Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9164 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,912 Year: 4,169/9,624 Month: 1,040/974 Week: 367/286 Day: 10/13 Hour: 1/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Creation science or not?
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 25 of 97 (294821)
03-13-2006 8:28 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by riVeRraT
03-08-2006 9:28 AM


quote:
Many people in here claim creation science not to be science at all. I disagree, all science is science.
So, what you are saying is that if I attach the word "science" to any qualifier, doing that makes it "science"?
If I were, for example, have a religious belief that magical pumpkins were the source of all life and the Universe, and I wanted to promote this view through appearing to have scientific backing even though I did not follow any of the rules of "regular" science in my reasoning or my research, and I called the resulting efforts "Squash Science", does that then mean that "Squash Science" should be considered on equal footing with regular science?
quote:
Here are some of my reasons for coming to the conclusion that creation science is indeed science.
Once while discussing with schrafinator about "true scientists" and "true science" I brought up the fact the science is not always used for the good. It has been used to create more harm than good. To her, and me, this is not true science, and that is because of the motives behind it.
Hold on, when have I ever said that? I believe you are seriously mistaken.
In fact, I have said exactly the opposite.
I have said that scientists who follow the scientific method properly are doing proper science regardless of their motives.
The motivations of a scientist are irrelevant to if his or her work qualifies as scientific.
quote:
So creating an atom bomb fits that description.
So does creation science.
No, that is incorrect.
The creation of the atom bomb was, indeed, very well-done science, because it, form your wiki definition, :
Scientists use observations, hypotheses, and logic to propose explanations for natural phenomena in the form of theories. Predictions from these theories that can be reproducibly tested by experiment are the basis for developing new technology.
Creation science does not do the above, especially it avoids the second sentence, in bold. Therefore is is not science.
quote:
The physical evidence people feel as the Holy Spirit falls on them is real. Whether it is God or not, is what they want to find out by using the scientific method.
Creation Science folks never question "if it is God or not". They decide ahead of time that they know that it is God, and that nature must fit their interpretation of certain parts of a certain non-scientific holy book.
Again, this does not in any way fit your definition of science.
quote:
Many unexplained events, such as healings, and all the supernatural phenomena claimed in the bible, can be investigated. This makes it science.
Sure, they can be investigated, but that doesn't make it science.
quote:
No where in that description does it say that you have to not have a goal, or an objective when searching for answers.
Science goes where the evidence leads. In this way it is completely open-ended.
Creation science, by contrast, begins with a conclusion that MUST be found, regardless of where the evidence points.
quote:
In fact it says the opposite. You can believe in the TOE based on evidence, and then try to prove it.
This makes no sense. The evidence IS the support (proof).
quote:
You can believe in God based on evidence,
There is no scientific evidence for God, only subjective faith.
quote:
and try to prove it. Just because one theory has more physical evidence than the other, does not make it more science than the other.
Creation Science doesn't even meet the basic criterion for being science, as your own Wiki definition shows. They do not make "predictions from these theories that can be reproducibly tested by experiment".
quote:
When the TOE was first thought up, the evidence was limited. That never stopped people from trying to prove it.
Did you ever wonder why Origin of species is so incredibly long?
It's because of the evidence Darwin lists for his theory of descent with modification and natural selection.
You have it backwards, just like the Creation Science people do.
The overwhelmingly abundant evidence was pointing towards the hypothesis that Darwin came up with. It was by looking at the evidence and trying to come up with a logical explanation for why it appeared as it did that led to his theory.
Theories are simply ways to explain and organize the evidence. They are born out of the observation of the evidence, not dreamed up independently of the evidence like Creation Science does.
quote:
What should people who do not believe in God, or people that do not believe in creation science be worried about? If it cannot be proven, or does not exist, then the truth will come out.
Not if the suppression and marginalization of science continues. Remember what happened to Russian agriculture when they forbade their scientists form using Evolutionaty principles in their work?
quote:
There are all kinds of science,
Each one of these sciences has a different motive.
But all science that has ever produced anything of use has followed the same method.
Creation Science does not produce anything of use, because it does not follow the scientific method.
This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-13-2006 08:33 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by riVeRraT, posted 03-08-2006 9:28 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 37 by riVeRraT, posted 03-14-2006 6:14 AM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 29 of 97 (294862)
03-13-2006 10:38 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by Modulous
03-10-2006 6:42 AM


Agnosticism
quote:
An open minded scientifically minded person should really be agnostic, not athiest.
That's what I've always thought.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Modulous, posted 03-10-2006 6:42 AM Modulous has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 44 of 97 (295142)
03-14-2006 9:07 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by subbie
03-13-2006 7:35 PM


Re: Agnostic vs. atheist
quote:
Being open minded and scientifically minded doesn't mean that one can never come to a firm conclusion that something doesn't exist.
How does this jibe with the scientific tenet of tentativity?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by subbie, posted 03-13-2006 7:35 PM subbie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 48 by subbie, posted 03-14-2006 1:02 PM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 45 of 97 (295171)
03-14-2006 10:09 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by riVeRraT
03-14-2006 6:14 AM


creation science is not science. Simple.
Sure, they can be investigated, but that doesn't make it science.
quote:
Investagating them makes it science, not the event itself.
Sorry, I wasn't clear.
HOW one investigates something is the important point here. Scientific investigation follows a very specific methodology.
Creationists do not use this specific methodology, so they cannot be said to be doing science.
Science goes where the evidence leads. In this way it is completely open-ended.
quote:
Where in the definition of the scientific method does it say it has to be open ended?
The part that says science goes where the evidence leads.
quote:
Cancer research is not open ended, they study cancer, period.
Yes, but they do not decide ahead of time that the cure for cancer is to drink a gallon of orange juice every day and hop on one foot for 15 minutes out of every hour, and then look for evidence to support this conclusion and ignore all the rest.
Cancer researchers use the observed and inferred evidence from nature to ask questions and develop ideas about the origins and development of cancer, and then they design experiments to try to disprove their ideas; to test them.
They are not constrained in their methodology, as Creationists are, by the need to reach a specific conclusion about the origins and development of cancer. They go where the evidence, and the results of their testing, leads.
Creation science, by contrast, begins with a conclusion that MUST be found, regardless of where the evidence points.
quote:
Like finding a cure for cancer.
No, that is not a correct analogy.
An accurate analogy would be if a specific cure for cancer must be found, such as my orange juice and hopping cure above.
Creationists start with the specific treatment before looking at any evidence. They ignore any and all evidence that suggests that drinking a gallon of orange juice every day and hopping on one foot 15 minutes out of every hour doesn't cure cancer, and instead conclude that they must be making an error in understanding. After all, their holy book says that this MUST be the cure.
quote:
In fact it says the opposite. You can believe in the TOE based on evidence, and then try to prove it.
This makes no sense. The evidence IS the support (proof).
quote:
Let me just say this. The TOE is a theory, theories when correct, can make predictions,
Any theory, not just the correct ones, can make predictions. It is the testing of the logical consequences of the theories which tell us which ones are most correct.
quote:
we search to see if these predictions will come true.
Yes. Scientists also try as hard as they can to falsify their predictions. They search high and low and do many experiements to try to "break" their hypothesis. In this way, they are testing it. This is another thing that Creationists do not do. They never propose testable predictions of their hypothese.
There is no scientific evidence for God, only subjective faith.
quote:
What I feel cannot be classified as subjective faith.
The conclusions about the supernatural that you derive from your feelings are certainly subjective.
quote:
"If" God exists, and he made everything, then everything is the evidence.
Well, first you have to provide a testable, falsifiable theory complete with positive evidence that God exists, and then you must provide a testable, falsifiable theory complete with positive evidence that He made everything.
Creation Science doesn't even meet the basic criterion for being science, as your own Wiki definition shows. They do not make "predictions from these theories that can be reproducibly tested by experiment".
quote:
At least the major sites work that way, and I do have a problem with them.
But the name creation science on the whole is not to blame,
All of the "major sites" are "creation science on the whole", rat.
If AIG, DI, ICR, and the others listed here aren't the whole of Creation "science", then what other organizations or people are you referring to?
It's because of the evidence Darwin lists for his theory of descent with modification and natural selection.
quote:
A quick question, then maybe we can start another thread on it.
Can TOE explain your purpose in life?
No.
quote:
CAn TOE explain subjective feelings?
It can likely explain why we have feelings, yes, but not how you should act upon them.
Theories are simply ways to explain and organize the evidence. They are born out of the observation of the evidence, not dreamed up independently of the evidence like Creation Science does.
quote:
I believe I covered this already, and as you usually do you missed it.
Then please repost or link to where I missed it.
Remember what happened to Russian agriculture when they forbade their scientists form using Evolutionaty principles in their work?
quote:
No, please explain.
From the wiki. Also see entries on Lysenkoism and Lamarckism
In December 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gave a famous speech elevating "practice" above "theory", elevating the judgment of the political bosses above that of the scientists and technical specialists. Though the Soviet government under Stalin gave much more support to genuine agricultural scientists in its early days, after 1935 the balance of power abruptly swung towards Lysenko and his followers.
Lysenko was put in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union and made responsible for ending the propagation of "harmful" ideas among Soviet scientists. Lysenko served this purpose faithfully, causing the expulsion, imprisonment, and death of hundreds of scientists and the demise of genetics (a previously flourishing field) throughout the Soviet Union. This period is known as Lysenkoism. He bears particular responsibility for the death of the greatest Soviet biologist, Nikolai Vavilov, at the hands of the NKVD.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Lysenko retained his position, enjoying a relative degree of trust from Nikita Khrushchev. However, mainstream scientists were now given the ability to criticize Lysenko for the first time since the late 1920s. In 1962 three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Pyotr Kapitsa, set out the case against Lysenko, his false science and his policy of political extermination of scientific opponents. This happened as a part of a greater trend of combatting the ideological influence that had held such sway in Soviet society and science. In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences:
he is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudoscientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists.
The Soviet press was soon filled with anti-Lysenkoite articles and appeals for the restoration of scientific methods to all fields of biology and agricultural science. Lysenko was removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences and restricted to an experimental farm in Moscow's Lenin Hills (the Institute itself was soon dissolved). After the dismissal of Khrushchev in 1965, the president of the Academy of Sciences declared that Lysenko's immunity to criticism had officially ended, and an expert commission was sent to Lysenko's experimental farm. A few months later, a devastating critique became public and Lysenko's reputation was completely destroyed in the Soviet Union, though it would continue to have effect in China for many years.
Lysenko's political success was in part because of his striking differences from most biologists at the time, being both from a peasant family as well as an enthusiastic advocate of the Soviet Union and Leninism. He was also extremely fast in responding to problems, although not with real solutions. Whenever the Party would announce plans to plant a new crop or cultivate a new area, Lysenko would come up with immediate and practical suggestions on how to proceed. So quickly did he develop his prescriptions”from the cold treatment of grain, to the plucking of leaves from cotton plants, to the cluster planting of trees, to odd and unusual fertilizer mixes”that academic biologists could not keep up and did not have time to demonstrate that one technique was valueless or harmful before a new one was adopted. The Party-controlled newspapers inevitably applauded Lysenko's "practical" efforts and questioned the motives of his critics. Lysenko's "revolution in agriculture" had a powerful propaganda advantage over the academics who urged the patience and observation required for science. Lysenko was admitted into the Communist Party hierarchy and put in charge of agricultural affairs. Lysenko used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters," and to decry the "wreckers" in biology who he claimed were trying to purposely disable the Soviet economy and cause it to fail. He furthermore denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology.
This is why we worry about antiintellectualism in America, why we worry about the Creationists getting into the schools, why we worry about attempts by Creationists to change the definition of science to include them, and why we worry about the influence in our culture of all kinds of pseudosciences including Scienctific Creationism.
quote:
But all science that has ever produced anything of use has followed the same method.
quote:
Does love exist?
Can we not study love?
I believe we do, and it is a subjective feeling.
Whatever. What does this have to do with Creation science being considered scientific?
quote:
Creation Science does not produce anything of use, because it does not follow the scientific method.
quote:
Well the way I study creation, and God it does.
Mmm hmm. Does the way you study God qualify to be science?
quote:
Oh, and I am sorry if I claimed you said something and you didn't. I do not remember the thread, but I could swear you did say something to that effect.
'Sallright.
This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-14-2006 10:12 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by riVeRraT, posted 03-14-2006 6:14 AM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by Phat, posted 03-14-2006 11:39 AM nator has replied
 Message 52 by riVeRraT, posted 03-14-2006 4:09 PM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 47 of 97 (295209)
03-14-2006 11:46 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by Phat
03-14-2006 11:39 AM


Re: creation science is not science. Simple.
quote:
I do not agree with the possibility of a falsifiable reality in regards to faith, however. You either choose to take the leap or you do not.
I am right with you, Phat.
I just stated the above to make a point to the Rat.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by Phat, posted 03-14-2006 11:39 AM Phat has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 49 of 97 (295253)
03-14-2006 2:34 PM
Reply to: Message 48 by subbie
03-14-2006 1:02 PM


Re: Agnostic vs. atheist
quote:
I am willing to revise my conclusion if new evidence comes to light. Really, it's no different from any other conclusion that science comes to.All conclusions are subject to revision based on new evidence. That doesn't make the conclusions any less certain, simply contingent.
In my mind, this makes you an agnostic athiest, not just an athiest.
(I consider myself an agnostic athiest, btw)
The athiest believes that there is no God or gods.
The agnostic athiest doesn't know if God or Gods exist or not because there is no evidence for their existence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 48 by subbie, posted 03-14-2006 1:02 PM subbie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 50 by 1.61803, posted 03-14-2006 3:13 PM nator has not replied
 Message 51 by ramoss, posted 03-14-2006 3:15 PM nator has not replied
 Message 53 by subbie, posted 03-14-2006 6:34 PM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 56 of 97 (295375)
03-14-2006 10:32 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by crashfrog
03-14-2006 6:59 PM


Re: "No" vs. "I don't know."
quote:
But somehow when the topic is God, the rules are different? I think it's just intellectual timidity on the part of self-described "agnostics."
Well, yes, when the topic is a supernatural, possibly all-powerful and all-knowing entity, then yes, the rules are different.
It's not just that I don't see any evidence of God, it's that is it possible that God exists but we have no way of detecting God, just as invisible pink unicorns exist but I have no way of detecting them.
Therefore, I cannot say that they definitely do not exist.
To be intellectually consistent, I MUST say that I don't know if they do not exist or not.
I cannot make a positive claim for the non-existence of a thing using a lack of evidence for that thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 54 by crashfrog, posted 03-14-2006 6:59 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 58 by riVeRraT, posted 03-14-2006 10:35 PM nator has not replied
 Message 59 by crashfrog, posted 03-14-2006 10:48 PM nator has not replied
 Message 61 by subbie, posted 03-14-2006 10:57 PM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2199 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 92 of 97 (297925)
03-24-2006 7:24 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by runningman97
03-24-2006 5:25 PM


Now, Behe, the leading creo advocate of IC, has suggested blood clotting and bacterial flagella are IC. Unfortunately for him, evolutionary histories for both of these things have been suggested. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, blood clotting systems have been found with fewer than all the elements that Behe said were necessary.
quote:
I'm not aware of any satisfactory explaination for these systems. In the case of the blood clotting system, Behe mentions that an experiment was carried out using rats to show that a blood clotting system can function with proteins removed. However the side effect of this was that the rats couldn't reproduce, a slight evolutionary disadvantage if you ask me.
The glaring error Behe makes here is that he assumes that the elements of complex "irreducably complex" biological systems were added sequentially; "a + b + c + d = IC system".
That's not at all how evolution has happened, or has to happen.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 90 by runningman97, posted 03-24-2006 5:25 PM runningman97 has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024