From: Susan Brassfield <Susan-Brassfield@ou.edu>
> BTW I was kind of stumped by Johnson's question for a very long time until
> I finally realized that no scientist, or anybody who thinks like a
> scientist would *ever* be convinced by a single bit of evidence. It's
> thousands of bits of evidence taken together that are convincing. So the
> peppered moth or "The Beak of the Finch" are worthless without all the
rest
> of the other evidence from biology, paleontology, geology, physics and
> chemistry backing it all up.
The same goes for Creationary scientists and philosophical thinkers. But
the problem is not the evidence, but the philosophy within which the
evidence is interpreted. We have the Evolutionary philosophy and the
Creationary philosophy, both of which are religious in that they are based
on axioms which must be accepted by/on faith.
Evolutionism has the following axioms:
A. Naturalism: (Materialism) the concept that matter is eternal, there is
nothing else.
B. Actualism:(Uniformitarianism with the uniform part dropped) the present
is the key to the past.
C. All life forms evolved from nothing over long ages.
The corresponding Creationary Catastrophist's axioms are:
A. Creationism: matter was created and is not eternal.
B. Catastrophism: a catastrophe is responsible for most of the sedimentary
geologic record.
C. All life forms (with adaptive capabilities) were created within a short
time frame.
None of these axioms are scientifically based. Rather, science is and can
only be done and interpreted within these axiom sets. The Evolutionary
axioms are based on mankind's experience and suppositions: i.e. they are
humanistic. The Creationary axioms are based on the experiential knowledge
that the God of the Bible is real and truthful. Rather than human-centric,
they are God-centric. Creationists know by experience that because God is
Truth then they can depend upon by faith in the truth of God the Biblical
witness evidence for events which have occurred outside otherwise normal
human experience.
Your statement above reveals a false logic of which you seem blissfully
ignorant. You say that it is the thousands of bits of evidence (which is
interpreted within the religious philosophy of Evolutionism) which convince
you of the truth of Evolutionism. But you seem to not recognize that
Evolutionism is first assumed in the above axioms, therefore by trying to
use the Evolutionarily interpreted evidences to prove Evolutionism, you
commit the fallacy of proving what you assume.
Creationists reject all evidence which is interpreted within the
Evolutionary paradigm as superfluous. All evidence is instead interpreted
within the Creationary paradigm. As long as they only do that, and do not
attempt to then "Prove Creationism," they are entirely within their right
(and to do so with validity) to scientifically study, understand and
interpreted the natural world.
The controversy between Evolutionism and Creationism is not between
evidences but between interpretation of evidences according to one paradigm
or the other. The real crux of the matter are the axioms first assumed by
both sides. That is where the discussion should really be. And that, of
course, is by nature religious.
Allen Roy
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