| more flap about creationism (part 1) | | Date Created: Apr 03, 2006, 09:26 PM |
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| Here goes all my street cred. Here's an issue where the Archbishop of Canterbury and Jason Clark are in agreement and who do I side with? George W. Bush. Humiliation. But here's the thing. People are saying that we shouldn't even mention Intelligent Design or Creationism in Science class, because it ain't scientific. It doesn't come out of the scientific model and thus isn't a scientific theory. |
 If you think that, you need to hand in your Mr Science badge. Here's one of the basic things about science (JB Torrance taught me this phrasing of it): It is the nature of the object you wish to study that determines the modes and methods for investigating it. When we guessed out that those star things might be giving off radio signals as well as bright light, should we have blocked the building of radio telescopes because only optical telescopes are scientific!? Similarly, if you think that you can only investigate the origin of the universe by investigating through closed-loop cause and effect mechanics, then you have already decided something you have no grounds for deciding: you've decided that the origin of the universe happened in a closed-loop cause and effect mechanical way. Now the jury's still out: that may be true. But it ain't scientific to decide it just because so much other stuff turned out that way, just because it's more reasonable. That's not what science should be; that's fashion. (See Thomas Kuhn)
The Genesis narratives allow for an awful lot of stuff to happen in a closed-loop cause and effect mechanical way: 'Let the earth bring forth X, Y and Z after their own kind.' But it also has some stuff that was different -- that he created himself rather than calling the earth to bring forth: 'Let there be light,' and the intervention into humanity: 'Let Us make human beings...' If it's rational to believe in a God, then it's rational to believe in a God who really did create some stuff ex nihilo. And if it's possible that it really happened that way, then to define science in such a way that rules out mentally exploring what that might have been like is simply unscientific. |
| I don't know for sure how it all happened. One thing I do know for sure, though, when you've got a system where you're not allowed to say 'Maybe it happened like this....' you've not really got a properly scientific system. If you think about it in a way that doesn't evolve the emotive subject of religion, you wouldn't do it. You'd never have graduated to quantum physics that way, my friend, it's just billiard balls all the way back. Because, hey, the indeterminacy principle just isn't physics, cats or no cats (or both). |
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