I got involved with debating Creationists this weekend. I have a bad habit of trying to think and communicate thoroughly about complex ideas, which means my forum posts are often far too long (Just like my blogs and journal entries). But when I’m done I have a nice little essay almost worthy of keeping, with a little editing. So, on that note, have six of my posts from the last two days. It’s only my side of the discussion, but the full thread can be found here.
These are related to my last post, which I’ve been meaning to follow up on but haven’t had time to expound on. Many of the ideas that would and/or will be in the next post are nestled in the below.
Post 1:
“The naturalistic restriction is a myth, this barrier designed only in this age of evolution vs creation, for what purpose? Think about the limitations this places on science. Think about this line, it is rather artificial. This implies that God has no physical interaction with our reality. But it can’t know that.” — Chris PlewrightI definitely agree. If there were serious evidence, accessible to all (as opposed to primarily personal experience with God), that supernatural interaction had and does occur regularly in dramatic ways in the world, science would not keep its nose out of it. Not by a long shot. Science should say that “fantastic claims require fantastic evidence,” but it requires no a priori assumption of materialism IMHO.
“Regardless of you logic systems, Evolution is not science nor is creationims science both are untested hypotheses that use science at times to “prove” a link in their hypothesis. Just like medicine and dentistry are not sciences but make valuable use of science in practice of their professions.” — Tom Zwemer
Tom, I always hesitate before engaging your frequently disrespectful attitude (did it ever occur to you that most scientists are honest human beings who want to know the truth?), but I think the contributors to JAMA would be rather miffed at your labelling medicine as “not science.” I do see what you’re getting at. Medical practitioners are like engineers: applied scientists as opposed to research scientists (that is except of course, the JAMA gang et al). They have a goal, a motive, and they use the tools that research has provided. But I would remind you that the science, the truth behind their work puts serious constraints on how they can meet those goals in valid ways. It’s not purely subjective and up to the whim of the investigator.
I personally and somewhat offended by your (pardon the epithet) postmodern take on the questions science can and can not address. I will be the first to acknowledge that science too is subject to the hermeneutic circle. But to say that neither evolution nor creationism is “science” is a reactionary and rhetorical ploy that I have difficulties appreciating. Science is the search for truth and confidence therein (i.e. that we can all agree on), nothing more, nothing less. I like to bolster that broad definition with concepts from the Bayesian probability theory of Cox and Jaynes, in which data (observations from the world) is seen to either reinforce or diminish confidence in the validity of a hypothesis.
I think what you’re actually trying to say is that creationism and evolution are both models which lack sufficient evidence for placing objective confidence in their truth, and thus anyone who stands up with a bold conclusion is deluding themselves. In such situations with slim data it’s equally likely that a third model exists that we have not yet thought of, but which fits reality better. It’s appropriate to withhold judgement. String theory is like this — a very interesting hypothesis, and an intriguing world view for lack of any other knowledge, but not something anybody places much confidence in as anything more than our best guess given incomplete evidence.
I personally do not believe that the question of biological development lacks evidence. There is plenty of evidence by which to evaluate both the young-earth creationist model and the modern synthesis. We need only look at the forensic evidence in geology and paleontology, the biological evidence in present-day life, and the mathematical evidence in the self-organiziation of complex systems to evaluate the plausibility of the models. That’s what it’s about — determining if it’s plausible that our hypothesis is correct.
On a side note, the argument that we can’t put evolution in a lab is ludicrous. First of all, evolution makes many predictions that we can put in a lab. Second of all, the world counts as laboratory. Observation is the source of data, not just repeatable experiments. I believe Abraham Lincoln lived, and I believe I had a grandfather on my mother’s side, though I can’ re-grow either of them in a test tube or see them with my two eyes.
Which model is more plausible depends on the information at hand. If your information includes a personal relationship with Christ and a long history of spiritual experiences, than Intelligent Design might be a viable model in the context of belief in a personal God who is actively involved with His creation (or at least a sort of theistic evolution such as Francis Collins’ “BioLogos“). Here we start to approach a stalemate again, like the one you initially proposed, in which one must choose a model (ID or naturalism) in the face of unconvincing evidence. That I can respect.
But don’t pretend that the efforts of humanity to make sense of things have nothing to offer. From my perspective, it seems that you tend to be eager to dismiss the intellectual world at large because they disagree with your vision of rightthink (If that is a perverted caricature of your thinking, then I recommend you rethink the way in which you communicate your perspective). That world is vast, rich, and deep — very deep — full of honest people with serious insight, and often a great deal of wisdom. Pithy comments and spiteful hand-waving is rhetoric that if you say long enough and loud enough is convincing, but doesn’t actually engage the issues at hand.
If it’s not science, then what is it? What value is there in it? What can it tell you about truth? Or are you too entrenched in your postmodernism defense to have room for intellectual empathy?
ES
Post 2:
“This is not testable, and therefore neither can defeat the other from our current human perspective. Our current limited human scientific knowledge does not have any scientific explanation for non-uniformitarian past. But neither can this be disproved.” — Chris PlewrightNeither can we determine whether or not we all blipped into existence five seconds ago as a quantum fluctuation. But science is not about proving (verifying) or disproving (falsifying) things, it’s about making plausible inductions and determining what confidence we should be willing to assign a given model.
Therefore in-depth discussions on whether creationism or evolution is a more plausible model given the evidence are perfectly appropriate. It’s not up to the flip of a coin. I don’t like the model that says “same evidence, different assumptions = different conclusions,” because it’s a postmodern escape that implies there is no good answer. If you believe the evidence is inconclusive, say so, but be careful lest you demean your opponent unduly. Many scientists have very good scientific reasons for believing in evolution. Many creationists also have very powerful reasons for believing in a personal God — which then adds context to their science and makes things like Intelligent Design seem a lot more plausible. To dismiss either as “different assumptions, different conclusions” doesn’t do their experience justice.
Science is best guess, not proof. If you say something is not science or that it is an unsupportable hypothesis (i.e. Russell’s teapot) is rude, and doesn’t do justice to the enterprise of human reason.
Besides, isn’t the “assumption” of a “uniformitarian past” testable? What would we expect to see if the past was uniform? Bam. Prediction. What do we see? Bam. Observations. Does the hypothesis fit the data? Viola, a basis for discussion, i.e. a science.
ES
Post 3:
Tom,Mostly I was reacting to the likes of “Evolution is as much science ad alchemy,” which, while it could be a valid point if supported by an extensive discussion, seems rather harsh as a standalone statement. I too apologize if I’ve overreacted.
“Neither palentology nor geology have been able to test their hypothesis of origins”
I think we’re still clashing over what constites a test of a hypothesis. Speaking in the abstract like this won’t help us understand eachother, either. We can’t go on arguing over whether a model is testable without talking about exactly what that model is, what predictions it would make, how to test them, and then of course what significance said tests have. Otherwise all we can do is sling opinions around.
“No, it is not directly testable, only the corrolaries are testable.” — Chris Plewright
i.e. only its predictions are. Same with any hypothesis whatsoever. Some are more easily tested than others.
“Evolution claims too much evidence that fit into both sides, when it is trying to disprove creationism. This is my gripe, the public don’t realise this.” — Chris Plewright
And that’s a very good point. Just because a model fits the data doesn’t mean it’s valid. That’s why we need things like Ockham’s razor. By far the best way to validate a model is if it makes bizarre predictions that are not easily explained by another model, or which we didn’t expect until we worked the hypothesis through to its more obscure implications. Take Einstein’s general relativity, for example, which made the strange prediction that light from distant stars would be bent by the sun’s gravity. Sure enough, that was confirmed in 1919 by Eddignton’s expedition with convincing enough accuracy that Einstein instantly became an international celebrity.
“If you want disrespect try Dawkins, and Hitchins, or even Cliff.”
*shiver.* Amen to all of the above.
“If I disturbed you, I am sorry. I was rebutting your assertions. If those assertions define you, then I am sorry to have unsettled your ego. Tom”
Oh, see, now you’re just begging me to defend my honor. I’ll just note that I would also get miffed at anyone who made bold statements that agreed with my perspective, but which seemed to prematurely dismiss an opponent’s cogency. See one of my favorite articles on the matter here.
Post 4:
Allen:“Along with Naturalism (The Cosmos is all there is, has ever been or ever will be — Sagan) come some corollaries: Abiogenesis, Evolution, and Deep Time. These are not hypotheses, but are assumed “truths” that come with the territory of Naturalism.”
I am in a darkened room in a friend’s house. I can’t see more than the outline of four doors on the north and east walls, but I can only reach one of them. On that one I feel a door-knob. I have seen tens of thousands of doors in my lifetime, and been in hundreds of friend’s homes. Every one of these doors has had a door knob or handle of some sort.
A week later my friend’s house burns down around him. In trying to determine why he couldn’t get out, it becomes relevant whether I believe that those three doors had handles on that side. No one is around that’s seen them, and no one has given me reason to think these doors are more special than other doors. In all honesty it never even crosses my mind that they wouldn’t have handles.
Is it an “a priori” assumption if I believe those doors had handles? I’ve never seen those doors before in good lighting. The hypothesis is untestable — the house is gone now, but I believe they had handles.
Now Joey comes along and tells me that I’m being unscientific, and that my reasoning is based on blind faith, and that I’m biased against the possibility that the Great Green Arkleseizure (a la Douglas Adams) reached in and removed those doorknobs at the moment of their installation. “The existence of those doorknobs is not a hypothesis,” he tells me, “but is an assumed ‘truth’ that comes with the territory of Doorknobism.”
Imagine how that makes me feel. And how looney that makes Joey sound.
Of course the relationship between science and religion is a lot more complex than door knobs, and I don’t mean to imply that you’re looney for viewing naturalism as fideistic. Sometimes atheists can be closed minded, that’s for sure.
But what I’m getting at is that you can’t simplify things down to “their assumptions define their world view, it’s not based on evidence.” That’s just rude to thinking people across the globe.
If I had a personal relationship with the Great Green Arkleseizure, beleived I had seen him remove doorknobs in my house, and believed that he was every bit as interested in my friends houses as mine, then all of a sudden the matter is different. Maybe those door knobs were removed, and maybe that’s why my friend couldn’t get out of his house.
We cannot test abiogenesis directly, but we can make a case for its feasibility (I highly recommend looking into the science of complex systems). Deep time we can — microwave cosmic background radiation and redshift and radiometric dating use the exact same inferential principles as seeing the photons bouncing off a doorknob. It’s not just that we see light bouncing off something — we see the image of a *doorknob.* We also see “images” of what our hypotheses predict in the history of the earth and universe. Then, with the rocks dated, we see an interesting progression in life’s history that evolution attempts to explain. Mathematical explorations of natural selection show how complexity can be developed via stochastic processes, further reinforcing confidence in the model.
I don’t mind if you disagree on whether evolution is a viable model. That can be saved for another discussion. But to say that naturalism is fideism is rather strong. A person does not have to assume a priori that God does not exist before abiogenesis looks plausible. Perhaps he believes that God utilizes natural processes regularly (such as evolution), in which case abiogenesis need be no different. Or perhaps he looks at the world and the progress of science so far and says with Laplace “I have no need of that hypothesis,” and comes to view — from his scientific experience — God as a parameter in the model that at best violates Ockham’s razor, and worse is no better an idea than the Great Green Arkleseizure. If He has had a personal encounter with God, or if He’s seen evidence for Him elsewhere, then things would be different. But as is, abiogenesis seems like the most likely solution.
So anyway, I’m just reacting again to the defense mechanism so common to creationism: declare the issue undecidable. That way your opponents can’t fight back, because now we know all their arguments are based on an a priori assumption, not reason. In fact, however, we have a great deal of experience as individuals and as a community which help to contextualize and motivate our beliefs. Motivated belief (a la Polkinghorne) — that’s what we’re aiming for on both sides, not fideism.
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the dark.”
Post 5:
Chris,Sorry, this will be another long one — but ’tis my nature to try and be thorough.
“Something you failed to acknowledge, look at the ten points I made. Creationism is a model with a ‘causal’ explanation for all of them. Evolutionism does not have a ‘causal’ explanation for most of them - it simply acknowledges that they must be true - with no explanation. So, your beloved Ockham’s razor says that the explanation needs to be adequate to explain the things. Creationism is adequate to explain these, evolutionism is not.” — Chris
I’m looking at your ten, but am still having troubles trying to see what point you were making. I thought you were talking about predictions that overlap. You know, what you were saying about evolution claiming evidence that works with both sides, and thus doesn’t actually tell us anything about which one’s right.
But I suppose now you mean that the existence of a Judeo-Christian and/or anthropomorphic God provides a motivation for things like “I am here,” “I am dominant,” and “morality is a big deal.” Feel free to clarify, ‘cuz I think I’m still missing your point.
I’m not sure that a naturalistic world view provides no explanation for the things on your list. Land and water being separate are kinda no-duh. The abiogenesis->evolution model provides an explanation for everything except the existence of truth and casuality, which is not proven by theology either (since before you can even reason with Descartes that God would not deceive you you must assume them). I do acknowledge that naturalism hasn’t given and cannot give any explanation for why there is something rather than nothing at all, why we live in a universe that supports life, etc. Those are grand and inspiring mysteries — the question of first cause and why it caused what it caused.
On the second matter, I didn’t intend to get into whether or not God is an extremely simple hypothesis or an extremely complex one according to Ockham’s razor — that has been argued about inconclusively man times and many places.
I think of Him as complex in the sense that the Flying Speghetti Monster, Russel’s teapot, or what I’ve been calling the Great Green Arkeleseizure is complex — as a hypothesis based on no other evidence than the problem at hand, it’s pretty speculative and out there. But in light of other evidence, such as personal experience or belief in divine revelation, it can make sense, and I can respect that.
Similarly, if science had no evidence of consistent physical laws, then explaining history in terms of radiometric dating would be a huge leap in the dark, violating the razor. Or if there were no support for evolution from computer simulations of natural selection or the fossil record, then it would be a pretty ridiculous way to explain the shape of a bird’s beak. The razor would demand a less speculative hypothesis.
“If you can get what I mean by decelerating universe, and the relativity of time, then it actually allows for the scientific data to be fit into the creation theory.”
Now here’s an interesting question for the razor. Are variable laws of physics a sound explanation for what we see? I’m quite intrigued by your post, and while we may disagree I can respect where you’re coming from.
I will grant that constant physical laws are something much of science assumes. Of course, we can’t explain everything by constant laws, because we don’t understand the fundamentals of what those laws are. Dark energy, for example, refers to the paradox of the accelerating universe, which our current knowledge cannot explain. Not only is dark energy something we know nothing about, but there is some evidence that its strength/relevance has changed over time. But we do tend to assume that whatever it is is following some well-defined law beneath the hood.
We cannot show that the laws are uniform conclusively, but most scientists feel that the universe does follow well-defined laws that don’t change. Thus Niemand’s quote of Einstein: “Subtle is the Lord, but not malicious.”
I admit I haven’t looked into it in detail, but from what I understand models that propose changing laws or different laws throughout time or space are awfully hard to fit to all the data properly. And they necessarily have extra parameters — a gradient by which the speed of light changes as you get further from the Orion Nebula, or however you set up the model.
I think Beth also has a very good point. If you change the laws, big things happen because everything is related mathematically. If you speed up light, E=mc^2 changes, and the Sun suddenly starts producing waaaaaay more radiation than is healthy, and would most definitely destabilize the sun as we know it (It would have to be many orders of magnitude bigger to suppress that kind of explosion). You would have to change the speed of light drastically to cover the distance to distant galaxies, and it’s squared to begin with, so basically we’re blowing the Milky Way right there with out sun. If you don’t change the speed of light, and let distant stars be old, then we see very distinctive emission spectra that correlate directly to the spectra freshmen observe in their labs today.
In short, it’d be a pretty delicate and very specified process. Ockham’s razor doesn’t like it as a purely speculative hypothesis. But, then, Ockham wasn’t God, even though his name gets thrown around like a deity in discussions like this.
“I know this might seem a bit wild. But the point is that I have to believe that the laws of the universe shifted, so that we would not be able to live forever.” — Chris
And there’s the kicker. It does seem a bit wild if you’re approaching science without anything but the book of nature. String theory also purports to fit the data — but even if it does, in the end it’s just speculation, one out of an endless variety of models that could explain physics. But in this case you have an extra context for evaluating the models:
God exists, is actively involved in a relationship with me today, and was actively involved with His creation throughout history. The Bible says creation was originally perfect, and great emphasis is placed on the fallen nature of man. With this in mind, it stands to reason that the earth is younger than we think, evolution, if it occurred, only accounts for part of what we see, and the nature of the universe has been changed on a fundamental level. We have a model to explain it, albeit an imperfect one since we don’t know everything. With the added evidence of God, it makes at least as much sense as “uniformitarianism,” if not more. Ockham’s razor can’t cut out a God that you have experience with — instead now it needs to find a model that includes that evidence, that God.
I can respect and sympathize with that. I have a few more thoughts, but they’re more in response to Allen, so on to the next monologue…
ES
Post 6:
Allen, calm down.
“Perhaps you ought to learn a little about philosophy.”
“If ‘thinking people across the globe’ are guilty of this type of ‘thinking’ its about time they got woke up, regardless how rudely.”
“Wow! This is why I said before: ‘you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about!!’ This is so far out there, it’s not even in the same ballpark!!”
“Anyone who is trying to still function as if these facts are not true is living in a fantasy world.”
While I happen to agree with the last statement, the others are ad hominem rhetoric that just gets under my skin. It makes me want to defend myself, which means that it’s distracting from the issue at hand and a dishonest method of debate. You see how Niemand, Chris and I are having civil discussion, seeing value in eachother’s statements where value is to be found, not demonizing eachother while still disagreeing vehemently on the issues? Yeah. That’s what we call dialogue, and it’s how real communication takes place. It starts with a realization that just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re an idiot who needs “rudely awakened.”
Now, on to the actual topic. We’re talking about why science, or rather the naturalistic world view many people feel it implies, is wrong because they assume naturalism in doing said science. A “Circulus in demonstrando.”
Brining up Khun was a good move. An excellent point. I made a post here on spectrum last year (”Scienctific Subjectivity: Bias, Evolution, and Astrophysics” — It was published in the… was it the December issue?) talking about the same sort of thing, and I agree that anyone who thinks science is the incontrovertable acceptance of what the data perspicuously implies is indeed “living in a fantasy world.”
Circulus in demonstrando? That’s a bit pessimistic, and redolent of an agenda to dismiss the conclusions science has placed confidence in. However, is it a Hermeneutic cycle? Absolutely.
Oh, before I forget, there I go again using a theological term to describe science. I did the same thing with fideism, which as you said expresses the idea of putting faith above reason. You misunderstood me, however, by going with the literal dictionary definition that involved its traditional usage in describing religion. I was using it to describe science in that case — in which case I was not saying that science puts faith in religious revelation and rejects science. I was saying that science puts faith in science and rejects religion. That should have been clear from context, but I guess I could have specified it. And anyway, I wasn’t saying that, I was saying that you were saying that. What a birds nest.
“Naturalists and evolutionists accept Naturalism and it’s corollaries as FACT”
Not all evolutionists are naturalists. Indeed, most American scientists are Christians. And evolutionists.
And as to accepting it as fact — yes and no. For a naturalist to call himself a naturalist (or materialist, or atheist, or secular humanist, or whatever label he uses), he has to believe that there is no supernatural. But he is likely to believe that because he thinks it’s the most reasonable reading of the evidence at hand, not because of an a priori distaste for a hypothesis that involves God.
Now, about abiognesis, which is possibly the single most difficult-to-establish claim of the naturalist world view: You do well to harp on it.
“Abiogenesis does not “look plausible”, it is an absolute necesity for Naturalists!
1: Since the cosmos is all there is and has ever been or ever will be;
AND
2: Since there was once no life and now there is life;
AND
3: Since there is no God to mess with things;
THEN
Abiogenesis–life from non-life–spontaneous generation–is and must be an undeniable, indisputable fact even though how it must have happened is unknown.”
Yeah, pretty good summary.
There are two reasons to disbelieve abiogenesis or any other speculative hypothesis that cannot be tested:
(1) A different model exists that is less improbable and/or fits the data better (Ockham’s razor).
(2) The model in question is so improbable that a different model is likely to exist that is less improbable and/or fits the data better.
A naturalist is coming to criteria (1) with a subjective belief — based on his experience in the rest of science and his life (not an a priori assumption) — that God is improbable. (2) is a serious quandry, which many solve by invoking Carter’s “weak anthropic principle” (WAP). Others forgo the WAP by laying hope in how abiogenesis would be more probable deep in the earth, or by looking with Stewart Kauffman at the amazing self-organizing properties of complex systems, which could imply that life from non-life is not so improbable as we might think.
This is how it “looks plausible,” and while you insist that anyone who thinks it’s plausible is a fool, I need you to engage these ideas with a fine-toothed comb before I’ll be convinced of that assertion.
To a naturalist these are plausible, because it seems unlikely that another viable model exists. He literally thinks, given his experience, that it is more likely abiogenesis occured than that a God exists to fill in the “gap.” That statement is not an a priori assumption, but a weighing of the evidence.
Inferring God directly from nature is very difficult. Science is the study of nature — the evidence that anyone can look at and agree is there. You very quickly are looking at a God who used the big bang to indirectly create the elements needed for life via stellar nucleosynthesis, and who laid out the progression of life of the course of hundreds of millions of years in the billions of years of history of the earth, and who used entirely natural processes to affect speciation and the development of the biosphere, and so on. Maybe he tinkered with it a bit, and gave us some irreducibly complex organs, or altruism, but we can’t be sure that the complexity-generating mechanisms in nature aren’t powerful enough to do that by themselves.
The role of miracle is limited. How can we assume that, you say? I would answer that with another question: how can we infer that miracles exist in history? If we’re just following science, studying nature itself, the evidence everyone can see, which sets a precident for physical explanations, a miracle is quite the assortment of extra parameters that would make Okcham’s razor squeemish.
Remember my door-knobs story? The one that you dismissed with a one-sentence reply saying I was clueless? Yeah, it’s the crux of the entire matter. I would feel better if you could explain why all my thoughts on the matter are clueless, give some consideration to how my statements interact with what you’re trying to say, and then you can tell me what I’ve missed in a way that I’ll understand. “Is not!” does not constitute an argument.
Now for a point that might seem off topic, but is crucial, for if we can’t agree on how to dialogue properly and constructively, then we can’t dialogue properly and constructively:
“It is within this fact of Naturalism that scientific data is interpreted. And only those who accept Naturalism or are completely blind to the philosophical basis behind science would be taken in by such interpretations and think abiogenesis ‘looks plausable.’”
You tried to beat me over the head with Khun. I’d like to return the favor. This last quote of yours is rhetoric and I do not feel that it would be beneficial to either of us for me to reply. I might add that one of the implications of Khun and others is that you should be careful about your own black and white picture of reality, separating people into the fools and the wise ones. You have entirely dismissed your opponents as ignorant and biased fools. In my experience, most of the time when I make such assumptions it turns out to be wrong,
One way to foster effective dialogue is through active listening. Repeat the other person’s main points back to them, and ask if that’s really what they’re saying. Say “okay, so you believe A is true, and your reasons for it are B, C, and D.” That way you show them that you respect their effort, and you avoid the confusion created by misunderstandings and straw men and personal attacks. Then, after you’ve been properly empathetic (or expressed what Daniel Goleman calls “emotional intelligence”), you can say “but have you thought of E? That seems to imply F by my understanding. Furthermore I think you’ve not looked closely enough at B…”
Through this we can click together into one powerful reasoning unit, exploring the space of ideas and possibilities together and learning from eachother. As is, if we continue, it’s not much different than two brothers fighting over the front seat, which quickly digresses into name-calling and ad hominem, until they’re arguing over whether one of them “always” takes the biggest piece of cake, and they don’t even remember what the original fight was about.
Ug. This is why I need to stop arguing on the Internet. I have this great desire to solve the messiness of debate and make it so everyone can get along and disagree respectfully. Ha. Yeah right. It’s the Internet, for crying out loud, it’s supposed to be vulgar.
ES
As you can see, they welcome me with open arms the same exact way the open source community has as well. Cycling and Ubuntu are so darn close in community representation that I am falling in love with both more and more every day now.
I am scared, somebody hold me! What I find interesting is the fact they compared themselves to just Firefox and Chrome. Of course Firefox is #2 in browser land, but what about #3? Isn’t that Safari?
Right on topic with my 
).
Today’s perusal of the scientific world yields an article published last week: 
I mentioned the upcoming 
I’ve uploaded three papers I wrote for an independent study this semester on Computational Intelligence:
