Is Creationism Science?

[thomas t]

Dear fellow posters,

 

 

 

..."It is, therefore, our unequivocal conclusion that creationism, with its account of the origin of life by supernatural means, is not science. It subordinates evidence to statements based on authority and revelation. Its documentation is almost entirely limited to the special publications of its advocates. And its central hypothesis is not subject to change in light of new data or demonstration of error. Moreover, when the evidence for creationism has been subjected to the tests of the scientific method, it has been found invalid...

 

This quote is from a spokesperson of the National Academy of Science (this quote can be found ).

 

Can we discuss the question if creationist ideas are subject to change instead of the question in title?

I mean change according to possible new data from data collection in the field?

Would this suit the title, in your opinion? I think it would.

 

My opinion is, it should be. The Bible only gives a wide frame. For instance, that God made everything and humans were made via special creation. This frame isn't falsifiable, in my opinion. However, the reverse – for instance: God did not create humans in special creation - isn’t falsifiable either, I think (as discussed ).

 

Edit: ... isn't faIsifiable either, on the premise of the above quoteation imo, I would like to add. I think that it contains a generic rejection against any divine intervention testable by science: "creationism, with its account of the origin of life by supernatural means, is not science.". On this premise, there can't be any possible falsification of any claim that excludes a divine intervention.

 

Everything inside the biblcal frame is disputable, I think. For instance: did plants evolve via evolution or did God made them via special invention? Both options lie inside the scope of personal interpretation of the book of Genesis, I think.

 

Thomas

Edited September 23, 2013 by thomas t

[alphaparticle]

I think it's most useful to restrict 'science' as a field to stuff that involves, in principle, only physical type mechanisms. Things not being science then doesn't mean they aren't important, or aren't real, it just means that they involve more than physical cause and effect (though it may be physical cause and effect and something else). I share the concerns of many that explicitly involving a divine Designer in *scientific* inquiries could backfire, even though I believe there is such a Designer who is responsible for the existence of everything.

[bestrfcplayer]

In my personal, humble opinion, creationism is not science, as well, it doesn't use the scientific method. Instead, it relies on a sort of just it being there, and not testing whether its true or not. And also it's not science because it never changes. Science is always changing and evolving.

[thomas t]

I think it's most useful to restrict 'science' as a field to stuff that involves, in principle, only physical type mechanisms. Things not being science then doesn't mean they aren't important, or aren't real, it just means that they involve more than physical cause and effect (though it may be physical cause and effect and something else). I share the concerns of many that explicitly involving a divine Designer in *scientific* inquiries could backfire, even though I believe there is such a Designer who is responsible for the existence of everything.

Thank you Alpha for sharing your thoughts on this, it's interesting I think.

 

If I understood you well, you have the following equation in mind (tell me, if I'm wrong):

reality = physical reality + supernatural interventions.

Your approach, as I understand it, is to leave out possible divine interventions as the inclusion of it could eventually backfire when proven wrong. I deeply share your worry about this. However, when I read your post, I understood it as if you were telling us that everything made perfect sense without God.

That's fine, when facts are observable, I think. Take plate tectonics for example: you can observe the movement of the top layer of earth. You could if you like put supernatural interventions on top in your private calculations.

But what happens when our physical reality wouldn't make sense without a specific divine intervention? What if we as humans never existed without?

If you leave out (possible) divine interventions in the remote past, then you possibly talk about reality as it never could have happend - the wrong reality.

 

Have a good day,

Thomas

 

[alphaparticle]

 

I think it's most useful to restrict 'science' as a field to stuff that involves, in principle, only physical type mechanisms. Things not being science then doesn't mean they aren't important, or aren't real, it just means that they involve more than physical cause and effect (though it may be physical cause and effect and something else). I share the concerns of many that explicitly involving a divine Designer in *scientific* inquiries could backfire, even though I believe there is such a Designer who is responsible for the existence of everything.

Thank you Alpha for sharing your thoughts on this, it's interesting I think.

 

If I understood you well, you have the following equation in mind (tell me, if I'm wrong):

reality = physical reality + supernatural interventions.

Your approach, as I understand it, is to leave out possible divine interventions as the inclusion of it could eventually backfire when proven wrong. I deeply share your worry about this. However, when I read your post, I understood it as if you were telling us that everything made perfect sense without God.

That's fine, when facts are observable, I think. Take plate tectonics for example: you can observe the movement of the top layer of earth. You could if you like put supernatural interventions on top in your private calculations.

But what happens when our physical reality wouldn't make sense without a specific divine intervention? What if we as humans never existed without?

If you leave out (possible) divine interventions in the remote past, then you possibly talk about reality as it never could have happend - the wrong reality.

 

Have a good day,

Thomas

 

 

Yeah so even when I was an atheist I thought there were true things, real things, that couldn't be investigated by science as science is the investigation of physical stuff and how physical stuff interacts in terms of physical causation. I found understanding it that way most fruitful in my own scientific outlook. But, that is to admit that science isn't going to investigate 'all of reality' what that may or may not include. And, so what? I think the YEC crowd largely (not entirely, but this seems to be true of the vocal ones) have bought into the propaganda from latter day logical positivists that if it isn't empirically testable, verifiable or falsifiable, it isn't real, and that is why they are so obsessed with getting their view accepted as scientific. They are going to lose, for multiple reasons, not least of which is the pure hubris of deciding that 99.99% of biologists, of physicists etc are wrong about the age of the earth and life, and on *scientific* grounds.

[RobbyPants]

I think it's most useful to restrict 'science' as a field to stuff that involves, in principle, only physical type mechanisms. Things not being science then doesn't mean they aren't important, or aren't real, it just means that they involve more than physical cause and effect (though it may be physical cause and effect and something else). I share the concerns of many that explicitly involving a divine Designer in *scientific* inquiries could backfire, even though I believe there is such a Designer who is responsible for the existence of everything.

This sounds like the idea of non-overlapping magestiria, which is basically the idea that science can only examine certain things. This is true that a method used to study things that involves observation and testability will not be able to measure something that is either not observable or that makes no testable claims. This could mean one of two things:

1) It is not scientific, therefore, we need to examine/consider it using different means, or

2) It is not scientific, therefore, we do not need to consider it.

The first approach means that different people will likely come to different conclusions, and many of those different conclusions will not be any more defensible than opinions. This doesn't make any of them wrong, but they also wouldn't be compelling, either. You could argue the second approach is unnecessarily dismissive, but I feel the first approach doesn't give any outputs more useful than any one random person's opinion.

[alphaparticle]

 

I think it's most useful to restrict 'science' as a field to stuff that involves, in principle, only physical type mechanisms. Things not being science then doesn't mean they aren't important, or aren't real, it just means that they involve more than physical cause and effect (though it may be physical cause and effect and something else). I share the concerns of many that explicitly involving a divine Designer in *scientific* inquiries could backfire, even though I believe there is such a Designer who is responsible for the existence of everything.

This sounds like the idea of non-overlapping magestiria, which is basically the idea that science can only examine certain things. This is true that a method used to study things that involves observation and testability will not be able to measure something that is either not observable or that makes no testable claims. This could mean one of two things:

1) It is not scientific, therefore, we need to examine/consider it using different means, or

2) It is not scientific, therefore, we do not need to consider it.

The first approach means that different people will likely come to different conclusions, and many of those different conclusions will not be any more defensible than opinions. This doesn't make any of them wrong, but they also wouldn't be compelling, either. You could argue the second approach is unnecessarily dismissive, but I feel the first approach doesn't give any outputs more useful than any one random person's opinion.

 

Yeah, I'd argue it's nonoverlapping by definition though, and the way that science is set up in the first place. I don't think there is any way of avoiding it.

 

There are other ways of exploring claims than unleashing the scientific method. Alright, it's my favorite, and most precise, among other things.. but there are other ways of assessing the viability of claims.

Edited September 24, 2013 by alphaparticle

[RobbyPants]

Yeah, I'd argue it's nonoverlapping by definition though, and the way that science is set up in the first place. I don't think there is any way of avoiding it.

 

There are other ways of exploring claims than unleashing the scientific method. Alright, it's my favorite, and most precise, among other things.. but there are other ways of assessing the viability of claims.

What other means are you talking about?

[alphaparticle]

 

Yeah, I'd argue it's nonoverlapping by definition though, and the way that science is set up in the first place. I don't think there is any way of avoiding it.

 

There are other ways of exploring claims than unleashing the scientific method. Alright, it's my favorite, and most precise, among other things.. but there are other ways of assessing the viability of claims.

What other means are you talking about?

 

Sensation is the root of the sort of induction that the scientific method uses. You experience the outside world through your senses, and science is the way we order and master the knowledge gained that way. Other basic ways of knowing things include memory, introspection, testimony from others... all of these are defeasible by the way, can be tricked through any of this. But reasoning through knowledge acquired this other way may not include full use of the scientific method. Not everything we know to be true we can carefully reproduce or do innumerable objective observations on. Yes, that's a really nice way to go about things but it's not always available to us. If we are doing history, for example, we can set strict guidelines for how to do it as systematically and rationally as possible, but we won't be able to achieve scientific standards. Or, say we are doing philosophy, or mathematics, the latter of which is heavy on deductive reasoning.

 

To use an example directly relevant to us, I have experiences that have seemed to me to be from God. Now it's entirely possible that I am grossly mistaken, I realize that. In fact, such questions periodically keep me up at night. At one point I worried about my sanity with all seriousness. But in the end, while realizing I could be wrong, I only have my experiences by which to interpret the world. The best I can do is look at the most plausible explanations for what I experience, and systematically evaluate them. I can look for defeaters for each possible explanatory hypothesis. If I do this to the best of my ability, and come to the conclusion that God is at least as likely as other explanations, it seems that I am epistemically justified in concluding that yeah, I am going with the 'God hypothesis' here.

[Guest]

The Buzzzzz

 

Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour. Ecclesiastes 10:1

 

Among The Pagan

 

A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left. Yea also, when he that is a fool walketh by the way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to every one that he is a fool. Ecclesiastes 10:2-3

 

The National Academy of Science (USA) has recently produced a guidebook for public school teachers, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. This book tries to assure readers that neither the NAS nor evolution are anti-Christian.

 

But a recent survey published in the leading science journal Nature conclusively showed that the National Academy of Science is anti-God to the core. A survey of all 517 NAS members in biological and physical sciences resulted in just over half responding. 72.2% were overtly atheistic, 20.8% agnostic, and only 7.0% believed in a personal God. Belief in God and immortality was lowest among biologists. It is likely that those who didn’t respond were unbelievers as well, so the study probably underestimates the level of anti-God belief in the NAS. The unbelief is far higher than the percentage among scientists in general, or in the whole population.

Commenting on the professed religious neutrality of Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, the surveyors comment:

“NAS President Bruce Alberts said:

‘There are very many outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists.’

Our research suggests otherwise.”

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/1998/08/25/science-academy-godless

 

~

 

Dear fellow posters,

 

..."It is, therefore, our unequivocal conclusion that creationism, with its account of the origin of life by supernatural means, is not science. It subordinates evidence to statements based on authority and revelation. Its documentation is almost entirely limited to the special publications of its advocates. And its central hypothesis is not subject to change in light of new data or demonstration of error. Moreover, when the evidence for creationism has been subjected to the tests of the scientific method, it has been found invalid...

 

 

This quote is from a spokesperson of the National Academy of Science (this quote can be found ).

 

Can we discuss the question if creationist ideas are subject to change instead of the question in title?

I mean change according to possible new data from data collection in the field?

Would this suit the title, in your opinion? I think it would.

 

My opinion is, it should be. The Bible only gives a wide frame. For instance, that God made everything and humans were made via special creation. This frame isn't falsifiable, in my opinion. However, the reverse – for instance: God did not create humans in special creation - isn’t falsifiable either, I think (as discussed ).

 

Edit: ... isn't falsifiable either, on the premise of the above quotation IMO, I would like to add. I think that it contains a generic rejection against any divine intervention testable by science: "creationism, with its account of the origin of life by supernatural means, is not science.". On this premise, there can't be any possible falsification of any claim that excludes a divine intervention.

 

Everything inside the biblical frame is disputable, I think. For instance: did plants evolve via evolution or did God made them via special invention? Both options lie inside the scope of personal interpretation of the book of Genesis, I think.

 

I Think

 

Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. Psalms 119:160

 

Personally

 

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Matthew 5:18

 

The Bible Is True

 

Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. Proverbs 30:5-6

 

From The Very Beginning

 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1

 

~

 

I Have No Question That Natural Philosophers

 

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:1-3

 

Can't See The Forest

 

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation 4:11

 

Through Their Lens

 

Yea, hath God said, Genesis 1:3(c )

 

Therefore They Mock

 

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. Psalms 14:1

 

And Jeer The LORD Their God The Savior

 

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. Psalms 1:1-2

 

And They Would Have Every Man's Child Take The Plunge Of Death With Them

 

Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word; your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed. Isaiah 66:5

 

~

 

Be Blessed Beloved Of The KING

 

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

 

And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them. Numbers 6:24-27

 

Love, Your Brother Joe