Re: [asa] What causes students to move from faith?

Moorad,
    Au contraire, may I suggest that to "shed light in the so-called war
between science and religion" it is important to emphasize that there is no
distinction between historical and experimental science. It's an erroneous
distinction that I believe, though I'm not completely familiar with the
history of the idea, has been emphasized, if not created, in order to cast
doubt on theories of origins.

    Why do I think the distinction is erroneous? Because all the basic
equations of physics are time-reversible and hold for all time except for
going beyond a singularity such as a black hole. Yes, I know some
information is lost in the sense that we cannot access all the parameters we
would like but then none of our knowledge of initial conditions is exact or
complete in any time frame. And I know how entropy works as a function of
time. But it is absolutely first-class and equivalent science to run the
equations backward as well as forward in time. It doesn't matter if the
event is a single unique event or even a singularity, it's straightforward
science to study it. But going beyond the singularity, well for now that is
a distinction.

    Randy

> The laws of Nature that are based on experimental science are
> generalizations of historical propositions, viz., data obtained from
> repeatable experiments. Historical sciences rely on results obtained in
> the experimental sciences, thus the use of the word science in historical
> science, but deal with a single, unique event. One is not characterizing
> one kind as being more or less legitimate than the other but the
> distinction must be made to shed light in the so-called war between
> science and religion.
>
> Moorad
>
>

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Received on Wed Sep 6 21:20:38 2006