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To: tacticalogic
I don't know if I would agree that most Christians would disagree, but I understand that many of them do. I don't have a problem with them disagreeing with it, and offering alternative interpretations of the data and physical evidence, and theories based on those interpretations.

Great.

What I do disagree with is the attempt to exempt those theories from having to provide evidence and being submitted for peer review by the scientific community before they are accepted as valid.

What's the difference between this and your previous statement that you don't want scientists to have to go through theologians for approval of their theories? Why should creationists have to submit to the requirements of scientists before their theories are "valid"?

You have a particular interpretation of the account of creation in Genesis, and you test theories and interpretations of evidence and data against that standard. You assume that account to be scientifically authoritative, and believe that should be acceptable to anyone else as a test of the validity of those theories - even in the absence of any physical evidence to support it, or the presence of evidence to the contrary.

I don't assume it to be "scientifically" authoritative at least by the standards of science today. A large part of science is experimentation and the theory. Scientific principles and theories once held to be truth are reevaluated and discarded (or should be) when sufficient evidence against them are presented. This has happened many times in the past, it's happening every day, and it will happen in the future. Nobody has presented sufficient evidence that a creator God did NOT create man. But I believe the bible to be an authoritative source of information on this subject so I'm just waiting for science to catch up.

246 posted on 09/11/2008 8:14:46 PM PDT by DouglasKC
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To: DouglasKC
What's the difference between this and your previous statement that you don't want scientists to have to go through theologians for approval of their theories? Why should creationists have to submit to the requirements of scientists before their theories are "valid"?

Because religion is subjective, and science is supposed to be objective.

I don't think people like Dawkins have any business trying to pass their personal theology off as science, and I don't think it's reasonable to say the because he tries to, everyone else should get to do it too.

255 posted on 09/12/2008 2:38:00 AM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: DouglasKC
Scientific principles and theories once held to be truth are reevaluated and discarded (or should be) when sufficient evidence against them are presented. This has happened many times in the past, it's happening every day, and it will happen in the future. Nobody has presented sufficient evidence that a creator God did NOT create man. But I believe the bible to be an authoritative source of information on this subject so I'm just waiting for science to catch up.

If we allow scientific theories based on theology, can we discard that theology if we find what looks to be evidence that theory is wrong? Scientific theories are subject to consensus in order to try and provide the hightest degree of objectvity. You can't do that with theology, and still maintain an individual right of freedom of religion.

It's true that nobody can produce evidenct the God did not create man. This is call "proving a negative" and is generally impossible in nearly all cases.

If we make that acceptable as the basis for validation of scientific theory then anyone who can come up with any hypothesis, no matter how improbable, they can get demand that it be accepted and taught as viable theory. We don't let people do that, for good reason.

257 posted on 09/12/2008 3:04:32 AM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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