Hello Mr J (I'm giving you a pseudonym as I'd like this to be an open letter just incase this type of letter comes in waves),

Firstly to get the nitpicky stuff out of the way - first you say you're 'intelligent design' and then immediately (indirectly) site Genesis as your source. Now, I realise Intelligent Design is broader than its parent hypothesis, Creationism and the former could envelope the latter. However, as Intelligent Design was formed to get around the annoying ties that Creationism has with religion - it supposes any intelligent creator, not specifically God - you probably shouldn't point yourself at the bible while claiming to be an ID proponent. You seem to be, more accurately, of the creationist persuasion.

Furthermore, I don't think I ever claimed the Bible was a book of science or history. In fact I would very much say the opposite.

 

 

 

Okay so let's hit this link then. Here is a basic summary of the opening paragraph:

 

I can spoil the rest of this reply now by telling you the list is pretty much an attempt to align the Biblical verses (when quoted) with things stated ("maintained" or "confirmed") by science. It reminds me of Literature lessons back in school when you were meant to determine the meanings of poems and texts and most of us would come up with the meaning and then try and fit the text to back up the meaning we decided upon. It worked well then; not so well here. Sorry.

 

TWENTY-TWO EVENTS, then. I will not be going through all of them. Most of them I do not have the educational authority to comment on too deeply. Here we go then:

 

Okie-dokie - astronomy does not maintain that the universe had a beginning. In fact, beyond a certain time in the past - a ridiculously short amount of time after the Big Bang began - we have no way of knowing what happened. At this point we can only make speculations about what happened at this early point in the universe's history.
What some call the "beginning" is the earliest point in the Universe as we currently know it. Before the Big Bang, the universe could have had properties beyond any of our current thinking. We just don't know. FAIL

 

This is our first attempt to shoe-horn some bible passages into science.

Isaiah 42:5 - " ... he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; ..."
Isaiah 44:24 - " ... I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;"

I'm sure you can apply your interpretation to this, but it just sounds to me like the author is implying that he made the Earth very big and the heavens also very big. It doesn't say that 'he stretched them out and kept stretching them for the rest of time, possibly". FAIL

 

The science side is right, once again the Bible side is found lacking.

Genesis 1:2a - "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

This seems kind okay, if you take the leap that 'without form, and void' can mean gaseous, which I suppose it could in a poetic if I wasn't going to be pedantic. But you may ask, why does the article only quote half a bible verse? This is an uncommon practise, which becomes clear when you read the second half:

Genesis 1:2b - "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. "

What water? It just said if was without form, and void. Therefore, if you want to interpret the whole passage it seems more likely that the Earth was just dusty and watery and God hadn't put all his pretty grass and trees and chipmonks on it yet. And if you know the Bible, you'll see he has yet to do that. FAIL

 

Sadly, the Earth doesn't have a cornerstone, as it is a sphere. Also, here you are making an equivocation fallacy here: Geological Foundations are not the same as a builders foundations, which is the way in which this passage is using the term. FAIL

 

Let's ignore the fact that the Bible mentioned water before the birth of the Oceans (no bible ref is given, but in Gen 1:9-10 God gathers the waters together). The real problem I have here is the misuse of the word 'sudden'. In geological terms, the word sudden can (and in this case, does) mean up to hundreds of millions of years. This is why Creationist have such a problem with the Cambrian Explosion, because the don't realise the explosion was only relatively so. In the Bible, God creates the oceans almost dismissively and instantly. In fact he appears to create land and water at the same time, which might be why the article sites no bible verse. Dare I cry disingenuity? FAIL

 

Not really sure what's going on here as the Biblical reference is the one about the Earth being a void again. And it's pretty clear in the Genesis 1 that life is created on the second day when he makes grass, herbs and fruit trees. Mmmm! FAIL

 

We're onto days 2 and 3 of creation, now. We have to be careful because there are two accounts of the first 6 days of creation in the Bible: one in Gen 1 and one in Gen 2 and they don't match up very well at all. But, since Gen 1 has been cited previously, we shall continue in this manner.

Day 2: God creates Heaven (I know, he already created Heaven in Gen 1:1 but whatever), seas, land, grass, seeds, fruit trees, the stars, the sun and the moon. Then he declared them all to be good. Awesome, but where is the greenhouse effect? Seriously. You can't just state stuff and not back it up - there were at least citations before, now we have to go on trust alone? FAIL

 

I'm pretty much willing to give you this one, if we're going just by the Bible. It does state there was simply land and sea. However, we must bear in mind that the people that wrote the Bible probably didn't travel far enough to see much more than the land and the shore and had no idea of the full geography of the Earth. PASSABLE

 

Okay but don't bloody milk it. Just because I said a super-continent was plausable you can't then use real science to fill in all the gaps. Well I suppose you can, but you can't declare it's because the Bible says so. This one is clearly ALL SCIENCE.FAIL

 

We know we're in good educational company when authors start throwing apostrophes around like confetti. Does something belong to the season or are you saying 'season is'. Either way, there are some words missing.

Oh unless you meant seasons, plural! In which case, we still haven't established a greenhouse effect to dissolute and seasons weren't really established, the stars were created so people could tell what season they were in:

Genesis 1:14 - "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: "

But, you know - whatever.FAIL

 

Oh, come on. I'm not sure you would describe a dinosaur as a "great water monster" or a "long thin stretched out thing like a serpent.". These things sounds like sharks/whales and SERPENTS.

Furthermore, the Bible says that bats are birds and hares chew the cud; that unicorns and dragons existed, so it's not a super reference for ecological study. And 'flying things' could also mean Harry Potter playing Quidditch so let's shoehorn that into existence while we're here. Awesome - we just made Harry real!FAIL

 

I don't have too much to say about this, I just found the phrase "sudden beginning of a new day" hilarious. This happens every day at midnight, I guess?

Since we're not getting any Bible references any more, I'll have to do the leg work for the fifth day/ sixth day surprise:

Genesis 1:25 (Day 6) - "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."

God also makes man, but I can't be bothered to quote the whole thing. The point is that surely the dinosaurs would have been part of this variety of beast and not the previous bunch? A dinosaur is a thing which creepeth; it has legs doesn't it? So once again, this article can't even use the Bible properly and I have to do it for them. FAIL

 

PASSABLE

 

Right, now we've got a bit of a circular argument. What they're saying in the science bit is that if the Garden of Eden in all its splendour did exist then this place/time works because it's very nice, like the Garden of Eden. The bible side says that the Garden of Eden was a very nice place. Hey - just like the place the Geologists know about!

Kent in the summertime is a very nice place. Hey - it's also called the 'Garden of England', too! That fits the story even better! "The Kent Tourist Board maintains that..." FAIL

 

I'm confused. This appears to be saying that the mortality of human beings is confirmed by Geologists. I'm pretty sure we knew human beings died way before geology took off as a science. So... I'm not sure what the point is: the bible says that humans die, and geologists say that humans die so therefore thats another point for the bible? NO. FAIL

A further note - in the Bible, God tells Adam that he will die the same day that he eats the forbidden fruit. But he actually dies over 900 years later.

 

This one is just plain wrong. I won't speculate as to the whether it is knowingly wrong or terribly misinformed but it is so wrong that I'm going to cop out and point you at the excellent Talk Origins site that explains all the problems associated with the assumption of a worldwide flood as described in Genesis. In fact, I would recommend browsing Talk Origins if you are unsure about evolution, speciation or any other scientific study of global history. FAIL

 

 

Just in conclusion, I think it's important to remember that science isn't a thing, it's a method. After a hypothesis has been suggested, the next step is to try and prove it wrong as best as you can. This isn't being cynical or negative, but is a way of making sure that the hypothesis stands up in the real world and supports the available evidence. Anything that doesn't not stand up will not make it to the pool of scientific knowledge. Big Bang Theory and Evolution Theory (which only describes diversity of life, remember) have survived this process and are continuing to be refined by further evidence. Creationism and Intelligent Design are not able to stand up to scientific rigour and therefore can be believed by faith alone.

Thank you for your email though, I enjoyed reading the site you referenced.

Best Wishes

Chain Bear