In defense of creationism(ish)

Great Debates
21

papertiger, your rather feeble argument demonstrates only that you don’t understand at all how science works.

Others have addressed your specific claims with wit and energy, but I’ll take on one of your throwaway statements: “Religion, science, it’s all the same to me.”

They are most assuredly not the same, and only someone who doesn’t understand them could make that claim. It’s very simple: Religion starts with an unbreakable axiom, that God (or choose your deity/ies) exists, and moves forward with the understanding that all we see is an expression of his/its/their power and/or will. Science starts with a blank slate, and through observation and experiment builds up a set of theoretical explanations for why things are the way they are.

What about this is so hard to understand?

22

I certainly shouldn’t bother with this, but I was noodling along just before heading away for the weekend, when I noticed that “The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain.” Paradox? Nope.

If you accept this statement, then you are compelled to accept that there is only one certain thing. And that certain thing is “nothing is certain”, contradicting that there is one certain thing. You cannot accept this statement.

Now, to be interesting, to be a paradox, it also has to be impossible to reject this statement. Can we reject it? Certainly. Just accept anything other than “nothing is certain” as certain. Then there are two possibilities:

  1. We are correct about our accepted certainty. “nothing is certain” is not the only thing that’s certain if what we’ve accepted is certain (heck “nothing is certain” isn’t even true in this case).
  2. We have mistakenly accepted a certainty. Clearly, we must not know “nothing is certain” or we wouldn’t have done this. That is, “nothing is certain” can’t be certain, or we wouldn’t have erroneously accepted certainties.

So: “The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain” fails if we can find anything at all that’s certain.

How about death. And taxes. QED.

It’s quite easy to reject this statement. Just be certain of something, anything other than “nothing is certain”. You don’t even have to be right about it.

Seriously. Nothing is certain only if you fail to accept any certainties. Seems like a loop, but it’s trivial to break out of. Accept a certainty. I certainly will.

kg m²/s²

23

Strictly speaking, nothing in science is proven. In order to prove even 2+2=4, you must assume certain things. There is no such thing as a 100% proven fact in this world, because it is impossible to say that someting will always happen without an assumption. Sure, if you add two and two 113,314,798,471 times and get four, there is still no real garuantee that you will get four the next time.

In that regard, it is now time to announce that Evolution is NOT a theory. Evolution does happen, we did descend from apes, the earth is older than 10,000 ears old, etc. What the theory is in regards to evolution is HOW exactly this happens; it could be by Darwin’s way, or it could be another way, we are not sure. You will never see a book or report coming out with “definitive proof” of evolution, because evolution has been effectively proven for the last 100 years. Despite what President Reagen said, there is no debate about this.

Now, JR raised a point “What was there before?” Well, (And on this subject I am not sure of my total knowledge, so if everything I say is bull, please let me know) it goes something like this:

Basically, what the universe is made of is called Quantam Foam. It is the very framework of the universe. However, this quantam foam is not perfect, it has small analomies, and therefore has small fluctuations occuring in it evry so often. These fluctuations can produce any composition of atom, so there is no reason that say, an apple can’t just pop out from nowhere on my desk. The chance is extremely infintesimal, but there is a chance, and given enough time, it will happen. Now, this is by no means restrained to apples. Let’s say that one ‘day,’ a rather large fluctuation in the foam caused a bit of matter to appear. Now normally this matter woud have been absorbed back into the foam, but their is a chance that it could do the opposite, blow up, and create the universe. There is a chance for this to happen, and given an infinite time slot, it will. Or should I say it has?

There may or may not have been a universe before us. We could be the first, or the trillionth. Or the whole universe could have been made of chocolate until this one came along. However, it is, I believe, safe to say that here was nothin there before.

And all creationists are not fundies. My mother, for instance is a creationist, but she never taught my siblings or I to be creationist, and she has always encouraged us to be openminded about others, and never disrespect others because of race, religion, orientation, etc. In fact, she actually explained some tenants of evolution to me on a report I did in 10th grade, way back when, and never did she say, “Oh, but it is all false.” Granted, most creationsits are insane, but not all.

Cervantes

Too long to edit. Sorry.

24

I was rather hoping papertiger was going to return to this. I am very curious if papertiger decided his/her understanding of how science work needed adjustment or we are all just incorrigible.

25

Neither can the following be proven false:

  1. Zeus
  2. Odin
  3. Celestial Emperor
  4. Brahma
  5. Ralph the Snake God
  6. Umguf the Purple with Pink Polka Dots Unicorn
  7. You are a figment of my imagination
  8. This entire Universe has been created 10 seconds ago with apparent age
  9. Santa Claus
  10. Zionist World Domination
  11. The Tooth Fairy

And your point is?

26

Science does not have an agenda. It doesn’t care which theory is right.

Wrong. I’ll be sure to tell this to my boss who has been trying to prove wrong a model of kinetics for 3 smooth muscle proteins for the last 10 or so years. Who, btw, has the evidence needed but isn’t yet published in its entirety.

What’s the problem? The current model is supported by a group of elitists backed by Nobel prize winners. Their model has already been proven half wrong by my boss and a few others at NIH and in Germany. So what do they do? They, actually their lap dogs, make up in their head a hybrid model that still allows for the first incorrect modle to exist, without proof. Actually without all the proof. They are intentionally leaving out data!

The problem here is, like it or not, there is not investigation without investigators. And investigators are human. So yes, scientists can be and are dishonest.

27

all you’ve done is show that some scientists can have an agenda. science does not have an agenda, as demonstrated by your boss’ efforts to prove the current model wrong.

28

But science does not exist without scientists, no matter how simple. And if you were to ask the dishonest scientists if they have an agenda, they would say no.

29

And, of course, there are many people around who believe that YHWH did in fact create the universe and bring forth life on this planet (refraining from comment on what we do not know) and used techniques described by cosmologists as the Big Bang and by biologists as evolutionary processes (based loosely on Darwinian theory as amended by DeVriesian genetics, Miller-Urey biomolecular theory, and Eldridge-Gould punctuated equilibria) in doing so.

30

True. But the scientific debate takes place in public. Each scientist has to publish and defend his theories out in the open for all to see. Sooner or later the best theory, i.e. the one that explains the most in the simplest way without violating other scientific principles, will be accepted.

No one thinks that scientists are above reproach. But the method is the best we have found to date.

31

I’m not disagreeing with you at all, David Simmons. But sometimes, I wonder if we can’t see a better method for historical and political (not the politics of coutries, but the politics of science) reasons. This is what we’ve got, it seems to work pretty good, why change it?

I kind of feel the same way when I pop the hood of my car. OK, we’ve got these distributors and fuel injectors and timing belts. Is there a simpler way? What if we started from scratch, throwing out all this stuff and the expectation that we need all this stuff or its equivalent? I don’t think most engineers can truly reject those notions–I certainly can’t, even after trying really, really hard. What kind of Utopian car are we failing to come up with due to preconceptions about cars?

I can’t really think of a better way (to do science), so this isn’t very compelling. On the other hand, I don’t think I’m so smart that I should take my inability to conceive of a thing as proof of the nonexistence of that thing. What kind of Utopian science are we missing out on?

It’s true, Anticay, that individual scientists can approach their work surprisingly dogmatically. But then there are legions of grad students that only get a name if they discover something right. It takes too much time, energy, and vigilance to ensure that your wrong ideas get defended (especially after your death). It’s hardly worth trying, when right ideas almost seem to defend themselves.

kg m²/s²

32

To reaffirm **Newton meter:

Something about science and scientists that the creationists don’t understand is that science is NOT a monolithic enterprise with a single list of facts that all scientists subscribe to unquestioningly. Getting two scientists to agree on everything is like getting two theologians to agree on everything. Any scientist worth her grants would LOVE to develop a new theory that everybody else responds to with a “Yeah, that makes sense.” You don’t win Nobels proving somebody else right. But that new theory needs to be, and WILL be, subject to all of the attacks that scientific rigor, professional jealousy, and personal animosity can bring to bear.

We have strong reason to know that evolution, as a process, is a fact because it has survived 150 years of that. Any alternative theory needs to be able to also withstand it.

33

Just had to say:

Newton Meter - love your name! And your sig!

34

FriendRob: Heh. I call my fiance Joule, and my hyper little dog is Erg.

By the by, my critique of science was not directed at the results at all. The method just seems so damn inefficient sometimes. Of course, if we streamlined it, I might not be able to make money doing such fun stuff, so I should just shut up.

35

2+2=4 isnt science. Its mathematics.

2+2=4 because “2+2” is the same thing as “4”, it is the same information presented with a different symbol.

36

Not exactly, but close enough. See Edmund Landau’s classic work Foundations of Analysis for an explanation as to why.

37

ultrafilter wrote:

Um … could you perhaps post a link to different website for an explanation of the Big Bang? That page is riddled with errors.

(E.g. “Elementary particles known as quarks begin to bond in trios, forming photons, positrons and netrinos” – neither photons, nor positrons, nor neutrinos are composed of quarks. And whoever laid out the webpage has obviously never heard of the <SUP> tag.)

38

Really? Unfortunately, I’m not well-versed enough in big bang cosmology to pick out specific errors–if you’ve got one, we’d be better off with that.

39

I have no idea what kind of car we don’t have because of preconceptions. However, a much simpler engine has been tried. Some experimental turbojet engine autos have been built and tested. I think Chrysler did it way back when. Turbojets don’t have distributors, timing belts, fuel injectors and so on. But they have other problems, not the least of which is a really hot exhaust that has to be handled somehow.

Steam engines were tried early on [Stanley Steamer], but it took a long time to heat the water on first start up, and the “jump in and go” internal combustion engine was what the customers preferred. Here is a short history of steam power for autos: http://www.fofweb.com/Subscription/Science/Helicon.asp?SID=2&Rec_Title=Physics&iPin=ffests0085&RecordType=Essay

Engineers are always faced with a fact that I call the law of “the conservation of difficulty.” That is, when you eliminate a problem one place, it shows up in a different form somewhere else. Which solution is best depends on so many factors, like public acceptance, state-of-the-art, availability of materials etc. that I’m not sure that preconceptions are what keeps us using our present methods. Other methods have been tried and what we have works best so far.

However by using the scientific method someone, someday might be able to “bootstrip” that into a better and less messy method. I don’t expect to be around to see that.

40

This one’s pretty basic, but seems to be correct:
http://www.ency-astro.com/eaa/eaa/eaa/index.html?sessionid=88ca0c3fa7a637d7