I poked into Faith's Corner, and she says she'd like a copy of Message 178:
Admin in Message 178 writes:
Hi Faith,
We can discuss this if that is your wish, but only if you're truly willing to engage in a discussion. If you wish only to follow the same pattern that led me to request that you cut back your participation in the science forums then there really can't be a discussion.
Rather than reply to all of your message at once, let me reply to it one portion at a time and show you in which way each part is either right or wrong. There's no larger audience here, there are no lurkers, it's just us admins, so there's no need for posturing. Starting with the first paragraph:
Faith writes:
I read your message 144 about the requirements of science and simply thought how it defines creationism out of existence and how futile this whole debate is. I wondered if that list of requirements would have come into existence any time before the modern creationist movement got going. I rather doubt earlier science would have excluded an authoritative word from God as factual foundation for science.
We've been over this before. You've said this before and it's been answered before. This is fine as an introductory paragraph if followed by, "Now I understand from our previous discussions that your response to this is...", and then go off to produce some rebuttal. But you don't do that. You once again start the debate from square one.
You not only tend to begin discussions from scratch, but even in mid-thread you'll revert to the very beginning. Buzsaw does the same thing. It's as if there's no understanding that discussion is a give and take where each party listens and responds to the other. A discussion is not a speech or a soliloquy where the only voice you hear is your own.
I'm going to examine your first paragraph sentence by sentence:
I read your message 144 about the requirements of science and simply thought how it defines creationism out of existence and how futile this whole debate is.
To the extent that creationism hypothesizes about phenomena that have no evidence from the natural world, it does not possess one of the key qualities of science: observation of natural phenomena. The goal of science is to understand the natural world.
I wondered if that list of requirements would have come into existence any time before the modern creationist movement got going.
The message you refer to was not a list of scientific requirements. It listed the qualities of science, and it enumerated the steps of the scientific method.
The modern creationist movement began with Henry Morris and his book
The Genesis Flood, published around 1960. The origins of modern empirical science trace back to Roger Bacon (1214-1294 AD), continued through Francis Bacon (no relation, 1561-1626 AD), and reached a somewhat recognizably modern form through the work of René Descartes (1596-1650 AD), most notably his
Discourse on Method. The method continued to be refined through the 18th and 19th centuries, and even into the 20th century with the philosophical debates surrounding Karl Popper's ideas. All this predated the modern creationism movement. The modern scientific method is not a response to creationism.
I rather doubt earlier science would have excluded an authoritative word from God as factual foundation for science.
There was a time when western science in Christian countries did put great weight on God's word as contained in the Bible. As time went by it was discovered that the evidence did not support Biblical accounts, and so step by gradual step the Bible was abandoned as a source of scientific knowledge.
But science is a group activity with laborers from many nations, cultures and religions, many of whom have little to no contact with Christianity. Their science never used "an authoritative word from (the Christian) God as factual foundation for science."
The key question is how well the Bible works as a source of scientific knowledge, and the answer is extremely poorly. If creationists have better approaches for figuring out how the world works then they would continually beat traditional scientists in the race to new discoveries. If creationism had truly found a better way to do science then their record of success would be drawing more and more scientists away from traditional science, and the Bible colleges would be filled to overflowing with applications from scientific hopefuls from all over the world. But nothing like this is happening or has ever happened, and I think you would be hard put to cite a single creationist discovery in any field of science.
Summarizing what is right and wrong about your first paragraph:
- For those who view creationism's foundation to be Biblical events, then creationism is not science, and the characterization of science I provided does exclude this brand of creationism. But keep in mind that you are not a mainstream creationist. Mainstream creationism sincerley wants creation science to be accepted as every much legitimate science as evolution, deserving of treatment alongside or even replacing evolution. In order to replace evolution it has to possess the same qualities of science and follow the same methodology of science as does evolution, and this is just what mainstream creationism claims.
In other words, mainstream creationism rejects your suggestion. When creationists make presentations to school boards they avoid any reference to the Bible and talk about how the evidence actually supports a young earth and a global flood. They very much want to convince school boards that creation science is every much the same type of science as evolution. And you yourself are inconsistent on this point, because while in your initial paragraph you tacitly concede that creationism doesn't qualify as science, later in your message you argue that there is scientific evidence for the flood.
So are you right about science excluding creationism by definition? As far as what you say in your message it really isn't possible to tell, since you seem to be promoting two conflicting views of creationism, one based on Biblical revelation, and another based on evidence from the natural world. When you pick one or the other then I'll be able to tell you whether creationism is excluded from science by definition.
- You were incorrect when you speculated that the criteria for science were formulated as a response to creationism.
- About earlier science accepting God's authority on scientific matters, you are correct, there was a time when this was so. But as evidence from the natural world was gathered and accumulated, it failed to support God's authority.
So that completes my response to your first paragraph. Why don't you take a stab at replying and we'll see if we can move the discussion constructively forward.
--Percy
™ Version 4.2