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

Let us not forget that regardless all the scientific knowledge needed and used to address the questions you raise, still there is an element of history that makes your question all of the forensic nature type. I do agree that the most one can do is "beyond a reasonable doubt." However, recall that we really do not know if O. J. did it or not although he was found not guilty.

 
Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Sent: Tue 7/3/2007 4:15 PM
To: randyisaac@comcast.net; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: 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 17:29:03 2007