Of course it is okay to question science. But to do so you should have positive evidence for any new hypothesis. Is there any positive evidence for intelligent design? And btw, how old would you say the earth is?
No, they are facts of nature, reality. Belief does not enter in to it. I no more believe in them than I do in cake, quantum mechanics, carrots, relativity, dogs, insurance companies, stellar nucleosynthesis, Volkswagens, Henry VIII.
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Using what type of question?
It doesnât necessarily follow that I personally should have any new positive evidence for a hypothesis in order to question the validity of evolution. All I need is a doubt and this is what I have. So I donât equate âscienceâ with a body of unassailable facts or with theories about âevolutionâ. Or believe that the human mind is necessarily invested with the powers equal to the task. For some people science and evolution seem to be coterminous which I donât readily accept. So I believe it wrong to label someone as unreasonable because they do not accept evolution as the only explanation for how life in all of its abundance got here.
Neither am I proposing any âscientificâ evidence for for the movement which has become known as âIntelligent Designâ. This does not prevent me from viewing arguments on either side of the debate. Neither would I disqualify anyone as being âanti-scienceâ on the basis their affiliations or faith positions. Let the process of scientific enquiry speak for itself and be judged on its own merits. Let the arguments be opposed by the counter-arguments.
Regarding the age of the earth, I remain agnostic. I donât have enough verifiable information to definitively say either from science or the Bible. When I studied Geology, I believed in an ancient earth of billions of years as well as Darwinian evolution. When I became a Christian I became more convinced of a young earth but always retained doubts because of my geological training. The strata of the earth with its fossils etc. âlooksâ old from a naturalistic perspective. From a philosophically supernaturalistic perspective, however, it could possibly be young. So I canât in honesty rule out either. So the point of divergence as I see, is the vast gulf between naturalism and supernaturalism. Some people here, I believe, find ways of marrying the two, which is interesting.
What I have found fruitful for myself is to investigate the a priori philosophical basis for evolution and geology and read more widely in the so-called âsoft sciencesâ and question the belief in the power of the human mind to unravel these mysteries. This I would recommend. I also feel it is a good process for dismantling my own unhelpful assumptions. Also for an understanding of the relationship between faith and reason. This is still an ongoing enquiry.
I retain the outlook that some things are perhaps beyond finding out. Believing that people who claim to be wise may actually be fools. In this present life at least.
Thanks for asking.
How about yourself?
Being scientific isnât foolish⌠Doubting science isnât wiseâŚ
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Scientific questions.
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Same. Iâm pretty much on board for questioning anything right up to but not including the possibility of questioning questioning itself. That I would have to question. 
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I didnât say it was and I wasnât referring to you. It was only a generalized comment.
History has shown time and again that the general historic establishment consensus in many areas of scientific Inquiry has not only been challenged by âoutsidersâ but eventually completely overthrown.
Let it be judged based on the data and methodology.
Actually itâs better practice to counter with data and/or better experiments.
I supposed that God could be deceptive, He might have filled the earth with misleading evidence. He might have created the world last Thursday and implanted our minds with false memories. A deceptive God might even have give us a false Bible. But I donât believe that God is deceptive. And scientists believe that studying nature will give us good knowledge about the natural world. And the scientific enterprise has been for the most part very fruitful.
As for the age of the earth, I accept the scientific consensus: 4.6 billion years old.
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Yeah but thatâs the problem isnât it?! If you doubt science, how can you use science to doubt it?
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Regarding the attempted âtake downâ or âproof-of-failureâ of established scientific claims, it would be interesting to know the historical ratio of unsuccessful attempts to successful attempts in the last century - or more to the point, even in the last few decades. The scientific revolutions that really upset prior understandings (to the degree that they do - some just expand prior understandings beyond their former boundary conditions) - those are the celebrated ones you read of in textbooks. Thatâs why you donât know what n-rays are or spend a lot of time studying phlogiston.
Are you willing in any given new situation to bet on the challengers or the scientific establishment they are challenging? If your live is on the line, Iâll bet I know who youâll prefer. They can be and are wrong at times, yes. But not nearly as often as the merchants of doubt have been. To be almost consistently wrong on nearly everything, one only need listen to those whoâve decided science isnât trustworthy. And when the rest of us observe them doubling down on the many lies - even after theyâre known to be lies, it also leads one to wonder about their theological commitments too. If their drive for truth has become so stunted regarding this world, why would anyone want to trust what they claim to know about anything beyond? If one proves untrustworthy with the things of this world, who will trust them about heavenly things?
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YECs love to talk about âphilosophical assumptions of naturalismâ as if they were the only thing stopping anyone from interpreting rock strata as evidence for a young earth. The problem is that they arenât.
Hereâs why. Squeezing 4.5 billion years of evidence into just six thousand doesnât just require an odd miracle or two: it requires a very large number of tightly coordinated miracles in order to make all the measurements line up with each other.
Nuclear decay rates would have to have been accelerated to exactly the same extent as continental drift, as deposition rates of sediments, ice cores, lake varves, the speed of light, racemisation, thermoluminescence, erosion, galactic collisions, galactic jets, and a whole lot of other different indicators. Furthermore, this acceleration across multiple different physical phenomena would have to have been in complete lock-step across space and time, and would have to have been by a factor of many millions, billions or even trillions depending on what time frame you are proposing that the acceleration covered.
This kind of miracle would have to be so gargantuan and so exacting that it would amount to a massive tightly coordinated deception to make the universe look older than it really is by the most complicated and convoluted methods imaginable for no good reason whatsoever other than to mess with our minds and leave us unable to tell what is real and what isnât.
Such a course of action is totally inconsistent with the character and nature of God that I read about in the Bible. It is more in line with the kind of stuff that you get in Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, or the Discworld novels.
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I must point out that Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and that while religion is not mentioned in LOTR, the series is FULL of Christian imagery
- The 3 offices of Christ are there (prophet, priest, king).
- The evil ring is destroyed on March 25. Thatâs the date of the annunciation
- In bearing away the ring, Frodo takes evil upon himself.
And so on.
I didnât say you did and were. So was mine.
No it hasnât. Not to the degree of outsider - i.e. pseudoscientist - that you mean.
My point still stands. How about coming down on someone else for a change?
Iâm not YEC.
I donât know who you think I was referring to. I think you must be attempting at mind-guessing and getting it wrong. You think Galileo or Einstein ware a pseudoscientists? These too?
So Einstein was an outsider to science? To mathematics? To physics? To philosophy?
Anyone with a Ph.D. in science denying the tools, philosophy and findings of science, and there are many, (Margulis in that list is she? Hoyle? Davies? Dyson? Tesla?) regardless of their contribution to science, is, like Hoyle, rightfully denied a Nobel for falling at the hurdle of fallacy of incredulity and making a sad fool of themselves.
So, which of these outsider scientists are outsiders to science? The way all Ph.D. scientists who have pseudoscientific streaks are? YECs and IDers. Do any of these outsider scientists have such a streak? If so, did the pseudoscientific streak transform their role in the growth of modern life sciences?
âŚ
I thought not.
How are you going to double down on this?
You need to submit to science the way God does.
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So will you take a position on the age of the earth?
Have you read this book? Do you intend to read it? It looks very pricey.