From what I have seen it would appear that the data fits into the “expected” model, but that is not point here. The point being that it fits the scientific understanding enough for it to be declared a scientific fact. However what constitutes a scientific fact does not migrate out of science as a fact., It is still a working theory(outside science) and therefore can be disputed. At least in terms of significance or meaning if not its existence (fact)
Richard
I will respond to this…because i havent a clue what all the other tripe you are going on with there is even about…it appears to be mixing quotes from posts made by others…one of which was related to the question i asked…show me the person science?..to which i got an image of a crowd of people!
Your statement that “there is nothing in the cannon about the age of the earth” is absurd.
Read the geneolgies in Mathew 1 and Luke 3, the table of nations in the Torah, match up the history of the entire Old Testament lineage…we can trace right through from Adam to the present day withoutmillion year gaps. It is impossible to make the claim there are gaps of even thousands of years in the bible, let alone the stupid claim of millions (or the really absurd billions)…the historical and archeological evidence we have found so far i think overwhelmingly supports the accuracy of bible history and a young earth.
I mean honestly, if you can read well enough to follow the historical lineages of the old testament, its simple enough that a young child can add it up. The problem for Theistic Evolution is, such a belief cannot adhear to historical lineages without experiencing problems…such as your statements on these forums about whether or not Moses and the Exodus were real.
There are evidences regarding that…here are some
Or the university or the town, which should have been clear from the fact that I also mentioned Cambridge in the same sentence. As a Cambridge graduate I’m still trying to process the fact that both my alma mater and the other place have been knocked off their pedestal by the aforementioned St Andrews. Perhaps we should start referring to it as “the other other place.”
Um,no – facts are not theories, and they’re not “the best working” anything.
Only if you ignore the fact that the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh are ANE literature and instead dishonestly read them according to a modern scientific worldview as YEC insists on doing.
Actually not. I could have claimed that Cambridge was a veteran car that could be found anywhere. (Austin Cambridge, known as Cambridge in motoring circles)
It would appear that you are ignoring the argument involved, or at least, not attempting to look at it.
The point is not where St Andrews or Cambridge are or in what form they exist. The point is how facts can change or be relevant if you change the context or area or understanding.
You should know by now that I reason and conceptualise using allegories. (And I should know that scientists do not seem to understand them, i guess.)
Richard
Although scientific models are always subject to correction and revision, a successful new idea must do a better job of explaining what the existing idea does.
Of course, reality is complicated. What counts as “better”? Occam’s razor is often invoked, but science seeks to find more comprehensive explanations as well as simplifying. What counts as data? Also, there are significant perceptual and semantic variations. What is a new idea versus a tweaking of an existing idea?
Nevertheless, claims that something overturns existing scientific theories is almost invariably hype and often promoting crank ideas. The more time spent talking about how something is overturning major scientific concepts instead of discussing the evidence, the less one should believe the source. (Discovery Insitute and journalists take note.) The fact that our scientific understanding of a topic is almost certainly going to improve in the future is not a good excuse for dismissing what is known now.
I do not know why I bother.
Richard
The problem is that it doesn’t match up to the evidence found in reality. Much like Cardinal Bellarmine and his Biblically held Geocentrist views, when your interpretation doesn’t match up to the creation then you need to reevaluate your biblical interpretation.
I suppose I aught to clarify my frustration…
Read what you said from an outside perspetive.
The only valid perspective is science
The only yardstick is science
It must be better than science
Or tweak science
Why?
Science is not the only reality.
The reason why religion fights science is because scientists are so arrogant that nothing else matters.
There is more to this life than science!
Richard
Science is a method used to understand our physical reality, it is not reality itself. If you don’t want to use the scientific method to understand reality, then don’t.
That is not the point.
If I don’t I am insulting scientists!
Religion must bow to science, but science doe not (have to) take account of religion.
Richard
And rightly so … it wouldn’t be science any more if it was.
Say rather that in every aspect of our lives (including religion - for us moderns that act as if we can separate that out) we are obliged to attend to reality. (Or we ignore it at our own peril and to the embarrassment of any religion then, that we claim to follow.) And what are the ways we can best (most accurately) attend to physical reality? Science has shown itself unequaled among our tools. Religion no more “bows” to science than your brain “bows” to your eyeballs when it assumes that it needs to get input from your eyes rather than trying to dictate to your eyes what it wants them to see.
Sorry, but no. Religion does not rely on sight, sound or touch… They are the physical realitiy.in which science is entrenched.
t is as much a state of mind as it is the reliance on senses.
Hey, even God must obey science (because He created it?)
Richard
I appreciate science, as we no longer require (at least, theoretically) a shouting match of religious opinions to get at at least a large section of knowledge. We don’t have to rely on an Islamic, Christian, or Buddhist point of view on philosophy to come at why people have fever, for example.
I’m a scientist and it doesn’t insult me. Do what you want.
You are free to take a religious position that contradicts what we observe in the universe. Your choice. Doesn’t insult me. All that I ask is for people to be clear when they are not using science.
Well, it isn’t like “science” is some willful personage demanding obedience. Say, rather, that God created reality, and its intelligibility is a reflection of God’s faithfulness.
Religion doesn’t provide any hard data, so science can’t “take account of religion”.
It’s like complaining that students in a baking class don’t take account of poetry.
I have repeatedly said that science is not the only perpective and that it is limited. But that is not a valid excuse for dismissing science’s assertions about scientific questions.
One critical yardstick for scientific ideas is whether they work scientifically. Ethics provides a different kind of yardstick, outside of science, but it applies primarily to the practice and application rather than the content of science, to take one example.
Nested hierarchies are a general characteristic of living organisms. There are complications such as convergence, lateral transfer of DNA, and differential loss of ancestral polytomies. But the existence of the hierarchies is extremely well-supported. The pattern of nested hierarchies, including the various complications, in turn closely matches what is expected with an evolutionary model of biological origins. In other words, if the normal method of creating new kinds of organisms uses descent with modification, we should see the patterns of similarity that we do in fact see. But these physical patterns in no way imply God’s absence from the process.
Of course, it is true that some people claim that science is the ultimate authority for everything. That error is popular among atheists pretending that their views are the product of pure reason and science. In a different form it is a foundational error of creation science and ID, whose “common sense” interpretations of the Bible assume that it must be scientific in order to be true and authoritative.
But assuming that everyone is making such assumptions is not reasonable. Especially if someone repeatedly rejects the claim that science is the ultimate authority, asserting that’s what is really meant does accuse them of lying.
A better model of anything does need to explain the data better than the alternatives. You are claiming that a model that includes God explains the entirety of reality better than one that excludes Him. This is true, but it is unreasonable of you to accuse me of making science superior to everthing when I say that an idea has to do better than its alternatives.
Is creation a scientific question?
Evolution is a scientific theory, but that does not mean that creation suddenly becomes subject to onlt the scientific method.
However because there is no consensus on how god interacts with Evolution it cannot compete on an even footing with ToE which has a majority consensus.
By saying God did it, but we do not know exactly how, we open up the option of “but we do” from science. Any argument against meets the challenge “show us a better option” and to be honest, we can’t within the scientific real at least… We end up arguing over the meaning of random, or the probabilities of fluke and chance,.or the ultimate irreducible notion
Richard
“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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