I see this, obviously, as an "Is it Science" topic.
Many have spoken about a stacked deck against creationists; some kind of unfair burden that they feel they alone must carry. In regards to the issue of board participation, it's been generally agreed that they have a legitimate point - there are more evolutionists than creationists. This is a demographic issue that cannot, in my view, simply be rectified by a change in moderation or board rules. But people have been trying to be better about avoiding the dogpile issue.
But in addition to that, creationists seem to feel that the requirement for discussion on an evidentiary basis constitutes an unfair burden of some kind. I agree that they have this burden, but it's the burden that all scientific propositions must meet. To waive that requirement for just creationists would be an unfair disadvantage to everyone else.
Creationists claim that creationism is science; that it has scientific and evidentiary support. I propose this thread to explore that claim. Can creationism meet the high standards of science, standards that the evolutionary model has and continues to meet?
First, the groundrules. What is science? The glib definition is "what scientists do" but that just begs the question. Philosopher Karl Popper outlined his view of the nature of scientific reasoning:
quote:
Popper coined the term critical rationalism to describe his philosophy. This designation is significant, and indicates his rejection of classical empiricism, and of the observationalist-inductivist account of science that had grown out of it. Popper argued strongly against the latter, holding that scientific theories are universal in nature, and can be tested only indirectly, by references to their implications. He also held that scientific theory, and human knowledge generally, is irreducibly conjectural or hypothetical, and is generated by the creative imagination in order to solve problems that have arisen in specific historico-cultural settings. Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single genuine counter-instance is logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the implication is derived, to be false. Popper's account of the logical asymmetry between verification and falsification lies at the heart of his philosophy of science. It also inspired him to take falsifiability as his criterion of demarcation between what is and is not genuinely scientific: a theory should be accounted scientific if and only if it is falsifiable. This led him to attack the claims of both psychoanalysis and contemporary Marxism to scientific status, on the basis that the theories enshrined by them are not falsifiable. His scientific work was influenced by his study of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
from
Karl Popper - Wikipedia
In other words, science is tentative (because no amount of evidence can "prove" a proposition) and theories must be falsifiable (because they can never be proven.) If a theory is not falsifiable then it cannot be tested against the evidence - any observation or outcome could be used as evidence for it, even two contradictory outcomes. A potential criticism of this is that no theory is truly falsifiable; an ad-hoc addition can always be added to a theory to make it consistent with observation.
So there's an additional criteria of coherence:
quote:
Coherentism offers an alternative by claiming that statements can be justified by their being a part of a coherent system. In the case of science, the system is usually taken to be the complete set of beliefs of an individual or of the community of scientists. W. V. Quine argued for a Coherentist approach to science. An observation of a transit of Venus is justified by its being coherent with our beliefs about optics, telescope mounts and celestial mechanics. Where this observation is at odds with one of these auxiliary beliefs, an adjustment in the system will be required to remove the contradiction.
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia
Another way we assess purported scientific models is through the principle of parsimony, aka Occam's Razor:
quote:
Occam's Razor has usually been used just as a rule of thumb for choosing between equally 'explanatory' hypotheses (ie, theories) about one or more observed phenomena.
Because, generally for every theory there are an infinite number of variations which are equally consistent with the current data, but which predict very different outcomes in some circumstances, Occam's razor is used implicitly in every instance of scientific research. As an example, consider Newton's famous theory that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." An alternative theory would be that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, except on the 12 of January 2055 when the reaction will be of half intensity." This seemingly absurd addition, violates the Occam's Razor principle because it as a gratuitious addition, along with an infinite number of other alternative theories. Indeed without a rule like Occam's Razor there would never be any philosophical or practical justification for scientists to advance any theory over its infinite competitors, and science would have no predictive power at all.
Occam's Razor is often abused and cited where it is inapplicable. It does not say that the simplest account is to be preferred regardless of its capacity to explain outliers, exceptions, or other phenomena in question. The principle of falsifiability requires that any exception that can be reliably reproduced should invalidate the simplest theory, and that the next-simplest account which can actually incorporate the exception as part of the theory should then be preferred to the first.
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia (again)
And this is important: these rules don't tell us what is true about the universe. Rather they tell us how to construct models that explain the most data and give the most accurate model. Unfortunately a condition called "solipcism" limits our ability to detect what is
true; in the face of this limit we must simply strive for what makes the best predictions. (Hence our conclusions are tentative, to bring us back to the beginning.)
So, I ask - does creationism, particularly Young Earth Creationism, the proposition that the Biblical account of Genesis (in whatever translation you prefer) is what actually happened, constitute a scientific model by these criteria?
I believe it does not. It's certainly falsifiable - the literal account in Genesis could certainly be disconfirmed by data, and to the best of my understanding it has been. (Other related propositions about God creating things to look the way they do to fool us are not falsifiable, but they constitute a different position entirely.) It is not, however, offered as tentative by its proponents. Neither is it coherent with other scientific theory, as it contradicts accepted models in chemistry, geology, and physics, as well as the biological theory of evolution. So too does it fail the test of parsimony by reliance to an infinite God whose existence cannot be substantiated short of the neccessity of God for the model.
When I overview the scientific criteria I have proposed, I don't see in them anything that automatically disposes them to rejecting creationism in favor of evolution. To the best of my understanding I see these criteria as an inherently neutral filter against ideas that do not meet the rigorous standards of science. What I'd like from creationists, if they should choose to join in, is a discussion of two things:
1) Whether or not I'm in error about the nature of science;
2) Whether or not my conclusion that creationism does not meet these criteria;
3) Whether or not these rules represent an unfair stacked deck against creationists.
If we get done with all that early, then we'll spend the rest of class discussing if evolution meets those critieria, which I believe it obviously does.
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