The nature of naturalism

[Roger Stanyard]

The problem we have is getting the grant money to do this kind of research because of our presuppositions are the wrong ones! Most of the work is being done in the USA as they can tap into other sources of income.

I doubt whether any "creationist" has ever applied for such funding given that there isn't a single practising scientist in the key fields of evolutionary biology or geology anywhere in Britain.

Indeed, the motly collection of creation scientists all appear to be criticising branches of science where they are not competent in or of their depth and/or unqualified in research. The head of the Biblical Creation Society only has a taught first degree and, certainly, this questions his ability to undertake scientific research. Andy McIntosh doesn't even have an O level on geology or biology.

I seriously question whether just "wrong" presuppositions is your real problem.

[marcsurtees]

Marc wrote The problem we have is getting the grant money to do this kind of research because of our presuppositions are the wrong ones! Most of the work is being done in the USA as they can tap into other sources of income.

J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a local cafe when she was a single parent on benefits, proving you don't need a lot of money to write fiction Marc!!! Though she did have sufficient talent to make her writing believable.

Believable!! And you think I have some strange ideas

[marcsurtees]

My definition of miracles is something along the lines of the following:
Events that are not consistent with what usually happens and cannot be explained except as acts of God.

you've told us that anything that disagrees with you version of Biblical interpretation must be wrong;

Actually I never said that, that is your caricature and not what I wrote.

But you are right about miracles, they are miraculous and even if we could explain then they remain so which (and I agree with you Paul, we probbaly can't explain them... although to go back to the wine miracle, God could introduce energy without having to create any more.)
I have no problem with miracles (the ones recorded in the Bible that is.)

[cathy]

Believable!! And you think I have some strange ideas

Marc I meant believable in that HP is a well structured, entertaining, logically coherent piece of writing that allows the reader to suspend disbelief whilst reading it knowing that none of it is actually true. That is what fiction is I believe, though I only scraped through O level in English so could be wrong. I meant it was utterly superior to the pieces of fiction produced by AiG, TiS, C4ID and other creationists which are so ridiculous, illogical and full of holes it is impossible to suspend disbelief to the end of the page let alone the book. However they are works of fiction in that they are untrue and the authors know them to be so. Unlike JK however they pretend to the reader that they are in order to get yet more of their hard earned cash.

I'm not sure how you justify agreeing with Paul's definition of your quote, ie the Ghalili definition. Creationist don't accept natual laws, eg radioactive decay, that do not fit with genesis. They have to invent huge impossible distortions in them, eg speeded up decay, and then invoke miracles to account for the mess that's left. I suspect the definition would fit more with what evolutionary christians believe, but not creationists.

If what you claim happened, even as a miracle, we would have found evidence for it by now. Creationists have been looking for years and are far from poorly funded. Nothing. Why not? Why do they still need to just nit pick away at what we've got or act all hurt cos nobody believes them? Why have they yet to produce anything useful?

[jon_12091]

Me suspects that the creationists are about to run headlong into a brick wall ith the Ark Encounter.

Spend money on scientific research to prove our thesis or a theme park, decisions, decisions... But this is the culture wars so theme park wins because we want Christians PAYING to go to an appropriately God-fearing amusement park just like Heritage USA ... err, perhaps not!

AiG is gambling itself, financially, on the escapade.

The house always wins ... and by that I mean the banks. At the very least its likely to mess with their cash flow and put a crimp on their operations while its under development. Not that Snelling et al splashing their latest, recycled, ideas over the internet probably costs that much.

[Roger Stanyard]

AiG is gambling itself, financially, on the escapade.

The house always wins ... and by that I mean the banks. At the very least its likely to mess with their cash flow and put a crimp on their operations while its under development. Not that Snelling et al splashing their latest, recycled, ideas over the internet probably costs that much.

Jon - no one knows who is putting up the bulk of the money for Ark Encounter. I suspect that the banks could put up a bit - pledged against the land and revenues from the existinng theme park but AiG looks as if it is being forced to raise some £25 million in equity from donations from the public. If the whole shooting match goes belly up there are going to be a lot of irate creationists.

I've seen this sort of fundamentalist crapola go bust in the past - mostly to do with dodgy religious TV channels. All kinds of murky things emerge when such operations go bust.

[Michael]

But fundamentalists and creationists are a many-headed hydra

[Roger Stanyard]

Actually I never said that, that is your caricature and not what I wrote.

I think you did - IIRC you stated that anything that contradicts the Bible is not acceptable to you.

[Brian Jordan]

Believable!! And you think I have some strange ideas

Marc I meant believable in that HP is a well structured, entertaining, logically coherent piece of writing that allows the reader to suspend disbelief whilst reading it knowing that none of it is actually true. That is what fiction is I believe, though I only scraped through O level in English so could be wrong. I meant it was utterly superior to the pieces of fiction produced by AiG, TiS, C4ID and other creationists which are so ridiculous, illogical and full of holes it is impossible to suspend disbelief to the end of the page let alone the book. However they are works of fiction in that they are untrue and the authors know them to be so.

Well said Cathy, but you know that creationists are like Alice's Red Queen and believe six - at least - impossible things before breakfast.

[Michael]

Roger asks, "So why have the courts been told otherwise?"

Because for legal reasons, creationists in the US have to deny that they are religiously motivated, which means that they have to present their alternative version of reality as "science". We should praise Marc for not stooping to such depths.

The issue still remains as to how we went from whatever species there are alleged to have been 6,000 years ago to the species we observe today (and in the fossil record). What is the scientific explanation and who can it be tested by the scientific method?

More precisely what are kinds, how to we observe kinds resulting in species today, what processes are involved, what evidence is there in the archeological record,how consistent is it with genetics, how did species move from being herbivors to carnivors over the space of 1,600 years, how consistent is this with symbiotic relationships...

These are kinds of question that some creation scientists are asking and trying to answer by applying the scientific method. (see for example http://www.creationbiology.org/).
We suspect that most of these questions can be answered scientifically because they would be part of the normal processes (that God maintains to keep the universe functional).
The problem we have is getting the grant money to do this kind of research because of our presuppositions are the wrong ones! Most of the work is being done in the USA as they can tap into other sources of income.

Which of the many scientific methods do you follow?

What about historical scientific methods which have been so fruitful over the last 300 years and have demonstrated beyond doubt that the earth is billions of years old. (as I am a sceptic I allow that radiometric dating could be out by a factor of 10 either way)

As for presuppositions yours is that the earth is 6000 years which has been demonstrated wrong millions of times as well as being contrary to the Holy Bible

[Peter Henderson]

Andy McIntosh doesn't even have an O level on geology or biology.

Gosh, I feel better already.

As for presuppositions yours is that the earth is 6000 years which has been demonstrated wrong millions of times as well as being contrary to the Holy Bible

I wonder what it would take to convince Marc that the Earth/Universe are a lot more than 6,000 yars old Michael, a conclusion arrived at by methods other than radiometric dating and long before the discovery of radioactivity ?

Other than his interpretation of the bible, why does Marc think science is so badly wrong on this ?

Believable!! And you think I have some strange ideas

You're not one of these "Harry Potter is Satanic" Christians Marc, surely not ?

We have a few in this neck of the woods and one that burned the books on a bonfire a few years ago !

[marcsurtees]

Actually I never said that, that is your caricature and not what I wrote.

I think you did - IIRC you stated that anything that contradicts the Bible is not acceptable to you.

Yes that is close enough to what I said (you have deleted the additions that I took exception to). The trick is of course to correctly understand the Bible. And I maintain that the historical understanding is the correct one, not that suggested by theistic evolutionists.

[Paul Braterman]

[quote="Michael"] (as I am a sceptic I allow that radiometric dating could be out by a factor of 10 either way)

Let me assure Michael that in this instance his scepticism is unwarranted. Present-day radioactive decay rates can be measured to high accuracy. We can be completely confident that these rates have not changed over time, because they are not free variables, but inexorable consequences of the laws of physics and the values of fundamental constants (Planck's constant, electron charge, etc). In fact, the first calculation from first principles of radioactive decay rates was carried out in 1928 by George Gamow. Rather similar comments apply to creationist suggestions that the speed of light may have changed over time.

How do we know that the underlying fundamental constants have not changed over time? two ways. If they had, the laws of physics and chemistry would have had to be different. But we know that they weren't, because we can make sense of the depositional history of rocks going back, now, to around 4 billion years before present. We can do better than that; we can interpret the light from galaxies emitted 13 billion years ago; in fact there is much excitement about measurements suggesting that at that time scale there may have been changes in the fifth decimal place.

The source I recommend on this, which deals with the theological as well as the pseudoscientific "objections", is by a Los Alamos physicist:

Wiens, R.C. (2002). Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective.http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/WIENS.html

Good account, recommended to believers and nonbelievers alike although non-believers will be able to skip certain sections, covers all the main methods.

[Chris Sergeant]

The wine “miracle” mentioned earlier is more easily understood in terms of the wine being hidden out of sight, but was later discovered.
There was an item on the news yesterday about the Kilogram having become lighter over the last century. Don’t panic. It is because the master ingot has lost some weight after much handling.
By coincidence I was just reading a book by Gamov. He was mentioning Teller decades ago outlining constraints on possible changes to the gravitational constant.

[Roger Stanyard]

Actually I never said that, that is your caricature and not what I wrote.

I think you did - IIRC you stated that anything that contradicts the Bible is not acceptable to you.

Yes that is close enough to what I said (you have deleted the additions that I took exception to). The trick is of course to correctly understand the Bible. And I maintain that the historical understanding is the correct one, not that suggested by theistic evolutionists.

How does anyone correctly understand the Bible? Your interpretation is based on Sola Scriptura which isn't ever mentioned in the Bible. So how can any Christian accept your position and you are contradicting yourself?