Re: [asa] YEC--What can we offer them?

OK, if you want to do philosophy, you can't disprove solipsism, you can't
show that the universe wasn't created five minutes or five seconds ago,
you can't prove that our terminology is an exact match for reality, you
can't demonstrate that the idea you have as a result of what I have said
or written is a match to what I had in mind. The fact is that, if there
is a solipsist, he's not talking. Nobody is a recent creationist. And
whatever problems we may posit, we communicate effectively. So we can set
aside the games philosophers play.

The fact is that we have some commitments on which we stake our lives and
all that our lives depend on. From time to time we find need to modify
these and lesser commitments. We find that /atomos/ have parts and can be
"split," and even that some of the parts can be split. Our understanding
becomes more subtle. But we don't worry about being totally wrong on
atomic structure. I was taught YEC and collected what I thought was
evidence for it. But when I finally read the original papers on
radiological dating, I discovered that the dates could be off by a factor
of 2 or 3, not twice that many orders of magnitude. Now I learn that the
calculations in RATE provide a temperature of 22,400 K that did not get
above 425 K. Do you suppose that returns me to YEC? Or do I wonder how
anyone can be so stupid as to believe such nonsense?

My sociologist colleagues (we were members of the same department) told
me of another game, renaming phenomena or producing new definitions to
try to make a name for oneself. They disapproved, though they said it was
popular.
Dave

On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 15:11:47 -0700 (PDT) Christine Smith
<christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com> writes:
> Hi Michael,
>
> I obviously can't speak for Gregory, but I think I
> know where he's coming from on this particular point.
> I totally agree with you that science has gradations
> of certainty, and that there are many things which are
> so well-attested to through experimentation and
> observation that we assume them to be true. However,
> to say that there is "no possibility" or "total
> certainty" seems to imply that not only are you taking
> a given theory, law, etc. to be a true representation
> of reality, but that you are not open to objectively
> evaluating any new evidence that would challenge the
> scientific "truth". I have always thought (in
> principle at least) that as scientists we have an
> obligation to leave open the possibility, however
> extremely unlikely it is, that something we hold to be
> true is wrong, or needs adjustment. Thus, I stated
> that although I don't believe YEC will ever be
> supported by science (and likewise, I hold evolution
> to be largely "true" in a practical sense), that I
> nevertheless remain open to evaluating any new
> evidence that would say otherwise. Isn't this the very
> essence of scientific inquiry?
>
> Christine
>

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Received on Sun Jul 1 23:02:50 2007