blah blah blah Creation science yadda yadda yadda metaphysics etc et al ad infinitum
Did you understand my post at all? Or was this just a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived insult?
Science begins at the bottom, in its own narrow field, in its own tiny problem. If it's lucky, the hypothesis solves the problem, and doesn't collapse under further scrutiny. That's the best it can hope for, and it works to disprove itself as fast as it can so as not to waste the time of good people. Occasionally, usually in the presence of genius, a successful hypothesis turns out to have great explanatory power. It is found to solve many problems, in many fields, and through this process it becomes a theory.
I call attention to the Gap Theory because it qualifies as an example of this process. It begins as a simple linguistic question. It resolves this question, and catches on like wildfire. In folklore, it sheds light on the Sons of God. In bible study, it tells us what the author of Hebrews is talking about in 11:3. In theology it serves Origen in reinterpreting his texts to create the wonderfully evocative Fall of the Angels. In politics, it assists Jerome in crushing the Luciferian heresy. In literature it gives us Milton's
Paradise Lost. And in early stratigraphy and paleontology it lays the foundation for our modern understanding of Deep Time.
Metaphysics, on the other hand, begins from the top down. It also can have great explanatory power. But in order to accomplish this, it has to work with the actual facts. Many good people are using creationism this way. They accept the findings of science and use them as a springboard to show how much more wonderful the creator must be than the primitive ideas of late antiquity ever imagined. Not just thousands, not just millions, but
billions. Not just one little world with one little sky wrapped around it, but infinite worlds in transfinite space in more dimensions than we can yet imagine properly.
In contrast to this, "creation scientists" and cdesign proponentsists not only refuse to use the truth, they lie. They not only fail to offer God the due credit for the world that is, they actively work to shrink his majesty in people's minds to that of a mere nepotistic storm lord good for only a few thousand years. They not only pretend to be baffled by a simple thing like flagellae, but refuse to do any damned experiments with their alleged hypothesis to actually earn the paycheck of a scientist. They are demagogues, and the only reason we don't kill them is because we haven't caught them hoarding weapons just yet. But God is patient, their time will come.
Mainline majority science viewpoint enjoys the bully pulpit, proclaiming priority preference in popular peer publications, propagating prevailing opinions of persuasive people.
I dig it when you get your alliteration going. I'd love to see you in some kind of steel-cage match with Jesse Jackson. It would be like Vikings invading France!
Buz:
Please produce the people who can pick a proper politician! *waving hands*
Jesse:
Here are the people! And this is the steeple! *waggling fingers*