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

Randy wrote:
There's also a danger in saying that we need to keep open the possibility,
however small, of a concept such as a young earth. This is necessary
presumably to convey openness to new ideas. But this idea of gradations of
certainty must be handled with care.

I strongly agree. However, as I think I have said before; a good scientist
must learn to keep that humility switch set to the on position __all the
time__.

I have absolutely no idea of any way to reconcile the 6000 year old earth
with
24/6 day creation paradigm with anything that I have studied in geology,
or biology, let alone what I know as a physicist. I have yet to encounter
even a shred of evidence in science that could even put an iota of ground
to the YEC view.

Yet, for all the effort I have put into the matter, everything I have
touched,
everything I have probed, everything I have pondered, and all the information
I have learned from others who have done the same, I (indeed we) still could
have missed something.

The only criteria that we have is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and there,
quite clearly, YEC fails the test.

Does the earth seem to be old from the best effort we can put forth to
examine it?
Yes.

Does evolution appear to be the best way to explain the scientific evidence
in
biology? Moreover, does it largely corroborate with the geology record.
Again
a strong yes.

Does astronomy agree with an old universe and is behavior of the universe
uniform over all measurable time for which we have data? Moreover, is it
consistent with chemistry and physics of the world we know. Again yes.

Do we achieve a consistent picture of the world from all these different
stand
points as far as we can discern? Yes.

With all corroborating information. this data, could I still be wrong? Well,
it seems pretty doubtful, and I doubt I will lose any sleep over it, but in
fact,
yes.

So, though it is quite unlikely we have missed something, I think it is
important
to keep that humility switch always set to "on". At least then, we can
sincerely
stand before the Lord and say we really did our best. Our faith and
faithfulness
is what we most need to work on and what seems the most important to good
science too.

By Grace we proceed,
Wayne

> Christine, you've already received several good responses such as Dave on
> the philosophical side and George on the scientific side. The issue is so
> important I'd like to add a few more comments.
>
> One of the issues here is communication and education. Too often scientists
> are viewed as arrogant and unreceptive by a nonscientific audience when
> making claims about what we know. We can learn a lot about better ways to
> communicate what we mean.
>
> There's also a danger in saying that we need to keep open the possibility,
> however small, of a concept such as a young earth. This is necessary
> presumably to convey openness to new ideas. But this idea of gradations of
> certainty must be handled with care.
>
> The IPCC approach is a classic in cautious statistical probability branding.
>
> This is necessary, at least to some degree, when the issue is a theory that
> is inherently statistical in nature and we're predicting the future path of
> a complex system with uncertain statistically random forcing. Many other
> physical aspects are not statistical in nature and we can't so easily apply
> a probability to them.
>
> I recently gave a short talk on "how to be a skeptic in science". Yes,
> healthy skepticism is a vital part of the scientific process. However, that
> skepticism itself must be validated through scientific methodology.
> Furthermore, the more mature and robust the concept, the higher the hurdle
> that the skepticism must clear.
>
> In the case of the age of the earth, Michael pointed out how a young earth
> was the assumed perspective until the latter part of the 18th century. When
> tested against data, this hypothesis was questioned and eventually the
> weight of evidence from so many different angles made it clear that the
> young-earth hypothesis was not an accurate interpretation of the data.
> Today, the remaining uncertainty in the age of the earth is the precision.
> The value of 4.5Billion years is more appropriate than 4.500Billion years.
> The uncertainty is on the order of a hundred million years. Maybe a little
> more, maybe a little less. But the uncertainty is not a factor of 2, let
> alone six orders of magnitude. To assert there is a possibility that it is
> wrong by this amount requires the assertion that a very very large number of
>
> oft-validated scientific principles and myriad diverse data sets are wrong.
> Citing this as an open possibility is not a reflection of healthy
> skepticism.
>
> By the way, in my talk I ended up claiming that, as far as I could tell,
> there has been no case where a scientific theory which has been validated by
>
> data from many independent sources and which is accepted as consensus by the
>
> mainstream community, has been later invalidated. I'd love to hear of any
> examples that any of you might think of.
>
>

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Received on Tue Jul 3 16:16:31 2007