The definition and value of science

[The Barbarian]

Since evolution as development is a broad concept, it can describe lots of things. Evolution could be just a change in the composition of a population's gene pool. Evolution could be the origin of new varieties or new species. Evolution could be the grand development of all living things on this planet from a single ancestral population. It's this flexibility of the term that presents a problem. As a creationist, I don't really have a problem with evolution as changes in allele frequency. Nor do I care much about the origin of varieties or species. It's universal common ancestry thing that I can't accept (for biblical reasons, as I've detailed elsewhere). So how do I and other creationists describe our position? What words should we choose?
The Nature of Evolution

Dr. Wood says there is good evidence for universal common descent, but for religious reasons, he thinks there's another explanation. This is honest and reasonable.

 

[J_B_]

Since evolution as development is a broad concept, it can describe lots of things. Evolution could be just a change in the composition of a population's gene pool. Evolution could be the origin of new varieties or new species. Evolution could be the grand development of all living things on this planet from a single ancestral population. It's this flexibility of the term that presents a problem. As a creationist, I don't really have a problem with evolution as changes in allele frequency. Nor do I care much about the origin of varieties or species. It's universal common ancestry thing that I can't accept (for biblical reasons, as I've detailed elsewhere). So how do I and other creationists describe our position? What words should we choose?
The Nature of Evolution

Dr. Wood says there is good evidence for universal common descent, but for religious reasons, he thinks there's another explanation. This is honest and reasonable.

Interesting. That quote echoes many of the things I've said and gotten a lot of push back about. Maybe he just said it more clearly and concisely ... or maybe the same people would push back against him as well.

 

[The Barbarian]

Interesting. That quote echoes many of the things I've said and gotten a lot of push back about. Maybe he just said it more clearly and concisely ... or maybe the same people would push back against him as well.

Sometimes, it's a pain to be rigorously honest about one's beliefs. But there's a certain satisfaction in being so.

 

[J_B_]

Sometimes, it's a pain to be rigorously honest about one's beliefs. But there's a certain satisfaction in being so.

True, I suppose. Yet being a congregation of one does prompt an occasional review of one's sanity.

 

[The Barbarian]

True, I suppose. Yet being a congregation of one does prompt an occasional review of one's sanity.

"You might be right; I could be crazy. But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for."
Billy Joel.

As Huxley said, when chided about his agnosticism, being asked what he'd say at judgement, 'Gentlemen, I was mistaken."

 

[mindlight]

Science is a systematic method of inquiry in how things work. Humans have always made models of how they think things work, some good, some bad, and have applied them with varying results. Science adds systematic inquiry to the process, a way of separating good models from the bad ones.

The important thing to keep in mind is that every theory and even what we think of as scientific laws are models. Newtonian physics is a good model, but Einsteinian physics presented a better one. This is why science happens when results don't match the models.

Models are models, no more, no less, and aren't the thing itself. It. This isn't a slam against science, far from it. It's simply stating what it is.

The value of that systematic way of inquiry is all around us, from the food we grow to the machines we make to the buildings we construct to the way we care for the sick. That said, the business of science is in finding how things work. The trouble starts when we make more of it than what it is. If science had all the answers, it wouldn't have to go looking for them. And just because science can make a model that seems to work doesn't mean that's the actual way things are.

Yes, it does help to think systematically, using models, about the world around us, both as a practical way of solving problems and also as a way of giving an explanation. A good novel will also do just that but is just art.
When the story gets too far from actual evidence it becomes little better than good fiction that may or may not be true.

 

[mindlight]

There is a real, non-zero probability that all the oxygen atoms in the room will go to one corner and suffocate you. I can confidently assert that will never happen. We live our lives like that, assuming things that are not proveable, because the are so likely that it's foolish to think otherwise. Las Vegas gets rich on people who can't figure this out.

This is the same discussion they have in philosophy class. Does the table exist? You can touch it, feel it, see it, taste it if you want and even smell the wood but some nutter will always come up with a reason why it does not exist in itself. There are some things that can be held to with certainty and with others we are just theorising.

People used to think that of evolutionary theory. And then things like antibiotic resistance made that important. You never know what truth might have value.

Microbes are not life and the evolution of resistance to things trying to kill them is an adaptation, not proof that they could one day evolve into microbiologists.

Such as Huxley's prediction in the 1800s that we would find transitionals between birds and dinosaurs?

God created creatures of the air, land, and water. Dinosaur is a fabricated category that includes creatures from each. That they share characteristics with birds proves nothing. This is just guessing.

Comes down to evidence. And that's why it's become so important. It works. Better than anything else we can do for that.

So did the Ptolemaic system work for predicting star movement, that did not make it true.

If you think so, you haven't been paying attention. As we get more and more information about the beginning of life, it appears more and more that God was right about the way life began.

Yes, there was a beginning and a Creator, on that we agree.

Self-catalyzing RNA, short proteins observed to form abiotically, and a large number of other discoveries all point to life coming about by natural means, as God says in Genesis. He made this world to produce life, and it did.

God made a universe that could support life with specific special actions. The idea of spontaneous emergence is deistic naturalism for which there is zero proof.

 

[mindlight]

Yes, but there is just one important thing to add, so I'll highlight this part. (We already agree generally on the other things).
Here's a very useful observation to add to this summary: Chemistry and any natural processes that affect life over time are also God's creation.

In other words, any natural process is simply God's creation operating as God designed it to operate!

See the implication? It means that for instance if any natural thing happens, even some evolution, that's literally God's work -- the outcome of His design working as He designed it to work. He is the one who made that natural process.

See the implication? Here's a useful further observation: there isn't really a meaningful difference between creationism -- the how of the unfolding of life -- and the natural processes of nature (of course there could not be...) including any evolution -- evolution and creationism are part and parcel -- like eggs together in a carton for a believer that learns some evolution happened, or to mix metaphors some more, like hand and glove.

Evolution (or any natural process) and creationism -- these 2 things are the same thing to a believer, because we know God created that very design of nature that is operating.

So, the commonplace view of very many Christians that God used evolution -- 'guided evolution' -- is so very indistinguishable from other versions of creationism, they are practically identical. Of course. It ends up being entirely subject to Romans 14:1 (from both sides!), so that no believers should ever have any conflict over such things.

God did create a planet conducive to life. My reading of Genesis is that there were a series of special actions that characterized the development of specific forms of life. But if the evidence ever became overwhelming I would switch to being a theistic evolutionist as I was before I started taking the bible at face value. In the meantime, I do not need to hear explanations from scientists that are not properly supported with evidence, to fill the gaps, because I already have a better explanation for that integrated with the whole of my life.

 

[Halbhh]

God did create a planet conducive to life. My reading of Genesis is that there were a series of special actions that characterized the development of specific forms of life. But if the evidence ever became overwhelming I would switch to being a theistic evolutionist as I was before I started taking the bible at face value. In the meantime, I do not need to hear explanations from scientists that are not properly supported with evidence, to fill the gaps, because I already have a better explanation for that integrated with the whole of my life.

Well, that's not really different from me there. For example, we are not told the unknown amount of time that passes during verse 1 -- the Big Bang, the Universe unfolding, and the coming into existence of the primordial Earth -- all the events that happened before the moment in verse 2 when the Spirit comes to hover over the waters of Earth:

Literally:

The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said...

Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 1 - New International Version

So, literally, we can see there isn't any suggestion of how much time passed during creation before the first special day of creation on Earth, or before the Spirit came to hover over the waters of primordial Earth....

We then realize God chose not to tell us how much time that was, how old the Universe is, and Earth...

Because I think that would work against His purpose that we have faith without seeing conclusive easy clear proof of God.

If it had been the text of this divine vision of creation had also told us

1b: ...And the Earth came into being after 9 times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand years....
(imagined wording that isn't in the text)

Then once science finally found out that in fact that time of about 9 billion years is actually visibly observable as being how old the heavens (the Universe) was before Earth came into being, then that would just give easy outright proof no one could doubt that the scripture is obviously fact even in every miraculous way, and thus prove even to the most hostile athiest that that God simply exists as merely evident fact, without any need for faith/belief at all....
Which would go against God's stated will in the Bible that we come to real faith.

Believing before seeing is the faith God wants:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.

 

[The Barbarian]

God made a universe that could support life with specific special actions.

According to Genesis, nature did exactly what He created it to do. Life was produced by the Earth as He intended.

He's the omnipotent Creator, not some little nature god. He's much more powerful and wise than creationists would like Him to be.

The idea of spontaneous emergence is

A misrepresentation of what actually happened. God made the Earth to produce life. And it did.

 

[mindlight]

Well, that's not really different from me there. For example, we are not told the unknown amount of time that passes during verse 1 -- the Big Bang, the Universe unfolding, and the coming into existence of the primordial Earth -- all the events that happened before the moment in verse 2 when the Spirit comes to hover over the waters of Earth:

Literally:

The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said...

Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 1 - New International Version

So, literally, we can see there isn't any suggestion of how much time passed during creation before the first special day of creation on Earth, or before the Spirit came to hover over the waters of primordial Earth....

We then realize God chose not to tell us how much time that was, how old the Universe is, and Earth...

Because I think that would work against His purpose that we have faith without seeing conclusive easy clear proof of God.

If it had been the text of this divine vision of creation had also told us

1b: ...And the Earth came into being after 9 times a thousand times a thousand times a thousand years....
(imagined wording that isn't in the text)

Then once science finally found out that in fact that time of about 9 billion years is actually visibly observable as being how old the heavens (the Universe) was before Earth came into being, then that would just give easy outright proof no one could doubt that the scripture is obviously fact even in every miraculous way, and thus prove even to the most hostile athiest that that God simply exists as merely evident fact, without any need for faith/belief at all....
Which would go against God's stated will in the Bible that we come to real faith.

Believing before seeing is the faith God wants:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.

If the evidence becomes overwhelming for an Old Universe then I have two loopholes in the text. The supposed gap between the initial creation and the six days of forming and filling that seem phenomenologically located on Earth is one of these. Though I am not sure this coheres with the testimony of the rest of the scripture.

The second loophole is the long-established theory of the first chapters of Genesis being a literary framework that is better read as a hymn of praise to God the Creator in contrast to the false gods of religions contemporary to Moses when he wrote it. Augustine for example could not believe it would take God as long as six days to create anything including the universe and suggested those chapters, therefore, had to be read as a literary framework.

Both suggestions would allow a less literal reading of events than I believe the text itself warrants. I am familiar with the arguments with both but as I said I came to the literal view from a more liberal one that originally granted greater credulity to academia and modern science than I do now. My position now is that science has gone beyond the scope of its methods and what it can actually prove and its theories and models are life corrosive because in the main people read them as undermining the necessity of God.

 

[The Barbarian]

My position now is that science has gone beyond the scope of its methods and what it can actually prove and its theories and models are life corrosive because in the main people read them as undermining the necessity of God.

The Christians who formed Biologos have found you to be wrong.
BioLogos - God's Word. God's World. - BioLogos

 

[Halbhh]

Augustine for example could not believe it would take God as long as six days to create anything including the universe and suggested those chapters, therefore, had to be read as a literary framework.

Right! I'd read some of Augustine's views (he having come

up more than one viewpoint on Genesis 1), and that's a good point: why would it take God so long, and why would God have to 'rest' and so on....

I came to the literal view from a more liberal one that originally granted greater credulity to academia and modern science than I do now.

That's almost like me, but not quite, as there's an important difference. Consider: we don't have 'credulity' that the moon orbits the Earth, for example, but instead we can observe it and literally have with telescopes, at different phases. After enough observations, we can figure out it's orbiting the Earth.

It's also possible to directly see by observation (without theories) that most stars are further away than 10,000 light years. Not using theories, but instead direct observations -- we literally can see they are further away than 10,000 light years(!). Let me explain.

I directly myself did the rotating mirror experiment (in a physics lab) to measure the speed of light. Did it myself, setting it up, measuring, calculating, the whole 10 yards. Understanding every piece, and literally measuring the deflection of the returning laser beam on the rotating mirror.

Doing all the calculations with the measurements I did personally, I got a measurement for the speed of light. I got ~ 300,000 km/sec.

So, it's not theoretical to me that light travels at that speed, but something I literally have observed. Directly.

Now, if we add trigonometry, which some or many of us have used, even some in the real world with objects more than once or twice, we can then understand 'parallax'.

Parallax isn't just a theoretical idea, but something you have personally observed also -- parallax is something you've seen also: when you move sideways and closer objects appear to move sideways against a more distant background -- that's the movement used to calculate 'parallax'.

We just add trigonometry to then determine how close the nearby object is from measuring the movement you did and the apparent movement the near object appears to make against the distant background.

Using just these: the speed of light and parallax, we can see that many stars are more distant than 10,000 light years, so that their light has traveled more than 10,000 years to reach us since it was emitted.

It's not just theory, it's direct observation without any theories or assumptions past trigonometry and how the speed of light remains consistent over large distances (as we've directly observed in such examples as signals from space probes having a time delay to reach Earth from a great distance).

 

[mindlight]

Right! I'd read some of Augustine's views (he having come

up more than one viewpoint on Genesis 1), and that's a good point: why would it take God so long, and why would God have to 'rest' and so on....



That's almost like me, but not quite, as there's an important difference. Consider: we don't have 'credulity' that the moon orbits the Earth, for example, but instead we can observe it and literally have with telescopes, at different phases. After enough observations, we can figure out it's orbiting the Earth.

It's also possible to directly see by observation (without theories) that most stars are further away than 10,000 light years. Not using theories, but instead direct observations -- we literally can see they are further away than 10,000 light years(!). Let me explain.

I directly myself did the rotating mirror experiment (in a physics lab) to measure the speed of light. Did it myself, setting it up, measuring, calculating, the whole 10 yards. Understanding every piece, and literally measuring the deflection of the returning laser beam on the rotating mirror.

Doing all the calculations with the measurements I did personally, I got a measurement for the speed of light. I got ~ 300,000 km/sec.

So, it's not theoretical to me that light travels at that speed, but something I literally have observed. Directly.

Now, if we add trigonometry, which some or many of us have used, even some in the real world with objects more than once or twice, we can then understand 'parallax'.

Parallax isn't just a theoretical idea, but something you have personally observed also -- parallax is something you've seen also: when you move sideways and closer objects appear to move sideways against a more distant background -- that's the movement used to calculate 'parallax'.

We just add trigonometry to then determine how close the nearby object is from measuring the movement you did and the apparent movement the near object appears to make against the distant background.

Using just these: the speed of light and parallax, we can see that many stars are more distant than 10,000 light years, so that their light has traveled more than 10,000 years to reach us since it was emitted.

It's not just theory, it's direct observation without any theories or assumptions past trigonometry and how the speed of light remains consistent over large distances (as we've directly observed in such examples as signals from space probes having a time delay to reach Earth from a great distance).

According to various recent calculations about the mass of the universe only about 5% gives an electromagnetic light signature the rest being dark energy or matter. And we cannot even see the whole of that 5%. That might not matter if we can trust that light always behaves the same way as we can observe it has behaved in our own system. Then simple trigonometry gives us distances and times based on our observed speed of light. But how does light pass through the dark stuff, is it distorted, instantaneous, or slow, what about time warps, quantum entanglement, and the possibility that light speed suddenly decayed due to some grand universe-wide supernatural cosmic event? Is the earth in its own time bubble while the rest of the universe ages more rapidly around it? We cannot know what happens to the light once it leaves the gravitational pull of our own sun and travels through deep space because we have never been there and we have no vision back billions of years because there is no mortal witness to such events. Yet we know that gravity bends light and can even suck it back into a black hole changing its speed and direction. I understand the simple maths but how many times have the obvious theories been overthrown? The earth feels flat beneath our feet and yet is spherical, the sun goes around us and yet we go around it. The stars seem to be small and shine for our benefit and yet they appear to be a part of a gigantic universe we have only just begun to explore and understand.

 

[The Barbarian]

what about time warps, quantum entanglement, and the possibility that light speed suddenly decayed due to some grand universe-wide supernatural cosmic event?

The problem with that (aside from the lack of evidence) is that if the speed of light was significantly faster thousands of years ago all life on Earth would have been destroyed. Radioactive decay is attached to the speed of light, and if it was a lot faster, there would have been a huge blast of ionizing radiation on this planet. And since we're here, (among other reasons) that didn't happen.

 

[mindlight]

The problem with that (aside from the lack of evidence) is that if the speed of light was significantly faster thousands of years ago all life on Earth would have been destroyed. Radioactive decay is attached to the speed of light, and if it was a lot faster, there would have been a huge blast of ionizing radiation on this planet. And since we're here, (among other reasons) that didn't happen.

If there were no radioactive rocks to decay and these are a symptom of some cosmic-wide event that happened more recently then of course that objection disappears. If not that assumption then another. The fact is you and I do not know and can only guess. This makes all the big "scientific" models on origins provisional.

 

[The Barbarian]

The value of that systematic way of inquiry is all around us, from the food we grow to the machines we make to the buildings we construct to the way we care for the sick. That said, the business of science is in finding how things work. The trouble starts when we make more of it than what it is. If science had all the answers, it wouldn't have to go looking for them. And just because science can make a model that seems to work doesn't mean that's the actual way things are.

Today's winner

 

[The Barbarian]

An important qualifier for the above quote:
The Nature of Evolution (toddcwood.blogspot.com)

Dr. Wood writes:
Since my original post on The Truth about Evolution, I'd say the biggest issue that has come up is what this evidence for evolution actually is. I've heard people casually dismiss me as ignorant and uninformed. Sure, I can see that. I've only done graduate studies in evolutionary biology, wrote a dissertation on protein evolution, worked and published in the field of comparative and evolutionary genomics, taught "History of Life" for three years, and irregularly attended SMBE and SSB conferences for the last twelve years. What could I possibly know about evolution?

Others have insisted that I have an obligation to disclose this evidence. Still others seem to be genuinely at a loss as to what evidence I'm talking about. So here goes. At long last, this is my final response to all those requests:

I'm not going to give you the evidence. Here's why: First, I'm a creationist and this is supposed to be a creationist blog. Why should I write a series of posts explaining evidence for evolution? Second, there are plenty of adequate summaries of the evidence for evolution. Shoot, Origin's still plenty compelling. Third, I think most of the people asking for this evidence are just trying to bait me into a debate. Let's face it, if they don't know what the evidence is already, then they must have chosen to ignore or dispute the many summaries of this evidence that are already out there. So why would I want to get into a big argument with a fellow creationist over the evidence for evolution? That would be silly.

So that's that. Go read Origin. I've got bigger fish to fry.
The evidence for evolution

 

[The Barbarian]

If there were no radioactive rocks to decay

But there always have been. In the lowest strata in the geologic column, there are radioactive isotopes. So long a the Earth has been here, there were radioactive isotopes. We even have at least one place where they got concentrated enough to start a natural reactor. So your assumption is demonstrably false.

If not that assumption then another.

That's the thing about creationist assumptions; as old ones get shot down, they just make up new ones.

The fact is you and I do not know and can only guess.

You can only guess because you don't know the evidence. But people who do know the evidence can make valid inferences from that evidence.

This makes all the big "scientific" models on origins provisional.

In the sense that the theory of gravity is provisional. In fact, evolutionary theory is more solid than the theory of gravity. We know why evolution works, but we still aren't absolutely sure why gravity works.

 

[mindlight]

But there always have been. In the lowest strata in the geologic column, there are radioactive isotopes. So long a the Earth has been here, there were radioactive isotopes. We even have at least one place where they got concentrated enough to start a natural reactor. So your assumption is demonstrably false.



That's the thing about creationist assumptions; as old ones get shot down, they just make up new ones.



You can only guess because you don't know the evidence. But people who do know the evidence can make valid inferences from that evidence.



In the sense that the theory of gravity is provisional. In fact, evolutionary theory is more solid than the theory of gravity. We know why evolution works, but we still aren't absolutely sure why gravity works.

Radioactive rocks in the lowest strata don't change my argument. If it was a cosmos-wide judgment that caused the very stones of the universe to become unstable it would not matter where they were located. You have a theory about how what we know hangs together. I can admit its explanatory power and still say you are just guessing and cannot know.