Posted on 05/26/2007 9:24:34 AM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
Some Scientists Worry That Sophisticated Center Will Distort Children's Views of Science
According to an ABC News poll, 60 percent of Americans believe God created the world in six days. In Petersburg, Ky., this weekend, a creation museum is opening that depicts a story far from what you may have learned in science class.
Exhibits at almost every natural history museum teach that dinosaurs are millions of years old, and that they died out long before human beings existed. But at the Creation Museum, they say God created dinosaurs and humans at the same time.
The Creation Museum, designed by the same man behind some of the attractions at Universal Studios in Florida, is a $27 million, high-tech sensory experience with animatronic dinosaurs and a movie theater with seats that shake.
The museum is intended to convince visitors that evolution is wrong and that the biblical story of life on earth from Adam and Eve to Noah's ark is scientifically verifiable.
The museum depicts Adam living with animals, including a dinosaur.
Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, the group that is funding the museum, says that only "secular scientists" would maintain that the first humans never lived with dinosaurs.
"[Scientists] can say that, but what's their evidence?" Ham says, insisting that "All land animals were made on day six."
Mainstream scientists worry that because the museum is so technically sophisticated, it could be effective in giving children a distorted view of science.
"That they'll show up in classrooms and say, 'Gee, Mrs. Brown, I went to this spiffy museum last summer and they say that everything you're teaching me is a lie,'" said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education.
Ham believes that's what should happen.
"And I say, great. Amen. That's what this place is all about," he said. "It's meant to challenge people."
The stakes are high. The museum argues that evolution jeopardizes people's belief in the Bible and leads to social ills like pornography and abortion.
"In an evolutionary world view, why should you have things like absolute morality? Why would it be wrong to kill someone?" said Jason Lisle, of Answers in Genesis. "I'm not saying that evolutionists aren't moral. I'm saying they have no reason to be moral."
[more at the link]
(discussion the error of fortheDeclaration's source ...)
Quoted from: Chronological Methods 8: Radiocarbon Dating A University of California in Santa Barbara course.
Thus, when he writes, in Note 9. "The radiocarbon (14C) dating method, although demonstrating that the fossil wood samples cannot be millions of years old......" he is quite wrong. The method demonstrated only that the organic carbon cannot be millions of years old. The stone and fossils are still millions of years old, but the organic carbon is clearly contamination from the "oxidised silty top" that he mentioned as being the fossil's environment. This is 'in situ' contamination, a source of problems well known to those working in the field, but that somehow escaped Dr. Snelling's consideration. Maybe he should have taken the course.
Yes.
"It is the evolutionists who are short on predictions.
"When will be the next 'jump' be in the species to create a newer and greater species?
If you reread my post you will see that I wasn't suggesting predictions on what will happen in the future. Both Evolution and Creation should be able to make the same type of prediction (or postdiction if you prefer).
There are no 'jumps' such as you imply, even Punctuated Equilibrium takes 100s of 1000s of years for one species to change into another 'related' species.
Predictions such as you requested are impossible, not because evolution cannot make predictions but because the environmental conditions necessary for a given change describe a complex system bordering on the chaotic and because we we need to know not only the predicted environmental changes but 'all' available genetic variance within every population. This is simply not possible.
Predictions in Evolution are about what type of physical evidence we should find given certain conditions.
"Now, why should Creationists predict future events for something that happened thousands of years ago?
Because that is how science is done. However those 'future' events are nothing more than the evidence we should find about an occurrence in the past.
Every historical physical event leaves physical traces. This is why forensics is as successful as it is. With historical data from the distant past much of the evidence has been erased by 'entropy' but we have developed means of determining logic sequences based on what evidence is left and observation of current events. Evolution can, and has, predicted that genomic comparisons between related organisms will be more similar than comparisons done of more distantly related organisms. The prediction has been born out. Evolution can and has predicted the group of layers where the transition from fish to reptile should be found. The fossil Tiktaalik was where they expected.
Similarly, Creationists should be able to predict what should be found in a specific group of layers. All of the questions I mentioned in my previous post are those kind of predictions Creationists should be able to make. They are predictions based on known physical processes and the logical consequences of the Creationists hypothesis of a global flood. A global flood would leave very specific physical evidences. Creationists should be able to predict what should be found.
When considering two hypotheses which purport to explain the same observation then the predictions of what should be found need to be mutually exclusive between the two hypotheses. In other words, if one hypothesis is true the result found should be different than that of the other hypothesis should it be true.
However, and I thought I made this clear in my other post, if either hypothesis requires a known, well validated law or convention to be contradicted, it has disqualified itself unless it can be shown that the law does not apply in that specific instance. The greater the number of laws contradicted the greater the difficulty in showing a valid divergence from those laws.
So far, 'Creation' science has to postulate so many 'special' instances of current laws as to be rightly ridiculed.
Both Evolution and the Creationist attempt to prove the Bible, are historical pursuits where the predictions are not based on what will happen in the future but what evidence should be found if the hypothesis is true.
"Creationists and Evolutionists work with the same scientific data and come to the same conclusion on how things works now (operational science).
"The disagreement is over the beginnings, not the present.
Yet had the physical universe operated differently in the past there would be indications of those differences evident today.
"We are not looking for any more global floods (Gen.9).
"If that happens, then the Creationists were wrong.
"Either, 'In the Beginning God'
"Or
"In the Beginning Nothing'
"Take your pick on what sounds more ratonal.
Who created God?
If he wasn't created then what conditions preclude that need?
And when I ask for some kind of verification beyond a bald assertion you dance away.
Define 'faith', define evolution and define science. From what I can see you sure aren't using the same definitions for any of them that I am familiar with.
"Now, you have to bring in another Universe view to explain the one we are in.
I never said there was another Universe, nor have I said that there is a 'void'. What I did say was that any conditions you can come up with for your God to be exempt from needing a creator can also logically be applied to the universe. If you do not understand my point that is unfortunate, I do not know any way of making it clearer.
"The view that something cannot come from nothing is thus, a fact.
Is this 'fact' born of empirical evidence or philosophy?
"Creationists start with God and never deny it.
That is their privilege. However, any attempt to make the physical evidence fit a preconceived goal is not science. Science starts with the observation and then forms a hypothesis. The data, the tests and the results determine the success or failure of the hypothesis. Creationists have a hypothesis which they declare true and then modify the data or the physical laws to fit that hypothesis.
"We try to understand what He created, not invent notions that 'this could have happened this way or that' and than ignore the fact that getting life from non-life is impossible, which you evolutionists well know.
Why is life from non-life impossible?
"So either God is impossible or Evolution is.
I disagree with your use of a dichotomy.
"All science that is true science deals with what can be observed and tested.
Such as? Name some sciences which are 'real' and why.
"There is no way that any Evolution view of history can be tested, it is all conjecture and hypothetical, based on a religious paradigm that rejects a Creator God.
I take it you have never diagnosed a problem or tried to determine what/who broke a lamp, or determined what left tracks on your lawn.
Indeed. That means he can be safely removed from the equation. This is one reason that methodological naturalism was adopted.
As for your quote from AiG, they seem to be missing the fact that every dating method is cross verified with others and calibrated according to the conditions of the samples. The scientists who collect the samples and the scientists who run the tests are well aware of the potential problems and adjust to take them into account.
Surely you don't believe that all of the geophysicists, geologists, physicists, astronomers, astrophysicists, biologists and chemists that prepare and perform dating are dumber than the authors at AiG?
Dumb? Aig manages to get $39.99 for the DVD pack indoctrinating children that man rode dinosaurs.
Really?
Here is the link to the DVD. http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Childrens-DVD-Pack,5197,126.aspx
Nothing in it about anyone riding a dinosaur.
It does talk about how some dinosaurs were small enough to enter the Ark.
It seems that you evolution guys actually know very little about the dinosaur.
And because many paleontologists have based inferences about dinosaur environments on the state of their skeletons in the rock layers where they are found, Padian said, some traditional views of "paleoenvironments" will now need some new thinking.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1846238/posts
Indeed. That means he can be safely removed from the equation. This is one reason that methodological naturalism was adopted.
Because God is consistent He is removed from the equation?
And He is replaced with what?
Abiogenesis which is impossible
As for your quote from AiG, they seem to be missing the fact that every dating method is cross verified with others and calibrated according to the conditions of the samples. The scientists who collect the samples and the scientists who run the tests are well aware of the potential problems and adjust to take them into account.
And you seem to ignore the fact that scientists are people and have preconceptions.
There was a recent article on FR on the fallacy of global warming by a scientist who noted that those supporting global warming were doing so on false assumptions about CO2 rates.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i3/physics.asp
Predictions or ‘postdictions’?
Many evolutionists proffer mutations and antibiotic resistance in bacteria (operational science) as being some sort of prediction of evolution (origins science). In fact, genetics (operational science) was an embarrassment to evolution, which is probably the major reason that Mendel’s pioneering genetics research went unrecognized for so many years (Mendel’s discovery of discrete genes did not fit Darwin’s idea of continuous unlimited variation). When mutations were discovered, these were seen as a way of reconciling Darwinism with the observations of operational science—hence the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Mayr, Haldane, Fisher, etc.
So, Darwinism never predicted anything, it was modified to accommodate the observations. In fact, because Darwinism is so malleable as to accommodate almost any conceivable observation, science philosopher Karl Popper proclaimed that it was not falsifiable, and therefore not a proper scientific theory in that sense.
What about the predictions of evolution vs creation? The track record of evolution is pretty dismal. See How evolution harms science. On the other hand, modern science rides on the achievements of past creationists—see How important to science is evolution? and Contributions of creationist scientists. For a clear example of modern-day scientific predictions based on a creationist model, see Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation.
Popper’s notion that evolution is not a falsifiable scientific theory is underlined by the many ‘predictions’ of evolutionary theory that have been found to be incompatible with observations; and yet evolution reigns. For example, there is the profound absence of the many millions of transitional fossils that should exist if evolution were true (see Are there any Transitional Fossils?). The very pattern in the fossil record flatly contradicts evolutionary notions of what it should be like—see, for example, Contrasting the Origin of Species With the Origin of Phyla. The evolutionist Gould has written at length on this conundrum.
Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, none of the cases of antibiotic resistance, insecticide resistance, etc. that have been studied at a biochemical level (i.e. operational science) have involved de novo origin of new complex genetic information (see the book Not By Chance (right). In fact, evolution never ‘predicted’ antibiotic resistance, because historically it took the medical field by surprise—see Anthrax and antibiotics: Is evolution relevant?
Contrary to evolutionists’ expectations, breeding experiments reach limits; change is not unlimited. See the article by the creationist geneticist, Lane Lester. This matches exactly what we would expect from Genesis 1, where it says that God created organisms to reproduce true to their different kinds.
Evolutionists expected that, given the right conditions, a living cell could make itself (abiogenesis); creationists said this was impossible. Operational science has destroyed this evolutionary notion; so much so that many evolutionists now want to leave the origin of life out of the debate. Many propagandists claim that evolution does not include this, although the theories of abiogenesis are usually called ‘chemical evolution’. See Q&A Origin of Life for papers outlining the profound problems for any conceivable evolutionary scenario.
Falsified but not abandoned
So, why do evolutionists persist with their spurious theory? For many it’s because they have never heard anything else. For avowed materialists it’s the ‘only game in town’—the only materialistic story available to explain how everything came to be; the materialist’s creation myth. It’s a bit like the proverbial ostrich putting its head in the sand, thinking that all that exists is what it can see under the sand. The ostrich’s worldview excludes everything that it does not find convenient. In the darkness of the sand, all unacceptable facts cease to exist.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0228not_science.asp
You have watched it?
Give it up and stop using AiG's biased falsified information. The blue is especially directed to you.
Did Popper refute evolution?(Thinking About Science) From: Skeptical Inquirer | Date: 9/1/2004 | Author: Pigliucci, Massimo
The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is the currently accepted paradigm to explain the history and diversity of life on Earth. Yet ever since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, the theory has been under attack on a variety of grounds. Readers of SI are familiar with standard creationist nonsense, as well as with the slightly more sophisticated sophistry of "intelligent design" proponents. Some of the criticisms of evolutionary theory have been put forth in the professional philosophical arena, where serious scholars have often accused it of being incoherent or logically fallacious.
Perhaps the best-known philosophical criticism of evolution was put forth by Karl Popper, who once claimed that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program" (Unended Quest, 1976). Popper famously retracted his comments once it was explained to him that there was quite a bit more to the theory than he had understood from a cursory examination of the subject: "I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation" (Dialectica 32:344-346).
Besides being an impressive example of a famous scholar admitting in public that he was wrong (when was the last time a creationist has done that?), the episode is important for two reasons. First, it is interesting to understand where Popper's original criticism came from; second, it is crucial to realize exactly why he recanted. One of Popper's chief interests in philosophy of science was the so-called demarcation problem, something very dear to skeptics. The problem consists of identifying the criteria that separate science from pseudoscience. Popper took, not surprisingly, physics and astronomy to be quintessential examples of good science. On the other hand, he considered Marxist history, Freudian psychoanalysis, and astrology as examples of pseudoscience. The task, then, could be rephrased in terms of pinning down what distinguishes these two groups of theories. As it turns out, Popper's approach was vitiated by his failure to appreciate the heterogeneity intrinsic in both the categories of "science" and "pseudoscience," i.e., in the fact that not all science (or pseudoscience) is created equal, operates by the same criteria, and can therefore be defined in similar manner. But I will return to that topic in a future column.
As far as we are concerned here, Popper proposed his famous criterion of falsification to solve the demarcation problem: good science is done when hypotheses can be shown to be false (if they indeed are). That's where the philosopher's criticism of evolutionary theory originated from. Popper understood evolutionary biologists to say that their theory predicts that natural selection allows only the fittest organisms to survive; but, he countered, the "fittest" organisms are defined as those who survive, which makes the statement tautological. Now, in philosophy being a tantology isn't necessarily a bad thing: after all, tautologies are the bread and butter of logic and mathematics--in the sense that one logically deduces consequences from premises that are taken as given, like definitions--and consider how many interesting things have come out of both logic and mathematics. That is why Popper initially concluded that, though tautological, evolutionary theory was a useful "metaphysical" (in the philosophical, not religious, sense) program, i.e., an overarching idea that could provide a powerful framework to interpret the biological world. But, as in the case of Freudian psychoanalysis or Marxist history, it wasn't good science.
Why, then, did the Austrian philosopher change his mind? Because it turns out that while it is true that evolutionary biologists predict (i.e., deduce) the survival of the fittest (and the much more important fact that s/he is going to have the most offspring) by means of natural selection, they have independent ways to assess which members of a population of organisms actually are the "fittest." For example, biologists employ optimization analyses to predict which combinations of morphological, behavioral, or physiological traits are more likely to be advantageous (i.e., to increase "fitness") in the range of environments actually encountered by a given living form. They then sample natural populations of organisms, determine in which environments they actually live, measure those traits they hypothesize are more likely to make a difference, and obtain statistical predictions on where natural selection should push the population next. Finally, biologists wait until the next generation of organisms comes out and measure their characteristics again.
If the theory were correct (and given some other verifiable conditions, such as the presence of adequate genetic variation for the traits in question), the population's mean for the characters under selection should have shifted in the predicted direction. This is an eminently falsifiable hypothesis, in the same sense in which predictions made by astronomers or physicists are falsifiable, and very much unlike the explanations of human behavior put forth by psychoanalysts, which are notoriously so flexible that they can fit (a posterion) virtually any observed pattern.
The tautological circle thus broken, evolutionary biology can be fully admitted among the sciences even by the Popperian criterion of falsification. Much more than a useful metaphysical research program, the modern theory of evolution is as scientific as Newtonian mechanics, though by all means not as precise as, say, quantum mechanics. The distressing part of this story is how many creationists, and occasionally even professional philosophers, keep bringing up Popper's alleged refutation of evolution as if it were the last word on the subject. They often imply that evolutionary biologists are either dupes or, worse, consciously misleading the public into thinking that they are doing good science at the expense of that same public's generosity. For this, however, we cannot blame Popper, who demonstrated in his retraction a much higher intellectual standard than the people who attempt to exploit one of his mistakes in order to serve their parochial ideological agendas.
Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of evolutionary biology at SUNY-Stony Brook on Long Island and author of Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism and the Nature of Science. His essays can be found at www.rationallyspeaking.org.
["As for the 'law of physics' being changed by a 'capricious agent', on the contrary, it is because God is not capricious that we can count on nature to be constant"]Indeed. That means he can be safely removed from the equation. This is one reason that methodological naturalism was adopted.
"Because God is consistent He is removed from the equation?"
Would you please stop conflating methodological and philosophical considerations.
If God is consistent then the results of experiments/tests/predictions can be taken at face value. When performing an experiment, if you have confidence, based on prior experiments, that the material of the container used will not affect the outcome then you can safely ignore that container in your conclusions.
And He is replaced with what?"
A methodology which has shown itself to be the best way yet discovered to increase our knowledge of the natural world.
See my comment about conflation above.
"Abiogenesis which is impossible"
Abiogenesis has nothing to do with why God is not a part of Methodological Naturalism which is what the discussion is about.
BTW, how do you prove something is impossible?
As for your quote from AiG, they seem to be missing the fact that every dating method is cross verified with others and calibrated according to the conditions of the samples. The scientists who collect the samples and the scientists who run the tests are well aware of the potential problems and adjust to take them into account.
"And you seem to ignore the fact that scientists are people and have preconceptions."
Not at all. I know people have preconceptions, biases, fears, desires and every other emotion which would cause them to misinterpret, fudge, lie, and misrepresent their work. What I am saying is that the process of placing all the data, the analysis methods and the conclusions out in front of thousands of other well trained scientists (not to mention lay persons) who all have a vested interest in having their own opinions accepted so tend to dismiss other work unless that work is impeccable, will force all but the most foolish scientist to make sure his/her work is as clean and accurate as possible.
When a scientists presents a paper, the response is not all smiles and chuckles and pats on the back, it is hard direct questions and doubt. Most scientists I know love to take apart another's work, it is part of the culture and is expected. If you don't have a tough skin you will not make it far in (original research) science.
"There was a recent article on FR on the fallacy of global warming by a scientist who noted that those supporting global warming were doing so on false assumptions about CO2 rates.
Do you have a link?
>>There was a recent article <<
[Benny Hinn] Clerics warn of TV evangelist’s healing claims
Church leaders say the public should be sceptical of a visiting preacher’s powers
South China Post/February 10, 2003
By Anna Healy Fenton
Local religious leaders are warning the public to be “extremely sceptical” of healing claims made by one of America’s most controversial television evangelists, who brings his flamboyant ministry to Hong Kong tonight.
By yesterday morning the five thousand free admission tickets had been snapped up for the four-hour Benny Hinn Hong Kong Crusade at the Hong Kong International Trade and Exhibition Centre in Kowloon Bay.
Though hardly a household name in Asia, Pastor Hinn’s lavish lifestyle and extravagant claims for his healing ministry have attracted much attention in the US.
His daily television show This is Your Day is broadcast on the Internet and syndicated on 190 cable and satellite TV stations worldwide. While his preaching may be popular, it is the spectacle of his “healing” powers that brings in the crowds.
On television, empty wheelchairs are shown with their former occupants proclaiming themselves spontaneously cured of conditions such as lupus and heart disease. Those who have been “healed” are shown taking faltering steps across the stage before collapsing into Pastor Hinn’s arms in what resembles a hypnotic trance.
“The healing may happen instantly and may happen gradually, but surely as God is God, your legs will work again, and your body will be healed again” is a typical statement of Pastor Hinn.
Pastor Hinn first appeared in Hong Kong in May 2001 as the guest of Reverend Titus Poon Man-shun, of the Assemblies of God Wa Wai Church, which has branches in Kowloon and the New Territories.
But not everyone supports Pastor Hinn’s preachings.
“I would say he is the worst kind of charlatan, the kind of person who gives religion a bad name. He preys on people at the worst times in their lives,” said John Le Mond, a professor of theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Sha Tin.
“He uses the funds for his own personal use and travels by private plane. I consider him a person without any personal moral integrity.
“I think it very sad that some group in Hong Kong has chosen to bring the very worst of American Christianity to Hong Kong.”
But Reverend Poon defended Pastor Hinn. “I don’t think everybody in the Christian circle will have the same perspective. But in the Bible, Jesus preached to the sick and the demon-possessed. The early churches did this kind of thing, and it’s recorded in the Bible where healing is very common,” said Reverend Poon. “The message tonight is that Jesus Christ is our saviour, the healing will be secondary to that.”
Although the Roman Catholic St Joseph’s Cathedral refused to comment on Pastor Hinn, the Dean of St John’s Cathedral, Christopher Phillips, urged people to “be very wary, careful and to use common sense”.
Father Phillips said: “Television evangelists go for these big rallies. They steam into town then out again, leaving mainstream people to pick up the pieces, especially with ‘healing ministries’.
“I’d like to know what happens a week later when the razzamatazz has gone. We end up picking up the pieces.”
According to a recent report, the Hinn ministry’s total annual income has increased dramatically from US$50 million (HK$390 million) in 1997 to the latest estimates - which the ministry says are inaccurate - of more than US$100 million a year. And because the ministry is registered as a church, the money is tax-free. There is no legal obligation to make its books public.
The pastor has a private jet. His entourage - which includes staff musicians - will be staying at the Peninsula hotel while in Hong Kong.
Abiogenesis has nothing to do with why God is not a part of Methodological Naturalism which is what the discussion is about.
Oh, stop your double-talking.
For Evolution to be viewed as a legimate alternative theory to Creation, it would have to be at least possible.
Nothing you have said has explained how 'something' can exist from nothing and 'life' from non-life.
44. Probability and the Origin of Life
http://www.parentcompany.com/creation_essays/essay44.htm
'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'-Doyle
Either God is impossible or Evolution is.
Please don't waste anymore of my time.
Evolution is not required to be an alternative to Creation. Evolution allows that God may have created the universe and the earth. Science has to acknowledge, though, that there is no way to falsify that hypothsis.
It is just neo-Kantian nonsense.
Science is about find out the truth using a certain methodology, experimentation and observation.
None of this methods are of any use in understanding the origins of the Universe and life.
Ultimately, Evolution is a faith based system, interpreting the data according to a naturalistic world view.
Popper did state that Evolution was not a legitimate science, but then recanted it under pressure.
God has the power to create anything he wishes. Do you deny that?
Now, why doesn't AiG present these facts? Biased? Willing to let the ignorant read their info and spread it on other websites?
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