Omonia

Is Science "Getting Better"?

2006-03-08T15:26:00.000-06:00

The title of this post is intended to carry a double meaning. The first meaning is the one which is immediately evident from a simple reading of the title: is science better today than it was at some point in the past, and will it be better in the future than it is right now. The second meaning I have could be better read as "Is Science All About 'The Process of Getting Better'?" I would like to begin with the second interpretation I provided, since an analysis of that question will provide a better foundation for answering the question posed by the first interpretation.

This blog has spent a lot of time up to this point talking about origins, which at some point will bring up the theory of evolution. Science as a whole may not be centered around the concept of things getting better--in fact, to my understanding, studies of thermodynamics and entropy state quite the opposite--however evolution is grounded in what I will summarize as "progress." Speaking in terms of evolution, progress requires that over large enough spans of time, later generations of species will be better than previous generations. A human is better than a monkey is better than a bird is better than a lizard is better than a fish is better than a protozoa. The justification given for how this happens is that there is a lot of little variations in all directions over generations, good and bad, but only the better ones survive and persist.

Regardless of what you think about macro-evolution, progress as a philosophy is not confined to the academics of biology. People say that civilization is progressing, which by that they mean a whole host of things. Our laws are more enlightened, more informed, and more just than they were before. Our social institutions and cultures are more reasonable and practical than they were before. Our technology is better and people have better standards of living than before. Even our academics, and especially our science, is better and more comprehensive than it was before.

Much of this is true, and I don't intend to dispute that progress can and does happen. My point is that progress is taken for granted. In fact, I have heard some suggest and I am inclined to believe (although I won't go into why) that this faith in progress inspired the theory of evolution, rather than the other way around. I am open to hearing otherwise, but as far as I know there is not much justification for why there should be progress in any human institution other than on the basis that we do see it. This is one illustration for when I say that everyone carries assumptions into everything. I imagine "unbiased" scientists still believe in progress.

Furthermore, I see that too much attention focused on progress has started to confuse its definition. Progress holds that, in the long term, things will be better in the future than they are at present, and they are better at present than they were in the past. It does not, however, mean that progress is monotonic--that is, that each day or each year or even each decade will be better than the one before it. People still make mistakes, and mistakes can be perpetuated, too. In fact, they can be perpetuated because of a blind adherence to progress. Once made and if not quickly caught, a mistake may be labelled as "progress," which means it is assumed to be better than anything that came before. Not only will it go unquestioned, but more things will be built off of this foundational mistake in order to continue with progress.

I concede that probabilistically, such a perpetuation becomes less likely the longer it is perpetuated. After all, if it really is a mistake at its foundation, then at some point something built off of that mistake simply won't add up. Here is a paradox: the more strongly you believe in progress, the better chance there is that this perpetuation will happen. You see, the longer a mistake lasts, the less likely it is to last; but a strict adherent to progress, knowing this, will say that since a mistake is not likely to last that long, will be more likely to claim that there was no mistake at all. By denying the mistake to be such, it is allowed to continue.

So, now, when you laugh at my suggestion that anything about the Middle Ages could be better than anything we have now, understand that you are assuming this philosophy of progress. On that note, though, I may revise my previous comment because I may have wrongly associated two eras of history. I had every intention of going into more detail about that claim, but my introduction to it has already become long enough.

Testing the Water

2006-02-01T16:14:00.000-06:00

I imagine that my remarkable slowness in updating this blog may have caused some to lose interest in what I have been saying. Is there anyone who would like for me to continue, and would like for me to do so for any reason other than to ridicule me.

Standards for Revelation

2005-11-25T23:22:00.000-06:00

There remains, then, only to discern what, if any, are the words of the designer to humanity. I do not pretend to have a sufficient list of criteria, but I hope to present here a preliminary list of necessary criteria for judging between what are the words of us and what could be the words of one above us. A true "scripture" must at least be...

1) ...completely true.

I argued for this point previously. If it is at some point false, then we--presumably--have no standard but ourselves to judge which parts are true and which are false. If we set ourselves up as a reliable standard, then there is no sense in going this route at all.

2) ...internally consistent.

This is demanded by the first requirement. If something is internally inconsistent, that is, it is self-contradictory, then it must necessarily be false at that point, because one of its two claims must be false.

3) ...externally consistent.

Our hope is that the scripture is written by one who is knowledgeable about the world we live in. He would then be qualified and capable of writing about this world without error. We therefore expect such a scripture to be consistent with what is true in our world. This standard is somewhat dangerous to apply, because we ourselves have judgments about this world which are not always completely correct. So if I disagree with a scripture, and I disagree because I am wrong about the world and it is right, can I really say that it is wrong about the world?

4) ...authoritative.

We seek words from one who designed our world, from one who knows it intimately. His knowledge of the world is not dependent upon that of others; it is self-sufficient. When these words claim, "This is so," then we should not be surprised when we do not see, "This is so because this great thinker has said that," or, "This is so because we see that and that are so," but simply, "This is so," because he has no need to appeal to any other standard but himself.

The Desirability of Revelation

2005-11-25T22:59:00.000-06:00

Before my extended absence and my couple digressions onto other loosely related topics, I was examining what conclusions can be drawn after having admitted that all of the world before us exhibits form which seems to require its design by some intelligence. Supposing this, there is actually very little that can be concluded with any confidence. I suggested the possibility of direct revelation from the intelligence.

I can imagine many would shirk at such a suggestion, preferring pure reason and universal experience to the words offered of one or more people. We recognize that in our world, the words of people are unreliable. There is a thing called lying, and because such a thing is possible we cannot always trust everything that everyone says. The mere fact that two people may say two different things which are exclusive of one another is sufficient proof of this. There are a lot of "scriptures" out there, and they can't all be right, and there's no way of knowing whether the authors are lying or not, so there's no good reason to trust them. However, it should also be noted that pure reason and experience are deceptive as well. Over the ages, philosophies inspired by reason have been just as multitudinous as religions inspired by the words of others. We recognize that appearances can be deceiving because appearances, too, can lead us to contradictions. There is nothing more or less perfect about reason--on this criteria alone--than about revelation, yet philosophy has for a long time hoped and assumed that it is.

Consider, however, the words of the intelligence, if there are any available. For convenience, I will refer to the intelligence in the singular masculine. When talking about an intelligent designer, we have implicitly assumed that this intelligence is qualitatively similar to that shared by human beings if not quantitatively. One peculiar feature of this intelligence is the ability of communication, that the ideas of one intelligent being can be shared with another such being. I may at times use the concept of "words" interchangeably with "ideas" as used in the preceding sentence; do not be surprised by this. Therefore, communication between an intelligent designer and humanity is at least not inherently impossible.

Now, the words of the designer are either fully true, at some point false, or have no truth value at all--that is, it is a collection of words either with no meaning or it is purely subjective. I am hesitant to say this last option is a real option to be considered, but for the benefit of the doubt I'll let it stand. Whatever the case, in all but the first option, these words would be inadequate for our purposes. We desire truth. If the intelligence's words are at some point false, then to find truth we would need a measure by which to judge his words; the best candidate, it seems, is the reason and experience of man, and if we go with that, we may as well have trusted that from the beginning. If the intelligence's words have no truth value at all, then of course they will be worthless for finding truth. Supposing his words are false or foolishness (or even true), this still provides us with some small glimpse into the nature of the intelligence that we are dealing with. Namely, we know that he is unreliable. If he is unreliable, is there any reason to suppose that that which he shaped will be more reliable and more knowable than he? Yet it was the reliable nature of the patterns of the world that led toward an intelligent designer in the first place. The argument is loose, I concede, but on the surface our limited assumption of an intelligent designer seems more consistent with his being reliable.

If he is reliable, then his words are to be trusted above all else. Having been the designer of this world, his knowledge of the world would be extensive and complete; he could not be deceived in this regard. I suspect that no one is really afraid that, if an intelligent designer chose to speak with humanity, that he would somehow get his words all wrong. The real fear is that humanity, upon reception, has changed these words around, or that humanity calls revelation that which is not at all. This is the root of the distrust of "scriptures." If we could be confident in finding some imparting of words from the designer to the designed, then in those claims, at least, we may be assured of having found answers to these uncertainties. Our hope is that, if the designer has chosen to give any words at all, its words are sufficient for living in this world, since he would, after all, know the world well enough to know what was sufficient for life in it.

What I Believe About Origins

2005-11-07T01:57:00.000-06:00

Since there has been some request for this, I will lay forth the extent of my convictions regarding the origin of our world. I feel, though, that in part doing so now is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak, and therefore I share my views only after this exhortation. Origins is a hotly contested topic, and it is often a make-or-break view to hold. As such, I sense the temptation arising to first hear the particulars of my view, compare it against the particulars of your own views, evaluate how closely the two are in agreement, and afterwards attribute me credence in proportion to my agreement with you on this one issue. Put simply, if I make a claim about how we came to be, and you think it's preposterous to even think that way, you will call me crazy and assume everything else I say is crazy, too. This is common practice, and often the principle holds true, but I claim it is not always that simple, and I request that you hear me out even so.

What do I believe? I believe the Bible is inerrant as originally written, and I furthermore believe that the Bible as we have it is close enough to its original writing to be relied upon. Inerrancy means that it is true and free from error in its primary purposes--to demonstrate the character of God and His relationship to His world--and in its secondary purposes, including describing historical events. Therefore, anything which God's Word says is true must be, and any claim which contradicts His Words must be false.

We begin with Genesis 1, which says that God created the heavens and the earth. Right away we see that the world is a creation of God's, and is therefore subject to Him. It came into being, it is temporal, it is finite, it is not eternal, it is not co-existent with God, and furthermore it is not the same as God. The account goes on to describe how features of the world were created, and five evenings and mornings occurred between them, and after the sixth evening and morning we are told God rested from His work. Many claim that the use of days is figurative in this passage, and could actually refer to eons; the use of the word, not to mention the emphasis placed on evenings and mornings, seems to rule out this possibility from critical analysis. Many claim that the whole passage is figurative, such as the poetry found elsewhere in the Bible. There is poetry in the Bible which should be read as poetry; if you compare this passage with other poetry, you see that they are not at all the same in style. The Genesis account is written much like the history accounts. So yes, I hold to six-day creationism.

I am a little less concerned about the particular age of the world, that is, the amount of time spanning between the beginning of history and now. Whether God created the world or the world created itself has incredible theological and philosophical consequences which cannot be taken lightly. A couple thousand years, on the other hand, don't add up to that much. From what I understand, the estimate of 6,000 years was derived from genuine Biblical scholarship, and for that I tend to prefer that estimate.

As was hinted, I hold that God is eternal, and by eternal I mean not only that which is without beginning nor end, but that which is atemporal: God does not flow with time, as we do, but transcends time itself. In the act of creation, God created time itself with a definite, historical beginning. The created world is finite, and God alone is infinite. The finite is separate from the infinite--not to say that they have no communion between them, but they are not the same essence.

When humankind was created, we were created in the image of God, possessing many His qualities in a finite instantiation. We were without sin but not incapable of sin, with the freedom to choose either dependence upon our Creator or rebellion against Him. Having chosen to assert our own authority over our lives, we became enslaved to this decision, and thus humanity is fully separated from God.

While this is probably not the "scientific" beliefs you were expecting to hear, I nevertheless consider these truths to be of the utmost importance in understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Returning to "scientific" beliefs, some time following all of this, God caused a great flood to cover the earth. Now, there has been not a little speculation about the nature of the earth prior to man's fall, between the fall and this flood, and following the flood. I suspend judgment on much of these details. However, I will say that this flood was a catastrophe the likes of which was never seen before or since, and would naturally cause great changes to the earth. Regarding the ark which Noah was commanded to build and fill with the creatures of the earth, it seems reasonable to suspect that Noah brought on board a pair from every high-level classification of animals, and from these the mechanisms of speciation have produced the diversity we find today. As for the dinosaurs, a lot could be explained by simply claiming, "They were not permitted on the ark and so became extinct in the floodwaters." There is no indication of this at all, so we are led to believe that the extinction must have happened either prior to the flood or after it, but not as a result of it.

I am sure you will not be satisfied with the account I have laid forth. However, as I said at first, I did not want to lay all of this out all at once at this time.

Assumptions in Science

2005-10-26T02:05:00.000-05:00

It has been a very, very long time since I last set out to write about this topic of intelligent design. The reasons for this long hiatus are many and complex, and would be of no benefit to recount here. At this time, I feel that it is important to resume this discourse and let it continue to a more natural end.

Before beginning again, I would like to take a moment to share some evidences which were recently shared with me. In this tension between the view of a created origin of the world and an evolving origin of the world, the primary attack leveled against those who hold to a view of creation is that they must "bite a bullet" in order to maintain that position. That is, they must believe steadfastly in certain facts or ideas which are not impossible, but nevertheless difficult to keep consistent with the rest of the body of knowledge. Specifically, creationists have to believe that a large percentage of scientific facts and interpretations, corroborated by a large percentage of the scientific community, are either false, misguided, or misrepresented. It would seem that--at least probabilistically speaking--the odds are in favor of agreeing with the scientific community, and to do otherwise is nothing but foolishness and stubborn.

However, this need not be the end of the story, even though most would like it to be. If it can be shown that, contrary to the assumption that the conclusions of every researcher are formed independently of every other researcher, there is in fact some influence from one researcher on the next, the possibility of error is no longer infeasible. Instead of measuring the probability that each researcher might introduce the same error again and again, we really are looking for the probability that the following researcher will not question an error carried along by the previous one. We know that researchers do not work independently of one another and realistically, not much progress could be made if they did not. It is not an inherently bad or dangerous thing that this collusion occurs, but neither are these people necessarily above reproach.

Still, the question remains as to whether or not the scientific community would and does allow grievous misconceptions to be perpetuated. One such example was recently shared with me of how this has happened in recent history. I will let you read the story for yourself, and in case you are doubtful I made every effort to find an "unbiased" source. For background, begin with an article on Catastrophism and then read about J. Harlen Bretz. As you will see, Uniformitarianism was preferred to Catastrophism in the 18th and 19th century not so much because of any new-found evidence, but because Uniformitarianism offered an escape from the religious baggage implicitly associated with Catastrophism. From the way the story was first told to me, Bretz's findings were initially discounted not on the basis of any particular flaws in his research, but simply because his conclusions did not conform to the accepted standard of the day. They would be on the level of silliness and pseudo-science. It wasn't until the rest of the scientific community actually went out and looked at his findings themselves that they were willing to concede that perhaps there were some flaws in their assumptions. Despite a general agreement, popular opinion turned out to be not quite correct, and it had been carried along through time without much trouble.

Hopefully this illustration will soften any hardened resolutions you may have regarding the preferability of mainstream thought over any other position, or at least that regarding the essentially infallibile nature of mainstream thought. It is often claimed that the opposition has no evidence at all for its claims, and it was my intention to show that this is not so. Furthermore, I would like to point out the role that presuppositions played in this instance. In hindsight, we see that geologists were mistaken for some time because they held onto certain presupposed views through which they interpreted what they found, but these views were not wholly consistent with a true picture of what was going on. We are told that science seeks to lay aside these biases and presuppositions and only look at matters objectively. Aside from the fact that this is very, very hard--because they are hard to find and harder to part with--I would suggest that it is actually impossible. Consider carefully by what means we judge that "objectivity" is a reliable standard, and you may see that this, too, is a presupposition, after a fashion. The goal, then, is not to be as neutral as possible in one's reasoning, as this seems a futile task, but to seek out a right foundation for all other reasoning, and it is in this direction I wish to go.

Omonia to Return

2005-10-14T00:26:00.000-05:00

Omonia should be returning relatively soon.

What About the Aliens?

2005-05-20T04:12:00.000-05:00

In the preceding comments, this question effectively arose: “What about the aliens?”

Well, my answer (for which I was hoping to have provided context before now) is to weigh the issue against Biblical scripture. What we find is that Scripture doesn’t say anything about aliens at all; it’s not even alluded to. This doesn’t discount their existence, but we can conclude the following: It is possible that they do not exist. If they do exist, it has no importance on how we relate to God (since this is what the Bible is about, if it were relevant, it would need to be mentioned). Or, any importance there might be is a natural extension of that which is taught in Scripture. Nam made the excellent point of whether to consider aliens as equally created in the image of God, or if they are lesser beings. The answer can have serious ramifications, but Scripture doesn’t adequately equip us to make that judgment. So aliens are not important in this regard.

Taking a more high-level approach, consider the role of humanity in the world. The Bible declares that we are created in the image of God, and note further that creation culminates with the creation of humanity. The rest of the Bible frames all of history, all of the world, and all of understanding in the context of man and God. Humans have a special importance in the world. For there to be aliens who are equal with us (or greater) would be inconsistent with the way God has revealed our relationship to Him as something special. For there to be aliens that are like plants and animals, they should have some significance to humans. Since in the present state of affairs it is doubtful this could happen, I find it highly doubtful that there is alien life.

I’ve commonly heard the argument that space is too big for there not to be aliens. Genesis 1:14-15 gives us an explanation. “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.’ And it was so.” We see that even though the universe is much bigger than the people inhabiting it, God explains that it is not wasted after all. It has a purpose, and that purpose is for the benefit of us humans. Again, all of creation and history centers around us.

Who Is the Intelligent Designer?

2005-05-10T03:08:00.000-05:00

I would like to return again to defining intelligent design. I mentioned “things in the universe which exhibit a kind of complexity... as though a rational agent had designed it.” So what is a rational agent that could design the world?

Is this agent personal or impersonal? I am thinking of an image which as I recall was attributed to Nietzsche: when men were “primitive,” we were subject to all kinds of impersonal dangers like floods and earthquakes and hurricanes, and there was little we could do about them; we invented the idea of a personal God in order to be able to plead with Him and have a hope of being heard.

An impersonal rational agent seems hardly any different than saying that things evolved by chance, but I think there is a fine distinction which leaves this as an option. Chance is chance, things are as they are but they could have just as easily been otherwise. An impersonal rational agent consists of orderly (rational) rules and directives such that things will happen according to these rules. The design we see is a result of the rules of existence interplaying in such a way that it is orderly. Yet even this formulation of rules seems to be a product of design.

This leads to another consideration. Is the rational agent final? Is the agent the ultimate, transcendental agent which is because it is, or is there another agent that created the first in the same way the first created us? (I mean creation loosely, that it is responsible for our design). Whatever the answer is, the same questions we ask of our creator could be plied in the same way toward the one who created him, or the one who created him, until we find the final cause.

If our immediate creator is a personal agent, we can further ask the question of whether or not there are one or many distinct beings. Not only could there be one agent who created another, but the one may have created many.

In the end it becomes clear that there are a lot of things we could reason about the intelligent designer and not many things we can reason with certainty. I would like to take a step back and consider by what means we can know anything. So far I have been starting with information that is immediately clear to us or that we observe, and using our own reason try to deduce more. We can also learn by being told by one who knows. This latter option is certainly easier, and hopefully more reliable. It seems good, then, to exhaust the possibility of direct information before we resort to unaided reason.

The Relevance of Philosophy

2005-04-27T04:43:00.000-05:00

Over the course of our discussion on evolution and creation, the notion of intelligent design came up, which sounds like a reasonable way to work out all of these differences. Although I don’t think it will be a problem, let me clarify what I mean by intelligent design. Intelligent design is to say that there are things in the universe which exhibit a kind of complexity which is impossible, or at least infeasibly likely, to have come about by any random combination of elements, but appear as though a rational agent had designed it. AnswerinGenesis calls this information; information is inherently rational, and so cannot arise without a rational agent, but it can be lost and it can be reshuffled. This means that horizontal evolution of attributes is possible (and may even be a necessary explanation), but vertical evolution of complexity is not possible.

Once we accept the likelihood that the universe has intelligent design, then the argument has suddenly opened itself up to a lot of philosophical considerations, and it is from here that I would like to proceed. My experience is that a lot of people either cringe or dismiss philosophy as a lot of nonsense which isn’t relevant anyway. That it contains errors and inconsistencies I do not deny, but I challenge the notion that it does not mean anything. Francis Schaeffer’s “Escape from Reason” explains how post-modernism got to be where it is today, and I am going to summarize what he has to say. I strongly recommend reading it, regardless of any interest you may have in philosophy--or read “The God Who Is There”, which seems to cover the same things quickly and then moves further into application.

Western philosophy has been primarily built upon three things: unity, rationalism, and rationality. Note that rationalistic is to rationalism as rational is to rationality, but all four words are not related to the same idea. There is a dividing line, much like Plato’s, between the world of becoming, the particulars, and the world of being, the universals. Schaeffer calls the two realms nature and grace, respectively, and identifies God, heaven, the unseen, and the souls of men as part of grace, and earth, the seen, and men on earth as part of nature. Unity is the desire of philosophers to find a unified system of thought that could encompass both nature and grace. Rationalism is the method of doing so, in which “man begins absolutely and totally from himself, gathers the information concerning the particulars, and formulates the universals.” Rationality is the set of rules by which we apply reason, which is basically logic. It is grounded in the principle of antithesis, that either a statement is true or it is false. For those not familiar with logic, saying something is “partially true” is a semantic convenience. If a statement requires A AND B to be true, and only one of A and B are false, then the statement is necessarily false, but this is less informative than saying it is “partially true.”

The real problem with philosophy is rationalism. It is not that there is anything wrong with deriving understanding from other understanding, but the humanism of rationalism allows that man can discover God by reason alone, starting with himself as the foundation. This will not work, and Schaeffer explains why, but for now let’s assume it will not work. The history of philosophy has been many an attempt to find unity through rationalism, and each succeeding philosopher has thrown down his predecessors’ models with his own, only to have his thrown down later. Existentialism was the breaking point of this trend, in which man (rightly) gave up hope of ever finding unity in this way. Unfortunately, instead of throwing out rationalism, he has thrown out rationality when talking about grace. Without rationality, we can say whatever we want about grace, and there is nothing wrong with it being riddled with self-contradictions. This is how we end up with the silly notion of relativism, saying that one thing is “true for you” and its contrast is “true for me.” Truth has been denied its power of antithesis.

Therefore, I maintain that even though popular thought would have us treat philosophy as non-rational, there is no need to do so, and in fact doing so only lands us in trouble. As such, conclusions about the realm of grace actually mean something. I feel that this notion of intelligent design will be a good way to bridge the chasm in rationalism between man and God. We haven’t fully reasoned that the world is designed by an intelligent being, and I suspect we cannot and believe we do not need to do so. We have only some sort of innate intuition; we must presuppose that there is some intelligence in the realm of grace, and from this starting point I intend to reason further.

More On the Evidences of Origins

2005-04-26T02:17:00.000-05:00

I am glad that Nam mentioned the website http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp. It contains some of the arguments which I made reference to, many more which I have heard in the past, and some that I had never heard before. After reading through that page and looking at some others on the site, I would say that this is a much more reliable and better reasoned source of information than the one I linked to previously.

I have been told about the calculation of the age of the earth using the Biblical genealogies and other Biblical data by James Ussher. In fact, AnswerinGenesis says that this was a commonly held position before Ussher, but Ussher offered the most thorough research behind it; they also say that well-respected figures in the scientific community long after Ussher, like Kepler and Newton, also agreed to this dating. I have not tried to verify that this dating is consistent with Scripture; it certainly seems to be, and I have heard it enough from other respected Christians. Yes, I am of the opinion that this is an appropriate interpretation of the Bible which is at the very least an accurate estimate of the age of the world.

I had not thought of that comparison between the “evidence” of the sun and the “evidence” of radiometric dating, but I am glad you brought that to my attention. It’s sort of a moot point now, since I accept that the sun idea is probably invalid, so it would not be so consistent to say that radiometric dating is also invalid. I would like to point out that AnswerinGenesis also offers the suggestion that radiometric decay may be accelerating at rate which is only now perceptible. Also, both AnswerinGenesis and CreationScience both reiterate that the dating depends on a relatively stable system, but the flood of Noah may offer a sufficient traumatic event to disrupt the stability of the process. This is something of cyclical reasoning, as we are using the Bible to justify the Bible. That’s not inherently incorrect, it just doesn’t prove anything. What it does prove, however, is that it is not inherently inconsistent.

As to the idea of the world being created yesterday, I would like to point out an important flaw in the reasoning Nam made, which is perfectly understandable because it depends on an overlooked distinction. In the model suggested, all of matter, from inanimate rocks and water and air even to biological plants and bodies are created in a state that, observed today, would be indicative of age. What I did not suggest is that a rational soul is being created with an appearance of age (and by soul I only mean something like the Platonic/Aristotelean definiton of the emotion, reason, and volition). Even this point must be further refined, as we assume that Adam and Eve had maturity in knowledge and practical wisdom, at the very least more than an infant would. However, I would say that experientially, they were fully aware of having been “born yesterday,” so to speak. It does not entirely exclude the possibility of recreated memories, but the jump from one to the next is not direct, and doing so requires philosophical considerations which lend themselves to another discussion entirely.

Creationism definitely explains the existence of Whit.

Sadly, I didn’t even arrive at any of the things I really wanted to talk about. I guess I’ll have to postpone them again; this is enough for now. I intend to move away from the topic of creation, but I will be picking up on a point which arose during this discussion.

Reconsideration of Earlier Responses to Evolutionism

2005-04-14T04:53:00.000-05:00

Here are some other common defenses I’ve heard for creationism from a scientific standpoint.

To generalize the application of radiometric dating, take a natural object which is continuously undergoing a constant and predictable natural process of change, a state which is measurable in its present form and which has a well-defined initial state, and by extrapolation it is easy to show how long it would take this natural process to transform an initial state into its current state, therefore we can predict with relative certainty how long ago the initial state occurred. Radiometric dating measures the amount of time between a fossil’s death and its present discovery by the decay of certain isotopes found in the fossil.

What I have heard, however, is that when this same method of extrapolation is applied to other natural processes, the results are not so consistent anymore. For example, I was told that when scientists were first trying to land a person on the moon, they weren’t sure what to expect. The moon’s thin atmosphere allows a lot of space dust to enter into its gravity and settle on the surface without burning up on entry; if the moon is billions of years old like the earth supposedly is (you’ll have to excuse me if I’m using the wrong time frames), then the scientists theorized that the layer of dust on the moon should be very deep. Yet we see that it was only a very thin layer.

More convincingly, consider the sun. Even secular science makes very clear that the balance of the earth with the sun is precariously delicate; if earth’s orbit were just a little different the planet would be uninhabitably hot or cold. Now, the sun has been undergoing fusion and science theorizes that it will eventually burn out. This is extrapolating forward, but what about backwards? Consider that for life to evolve over the past several billion years, the sun would have to maintain its delicate balance all that time to be conducive to life. Yet backwards extrapolation says that the sun should have been too big and bright to support life.

CreationScience also has a theory saying that radioactive decay either isn’t constant or isn’t exponential in its behavior, which of course would explain consistently incorrect values in radiometric dating. Their observation is that repeated laboratory tests of radioactive decay consistently have a margin of error from previous experiments on the side of decay being faster than anticipated, and rarely if ever is decay reported to be slower than it was the last time it was observed. The implication is that, if there is a noticeable change in the decay function over a couple hundred years, imagine how much more pronounced this variation would be over several thousand years.

Another argument that I’ve heard to defend creationism is a simple yet no less important one. Suppose, on the off chance that the universe and everything in it was created some relatively recent time ago by a personal God. Certainly He would be omnipotent, at least insofar as we are concerned, because He would have authority over that which He made, in a similar way that a tinkerer would understand a device that he has built entirely by himself. Since God is omnipotent, there is nothing at all restricting Him from creating a universe which is does not already show “signs” of age. It is in keeping with His character, as Adam and Eve were created as man and woman, not infants, and there would be no vegetation for food if all the trees were still seeds in the ground. It is entirely possible that things like rocks look older than they are because they looked old when they were first created. I’ve heard of this being take to the other extreme, saying that dinosaur fossils were buried in the earth by God at creation “to test our faith.” That lends itself to another discussion entirely, but I will say that I strongly disagree with this view.

I happened upon a web article at NewScientist which talks about 13 things in science that still don’t make sense. Item number 2 has strong connections with the origins of the universe.

I have one consideration which occurred to me as I was being taught evolution. It is quite possible that a thorough investigation would show that it is entirely possible that my point does not necessarily produce a contradiction in evolutionary science, but it’s something to think about. One of the things you learn about in biology is symbiosis and parasitism and one other species relationship whose name I cannot remember. These relationships usually involve two species of very different “complexity” level. That is to say, one should have evolved long before the other did. Yet that is not possible if each depends on the other for its existence. A valid argument would be to say that these creatures evolved after their counterparts in complexity did, so that they evolve together. This would require verification that I can’t provide. It is something to look at in the fossil record, whether or not dependent creatures are indicated as having evolved out of order. For that matter, what about an entire ecosystem, where the relationship is not so direct? The food chain, even? There are so many interrelated dependencies that had to all evolve in exactly the right sequence for it all to fit together the way it does today.

For anyone reading this, I would like to pose one question to you with which to critically examine yourself. If you are wondering whether the universe was created or if it evolved, whether it happened as a statistical chance or if it was divinely guided, examine why you are asking this question. Is it actually in pursuance of truth that you investigate this matter? Perhaps you have made up your mind about God already, and you are simply trying to find some way to rationalize your opinion. Perhaps it is an idle question, and you are not prepared to accept the consequences from one of these positions being true. If what you really want to know is more about God, does He exist or not, and who is He if he does, then I would invite you not to spend too much time deliberating over scientific findings. While they can and must be supportive of the truth, it is not sufficient to convince on such an infinite matter. Assuming evolution is no longer a pressing topic, I will elaborate on this bold statement next time.

Answering Questions about Evolutionism

2005-04-09T01:41:00.000-05:00

Well, it's a good start that you agree with everything that I said. However, you are correct that I did not say anything directly contradictory to what you had said. When I started, I expected to say more, and I also meant to suggest that the information on that site seems reasonable, and hopefully you will notice that the sum of everything said there conflicts with your own conclusions on at least some level. Furthermore, what I intended to show was that the methods described are not sufficient, nor perhaps even adequate, to lead to your conclusions.

I am glad that you cleared that up about carbon dating, I had forgotten that distinction. As to the story about the cat, I understand exactly that radiometric dating is imprecise; in fact I tried to say that in my story, however I guess I wasn’t clear. I don’t know the exact numbers, but let’s suppose that radiometric dating is accurate to within 100 thousand years. Since the cat was buried extremely recently, one would expect radiometric dating to place it within at least the last 200 thousand years. However, the results were not that way; say it came to a million or so years. This was the kind of error demonstrated by the example of the cat.

I would also like to respond to some of Nam’s Answers to creationscience.com

QUESTION
Where has macroevolution ever been observed?

ANSWER
[Humans don't live long enough to observe such things.]

Exactly. If you want to tout empiricism as the exclusive standard for measuring truth (not saying that you are, but some might), you are going to have to accept the fact that you cannot empirically prove evolution. Or creation, for that matter. It should still be possible to discern beyond a reasonable doubt, as we do with the study of history, but the way we approach these disciplines are not exactly the same.

QUESTION

All species appear fully developed, not partially developed…

ANSWER

Don't disregard the existence of vestigial structures…

Vestigial structures may not be as “vestigial” as they first appear. It was long believed that the human appendix was a useless organ (hence the name), and was perhaps even a vestigial organ, but last I heard recent studies suspect it may assist with the immune system. Even if we accept that these members are vestigial, it still does not fully answer their question. If a leg is to evolve into a wing, evolution says that this must happen very gradually over many generations. For each of these generations to exist, the previous generation must also be able to be a viable creature and survive to reproduce consistently. Every intermediate step was a viable creature, and so it seems that this relatively smooth continuum should continue to exist along with the end points of legs and wings. At best, we observe some fluctuation around the end points.

You could also argue that the intermediate steps are viable creatures, but the endpoints are more viable than the intermediates, better able to survive, and so the intermediates died out for their inability to compete.

QUESTION

Do you realize how complex living things are? …

ANSWER

[I must accuse the questioner of going off topic here...

If our intention is to focus entirely on the science of evolution or creation, then I would have to agree that this is off topic. It is very much a philosophical question to pose. Nevertheless, I said before that we can’t verify macro-evolution strictly empirically. Intelligent design is fundamentally a philosophical question, however studying biology and the origins of life are probably the best places to notice evidence for or against intelligent design.

You will hear many Christians use intelligent design as an argument in support of creation. It is an important issue that must be dealt with at some point. There are many Christians who acknowledge the existence of God and His role in intelligent design, yet still maintain that the universe evolved. This has other serious philosophical and theological ramifications that also must be dealt with.

QUESTION

3. If macroevolution happened, where are the billions of transitional fossils that should be there?...

ANSWER

[ There are many factors that go into making a fossil and having it survive preserved well enough for us to find today...

This sounds like a reasonable point. I still maintain that, even if the fossil record is broken due to complications in the fossilization process, it still seems that the creatures present today should also exhibit this same continuum in a much smoother way. A theory which I’ve often heard to explain the separation of fossils, which is on creationscience--although I don’t know how convincing it really is--is to say that they settle over time, sorting themselves by relative size. Looking again, I see they have a theory of liquefaction which seems more adequate than the basic understanding I had before.

What I would like to do at this point is raise my own questions or observations for you to consider, rather than always responding to what you have to say. However, I think this is enough for now.

Some Responses to Evolutionary Thought

2005-04-05T03:48:00.000-05:00

Nam brought up the topic of evolution for discussion on his site. I decided it would be an appropriate thing to have here.

I agree completely that micro-evolution is an accepted phenomenon, and that is not worth discussing. I'm glad we can begin with this distinction in mind. I have actually heard a fair amount of information regarding support for creationism vs. support for evolution. I would recommend reading through the chapters found at this website: http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ I wouldn't call it a final answer, but it's a good start.

As a general rule, I would not recommend using televangelists as a standard of measure for Christian thought on science, or even a standard for Christian doctrine.

I’ve been told a few times that carbon-dating has been applied to objects which we can date by its historical context. The numbers are usually off significantly, but on a granularity that’s still reasonable for the time scale being proposed. I have this story to add to that, but I must first qualify it. I do not remember who told it to me, but it was a peer of mine, not a scientific authority (of course, he was telling me as having heard from some other source, and supposedly the original source of information was someone reputable). I’ve only heard it once, so it’s not well substantiated. The details of the story have escaped me, so all I can relate is the basic idea. In short, take this with a grain of salt. I heard that someone carbon-dated the remains of a house cat which was caught in the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The actual time of the death of the cat would obviously be well-known, but the results of the dating were inconsistent--on a scale that is unacceptable for the present applications of carbon-dating. The reason suggested is that something about the way in which it was buried changed the characteristics of the corpse.

Radiometric dating rests upon two assumptions, really. The first is that the process of radioactive decay occurs at a rate which is a consistent function--exponential—and has always been this way. This is what Nathan Walker challenged. It is unreasonable to assume that carbon, or any other natural process, would just suddenly "be different" permanently. However, there may be external conditions which affect radioactive decay which are not eternally consistent. The second assumption is the make-up of the fossil being dated when it was first fossilized. Perhaps the make-up of the creature was different than expected, or perhaps something traumatic happened to alter its make-up, as in the case of the buried cat. These are hypotheticals which may be unlikely and only serve to cast doubt on a method regarded as absolutely reliable. It disproves nothing.

There are some who would say that it doesn’t much matter to the Christian faith whether the world was created or evolved; many others make cases for macro-evolution as part of God’s direction. I noticed this verse in the Bible once: "But a witless man can no more become wise than a wild donkey’s colt can be born a man." (Job 11:12) I know that evolutionists would never suggest such a radical jump in a single generation, but it seems to treat the notion that a creature can bear anything other than its own kind as ridiculous. My observation is extremely incidental to the point of the passage, but you can still glean a general attitude toward the matter. This, of course, is in addition to the direct commands by God in Genesis 1 for plants to multiply "according to their kinds" and a repeated insistence on the creation of all other living creatures according to their kinds.

Furthermore, I was made aware of another important point. I’m a fan of the ApologetiX, a sort of Christian version of Weird Al Yankovich. In one of their songs "The Real Sin Savior" (after Eminem’s "The Real Slim Shady"), some lines go: "And if we're monkeys you might as well forget original sin!" Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden cannot be thought of as a single, historical event within the context of evolutionary origins. At best, it is a symbolic metaphor describing human nature as it inherently is. One’s view of original sin has radical consequences on how one interprets a lot of other doctrine as well. It does matter what you think.