Real Science

There is a common myth that 99.9% of people fall for in regards to Science. It is the difference between ‘observational’ science, and ‘historical’ science. The two are qualitatively and fundamentally different, and acceptance of this is critical.

‘Observational’ science is the real science, it is the science where you can actually test hypothesises like the spherical nature of earth for example. The object of this hypothesis is an extant factor, this means that we can go out and make verifiable measurements as to the nature of the earth. We can measure angles and actually fly totally around the longitude and latitude lines of the earth. This can be tested and verified both others at any later time.

But ‘historical’ science is qualitatively different. It is an interloper, it barely qualifies as science at all. This sounds harsh, radical and almost heretical to those who haven’t pondered the philosophy of science before.

The fact is that nothing in the past is verifiable, especially events that are prior to the historical record. How can we observe the emplacement of fossils to test the creation or evolution hypothesises? The deposition of fossils occurred in the past, and the past is a place that is impenetrable to observation. So if data is unobservable, then it isn’t verifiable and thus can not be considered science.

We can certainly speculate using the scientific method by examining data like fossils which themselves are extant and therefore verifiable. But any speculation as to the origins of the fossils is totally outside the realm of the scientific method.

The scientific method is only a very narrowly useful tool. It’s power as a explanatory device is prodigious when it is used appropriately within it’s purview, but we must be careful not to extend it’s use to outside natural bounds and try and use it like a omniscient fountain of knowledge.

Darwinism a la Geocentrism

In a strange case of history repeating, the whole debate about origins seems to quite neatly align with another old debate about nature; the workings of the solar system.

Aristotle’s geocentric model of the universe was rather simplistic in that it assumed that all the celestial bodies moved in a uniform circular path around earth. While the retrograde motions of the planets were certainly known to Aristotle, he had no way to incorporate it into his model.

It wasn’t until Apollonius and Hipparchus came on the scene that the idea of epicycles was injected into Aristotle’s model to make it fit the actual observations. When Ptolemy came along, he took the idea of epicycles to a whole new level, compounding epicycles upon epicycles in a desperate effort to make the Aristotelian model fit observations.

It wasn’t until Copernicus and Kepler finally came upon the scene that the whole Aristotelian system was thrown out in favor of a totally new, and far more accurate, model; heliocentrism.

We can see in this whole narrative some quite striking parallels with the current debate over origins:

Darwin’s evolutionary model of the origins of the species is rather simplistic in that it assumes that all species evolved from one common ancestor by only a natural process. While problems were well known to Darwin such as a lack of model for the origin of the first life-form; lack of transitional fossils; and known limits to genetic change in breeding, he had no way to incorporate these into his model.

Intelligent Designist’s eventually came on the scene and injected the ‘god of the gaps’ idea into Darwinism in a desperate effort to make the Darwinian model fit observations.

It wasn’t until Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb Jr. finally came on the scene that the whole Darwinian system was thrown out in favour of the new, and far more accurate model of Biblical Creationism (or Young Earth Creationism).

The overturning of the Aristotelian model in favour of heliocentrism was a long drawn out and tortured affair. The stalwarts of the old model simply didn’t want to let it go and thus admit that they were totally wrong. They used every tactic in the book to stall the rise of the new model, even the highest powers in the land resorted to ‘roughhousing’ tactics.

It took the compounding of evidence and the slow dying off of the ‘old guard’ before the revolution truly took over.

The same is certainly true of today’s origins debate. The adherents of the old Darwinian model of origins are just as stubborn and dogmatic as the old geocentrists. Darwinists are demoting or sacking those in academic circles who disagree with them, even resorting to the courts in a desperate attempt to stall the rise of Biblical creationism.

But just as the ‘old guard’ was unable to stem the rise of revolutionary heliocentrism, the evidence against evolution is mounting, the evolutionary dogmatists are aging and the tide is inexorably turning in favour of the new revolution; Young-Earth Biblical Creationism.

The Secular State and Religion in the Classroom

It is a common claim charged against creationists that they want their theory of creationism taught in schools. This then, it is claimed by creationist’s critics, would violate the main premise of the secular state; the separation of church and state, or the favouring or discrimination against any one particular religion.

But it seems to me that the very action of forbidding creationism from even discussion in the classroom is itself such a violation. It also seems that forcing evolutionism down the throats to teachers and students is also a violation because the state is choosing which worldview is or isn’t to be taught.

Casey Luskin explains all this in the article linked to below, here is a brief excerpt:

A “Supreme Court decision described the rule that “government should not prefer one religion to another” as “a principle at the heart of the Establishment Clause.”8 Yet it is this very principle that some latter-day defenders of Darwin would disregard in their zealous advocacy for evolution education.

“In the public controversy over evolution, the common stereotype holds that Darwin’s defenders are the ones guarding public school curricula against unconstitutional entanglement with religion. The evidence cited in this Article shows this stereotype is wrong: Zeal for Darwin causes his latter-day defenders to encourage public schools to attack, inhibit, oppose, and disapprove of purported religious views that dissent from evolution, and to prefer both theistic and non-theistic religious viewpoints that support evolution. The hypocrisy of the evolution lobby is untenable, for it will lead to violations of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unequivocal ban on “denominational preference” in public schools.”

To set the record straight, creationists aren’t concerned with making teachers teach creationism in the classroom. Making teachers, who have a very poor grasp of creationism, teach creationism would more than likely do far more harm than good.

Instead what creationists would rather see in the science classroom is that both teachers and students be able to discuss, without fear of chastisement, any theory of origins like creationism as long as the questions and answers are scientifically orientated.

But unfortunately at the moment there are so many cases where students are ridiculed by their teachers for raising such honest questions, and even teachers are sacked or demoted for not adhering to the hardnosed evolutionary dogma.

It is truly a sad day when free inquiry in our education centres is so severely restricted. It reminds me of the type of intellectual control that Soviet Russia had on it’s places of learning.

ZEAL FOR DARWIN’S HOUSE CONSUMES THEM:
HOW SUPPORTERS OF EVOLUTION ENCOURAGE VIOLATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE

By Casey Luskin

Atheism, Creationism and a Conflict of Interest

Atheistic naturalists are inherently incapable of critiquing any theory which presupposes miraculous events. This is for the same reason of judicial 'conflict of interest'.






Suppose an accused man was brought before a judge who was his father. If the judge insisted on presiding over the accused he would be forced to step down from the case because of an obvious conflict of interest. The reason this is so is because the accused is likely to be benefited by the judge’s predisposition towards favouring him due to their special relationship. Thus, the judge has an ineradicable favouring towards the accused, therefore the outcome is quite likely to be skewed.

The same is true of atheistic naturalists who wish to pass judgement over creationism.





The most foundation axiom for the atheist is that supernatural events do not exist, and as such the ‘supernatural’ is totally excluded from even consideration. This means that their starting assumption - there is no supernatural events – conflicts with the task at hand - critiquing creationism - because creationism presupposes supernatural events as an axiom of it's model of origins.





The fact that the atheist has an ineradicable disposition against creationism means that his conclusion will be highly skewed; the atheist has a substantial conflict of interest when discussing creationism.

YEC, ID and the God of the Gaps

Atheist Fairytales

The ‘God of the Gaps’ idea (hereafter abbreviated as gotg) is commonly used as a disparaging epithet against anyone who denies that only natural causes have been in effect in the universe’s history. Wikipedia defines it as:

“a view of God as existing in the "gaps" or aspects of reality that are currently unexplained by scientific knowledge, or that otherwise lack a plausible natural explanation….a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena for which science has yet to give a satisfactory account.” [Emphasis added]

I will ignore the non-sequitur logical fallacy of the gotg argument that, just because you can imagine a plausible natural explanation for an event in the past doesn’t mean that it actually occurred that way. Instead I want to focus on it’s common application to the two worldviews of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) and the Intelligent Design movement (ID).

It seems to me that the idea of filling the explanatory gaps in the naturalist theory of origins with ‘god did it’ is most applicable to ID. To explain why this is so, a brief explanation of what ID is, is necessary. Wikipedia defines ID as the:

“proposition that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”

This means that ID basically accepts every single part of the atheistic model of evolutionary origins, except where atheistic evolution fails to explain how something happened, like the commonly cite bacterial flagellum. So whenever naturalism fails to provide a plausible explanation of how something could have occurred naturally, ID says “god did it” (or to be more accurate: “a designer did it”). So we see that the definition of what ID is, inherently includes the essential logic of the ‘God of the Gaps’ idea.

YEC on the other hand, rejects all forms of evolution (be it atheistic, theistic, deistic etc) totally and utterly. YEC has a totally different model for the origin of life. It completely rejects the idea that all life has commonly descent from bacteria via any form of evolution. YEC rejects the theory that all life has a common ancestry as merely a figment of the imagination, and as a false interpretation of the empirical data that the earth’s rocks provide.

I would consider YEC immune from the gotg allegation, as opposed to ID (or any other variation of theistic naturalism), because YEC doesn’t actually attempt to insert supernaturalism in the gaps of the atheistic framework, but inserts supernaturalism in place of the whole atheistic framework itself!

Thus, if the YEC theory rejects the actual whole fractured framework of evolution, than any accusation that the YEC theory is a gotg type theory is inapplicable since the YEC model rejects the actual framework and thus the gaps that gotg thinking is employed to plug.

Because of this rejection of the atheistic evolution of all species, and the rejection of the corollary gaps in the model that ID tries to fill, YEC is free to interpret nature through supernatural means, immune to the gotg epithet.

It is for this reason that YEC avoids the whole gotg trap that ID inherently falls head-first into.

Interpreting Scripture

It is generally agreed by laymen and Biblical scholars alike that the best way to interpret the meaning of Scripture is to compare it to itself (that is, cross-referencing with itself), and that a good rule is that the Bible should be taken as literal unless it obviously means otherwise, as is obviously the case with Psalms or Revelations.


Yet when the topic of Creation and the Flood is discussed, the rules suddenly change and we are told that Scripture should also be interpreted by "science" whenever the two disagree.



Essentially what is implied-consciously or not- is that the Christian worldview is to be subordinate to all other worldviews, particularly the currently reigning secular worldview. Whenever there is a disagreement between these two, the Bible is always the one that is reinterpreted. It is claimed that the “science” of the secular worldview is the acme of human knowledge and as such all other forms of knowledge must be subservient.



But what is meant by the term 'science'? It seems that the two terms ‘science’ and ‘naturalistic evolution’ are used synonymously. It is certainly true that most of the public have the fallacious impression that ‘science’ inherently means naturalistic evolution to the exclusion of all other worldviews such as YEC, OLC, theistic evolution etc. And vice versa it is believed that naturalistic evolution has exclusive rights over the term ‘science’, to the exclusion of all other worldviews (Hence why so many religious people feel compelled to reject all ‘science’ outright; they wrongly think that in order to reject evolution they must also reject ‘science’).

Science certainly is a powerful explanatory tool for acquiring knowledge. Therefore because naturalistic evolution claims exclusive rights over ‘science’ it is wrongly assumed that ‘naturalistic evolution’ must similarly be regarded as just as powerful and authoritative by synonymous association alone. Thus, it is claimed that the philosophical worldview of naturalism must be the rule to which all other worldviews conform.

It is for this reason alone that the Biblical account of origins is demanded by secularists to be subservient and must genuflect to their own worldview of naturalistic evolution.





What secularists are erroneously claiming is that any Biblical idea that conflicts with science is wrong.

But what they really mean is that any Biblical idea that conflicts with their philosophy of naturalism is wrong! It has NOTHING to do with science at all!



But what mus be remembered is that science is rather like statistics; you can pick or ignore whatever pieces of science that you like to suit whatever worldview you like; YEC, OEC, IDism, theistic evolution, deistic evolution, atheistic evolution etc, the fact is that ALL worldviews have some sort of science behind them.



So in the end we see that scientific evidence actually does comport with Scripture-rather; it is only the philosophical worldview of naturalistic evolution that does not fit with Scripture. And considering that it was originally designed to oppose the Biblical model, the fact that the two conflict should come as no surprise to anyone.

The conflict is not between ‘science’ vs the Bible at all. Instead the real conflict is between the worldviews of naturalism vs the Bible, as well as between naturalistic science vs Biblical science.



So what Christians are actually doing when trying to compromise the Bible with evolution is making the Bible subservient to the most popular worldview of today in a vain attempt to avoid embarrassment in the face of ungodly man, rather than being concerned with truth in the face of God.



Should the perspicacious Word of God really be subservient to the capricious vogue of man?

Man and Dinosaurs Together?

Can you spot the Dinosaur in this ancient carving?

One contentious facet of Young Earth Creationism is the belief that humans walked the earth with dinosaurs only 4000 years ago.



This belief is rubbished by evolutionists because it is in complete contradiction with their own beliefs. They believe that dinosaurs ceased to exist over 65 million years ago.

They come to this conclusion because their interpretation of the earth’s rocks shows no fossilised dinosaurs which is dated by radiometric dating methods to be younger than 65 million years.

The dating methods that produce these dates are not the topic of this particular article, and have been adequately refuted many times by others.



The reason why this logic is fundamentally flawed is that it relies on the absence of evidence, rather than the presence of evidence. This is a logical fallacy called an Argument from Ignorance.





Even if we accept their false dates for the sake of the argument (which I will for this article), the absence of fossils from a certain period of hypothetical time does not mean that that particular animal did not live at that particular time.

Three basic ways that a species of animal could be alive and not leave fossils is if 1) it moved to an environment where the fossilization process just didn’t occur. 2) a species population size temporarily and dramatically decreased to a size where fossilization would never occur. Or 3) we just haven’t found any fossils yet! Remember that palaeontologists have only dug a few miniscule little holes when compared to the vast volumes of fossil-laden soils of the earth’s surface.



But what is even more significant is that even according to the evolutionist’s own models, it is incontrovertibly accepted that species routinely lived for vast amounts of time without ever leaving even a hint of fossil evidence!
Some gaps are so large that when put in context of the whole fossil record, the gaps turn into vast chasms, some as large as three quarters of the whole fossil record!





The fact is that, even assuming the corrupt radiometric dates of the theory of evolution for arguments sake, if the fossil record fails to record the existence of a species for such vast amounts of time, then how can we trust the alleged finely graduated sequence of evolution that is claimed of the fossil record?

Similarly, how can we really trust that dinosaurs haven’t been on earth in the last 65 million years (assuming the evolutionist’s theory) based on an absence of fossils, when other species are claimed by evolutionists to live for hundreds of millions of years without leaving any fossil evidence at all???







So when all this is combined with the corrupt dates ascribed to the fossils, we have even more reason to disregard the alleged evolutionary history as nothing more than dubious speculation.

And no amount of dubious speculation, no matter how frequently and dogmatically parroted, will ever match the veracity of the clear and omniscient word of God.

Evolutionist and Creationist Science

http://www.nwcreation.net/intro.html

 "Science is wedded, at least in principle, to the evidence. Creationism is unabashedly wedded to doctrine "

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cre-error.html

Contrary to this quote, both are wedded to evidence as well as to doctrine. Creationism is wedded to the biblical doctrine of origins, while naturalistic evolution is in turn wedded to naturalistic philosophy.

Note also here, that secular naturalists will usually glorify themselves by adopting the term ‘science’ as the title of their worldview.

Science is only a dispassionate method of investigation though, but they use it interchangeably with ‘evolution’, as if they were one in the same. But evolution is only a model of origins-like creationism- which uses the method of science.



Both evolution and creationism are worldviews that are imposed upon the scientific method to discern events in the past.

Evolutionists try to hide this fact but highlighting their adherence to the scientific method, while hiding the creationist’s use of it. At the same time they hide their philosophical adherence to their doctrine of naturalism, while highlighting the creationist’s adherence to design.



The fact is that creationists are the only ones who are up front about their model of origins. They are quite happy to show that their scientific investigation is guided by the Biblical doctrine of design.

Evolutionist’s on the other hand, go to great lengths to hide the fact that they too are guided by a philosophical doctrine; naturalism. If pressed hard enough, and the questioner isn’t tricked by their many diversionary tactics, educated evolutionists will admit their adherence to naturalism, albeit very begrudgingly.