Three models for the origin of the universe

It seems to me that you are conflatign two different issues.1) Ultimate causation. I will grant that this is outside science because for for any natural explanation proposed it is always possible to propose that God lies behind it.2) The actual course of events. This is not outside of science.To deal with an actual example consider the issue of the age of the Earth. Now it is certainly not the case that an old Earth could not be refuted by evidence. Indeed in your original version of this post you proposed two lines of evidence that you thought might possibly show that the solar system was young.So there is concievable evidence that would refute an actual old-Earth creationist view. If your second model is irrefutable it is because it is not an OEC view - it takes no position on age. AN OEC view that actually stated that the Earth was old would be refutable.Now we move to the YEC view. Only Omphalist versions of YEC which propose that God created an Earth that appears if it were old cannot be refuted by the evidence. However this is a minority view because it is theologically very questionable - there is no plausible reason for God to act in such a way other than an intentional act of deception (consider the radiometric dating evidence - there is no reason why the ages produced should be consistent with an old Earth - all rocks could show the same age or ages could be random).Even if it is assumed that there is a single reason that would explain all the evidence of age, that would make omphalist YEC less scientific than any old-Earth view becuase it requires that extra assumption. If - as seems more likely in the context of oyur post - a YEC view that allows for individual pieces of evidence to either support a young or an old Earth is taken then the YEC view becomes scientifically vacuous on the age of the Earth. It literally has no scientific relevance. The proposition that this has "equal scientific status" with old Earth views then is clearly false.

But the only distinction between Young Earhh and Old Earth creationism IS the course of events. Are you seriously asking for a way to tell that one is true and the other is false without considering the differences between them ?As to your second point it really isn't different from what I said. Substituting God for a viable natural mechanism still has the same problems and even if we accepted that there was some prior cause that we did not know, the assumption that it was a God would be such overkill that parsimony would favour a natural cause. There is never any need to assign a proposed cause any capabilities beyond those needed for the explanatory role it plays.

Well I'm afraid that you're still wrong.
Aside from the fact that the creation date itself is part of the course of events, there are also the events which accumulate over time (e.g. radioactive decay) and the formation of the Earth's geology. OEC's can largely accept mainstream accounts of Earth history. It is only the history of life where OECs significantly differ from the mainstream.On the second point I am not being prejudiced at all - I am simply pointing out how science operates. If we have a viable natural mechanism to explain an event it is certainly unscientific to attribute it to a God instead.And no, I did not mean causes prior to the "ultimate cause" (whih would be self-contradictory), I mean causes prior to those known or inferred by us.If you are going to insert God into a chain of causation it must be either in place of another cause or prior to the entire chain. Where else is there ?And finally by using the words "God" and "He" you *are* attributing capabilities beyond those needed to generate our universe to your proposed cause. We don't need to assume a personified cause with all the capabilities that assumes at all. But if we do not then we are just left with a natural cause instead of a God.

I am afraid you are talking complete nonsense. The formation of the Earth is an event and when it happened is part of the course of events. Even if that were no the case OEC's do NOT assume that the Earth just hung about unchanging up until 6,000-10,000 years ago - they accept that many things happened prior to that time.And none of this mentions ultimate causes at all - so your suggestion that I was making the same error as you is an obvious absurdity. Just as it is absurd to drag up irrelevencies like the distinction between closed and open intervals.But then again if you DIDN'T want to discuss the history of the universe then you should clearly have excluded the YEC position because it differs radically from the others on that very point. You haven't even stated how YEC's and OEC's differ on the origin on any point other than when it happened ! But that point and what follows from it ARE the history of the universe - that IS the primary disagreement between OECs and YECs in the scientific arena. It is clear that you did not "carefully" choose your positions to avoid discussion of the history of the universe at all.On to your prejudiced creationist. He can make the assertion but he would be talking rubbish. Whereas I would still be making an entirely correct statement. Then of course you have to drag up irrelevancies like whether we have a conplete natrual explanation for the origin of the universe - when I never claimewd that we did nor is it relevant to the point I was making.If you want to put God into the history of the Universe then EITHER God has to be placed as a prior cause to those we know of OR God has to be substituted for one of the causes we do know of. Neither is scientific. And your prejuidiced creationist who wants to rewrite the scientific method to give results he likes can't change that.And science includes parsimony as one of its criteria - so all else being equal "pasimony favours" means that "science favours". So if you want to insist on an intelligent cause you need to argue specifically for an *intelligent* cause. And if you want to argue for an infinitely powerful cause then you are out of luck. Parsimony will never let you arge for more power than is required to produce the results you are attempting to account for.

If I was pissed off it was the obvious untruths.How could you suggest that you chose to present YEC and OEC as distinct positions to avoid discussing the differences between them ?How could you suggest that there is nothing obviously wrong to suggest that it would be scientific to throw out every scientific explanation we have in favour of "God did it" ? Science has ALWAYS been about the search for natural explanations and it has found and preferred natural explanations many things that were previously held to be due to God's direct action. YOur prejudiced creationist would say that science should still attribute lightning and plagues to God's action - none of this modern "unscientific" meteorology or medicine ! And why make this obviously false argument other than to make a baseless charge of prejudice ? Obviously maligning critics is a sign of your "openness" and willingness to accept criticism. Pardon me if I don't like being on the receiving end.

It's worse than that. Stellatic's "YEC position" is : But to avoid disagreeing with strongly supported scientific conclusions he has to drop the "approximately 6000 years ago within 6 (24 hour) days". For example any event dated more than 6,000 years ago HAS to be either denied or redated to less than 6000 years ago. He can retreat to Omphalism which avoids having to deal with the evidence but such a move in itself negates any claim to scientific validity (as well as being theologically very dubious).So there is no specifically YEC position he can defend as being scientifically valid - all he has left is "God created the Universe" which makes it identical to his OEC position.

When what you say is absurd and contains obvious falsehoods I see no reason not to say so.1) Even in your revised account it is clear that your "third" model ("YEC" in post 1) agrees with your "second" ("OEC" in post 1) that God is the ultimate cause of the universe but disagrees radically from both the other two on the history of the universe (comparatively rejecting more than 99.9999% of it, as measured by timespan).
Your "clarification" only confirms that my original objection was correct. You chose positions that differed obviously and radically on the history of the universe - it is simply impossible that you "carefully" chose positions that did not disagree on that history.2) In post 12 you insisted that you did not want to place God before any proposed natural mechanisms. As I have repeatedly pointed out since, that requires substituting God for a natural mechanism. Therefore my comment was a direct denial of your own assertion. It makes no claim as to the scientific status of any propose atheistic explanation.
I also note that your "clarification" simply repeats the glaring error I pointed out in post 24. As I stated in post 24 your argument rested on the fact that you could see no scientific difference between proposing "God did it" as an explanation over a viable natural explanation. And as I pointed out in post 24 that is obviously false. Science is founded on providing natural explanations. By definition any viable natural explanation is more scientific than "God did it". You might as well say that it is prejudiced to state that Albert Einstein was a greater scientist than Kent Hovind because a prejudiced creationist could assert the oppositeSo now you have given your clarification - and confirmed that you really did say exactly what I thought you had said - NOW is it alright for me to point out that you did indeed produce "complete nonsense" and "obvious untruths" ?

Omphalism is the view that the universe just LOOKS old. The name comes form the idea that since Adam was created with a navel - implying a past that did not happen, the universe had to be created with the evidence of a past that did not happen. Of course the extrapolation is fundamentally unsound since while some appearances of age may be necessary to a working universe (like ours), others are not. (And even the supposedly "necessary" appearances of age assume that the universe somehow had to be much the way we see it - rather than say the appearance we would derive from a plain reading of Genesis 1)

Well yet again we see misrepresentation rather tan dealing with the point. The point - which is quite clearly stated - is not that datign an object to more than 6000 years ago disproves YEC but that YEC - even as defiend in your original post - must reject such dates and therefore radically disagrees with both other positions on the history of the Universe.From your other posts it is clear that you are at least sympathetic to YEC. However the "retreat to Omphalism" refers to how you might defend your original assertion that YEC was scientifically equivalent to the other two positions.With regard to my later post as I state Omphalism has two serious problemsFirstly it needs to present arguemnts to explain why we see particular evidences of age. We might need the sun to have reached a certain point in stellar evolution, but we do not need a fossil record indicating a long history over which the fauna and flora of Earth have greatly changed - if they have in fact not changed significantly since the Creation.The other problem is the unstated assumption that a YEC creator God would create a universe like this. Why, for instance, are the sun moon and stars not simply lights in the sky ? Why should we be able to even construct a theory of stellar evolution (which is more like the changes of an individual from birth to death than biological evolution) ? After all only a fraction of the process could possibly happen between the Creation and Armageddon.It isn't enough to just write off contrary evidence with ad-hoc explanations in science. "God just made it look that way" isn't very good unless you have a reason to suppose that God WOULD make it look that way.

Well I still don't understand how you could not think of the 6,000 year age as being relevant when the only difference between your YEC and IEC position was that YECs did insist on the 6000 year age.But I think you are still confused on my second point.As I have said ultimate origins are outside the bounds of science.The problem came in after you stated that you were not referring to the possibility of proposing God as the ultimate cause beyond any we could discover. But if we ever did produce a complete naturalistic model for this universe's origin you have ruled out your only way of keeping God in the picture that is consistent with science. Which means that your self-imposed limitation makes the atheistic model at least potentially scientific, while the theistic model is not.