The intended purpose of the "Theological Creationism and ID" forum

I saw this thread last night and I honestly cannot workout how debate in such a forum would occur.The best I could think of it is as follows:Poster x: "The bible says X occured"Poster y: "Yes, yes it did".(six months passes)Poster x: Another cup of tea?I can see how it would be useful for the creationists to natter amongst themselves but I don't see any sustained debate because what there for the "science" types to debate?

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For instance you can argue about why God would make an Earth that looked old if it was really young

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But the earth is young, there is no scientific evidence that it's old. How do you know that conditions were not different last thursday? Therefore we must fall back on what it says in the bible and the revealed word.on a more serious note - I'm sure we did try this approach somewhere before in one of the other forums and I don't remember much joy from it? anyone else know what I'm talking about?Edited by CK, : No reason given.

It's not that I think it's a pipedream but I honestly cannot grasp how sustained discussion would occur in such a forum. I don't see how those two statements go together. Let's take the current noah's ark discussions we have ongoing. The bible says it happened and that was that. What science is there to discuss?Anything the science types try and introduce is going to be met with "well in this forum the flood did happen and that's that". I don't understand in that sort of circumstance what sort of "science" could be introduced?Maybe the easiest way to see how this would work is to start a discussion and see what happens?Question is - what on? (whatever the discussion is I'll sit it out)

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We allow people to choose to be mainstream, or to be a crackpot. This is the place where the crackpots can go, to try and see if they're truly crackpots, or if they're geniuses.

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That's the Showcase you are describing isn't it? The problem with "crackpots" is that they are immune to argument and rational discussion - they ARE right. That's great if it's the 0.01% you are dealing but it's awfully pisspoor debate at the level we are working at.

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If creationists can come up with theories that answer as many questions as scientific theories do, at least we will have an explicit statement of the contingencies of their beliefs.

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That's never happened - not using any process of scientific discovery/experimentation/method/methodolgy that I am aware of. Creation scientists don't practice science - we can argue the toss about it all day, they just don't. All they do is come up with negative reasons why existing theories are wrong. They conduct no experiments, they do not engage in the peer review process. There is a reason for this - Creation science is a political movement, it is not a scientific one.Your other problem is that you will never get explict statements - take KINDS as an example. Creationists will tell you they have a explict position on what they are, but you'll never see it, you'll just get waffle and hand-waving. Every "explicit" piece of creation science always relies on an element of "lastthursdayism" - it's bunk.

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Those who do not yet believe can consider those contingencies.

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I don't understand what's to consider once you rule out "lastthursdayism" and "goddunitsomehow" - every single creation theory I've seen relies on at least one or maybe both of those.The other problem with this concept of theory generation is that most of the creationists here either don't understand enough about science to discuss it or do understand it but are unable to intergrate it into their thinking in any rational way (because of the discomfort it causes them). The most common response is just ad-hoc reasoning followed by a sidedish of "well it makes sense to me".

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And those who believe can better appreciate how difficult good, solid theory-building is, can become more practiced in logical and critical thinking, and can appreciate the power in current scientific theory.

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Again this does not and will not happen - in theory, this should already happen on the main science boards but we all know it does not.If we want to discuss Pseudoscience - let's not give the forum a mealy mouthed title, just call it the pseudoscience forum and be done with it.Having said all that - let's see a thread and get a better grasp of how this would work, then all the naysayers like me can be proven wrong.

See if PS is willing to have it moved into the handwaving forum - then PS and Faith can see where they go with it.Edited by CK, : No reason given.

How about this - we duplicate the thread in the TC&I forum as a experiment to see how the debate would differ?

great - as an Ider - maybe you could start a thread on the following - the three most important pieces of current ID research - experiments or studies that show the preditive powers of ID.Remember this is about ID so your thread shouldn't contain the word evolution because as a scientific theory ID should stand on it's own.

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Im curious about your request that I not mention the word EVOLUTION at times in the discussion, it is of course quite silly to ask this, due to the nature of the discussion. you fellas certainly have no problem mentioning Creationiost and ID in every other sentence.

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Sorry I should have been more specific - I was of course referring to the theory of evolution rather than the term evolution itself. The problem we have is that many many people turn up here and say "I believe in ID"/"ID is a scientific theory" but when asked to explain it, they seem only able to explain it in terms of what the TOE is not rather than what ID is and what it's predictive powers are.

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Easy enough, that task is so simple it doesnt require to much effort as you will see.

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Great - I look forward to you starting a thread outlining what you consider to be the three most important current applications of ID - I ask this question (well a similar one) of all IDers who turn up and I generally just get "well [the theory of] evolution is wrong because..." which says nothing at all about ID.Maybe you can be the first IDer to rise to the challenge.To start a new topic - click on the "new topic" button at the top of the page - this will allow you to create a topic proposal.Edited by CK, : clarification on topic starting.

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