Evolution, Creationism, and science

[lucaspa]

We were discussing the relationship of creationism to science. And yes, I'm talking about science and I haven't posted any "creationist crap". Mokele, you should know that from my other posts. After all, we are discussing mechanisms of evolution in another thread -- specifically genetic drift. Nowhere in my posts do you see any rejection of evolution, do you?

 

Also remember I'm making a much stronger statement than you about creationism. I'm saying creationism is a falsified theory. That is, it is WRONG. You are merely saying creationism is not science. That says nothing about its truth value.

 

So, we are talking science and the philosophy of science. Using ad hominem arguments and closing the thread isn't going to make the data go away.

 

Mokele: "Creationism may have been a theory, but it was never scientific one, since it cannot be tested (since God is *defined* as unknowable) and cannot be falsified (since there's always the 'God of the gaps'). It fails to fulfill these, it's not science, end of story."

 

Notice the source here, Mokele. Kitcher is a philosopher of science and an evolutionist.

 

""There is another way to be a Creationist. One might offer Creationism as a scientific theory: Life did not evolve over millions of years; rather all forms were created at one time by a particular Creator. Although pure versions of Creationism were no longer in vogue among scientists by the end of the eighteenth century, they had flourished earlier (in the writings of Thomas Bumet, William Whiston, and others). Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists-William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and Louis Agassiz, for example. These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way. However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories. Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended. The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory. They struggled hard to explain the observed distribution of fossils. Sedgwick, Buckland, and others practiced genuine science. They stuck their necks out and volunteered information about the catastrophes that they invoked to explain biological and geological findings. Because their theories offered definite proposals, those theories were refutable. Indeed, the theories actually achieved refutation. In 1831, in his presidential address to the Geological Society, Adam Sedgwick publicly announced that his own variant of Creationism had been refuted:

 

Having, been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy ... I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation.

 

We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic Flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of a former world entombed in these ancient deposits. In classing together distant unknown formations under one name; in simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic remains we have discovered, but by those we expected, hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them; we have given one more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of unconnected truths. (Sedgwick, 1831, 313-314; all but the last sentence quoted in Gillispie 1951, 142-143)" Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism pp125-126

 

Did you see that, Mokele? Creationism was falsified. It's not "unfalsifiable". Instead, creationism is both falsifiable and falsified.

 

Mokele: "We all know perfectly well what "creationism" means, thanks the the actions of religious zealots in the US."

 

But "creation" and "creationism" are not the same thing. Creation is a theological statement: God created. Creationism is a specific method that God used to create.

 

Theistic evolutionists (such as Charles Darwin, Kenneth Miller, Francisco Ayala, and myself) all believe in creation. We all, however, reject creationism.

 

Lucaspa: "There is evidence for ANY and EVERY scientific theory, if that is what you are looking for."

 

This comes from Karl Popper and the Duhem-Quine Thesis.

"1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory -- if we look for confirmations." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38.

 

The Duhem-Quine Thesis states that, for any limited amount of data, there are an infinite number of theories to explain it. The corollary for that is, of course, that for any theory there is going to be a limited amount of data that supports it.

 

The examples you gave was simply data that hadn't been found YET. (of course, since Godzilla is an admitted fictional character, it can't be a scientific theory)

 

Mokele: "Philosophy is a waste of time. We outgrew it the moment it gave birth to the scientific method."

 

Mill was stating philosophy ABOUT the scientific method! How do we evaluate theories in order to separate the correct ones from the incorrect ones? That's the problem of the scientific method Mill and others have grappled with. It's called the philosophy of science. Call it "how and why we do science the way we do science".

 

Popper gave another way of evaluating theories: show them to be false.

 

Mokele: "Wrong. A theory without evidence for it is worthless."

 

Most theories start out without evidence. Most get falsified, of course. But some end up earning the scientists who first proposed them Nobel Prizes:

 

"Volume 13, #22 The Scientist November 8, 1999

http://www.the-scientist.com/yr1999/nov/halim1_p1_991108.html

 

Nobel Laureate Ready To Head Back to Lab

Author: Nadia S. Halim

Date: November 8, 1999

Courtesy of Rockefeller University

 

Nobel laureate Günter Blobel

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When Günter Blobel and David Sabatini first proposed the signal hypothesis in 1971, the whole thing was simply ignored. There was not a shred of evidence to support it. "

 

The theory was not worthless after all, was it? Another example is tachyons:

 

"1. Tachyons: can we rule them out.

 

The special theory of relativity has been tested to unprecedented accuracy, and appears unassailable. Yet tachyons are a problem. Though they are allowed by the theory, they bring with them all sorts of unpalatable properties. Physicists would like to rule them out once and for all, but lack a convincing nonexistence proof. Until they construct one, we cannot be sure that a tachyon won't suddenly be discovered." Paul Davies, About Time, 1994.

 

There is no evidence for tachyons. Does that make Special Relativity worthless?

 

The point here, Mokele, is that saying "there is no evidence for creationism" is a worthless argument for evolution! This doesn't make creationism correct. Creationism is still wrong even if you use a mistaken argument against it. What saying "there is no evidence for creationism" does is show 1) an ignorance of the history of creationism and how it was falsified.

2) an ignorance of how science is done.

3) ignores the most effective arguments you have against creationism: data that shows creationism can't possibly be correct.

 

Read this and think about it carefully, please:

 

" Creationists make assertions about the world. Once made, those assertions take on a life of their own. Because they do, we can assess the merits or demerits of creationist theory without having to speculate about the unsavoriness of the mental habits of creationists. What we do, of course, is to examine the empirical evidence relevant to the creationist claims about earth history. If those claims are discredited by the available evidence (and by "discredited" I mean impugned by the use of rules of reasoning which legal and philosophical experts on the nature of evidence have articulated), then Creationism can safely be put on the scrap heap of unjustified theories.

But, intone Ruse and Overton, what if the creationists still do not change their minds, even when presented with what most people regard as thoroughly compelling refutations of their theories? Well, that tells us something interesting about the psychology of creationists, but it has no bearing whatever on an assessment of their doctrines. After all, when confronted by comparable problems in other walks of life, we proceed exactly as I am proposing, that

is, by distinguishing beliefs from believers. When, for instance, several experi-ments turn out contrary to the predictions of a certain theory, we do not care whether the scientist who invented the theory is prepared to change his mind. WA do not say that his theory cannot be tested, simply because he refuses to accept the results of the test. Similarly, ajury may reach the conclusion, in light of the appropriate rules of evidence, that a defendant who pleaded innocent is, in fact, guilty. Do we say that the defendant's assertion "I am innocent" can be tested only if the defendant himself is prepared to admit his guilt when finally confronted with the coup de grace?

In just the same way, the soundness of creation-science can and must be separated from all questions about the dogmatism of creationists. Once we make that rudimentary separation, we discover both (a) that creation-science is testable and falsifiable, and (b) that creation-science has been tested and falsified-insofar as any theory can be said to be falsified. But, as I pointed out in the earlier essay, that damning indictment cannot be drawn so long as we confuse Creationism and creationists to such an extent that we take the creationists' mental intransigence to entail the immunity of creationist theory from empirical confrontation." Larry Laudan, "More on Creationism", Chapter 24 in But Is It Science? Edited by M Ruse pp 363-366

[lucaspa]

Before I start, remember I have been saying that creationism is a falsified theory. It is wrong.

 

Mokele: "We're flat-out stating that there is no evidence that supports creationism. None, Nada, zip. None has even been presented. If you want to challenge this, show evidence. "

 

This is where Mokele was not reading my posts. Looking into history, evidence supporting creationism can be found in papers in the period 1700 -1831. Not only that, but Gentry published a couple of papers in Science with evidence that supported a young earth:

Gentry, R., 1968, Fossil alpha-recoil analysis of certain variant radioactive halos, Science, 160:1228-1230.

 

Gentry, R., 1970, Giant radioactive halos: indicators of unknown radioactivity?, Science, 169:670-673.

 

Gentry, R., 1974, Radiohalos in a radiochronological and cosmological perspective, Science, 184:62-66.

 

Gentry, R. and others, 1976, Radiohalos in coalified wood: new evidence relating to the time of uranium introduction and coalification, Science, 194:315-318.

 

So, even in recent history, Mokele's claim "there is no evidence that supports creationism. None, Nada, zip. None has even been presented." is false. What we are into now is an argument whether that evidence is valid. Of course, Mokele didn't put that qualifier into his claim. So now anyone using the "there is no evidence" argument against a creationist is bogged down in an endless no-win argument about whether Gentry's evidence is valid or not.

 

Looking back in history, in the 1820s, Buckland and Sedgwick both published studies ascribing surface morrains in Europe to a world-wide flood. In 1695 John Woodward listed the fossil record and sedimentary rock as showing that a world-wide flood had dissolved or eroded the particulate matter of the earth's surface and then redeposited them in general order of specific gravity. (Arbuthnot and Bellers falsified this one 10 to 20 years later.) Silliman in 1823 and Hitcock in 1837 in America noted that surficial deposists were consistent with a world-wide flood. (they were also consistent with glaciation, which became dominant after the Flood was falsified.) Prestwich in 1795 listed several bone-filled fissures and caves and rubble drift deposits on top of raised beaches in southern England and the wester Med as evidence of a post-glacial inundation followed by a rapid elevation. (The features Prestwich listed were later accounted for as periglacial phenomenon.)

 

You can find a more detailed list of all this in the books Genesis and Geology by Charles Gillespie and The Biblical Flood: A Case History of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence by Davis A. Young. Both are professional geologists.

 

The work of Blythe supported creationism, since he saw selection keeping species constant. Richard Owen, a contemporary of Darwin, wrote papers supporting creationism.

 

Even Lyell supported creationism as applied to species in his Principles of Geology:

 

"Each species 'was endowed at the time of its creation, with the attributes of organization by which it is now distinguished." Only limited variations within a type have ever occurred. Each species, itself immutable, probably takes its origin frmo a single pair, such pairs having "been created in succession at such times and in such places as to enable them to multiply and endure for an appointed period, and occupy an appointed place on the globe." CC Gillespie, Genesis and Geology 130-131.

 

Now, read closely, what matters is the evidence AGAINST a theory.

 

Taken in isolation, the fossils at Dinosaur National Monument are "evidence for" creationism. Why? Because you have animals jumbled together by a flood -- and you could say that this flood was the Flood. if you look only at those fossils in that location and ignore all other data.

 

So, why don't we consider all this "evidence for" creationism today. Because creationism has been falsfied. That is, data has been found that could not possibly be there IF creationism were true! True statements cannot have false consequences and creationism has false consequences. Therefore it can't be true.

 

Not only does the evidence "for" creationism still exist, but the evidence falsifying creationism still exists!

 

Back to Popper and "evidence for"

 

"1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory -- if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions.

3. Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.

5. Confirming evidence should not count *except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory:* and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. "

[the tree]

Take it out back: http://orginsdebate.com or http://talkorigins.org

[Mokele]

Tree is correct. We got rid of creationism not because it's a load of shit, but because it gives rise to HUGE threads that consume an inordinate amount of time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere. Just like the Philosophy & Religion forum, creationism has been given the boot in part because of the tremendous headaches it causes all around. We offloaded it into another forum, and that's where it stays.

 

Mokele

[Sayonara]

When a moderator closes a thread, it means that discussion is over.