denied his own writing, denying that he proposed that creationist colleges should be forced to pay faculty who reject scientific creationism. The main way he denied this was by obfuscation, playing the game where, if Bob only said creationism, and not scientific creationism, then Bob was totally misrepresenting Joshua's position. He was intentionally confusing the matter to manipulate the audience into thinking that he just be correct because surely he knows what he wrote. Then Swamidass writes, "correct remedies will take time... But [creationists] should understand the significant benefits for their universities if brought into alignment with national educational norms", those benefits being that if the schools cave, then he won't try to prevent their graduates from applying to medical school, etc. That's big of him. And he closes arguing that, "unconditionally renewing [creationist accreditation] is... unacceptable…"
So, Dr. Swamidass, that's why you frustrate others. You're not above trying to mislead the audience to win your old-earth argument.
This is the show from Tuesday, April 13th, 2021
SUMMARY:
Last month the Wall Street Journal published the article, A Compromise on Creationism, Mainstream scientists shouldn’t completely shun organizations friendly to the belief[/url]. Bob was frustrated interviewing the author, Dr. Joshua Swamidass, associate professor of laboratory and genomic medicine and biomedical engineering at St. Louis' Washington University. It seemed that Dr. Swamidass talking on the radio to a creationist repeatedly denied the overt recommendations he had made in print just a month ago. We lay out these particulars below including for example Joshua's argument that in Mark 10:6[/url] when Jesus quoted Genesis chapter 1, that at "the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female'", Swamidass claims that the Lord was not reminding us of when God created mankind and when He instituted marriage (i.e., from the beginning of the creation itself), but rather, that Jesus was somehow rebutting something like transgenderism or homosexual marriage. Again, please see below and see the conclusion of the interview at rsr.org/swamidass-2.Today's Resource: Evidence Against the Big Bang
When people wonder what evidence exists for the Big Bang, many ask Google. And not surprisingly, when folks search for: evidence against the Big Bang, Google sends most of them on over to Real Science Radio's List of Evidence Against the Big Bang. Yet this is surprising: When NASA urges you to trust the theory because of its confirmed "predictions", folks who Google: big bang predictions, also find RSR's article ranked #1!
This video can help prepare you for the coming revolution in cosmology. The nine pieces of evidence presented herein are bringing people out of the failed science of the 1900s and into the 21st century demanding truth regarding both the origin of universe and ultimately, the origin of ourselves.And now, let's leave out the word "predictions" and leave out the word "against". Increasingly, when scientists and others just Google: big bang evidence, the search engine is sending them on over to RSR's evidence AGAINST the Big Bang! So whether you are a creationist or even if you're dug in still defending the old scheme on the origin of the cosmos, you'll want to watch this video to catch up with the latest amazing science on the big bang!
ENDORSEMENTS
Former NASA Cassini Saturn mission lead ground systems administrator David Coppedge:
"Great work on the Big Bang video! It's excellent. You did your homework and the information is presented clearly at the right level for most people. I like how you preemptively close off comeback arguments from materialists."
Coppedge is a board member of the group that produced the Privileged Planet video.
Australian physicist, cosmologist, professor, and award-winning co-creator of the world's most precise clock, physicist Dr. John Hartnett:
"I recommend that you buy and watch RSR's Big Bang video! I find it to be excellent. During RSR's on-air debate with Lawrence Krauss, this leading big bang proponent said that, 'All evidence overwhelmingly supports the big bang.' So RSR began assembling a list of peer-reviewed evidence against the paradigm which led to this great video!"
Evidence Against the Big Bang - Blu-ray, DVD or Video Download
* About the RSR Swamidass Interview:
- James Tour: Bob was wrong to insist on Part 2 of this interview that world-class scientist Dr. James Tour is a young-earth creationist. He's known for stating that he doesn't want to be labeled as an ID advocate. (The intelligent design movement has a secular message.) Dr. Tour kindly replied to an email from Bob:
And Dr. Tour added:
With some websites claiming incorrectly that Dr. Tour is not a creationist, it is good to have this authoritatively, in writing from the man himself, who clarifies: "I am a creationist."
- Frustrated for These Reasons: At the end of tomorrow's broadcast, Bob was dismissive of Dr. Swamidass asking him, "Why are you frustrated?" But to answer, as Bob does in the introduction of Part 2, the reasons are:
1. "That's Not What I Wrote"
2. Eunuchs (believe it or not, and)
3. Thorns.
- Thorns: The Genesis thorns demonstrate the old-earth mishandling of God's Word. Taking Moses at his word, there were no thorns until after Adam sinned. Why? Thistles, thorns (i.e., blooms which fail to open), and even weeds, are part of the curse of the ground that resulted from the Fall. That teaching provides a powerful transdisciplinary (paleontological/theological) young-earth argument. Old-earth Christians claim that various rock layers, even those containing fossilized thorns, formed a hundred million years before the age of man. So, either 1) the rock layers and fossils actually are young or 2) Genesis is wrong and thorns preceded Adam's fall. Old-earthers including Joshua don't like either option. So what did Dr. Swamidass claim on today's broadcast? That the thorns had been there all along, but they were outside the Garden of Eden, all over the earth, for a hundred million years or more. So when God said, "Because of your sin now there will be thorns", God meant only that now there would be thorns also inside the Garden of Eden.Of course that's absurd and impossible with any sincere reading of the text. Why? Because God immediately kicked Adam out of the Garden. Yet He said that the thorns would cause Adam to sweat and toil as he works the ground. So because Man's sin corrupted the perfect creation, the thorns that God is talking about are those that would now grow in the fields all over the earth. From Genesis 3 when God said to Adam that because he had sinned...
That story cannot be understood, unless you're willing to twist it beyond recognition, to claim that thorns had been outside of the Garden all along but Adam's fall resulted in thorns only then growing also within the Garden. Christians who reject the Bible's teaching of a young earth bring violence to the text.
- God Made Us at the Beginning of Creation: Old-earth Christian Dr. Swamidass made another bizarre argument that the RSR crew is still having difficulty following. In Mark 10:6 Jesus quoted Genesis chapter 1 to remind the rabbis that at "the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female...'" This also tells us that therefore, mankind was not made, as taught by old-earthers, billions of years after the creation, but at the beginning of the creation. But Swamidass claims that the Lord was not reminding us of when God created mankind, and when He instituted marriage (i.e., from the beginning of the creation itself). Rather, this old-earther claims that Jesus was somehow rebutting something like transgenderism or homosexual marriage. Really? Talk about an anachronism.
So Swamidass brought up the Matthew 19 parallel passage, where a couple paragraphs later, Jesus does go on to talk about celibacy and in that context he mentions eunuchs. But it's taking that totally out of context to claim that the Lord was talking about eunuchs when He reminded the rabbis that God made us at the beginning of creation. By the way, the word creation is not a verb. It's a noun. The creation is the universe. When we trust in Christ we become a new creation. The "whole show" as often said, is called, the creation. The word "creation" summarizes everything that God made. So, God made us at the beginning of the creation. That doesn't mean on Day One of creation week. That means, when you look at the universe, at the whole show, that God made us at the beginning of that creation, just as Jesus said. He was quoting from Genesis chapter one which starts, "In the beginning, God created". So Jesus was reminding the rabbis of when God instituted marriage, that God did that at the same time, in fact, on the same day, the sixth day of creation, when He made man, at the beginning of the creation of God. He wasn't arguing against eunuchs, or for that matter, homosexuals, marrying. (That perverse idea was so against Scripture that it wouldn't even have entered His mind.)
- "That's Not What I Wrote": Dr. Swamidass' Wall Street Journal article, though he is a Christian, is part of the cancel culture against Bible-believing Christian colleges. His message to Bob Jones University, etc., You better change the way we're telling you to change, and stop teaching evidence for biblical creation in your science classes, or else we'lll call for medical schools to reject your students; for your school should lose its accreditation unless you are willing also to have faculty members teach against a recent creation. For that later part, he used the euphemism, "academic freedom". Actually, it's cancel culture and the theft of liberty, and that by one of our own.
In his discussion with Bob Enyart, Joshua did what Calvinists often do in debate. Instead of defending their position, they claim that their opponent just doesn't understand Calvinism. Swamidass was pretending that he had not just written in the WSJ that Christian schools should lose their accreditation unless they compromise on creation science. He used a couple methods to dodge responsibility for the cruelty he had just advocated for.
First, he tried to deny making his own proposal by claiming that any such changes would not be up to him personally but up to the accreditation organizations. No kidding. That's deceptive. We're talking about his proposal. Not theirs.
Then, he argued that a certain practice was not his practice, but that of the accreditation organizations, even though he supported the practice.
Next, toward denying the proposal he had just published, he obfuscated by pretending to agree with Enyart and with creationist colleges generally, to show how reasonable and tolerant his old-earth side really is. In fact, there's hardly any disagreement at all. The way Joshua did this was to interpret the word creationist differently when he uses the term, and when creationists like Bob use it. When Joshua used regarding these Christian colleges, it meant scientific creationism (which is young earth creationism). When Bob said that Swamidass wanted to force Christian colleges to stop teaching creationism in their science classes, he objected claiming that he had written no such thing and that Enyart had misunderstood the article. How could Swamidass justify uttering such a blatant falsehood? Because Bob didn't say each and every time, "scientific creationism", but often, only creationism. That's what's called obfuscation. He did the same with the thorns and the eunuchs. Anything to win an argument. And if you can trick the audience into thinking your old-earth view shows you to be the reasonable one, so much the better.
His WSJ article was about whether the top U.S. accreditation board, abbreviated CHEA, "should continue to recognize a young Earth creationist" [accreditation] organization. He then describes the nation's young-earth Christian accreditation group, called Tracs. And adds, "As a medical doctor and research scientist, I reject young Earth creationism… I perceive a readily observable fact: Earth is billions of years old." [That's sure not so readily perceived, for example, when you break open dinosaur bones and find blood in them.] Joshua then argues that the top accreditation group should hold creationist colleges like Bob Jones University to what Swamidass calls a, "higher standard" on science. Then, "A committee … could... develop... recommendations for the institution to adopt. Absent some... compromise, a renewal of [accreditation] should be... denied." And, get this, "deviations from national norms in a science curriculum need to be... tracked and reported." And, "Credit from courses that include creation science should not be used toward science degrees. Nor should they be eligible for transfer to secular institutions."
Dr. Swamidass then proposes that for a creationist organization to be "recognized, it should also give more space to [that is, tolerate, hire, etc.] faculty who disagree… A reasonable process would... require creationist institutions to... align with national norms, [they] should defend the academic freedom of [faculty; that is, of] those who dissent from scientific creationism."
On Real Science Radio, just a month after writing his article, Joshua Swarmidass simply denied his own writing, denying that he proposed that creationist colleges should be forced to pay faculty who reject scientific creationism. The main way he denied this was by obfuscation, playing the game where, if Bob only said creationism, and not scientific creationism, then Bob was totally misrepresenting Joshua's position. He was intentionally confusing the matter to manipulate the audience into thinking that he just be correct because surely he knows what he wrote. Then Swamidass writes, "correct remedies will take time... But [creationists] should understand the significant benefits for their universities if brought into alignment with national educational norms", those benefits being that if the schools cave, then he won't try to prevent their graduates from applying to medical school, etc. That's big of him. And he closes arguing that, "unconditionally renewing [creationist accreditation] is... unacceptable…"
So, Dr. Swamidass, that's why you frustrate others. You're not above trying to mislead the audience to win your old-earth argument.
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