World Net Daily contributor David Rives is a Creationist and he appeared on the Eric-Hovind-hosted Creation Today show recently, explaining that the Big Bang was bad science because the Bible doesn’t back it up.
Because that’s how science works.
Eric Dolan at Raw Story has the clip:
“Now, today we have a lot of atheistic scientists who are telling us, ‘You can’t believe the Bible,’ that everything is the result of an explosion 14 billion years ago, and I believe that’s bad science. It doesn’t line up with the Bible, and it has a lot of problems that those scientists don’t want to tell you. So, yes, you can study astronomy, no problem at all, as long as you stick to the facts of astronomy. The scientific, empirical data that can be seen and demonstrated.”
…
“I believe that, in six literal days, God created everything, that on day four, he created the stars — that’s what the Bible says — and the information that we’re being told, that a lot of universities are teaching us about astronomy, is nothing but bad science.”
If “lining up with the Bible” is the standard to which we hold things that must be true, then Rives might as well be an atheist since the Bible itself fails that test.
By the way, you can tell Rives is an astronomer because he tells us all about his telescope. If you can take great pictures of the universe, I guess, then that qualifies you to speak about the nature of the origins of the universe.
One more thing: At the 8:45 mark in the actual episode, Hovind matches wits with Rives by misquoting Albert Einstein:
“I think it was Albert Einstein that said any serious student of science will look out there, will realize or recognize, there’s something going on, there’s somebody in control of all of this. I didn’t get that quote exactly right. Look it up. Einstein.”
Okay. I looked it up. Here’s what I think Hovind was referring to:
“What I see in Nature is a grand design that we can understand only imperfectly, one with which a responsible person must look at with humility.”
Of course, as with most things, the hosts are guilty of out-of-context analysis that doesn’t mean what they seem to think it means. Einstein wasn’t religious, but often spoke in theological terms.
And, like all other credible scientists, he’d be ashamed at how his field is being perverted by people like Hovind and Rives who don’t know the first thing about how science works.
(via Christian Nightmares)