Let me start by saying how much I’ve appreciated this dialog! I’ve learned a great deal about being able to give an answer; to defend a position logically, intelligently and yet still passionately. Like the Bi . .I mean, like an ancient book of practical wisdom says, “Iron sharpens iron” and you guys have done that for me. You’ve encouraged me to go outside what I knew (or thought I knew) to find clearly defined meaning not just opinion!
Like I said, I am a layman. I have a somewhat basic understanding of the inner-workings of our universe and the wonders contained within. I cannot argue the finer points of the Theory of Relativity or the varying speeds of light bands over distance and time. I have an equally basic understanding of biblical doctrinal theology, but would find myself lost in a debate over predestination or the Trinity.
What I am primarily concerned with are the principles behind the whole debate. Why is science accepted as fact and religion dismissed as myth? And when I went searching for the definitions . the primary foundations . of these terms and then applied them to what I knew, it seemed obvious to me that both creation and big bang stemmed from the term theory . a guess . a supposition . and that by subscribing to EITHER theory required FAITH; Faith in the theory to be correct, Faith that any unanswered questions would be forthcoming and fully supportive of the initial theory, Faith that says we’re on the right track to discovery.
I said that a theory of the origin of the universe was, by definition, a religion.
I said that both theories of the origin of the universe were untested.
You challenged the notion of untested. So I went in search of how to say exactly what I mean. I found this out:
Many words have changed their meanings over time. The word ”science’ originally meant ”knowledge’, from the Latin scientia, from scio meaning ”know’. This original meaning is just not the way it is used today, it is linguistically fallacious to claim that even now, ”science really means knowledge’, because meaning is determined by usage, not derivation (etymology). A lot of this is semantic word-play, and depends on how the matter is defined, and for what purpose the definition is raised.
Ok, so I need to be precise in how I define the word science and make sure of that when I say Big Bang is not a SCIENCE.
You also challenged my statement of “backward reasoning.” (studying A,B,C to formulate D and then using D to support A,B,C)
So I found this:
There are many areas of life in which circularity and truth go hand in hand
(e.g. What is electric charge? That quality of matter on which an electric field acts. What is an electric field? A region in space that exerts a force on electric charge. But no one would claim that the theory of electricity is thereby invalid and can’t explain how motors work.) ” it is only that circularity cannot be used as independent proof of something.
Ok, so it wasn’t “backward reasoning” I wanted to say . it was circular reasoning. I found out that circular reasoning used in Big Bang science doesn’t make the science invalid, it means that it cannot be used as independent proof of the initial singularity of the universe.
You challenge my definition of the term theory. I said it was a guess; a word which has a tendency to reflect back a meaning of “unsubstantiated.” You said there were all kinds of definitive tests and sound mathematics that were able to be quantified.
So I found this:
“Evolution is just a theory.” What people usually mean when they say this is ”Evolution is not proven fact, so it should not be promoted dogmatically.’ Therefore people should say that. The problem with using the word ”theory’ in this case is that scientists use it to mean a well-substantiated explanation of data. This includes well-known ones such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Newton’s Theory of Gravity, and lesser-known ones such as the Debye-Hckel Theory of electrolyte solutions and the Deryagin-Landau/Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory of the stability of lyophobic sols, etc. It would be better to say that particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture.
Ok, so a better way of saying what I intended would be that Big Bang/Evolution are not proven fact and should not be promoted as such. I should have clearly differentiated between data collection and data interpretation. Much of the information we receive in science class in school is merely the researchers’ interpretations . without data or alternative views and even the scientists use interpretations and conclusions to bolster arguments rather than going back to the data for support for ideas.
Then, further research into this whole circular reasoning thing brought me to an article that made it all very clear! I’ve included pieces of it. But before you read it, just remember . the whole point of this topic was NOT if Big Bang/Evolution science data was correct, nor was it if the Biblical account of creation was correct . .the whole point was that the TWO THEORIES SHOULD BE EQUALLY CLASSIFIED AS RELIGIONS based on present definitions. And then, consequently, why IS one a science and the other a religion?
It’s not science’
by Don Batten
Anti-creationists . by definition, commonly object that creation is religion and evolution is science. To defend this claim they will cite a list of criteria that define a ”good scientific theory’. A common criterion is:
” the bulk of modern day practicing scientists must accept it as valid science.
” the ability of a theory to make predictions that can be tested.
Many attempts to define ”science’ are circular. The point that a theory must be acceptable to contemporary scientists to be acceptable, basically defines science as ”what scientists do’!
The definition of ”science’ has haunted philosophers of science in the 20th century. The earlier approach of Bacon, who is considered the founder of the scientific method, was pretty straightforward:
observation ’ induction ’ hypothesis ’ test hypothesis by experiment ’ proof/disproof ’ knowledge.
Of course this, and the whole approach to modern science, depends on two major assumptions: causality and induction.
Perceptions and bias
The important question is not ”Is it science?’ We can just define ”science’ to exclude everything that we don’t like. Today, science is equated with naturalism: only materialistic notions can be entertained, no matter what the evidence. Our individual worldviews bias our perceptions.
The atheist paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, made the following candid observation:
”Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective “scientific method”, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology.’2
The prominent evolutionist Professor Richard Lewontin said:
”We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’1
Many scientists are so philosophically and theologically ignorant that they don’t even realize that they have these metaphysical assumptions. Being like a frog in the warming water, many do not even notice that there are philosophical assumptions at the root of much that passes as ”science’. It’s part of their own worldview, so they don’t even notice.
We recognize that a philosophy of life does not come from the data, but rather the philosophy is brought to the data and used in interpreting it.
So the fundamentally important question is, ”which worldview (bias) is correct?’, because this will determine the correctness of the conclusions from the data.
Of course the founders of modern science were not materialists (Newton, widely considered the greatest scientist ever, is a prime example) and they did not see their science as somehow excluding a creator, or even making the Creator redundant. This recent notion has been smuggled into science by materialists.
Michael Ruse, the Canadian philosopher of science also made the strong point that the issue is not whether evolution is science and creation is religion, because such a distinction is not really valid. The issue is one of ”coherency of truth’. In other words, there is no logically valid way that the materialist can define evolution as ”science’ and creation as ”religion’, so that he/she can ignore the issue of creation.
A valid distinction
However, we can make a valid distinction between different types of science: the distinction between origins science and operational science. Operational science involves discovering how things operate in today’s Creation”repeatable and observable phenomena in the present. This is the science of Newton. However, origins science deals with the origin of things in the past”unique, unrepeatable, unobservable events. There is a fundamental difference between how the two work. Operational science involves experimentation in the here and now. Origins science deals with how something came into existence in the past and so is not open to experimental verification / observation (unless someone invents a ”time machine’ to travel back into the past to observe). Studying how an organism operates (DNA, mutations, reproduction, natural selection etc.) does not tell us how it came into existence in the first place.
Tertiary (college / university) courses in science mostly don’t teach the philosophy of science and certainly make no distinction between experimental / operational and historical / origins sciences. Organometallic chemist Dr Stephen Grocott, although having been through at least seven years of university training, later remarked:
”Though I’d been working as a scientist for 10 years, I really only just learned what science was. Some of the things people call “science” are really outside the realms of science; they’re not observable, testable, repeatable. The areas of conflict are beliefs about the past, not open to experimental testing.
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Both evolution and creation fall into the category of origins science. Both are driven by philosophical considerations. The same data (observations in the present) are available to everyone, but different interpretations (stories) are devised to explain what happened in the past.
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The inclusion of historical science, without distinction, as science, has undoubtedly contributed to the modern confusion over defining science. This also explains the statement by Gould (above), who, as a paleontologist, would like to see no distinction between his own historical science and experimental science. Gould rightly sees the paramount importance of presuppositions in his own ”science’ and assumes that it applies equally to all science. Not so.
Do you believe in hot water?
Creationists have absolutely no problem with operational science, because the evidence drives operational science. It does not matter if you are a Christian, a Moslem, a Hindu, or an Atheist, pure water still boils at 100C at sea level. However, the true Hindu might still think it is all an illusion, and some atheists embracing postmodernism espouse that ”truth’ is an illusion. However, origins science is driven by philosophy. One’s belief system is fundamental to what stories you accept as plausible. Now if the majority of practitioners of origins / historical science have the wrong belief system (materialism), then the stories they find acceptable will also be wrong. So a majority vote of ”contemporary scientists’ is hardly a good way to determine the validity of the respective stories. And origins science, or historical science, is essentially an exercise in story telling”Lewontin alluded to this story telling in the quote above.
References
1. Richard Lewontin, ”Billions and billions of demons’, The New York Review, January 9, 1997, p. 31. Return to Text.
2. Stephen Jay Gould, 1994, Natural History 103(2):14. Return to Text.
3. Kerkut, G. Implications of Evolution, Pergamon, Oxford, UK, p. 157, 1960. Return to Text.
Just one more of my own thoughts .
So if it is all about the philosophy of science . the bias, the understanding, the faith you bring to the data . what if you’re wrong?!
If a creationist dies and “discovers” that there is no God and dead is IT he has lost nothing in the process. But if an atheist dies and comes face to face with God . .
Thanks again, guys, for “sharpening” me into a clearly defined, solid foundation of understanding!
God says, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent' (1 Corinthians 1:19).
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