Former YEC's, what made you change your mind?

[JoelHinrichs]

@heymike3

Science doesn’t form theories, scientists do and they are human like anyone else. Like those who think a theory (or natural law) can explain why something came from nothing.

Science consists in the search for explanations of puzzling facts, and theory is the final step on a mountain ascent.

Start with an educated guess, or conjecture. This is a statement of “likely” behavior of some part or element of the universe. This is where the scientist has imagined a new explanation for some phenomenon that has not good explanation at present, or has a differing conjectured explanation. A researcher finds funding to conduct experiments, adjusts the wording or whole structure of the conjecture.

Next is the hypothesis. The researcher has managed to shape the explanation into something that can be tested. Other researchers run experiments of their own to “test the envelope” or locate odd cases where the hypothesis does, or does not, work perfectly.

The pinnacle is an explanation that meets all tests science can perform, and every test result reinforces that explanation.

NOTE: theory isn’t proven; it has survived all attempts to disprove it. A next set of researchers may spot a hidden flaw, thus disprove the theory.

But at all times scientists, instead of “thinking up” some hairy new theory or natural law, confine themselves to the ones on hand.

Nothing can ever explain why something came from nothing for the simple reason that science confines itself to the universe as it exists. In this universe there is no “uncaused cause.” Conjectures abound regarding the origin of the universe, but none of them can be tested.

Genesis 1:1,3 state that G*D instantiated time, space, matter, and light. Verse 2 is a pat on grandfather’s head; it grandfathers in a prior foundational conjecture because Genesis, aside from those two verses, is theology. It concerns the Creator, rather than creation itself. It does so in a page of imagery; to bring it up to fact you would need to include a long shelf of PhD theses (etc.)

[JoelHinrichs]

@St.Roymond

@heymike3

Chapter 7 of Genesis is a mess without seeing the chiasm

To me if it’s read without seeing the chiasm it’s frankly stilted and boring.

Stilted and boring do not address factuality (ugly facts) - the primary point here is that the Flood narrative was a sine qua non. Failure to address it, coupled with failure to demonstrate God’s concern for His Children, made the Flood narrative critically important for it theological content. Local floods occur everywhere, and if large enough can extend past the horizon hence “cover the mountaintops.”

[JoelHinrichs]

@DavidC

. Evolutionary convergence (see Simon Conway Morris) also points in the direction of some sort of “control” to what life can/will do.

The only control is whether or not more and healthier offspring result. Think of a factory where the manager has a sign on the door, in large print: IF IT WORKS, SHIP IT!

@DavidC

As I interpret the data scientifically and theologically/philosophically, I am persuaded that the Modern Synthesis is not the best model. I am not out to undermine established science or to overlook data, I just think we need to reevaluate our paradigms.

As to paradigms, the sign on the factory manager’s door works very well.

[knor (Kai)]

@JoelHinrichs

Local floods occur everywhere, and if large enough can extend past the horizon hence “cover the mountaintops.”

There is a suggestion that a great flood described in some of the Ancient Near East stories could have been experienced between the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris, in Mesopotamia, ‘Land between the rivers’. If there is a great flood in that area, boosted by rising sea water at the mouths of these rivers, the flood could cover everything between and beyond the rivers. It would be an enormous flood, >300 km (>200 mi) wide (my crude estimate based on a general map). It would definitely cover the whole world these people could see, beyond the horizon, and would drown all people that did not have a floating raft.

This is just one hypothesis but an interesting one.

[JoelHinrichs]

@heymike3

Is it science to say mutations are random or indifferent?

According to Coyne

This is a central tenet of evolutionary biology, which Noble says has now been disproven. It hasn’t.

In the strictest sense A,C, G, and T are reactive, chemically, in differing ways. Thus randomness is merely apparent, not real. Nonetheless all mutations of whatever kind are unpredictable. Most mutations tend to be indifferent - out of 25,000 suspected genes in the human genome, one more or less merely contributes to adaptability - very few are fatal.