Discussions in the comment sections of many posts on this site chaotically tend toward the strange attractor of one generally off-topic issue: Why does Creation/Evolution seem correct to you? It is usually a discussion between Creationists who believe that the scientific conclusions are based on faith, and Naturalists who believe that the Scientific Method is best tool ever invented to extract sense from chaos.
In the beginning, Natural Philosophers (now called Scientists) in the West all believed in the Bible. Bishop Ussher gave the final word on the age of the universe according to the Bible in the early 1600’s, and the Church had all the answers. But then the idea emerged that one can actually test Aristotelian conclusions (purely rational and based on “what everybody knows”) with observations. Copernicus demonstrated with careful observation and applied math around 1600 that only the moon itself orbited the Earth, and all the other planets circled the Sun. The church accepted this, as a philosophical observation, irrelevant to the place of Man in the Universe. Then Galileo made a gadfly of himself by publishing popular books mocking the Pope for publicly continuing in the preaching of Geocentrism when it was clear, with the aid of a telescope, that not only did the planets orbit the sun, but that some of those planets had moons of their own. Many moons, placed where Man couldn’t even see them without modern technology.
Well, it just snowballed from there. Newton, a devout Christian, developed math in the late 17th century that accurately modeled the behavior of pretty much everything that man could observe at the time (the Laws of Motion). And those models showed how things naturally happen, without need for divine intervention. 
Then in the mid-19th century, J.C. Maxwell developed similar rules to explain electromagnetism (light, electricity, radio, etc). Discovery after discovery kept challenging the universally held beliefs in many areas. Gravity wasn’t related to nor caused by sin. Demons didn’t cause disease. The basic elements weren’t Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Air was a complex substance, but caloric and phlogiston weren’t. The planet and the universe steadily got wider and older and more complex as more and more evidence collected by true believers forced them to acknowledge that nature is as it is, and not how interpretations of the ancient texts described it.
By the 1700’s, many Christians were becoming Deists; they believed in an omnipotent Creator, but not in the meddling and insecure deity portrayed by most western religions. God as a watchmaker, who wound up the universe, and then sat back to watch it play out.
By the start of the 20th Century, there was a problem. The Universe (what we now call our galaxy) was only measured to be 100,000 light years across, yet every measure of geology pointed to many millions –hundreds of millions by some measures– of years of history on the Earth. How could the Earth be orders of magnitude older than the universe? Then came General Relativity, quasars, and the red shift. Suddenly the universe exploded out to billions of years across/old. And then quantum and then nuclear theory led to unstable isotopes being used as accurate clocks. The planet rose to billions of years old, too. When we brought samples back from the moon, they indicated the same age as Earthly rocks. Conflict resolved.
But there is still a small group of people who hold tight to the 17th century interpretation of a literal Genesis story. This movement emerged in the United States after the Scopes Trial in the 1920’s, depending on the idea that a Young Earth precludes the principle that species could have evolved; there wasn’t enough time. Odd schools of thought therefore emerge (Flood Geology, Intellignet Design, etc), that try to sound scientific, yet not actually using that methodology developed centuries ago.
We see comments saying that “old Earth” evidence is only found because the discoverers believe in it. They didn’t always. Most of the earlier and still useful evidence of the age of the Earth was found by those who didn’t initially believe in their own results. And when they did, they had to fight ridicule before the disbelieving community. It is the method that prevailed, not the authority of the discoverer. Nor are convincing arguments much good against the method. Scientists are often wrong. Very often. The scientific method records these wrong results so that they can be checked. And they are. And eventually and asymptotically, the correct ideas are refined and prevail.
Unfortunately, the public only sees the tip of the science iceberg. There are big, splashy announcements of bold ideas. Like Cold Fusion. That was a case when would-be discoverers did an end run around the method and announced to the public before their results could be independently checked. A quiet retraction was printed when the dozens of labs that should have been contacted first, demonstrated universally that the first announcement was based on a procedural error. But research continues. That they didn’t demonstrate something new does not imply that there is nothing new to be discovered.
I blame the media. Remember Halley’s comet? The previous time around, it was a gaudy show. In the 1980’s most astronomers said that it might be visible. The media covered it as the show of the century, assuming that it would be the same show. Technically, it was the same show. But this time we only had partially obstructed nosebleed seats, rather than right on the gridiron. Actual scientists knew this, but their story wasn’t newsworthy. When it turned out to be exactly what the scientists said, the public blamed the scientists for misleading them.
Science is portrayed to the public as a mixture of magic and authority. It is neither. It is a process whereby thousands of brilliant and highly trained competitors are all trying to prove each other wrong, or to come up with a new twist. After a generation or two of consistently and universally failing to prove that something is wrong, then it becomes provisionally accepted: A “theory”. Then it continues to be tested. Nothing is accepted on authority. Rarely is something revolutionary accepted within a decade of its announcement.
Einstein wasn’t correct about relativity because he was Einstein. He was correct because many experiments and observations failed to prove him wrong, and that his ideas led to other subsequently proven ideas. The same went for Newton, Maxwell, Bohr, Feynman, Hawking, and so on. Up-and-comers are always re-testing the earlier theories using newer methods. Under the sedate public image, real science is contentious and messy.
Finally, science is all about “how”. Religion or faith may cover “why”, for those who need it. The problem comes when unqualified observers (who sometimes have credentials to state otherwise) with a philosophical axe to grind revisit long-discredited arguments and claim them as new discoveries. They dun researchers for refusing to look at their “new evidence”, but neglect to review the existing literature, or to run the standard tests themselves. They just make claims that sound reasonable. Anyone who knows the history of 20th century discovery knows that common sense reasonableness does not match reality beyond the everyday scale of experience. And modern instruments measure far beyond that realm.
To (finally) sum this up. The question comes down to: Do you believe in the Scientific Method and its results, or in the principle that unless it agrees with a particular minority interpretation of The Bible, it is wrong?
Seems clear to me. So how do you explain someone like Erik B? How can he ignore all this evidence?
Karl: What do you mean by a "Uniformitarian"? It generally means that the laws of nature that we now observe are assumed to have been the same in the past. Consistent. Every observation ever made supports this view.
What if the laws of nature were different, or arbitrarily and temporarily suspended? There would be evidence. If you modify any of the so-called constants, our solar system and world would not be as we have them. It takes too long to reach a new equilibrium and we would see the results.
Pick a law of nature, any of the six basic ratios (read Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe) on which everything depends, and pick a time to change it's value and then another to change it back. Run the model of the galaxy/solar system/planet for that time under that new assumption, and see what happens. You'd notice the effects today (mostly with everyone dead). Change the initial conditions any way you want to try to keep us alive. If the laws had been changed, they'd leave a mark.
I've never heard of anyone trying to debunk Flood Geology by comparing it to a tsunami. It is posed as a magical materialization of an improbable amount of water followed by an equally magical disappearance. Ignoring the magical aspect and given that framework, certain sedimentary and tectonic hypotheses can be posed, and tested. Can be, have been, always fail.
The appearance and disappearance of all that water is another issue, too easy to debunk. The hovering ice/water/vapor layer hypothesis is silly for too many reasons, like transparency and potential vs. kinetic energy issues. Subterranean steam caverns are just as silly.
The quote that I posted was from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Sorry if I confused the topic further. I used it as an example of the kind of questions that people started asking when they had the leisure and inclination to think about where fossils come from, not as some kind of authoritative source on geology.
What would a non-naturalistic science look like? What would be its methodology?
Silly Dan! You don't think that God is smart enough to wipe away his fingerprints?
The question is more aptly put epistemologically as to whether the actual workings of science which are fairly unquestioned by even young earth creationists can be stripped of their value ladden inferences and interpretations.
When this is done a supermajority will not question the facts of science. It's when some scientists superimpose value systems (which they do not call value systems) with assumed true premsies that can not ever be fully proven that science has been wrong in the past and will be wrong again in the future.
If the facts of science are really objective facts how could anyone prove them wrong? Likewise what would be the point in thinking they could be proven wrong? When inferences and interpretations are elevated to the same position as directly proven observational laws, science has lost sight of its own biases.
The scopes trial that you mention was indeed pivotal because a secular court was asked in a three ring circus environment to decide from particulars if a freedom from religion climate could be established for the teaching of science. This gave science models and theories precedence over other value systems and since this time you will be hard pressed to find any university trained scientist who truely gets the point. Science laws and patterns do not prove theories and models. Models and theories have to be accepted on faith just as much as anyother religion with its tenents and doctrine.
The issue is whether or not a model or a theory, that really could be wrong, either knowingly or unknowingly actually eliminates the rest of the philospohical competetion by claiming objectivity and utilitarian principles. This is a logical house of cards ready to be toppled, fighting every step of the way against someone exposing the premises that are not facts but beliefs.
Karl: Philosophically speaking, any theory produced by science could be wrong. Just as Quantum Theory demonstrates that the Golden Gate Bridge could suddenly materialize intact in Beijing. But the odds are quite low.
Science is all about the odds. The models (theories, laws) of science are all about figuring what is likely to happen, or to have happened. Science is based on, "Never mind what they think; look at this!" The only consistent doctrine of science is, "Oh, yeah? Prove it!"
All observation is conjecture. Your mind perceives a cloud because the photons traveling from the sun via certain dense clusters of atoms of airborne water trigger different reactions in molecules in cells in your eye than do photons that traveled via less dense distributions. Those molecules cause a cascade of other molecular reactions that eventually reach your optic nerve as a series of electrochemical pulses that represent differences in intensity across a spatial field of cells. Those signals go through several stages of processing in specific parts of your brain so that eventually (milliseconds later) you can compare to previous experience and recognize, "cloud".
That it is a cloud is a theory that your mind developed over years from previous and never violated observations. It might not really be a cloud. Clouds may never have existed in the past. But the way to bet when your eye perceives the pattern that you have always called a cloud, is that it is a cloud.
The Scopes trial did nothing for science other than allow it to be displayed in biology classrooms. Science doesn't care about either civil or divine law, except when practitioners of the latter use the former to try to stop discovery.
Mike writes:—"Seems clear to me. So how do you explain someone like Erik B? How can he ignore all this evidence?"
People like Erik assume that we (being scientific materialists) have simply misinterpreted everything.
Galileo, when asked about those times when the Bible and his work seemed to conflict, replied that when his science (note: his science) contradicted Scripture, he assumed he had misinterpreted the Bible. There are a couple of ways to look at this, one being that he may have read as literal sections that ought to be seen as purely metaphorical, the other being that he simply did not comprehend the manner in which what he had read could be true. Discussing this with a friend who is a devout Christian recently, he gave the for instance of Joshua stopping the sun. Obviously that didn't happen. But it doesn't render that passage false in a literary sense—time slows in the personal perception of someone highly adrenalized. It is well-documented. If that scene had appeared in a novel by, say, Walter Scott, we'd know at once that he was being deeply metaphorical—the sun didn't stand still in the sky, it stood still for Joshua.
People like Erik have opted not to see it that way because it leads to one conclusion that I believe (my opinion) that is intolerable—that humans are not the pinnacle of creation, that we are, in fact, replaceable, and probably will be. Deep down, I believe the literalist reaction to scripture is a bone-deep denial of this possibility.
Secondarily, it makes the universe a much scarier place.
Young Earth Creationists employ the introduction of Miracle to explain certains things. Evolution aside, the fact that we receive light from stars tens of billions of light years away strikes me as ample evidence that things are much older than they claim. This may come across as simplistic, and I have seen some fascinating mental acrobatics performed to explain how a universe only six thousand years old can possibly contain stars the light of which took multiple tens of thousands of years to get here. There is a simple macro artifact which establishes that the time required for something like biological evolution to work is there. One might argue that those stars aren't really "there" or that god somehow forced the light to travel faster than its own top speed (thereby deceiving us—but only with the light of stars that without technology we couldn't see anyway, so what would be the point?) or the devil did it to confuse us or….
All such explanations rely on some species of magic.
Ultimately, though, the question comes down to a very simple—What difference does it really make?
Mark, I think you are right on target.
A lot of creationists outright dismiss evolution, because of the connection to lower or "non-blessed" life forms. They say "We're special, 'cause god made us this way."
Religion serves the purpose of providing comfort to those that fear the unknowable. Answers are developed based on what can be observed, that satisfy the need to know enough to allow the average citizen to go about daily life without worrying about the moon falling out of the sky and crushing him in his sleep.
However, while religion poses plausible explanations for these questions, scientific methodology finds a way to test its answers and to adapt the answers to fit the results of those tests. As science gradually supersedes the religious explanations of the natural world, it has slowly eroded the foundations of religion, and that is the threat felt by fundamentalists. If they accept science that disagrees with their established beliefs, Then they must admit that their religion in not infallible, that the beliefs they have adopted from the religion may not be true, and that scares them.
I can imagine my reaction to proof of God. Anyone who grew up with speculative ("science") fiction has read numerous cases of God showing his hand to skeptical scientists. Try Hoyle's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=hoyle+black+cloud" target="_blank" title="Amazon link" rel="nofollow">The Black Cloud".
This is in response to Mike and Grumpy from <a href="http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/08/28/deep-water-effects-on-radioactivity/#comment-27237" rel="nofollow">over here, trying to move the conversation to this more appropriate topic.
I am responding to Mike and Grumpy over here, in response to Dan's herding.
With respect Mike, I think Grumpy is grumpily making an important point about methodology here. Karl and Erik seem to be saying "We don't trust scientific conclusions because they may be disproved or modified." Dan and Grumpy are saying "We trust scientific conclusions because they can be disproved or modified." That's an important distinction.
The amount of dogmatism (pun intended) with which those views are put forward, and the ability or inability to imagine a subjective counter-reality, probably have more to do with personality or temperament.
The distinction Grumpy makes between explanations for speciation vs. origin of life is also important. That's why many religious believers, including possibly the majority of Christians (Catholics, liberal Protestants, Eastern Orthodox) have no trouble accepting evolution and an old Earth. Active promoters of Creation Science all belong to a narrow range of evangelical Protestant sects, or else conservative Islam. (Hmmm, is there a trend there?) I don't think it's true, as Niklaus claims, that all religions see "explanation of the natural world" as their "foundation."
Lastly, it's all about power, isn't it? Should anyone be able to believe and say anything they want about the origins of life? Yes, I think. Should they be allowed to teach it to children as science? In a private school? In a public school? Should "alternative" explanations for the Grand Canyon be posted by the national park service? Should universities accept Creationist biology courses as fulfilling their entrance requirements? That's where it all gets dicey. In these arguments I think creationism illicitly assumes the mantle of authority of science, without submitting to the discipline of science.
I think both religion and science, as human institutions, have faults. In both areas, in all areas of life, we can be misled when we forget how much we don't know.
Mark says:
OK, but look at this another way. Who was the lawyer for the creationist side in the "Scopes" trial? William Jennings Bryan, the great populist orator and politician. While populism is now sometimes used almost as an epithet, in the late 19th century the Populist Party had a truly progressive platform in favor small farmers and working folks. They were for public ownership of railroads and utilities, direct election of Senators, and against financial monopolies and government policies that benefited only the wealthy. In fact a lot of their platform was taken up and finally achieved by the Progressives in the Democratic party.
Secondly, the political idea that "all men are created equal" can be traced to the religious idea that "all men are created in the image and likeness of God." So the idea that people are in fact animals, combined with ideas of social Darwinism, could be seen to threaten the idea of the worth of the individual, especially for those who keenly felt their economic disadvantages.
Thirdly, creationism hardened into ideology in the era of the red scare, then Cold War. So the example of atheistic Communism, which treated people as animals, was always there as an object lesson for God-fearing Americans.
I'm not defending these conclusions or portrayals, but just suggestion that behind the self-aggrandizement you see, there may be a legitimate concern about the dignity and worth of the individual that needs to be addressed.
And hiding behind this layer there are darker fears. Even before the theory of evolution, people talked about "the animal nature" in humans. Certain races were always seen as closer to animals. If common descent from apes had been postulated only for non-whites, I'm sure it would have gained widespread acceptance much earlier.
Of course evolution supporters also used the theory to justify racism too. In fact I have an old atlas which pictures "The Five Principal Races of Man" next to an orang-utang so you'll be sure to get the point. And why does EVERY graphic of the human evolution end in a white male?
Vicki,
William Jennings Bryant allowed that Evolution was acceptable as long as it did not include Man. Human beings had to be seen as distinct, as "special", in his view because, he suggested, including us would undermine morality. This is an argument we see parroted today by some hardcore fundies, that somehow by accepting Evolution even for human beings there is no basis for morality any longer. This is patent nonsense, of course, but there you have it.
As to your remarks about science in response to Grumpy, I find it interesting that folks who refuse to trust science—because it can be disproven—turn to a superstition, which can't be proven, especially a superstition that has at its core no obligation to actually DO anything, that in fact must not do anything lest it damage "faith" by suggesting that it can be proven. After all, if god actually acted in the world according to materialist principles, no doubt some of what he/she/it would do would just piss off the faithful. Safer, then, to have a non-acting, non-interfering god that "works in mysterious ways" rather than something hidden behind a curtain that might be pulled back. Functionally, they end up relying on Nothing while condemning something that has utility.
"And why does EVERY graphic of the human evolution end in a white male?"
Because white males are the BEST chartmakers!
Dan, Vicki, Mark, Grumpy, Mike, et al: Thank you for this eloquent discussion. This is really good stuff. I think that it is peeling back something that has lurked in the background to many of science versus religion debates: that there is a strong emotional component to (many? all?) explanations. Many people would resist, stating that truth is objective, rigorous, straightforward. Various writers have convinced me that the emotions are the foundation for the split we see so often where the science community offers buckets of replicable experimental results and predictions while an opposing group works hard to ignore that evidence. Ironically, the non-science folks usually deconstruct the evidence–applying hyper-skepticism–to such an extent that nothing at all is certain, which functions as a great leveler. Then they stroll through the wreckage mini-creators of their own equal-opportunity world views. As a footnote, they add (in violation of their hyper-skepticism) that a sentient, caring, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent spirit who just happened to intervene into the physical world at, of all possible places, Earth (!), exists and, indeed, "He" "explains" "everything."
[BTW, Science isn't the only area where emotions overwhelm objectivity.]
I've often written about Johnson and Lakoff, Andy Clark, Antonio Damasio and others who warn us that we need to take embodied cognition seriously. It's not thoughts all the way down. Eventually we get to all that gooey stuff that seems to have an awful lot to do with our ability to think. I am also finding strongly detailed analysis in the writings of Carl Craver, of whom I've also written.
I will sketch out a story about (of all things!) ball lightning in a separate post, my illustration of the power of explanations that are entirely devoid of supporting facts. I will also write at length about Robert Burton's new book on what it means to be "certain."
I do think this particular post and discussion is a solid summary of much that has come before, regarding human scientific endeavors, as well as our discussions at this site.
Vicki's most excellent point:
I just wanted to highlight it.
Dan & Vicki: The above quote by Vicki was my favorite too. Hits the nail on the head.
Science is often corrupted by politicians.
On occasion, it becomes expedient to favor an unproven and untested theory when political goals are served. When this occurs, politics trumps science for a while. The theory is accepted as fact, when it may not be, and any research that opposes that particular theory is dismissed as inherently wrong because they do not support the politically designated theory. Often the theory shifts to a religions explanation.
There are numerous examples throughout history of this. One of the best examples is related to the discovery of AIDS.
AIDS was first noticed in the early 1970s. It was a medical mystery. However, as more cases began to show up, a certain demographic developed. AIDS initially appeared to affect heroin users, homosexuals, and Haitians. George Carlin remarked that he would stop doing anything that started with the letter "H". Preachers began proclaiming AIDS was "God's punishment for their wicked ways" and to avoid alienating the religious part of the public as well as the homophobes, AIDS research received little funding for about 10 years.
We did not know that AIDS was causes by a virus. We did not know that AIDS had an incubation period of several years. We did not know exactly how AIDS was transmitted. While we sat ignoring the problem for 10 years, it was spreading in epidemic proportions.
I see a similar pattern emerging concerning the cause of global warming. I think the politicians and media have prematurely settled on the anthrogenic co2 theory as a single and immutable explanation for the climate change. There are many and more pressing reasons to wean our societies off of fossil fuels as the major source of energy. My concern is that by locking in to a single theory and rejecting all others, we may very well be standing on the railroad bridge watching for the train to come from the north, while it is rapidly approaching from the south.
The nature of the scientific method is not that it is infallible, but that when it fails to account for the real world, it "learns" from its mistakes.
Since the discussion that began in the post titled "Deep Water Effects on Radioactivity" has moved to this post, I'll join in here.
I agree with those of you who think Vicki hit the nail on the head with her observation:
"Karl and Erik seem to be saying “We don’t trust scientific conclusions
because they may be disproved or modified.” Dan and Grumpy are
saying “We trust scientific conclusions because they can be disproved
or modified.” That’s an important distinction."
Indeed so. Basically, it boils down to whether you place your faith in myth, superstition, dreams, visions, etc., (which Karl labels "the sacred") or in the scientific method. I choose the latter, mainly because it is the only methodology that has been demonstrated to consistently give correct answers to questions about our natural world. We can think of it this way: religion-based "proofs" consist of first deciding what one's preferred holy book declares to be the correct explanation, and then searching for facts that confirm that explanation while arbitrarily rejecting facts that contradict that explanation. The scientific method inverts that process — it begins with the facts (all of them) and then seeks to find an explanation which incorporates them. Religion (at least, Christianity) fits the facts to the theory; science fits the theory to the facts.
An example of this difference is George Bush's decision to invade Iraq. First, he decided to invade, then he picked the facts to fit his decision. As with religion, his problem was not necessarily that his facts were wrong, his problem was that his methodology was fundamentally defective.
Keep in mind that this is not necessarily a problem for religion when religion is dealing with spiritual matters — questions such as "What is the purpose of my life?" or "Where do I go after I die?" For such questions, the scientific method won't necessarily provide superior answers compared to other methods. However, when we ask questions about the natural world, the scientific method clearly is superior to anything else our species has yet encountered. Trouble is, many religious believers make no distinction between spiritual questions and scientific questions, so they apply the wrong methodology to the latter.
Science is all about the odds. The models (theories, laws) of science are all about figuring what is likely to happen, or to have happened. Science is based on, “Never mind what they think; look at this!” The only consistent doctrine of science is, “Oh, yeah? Prove it!”
I quoted Dan's statement because it can be used by either side of the Naturalists and Creationist's debate. What rised to levels of proof is also based upon the foundation of the premises one is willing to think as more reasonable.
Naturalists claim to hold to no other source of knowledge besides those of science. This is not true. Science has no basis of determining the value of anything. It does have the ability to attempt to stiffle all discussion however about things claimed not to be scientific.
Grumpypilgrim wrote: "Basically, it boils down to whether you place your faith in myth, superstition, dreams, visions, etc., … or in the scientific method. I choose the latter, mainly because it is the only methodology that has been demonstrated to consistently give correct answers to questions about our natural world."
There is a bit of circular logic in this statement, specifically the assertion that, "I trust the scientific method because it gives the correct answers, and I get the correct answers because I use the scientific method." How do you verify your definition of "correct"?
Grumpypilgrim again: "… religion-based “proofs” consist of first deciding what one’s preferred holy book declares to be the correct explanation, and then searching for facts that confirm that explanation while arbitrarily rejecting facts that contradict that explanation. "
I argue that this is the natural approach for humans, and that an ordered, logical approach requires discipline that is learned, not innate. I offer an example: On April 19, 1995, I was in Oklahoma City. It was a breezy, warm morning, and we had propped open the large steel factory door near my cubicle at work, to allow some air to flow through the building. It was fairly common for the wind to slam that door shut.
A little after 9:00 that morning, one of the loudest sounds I've ever heard shook the whole building. My coworkers and I, stunned and confused, wondered what could have caused such a huge noise. Our addled minds searched for anything that could explain it. Ultimately we decided that the wind had slammed the door shut again, even though, from our own experience, we knew that it didn't even BEGIN to explain what we had experienced. But it gave our minds something to grab onto, and that provided great solace at the time. The fact that, upon investigation, we found that the door WAS actually closed was all the verification that we needed.
Now, here's the big difference between scientific method and religious proof: when we read the news on the Internet about the bombing downtown, we immediately realized that it was a far better explanation for what we had experienced than the slamming door, and substituted that for our previous conclusion.
Karl: I disagree with "Science has no basis of determining the value of anything." Science uses objective instruments to determine the value of things. Distance, mass, charge, rates of change, and so on are measured by devices that don't care about the philosophies of those who created them nor of those who use them. Species drift genetically at a measurable rate. So do tectonic plates. So do stars and planets. The occasional extreme events that undeniably exist and arguably cause speciation are statistically predictable, based on measurements.
"Science" only stifles public discussion by urging limits on teaching anti-scientific conclusions posed as science. No one says that you cannot teach the dozens of competing popular creation stories in philosophy classes. If you cannot measure it nor use it to make verifiable predictions, then it isn't science.
Non scientific philosophies don't use measurement, don't make precise predictions, and do adhere to predetermined conclusions no matter what the evidence. Nowhere in Creationism do they say, "Never mind what the Bible says, look at the evidence". It always comes back to the ancient lore.
An energy company that explored using the precepts of Flood Geology to find coal, oil, or gas would quickly go broke.
grumpy pilgrim states:
The scientific method inverts that process — it begins with the facts (all of them) and then seeks to find an explanation which incorporates them.
What a prideful assumption to make, as if science will never discover anything knew, or ever be shown to have some of its presumed facts to be in error. New facts are added to the picture, often from those who on purpose contradict the presumed truth of the existing facts.
And you accuse the creationists to be holding to something they willing admit is sacred. Please get off your high horse and bring the discussion back to an awareness of the falibility of either system based upon the truth of the basic premises.
Naturalists don't do their science in a vacuum which can presume infallibility. That's an unwillingness to admit possible bias.
Dan asks:
Karl: What do you mean by a "Uniformitarian"? It generally means that the laws of nature that we now observe are assumed to have been the same in the past. Consistent. Every observation ever made supports this view.
Uniformtarian principles leave out the apparent catastrophic evidences and try to gloss over what they really mean by disjointing them into unconnectable timeframes.
I have no problem with the laws of physics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, relativity or even genetic variation.
I take great exception to those who claim that the current processes have to have been in operation for time frames that are well beyond reasonable measurement. Any calculation beyond the time frame of recorded human history assumes too much uniformitarian philosphy to ever be fool proof.
More and more geologic evidence is emerging for catastrphism than any university geology department wants to discuss. They simply wave their hand and insist that there is no need to try to connect any of the dots.