Dizzy...

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinning...
I have been reading blogs by other people who have been reviewing Expelled, a new movie by Ben Stein. (Could I fit one more hyperlink in there? I think not.)
Waahhh...I feel so uneducated! My meager brain cells are blowing out lactic acid, trying to keep up. And you people visit my blog? -sigh- I should quit while I'm ahead!
WAS I ever ahead?
I AM looking forward to seeing this movie. I was edumacated in geology in the 70's and 80's, mostly unchurched, and easily fell for an Inherit The Wind-type of cosmology; why couldn't the Earth have been formed by God, using evolution? I remember sitting in a lecture during my Historical Geology class (no, this doesn't discuss geology in history, silly reader. This is about the geologic timeline and what was going on when. Go figure.) Our Kiwi professor challenged us to "learn this stuff; figure out how you're going to answer those Bible-thumpers when they come calling." Fast forward about 18 years, and I was sitting in a church auditorium, at the Illinois Christian Home Educators' Convention, and I heard the answer, spoken by God and relayed by Ken Ham. It was Romans 5:12, "Sin entered the world through one man, and death though sin..." Mr. Ham posed the question; how did we have millions and billions of years of natural selection and evolution if nothing died until Adam came along? Whoa. Talk about rocking my world. And it really did; John and I turned to each other and said, "We gotta hear more of what this guy is talking about." And we spent to rest of the convention learning NOT about homeschooling, but about Biblical creationism. An Ozzie helped me meet the challenge the Kiwi gave me. -smile-
So I want to go and see what this is all about. For me, as a student of science, evidence is an issue. So many of my college friends bought the scientific dating pie because it tasted good. I never got an answer to my question of my Sedimentology TA; where, if we say we know that Isotope A has a half life of 250M years, is the first reading of that isotope, to prove that, after 250M years, half of it's radioactivity has dissipated? The fact that there is no evidence, for either camp, is telling to me. It reminds me of that proverb, "Man plans, God laughs." Not that I believe God is in Heaven, laughing at our pitiful attempts to understand him. I wouldn't blame him, but I don't believe that. No, it's a question of control. By measuring radioactive isotopes and assuming we have a handle on them, we assume we have control over events. Don't we all know better? If I had control, I would not have a son in Iraq. If I had control, my lettuces would be burgeoning in my garden, not in the greenhouse, where they await dry weather. It's just childish to even consider the possibility that we can control anything in our lives. Plan, certainly. Manage, perhaps. Control. I don't think so.
So I'm looking forward to this movie. I want to see how people with no evidence can be pushed aside by people who also have no evidence, but say that the former's lack of evidence is somehow more of an excuse to push them aside.
Is your head spinning yet? I'm going to go lie down.