No PhD Needed

[MathGeek]

Even with a rather literal reading, a number of assumptions and additional steps of logic are needed to assign an age to the earth. To me, the more direct and supportable conclusions a literal reading gives are a six day creation, the absence of death before the fall of man, and the creation of man and woman at the beginning of creation.

Understanding the conflicts between these aspects of a literal reading of the Biblical texts with modern secular consensus is not a task for a few sentences in an internet forum. Send me an email request, and I'll send along the 10 page paper my wife and I co-authored on the topic some time back. Michael_Courtney@alum.mit.edu

The main points ideas center around two points:

1) The application of methodological naturalism assumes that the laws of nature are constant. Since miracles and supernatural events are assumed by the method not to occur, any claim that the method has invalidated a specific claim of a supernatural event (Biblical creation) has made a circular argument, which is a fallacy.

2) Operational science describes the laws of nature and is subject to the tests of repeatable experiment. Questions of what happened in the past are more properly questions of history rather than natural science. Redefining the subjects as science rather than history gives greater weight to a naturalistic interpretation of the physical evidence (with a method that assumes miracles do not occur) than to the eyewitness testimony and documentary evidence commonly admitted when questions are recognized as historical.

The 10 page paper is titled, "Faith and Science: Debunking the Myth that Science Disproves the Bible" and while it neither proves nor demands a literal interpretation of the Biblical texts regarding creation, it does present a framework which allows them to be preserved without any contradiction by secular consensus or modern science.

[Baychamp1]

Originally Posted by MathGeek

Even with a rather literal reading, a number of assumptions and additional steps of logic are needed to assign an age to the earth. To me, the more direct and supportable conclusions a literal reading gives are a six day creation, the absence of death before the fall of man, and the creation of man and woman at the beginning of creation.

Understanding the conflicts between these aspects of a literal reading of the Biblical texts with modern secular consensus is not a task for a few sentences in an internet forum. Send me an email request, and I'll send along the 10 page paper my wife and I co-authored on the topic some time back. Michael_Courtney@alum.mit.edu

The main points ideas center around two points:

1) The application of methodological naturalism assumes that the laws of nature are constant. Since miracles and supernatural events are assumed by the method not to occur, any claim that the method has invalidated a specific claim of a supernatural event (Biblical creation) has made a circular argument, which is a fallacy.

2) Operational science describes the laws of nature and is subject to the tests of repeatable experiment. Questions of what happened in the past are more properly questions of history rather than natural science. Redefining the subjects as science rather than history gives greater weight to a naturalistic interpretation of the physical evidence (with a method that assumes miracles do not occur) than to the eyewitness testimony and documentary evidence commonly admitted when questions are recognized as historical.

The 10 page paper is titled, "Faith and Science: Debunking the Myth that Science Disproves the Bible" and while it neither proves nor demands a literal interpretation of the Biblical texts regarding creation, it does present a framework which allows them to be preserved without any contradiction by secular consensus or modern science.

In my simple mind the theory that masses of rock & gases collided randomly and created a perfect planet which sustains animal, plant and human life perfectly, debunks the scientific non believers. Challenge them to go to church, read the bible and actively seek the Holy Spirit, and we'll see who changes their mind.

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by Baychamp1

In my simple mind the theory that masses of rock & gases collided randomly and created a perfect planet which sustains animal, plant and human life perfectly, debunks the scientific non believers. Challenge them to go to church, read the bible and actively seek the Holy Spirit, and we'll see who changes their mind.

Agreed.

[Smalls]

Originally Posted by Baychamp1

In my simple mind the theory that masses of rock & gases collided randomly and created a perfect planet which sustains animal, plant and human life perfectly, debunks the scientific non believers. Challenge them to go to church, read the bible and actively seek the Holy Spirit, and we'll see who changes their mind.

My question though is how does it debunk them? A theory is something can be proven or disproven. Can this be proven or disproven?

I'm catholic. I believe in the creation story, but not because it could be proven. I believe it because that is my faith. I also believe evolution is a real thing. Evolution, in my opinion, is a tool of God. For what purpose? Maybe so that his creation will adapt and survive.

But I'm not sure we will ever be able to prove, one way or another, how the world was made. Everything we have is "theory", which I think is using the term a bit loosely, because it implies that it can proven or disproven. Can any of them be proven? Or do we just believe in what we believe is the truth?

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[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by Smalls

My question though is how does it debunk them? A theory is something can be proven or disproven. Can this be proven or disproven?

There are different kinds of levels of proof and disproof. For example, most scientist and engineers are familiar with means, standard deviations, and p-values. If a theory makes a quantitative prediction of the value of an outcome, and an experiment measures that outcome a number of times with a mean value and a standard deviation, the mean value being 2 standard deviations away from the outcome has disproven the theory with a 97% confidence level. Suppose the theory predicts average global temperatures to rise by 3 degrees over a specified time. If the measured temperatures have risen 2 degrees +/- 0.5 degrees, then the prediction is off by twice the uncertainty in the measurement. This allows a confidence level to be ascribed to a claim of disproof, but it is not absolute certainty.

Other claims can also be debunked more qualitatively, akin to Mythbusters' use of their three outcomes: Busted, Plausible, and Confirmed.

Originally Posted by Baychamp1

In my simple mind the theory that masses of rock & gases collided randomly and created a perfect planet which sustains animal, plant and human life perfectly, debunks the scientific non believers. Challenge them to go to church, read the bible and actively seek the Holy Spirit, and we'll see who changes their mind.

I agree with Baychamp that the claims that a planet perfectly suitable for life assembled from rocks and gases has been debunked by qualitative considerations about its unlikeliness. "Busted." The original scientific claim is captured in the "nebular hypothesis" originally put forward in 1755 by Immanuel Kant. It has never found enough evidentiary support to be called a theory. It only persists, because all the other naturalistic theories for the formation of the earth and solar system have failed more spectacularly.