Fine. But I don’t care about the rules of the scientific establishment. I care about what’s actually true.
There was once a time when a consensus of scientists were geo-centrists. That doesn’t mean there was a time when geo-centrism was true. Even if all the scientists believed in evolution, that wouldn’t make it true. They can consider it true all they want, but truth isn’t a popularity contest.
Yet it was the faith in the consensus among the most learned in each discipline which has led us beyond geocentrism. Creation science, so long as it will not publish in the big-boy pool of science review, just isn’t relevant.
You can keep repeating this to yourselves as long as you want, but it is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “la la la la”, while the rest of us actually attend to all of what is really there to be seen. @jammycakes and others have repeatedly shown how and why the presuppositional assumptions you so badly want to take refuge in - those have all been soundly addressed. There is just too much other stuff that is explained, independently confirming, and consistent with the now well-measured deep-time. The vast majority cannot and will not just pretend none of that exists.
You’re moving the goalposts. I didn’t say anything about the relevancy or legitimacy of creation science. I just made the obvious point that six-day creation could be true, even if nobody believed it. Whether it’s true or not has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific consensus.
In fact, as I’ve said over and over again, the secular scientists are unable to conclude six-day creation because methodological naturalism forbids supernatural creation by God. Even if all the evidence supported six-day creation, the secular scientists would still believe in evolution. It’s not as if the scientists looked at the evidence and found creationism wanting, it’s that they never considered it in the first place, and they never could consider it. This isn’t a “fair fight.”
For your reading distress:
No I wasn’t making that accusation and I did not intend to imply that you were on a par with somebody who denies that one plus one equals two. That completely misses the point that I was making. The point was simply that when you are dealing with facts or calculations, they do NOT depend on your worldview.
Not true. There is a test that can distinguish between isochron lines and mixing lines. Plot a second graph of \frac {^{87}\text{Sr}} {^{86}\text{Sr}} against \frac 1 {^{87}\text{Sr} + ^{86}\text{Sr}}. Mixing will give a straight line; true isochrons will not.
Besides, if mixing really were a legitimate explanation we would see as many samples giving negative isochrons as positive ones. We do not.
You need to realise a few things here:
The fact remains that these anomalous results are very much in the minority. And in most cases, they are not as anomalous as YECs make them out to be. 270,000 to 3.5 million years is not a big deal for K-Ar dates when you consider that the half life of 40K is 1.25 billion years – a thousand times as much – and to get that level of sensitivity you need to use a high-end radiometric lab with state-of-the-art equipment that charges a lot more for the more advanced processing that’s needed.
In any case, there is a simple way to determine when isochron dating works and when it doesn’t: use multiple different methods whose assumptions are independent of each other. If radiometric methods really were so unreliable that they couldn’t tell the difference between thousands and billions, the different results would be wildly different. Every. Single. Time. Without. Exception. Yet in the majority of cases, they agree with each other to within a few percent.
So no, I’m sorry, the assumptions are not as unprovable as you think they are. And they are not just “naturalistic assumptions” either. Cross-checks such as these are how measurement works in every area of science. “Naturalism” or “worldviews” have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
But every form of measurement works by calculating things, and every form of measurement makes assumptions that could, at a stretch, be claimed to be unprovable. The distance from London to New York works by calculating things and assuming that the speed of light is the same today as it was yesterday. Police speed cameras work by measuring Doppler shift and assuming that they’ve been calibrated correctly and that the driver of the oncoming car isn’t operating some kind of jammer of other.
I’m sorry, but you can’t just cry “unprovable assumptions” as a magic shibboleth to challenge every kind of measurement that you don’t like. There are some assumptions that it simply isn’t reasonable to challenge.
No I wasn’t implying that all creationists are stupid people who don’t understand science and who don’t get degrees. That is a straw man mischaracterisation of what I said. My comment was referring to the kind of people who you yourself described as “lay creationists” who are “the low hanging fruit.” Besides, I was making the specific point that books and YouTube videos are not a substitute for hands-on experience.
Besides, I’ve also addressed the issue of “many eminent scientists who believe in six-day creation.” As I said, very few of the signatories of the Scientific Dissent from Darwin were YECs.
If God was the creator of the cosmos then you are right, no scientist -whether Christian or secular- will ever uncover evidence of that through research. Because science studies what is and where possible what proximal causes led to what we find. We are only ever able to follow those proximal causes back so far. Science, so far as I can tell, is not interested in ultimate causes, though some may opine on occasion.
There isn’t any fight going on in science except on occasion between entrenched anti-theists and creation scientists. Regular science is not part of the fray.
Well, we are in agreement if you make a more reasonable claim. Theistic evolutionism is an impossible task. It is nonsense ideology from the start. I fully agree about that.
But “mere theistic evolution” isn’t as demonic as you make it. And “old earth” isn’t such a “devil” as Fr. Seraphim Rose made it sound, in the shadow of “nihilism”. His disciples on this topic are marginal among Orthodox Christians.
Theistic evolutionists are simply lost because the evangelical Protestant tradition has betrayed them. Notice that born again Protestant Phillip Johnson wrote the Foreword to Rose’s posthumously published main text on this topic? Many of these evangelical ex-YECists used to be biblical literalists, and now they seem to have over-shot the other side.
I’m thankful just to watch and not to get stuck in that wrestling match. 
All the Saints of are Church rejected evolution. Even the modern ones, who lived during / after Darwin’s time. How can you say Rose’s view is marginal, if it’s the authentic Orthodox position? The Scriptures, the Church Fathers, the Saints, the hymnology, the iconography. It’s all in conflict with evolution and long ages.
If Rose is wrong, I’d like you to point out where he’s wrong. It isn’t enough to simply point out that a Protestant wrote his introduction. So what? What difference does any of that make? Rose cites hundreds of passages from the Church Fathers in defense of his thesis.
You aren’t a theistic evolutionist? Then what are you? What do you believe?
Questions:
This is how "jammycakes responded to my suggestion that she take a look at what Douglas Axe and Ann Gauger have to say:
Jammy Cakes,
You really need to stop writing before you dig yourself into a deeper hole. This post seems really bizarre.
Ann Gauger received her Bachelor’s degree from MIT and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington Department of Zoology. She held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, where her work was on the molecular motor kinesin.
Douglas Axe is a Professor of Molecular Biology at Biola University and received his PhD at Caltech. He held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Medical Research Council Centre. So yes, reading their books and watching their videos is a reasonable way to learn about genetics since we can’t all go get doctoral degrees in this subject and every other subject that is discussed in this forum.
Are these the people you think are brainwashed wannable experts that haven’t set a foot in a laboratory since they finished compulsory science education at age sixteen? In reality, these are the folks you need to interact with through their writings and videos, unless of course, you only want to mock and don’t want to expose yourself to differing points of view.
And just a word of advice. If you want to show the strength of your position, don’t shoot down the weakest of your opponent’s and their weakest arguments. Don’t think for a second that you have made an argument against creationism by refuting someone so ignorant as to say that evolutionists believe that cats evolved into dogs. Rather refute a creationist that is so ignorant as to say that evolutionists believe that hippos and whales evolved from four-legged, even-toed, hoofed (ungulate) ancestors that lived on land about 50 million years ago. Oops, that really is what evolutionists say.
Engage with the ideas from the best informed of your opponents, and either refute them or join them.
Yes, but neither is truth something that comes down to just beliefs or claims. Truth is knowable, even if it is only imperfectly knowable. Asserting that scientists can discover facts and that scientific facts are true is not asserting “truth is just a popularity contest.” Claims in the Bible that are contradicted by facts in the world need to be reevaluated, not just imposed as “truth” on a reality that testifies otherwise. I don’t agree that something can be true if doesn’t correspond with reality. (Known reality being what the scientific consensus models very well.)
No I do NOT think that Ann Gauger and Douglas Axe are brainwashed wannabe experts that haven’t set foot in a laboratory since they finished compulsory science education at age sixteen. That comment did not refer to Ann Gauger and Douglas Axe. You’ve made exactly the same mistake as @DavidS here in totally missing my point. My point was simply that reading books and watching videos are not a substitute for hands-on experience.
Read the applicable pages in Walton and you will see that all of those issues are there, except of course, “metaphysical naturalism.” And also please re-read what I wrote so that you can quote it accurately–“methodological naturalism.” You should quote accurately if you want to posit intentional dishonesty or gross misuse of vocabulary.
My bad, but only partly. You said “philosophical naturalism,” which is a synonym for “metaphysical naturalism” and means the belief that the natural world is all there is and the scientific method is capable of investigating all of reality. It is not the same thing as “methodological naturalism” which is the acknowledgment that the scientific method only has tools to examine the natural world and cannot investigate the supernatural.
Your words were “Walton spent about a third of his book defending the position of philosophical naturalism.”
Which is still false.
Wow, this is a very demanding (or mean) forum. I try to correct myself, and the correction is not accepted, and I am painted as some kind of a horrible actor–“either intentionally dishonest or a gross misuse of vocabulary.”
So let’s start over. Walton spends 32.54% of his book, based on the text portion of the book itself, discussing in his words “metaphysical and philosophical questions” (as I clarified before.) Can we try to discuss so that we understand each others positions rather than to paint the other person as a bad actor? I am fully cognizant that it is unlikely that everyone on any thread will ever agree, but can we at least be respectful?
And by now we have lost the point of the illustration itself which is:
In this forum, there is a very strong emphasis by some BL folks that we must rely on scholars. But that is not applied evenhandedly. When Walton strays out of his lane (text analyst) into philosophy, no one calls him on that.
While I am dissing Walton, let me commit one more offense. He says, “This is the layer in which science has chosen to operate and where it is most useful.” (page 15 in The Lost World of Genesis One)
The context is hardly important at all. Science doesn’t “choose” anything. Scientists do. Nowadays when politicians and celebrities and others that pretend to speak with authority invoke the mantra of “science says” or “we follow the science.” Again, science is silent. Scientists speak, and when they speak nonsense, it is still nonsense.
This sure reads like an attempt to paint your discussant as a bad actor, not an attempt at being respectful. May not be your intent but that is the way I read it.
Sorry, I’m not trying to be mean or disrespectful, I’m trying to ensure that John Walton is represented fairly. You called me out for not quoting you correctly. I did reread the part I was referring to and it still said philosophical naturalism. I wasn’t aware there was an attempt to correct what you said about Walton, I thought you were just denying you ever said something inaccurate. I wasn’t painting you as a horrible actor, I was pointing out that either you were using philosophical naturalism incorrectly, or you were lying about what Walton said in the book, since he most definitely does not spend any time at all defending philosophical naturalism. If you are trying to clarify you should have said methodological naturalism, then all is well.
I think English speakers are capable of understanding this figure of speech, which is called metonymy. It’s like when we say, “No statement from the crown” or “The top brass is pushing for withdrawal.” Science is a stand-in for the scientific consensus of scientists or the agreed on methods of science. This is totally normal English usage and refusing to recognize figures of speech because of some kind of commitment to over literalism won’t help you communicate or convince people others are communicating poorly.
That’s kind of how science works. Science can’t work when you include the supernatural because you can explain any possible observation as “God did it that way.” Why do we find nested hierarchies of pseudogenes that were predicted by common ancestry? God just made it that way. It is very difficult to predict beforehand as to how God would or should have done something supernatural.
A commitment of modern young earth creationism comes from one of its popularizers:
“We take this revealed framework of history as our basic datum, and then try to see how all the pertinent data can be understood in this context”
This commitment is fundamentally opposed to how science is done.
This is definitely not true. By default, early scientists of the 1600s or so held to two positions:
It is a very interesting story of how scientists (who basically were all Christians) in England and the rest of Western Europe came to reject both of these ideas that they assumed were true by the mid 1800s (before Darwin mind you). Some had such a strong belief, that it led them to just assume evidence fit a global flood model like William Buckland in the early 1800s. He wrote at one point in his life:
“The grand fact of an universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that, had we never heard of such an event from Scripture, or any other, authority, Geology of itself must have called in the assistance of some such catastrophe, to explain the phenomena of diluvian action which are universally presented to us, and which are unintelligible without recourse to a deluge exerting its ravages at a period not more ancient than that announced in the Book of Genesis.“
But yet he ended up recanting this position as better evidence came in.
Here is a list of how prominent flood geologists of today try to explain the geological column. Do you happen to know how the boundaries between geological periods are defined? It really isn’t fair to ask flood geologists squeeze lots of history into a few major events.
Anything else with an appearance of antiquity can just be handwaved away with “oh the radiometric decay rates were faster in the past” or “oh, that wouldn’t destroy the earth or actually heat it to 22,000 degrees because there is a fifth dimension that opened up during Noah’s flood that the energy escaped through. However, Noah and everything on the ark would have needed to consume extra calories as they lost energy to this fifth dimension. Oh and by the way, I also solved all the outstanding questions of modern cosmology.” (these are actual paraphrases from Russ Humphreys from a few years ago- how is that for making things a “fair fight” when you get to invent extra dimensions and claim they solve mysteries of the universe but yet never need to bother doing experiments on them).
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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