AiG and other professional Creationist organisations I have studied have policies against the use of the scientific method, and I have read dishonest misrepresentations of scientific studies.
Some, but I consider their science to be applicable in some cases.
I believe the Consensus of the Fathers is an appeal to the expertise of traditional leaders of your Church?
The Consensus of the Fathers (
unanimem consensum Patrum) is an appeal to the early Fathers of the Church, which, if they all unanimously agreed on the topic, that topic became
de fide ("the faith") and infallible. It is also called the Unanimous Consent of Theologians. If they all agreed, then their [because they were the representative of the whole people of God in their day] unanimous consensus could be taken as an unerring manifestation of the
sensus fidelium (i.e., "the supernatural appreciation of faith on the part of the whole people, when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals.").
ALL of the Fathers believed the world was created by God in six days, and thus is
de fide.
I am not a theologian, but the fact that the leadership of the Catholic Church (and other Christian branches) do not universally find their opinion convincing makes this suspect as a method of demonstrating even religious tenets let alone facts about the world.
I will not confuse you with strange Latin phrases or overcomplex Church judiciary; However, the Catholic Church contends that those who do not follow its Ordinary Magisterium (aka, the doctrinal disputations of the Pontifical Office, i.e., the Papal Throne) and the Inordinary Magisterium (aka, the Consensus of the Fathers,
de fide statements, etc.) are outside of the Church, with few exceptions. As such, in the Catholic mind, those who are outside of the Church cannot fully actualize their faith, and thus anything they contend or reject is considered spurious by the Church and those within it [generally].
By method I mean exactly how you verify your interpretation is the correct one within your religion?
The Consensus of the Fathers is the only interpretation that allows you to fully be in the Catholic Church
An appeal to traditional experts is certainly a method, but it simply allows your detractors to ask why their personal interpretation is correct.
The Holy Spirit guides the teachings of the Church, and thus cannot error as God is perfect.
The issues is that if they were considered psudoscience because they were weird ideas with no method of demonstration, the researchers found methods of demonstration.
That is not what has always been taught. From
Science and Pseudoscience (From the London School of Economics and Political Science)
: The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has scientific,
philosophical, and political implications, also noting
"that
creationism, [...] are pseudosciences." The minds of most in the scientific field have already been made up on the matter of creationism.
Creationist methodologies aren't flawed because they are new or different, they are flawed because they are not effective as a method of demonstrating facts.
What are some examples of this flaw?
Literally anything is possible to an Omnipotent God with mysterious motivations for actions... which means that literally any aspect of the physical world can be explained by these "mysterious ways" this means that any examination of reality is actually useless.
Not quite,
Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God
to conceal a matter;
to search out a matter is the glory of kings." God created the world with order and consistency, which allows us to explore and understand it.
Beyond reasonable doubt is a description of a conclusion from evidence not an incantation that makes you right.
We have evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the Flood happened, through Geological surveys and studies.
The reasoning behind accepting the conclusions of scientific research can be explained... I have never seen reason to accept Creationist conclusions in the same way.
This is a personal observation; therefore, I can't really speak about things that you have seen. I have never seen that in my time, however.
The pattern of ellipses in your quote makes be very suspicious that this fragment has been dishonestly quote mined to misrepresent the author. Do you have the original article, or simply a quote from a Creationist website?
Excuse me I misspoke, I meant to quote Hubble's Observational Approach to Cosmology, which says the following quote. The citation is '
The Observational Approach to Cosmology, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1937, pp. 50, 51, 58.'
The full quotes are here:
On Page 50, Hubble says: "The energy-corrections, it will be recalled, are the total effects of red-shifts on apparent luminosities, provided red-shifts are not velocity-shifts. The latter interpretation seems to follow directly from the preliminary assumption of uniformity. The assumption of uniformity has much to be said in its favour. If the distribution were not uniform, it would either increase with distance, or decrease. But we would not expect to find a distribution in which the density increases with distance, symmetrically in all directions.
Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central earth. The hypothesis cannot be disproved but it is unwelcome and would be accepted only as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. Therefore, we disregard this possibility and consider the alternative, namely, a distribution which thins out with distance."
On Page 51 [directly after the previous quote], Hubble says: "A thinning out would be readily explained in either of two ways. The first is space absorption. If the nebulae were seen through a tenuous haze, they would fade away faster than could be accounted for by distance and red-shifts alone, and the distribution, even if it were uniform, would appear to thin out. The second explanation is a super-system of nebulae, isolated in a larger world, with our own nebula somewhere near the centre. In this case the real distribution would thin out after all the proper corrections had been applied.Both explanations seem plausible, but neither is permitted by the observations. The apparent departures from uniformity in the World Picture are fully compensated by the minimum possible corrections for redshifts on any interpretation. No margin is left for a thinning out.
The true distribution must either be uniform or increase outward, leaving the observer in a unique position [meaning we are not random, but we are the center of the universe]. But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs.
Therefore, we accept the uniform distribution, and assume that space is sensibly transparent. Then the data from the surveys are simply and fully accounted for by the energy corrections alone - without the additional postulate of an expanding universe."
On Page 25, Hubble says: "The departures from uniformity are positive; the numbers of nebulae increase faster than the volume of space through which they are scattered.
Thus the density of the nebular distribution increases outwards, symmetrically in all directions, leaving the observer in a unique position [meaning we are not random, but we are the center of the universe]. Such a favoured position, of course, is intolerable; moreover, it represents a discrepancy with the theory, because the theory postulates homogeneity. Therefore, in order to restore homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique position, the departures from uniformity, which are introduced by the recession factors, must be compensated by the second term representing effects of spatial curvature."
In these three quotes, Hubble shows that he cannot disprove Geocentrism, but chooses not to believe in it as it is a "horror" and an "unwelcome supposition." He thus takes the theory that opposes the idea that we are special and unique on the universe [and, by proxy, that God made us the center of creation because we are the most important thing to him], regardless of if the postulation that he considered to be "creationistic" was more correct than his secular postulation. Such is the issue with modern science, summarized in three pages.
Do you not think that, with these quotes in mind, that any view that may show our importance [aka Geocentrism, making us the center of God's creation and thus central to the universe’s design; or Young Earth, that God did not lie to us in His scripture] would be accepted? I have shown to you that the delegation of "pseudoscience" is a philosophical one, and that evidence pointing to our celestial importance is avoided because of it being an evidence that we are central to the universe’s design. The reason they betray their own method on this matter is because if our importance is codified, then how can secularists explain that we are just "worthless organisms on an unimportant planet"? They say this because the prince of this world wants people to believe that they are "worthless organisms on an unimportant planet," as it contradicts the idea of God's infinite love and care.
If evidence were to confirm that we are central to the universe’s design [which we know we are], it would undermine secular science's claim of randomness and insignificance. People would naturally begin to ask: "If we are important in the universe, then this can’t be an accident. Someone must have intentionally placed us here." Then, the snowball tumbles.
In addition, have you ever looked up the conclusions and methods of the actual research on the topic, or only the casual discussion in a popsci entertainment magazine?
As I previously stated, here are some books, written by individuals with scientific doctorates:
- 'I Have Spoken to You from Heaven: A Catholic Defense of Creation in Six Days' by Hugh Owen & Bp. Korir of Eldoret, Kenya
- 'The Doctrines of Genesis 1-11' by Rev. Fr. Dr. Victor Warkulwiz, M.S.S.
- 'A Catholic Assessment of Evolution Theory' by John M. Wynne
- 'International Catholic Symposium on Creation' by the 2002 Symposium held in Rome (including Bp. Andreas Laun, Fr. Victor Warkulwiz, Fr. Brian Harrison, Fr. Johannes Grun, Dr. Josef Seifert, Dr. Dominique Tassot, Guy Berthault, Dr. Robert Gentry, Dr. Robert Sungenis, Dr. Robert Bennett, Dr. Maciej Giertych, Dr. Robin Bernhoft, Dr. Christian Bizouard, and Dr. Arthur Gohin)
God bless.