Creation, Evolution, and faith

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A philosopher of science might view it a bit differently. But for the scientist, I agree that our main evidence for faith in our presuppositions is pragmatism--the presuppositions seem to work well.

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That's kinda what makes them not "presuppositions".

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Can you please explain? Are you claiming that science rests on no presuppositions at all?

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Yes, I think this is a rational conclusion. But the presuppositions cannot be proven. Yet we "believe" and "have faith" that they can tell us something real about the universe around us.

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I'm confused. You seemed to agree that the evidence we have of the efficacy of the scientific method provides pragmatic evidence for its worth, yet you insist on describing our use of it as based on faith. Could you explain this inconsistency?

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I see no inconsistency. What do you believe is inconsistent?I suspect you are trying to define "faith" as "blind faith." This is NOT a standard English meaning. See Webster's definition in Message 88. Faith essentially means belief, persuasion of something, reliance, trust. Faith is generally based on evidence of some sort. My use of "faith" above falls best under his definition #1: "belief", or perhaps his definition #2: "The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another ... on probable evidence of any kind, ..."

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A philosopher of science might view it a bit differently. But for the scientist, I agree that our main evidence for faith in our presuppositions is pragmatism--the presuppositions seem to work well.

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The presuppositions of science are rather bland. They include such ideas that we can trust what we see, that the laws of nature do not change arbitrarily in either space or time, and that nature can be understood rationally. That's it. They are the same presuppositions that allow you to go to sleep at night and know that you will wake up on your bed and not the ceiling. The same presuppositions that allow you to brush your teeth in the morning knowing that the toxicity of sodium flouride will be the same tomorrow as it was today. They are the same presuppositions that allow you to push down on your brake pedal and know that steel will not suddenly turn into the consistancy of spaghetti.

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If you want to argue that we can not trust what we observe, and that nature is not rational, then we can argue about the validity of the presuppositions of science.

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I agree. This is what I tried to say back in Message 25. We presuppose that natural laws are consistent, that they will be so in the future, and that they were so in the past. We presuppose "methodological naturalism"; we exclude Omphalism and Last-Thursdayism. We can't prove this position. If God wanted to create us all last Thursday with our memories and earth history intact, there is no way we could tell. We also presuppose that our observations have some bearing on the real world, that we are not all a computer animation in The Matrix. We can't prove this, either.

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It's not necessarily the conclusion I would draw in that example. Likely it would be but it's def not 100% provable and never will be. I start with an assumption that the Bible is true, that Noah's flood did occur, and thus much can be explained in light of a world wide catastrophe that completely changed the landscape.

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In other words you start with the assumption that creationists must be right and you don't even look at the evidence in anything more than a superficial way. But in fact you are wrong. The flood FAILS to adequately explain the geological and fossil record.

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Has there not been major flaws at times in radiometric dating??? P

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No there have not been major flaws. None that would invalidate the methods used at all.

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People were not around when rocks were formed, whether you are a creationist or evolutionist this is a true statement, so we can only guess about their content or how quickly radioactive elements decayed millions of years ago, or say, pre-Flood.

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Again that is false. We can look for conditions that would change decay rates - none relevant have been found. We can look for the consequences of changing decay rates - none have been found. We can use astronomical evidence to see if there is evidence of differing decay rates, and none has been found. Of course creationists are unlikely to let you know these facts because they want you to dismiss the evidence.

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Take Noah's flood out of the equation and most believe that there have been other catastrophic events around the world, including an ice age (yes, YEC believe this, it's just a difference of when it occurred) so how do we know how these events affected dating methods.

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In fact there have been multiple ice ages - creationists only admit to one (again going against the evidence). And we know that they haven't affected the relevant dating methods because we have a scientific understanding of these events. Once again we see science resting on the evidence and creationism desperately trying to dismiss the evidence - in the name of faith.That is the difference. Science is based on evidence and creationism is based on dogma.

Hello again Flyer75,Others have answered about the dating stuff, and I'd suggest you take their advice and take it to another thread to discuss it further, so as not to derail this one (which should be about wheteher or not science is based on faith rather then data).Some comments: Think this argument through though. What about a murder? Say, for example, nobody was around to see it, can nobody be convicted for the act then? Do you see the flaw in this argument? Things leave evidence, the evidence these things leave is what science bases itself on. But science doesn't take any assumptions like that. It bases itself on things that are shown. You're rebuttal "But things could've been different in the past!" isn't really much of a rebuttal at all. First of all, the dates are in correllation, meaning that different isotopes with different decay rates (this is important) still give the same dates for the same rocks. This would mean, that if they were different in the past, there wouldn't have beeen a set change in decay, but the rates would have to have changed proportionally. And untill this is shown to have happened, why should we act like it did? But like I said, this would be better suited to a "dates" thread.Also all someone has to do to counter a "what if?" argument is say "well, what if it's not?". You're stuck then. This is why science asks you "Ok, you say things were different/you say this happened, where's the evidence for your claim?". As long as you can't provide evidence for your claim, why should we consider it?I think I know why you assume the bible is true (that's because of your belief in it's accuracy, right?). But let's look at it in a different light. Why should we teach something as fact simply because you believe it is true? What about the Hindu creation myths? Or the Norse, or the Egyptian? Should we teach them as fact, or consider them seriously in science simply because there are people that consider these things to be true?Can you see how important evidence is to science now?

I'm not sure why you insist on equating "faith" with the kind of conclusions that scientists come to, unless it's to either elevate the beliefs of religion or denigrate the conclusions of science, but you're attempting a not particularly elegant redefinition.The definitions from Webster that you quoted in Message 88 all contain an element of reliance on authority that you keep parsing out when you quote them. This is a crucial difference, although not the only difference, between religious and scientific beliefs. In most religions, truth is found in an authoritative writing. It's true because the bible/koran/bagavad gita/golden tablets says so. Nothing in science is true just because someone said so.The reason you see no inconsistency is because you are equating the conclusions of science with the conclusions of religion. Yes, both are based on some kind of evidence, but the nature of the evidence that they two rely on is altogether different.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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I understand what he is saying in this and it's not an inconsistency, imo. Both creationists and evolutionists view history/science through their presuppositional lens. In other words, both come to the table thinking, without evidence to what is being theorized, either in the terms of Global Flood or millions of years.

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Take this crude example: Tons of dinosaur foot prints are found running in the same direction. The evolutionist automatically assumes that millions of years ago followed by a theory that the dinosaurs were running from predators looking to eat them. The creationist automatically assumes thousands of years ago followed by a theory that the dinosaurs were running from a global catastrophic flood, Noah's flood. Who's right? Neither side can absolutley prove their theory, but both came to the table with a presupposition opposite of the other. Both can agree that something happened to the dinosaurs in this specific case, both can agree that the dinosaurs were running from something looking to wipe them out, but the conclusion is different. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is what he is trying to say in the post.

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Again, I apologize for the first grade level analogy............

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Sort-of, but not quite. By "presuppositions" I was referring to something more fundamental and basic, both for science and for religion. An old earth is not a presupposition, but a conclusion based on interpretation of scientific data. The presuppositions are discussed in Message 108. Likewise, I would not call a global flood a presupposition, but a conclusion based on interpretation of biblical data. The underlying presuppositions are such things as the belief that the Bible communicates truth, and that a literal interpretation is the correct one.

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Again, excuse my ignorance but I believe this is a form of uniformitarianism as coined by the deist James Hutton? If not, I apologize, if so, I have to ask again....how do we know? How do we know light traveled at the same speed it does today 40 million years ago? Or that the way we date rocks today has any connection to the way they decayed 110 million years ago? IMO, it's a logical conclusion that scientists have "faith" that the present is the key to the past.

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I don't know enough about Hutton's views to be sure, but I am skeptical that he was really a deist.Modern science is more than just Baconian experimentation. It also involves mathematical descriptions and conceptual generalizations to "laws" about how the world actually works. We don't just try to match experiment with our theories, we try to understand what is really going on. And on the two examples that you've given, we have good theoretical understanding which tells us that these things cannot vary. The speed of light in vacuum is understood to be a fundamental constant, independent of any variables, and experiment backs this up. The rate of radioactive decay is understood to be a constant based only on nuclear structure, and experiment backs this up as well.

Here is what I said before: "laws of nature do not change arbitrarily in either space or time." The important bit here is "arbitrarily". Before these laws were discovered it was entirely possible that they could have changed over time or space. However, science assumes that they will change in a rational and describable way, not arbitrarily.As for the speed of light specifically, the equation E=mc^2 allows us to make predictions about what we should see if the speed of light were different in the past. An increase or decrease in the speed of light would correlate with an increase or decrease in the energy output of stars, just as one example. No such change is seen in any galaxy that has been looked at. The constancy of the speed of light is not assumed. It is a conclusion drawn from mountains of evidence. You might want to read up on the Oklo reactors. These are natural nuclear reactors that went critical billions of years ago. The decay products are exactly what we would expect to see if the decay rates were the same billions of years ago. Like the speed of light, the constancy of decay rates is also supported by mountains of evidence. It is not assumed.

That's exactly what the first geologists did in the early 1800's. Guess what? They abandoned this assumption because the actual geologic record told a very different story. They were never able to find a global flood layer. What they found instead was literal mountains of evidence for slow geologic processes, not to mention multiple ages where glaciation was the major erosive process. They found the exact opposite of what one should find if Noah's flood occurred in the past. It wasn't faith that lead them to conclude that the Earth was ancient, much older than Usher's calculations suggested. Even before Holmes first proposed radiometric dating the consensus among geologists was that the Earth had to be at least 100 million years old, and probably much older. So when a crime scene investigator finds a person's DNA, fingerprints, shoe prints, and fibers at the scene of a crime are they only guessing that this person was at the scene of the crime?Your argument has taken quite a turn. First, you tell us that scientists do not have any evidence for anything so they are just assuming things. When it is made obvious that there is indeed evidence you are now arguing that evidence doesn't matter. Evidence is just a guess. If you want to approach this topic honestly then deal with the evidence, don't discount it. Just because your ideas of how old the Earth are are based on faith does not mean that scientists use faith to determine the age of the Earth as well. Other than faith, what reason is there to include Noah's flood as a geologic event?

Theories do not rest on presuppositions. They rest on the evidence.

There is no single definition, standard or otherwise, for "faith". You are trying to use a semantic argument, conflating different definitions of faith in order to give religious faith the same level of confidence as faith derived through experience and evidence. They are not the same thing.

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Can you please explain? Are you claiming that science rests on no presuppositions at all?

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Theories do not rest on presuppositions. They rest on the evidence.

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You are evading the question. Do you claim that there are NO presuppositions that underlie science?

What do you mean by "presuppositions?"Science begins with the working assumption of methodological naturalism.Is that what you are referring to as a "presupposition?"If not, please clarify what you are referring to.

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I'm not sure why you insist on equating "faith" with the kind of conclusions that scientists come to, unless it's to either elevate the beliefs of religion or denigrate the conclusions of science, but you're attempting a not particularly elegant redefinition.

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Perhaps this is because I see non-religious people in this thread denigrating religious faith. They apparently don't understand it and want to dismiss it as a "blind faith" based on no evidence at all. I am trying to explain that this perspective is simply wrong.I doubt that such "blind faith" exists at all. Even the most unsophisticated followers of tribal religions have some sort of evidence for their religious faith, perhaps because they trust mentors who have always been honest with them, perhaps because they recovered from an illness after the shaman did his chants. Many religious believers base religious faith on a holy book which has been tested at some level and been found trustworthy. More sophisticated religious believers base their faith on evidence found in detailed, academic study of original languages, cultures, and history.

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The definitions from Webster that you quoted in Message 88 all contain an element of reliance on authority that you keep parsing out when you quote them. This is a crucial difference, although not the only difference, between religious and scientific beliefs. In most religions, truth is found in an authoritative writing. It's true because the bible/koran/bagavad gita/golden tablets says so. Nothing in science is true just because someone said so.

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Yes, in a religious context, there is often a reliance on authority. But this is not a fundamental component of "faith." Consider the definition from dictionary.com: Note that the first (main) definition has no implications of authority or any limitations on evidence. The basic meaning of "faith" is simply "confidence" or "trust;" it is essentially synonymous with "belief." We have faith that an airplane will stay in the sky, we have faith that our scientific theories will work tomorrow like they do today, etc. These are normal, valid uses of the word "faith."The second definition comes closest to "blind faith", but doesn't quite get there. "Not based on proof" is not the same as "not based on evidence." Faith based on evidence which is suggestive but not definitive would fit this definition.

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The reason you see no inconsistency is because you are equating the conclusions of science with the conclusions of religion. Yes, both are based on some kind of evidence, but the nature of the evidence that they two rely on is altogether different.

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I agree, and have said this multiple times in this thread. The main difference is not the presence or absence of evidence, but the type of evidence that each works with.