What prompted me to make this thread was to give an answer to the following comments.
In
Message 291, jar said, in response to Faith:
AdminJar writes:
Faith writes:
We start from the inviolable Biblical premise, we start from the position that Biblical revelation is a KNOWN, and that everything we observe must be explained within its terms.
That is the failing. When you have already determined the conclusion you have moved from the realm of science into something else.
In
Message 2, Buzsaw responded as follows:
Buzsaw writes:
This's what frustrates me. BBists already determine conclusions which we deem impossible like the whole universe, including all space once supposedly occupying a submicroscopic area billions of times smaller than a pin point or even the proton of an atom. We believe that's a lot more preposterous than it all being designed by an intelligent creator. One "already determined conclusion" which millions deem impossible (including some scientists) is called science and ours which is deemed impossible by secularists is disallowed in the science debate as science.
Buz is flat out wrong about conventional cosmology just being assumed.
He asserts this over and over, and gets more and more frustrated, but that can't be helped. The claim is false. Big Bang cosmology is based on a number of independent lines of empirical evidence, which have been discussed at length in the many threads. This is the only reason it has become dominant.
In order to become so dominant, Big Bang cosmology actually had to overcome the philsophical objections of many scientists. The major problem it had with acceptance early in this century was because of the troubling philsophical implications of an origin in time. Many called it a form of creationism, and rejected it on that basis. You still get this objection raised, but it carries no weight in science. The evidence is what counts, and has carried the day.
Buz's own objections to Big Bang cosmology are that is it "preposterous", or "illogical".
But that is not a valid argument in the science forums. It's not a valid argument anywhere, in fact. Logic is just a way of working out the implications of starting assumptions, and the assumptions used to reject Big Bang cosmology are not well founded empirically, and they are not a generally accepted basis for drawing conclusions. That is; the Big Bang is not illogical at all. It simply violates a few common assumptions often made about such things as space and time. Preposterous is simply an expression of basic assumptions, which need to be put on the table and examined in the light of the observations and evidence.
The general feeling of the board administration seems to be that the science forums are specifically intended discussion which is founded on examining and explaining the emirical physical evidence, and developing or refuting models on the basis of their capacity to deal with that evidence. That is my view, certainly.
Objections to conventional cosmology based on philosophical concerns (such as the objection by some atheists to an origin in time) are not what science is about. Neither are objections based on logical inference from undebateable starting assumptions, or personal incredudilty on what makes sense to you or not. These objections can be discussed by all means; but the science forum is intended for those who engage by using or explaining or dealing with physical empirical evidence.
There is some contention about whether it is appropriate to apply restrictions to people who cannot engage in this manner. Should we allow people to simply apply biblical or theological or revelatory or philosophical arguments to these questions? I say yes, but only in the other forums. Leave the science forums to those who want to engage by leveraging empirical physical evidence. As far as I am concerned, this allows for invocation of gods or magic or designers or anything else; as long as it is based on explaining and addressing the empirical evidence.
Faith's suggestion of threads is an interesting one. Basically, I take her as suggesting that there should be scope for a discussion of such things as proper biblical interpretation which is not distracted by a lot of scientists bringing up empirical objections. That seems like a sensible idea to me. There are people who consider that inference from emphemeral physical observations is inherently unreliable, and I see no reason why a thread proposal could not request a corresponding focus on exegesis in the subsequent discussion. I don't think it needs a whole new forum, however, given the makeup of our contributors. I suspect there may be other boards that would be good for that kind of focus as well.
Cheers — AdminSylas
™ Version 4.2
