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* Original To : All, 1:124/4115.221 * Original From: Graham Kendall, 1:170/600 * Original Date: Sep 28 01:56 Report on the Duane Gish lecture, On Sept. 22, Duane Gish, famous creationist, gave a lecture at the University of Tulsa A crowd of about 500 people attended. His lecture was a defense of the creationist position and a denial of much of modern science. His main claim is that the universe is only a few thousands of years old. The earth is slightly younger and all things occurred in agreement with Genesis including Noah's universal flood. This flood supposedly laid down all of the geological formations with their fossils. He kept repeating that NO intermediate fossil organisms exist which would be TRUE UNQUESTIONED ancestors of modern organisms. No fossil can be ABSOLUTELY PROVED to be the ancestor of any modern organism but many fossils exist which have a mixture of characteristics of older and more recent organism, showing they are at least close relatives of a true ancestor. Although he kept speaking of events of the Cambrian and other priods, his young earth would not have these periods as EVERYTHING is recent. At the end of the lecture I had about 10 minutes of give and take with him with about 20 people watching. I kept pointing out his misuse of the terms for the geoogical periods. He did not have a good reply. I kept pointing out that the fossils of each period were not found in earlier or later formations with NO admixture. His defense was that this arrangement represented ecological zones or density sorting. He said in a previous lecture that the formations of the Grand Canyon were the results of the flood and represented ONE year of deposition. He tried to prove it by pointing out the rapid consolidation of thick ash deposits from Mt. St. Helens. The error is that the ash deposits are ALL ignious and the Grand Canyon deposits are almost all sedimentary in origin. He claimed that stars represented very unlikely structures, which is disproved by their vast numbers. He brought up the argument that complexity proved an intelligent designer. He did not mention the engineering excellence of disease organisms or the inefficiencies and weaknesses of many organisms, including us. He tried to make a big deal of the opposite rotation direction of some moons and planets, compared to the majority but nothing in any of this supports creationism. He was polite throughout the discussion but his dishonesty was obvious to those equipped with knowledge. Afterward I had a long discussion with a young engineering student. He recognized many of Gish's errors but still tried to defend Christian theology. His historical education was very limitedand knew little of the cruelties originating in the various branches of that organization. It was a very pleasurable evening, at least for me.

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