Science isn’t about a particular batch of results. Science is special because of the way in which it gets those results. The following is from a well-written essay in the NYT entitled, “Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy“:
Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.
That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity — the writer and biologist Lewis Thomas once likened it to an anthill — that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world.
Nobody appeared in a cloud of smoke and taught scientists these virtues. This behavior simply evolved because it worked.
It requires no metaphysical commitment to a God or any conception of human origin or nature to join in this game, just the hypothesis that nature can be interrogated and that nature is the final arbiter.
When nature is both the method and the final arbiter, then the person who intepretes the words and meanings of "natural" is the only person doing science. This is called naturalism and it is not the only way of doing science.
Not everything is "natural." Anything truly unpredictable should then be labeled as unscientific or simply supernatural.
Can a naturalistic scientist predict the next evolutionary stage for humanity?
There is way to much about science that is not natural. Take for example the big bang and quantum mechanics, these are highly discussed but unpredictable in terms of use of the world "natural."
It seems the people that control both the denotations and the connotations of the words of the naturalistic scientist do have values and one of them is defining the terms the way they want to limit other ways of considering how historical events can be considered.
Karl: You need to re-read the article. The claim is that knowledge is not science, but that "science" constitutes the method of inquiring.
Things are not science. Science is something people DO.
I also quarrel with your use of "natural." If things are unpredictable (big bang, quantum mechanics), that doesn't make them unscientific, but merely not well-understood. I don't call things I don't understand "unscientific" or "supernatural." You keep looking for a way to set aside things you don't understand in order to call them supernatural, in order to make them subject only to your whimsical and capricious characterizations rather than the rigor of the scientific method. It's all a cop-out to the extent that you do this. It's not valid to say that X is equally real to the things that science does address because you've chosen to stop trying. As Paul Churchland often writes, we used to write off much of what we currently do understand well because these things were supposedly "beyond science."
Karl writes: "Not everything is “natural.” Anything truly unpredictable should then be labeled as unscientific or simply supernatural."
That is a failure of logic and a triumph of naivety. Let me rephrase it: "Science doesn't explain EVERYTHING, therefore anything we don't know or can't predict is due to GOD."
"Everything" is indeed "natural". Even things we can't predict, such as tsunamis, quantum events and where my dog will choose to sleep tonight (although that is fairly predictable based on past behaviour patterns, she may choose to sleep outside in her doghouse. Unlikely but possible) are natural. Because they exist and we can perceive them, regardless of whether we can predict what they'll do next, they are the definition of natural. I don't really know how my TV works but I'm not giving credit to a tribe of leprechauns living inside it working dials and cogs. Even if I did it would beg the question: where the hell did the leprechauns come from?
Everything – us, planets, dogs, cacti, black holes, squid, quarks and everything else – is the very definition of "natural" otherwise we would simply not be able to perceive it.
If you're claiming that something exists that we cannot perceive – ie something supernatural (ie God, obviously) – that simply raises more questions than it answers, such as: how do YOU know something imperceivable exists? Are you supernatural? What exactly is it about supernature that makes it impossible for us to perceive? Again, how do you know about it? Have you experienced it? Can you show us? Is it possible to explain it without resorting to dogma/scripture/faith/leprechauns?
Next: "Can a naturalistic scientist predict the next evolutionary stage for humanity?"
Explain to me (a) exactly what a "naturalistic" scientist is (if "naturalistic" is even a word) and (b) how a "supernaturalistic" scientist works (if they even exist – Michael Behe doesn't count, he's just an idiot). Reading entrails? Do they have a Tarot lab? Laboratory-grade cystal balls?
To answer your question simply, nobody can predict the next evolutionary stage for humanity (by the way, it's childish & smug to ask that question in a way which obviously assumes that the answer "nobody can predict such a thing" is some kind of admission of failure on the part of science. Science doesn't claim to know everything and any decent scientist will be the first to admit where the gaps in their knowledge are. The whole point of science is to identify those gaps and do one's best to fill them – but with verifiable evidence, not with vague & baseless assertions of the supernatural).
Further to the question: nobody can predict how we'll evolve, because species evolve (partly) in response to environmental pressures and noone can predict exactly how our environment will change over the next few hundred millennia or aeons, anymore than they can predict where the next hundred tsunamis will strike. Basically, the factors that influence evolution are too numerous to be able to make any kind of meaningful prediction. But that doesn't mean it won't happen, or that it will only happen through diving guidance.
Also, evolution doesn't happen in "stages", it occurs in tiny, imperceptible increments and the results of evolution or large complex organisms like mammals can usually only be seen over vast time-spans as those incremental changes accumulate, change, diversify etc (of course time-spans vary according to the organism – populations of very short-lived organisms like bacteria or fruit flies can be observed evolving new traits within weeks or months).
Science, as Erich said, is something people do. It's a process. A way of making sense of your observations and devising explanations of natural phenomena. It's a way of doing that while making sure you don't cloud your results with your own biases, whatever the source of your biases may be (no human can pretend that they're completely unbiased, that's why the methods of science are – and have to be). Science is not a theology and contains no unchanging dogma, and as such does not pretend to know things that it doesn't or can't know and it definitely doesn't presume to offer up explanations without evidence. Any decent scientist loves gaps in their knowledge – it means they get to do more science to find out what fits there! But simply making something up to fill a gap in knowledge is not science. That's called "science fiction" or even "religion."
More blathering on this topic: http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/09/24/why-i…
Since when can something not be labelled unscientific? You folks seem to do it all the time around here. I did not say that things are either scientific or supernatural, I said that that if they are unpredictable then they are unscientific or supernatural. Apparently you associate everything that is unscientific as also being supernatural.
Why can't something just be called unscientific without earning the disdain of being labelled supernatural?
Naturalistic is very clearly defined by many sources. It is an adjective of the noun naturalism which is a philiosophy that bases its perspective upon the natural order and its specific observable manifestations. As an adjective is dependent upon the idea that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.
Naturalism taken to its exteme relies upon cause and effect. This would mean that people really do not have free will, that would only be an illusion in the minds of people.
I fully believe in the application of natural law to much of the natural world. I do not however believe that there is no wiggle room for stuff to happen that is bound by the normal, regular patterns which we see and call natural cyclical observations. Naturalism sees the normal, regular, onging patterns and laws in the world at hand and tries to aplly them to all places and times along the way.
Catastrophic and "unpredictable" matters then don't need to be fully scientific nor supernatural. They could just be out there as maybe scientific or maybe supernatural, because the verdict isn't in yet.
Naturalism doubts the supernatural and free will of agents like presidents and moral law, or a moral law giver. While those who resist holding to the assumptions of extrapolated science are called ignorant and unreasoning.
Hank writes:—"That is a failure of logic and a triumph of naivety. Let me rephrase it: “Science doesn’t explain EVERYTHING, therefore anything we don’t know or can’t predict is due to GOD.”
I kind of gotta side with Karl on this one, folks. He did not say what Hank rephrased. He said something which is in the category of unpredictable—either because we don't have enough information about it or because it is one of those things which happens (and we've all seen them) which repeats so rarely that is can be classed as unique—cannot be classed taxonomically. You can opine about it all you want, but until evidence accrues around it, it's not part of a scientific hypothesis.
Ball lightening once fell into this category. (So, long enough ago, did meteors.)
I would, however, state as an opinion that anything that happens is by definition natural. The problem in certain instances is demonstrating that (a) something happened and (b) that the something which happened was as described by witnesses. This is very difficult to do with one-offs.
Sometimes an event occurs which is recorded as one thing but which we come to understand was in fact something else. We find evidence that something like the thing described happened, but was it what was described by the witnesses? Often not. They didn't know. They didn't have a framework for contextualizing it. (Or they had another agenda.) But something happened. We can examine the traces left behind and in many cases arrive at a scenario that explains the evidence and sometimes validates the event.
But we still argue about the nature of the event where there simply isn't enough evidence.
We get into tangles with Karl over what constitutes valid interpretations of evidence and sometimes over what passes as legitimate sources of evidence.
But we needn't misconstrue what he says.
"Naturalistic … is an adjective of the noun naturalism which is a philosophy that bases its perspective upon the natural order and its specific observable manifestations. As an adjective is dependent upon the idea that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws."
Exactly. Science is concerned – can ONLY be concerned – with specific observable manifestations of nature. By definition anything described as "supernatural" or beyond observable manifestations of nature IS unscientific because it can't be observed naturally.
The thing is, you're relying on an assumption that the supernatural exists in the first place. It's an assumption based on very little and supported by nothing. When you assume something is a certain way but have no support or base for that assumption, you're being unscientific.
However, when science observes something it can't explain, it doesn't slap a "supernatural" or "unscientific" label on it. It simply says "we don't know yet" instead of giving credit to some unseen and undefined force/entity/process. Science will happily speculate on things it doesn't know – but it won't define anything until it has sufficient information to do so.
I'd still like to hear how a "supernaturalistic scientist" (whom your first comment implies should exist, by your use of the redundant phrase "naturalistic scientist") would go about his work. Since science restricts itself to what can be observed, any scientist pretending to work with "supernature" would be oxymoronic. Like a "rational priest".
Hank states –
"Science will happily speculate on things it doesn’t know – but it won’t define anything until it has sufficient information to do so."
This is not really the case- how many times historically has an entire culture been led astray by wrong models and ideology that have been foisted upon the masses by the linkage of naturalistic perspectives with supposed acceptable interpretations of holy writings?
Science has been known for making calls to early because it finds itself too impatient to wait for more evidence and too easily swayed by philosophical perspectives claiming certitude about the natural world.
Moses described observations from the naturalistic perspective of the world that he beleived were the most valid to use.
Either the events he was apart of and witnessed were quite unique and unpredictable or else there really are perfectly natural ways to better describe what really took place, but to him this was not evident.
The fact that the outcome favored his God over the god of the Egyptians could be viewed by some as his interpretation by the way of imagination and faith in something that caused these unique but somehow not supernatural yet also somewhat predictable events.
I believe there could be a naturalistic explanation for many of these plagues and even the parting of the Red Sea, but for those who claim the events never happened its time to wake up and smell the coffee.
The DI website discusses a great deal of topics from gods to personal values and political persuasions. These are certainly not scientific, most are simply unscientific, they do not need to be labelled as "bad science" or supernatural points of view.
There is a strong tendency in the scientific world to discount that there is anything that man can't find a natural explanation for. I just don't believe that science has as much going for it as the naturalists hope.
Karl writes:—"There is a strong tendency in the scientific world to discount that there is anything that man can’t find a natural explanation for. I just don’t believe that science has as much going for it as the naturalists hope."
Yes, well, so far it has had a better track record than anything else.
There's a Winston Churchill quote I always liked: "Democracy is a terrible form of government, except for every other form." I'm paraphrasing. I think the sentiment is applicable to science.
I haven't seen any phenomena that have been explained better by anything else. And before you go there, let me add that attributing things to god is just so much handwaving. It's not an explanation, just an excuse for some people to stop looking for explanations.
Quoth Karl: "… how many times historically has an entire culture been led astray by wrong models and ideology that have been foisted upon the masses by the linkage of naturalistic perspectives with supposed acceptable interpretations of holy writings?"
Entire cultures have been led astray many times and by many things, usually by ruthless, power-hungry people using whatever leverage they could to gain peoples' support.
Key phrases in your question – "holy writings" and "ideology…foisted upon the masses". Such cultures (eg Stalin's Russia & Hitler's Germany) were led astray by humans, misinterpreting holy writings or science (bad science – Lysenkoism – in Stalin's case) or whatever else those humans need to increase their own power. Science – any neutral, factual knowledge of our world – does not & can not dictate the intent or morality of its user or the method of its use. It is a tool like anything else – you can use it for good or for bad purposes, just as you can use a chisel to carve David from marble or to stab somebody. But you can't use a chisel for everything, just as science can't explain everything or tell you how to behave. But science will admit its shortcomings & gaps in and limits to its knowledge, as well as avoiding commenting on things which aren't in its department. Religion, however, denies it has any limitations or shortcomings and constantly presumes to insert itself anywhere where science has said "I'm not sure." That is unscientific. Happily, though, the gaps that peoples' various superstitions can fit into are shrinking at a rapid rate.
Now, considering the events of Moses' life have not been recorded anywhere but in the Old Testament, which is known to be unreliable and morally dubious (to use the most charitable description possible) I'll have to take those couple of paragraphs as seriously as they deserve. You almost had a point until you presumed to use the Bible as a reliable historical reference.
As for assuming we insist and make a positive claim that the events in the OT never happened, you're close but not quite there. We simply say "there's no evidence that those things happened". It's the Bible – and only the Bible – that claims those events as factual. There are two great reasons not the believe the Bible on those counts. Firstly, the Bible's historicity is practically non-existent. Barely any events or people described within can be confirmed by any other source, either archaeological, historic or any other means which are used to confirm ancient events. Secondly, nowhere else is mentioned the events of Exodus or anything else Moses is meant to have been involved in. Nowhere in Egyptian history is there mentioned either a mass escape of millions of Hebrew slaves or a subsequent mass death of Egyptian soldiers, including their Pharaoh. None of Egypt's neighbours mention anything even close to that either – and you'd think that a powerful & wealthy land like Egypt (which would have had numerous enemies) would be the focus of a lot of attention if its army and god-king suddenly disappeared all at once. Even if the Egyptians had the event scrubbed from all their history (as they unsuccessfully tried to do following the death of the despised renegade Pharaoh Akhen Aten), you can bet the neighbours would have happily recorded that Pharaoh and his army had perished chasing after a million slaves! The power & security vaccuum in Egypt would have been immense and impossible to resist. A leaderless rich nation with no army to protect it? In those days such a nation would have been a sitting duck.
"The DI website discusses a great deal of topics from gods to personal values and political persuasions. These are certainly not scientific, most are simply unscientific, they do not need to be labelled as “bad science” or supernatural points of view.
There is a strong tendency in the scientific world to discount that there is anything that man can’t find a natural explanation for. I just don’t believe that science has as much going for it as the naturalists hope."
Certainly, a lot of what we discuss here is political, personal or religious, i.e. non-scientific. But we don't label such things "bad science" or "supernatural" either. Some topics, although they aren't scientific, simply don't automatically fall into the opposite category. We don't see the world in black & white. What's your point?
The tendency in science is not to discount anything it can't explain, it's to not comment on it at all until an explanation can be found. But what science doesn't do is insert supernatural causes into gaps in its knowledge. I don't make stuff up when I don't know something, I just say "I don't know." Religious people seem to have huge problems admitting when they don't know things.
Science isn't perfect or foolproof, but it has a lot more going for it than the one-size-fits-all explanation of "God did that."
(Quoth me): The natural world constitutes everything that we can sense (either with our human animal senses or through special machines we have invented to enhance our natural senses). The natural world consists of everything except those imaginary supernatural (Ann Druyan would say "sub-natural") beings that Karl and so many other people concoct in their heads. Those things that are natural include gravity, atoms, species and feelings of romantic love. Many of these things can already be examined and explained by use of the scientific method. Maybe, someday, science will be able to confidently talk about all of these things.
The natural world is everything that actually is, but science is not the only way of knowing that natural world. Science is something that human beings SOMETIMES do. Science is a special type of inquiry. I will defer to Robin Dunbar, who wrote The Trouble with Science (1995):
(Page 78-80).
Newton-Smith's points
vii) metaphysical compatibility (that it meshes well with our other beliefs, including our general metaphysical position); and
viii) simplicity (a version of Occam’s Razor which says that, when all other things are equal, simpler theories are to be preferred, if only because they will be easier to compute)
I whole hardedly endorse point vii because as I have said all along theories in science attach themselves to the values and ideology of the person interpreting what they believe the evidence means.
I have no calms about experimental science that studies events in real time in the here and now. I have room for much doubt whenever science portrays itself as having universal application for the past and distant reaches beyond our solar system, or even into the fabric of space itself.
Naturalism is indeed a metaphysical position that shades and shapes the manner by which evidence gets interpreted. This system of thought holds that only the physical is real so leave the non-physical on the shelf. Naturalism willingly blinds itself to anything it can't physically wrap its thoughts around or anything it believes would put its perpective on anykind of an equal footing with any other metaphysical position.
Naturalism can look at layers of rocks, sediments and fossils and state that they formed gradually over millions of years, even while knowing that the majority of non-marine fossils form under events of sudden burial.
I can look at the layers that formed at Mount Saint Helen's and have clear documented evidence for how these layers got laid down and they were not over millions of years. I could take the rocks from this same site and have them dated using radioisotopes and those doing the tests would have to be told the actual known history to be able to attempt to fit the test results because the basic tests wouldn't be correct about the timing of when these rock formations were deposited.
Yet these same tests are used to date strata and time frames when all they can do is assume that the science matches their presumed metaphysical position concerning the ages of these rock formations.
As for the simplicity of a theory, that is not true. The "laws" of science are the keep it simple approach and they make much sense. The theories seem to keep making it more and more complicated with more and more constant adjustments being needed until a better fit model replaces two or three existing models with one that subsumes conflicting interpretations of the same data or evidence. The longer the treatise needed to explain something to a fellow man I can say there must be a better way, maybe not a simple calculation but a manner of doing science that pulls more of the conflicting interpretations of data into agreement with one another.
Karl writes:—"I can look at the layers that formed at Mount Saint Helen’s and have clear documented evidence for how these layers got laid down and they were not over millions of years. I could take the rocks from this same site and have them dated using radioisotopes and those doing the tests would have to be told the actual known history to be able to attempt to fit the test results because the basic tests wouldn’t be correct about the timing of when these rock formations were deposited."
That's a bold statement. Where's your evidence that they would necessarily get it wrong in that way?
Once again, Karl confuses casual looking with scientific observation. Any geologist can tell you that a volcano is a short-lived, local event. The big ones like Krakatoa, Yellowstone, and Thera leave detectable traces far away, a mark on the currently deposited stratum that diminishes with distance from the event. By knowing when certain landmark eruptions have occurred, we can date their traces in previously unconfirmed strata.
Geologists don't depend on any theoretical global rate of deposition. Each area in each era has its own average rate, much like in dendrochronology. Markers, the changes between layers, are much more important than the thickness of layers.
In the case of Mount Saint Helens, the chemistry changes subtly between eruptions, but the layer exposed to weather changes depending on how long it has been exposed. The time between eruptions is relatively constant. So we can count the layers to see how old the volcano is, within known precision. But measuring their depth gives us little useful information.
And, for the umpteenth time, non-biological isotope dating doesn't care about the beliefs of the practitioner, nor about where or how you found the rock. Except in the case of potentially mixed provenance sites such as lava floes. In those cases, multiple specimens should always be presented and the youngest date is accepted. These situations are easily identified by 10 year old rock hounds (yeah, I was one) or even possibly by trained geologists.
Oh dear, I'm not sure if I'm ready for another ride on Karl's roller coaster. The dizzying drops from the heights of philosophical speculation about scientific naturalism to highly specific but unsubstantiated claims about empirical reality. The hairpin turns from pious sermonizing about society's poor morals into vicious character assassination and rumor-mongering. The terrifying glimpses of Internet sewers where mutant rats feed on the decaying entrails of 19th century conspiracy theories.
I'm getting queasy just thinking about it.
Whenever rock materials of any kind be it igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary are moved from one place in the crust to another and redeposited there is no way of telling from the radioisotopes themselves when the material got left there. That's pure and simple. Those who think they can tell when it got deposited are soothsayers unless they witnessed the event.
Science has the tools to extrapolate, but are the methods finding the date of deposition, the apparent isotopic mixture ratios pre-solification, or an indeterminent yet wished for evidence of fossils that are millions of years old?
Karl is correct in that radioisotope dating is nearly useless for sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. These methods only tell you how long since a crystal within a rock was last molten. Good only for igneous deposits and strata, or to confirm what area eroded to produce certain sedimentary strata. Or to find the maximum provable age of a planet.
That is why other techniques are primarily used for the other types. Like counting the layers of different types of deposition that correlate to seasons and climatic shifts and volcanic eruptions and other markers that have knowable periodicity within known margins.
Paraphrase: "Those who think they can tell when [event X happened] are soothsayers unless they witnessed the event."
Notwithstanding Dan K's explanation of alternate methods of dating sedimentary and metamorphic rock (and ignoring for the moment many religionists' peculiar obsession with debunking or de-legitimising the various forms of radioisotopic/radiometric dating – as well as the erroneous assumption that scientists alter evidence to fit preconceived notions, which is the very antithesis of the scientific method), if you can apply that kind of absolutism to the field of geology, why not to everything else?
OK … done! Poof! There goes archaeology, geology of course, anthropology, cosmology, palaeontology, astronomy, dendrochronology, all of biology, every branch of historical study as we all as journalism, law, forensic science …
… hmmm …
… theology …
My point all along has been to accept the laws of science as a methocology that has practical value for understanding relatonships in the here and now.
When science uses its prognostication tools to venture into the distant past (historical geology)or even the immediate future (global warming) we should be careful that any personal metaphysical positions haven't become a part of our "scientific" conclusions.
I have no need to challenge the laws of a field of science unless they can be shown to be attached to metaphysical positions, then we all ought to be wary of how leadership pushes an ideology as scientific with evidence to back them up.
As for debunking history and theology, it seems scientists with a naturalistic bent think its something they have every reasonable ability to quash. Why can't something quash the interpretstions of the naturalists once in a while?
So Karl is arguing that our observation of the sun rising today, combined with our understanding of what causes it to rise (the theory of gravity and the theory of inertia), is not adequate to claim with certainty that it rose yesterday, perhaps above the clouds. That is, unless someone specifically wrote that it did.
How about that it rose last month? Last millennium? A million years ago?
Our theories of sedimentation, of genetic drift, of continental drift, or of isotopic transformation are about equivalently shaky.
This is what is special about science. Not just the asymptotically perfect observations and the ever-increasing explanatory power, but the ability to accurately predict in both directions.
"I have no need to challenge the laws of a field of science unless they can be shown to be attached to metaphysical positions, then we all ought to be wary of how leadership pushes an ideology as scientific with evidence to back them up."
And yet. . .all your challenges to the laws of science have been attached to metaphysical positions, Karl. Why is that?
Because the sun might not have actually arisen many millions of years ago as naturalists dutifully believe. And it might not arise in the sense we know it in the next million years as science seems to think it will.
I happen to reasonably hold a degree of skepticism to the things naturalism takes for granted as being invariant. There are potential degrees of operation to the natural laws that would upset the typical patterns of life on earth and even the motions of the planets and the like.
Earth's rate of rotation could be subject to change, and those who build a time line on invariable operation of current patterns are bound to natural law that is only subject to known inputs and outputs.
I state I have a metaphysical bias towards believing at least those portions of recorded history that may seem unscientific, but nonetheless are fairly reliable descriptions of something they may not have fully understood.
Will others that carry on supposedly "objective scietific studies" admit the same?
So how does igneous rock get a pass for being the gold standard for radioisotopic Dating? I could see how intensive igneous rocks could stand a better chance of being undisturbed in their natural formations but either intensive or extensive igneous materials still found in layers on top of other layers had to have been somehow transported form with-in the Earth to without, or from a higher position to a lower position by erosion.
I still do not recognize the validity of any dating method that was transported from one position to another without an eyewitness for the method of transportation. Fossils truely found sandwiched amoung crystalline igneous materials of any size or form still have an uncertain historical relationship asw far as I'm concerned.
Karl, you don't seem to be aware of that which naturalists consider invariant: It is change. Everything changes. Scientists always measure the rate of change, and the rate of change in the rate of change, and the rate of change of that. These are simple mathematical transforms of each other, and all taken into account.
And none of these derivatives are considered absolutely constant. Each is calibrated by the others.
This even applies to things that seem to the uninitiated to be constant, like the length of a day. The day is growing longer at a rate that changes primarily because of the proximity of the moon and the sun. The magnetic and ion fluxes from the sun contribute another small fraction. There are other contributors that chaotically affect the precise length of a day, like the variable flux of meteors.
There is no "could be" about the changing rate of rotation of the Earth. It is more or less steadily slowing. Science has given us tools that let us divide the length of a day into minuscule precise pieces; my PC chops it into 172,800,000,000,000 cycles (at 2GHz).
Science has also given us tools to calibrate how long a day was in the past, such as the amount of growth of preserved plants in deciduous zones.
Naturalists don't "dutifully believe" that the sun rose a million years ago any more than you dutifully believe that it rose yesterday. They understand what makes it rise, what makes the Earth turn, and what can (and cannot) possibly affect either.
Karl: Why don't you just go on over to Answers in Genesis and hang around with your intellectual peers over there? Like you, they believe that scientists have a unfortunate "bias" when they assume that scientific laws operated in the past (and will operate in the future) the way they operate in the present.
Those folks at AIG love arguing, as do you, that we increase our knowledge when we crank up our scientific skepticism to convince ourselves that we know nothing (or next to nothing). They too believe that old religious books are to be believed whenever they conflict with careful scientific measurement. They too believe that you crank down skepticism when it comes to believing the literal truth of scripture. It's the same shell game you like to play.
Here's a sample. Really, go spend some time over there where your cherry-picking style of inquiry will be far more appreciated:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v3/n…
Or go spend time at this site, which attempts to harmonize the Bible and Science. The name of the game, of course, is to Save the Miracles!:
http://scibel.com/scibel/article_miracles_and_the…
From the initial reference you gave to initiate this thread.
"That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view."
Tolerance for opposing points of view is what I have learned makes anyones own beliefs more credible. When we say we tolerate those who think the same as we it is not tolerance, it is a mutual admiration society.
I sharpen my own thoughts and understandings of science through discussion with those I see holding an opposing point of view. Something that many University professors truly consider a worthless waste of time because of their lack of desire to consider the possibility and the potential need to revamp stuff they have believed is true to the degree that their point of view can not be questioned.
I do discuss these matters with others and not just here on DI. I will shrink into the wood work if that is really what you believe your Blog is really all about.
Just say the word and I'm out of here.