Is Young Earth Creationism a Science?

[harvey1]

Recently, I've had some discussions in the Christianity sub-forum where we argued about whether academia has the right to define what academic used terms mean. And, it seems that the consensus seems to be that the populace has a majority share in what terms mean. So, since many people believe that Young Earth Creationism is a science, I thought that a majority in this sub-forum would have no problem calling YEC a science. Is that true? Can we dispense with YEC as being unscientific because some certain populace now has defined science differently than the academic departments throughout the world? Any thoughts?

[Rob]

[Disclaimer: YEC is not "science" by any stretch of the imagination. And nothing in this post in meant to imply otherwise.]

As far as I can see Rob, you could choose to call any science "Idle speculation" dressed as so-called scientific facts.

Only those of a pseudoscientific mindset on either side of the extreem of the creationist-materialist spectrum are unable to recognize the limits of science; creationists error in that they set limits where there are none; materialists (such as QED) error in that they fail to recognize any limits whatsoever:

Fifty years after Schrodinger wrote his little book, his challenge still hangs in the air. What is lif? Having learned so much about molecules and mechanisms, structures and functions, physiology and ecology and ontogeny and phylogeny, why are we still at a loss for a satisfying answer? Schrodinger himself posed the riddle with a flourish, but wisely refrained from offering a solution; today we are quick to deflect the mystery with a wry smile, a parable, or a joke. The reason has much to do with the difference between explanation and understanding. We are quickly learning to explain the workings of the biological machinery and even how organisms came to be as we find them, but we have no persuasive answer to the question why life exists in the first place. Loren Eiseley, thirty years ago, was baffled by "the hunger of the elements to become life," and we are not much wiser today. There is nothing in the textbooks of physics and chemistry to forbid a world that teems with bacteria and butterflies, but there is also nothing that would lead one to expect the world to be of this nature. The crux of the matter is that living organisms cannot be rationally and systematically deduced from the principles that generally do account for the properties of inanimate matter. (Harold 2003: 217-218)

We biologists claim for our science a high degree of autonomy from chemistry and physics, and rightly so. Organisms are historical creatures, the products of evolution; we should not expect to deduce all their properties from universal laws. The antics of a troop of monkeys in the forest canopy are doubtless consistent with all of physics and chemistry, but this knowledge supplies no insights that will be useful to a student of animal behavior. All the same, the autonomy of biology must ultimately trouble those who, with late Jacob Bronowski, "seek to find nature one, a coherent unity". The reason that many thoughtful persons continue to find life perplexing, even mysterious, is that sharp division between the organic and inorganic spheres. The distinction turns on those characteristics that are universally associated with entities we designate as living, but essentially absent from nonliving ones: intricate organization and purposeful behavior that unfold over time, both on the individual level and that of the total assemblage. Here yawns a great chasm that all biological scientists recognize, but many are deeply reluctant to acknowledge. (Harold 2003: 218)

There is clearly something special about living things that has not declared itself from beneath our vast heap of knowledge, and that seems to stand outside the circle of light that contemporary research strives to enlarge. What we lack is an understanding of the principles that ultimately make living organisms living, and in their absence we cannot hope to integrate the phenomenon of life into the familiar framework of physical law. I am not here to advocate a veiled vitalism, nor to sneak in a creator by the back door. But I do insist that until we have forged rational links between the several domains of science, our understanding of life will remain incomplete and even superficial. Until that impasse is overcome, we cannot refute philosophers, skeptics, religious believers and mystics who suspect that science is sweeping out of sight [by the fiat of science by re-definition!] the very mystery that it purports to elucidate. (Harold 2003: 218)

I do not have the answer to Schrodinger's riddle; no one does. It is even conceivable that we stand here at one of the limits of science, but it would be quite premature to concede defeat. We are gravely hampered by having but a single kind of life to ponder, and it may turn out that we cannot fully grasp the general phenomenon until we have either found additional versions of life or produced one in the laboratory. Neither prospect seems bright at present. (Harold 2003: 218-219)

-- Harold, Franklin M. wip. The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life. New York: Oxford University Press; 2003; c2001 pp. 217-219.

Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar said,

Catastrophe apart, I believe it to be science's greatest glory that there is no limit upon the power of science to answer questions of the kind science can answer.

-- Medawar, Peter. The Limits of Science. New York: HarperCollins; 1984: 87.

Many influential contemporary discussions of the origin of life have concentrated on the origin of information, in which information is construed simply to be nucleic acid sequences (e.g., Eigen 1992). Implicit in these discussions is the assumption that nucleic acid sequences ultimately encode all that is necessary for the genesis of living forms and, therefore, that a solution to the problem of the initial generation of these sequences will solve the problem of the origin of life. The move away from sequences [reductionism] would put these efforts in proper perspective: to explain the possible origin of persistent segments of DNA [which we can only speculate about at this time] does not suffice as an explanation of the origin of living cells. However, I do not wish to harp on this point since, quite justifiably, most molecular biologists think that such discussions of the origin of life are little other than idle speculation. (Sahotra 2005: 246)

-- Sarkar, Sahotra () Molecular Models of Life. The MIT Press.

[Sahotra Sarkar is Professor of Integrative Biology and Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.]

Why does Sarkar, a world renowned scientist regarding the “problem of the origin of life” state, “However, I do not wish to harp on this point since, quite justifiably, most molecular biologists think that such discussions of the origin of life are little other than idle speculation.” (Sahotra 2005: 246) The reason is really very simple; because as the numerous quotes above show, they are honestly acknowledging the current state of the field of abiogenesis, in contrast to the “leaps of faith” made by some scientists claiming that the problem was solved, a claim made typically by some mechanistic materialists attempting to “invoke the authority of science for ideas that are not really part of science itself.”

True scientists take these distinctions seriously; they value honest, critical examination of the facts, and honest, critical admission of not only what is known to be fact, but more importantly, what is not know to be fact; they recognize the importance of distinguishing between “idle speculation” and speculation in general, and a testable hypotheses, a fact, a theory, etc., and don’t use these terms irresponsibly as though there is no essential difference between them, when in reality there is a great difference between them.

QED, Jose, et al. love to trundle out such naïve (perhaps Jose knows exactly what he is doing; certainly as a trained professional, he should) speculation presented as plausible arguments as to the path to the origin of life, implying it is all so plausible that it must certainly be true, as though simply by invoking the authority of science and sounding plausible their arguments are somehow imbued with ‘truth.’ Of course, Jose doesn’t take the time to present the other half of the argument as presented by many scientists, even those scientists whose field is abiogenesis, such as Sarkar, which shed a far more critical light on these plausible “leaps of faith.” It is, after all, a lot easier to present half-truths rather than whole-truths in context. It certainly is a more effective rhetorical tactic if one is only interested in winning an argument by invoking the authority of science, or like QED, invoking the authority of science for ideas that are not really even part of science itself.

Take, for example, QED’s following statement:

There is precious little diversity in the Human Genome rendering us a virtual monoculture -- something known to be precarious in nature.

This sounds so reasonable, and of course, it is an appeal to the authority of science, using such terms as “diversity in the Human Genome” and “something known to be precarious in nature.” It sounds all so reasonable and even “scientific.” The sad fact, it is pseudoscience, and really no more based on science than the claim that the earth is 5000 years old or that the moon is made of cheese. And the truth is, when asked to support these statements with scientific evidence, there is nothing to support it. The fact is, that the current state of genomics is not only in no position to make such a claim, but what the growing body of evidence is pointing to if anything is a greater degree of phenotypic plasticity and variation than we once imagined. But of course, QED would not know this, because as far as I can see, QED is more interested in invoking the authority of science than really understanding the current state of scientific knowledge in any given field. And that is why he ignores the context of Sarkar’s statement, and rather than considering what actual scientists have to say on the subject of abiogenesis directs his statement at my person with the ad hominem statement “As far as I can see Rob, you could choose to call any science "Idle speculation" dressed as so-called scientific facts.” He is simply not interested in differentiating scientific fact from pseudoscientific statements invoking the authority of science in support of beliefs based upon scientism.

[W]hen I contemplate this issue is the colossal probabilistic state space presented by a large planet with a complex initial chemistry, served by a star providing the ideal thermodynamic environment for a large array of solids, liquids and gasses. So why isn't it reasonable to put two and two together here -- all philosophical and metaphysical prejudices being set aside. To me it looks more like a matter of some sort of statistical inevitability.

QED confuses the difference between scientific fact and plausibility arguments. It is a common fallacy, but a fallacy nonetheless. Just because we can think of plausible scenarios doesn’t make them fact. Neither does speculative prior probability prove anything beyond idle speculation. In other words, it is not only naïve, it is simply pseudoscientific to argue that prior probabilities lead to “statistical inevitability,” as it is well known in the science that Prior Probabilities Have No Probative Force.

Organic evolution is a fact; regarding "abiogenesis" it is also a fact that science doesn't have anything more than "idle speculation" to offer beyond the evidence of some self-organizing organic molecules, which a living cell composed of a cell membrane and a DNA/RNA inheritance system does not make, nor answer a host of unresolved problems, and to dress it up as so-called scientific fact or resolved provlem is to depart from the stage of facts, while reason abdicates and rapidly degenerates into a consort of false logic found in the scientism of philosophical mechanistic materialism. Honesty requires recognition of the fact and truth that at this point, scientifically speaking, we simply don't know. And to claim anything different is the false so-called science of scientism, which is a metaphysical belief system.


We neither know as a matter of scientific fact how life originated on this planet, nor how it would originate on any other planet. And idle speculation nor pseudoscientific appeals to probabilities can bridge this real current state of knowledge (or lack thereof).

Now, I too can speculate about the probability that there is life on other planets, and I honestly believe there is, but I do choose not to be so naive or presumptious to claim that I can know that this belief is either a scientific fact or a "statistical inevitability." That is simply pseudoscience (numerology to be exact) attempting to dress itself up as "scientific" by invoking the authoritative sounding phrases like "statistical inevitability." When I hear silly and naive arguments like this I am reminded of the statement "it does seem a statistical inevitability that there have been identical snowflakes. Of course, certainty is an impossibility." (Jay Cardosi)

[Jose]

I reminded you this is not a scientific conference; this is part of a debate/discussion on religion and science. So in this context a word such as "life" has its everyday usage unless it is qualified as a technical term. Unless a specific context is indicated, the everyday usage of a word is the "normal" usage. This is not a problem with words such as "microbe" which are not used in everyday conversation.

As I attempted to say, "everyday conversation" is different for different people. Among those I grew up with and among those I have known, "normal usage" is exactly the way I use the terms. "Microbe" is a part of normal conversation.

It seems to me that it somewhat deflects the goal of the discussion to delve into the possible philosophical interpretations of various ways of phrasing things. Wouldn't we be better able to talk about the real issues if we tried to figure out what the other actually means when saying something?

It is great fun to learn what you and Rob are able to do, when imposing various philosophies onto what I say. I had previously been unaware that it is possible to develop interpretations that are so wildly different from what I think I am communicating. This has been enlightening.

The assertion that "life" (in the everyday sense) is "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals" -- and that "Life" cannot refer to more than that -- is a philosophical assertion. If you are passing that off as science, you are being deceptive (perhaps self-deceptive).

I merely state the first part of that assertion, not the last. I refer to the undeniable fact that life is composed of the physical parts that make it up. I make no statement about the philosophical bits because they are beyond my ability to study. Sure, I can get together with others and philosophize about them; there's no problem there. But as you have said: to make claims about them gets us into philosophy. What I have thought I've been trying to do here is help us define "that part of life that is accessible to science." I haven't been trying to say there is nothing more. Rather, to help with the discussion--the sort of thing you referred to as "lesson X" where we talk about terminology--it seemed reasonable to discuss the terminology, so that henceforth we know what I'm referring to. If you'd like to think of the "life" that I can study scientifically as the mere nuts and bolts, independent of the important stuff, that would be fine. But please don't infer that if I leave out "the important stuff" in this definition, it means I claim "the important stuff" doesn't exist.

So physical, observable, measurable, repeatable -- such adjectives need not be used as qualifiers of science, and scientific results, because they are automatically subsumed by the word, "science."

Yes in an advanced science class and assuming that it has been highlighted in introductory science classes. But culturally "science is true" in an unqualified sense so the qualifications must be repeated in other contexts. It's not a burden; a standard footnote might do.

That standard footnote is already in the science classes. I have presented that footnote multiple times. Still, you raise an important point. For the general public there is a serious problem: how do we change the misperception of what science is? For that larger conversation, we need some kind of standard footnote--though I suspect that people won't believe it. However, for this conversation that we are having here, it might be reasonable to say that we've read the footnote, and we might be able to go on.

Trends in the data are important clues to trends in the processes that produced the data. Discontinuities in some trends tell us that those trends have some kind of variation. The absence of discontinuities in some trends argues that there is no justification for assuming that those trends are discontinuous.

It may be handy to insist that scientists simply assume uniformitarianism, but 'tis not so. It is the data--the evidence god put into his creation--that forces us to the conclusion that many trends are uniform. The data utterly fail to justify the assumption that there are no such trends.

Are you disowning uniformitarianism? Or making uniformitarian assumptions but refusing to use the word? Pretend you're not doing any philosophy -- is that your method?

I am pretending--if you want to use that word--that we might find it interesting to look at the data and see what they tell us. Do the data lead us to the conclusion that there are rules in the world? Do the data lead us to think that it is valid to extrapolate the rules we see now to times in the past? Do the data lead us to think that this extrapolation is not valid? The data are required to address these questions, not philosophy. If the data lead to a clear interpretation, strongly supporting one view and strongly refuting a different view, is it appropriate to label the strongly-supported view post hoc and call it philosophy?

Let's look at this argument. "Science starts with data." This is your mantra yet you avoid statistics. "Trends" are "clues" that the trends can be extrapolated -- to infinity? Extrapolation is not data. Every extrapolation is an assumption. Where's the statistical case for such breathtaking extrapolation?

Perhaps I erred in trying to stick to normal English, inasmuch as this is not a statistics conference. The short answer here is look at the data. Correlate different sets of data. Do the data indicate a continuous trend--on which you could do statistics if you liked--or do the data indicate discontinuities?

Here's a dumb analogy, but it's the best I can come up with right now. Let's count from 1 to 1000. Write down the numbers in a column as we go. Now, someone comes into the room just as we are finishing, sees what we're doing, and then looks at the long column of numbers. Now, they could look at that list of numbers and decide that we put 1-950 down all at once, and then started writing one number after the other just as they came into the room. They could decide that we put 1-950 into a coffee can, shook it, and poured the numbers onto the paper. Then, just before they came into the room, we started writing. They could also consider the possibility that we might have written all of the numbers one by one, just as they saw us doing.

The latter possibility would be a reasonable inference from the data. They have observed the process, and they see a list that this process would produce. They see no indication in this list that there might have been a different process, and they see no indication of where in the list a different process might have been used. They know of no mechanism that could achieve the other two processes mentioned above--the first 950 of the numbers suddenly appearing on the list simultaneously, or us somehow putting the numbers into a coffee can and then pouring them onto the paper. Therefore, even if the actual event was for the first 950 numbers to appear suddenly, they don't see how to justify that conclusion. So, their working model is that we wrote the numbers one by one.

Now, someone else comes into the room, and they hear the working model, to which they say: "Nah--that's the philosophy of uniformitarianism. It's not valid."

This is one of the reasons that "abiogenesis" and "evolution" are different subjects. Evolution is the change of life over time. Abiogenesis is the origin of life. Clearly, life had to originate before it could evolve.

Look at that last sentence: "life had to originate before it could evolve". That is an assumption. Who says life has to originate? That's a discontinuity.

Indeed, the origination of life would be considered a discontinuity relative to the evolution of life. Is there evidence for such a discontinuity? We find fossils only so-far back in the record. Before that, there's no record of what we now recognize as life. There's a discontinuity. There are others who use a different way of knowing to infer that there was an origin of life: they read Genesis. Again, there seems to be something about life being absent at one point, and then being present later. Overall, you are right: no one says life has to originate. But, through several "ways of knowing," we find discontinuities that suggest a time prior to the presence of life on this planet. Prior to the presence of life, there could not have been the evolution of living things.

After all, evolution is nothing more than individuals reproducing according to their kind, but with occasional errors and variations, such that the specific details of the "kind" changes over time.

If that were all evolution was, there would be no controversy today. Again, it's unwarranted extrapolation that is the issue. You could just as well extrapolate the stock market so we'll all be zillionaires someday.

But, that is what evolution is. The controversy is built around all this extra garbage, in which people seem to want to impose some kind of philosophical mysticism onto evolution, and onto the scientists who describe it. The controversy results from people not understanding what science is, and imagining that science claims to be something it is not. The controversy results from people not bothering to look at the data and see what it actually shows.

Science has never lost "its religious underpinnings". The basic assumptions of science are: that reality exists objectively independent of the observer; that the universe is predictable not chaotic; that the universe is subject to empirical testing (see for example Ernst Mayr's "This is Biology"). Only some philosophies and religions support these to a sufficient extent. As relativism becomes more popular, these underpinnings are undermined for relativism doesn't believe in the existence of objective reality and considers chaos real (or at least a real possibility).

Changing the subject doesn't address my point. Modern science as we know it grew out of natural theology: understanding the world through scientific methodology in order to reveal the glory of god. It seems to me that much of this discussion results from the fact that glorifying the Christian god is no longer the aim of science. [Of course, when Christians were in their dark ages, and it was the Islamic world that was at the forefront of science, it wasn't the Christian god that they sought to glorify. I've skipped some of the history here for the sake of simplicity.]

Now, it seems to me that you have said previously "But we can't live our lives as if there were no firm conclusions." In general, people live their lives as if one of those conclusions is that reality exists. Indeed, the Christian reality that is thought to exist (by some) is clearly independent of the observer, since much of this reality has never been observed by anyone. This same Christian reality operates as if things are predictable and not chaotic. Science increasingly treats reality as chaotic, thereby gaining increased understanding of complex, chaotic systems. Everyone seems to accept the notion that at least some aspects of the universe are subject to testing (e.g. we tend to check the temperature of the shower before we get into it). I'm not sure that this list of "religious underpinnings" or "assumptions" really has any bearing on the discussion. We can philosophize about whether we are the White King's dream, or we can get on with life.

The problem is that the dominant philosophy in the Western world is scientific naturalism in which philosophy takes a back seat to science. The result is science with no foundations. In Western universities today the next cultural/political movement could redefine science as subjective -- and this is well underway in the social sciences.

I don't understand what you mean. The Western world has, indeed, oriented itself around much that is scientific and technological. It could have done otherwise, as the Amish have done. But, apparently, a lot of people thought there were significant advantages to the output of science, and therefore embraced it. I see how there isn't a lot of philosophy that goes into science (at least, I see none), despite the discussions we've had here in which it feels like you are hoping to convince me that I'm doing philosophy rather than science. But, I cannot figure out how this results in science with no foundations. Do you mean, perhaps that science no longer seeks to glorify the Christian god, or that science no longer seems to assume that biblical absolute morality is accurate? Perhaps you can explain this to me.

Yes, I've heard of the movement to redefine science as subjective. This is something that creationists like to point out, because it fits with the notion that we should vote to see what is real and what is not, or what conclusions should be drawn from the data, or what is "science" that should be taught in school. As luck would have it, the philosophizing of a group of non-scientists doesn't actually change science.

You'll have to show your data here. Relativists are people who refuse to make moral judgments or else they justify behavior by subjective appeals ("whatever works for you"; "if it feels good, do it"). The behavior itself is not the point -- it's the standards (morals, justification of behavior). Of course those with no standards will be more inclined to do things that those with standards would condemn.

I understand the definition, but I'm confused about how to determine who is a relativist and who is an absolutist. My basic question, I guess, is: do you ask people what their list of standards is before categorizing them one way or the other?

Sorry, I tried, but I can't make sense of it. I can't figure out the metaphors. This is what always happens when I try to read it. It's terribly confusing--I can see why there are so many different denominations, based on differences of interpretation.

It can take time but that's also why there are commentaries.

The commentaries are someone else telling me what to believe. If they've got it wrong, or if they have an agenda of their own, then they may lead me to a false understanding. No, the only way to read this work is to read it personally and understand it. When I do this, I find it highly metaphorical, with the potential for numerous interpretations. In general, this applies to most parts of it, not just the one to which you referred me.

The answer to the question of standards and not living up to them is there. And the different denominations don't really differ that much.

Different denominations have been known to kill each other. Wouldn't this seem to imply a fairly serious difference of opinion? Even on these forums I've heard people refer to themselves as True Christians, and call others Pretenders. This, too sounds like a serious difference of opinion.

What is it about religion that enables its mis-use to create people who will fight to the death for an idea that others would consider wacky? I would think there would be some justification in trying to answer such questions.

The simple answer is that religion is about very basic stuff -- how should we live, what is truth and reality, what is the meaning of life (not the meaning of "self-replicating molecules"). So disagreements can be quite strong or strongly expressed. And there are dictatorial types of people waiting to take advantage wherever they can.

I'd phrase what you've said differently: this aspect of religion is about difficult questions that people have an innate desire to answer--how we should live, what is truth and reality, etc.--but that cannot be answered through the methods of science. We put the self-replicating molecules together, assemble bazillions of cells into human beings, and create therefrom a complex creature that can Ponder. In so pondering, we seek answers. Some can come to us from the "way of knowing" we call science. Others cannot, and must come from the "way of knowing" we call religion.

So far so good. What I was getting at before was the properties of religion, and the ways that those properties interact with human instinct, to enable some people to follow charismatic leaders blindly even unto the performance of activities that the religion would normally condemn. We must, I think, accept the fact that such properties exist, because extremist religious splinter groups exist.

Similarly, by the definition of "axioms" as the rules of the system under study, or "laws," we also come to observation as the precursor to developing the axioms. "Things fall down" may be an axiom of which a corollary is "water flows down hill." An axiom of biology would be "individuals reproduce according to their kind." Another is "DNA mutates." We might be able to argue that the former are so obvious that no inductive reasoning is needed, but for the latter, induction is essential.

John Dvorak's "axioms" are opinions of his. He makes no attempt to justify them as the result of systematic inquiry. Real axioms are before inquiry because they justify a certain type of inquiry. Are you saying that science needs no justification? Consider the Marketing Dept. version of inquiry: ask five dentists who you know if they use your product and then announce "four of five dentists use product X". That is statistically invalid inquiry. If you approach data without a justified methodology, you should be in marketing, not science.

Huh? I've missed something here. Axioms are supposed to be things that are generally accepted as true. They are supposed to be "laws" or "rules" that things obey. In the logic of mathematics, they are as you say--the basic facts upon which we base our reasoning. In biology, we have to figure out what the axioms are--and that requires studying living things and figuring out how they work. Once fundamental truths are uncovered, then we can call them axioms if we want. They aren't opinion. They are, however, the result of inductive reasoning. They have nothing to do with your marketing story; they aren't a vote, they aren't a statistical cherry-picking job. DNA mutates. Period. That is the observed fact--but learning this fact required inductive reasoning. Now that we know it is a fact, we can use this fact as part of our reasoning on other subjects (like evolution or cancer or cystic fibrosis).

...somehow people seem to get all annoyed when scientists say that the data compel us to accept evolution as a fact of life. Somehow, people seem to think this is an anti-religion statement. It has nothing to do with religion.

Translation: the technical term "evolution" as defined in contemporary science is a fact about the technical term "life" as defined in contemporary science. Warning: this has little to do with the words "evolution" and "life" in ordinary speech. In ordinary speech, evolution is not a fact of life. In these days when there are many caveats to avoid lawsuits, it would be good to see such caveats in science textbooks.

Can you translate further for me? What is evolution in "ordinary speech"? How is it possible to define "life" to exclude evolution as one of its properties? I've never heard this phrasing before, so I don't quite know what to make of it. I think you're telling me something Really Important that I should understand, but I don't see it yet.

Going back to our discussion of The Language, I'd ask the "ordinary speech" folks to qualify what they say, so that I can tell what they mean. It sounds like "evolution" means something wildly different from what it is in science...but this doesn't make any sense to me, since everything that is known about evolution is from science. I don't see how it is possible to have any other definition of evolution. The only way I can understand this at present is to say that there is a widespread misperception of what evolution is and of what science itself is. Since those who invented evolution are those who actually do science, it seems as if it is not science that changed the definition to something else. Shouldn't it be incumbent upon those who use the novel definition to qualify their speech, so the rest of us can tell what they mean by it?

You "don't know" whether RLH is off-the-wall or not? Whew, you're more confused than I thought. So you're saying because "there is no objective test" that we can't know? You're saying, science is the only way of knowing? Then you are tremendously ignorant. I'm not sure where you should start at this point but perhaps some travel would awaken you -- there's more to the world than Indiana, after all.

You either missed my point or obfuscated to escape it. LRH was clearly off the wall--that's why I choose his example. But, you have to admit that he has accumulated a great many followers who believe his claims. Joseph Smith accumulated a great many followers, too. Yet for both of them, non-believers are likely to say "these guys just wrote themselves a book, claimed it's some kind of Special Thing, and now claim it's a religion!" Well...that's not what the believers say. The believers say that your book is the oddball.

So here we have LRH's religion claiming that heaven is a reprogramming center, and Christianity (all flavors, I presume) claiming that heaven is something else. Both make claims about what happens to people after they die. Now, there's little argument about what happens to those molecules that make up the clockwork we go around in as mortals. Those molecules get recycled. The question is about the fate of the concept we call "spirit" or "soul" or whatever. The question is: how do we determine whether the Christian view is correct or LRH's view is correct? How do we determine whether either of these is more correct than the Navajo view of the Chindi? Maybe all of them are flat-out wrong. What "way of knowing" can you suggest to distinguish among these views, and find Reality?

To the followers of a religion, that religion is truth, whether or not it matches anyone else's truth. If we accept one of them as valid, we must accept them all as equally valid. Validity is determined by the user and for the user, but cannot be projected onto anyone else.

All religions or none? Relativism or complete agnosticism? Where are you coming from? I know all Hoosiers aren't that way. Perhaps you could read Socrates -- at least he knew that he didn't know.

Yeah, most Hoosiers are hard-core creationists. It's really weird. I've had some of them try to convince me that "the reason dinosaurs still exist is because they were on the Ark." They've also supported legislation for declaring English the national language with the statement "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for us." But back to the topic at hand. Where I'm coming from is the same place as always: looking at the available evidence and trying to figure out what it tells us. In this case, the evidence is that individual people believe their personal religion is the right one--they consider it to be Truth. Additional evidence indicates that there are many religions, and that they are different. What do you make of these observations? Can different religions that make different claims all be true? Is it fair to pretend my religion applies to you? Is it fair to pretend that your religion applies to me? What should we do as a country in the event that we have citizens who hold different religions? So far, our "official stance" is that we have religious freedom, and everyone is allowed to believe whatever the heck they want. OK...how do we accommodate this official stance in public places? My current university accommodates this stance by allowing any and all religious groups equal access. My dad's university accommodates this stance by forbidding any religious expression by any group. Both universities treat all religions equally, if in different ways.

There are those, however, who believe that their own religion should be given preference, and others should be banned. We have legislators who insist that public meetings should begin with prayers that explicitly invoke Jesus in the holy-trinity form. These same legislators just about froth at the mouth when it is suggested that another religion should be given equal rights--say, for example, having the public meeting begun with a wiccan prayer. [It is possible that they would vote for a total ban on religious expression in order to prevent wiccan ceremonies, rather than vote to allow all religious expression to occur.]

If scientists and science educators were modest about their claims and qualified their explanations, there would be no problem. I'm sure that some are that way. But many -- especially concerning darwinism (and this has been noted since the nineteenth century) -- are promoting explanations as unqualified truth and are denigrating other disciplines. Such science has become philosophy if not religion.

Again, the standard footnote is expected to be understood. Evolutionary theory is the scientific explanation for the scientific evidence. If there are people who don't want to understand the theory, and don't want to look at the data upon which it is based, and want to extrapolate from science to philosophy, that's their choice. Scientists can only say "this is what we think," but we cannot prevent people from misinterpreting what we say.

So here's the weird bit: many people seem to choose the "conclusion" for which no objective measure is possible simply because it claims it is Truth, and reject the conclusions that are based on hard facts. Why believe an unverifiable story when the facts are right there before us?

At least some religions "are based on hard fact" though these may be historical facts rather than scientific facts (depending on your definition). In particular, Judaism and Christianity are based on historical facts.

Uhh.....I think you have overstated your case. But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for some of it. Let's consider the specific issue of evolution vs the biblical story. Why accept the unverified, and unverifiable story that is based entirely on a book that claims it is true, and reject the mountains of hard data that lead to a fairly simple conclusion?

Are you saying that everyone must agree or else we're all being arbitrary? Do you think there is something that every human being agrees with? Don't say "science" because there are plenty of people (particularly in non-Western societies) that won't agree. So are you going to give up science because there's no universal consensus? Sorry, but people disagree; that's just a "fact of life" (warning: the words "fact" and "life" are used in their everyday senses here).

We've gone off on a tangent here. Let's refocus: the question was how to blend science and religion--two ways of knowing--and come up with a Whole. Science is easy; we've got a bunch of observations that must be a part of the Whole. But, I became puzzled when I tried to envision using religion to help build this Whole. Which religion do we use? If we use different religions, we'll get different answers. This kinda implies that it won't be possible to build an accurate, correct, True Whole without some kind of religious discussion. If the religious folk could come to a consensus on "what's out there beyond science" then maybe that could become part of this True Whole that we seek. But, if the religious folk squabble, and arbitrarily say "I'm right and you're wrong," then we don't have useful input from religion. Then, we're back to the question of distinguishing between different versions of heaven, and how to prove LRH's version of the reprogramming center is wrong.

Much as we'd like to use the scientific "way of knowing" and the religious "way of knowing," the religious way is too fraught with disagreement. ... The religious way of knowing seems, by your argument, to be relegated to the personal level for each of us.

Well, not many people will agree with you. So you are fomenting disagreement. But just because there is disagreement does not mean there is no possibility of knowing the truth. And not all truth comes by excluding the non-measurable and non-repeatable (as science does). There is truth that is knowable apart from science.

I think many people would agree that there is disagreement among religions about what is True. You are probably right that many would claim religion is not personal, but Absolute. It looks to me, though, that the evidence does not point that way. Nonetheless, my question still stands: if there is truth that is knowable through religion, how do we find it? How do we distinguish one religion's Truth from another's? Is it possible at any other level than "personal truth?"

It is in the country's interest to foot the bill [for public schools], since an educated and informed citizenry is essential to maintaining a good economy, high standard of living, and good environmental stewardship. To achieve this, it is incumbent upon the schools to teach the best possible science, among other things. Those customers who don't want this service are allowed to go elsewhere. If they want to pay to send their kids to a Christian school, as we did, they may.

So those who disagree with your education must pay your salary plus pay for alternative education? That is why private schools are for the rich and those willing to sacrifice for them. That is economic tyranny. It's about time that you paid for your own school and quit stealing money from those who disagree with you.

You've confused me here. Because I paid my taxes to ensure that everyone could go to public school, and paid extra to send my son to a Christian school, and contributed to the school's scholarship fund so that less fortunate kids could also go to the Christian school, I am engaging in economic tyranny? Because I am working to improve the public schools so that people won't want to send their kids elsewhere, and can therefore take advantage of the public support, I am "stealing money from those who disagree with me"?

Perhaps I am seen as a threat because I want to have schools be well-enough supported that they can educate their students well. Perhaps I am a threat because I want everyone to be well educated, not just the rich folks in the suburbs, and not just those of a particular religion. Perhaps I'm a threat because I recognize that different religions exist, and because I can tell the difference between religious arguments and scientific arguments in the matter of origins. It's hard to tell.

I note, by the way, that when I was growing up in California, the public schools were the best in the nation. Then, the customers decided to take control of the funding, and passed proposition 13--the property tax revolt. With years and years of declining funding, Californians now agree, by a 2:1 margin, that their schools are awful. This sad story tells me that it can be a very bad idea to allow the customers to decide on school funding. Children's learning is not a Walmart commodity to be bought as cheaply as shoddy workmanship will allow.

That's a nice anti-democratic statement. Perhaps you'd like to be president-for-life while you're at it?

I don't follow you. The fact seems to be that the California schools have gone from really good to pretty bad, as a result of withdrawal of monetary support. People voted to do this. They didn't think it through, of course--but it's an open question whether they would have voted the same way if they had known that cut their own taxes would trash the schools. They probably would have. We tend to consider short-term gain before we consider long-term consequences.

I find it odd, and somewhat depressing, that it could be anti-democratic to think of Children's learning as being more important than cheap shoes.

It's probably the tragedy-of-the-commons effect, wherein public funding typically wanes for those things that people think "others" should pay for.

[QED]

Now, I too can speculate about the probability that there is life on other planets, and I honestly believe there is, but I do choose not to be so naive or presumptious to claim that I can know that this belief is either a scientific fact or a "statistical inevitability."

I think that's makes for a good analogy. We can obviously play with words forever, but if I said it seems like a statistical inevitability that there will be life elsewhere in the universe, I think it would be a good way to explain the reason for my belief. This is exactly how I feel about abiogenesis. I really am trying hard to uncouple any prejudices here and look at it objectively. But whenever I try to imagine the range of chemistry that can take place during a billion years on a planet like this, and knowing that it only takes one click on the evolutionary ratchet to start it all off, my mind gravitates helplessly towards the one conclusion.

Of course we can take a belief such as this and break it down to a matter of speculation -- as a technical exercise in reason that would be a trivial effort. But it is still a belief. It's not just the statistics though, there's a strong signature in the subsequent evolution of life which follows through from whatever event marked the transition from non-life to life; whatever caused that transition certainly lacked the power to propel life forwards for an exceedingly long time. Still, you're welcome to remind everyone that this is just more idle speculation if you wish. It would be nice to hear some alternative speculation -- you know, just for balance.

[Jose]

The assertion that "life" (in the everyday sense) is "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals" -- and that "Life" cannot refer to more than that -- is a philosophical assertion. If you are passing that off as science, you are being deceptive (perhaps self-deceptive).

Perhaps we should look at my statement differently. Do you claim that "life" is not "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals," and that "life" is something else entirely?

This came to mind this afternoon as I was trying to modernize some elementary-level lesson plans, based on the State Science Standards that seem to emphasize "food." This gave me the impetus to dig up a paper on the "energy budget" of Syrian hamsters, in which the researchers carefully weighed the food that went in, the "excreta" that came out, and the weight gain/loss. It turns out that about 22% of food-that-goes-in comes out as "excreta," about 0.5 % goes into body mass, and the rest "disappears." It's metabolized to CO2 and water in order to release energy to make ATP. When the little dears are put on a light/dark cycle that mimics winter, they shift into hibernation metabolism, and stop eating. This leads to weight loss. Chemistry continues, because neurons need ATP (for us, about a third of our total ATP use)--and with no incoming food chemicals to metabolize, there's no choice but to scavenge fat stores (and eventually muscle). I couldn't find an analogous study done with humans, but since the chemistry is pretty much identical, the hamster study is OK as a rough comparison.

It seems that all of this stuff happens, and is an essential part of life. Or is there a "conversational English definition" of "life" that doesn't include the processes required to keep living things alive?

[rigadoon]

[Disclaimer: YEC is not "science" by any stretch of the imagination. And nothing in this post in meant to imply otherwise.]

Is Newtonian physics science? Of course it is, even though it has been superseded by Einstein. Was "creation science" ever a science? While the term is recent, something like it was certainly considered scence before the mid-19th century. So "creation science" is science -- whether it is commonly accepted or not.

Please don't make the mistake of assuming that I'm deeply committed to any particular philosophical position on this matter.

Sorry, QED. We will have our philosophical commitments ferreted out from our words, regardless of what they actually may be.

Exactly.

I reminded you this is not a scientific conference; this is part of a debate/discussion on religion and science. So in this context a word such as "life" has its everyday usage unless it is qualified as a technical term. Unless a specific context is indicated, the everyday usage of a word is the "normal" usage. This is not a problem with words such as "microbe" which are not used in everyday conversation.

As I attempted to say, "everyday conversation" is different for different people. Among those I grew up with and among those I have known, "normal usage" is exactly the way I use the terms.

Let's look at a dictionary definition of "life". Here's the Cambridge online dictionary (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define. ... &dict=CALD)

life:
1 the period between birth and death; the experience or state of being alive
2 way of living or a particular part of someone's life
3 the period for which a machine or organization lasts
4 the quality which makes people, animals and plants different from objects, substances, and things which are dead
5 energy or enthusiasm
6 everything which is alive

So which one are you using?

I remind you again that this thread is about science and religion so it is not appropriate to use words from general conversation (and defined in ordinary dictionaries) in a peculiar sense without qualifying them -- and showing how such a peculiar sense applies to a general conversation. If you are saying "all I do is science" then perhaps I am conversing with a robot.

The assertion that "life" (in the everyday sense) is "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals" -- and that "Life" cannot refer to more than that -- is a philosophical assertion. If you are passing that off as science, you are being deceptive (perhaps self-deceptive).

I merely state the first part of that assertion, not the last.

You did say "Life cannot refer to more than that" in your previous post.

I refer to the undeniable fact that life is composed of the physical parts that make it up.

No, that is a false statement. You could say that the physical aspects of life may be analyzed into parts, however.

The assertion that "life" (in the everyday sense) is "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals" -- and that "Life" cannot refer to more than that -- is a philosophical assertion. If you are passing that off as science, you are being deceptive (perhaps self-deceptive).

Perhaps we should look at my statement differently. Do you claim that "life" is not "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals," and that "life" is something else entirely?

Of course life is more than matter. Only a materialist would say such a thing.

This came to mind this afternoon as I was trying to modernize some elementary-level lesson plans...

It seems that all of this stuff happens, and is an essential part of life. Or is there a "conversational English definition" of "life" that doesn't include the processes required to keep living things alive?

Of course there are processes but life is not identical to physical processes.

I make no statement about the philosophical bits because they are beyond my ability to study. Sure, I can get together with others and philosophize about them; there's no problem there. But as you have said: to make claims about them gets us into philosophy.

As you noted in Post 89, "We will have our philosophical commitments ferreted out from our words".

Scientific naturalism is a philosophy in which "there is no first philosophy and that the philosophical enterprise is continuous with the scientific enterprise (Quine, Theories and Things). So reality is limited to what is studied by science. This seems to be your philosophy, based on your words. One consequence of this philosophy is that it undermines the dividing line between science and philosophy. So when naturalists talk science they are also talking philosophy. Yet they exclude contrary arguments by saying "that's philosophy, not science". Very sneaky.

What I have thought I've been trying to do here is help us define "that part of life that is accessible to science." I haven't been trying to say there is nothing more. Rather, to help with the discussion--the sort of thing you referred to as "lesson X" where we talk about terminology--it seemed reasonable to discuss the terminology, so that henceforth we know what I'm referring to. If you'd like to think of the "life" that I can study scientifically as the mere nuts and bolts, independent of the important stuff, that would be fine. But please don't infer that if I leave out "the important stuff" in this definition, it means I claim "the important stuff" doesn't exist.

So what is this "important stuff" you are leaving out? And how does that relate to "life"?

I am pretending--if you want to use that word--that we might find it interesting to look at the data and see what they tell us. Do the data lead us to the conclusion that there are rules in the world? Do the data lead us to think that it is valid to extrapolate the rules we see now to times in the past? Do the data lead us to think that this extrapolation is not valid? The data are required to address these questions, not philosophy. If the data lead to a clear interpretation, strongly supporting one view and strongly refuting a different view, is it appropriate to label the strongly-supported view post hoc and call it philosophy?

That is why good science uses probability and statistics: to show how and to what extent the data support the hypothesis. Otherwise people look at data and come to different conclusions. You seem to think that looking at data leads to "rules". No, it leads to hypotheses.

Let's look at this argument. "Science starts with data." This is your mantra yet you avoid statistics. "Trends" are "clues" that the trends can be extrapolated -- to infinity? Extrapolation is not data. Every extrapolation is an assumption. Where's the statistical case for such breathtaking extrapolation?

Perhaps I erred in trying to stick to normal English, inasmuch as this is not a statistics conference. The short answer here is look at the data. Correlate different sets of data. Do the data indicate a continuous trend--on which you could do statistics if you liked--or do the data indicate discontinuities?

What continuous data are you talking about? Are you suggesting that "life" is like a continuous wave of something? Anyone can draw a trendline through data but it takes real science (and statistics) to show to what extent the trendline can be extrapolated. Just calling it a "rule" and extrapolating it to infinity -- it that what you mean by science?

Here's a dumb analogy, but it's the best I can come up with right now. Let's count from 1 to 1000. Write down the numbers in a column as we go. Now, someone comes into the room just as we are finishing, sees what we're doing, and then looks at the long column of numbers. Now, they could look at that list of numbers and decide that we put 1-950 down all at once, and then started writing one number after the other just as they came into the room. They could decide that we put 1-950 into a coffee can, shook it, and poured the numbers onto the paper. Then, just before they came into the room, we started writing. They could also consider the possibility that we might have written all of the numbers one by one, just as they saw us doing.

The latter possibility would be a reasonable inference from the data. They have observed the process, and they see a list that this process would produce. They see no indication in this list that there might have been a different process, and they see no indication of where in the list a different process might have been used. They know of no mechanism that could achieve the other two processes mentioned above--the first 950 of the numbers suddenly appearing on the list simultaneously, or us somehow putting the numbers into a coffee can and then pouring them onto the paper. Therefore, even if the actual event was for the first 950 numbers to appear suddenly, they don't see how to justify that conclusion. So, their working model is that we wrote the numbers one by one.

Or they could call this counting process a "rule" and say it must have been going on for 10^10 years in the past. Are you saying that if you observe process X and don't observe a process Y then process X is the only process there is so process X can be extrapolated without limit? And the only thing you can look for is a "mechanism" -- so only mechanistic explanations are allowed?

Perhaps you are mesmerized by the word "process". You seem to think that once you've detected a process, it can be extrapolated indefinitely. There's nothing magic about a "process". Following a receipe is a "process". Going to work is a "process". There is no reason to suppose that a process goes on forever -- or that it never changes. On the contrary, all the processes we observe in everyday life have a definite beginning and end. It would be very unusual for a process not to. The burden of proof is on those who think that processes must last forever.

Now, someone else comes into the room, and they hear the working model, to which they say: "Nah--that's the philosophy of uniformitarianism. It's not valid."

Yes, it looks like uniformitarianism.

Compare these methods:

Method A
1 Determine the bounds of a population
2 Take a random sample from this population
3 Estimate characteristics of the population based on the random sample and probability; include measures of uncertainty

Method B
1 Determine the bounds of a population
2 Take a convenience sample from this population
3 Find a rule
4 Extrapolate the rule to the whole population; assume that this is perfectly correct and may be extrapolated without limit unless someone proves otherwise.

Method A is statistically valid; method B is not. Are you calling method B science?

Indeed, the origination of life would be considered a discontinuity relative to the evolution of life.

So the origination of life is a discontinutiy. Conclusion: the question is how and when this discontinuity occured, not whether or not it occured.

Modern science as we know it grew out of natural theology: understanding the world through scientific methodology in order to reveal the glory of god. It seems to me that much of this discussion results from the fact that glorifying the Christian god is no longer the aim of science.

There are many scientists who are Christians who would disagree. The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a group of them (and they're friendly to evolution, too). For example their website has an interesting article on "Science College Teaching/Research" (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/College% ... -98Ju.html) in which the author quotes First Corinthians 10:31

Whatever we do, we should do it all for the glory of God.

Now, it seems to me that you have said previously "But we can't live our lives as if there were no firm conclusions." In general, people live their lives as if one of those conclusions is that reality exists. Indeed, the Christian reality that is thought to exist (by some) is clearly independent of the observer, since much of this reality has never been observed by anyone. This same Christian reality operates as if things are predictable and not chaotic. Science increasingly treats reality as chaotic, thereby gaining increased understanding of complex, chaotic systems.

Christians operate as if things are predictable by God, not necessarily by human beings. Christians also operate as if everything has a cause -- there is no chaos in the sense of uncaused. Chaos in a sense of complex or highly sensitive to initial conditions is not an issue.

Does science operate as if some things that are not directly observed actually exist? Yes. For example, physical "forces" are observed indirectly, not directly. All that is directly observed is action at a distance. That is why the existence of forces is a matter of philosophical debate.

I see how there isn't a lot of philosophy that goes into science (at least, I see none), despite the discussions we've had here in which it feels like you are hoping to convince me that I'm doing philosophy rather than science. But, I cannot figure out how this results in science with no foundations. Do you mean, perhaps that science no longer seeks to glorify the Christian god, or that science no longer seems to assume that biblical absolute morality is accurate? Perhaps you can explain this to me.

You seem to be expressing the "no first philosophy" philosophy, which is naturalism: that science is fundamental and everything else is built on top of science.

Yes, I've heard of the movement to redefine science as subjective. This is something that creationists like to point out, because it fits with the notion that we should vote to see what is real and what is not, or what conclusions should be drawn from the data, or what is "science" that should be taught in school. As luck would have it, the philosophizing of a group of non-scientists doesn't actually change science.

The public school battles going on have much more to do with the culture war than with science. As "bad luck" would have it, research grants and educational philosophy are determined in relation to the culture which is increasingly anti-objectivity.

I understand the definition, but I'm confused about how to determine who is a relativist and who is an absolutist. My basic question, I guess, is: do you ask people what their list of standards is before categorizing them one way or the other?

Ask people if they have any standards that apply to everyone. If they do, they're absolutists. If they don't, they are relativists.

The commentaries are someone else telling me what to believe. If they've got it wrong, or if they have an agenda of their own, then they may lead me to a false understanding. No, the only way to read this work is to read it personally and understand it. When I do this, I find it highly metaphorical, with the potential for numerous interpretations. In general, this applies to most parts of it, not just the one to which you referred me.

That's rather cynical. It seems you don't believe what anyone tells you, except perhaps for your wife. By the way, all language is metaphorical; as IA Richards said, we cannot speak more than two or three sentences without using a metaphor.

The answer to the question of standards and not living up to them is there. And the different denominations don't really differ that much.

Different denominations have been known to kill each other. Wouldn't this seem to imply a fairly serious difference of opinion? Even on these forums I've heard people refer to themselves as True Christians, and call others Pretenders. This, too sounds like a serious difference of opinion.

And German scientists worked to kill British and American scientists (and vice versa) in WWII. Anyway, the so-called "wars of religion" in Europe had much to do with nationalism, economics, etc.

...the "way of knowing" we call religion.

I'm still surprised that you consider, say, Scientology a "way of knowing" somehow parallel to science. You'll have to work hard to justify that.

Axioms are supposed to be things that are generally accepted as true. They are supposed to be "laws" or "rules" that things obey. In the logic of mathematics, they are as you say--the basic facts upon which we base our reasoning.

I was following the usage in mathematics and philosophy in which axioms are assumed in order to begin reasoning. It's best for the sciences to defer to the "queen of the sciences" (mathematics) in such a case. Besides, we already have words for conclusions.

...somehow people seem to get all annoyed when scientists say that the data compel us to accept evolution as a fact of life. Somehow, people seem to think this is an anti-religion statement. It has nothing to do with religion.

Translation: the technical term "evolution" as defined in contemporary science is a fact about the technical term "life" as defined in contemporary science. Warning: this has little to do with the words "evolution" and "life" in ordinary speech. In ordinary speech, evolution is not a fact of life. In these days when there are many caveats to avoid lawsuits, it would be good to see such caveats in science textbooks.

Can you translate further for me? What is evolution in "ordinary speech"?

Here's a dictionary definition of the word "evolution": a gradual process of change and development.

How is it possible to define "life" to exclude evolution as one of its properties?

The definitions of the word "life" that I quoted above say nothing about "evolution" though they don't exclude it.

Going back to our discussion of The Language, I'd ask the "ordinary speech" folks to qualify what they say, so that I can tell what they mean. It sounds like "evolution" means something wildly different from what it is in science...but this doesn't make any sense to me, since everything that is known about evolution is from science. I don't see how it is possible to have any other definition of evolution. The only way I can understand this at present is to say that there is a widespread misperception of what evolution is and of what science itself is. Since those who invented evolution are those who actually do science, it seems as if it is not science that changed the definition to something else. Shouldn't it be incumbent upon those who use the novel definition to qualify their speech, so the rest of us can tell what they mean by it?

As you can see from the dictionary definition of "evolution" it's a general word that could be applied to many things. If you can't see that, then perhaps you've had a narrow education or you spend too much time at the computer. Take a break. Read some history. Go to a concert. Take a trip.

LRH was clearly off the wall--that's why I choose his example. But, you have to admit that he has accumulated a great many followers who believe his claims. Joseph Smith accumulated a great many followers, too. Yet for both of them, non-believers are likely to say "these guys just wrote themselves a book, claimed it's some kind of Special Thing, and now claim it's a religion!" Well...that's not what the believers say. The believers say that your book is the oddball.

There's much more going on here than "you say, we say". For example, there are 2000 years of Christianity, which is the most worldwide religion -- it is not some fad. There has been much careful history, philosophy, and theology -- ignore these subjects if you want but that is like wearing blinders.

So here we have LRH's religion claiming that heaven is a reprogramming center, and Christianity (all flavors, I presume) claiming that heaven is something else. Both make claims about what happens to people after they die. Now, there's little argument about what happens to those molecules that make up the clockwork we go around in as mortals. Those molecules get recycled. The question is about the fate of the concept we call "spirit" or "soul" or whatever. The question is: how do we determine whether the Christian view is correct or LRH's view is correct? How do we determine whether either of these is more correct than the Navajo view of the Chindi? Maybe all of them are flat-out wrong. What "way of knowing" can you suggest to distinguish among these views, and find Reality?

There is no one method or "way of knowing". Why not? Because we're talking about the most basic things. If there were a single method of knowing ultimate things, it would be the ultimate method -- it would be a religion itself. I cannot point you to a method. I can only point you to a particular person -- Jesus of Nazareth. If you seek the truth about this one person, you will find whether Christianity is correct or not.

Where I'm coming from is the same place as always: looking at the available evidence and trying to figure out what it tells us. In this case, the evidence is that individual people believe their personal religion is the right one--they consider it to be Truth. Additional evidence indicates that there are many religions, and that they are different. What do you make of these observations? Can different religions that make different claims all be true? Is it fair to pretend my religion applies to you? Is it fair to pretend that your religion applies to me?

The situation is not as bad as you think. Moral standards overlap. Some morals are universal -- the kind you learned in kindergarten: be honest, don't bite others, don't steal, help old ladies cross the street, etc. These overlaps are a place to begin a conversation (like the one we're having) in which those who disagree on some things can try to understand others and perhaps change someone's mind.

What should we do as a country in the event that we have citizens who hold different religions? So far, our "official stance" is that we have religious freedom, and everyone is allowed to believe whatever the heck they want. OK...how do we accommodate this official stance in public places? My current university accommodates this stance by allowing any and all religious groups equal access. My dad's university accommodates this stance by forbidding any religious expression by any group. Both universities treat all religions equally, if in different ways.

Your university is quite right to allow religious freedom. As for your dad's university, I bet they allow religious expressions by atheists, materialists, naturalists -- and discriminate against all other religions.

There are those, however, who believe that their own religion should be given preference, and others should be banned. We have legislators who insist that public meetings should begin with prayers that explicitly invoke Jesus in the holy-trinity form. These same legislators just about froth at the mouth when it is suggested that another religion should be given equal rights--say, for example, having the public meeting begun with a wiccan prayer. [It is possible that they would vote for a total ban on religious expression in order to prevent wiccan ceremonies, rather than vote to allow all religious expression to occur.]

Legislators should be free to pray any way they want -- if people don't like it, they can elect different legislators.

So here's the weird bit: many people seem to choose the "conclusion" for which no objective measure is possible simply because it claims it is Truth, and reject the conclusions that are based on hard facts. Why believe an unverifiable story when the facts are right there before us?

At least some religions "are based on hard fact" though these may be historical facts rather than scientific facts (depending on your definition). In particular, Judaism and Christianity are based on historical facts.

Uhh.....I think you have overstated your case. But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for some of it. Let's consider the specific issue of evolution vs the biblical story. Why accept the unverified, and unverifiable story that is based entirely on a book that claims it is true, and reject the mountains of hard data that lead to a fairly simple conclusion?

Many Christians have ways of reconciling these two stories. Some Christians think the evolution story is overstated and are working on a creation model that fits easily with the scriptural record. Some Christians aren't concerned about it either way.

We've gone off on a tangent here. Let's refocus: the question was how to blend science and religion--two ways of knowing--and come up with a Whole. Science is easy; we've got a bunch of observations that must be a part of the Whole. But, I became puzzled when I tried to envision using religion to help build this Whole. Which religion do we use? If we use different religions, we'll get different answers. This kinda implies that it won't be possible to build an accurate, correct, True Whole without some kind of religious discussion. If the religious folk could come to a consensus on "what's out there beyond science" then maybe that could become part of this True Whole that we seek. But, if the religious folk squabble, and arbitrarily say "I'm right and you're wrong," then we don't have useful input from religion. Then, we're back to the question of distinguishing between different versions of heaven, and how to prove LRH's version of the reprogramming center is wrong.

"Religious folk" includes everyone because everyone has a religion. For some religions there is nothing beyond science. For other religions there is a little or a lot of overlap with science. I'd say Christianity has a lot of overlap with science. You're right that "religious folk" (meaning everybody) disagree so don't expect much world-wide concensus. If only life were as simple as arithmetic...

I think many people would agree that there is disagreement among religions about what is True. You are probably right that many would claim religion is not personal, but Absolute. It looks to me, though, that the evidence does not point that way. Nonetheless, my question still stands: if there is truth that is knowable through religion, how do we find it? How do we distinguish one religion's Truth from another's? Is it possible at any other level than "personal truth?"

Religion deals with matters that don't fit the disinterested observer paradigm simply because observers are part of reality (unless we think we're an illusion). So the subjective/objective distinction isn't as useful here. Natural theology shows that reason and common experience are sufficient to know some things about good/evil, the nature of truth, the existence of God, etc. It hasn't received much attention in recent years but I think that has much to do with the decline in belief in the power of reason. Another approach is through the study of history. Interest in history has declined, too. How do people come to accept/believe/follow a religious teaching? Nowadays it's mostly personal experience.

You've confused me here. Because I paid my taxes to ensure that everyone could go to public school, and paid extra to send my son to a Christian school, and contributed to the school's scholarship fund so that less fortunate kids could also go to the Christian school, I am engaging in economic tyranny? Because I am working to improve the public schools so that people won't want to send their kids elsewhere, and can therefore take advantage of the public support, I am "stealing money from those who disagree with me"?

Compare education with food. We all need food. So why doesn't the government control food production and distribution? It's tryannical and doesn't work. We all need education. Why does government force everyone to pay for its indoctrination centers, commonly called schools? It's tyrannical and works poorly but the education lobby is politically powerful. What would be a way that wasn't tyrannical and inept? Give the power to the customer, as we do with food, housing, etc. For those who are poor, it would be easy to set up tax credits, vouchers, scholarships, etc. to help them. The power of competition would ensure quality schools because the customer (students and parents) would have the freedom to decide which school to attend.

The fact seems to be that the California schools have gone from really good to pretty bad, as a result of withdrawal of monetary support. People voted to do this. They didn't think it through, of course--but it's an open question whether they would have voted the same way if they had known that cut their own taxes would trash the schools. They probably would have. We tend to consider short-term gain before we consider long-term consequences.

Californians decided that financing schools through property taxes was a bad idea, as I recall. There are better ways to finance schools, see above.

I find it odd, and somewhat depressing, that it could be anti-democratic to think of Children's learning as being more important than cheap shoes.

If the people disagree with you, the democratic response would be to defer to the people.

It's probably the tragedy-of-the-commons effect, wherein public funding typically wanes for those things that people think "others" should pay for.

Democracy means allowing the people to be wrong, too, since the people are the ones who are affected. As for the "commons" nowadays that is a "naked public square" because of the war against religious expression in public.

[McCulloch]

[Disclaimer: YEC is not "science" by any stretch of the imagination. And nothing in this post in meant to imply otherwise.]

Is Newtonian physics science? Of course it is, even though it has been superseded by Einstein. Was "creation science" ever a science? While the term is recent, something like it was certainly considered scence before the mid-19th century. So "creation science" is science -- whether it is commonly accepted or not.

The creationist point of view is not science and cannot be science simply because it may have been considered science by someone at some time. Science is a way of objectively determining truth by examining evidence. Creationism presumes what the truth is and then fits evidence to its preconceptions. They are not the same.

[Rob]

[Disclaimer: YEC is not "science" by any stretch of the imagination. And nothing in this post in meant to imply otherwise.]

Is Newtonian physics science? Of course it is, even though it has been superseded by Einstein. Was "creation science" ever a science? While the term is recent, something like it was certainly considered scence before the mid-19th century. So "creation science" is science -- whether it is commonly accepted or not.

The creationist point of view is not science and cannot be science simply because it may have been considered science by someone at some time. Science is a way of objectively determining truth by examining evidence. Creationism presumes what the truth is and then fits evidence to its preconceptions. They are not the same.

An example of how creationists are both confused as to what the nature of science is, and how to differentiate science from pseudoscience and religious beliefs, can be seen in the following statement:

Is Newtonian physics science? Of course it is, even though it has been superseded by Einstein. Was "creation science" ever a science? While the term is recent, something like it was certainly considered science before the mid-19th century. So "creation science" is science -- whether it is commonly accepted or not.

Apparently, Rigadoon is unaware of the history of the term "creation science." He is correct it is a term of recent origin, coined in the mid-1970s, but Rigadoon misldeadingly claims, that "something like it was certainly considered science before the mid-19th century." In the mid-19th century religionists did not attempt to dress their religious beliefs up as science; they openly interpreted then known science through the lens of religious beliefs. It was only when scientific evidence began to seriously undermine certain religious beliefs about the scripture, that certain groups of religionists who insisted on interpreting scripture literally started a movement aimed at getting back to "the fundamentals," hence "fundamentalists," that the efforts to refute the findings of science and to replace them with their own narrow and dogmatic and literalistic religious beliefs about scripture began. Even then, at first, as late as the early-1970s, there was no attempt to "assign scientific status to the biblical doctrine of creation." (Numbers 1993: 241)

[This use of the term "creation science"] ... coincided with the publication of an innovative handbook for high-school teachers, prepared by Morris, called Scientific Creationism (1974). In it Morris sought to peel off the biblical wrappings of creationism and repackage it as science. (Numbers 1993: 242)

(....) By the mid-1970s the advocates of flood geology, such as Morris and Moore, had securely attached the synonymous tags "creation science" and "scientific creationism" to the Bible-based views of George McCready Price. This relabeling reflected more than euphemistic preference; it signified a major tactical shift among strict six-day creationists. Instead of denying evolution its scientific credentials, as biblical creationists had done for a century, the scientific creationists granted creation and evolution equal scientific standing. Instead of trying to bar evolution from the classroom, as their predecessors had done in the 1920s, they fought to bring creation into the shoolhouse and repudiated the epithet "antievolutionists." (Numbers 1993: 242)

(....) [A]s one sociologist has suggested, creationists began stressing the scientific legitimacy of their enterprise because in an increasingly secularized culture "their theological legitimation of reality was no longer sufficient for maintaining their world and passing on their world view to their children." ... [T]he appeal to science arose primarily in response to specific educational and legal developments. (Numbers 1993: 242-243)

-- Numbers, Rondald L. (1993) The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. California University Press.

In other words, when they openly admitted their beliefs were based upon a literal interpretation of the bible, they lost in the courts consistently, so they then took a more deceptive tact of dropping the explicit religious langauage; nevertheless, "Creation science is religion masquarading as science to get into the biology classrooms." (Ruse 1988: 41)

The comparison of Newtonian mechanics with the oxymoron "creation science" is like comparing oranges and rotten apples; the comparison is fallacious from the get go. Newtonian mechanics was based upon valid science, and still is based upon valid science; creationist never was based upon science, and never will be based upon science, no matter how much creationists attempt to disguise it as science.

Creation science (an oxymoron) is just another name for the same old religious beliefs, based upon the literalist interpretation of the Bible, attempting to disguise their true intentions and nature so they can sneak their way into the science classroom. Creationism never was scientific, and still is not science, and never will be science, as it is nothing more than a religious belief system, a narrow literalist interpretation of scripture, an erroneous belief system which does not belong in our science classrooms, but does need to be exposed for what it is in comparative religion and philosophy classrooms.

Because "Creation science is religion masquarading as science to get into the biology classrooms, (Ruse 1988: 41)" each and every time creationists try to sneak it into the public school system it will be challenged in court, and each and every time it will be shown to be nothing more than religious beliefs masquarading as science, and will therefore consistently lose, as we so recently saw in Dover.

[Jose]

That is, there is no need to specify "physical life" when referring to life, because in science, "life" refers to ... uhhh ... living things--things that, so far, are all composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals. "Life" cannot refer to more than that because the fundamental rule of science is to start with observations. If you can't detect it, it's outside the realm of science.

The assertion that "life" (in the everyday sense) is "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals" -- and that "Life" cannot refer to more than that -- is a philosophical assertion. If you are passing that off as science, you are being deceptive (perhaps self-deceptive).

I merely state the first part of that assertion, not the last.

You did say "Life cannot refer to more than that" in your previous post.

I had made the assumption, perhaps incorrect, that the grammatical context of that statement made it clear that I was defining the scientific usage of the term, "life." I was explaining why it is unnecessary to qualify "life" with accessory terms, such as "the narrow-minded geeky pinhead definition of the mere physical material that is inside living things." Removing partial statements from their context enables misreading--and, in this case, enables the reader to paint a philosophy onto a definition of terminology. The definition of the term is different from what I assert.

I refer to the undeniable fact that life is composed of the physical parts that make it up.

No, that is a false statement. You could say that the physical aspects of life may be analyzed into parts, however.

Again, you confuse me. If, as you imply, it is possible to analyze the physical aspects of life, thereby discovering the physical parts that make up the physical aspects of life, why is it "false" to say that life is made up of these physical aspects? We look at a living thing. We find it is composed of certain kinds of stuff. We say "this is the stuff we found." How can this be a false statement?

I would ask here whether these are word-games that we are playing here, in the sense of "aha--here's a way I can make Jose look silly." Or, do you really infer that I actually mean things the way you have presented them in replying? Are we playing games because it's fun, or are we really having a fundamental problem communicating?

To say "life is composed of chemicals" says nothing at all about "other stuff" that has to do with life--all those other definitions you gave us. It merely says what it says: living things are made of chemicals. If you grind them up and look for stuff, that's what you find. The fact that you don't find "consciousness particles" or "souls" says you didn't find them, possibly due to technical inability on your part. If you don't find something, you can say you didn't find it, but you can't legitimately say it doesn't exist. If you report what you find, you are being honest. It seems to me to be a gross misrepresentation for someone else to take your words and claim that because you didn't say anything about what you didn't find that you assert that what you found is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever can be. [It's kinda fun if you're playing word-games, though. That's why my previous question matters.]

I remind you again that this thread is about science and religion so it is not appropriate to use words from general conversation (and defined in ordinary dictionaries) in a peculiar sense without qualifying them -- and showing how such a peculiar sense applies to a general conversation. If you are saying "all I do is science" then perhaps I am conversing with a robot.

Robots * do * not * do * science * They * must * be * programmed * to * respond * Real * data * cannot * be * analyzed * with * preprogrammed * answers * ...

I could as well say that this thread is about science and religion, so it is incumbent upon its participants to try to learn some science. It is not appropriate to use words from general conversation in a peculiar, philosophical sense when they have already been defined by the user.

So, let's see here...I wonder if it would be possible to cut through a lot of this and try to figure out what's going on. It seems to me that we have come to this point:

• scientists analyze the physical world that is detectable by human senses and by instruments that we have invented
• their findings, therefore, refer to the physical world
• when they report their findings they assume--apparently wrongly--that it is so obvious that they deal with the physical world that everyone knows this
• many non-scientists are more concerned with non-physical aspects of "life" and, in many cases, don't really care about the physical stuff
• therefore, many non-scientists interpret scientists' reports according to what they want to understand--the non-physical, which is scientifically inaccessible
• as a result, non-scientists infer that science is a religion and/or philosophy, cannot be objective, overstates its case, etc.

Would you buy this? Or have I made a hash out of it?

Perhaps we should look at my statement differently. Do you claim that "life" is not "composed of one or more cells, built of molecules of certain types, built of atoms of a subset of chemicals," and that "life" is something else entirely?

Of course life is more than matter. Only a materialist would say such a thing.

It seems that all of this stuff happens, and is an essential part of life. Or is there a "conversational English definition" of "life" that doesn't include the processes required to keep living things alive?

Of course there are processes but life is not identical to physical processes.

Again, is this word-games, or a communication problem? I highlighted in blue the relevant bits that illustrate how your responses do not address what I asked. Perhaps it would help if I rephrase these questions. The first one: do you claim there are no cells, atoms, chemicals, molecules, etc in living things? If so, can you justify this claim? If not, can you explain how you interpreted my question so differently? For the second bit: again, I'll rephrase it: can any of your definitions of "life" be satisfied by things that are dead? With both of these, I'm not asking whether "life" is nothing but chemicals; I'm asking whether you accept the fact that living things contain chemicals, and are in fact built from them.

So reality is limited to what is studied by science. This seems to be your philosophy, based on your words. One consequence of this philosophy is that it undermines the dividing line between science and philosophy. So when naturalists talk science they are also talking philosophy. Yet they exclude contrary arguments by saying "that's philosophy, not science". Very sneaky.

I'm not talking about the definition or limits of "reality", and never have been. I'm trying, apparently very badly, to illustrate the limits of science. I'm trying to convey a sense of "that which is accessible to science." I'm trying to convey understanding of the fact that when scientists report findings, and describe "what we know," it is inherent in the descriptions that they refer solely to that which is accessible to science. I'm trying to make headway on the basic notion that talking about one thing does not equal claims about other things.

So what is this "important stuff" you are leaving out? And how does that relate to "life"?

I don't know. I assumed you would. They're all those other things you refer to when you say that "life is more than" what I've talked about from a scientific viewpoint. I thought your main point here is that there is other "important stuff" beyond, say, the chemistry of living things. I guess it would be all that philosophy and religion and such, that is inaccessible to scientific methodology.

You seem to think that looking at data leads to "rules". No, it leads to hypotheses.

Where did the so-called "laws of physics come from? They weren't written on stone tablets. Nor are the "rules" of genetics, that individuals reproduce according to their kind, and that DNA mutates.

What continuous data are you talking about? Are you suggesting that "life" is like a continuous wave of something? Anyone can draw a trendline through data but it takes real science (and statistics) to show to what extent the trendline can be extrapolated. Just calling it a "rule" and extrapolating it to infinity -- it that what you mean by science?

Oh, just to choose a random example, you could look at ice cores, and see if there is any sort of trend in the data. You might compare this to the YEC claims that Ussher's chronology must be correct. Then ask yourself: here's a dataset that conflicts with YEC chronology yet has no extrapolation. The YEC approach is to say that "things were different" in the early days. Frankly, I haven't bothered to look up their ad hoc explanation for the ice cores, river varves, etc. For radioactive decay, they arbitrarily say "god must have made it much faster at first, and he must have made it happen without so much energy release, too." Fine--we can invoke any supernatural event we want with equal justification. But to make it science we have to find evidence to support the claim that the unambiguous trend in the data is false.

Well...maybe there is an extrapolation here. As long as we've been aware, there have been what we call years--including, in some parts of the world, winter and summer. So, unless we find evidence to the contrary, we will extrapolate to a few years earlier and consider it likely that there were years then, too. The YEC extrapolation is to accept the most recent 6000 years, but then say "before this, it was different, so we're going to propose a different mechanism entirely for continuing the otherwise unbroken trend." The scientific extrapolation is to say "unless the data suggest otherwise, we'll consider the trend reflects known processes." This would mean that your argument--that such extrapolation is not valid without exceptionally good statistics--must determine the statistical validity of "one year following the next." This is kinda like the statistics of "individuals reproducing according to their kind"--no exception has ever been found, so the statistical validity is very, very good. Your statistical argument would say that we should be able to extrapolate to infinity, because there is no variance in the data.

Christians operate as if things are predictable by God, not necessarily by human beings. Christians also operate as if everything has a cause -- there is no chaos in the sense of uncaused.

Of course god can predict everything (if he exists)--but we're not dealing with god here. We're dealing with science, and the general question of what humans can learn. Since god isn't telling us the answers, we're kinda left on our own to figure things out.

It is a Christian assumption that everything has A Cause. But, that is a religious and philosophical view. It is also a religious and philosophical opinion that natural events are "uncaused." I doubt that you'll find natural events to be uncaused, if you actually look at the data. For example, to discover that DNA mutations occur at random is not to discover that mutations are uncaused. It merely is to find that when we apply statistical analysis (your favorite) to the distribution of mutations along a DNA molecule, we can't find evidence for any regions being "special targets" of mutagens. As for causes of mutations, we know there are many--radiation, chemical mutagens, etc. These are the things that cause the mutations to occur. Being dumb, they can't choose where in the DNA to make their mark. If you like, you can invoke the Hand of God in determining which bases are changed in which ways in which individuals, thereby providing A Cause for specific types of mutations. That's a religious and philosophical issue, however, and is beyond what we can determine from the data.

LRH was clearly off the wall--that's why I choose his example. But, you have to admit that he has accumulated a great many followers who believe his claims. Joseph Smith accumulated a great many followers, too. Yet for both of them, non-believers are likely to say "these guys just wrote themselves a book, claimed it's some kind of Special Thing, and now claim it's a religion!" Well...that's not what the believers say. The believers say that your book is the oddball.

There's much more going on here than "you say, we say". For example, there are 2000 years of Christianity, which is the most worldwide religion -- it is not some fad. There has been much careful history, philosophy, and theology -- ignore these subjects if you want but that is like wearing blinders.

As I've said before, the ability of a religion to convert people by the sword does not convince me that its large following means very much. But, you missed my point. It is a fact, whether we like it or not, that people of other religions don't accept Christianity. They consider your book to be meaningless, regardless of the number of followers or its temporal tenacity. They believe they know the real story, and that Christians are, sadly, misguided. The question is: if we want to use "religion as a way of knowing" in our search for the real, single, true understanding of the world, which religion do we use? Everyone will say "mine"--including scientologists and raelians, whether we like their religions or not.

So here we have LRH's religion claiming that heaven is a reprogramming center, and Christianity (all flavors, I presume) claiming that heaven is something else. ... The question is: how do we determine whether the Christian view is correct or LRH's view is correct? How do we determine whether either of these is more correct than the Navajo view of the Chindi? Maybe all of them are flat-out wrong. What "way of knowing" can you suggest to distinguish among these views, and find Reality?

There is no one method or "way of knowing". Why not? Because we're talking about the most basic things. If there were a single method of knowing ultimate things, it would be the ultimate method -- it would be a religion itself. I cannot point you to a method. I can only point you to a particular person -- Jesus of Nazareth. If you seek the truth about this one person, you will find whether Christianity is correct or not.

To be more precise, you can point me to what many consider to be a book written by humans on the basis of their oral traditions, which makes claims about this person. You can point me to a number of different experts who can tell me what to believe after reading this book. I won't necessarily be told the same things about what is True. Even with this one book, there is disagreement. When we actually travel and learn from others, we find that there are many other religious views besides this particular family of Christian interpretations.

Your argument has seemed to me to be that science is inadequate for understanding, and that we must include religion for that which is inaccessible to science. That's fine. My question has been how to reconcile the claims of religion with the facts [the actual data, as opposed to the theory built from the facts]. To be "true," our understanding must account for the facts. To satisfy your additional interests in that which is inaccessible to science, we need to bring in some other way of knowing. I don’t see how to justify choosing one religion's way over another religion's way, inasmuch as they have equal objective support. It sounds like, from what you've said, you are suggesting that it is self-evident that one way is obviously correct, and that others need not even be considered. Should you, perhaps, get out more?

[rigadoon]

The creationist point of view is not science and cannot be science simply because it may have been considered science by someone at some time. Science is a way of objectively determining truth by examining evidence. Creationism presumes what the truth is and then fits evidence to its preconceptions. They are not the same.

You are confusing the question of whether creation science is good science vs. whether it is science at all. The Big Bang model was science when it was unpopular with scientists; it will still be science if it becomes unpopular again. You'll need to show evidence about what "creationism presumes".

First, Rigadoon is ignorant of the history of the term "creation science." He is correct it a term of recent origin, coined in the mid-1970s, but Rigadoon misleadingly claims, that "something like it was certainly considered science before the mid-19th century." In the mid-19th century religionists did not attempt to dress their religious beliefs up as science; they openly interpreted then known science through the lens of religious beliefs. It was only when scientific evidence began to seriously undermine certain religious beliefs about the scripture, that certain groups of religionists who insisted on interpreting scripture literally started a movement aimed at getting back to "the fundamentals," hence "fundamentalists," that the efforts to refute the findings of science.

The motivations of scientists should not be at issue here.

YECers receive tremendous hostility and frequent misrepresentation. Let me try to clarify a few things:

(1) The leadership of the YEC movement is NOT focused on trying to change education legislation. This has been initiated by scattered individuals and local groups -- like the folks in tiny Dover, PA. So this is a red herring argument against YEC.

(2) The religious motives of YECers are NOT relevant to YEC as a scientific endeavor. Same for the religious motives of darwinists, etc. Another red herring argument.

(3) People such as Granville Penn, George Bugg, Georges Cuvier, Andrew Ure, George Fairholme, John Murray, George Young, and William Rhind wrote on geology and biology words that today would be read as scientific creationism. With due account for the historical and cultural context, they could be considered scientists of the YEC school. Scientific geology existed before Lyell and biology before Darwin. Again, whether a scientific model is currently accepted is a separate question from whether it is science.

(4) Up to the 19th century it was acceptable to mix science and Scripture in scientific writing. To pass muster now it is possible to separate out Scriptural sources from a scientific model. A scientific model should be evaluated without reference to sources that are not explicitly part of it.

(5) History and science overlap. Should geologists studying vulcanism include historical accounts of eruptions? Of course they should. Should they include historical accounts of floods? Again, yes. The Hebrew Bible is an ancient document with historical accounts of a flood. There is nothing non-scientific with taking this into account. On the contrary, ignoring it is ignoring valuable evidence.

(6) Nowadays there are all sorts of critics of (neo)darwinism. Few have gone so far as to abandon the darwinist paradigm for natural history but there's no inherent reason why that couldn't be considered within science.

(7) Before the professionalization and standardization of science, there would be no question that YEC is a (rival) scientific model. Part of the debate is about who is a scientist and who decides who is a scientist. If governments started giving YECers grants, I bet we'd find that YECers are recognized as scientists. The moral: the state has become the final arbitrator of science (a sad state).

(8) Contemporary YEC theory is under development; it's "young" after all. It's a "research programme", to use Lakatos' expression.

To Jose:

OK, we have a communication problem. If I misread you somewhere, I apologize. From now on, I'll just assume that you always have your lab coat on and are speaking only about science unless you say otherwise. The discussion of "life" will have to start over, perhaps in a new thread.

Historically science came from philosophy and the dominant philosophy today (among philosophers and perhaps scientists, too) is naturalism in which science forms the basis for philosophy. So in a sense we've come full circle; science and philosophy are back together. For naturalists the question "what is science" is equivalent to "what is reality".

So, let's see here...I wonder if it would be possible to cut through a lot of this and try to figure out what's going on. It seems to me that we have come to this point:

• scientists analyze the physical world that is detectable by human senses and by instruments that we have invented
• their findings, therefore, refer to the physical world
• when they report their findings they assume--apparently wrongly--that it is so obvious that they deal with the physical world that everyone knows this
• many non-scientists are more concerned with non-physical aspects of "life" and, in many cases, don't really care about the physical stuff
• therefore, many non-scientists interpret scientists' reports according to what they want to understand--the non-physical, which is scientifically inaccessible
• as a result, non-scientists infer that science is a religion and/or philosophy, cannot be objective, overstates its case, etc.

Would you buy this? Or have I made a hash out of it?

Natural science may include things that are not physical -- as in certain schools of psychology. Also, it's not unusual for scientists to overstate their case or don't shy from theological assertions (as Christoph Cardinal Schönborn complained (http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0 ... nborn.html).

...I'm not asking whether "life" is nothing but chemicals; I'm asking whether you accept the fact that living things contain chemicals, and are in fact built from them.

The metaphor "built from" implies that the constituents of all living beings are solely material. That is false.

So what is this "important stuff" you are leaving out? And how does that relate to "life"?

I don't know. I assumed you would. They're all those other things you refer to when you say that "life is more than" what I've talked about from a scientific viewpoint. I thought your main point here is that there is other "important stuff" beyond, say, the chemistry of living things. I guess it would be all that philosophy and religion and such, that is inaccessible to scientific methodology.

You want me to decide what's important for you? Please take off your lab coat and answer again.

You seem to think that looking at data leads to "rules". No, it leads to hypotheses.

Where did the so-called "laws of physics come from? They weren't written on stone tablets. Nor are the "rules" of genetics, that individuals reproduce according to their kind, and that DNA mutates.

The "laws of physics" started as hypotheses. They were not assumed as uniformitarianism is assumed.

...Frankly, I haven't bothered to look up their [YEC] ad hoc explanation for the ice cores, river varves, etc. For radioactive decay, they arbitrarily say "god must have made it much faster at first, and he must have made it happen without so much energy release, too." Fine--we can invoke any supernatural event we want with equal justification. But to make it science we have to find evidence to support the claim that the unambiguous trend in the data is false.

Well...maybe there is an extrapolation here. As long as we've been aware, there have been what we call years--including, in some parts of the world, winter and summer. So, unless we find evidence to the contrary, we will extrapolate to a few years earlier and consider it likely that there were years then, too. The YEC extrapolation is to accept the most recent 6000 years, but then say "before this, it was different, so we're going to propose a different mechanism entirely for continuing the otherwise unbroken trend." The scientific extrapolation is to say "unless the data suggest otherwise, we'll consider the trend reflects known processes." This would mean that your argument--that such extrapolation is not valid without exceptionally good statistics--must determine the statistical validity of "one year following the next." This is kinda like the statistics of "individuals reproducing according to their kind"--no exception has ever been found, so the statistical validity is very, very good. Your statistical argument would say that we should be able to extrapolate to infinity, because there is no variance in the data.

You forgot the first steps: Determine the bounds of a population; Take a random sample from this population. What is the population you are considering? All events that lead to a new organism (in uniformitarian terms) for the last 5x10^10 years? Do you have a random sample from this population?

And even a zero variance does not eliminate the uncertainty caused by observing a sample rather than the whole population.

...I doubt that you'll find natural events to be uncaused, if you actually look at the data. For example, to discover that DNA mutations occur at random is not to discover that mutations are uncaused. It merely is to find that when we apply statistical analysis (your favorite) to the distribution of mutations along a DNA molecule, we can't find evidence for any regions being "special targets" of mutagens. As for causes of mutations, we know there are many--radiation, chemical mutagens, etc. These are the things that cause the mutations to occur. Being dumb, they can't choose where in the DNA to make their mark. If you like, you can invoke the Hand of God in determining which bases are changed in which ways in which individuals, thereby providing A Cause for specific types of mutations. That's a religious and philosophical issue, however, and is beyond what we can determine from the data.

Calling a set of events "random" is different than calling an individual event "random". The set of events may exhibit stochastic properties in which case one can describe it's behavior (distribution) as a whole. But a single event that is "random" -- that means either there exists inherent randomness in the world or we don't know exactly what caused this particular event. For such an event, an angel could have caused it for all we know.

As I've said before, the ability of a religion to convert people by the sword does not convince me that its large following means very much. But, you missed my point. It is a fact, whether we like it or not, that people of other religions don't accept Christianity. They consider your book to be meaningless, regardless of the number of followers or its temporal tenacity. They believe they know the real story, and that Christians are, sadly, misguided. The question is: if we want to use "religion as a way of knowing" in our search for the real, single, true understanding of the world, which religion do we use? Everyone will say "mine"--including scientologists and raelians, whether we like their religions or not.

You need to back up your snide remarks about "the sword" with some facts. The problems today with Jihadists have nothing to do with religion in general or Christianity in particular. Religion in general is not "a way of knowing" but Christian theology is a form of knowledge.

There is no one method or "way of knowing". Why not? Because we're talking about the most basic things. If there were a single method of knowing ultimate things, it would be the ultimate method -- it would be a religion itself. I cannot point you to a method. I can only point you to a particular person -- Jesus of Nazareth. If you seek the truth about this one person, you will find whether Christianity is correct or not.

To be more precise, you can point me to what many consider to be a book written by humans on the basis of their oral traditions, which makes claims about this person. You can point me to a number of different experts who can tell me what to believe after reading this book. I won't necessarily be told the same things about what is True. Even with this one book, there is disagreement. When we actually travel and learn from others, we find that there are many other religious views besides this particular family of Christian interpretations.

People disagree about religion -- get over it. That's a cop-out if that's your excuse for not considering "important things".

Your argument has seemed to me to be that science is inadequate for understanding, and that we must include religion for that which is inaccessible to science. That's fine. My question has been how to reconcile the claims of religion with the facts [the actual data, as opposed to the theory built from the facts]. To be "true," our understanding must account for the facts. To satisfy your additional interests in that which is inaccessible to science, we need to bring in some other way of knowing. I don’t see how to justify choosing one religion's way over another religion's way, inasmuch as they have equal objective support. It sounds like, from what you've said, you are suggesting that it is self-evident that one way is obviously correct, and that others need not even be considered. Should you, perhaps, get out more?

People reconcile the claims of religion and "facts" in different ways. I previously mentioned the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) (http://www.asa3.org/) as an example. Hugh Ross' website is another (http://www.reasons.org/).

[Jose]

You want me to decide what's important for you? Please take off your lab coat and answer again.
...
People disagree about religion -- get over it. That's a cop-out if that's your excuse for not considering "important things".

It may seem odd, but there is a considerable proportion of Americans, myself among them, who don't buy this argument that there is "undetectable stuff" in some kind of imaginary, non-physical reality. It's probably a consequence of not having been exposed to religion at a young age. So, in referring to those "important things," I was trying to find a way to fit what seems to be your worldview into some kind of perspective that I can understand. If you hold certain things to be important, and gain understanding about those things from philosophy and religion, great. If it turns out that those things are inaccessible to science, let's not pretend that science makes claims about them. They are "knowable" only by means of other "ways of knowing."

A second issue that the above quote brings to mind is the awkwardness of taking individual sentences out of context. I know people disagree about religion--that is precisely my point. There's nothing to "get over." In context, the diversity of religion was this:

• You and others seek reality, or truth
• Science also seeks reality and truth but by a different route
• When that reality/truth is finally known, it should be the same whichever route was taken to get there.
• But, religions disagree on their respective truths.
• An important question, therefore, is how do we distinguish among religions to determine which one is right? If we can't do this, and if we simply accept the diversity of opinion without exploring it further, it seems unlikely that religion can contribute meaningfully to finding the final, true reality precisely because religion will say that there are a great many different realities.
• Science, for all its failings, at least is required to fit the facts of the real world.

My observations on the diversity of religion is not a complaint to "get over," but the basis of a question to you: For things that are not objectively verifiable, how can one ever place one religion's opinion over another? Isn't this the basis of religious freedom in the US? Isn't this why Congress shall pass no laws respecting the establishment of religion? I chose to pose this question partly through example: so-called mainstream religion considers LRH to be a wacko, and his religion to be made up out of whole cloth. BUT, on the basis of his specific claims about heaven, compared to those of Christianity, how can anyone prove that one opinion is more correct than the other? After all, LRH said he visited the darned place. That's no more miraculous than what the bible asks us to believe. If you don't like the scientology comparison, think of the various Asian religions, each of which has a history at least as long as that of Christianity, and millions of followers.

If it is impossible to distinguish among them except by faith, and if there is no chance of agreement, then it seems that the religious world is, by default, asking the physical world and its facts to determine what reality and truth are--and relegating the "other truths" that are so important to religion to the realm of philosophy and individual opinion.

...I'm not asking whether "life" is nothing but chemicals; I'm asking whether you accept the fact that living things contain chemicals, and are in fact built from them.

The metaphor "built from" implies that the constituents of all living beings are solely material. That is false.

That is a bold assertion. What is your evidence? Still, however, you quibble with semantics. What does the word "from" mean? Well, in the food industry, it has a very specific meaning enshrined in law: the materials listed are starting materials that are used in some percentage. Splenda, for example, is allowed to say "made from sugar so it tastes like sugar," when, in fact, the ingredients are close to 49.9% glucose, 49.9% short-chain starch, and 1% chlorinated sucrose. Only the latter is the stuff that is "made from sugar" (by chlorinating sucrose, which we call "sugar" in conversational English). So, the term "built from" is not a metaphor but a literal truth: there are very specific molecules that make up the components of cells. Take some lipids and assemble them to create cell membranes. Embed in them some proteins to create the channels that membranes use to pass things in and out. Assemble some nucleotides to make the DNA and RNA that cells use for information storage and retrieval, and for some of their chemical reactions. Etc. I ask whether you deny this fact. Your current answer is ambiguous, as if you don't want to commit yourself. Are these things present or not? All I have asked is if you accept that these things are there. You seem eager to paint this with a philosophical question that I neither ask nor frankly, care much about: is there Something Else besides that which we can detect? It seems that you claim there is...what is it, and how do you know?

You seem to think that looking at data leads to "rules". No, it leads to hypotheses.

Where did the so-called "laws of physics come from? They weren't written on stone tablets. Nor are the "rules" of genetics, that individuals reproduce according to their kind, and that DNA mutates.

The "laws of physics" started as hypotheses. They were not assumed as uniformitarianism is assumed.

You've made an assumption here that is, unfortunately, quite wrong. I suspect it underlies much of what you've said during this discussion. What you refer to as uniformitarianism was not simply assumed. Just like the laws of physics, it was inferred from hard facts. When the initial hypothesis was being developed, it met with resistance among the scientific community because--as you have reminded us--science was initially a philosophical examination of the world, tightly linked to religious understanding. It was assumed (and this time, "assumed" is the correct term) that Genesis was correct, Ussher's chronology was correct, etc. The concept of "uniformitarianism" was put forward against this widespread assumption. To be accepted, it required exceptionally strong evidence. That it was accepted shows that the evidence was, indeed, quite strong. That it continues to be accepted shows that the evidence continues to support it; indeed, strengthens it.

The original hypothesis was put forward long ago. The data still support it. Supposed "contradictory data" have been shown to be not contradictory at all. That original hypothesis is now part of our knowledge base. It's not an assumption, but an inference from data. There's no point in pretending we don't know this, and that we need to keep showing it over and over. For anyone new to the field, the simple answer to their skepticism would be "go read the literature."

People generally accept the notion that individuals reproduce according to their kind. When was this hypothesis first put forward? As you've said, it has not been done to watch 100% of all individuals of all species; the hypothesis is based on random sampling. Still, people had sampled enough things by, oh, 2000 years ago to put forward this hypothesis. Indeed, it was stated in the written version of tribal wisdom as Fact.

Yet, we don't hear statements like "The laws of physics were not assumed the way Samekindofoffspringism is assumed." Sure, we have accepted the idea that individuals have the same kind of offspring as they, themselves are. We use this as one of the basic laws of genetics. We may even leave it as an unstated axiom, or given, when we think about different types of plants or animals reproducing. If we don't think about it, maybe it counts as an assumption. Yet, we don't hear complaints about this assumption, even though the facts that led to the hypothesis come from fewer lines of evidence than the facts that lead to "uniformitarianism." It would seem that the only reason to object to "uniformitarianism" and not "samekindofoffspringism" is that the former conflicts with a narrow reading of Genesis.

Calling a set of events "random" is different than calling an individual event "random". The set of events may exhibit stochastic properties in which case one can describe it's behavior (distribution) as a whole. But a single event that is "random" -- that means either there exists inherent randomness in the world or we don't know exactly what caused this particular event. For such an event, an angel could have caused it for all we know.

I don't see what you are leading to here. A single mutation occurs in the context of other mutations that occur. It is one event among many in a generally stochastic process. Even when we expose organisms to X-rays to induce mutations explicitly, we don't know that a particular mutation that we recover was caused by an X-ray. It could have been a spontaneous mutation, or chemically-induced, and happened to show up in our analysis. Or, as you say, an angel could have caused it. So what? We know, from our understanding of chemistry, that some chemical event caused the DNA damage that showed up eventually as a mutation. It's not "uncaused." Even if it's "random," it's still possible to imagine that god directed the X-ray, or the oxygen radical, or whatever, to that particular spot on the DNA in order to produce that specific mutation so that, millions of years later, a particular individual whatzis could be born with certain important traits. People are welcome to think that god directs mutations; all the data show is that the chemical causes have no particular bias toward, or away from, any particular genetic elements.

You need to back up your snide remarks about "the sword" with some facts. The problems today with Jihadists have nothing to do with religion in general or Christianity in particular. Religion in general is not "a way of knowing" but Christian theology is a form of knowledge.

I thought it was well known. I guess I find it hard not to think of one of Diego Romero's bowls (Cochiti Pueblo), showing an image of the Spanish cutting off the foot of a Puebloan who would not convert to Christianity. I've looked for an image of this bowl online, but couldn't find one. The following are a couple of brief summaries of the conversion to Christianity:

With the approach of victory over the Moors, Ferdinand and Isabella had sharpened the zeal of the Church into a fearful weapon – the Inquisition – to nationalize a fragmented land, convert or expel Moors and Jews, and assail the heretics. During the days of the Inquisition, Spain burned people at the stake for advocating the heresy of Protestantism, purportedly practicing the dark magic of witchcraft, carving their mutton in the kosher tradition, or for taking their weekly rest on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, rather on Sunday, the Christian day of worship. ...

A Rio Grande pueblo revolted, unsuccessfully, around 1645 after the Spanish hung 40 Indians who refused to convert to Christianity. More Rio Grande pueblos revolted, unsuccessfully, in 1650, and 29 more Indians swung from Spanish ropes. ...

1000 Acomans lost their lives in the battle, which lasted for three days. Five hundred found themselves bound into Spanish enslavement. All surviving men over 25 lost a foot to Spanish blades as punishment.

[http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/P_rebellion.html]

The Pueblos may have outnumbered the Spanish, but they submitted themselves to the tribute and Christian conversion required by the crown. ...

Tensions came to a head in 1599 when Pueblos in Acoma attacked a party of Spaniards that had demanded provisions. The Spaniards burned the town and severed a foot from each Acoman male over the age of twenty-five.

The Spanish court system routinely punished disobedience with hanging, flogging, and dismemberment. The years leading up to the 1680 revolt were marked with many such instances of brutal retribution, as well as the institution of exploitative labor. Indians were forced to convert to Catholicism and native religious practices were suppressed. Masks and kivas, or underground ceremonial spaces, were destroyed, and medicine men were punished for attempted rebellions. In 1675 Governor Juan Francisco Treviño ordered forty-seven medicine men arrested after Pueblos were accused of practicing witchcraft. All were whipped and imprisoned; four were sentenced to death by hanging. Three of these sentences were carried out; the fourth prisoner committed suicide.

[http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2002 ... evolt.html]

Ancient history? Sort of. But it's that history that led to the current situation. My point is simply that we can't use "the presence of followers" as a yardstick for "the truth of a religion." In this case, we have historical evidence of coerced conversion. It also turns out that the millions of inhabitants of North America, who would probably not have been so easily converted had they survived, largely succumbed to European diseases--which wiped out the vast majority of the population. This is why it appeared that the "new world" was largely unpopulated when settlers began to arrive. Needless to say, filling up an empty continent by simple breeding, with the cultural transmission of the founding religion, is also a way to produce a large number of followers regardless of the truth of the religion. Please, though, keep this in context. I'm not implying anything about the religion itself. I'm reminding us of the history, which was not always pleasant, and asking that we recognize that the behavior of some individuals is not evidence for or against the fundamental truth of a philosophy. It may be linked to the propagation of that philosophy, but not to its fundamental truth. After all, scientologists could have done it, if they'd been in the right place at the right time.

You say, "Religion in general is not "a way of knowing" but Christian theology is a form of knowledge." As it turns out, the term "way of knowing" is an education term that is used currently to refer to thought processes that can lead to "forms of knowledge" (to use your phrase). Mathematics is a "way of knowing" some things. Science is a "way of knowing" some things. Religion is another. As it turns out, different religions, when used to infer things about the spiritual world (should such a thing exist), come to different conclusions. For the practitioners of a religion, their religion is, for them, a "way of knowing" that gives them their "form of knowledge."

I find it easier to think about if I consider "religion" as a class of philosophies, rather than try to think of each religion separately. It seems to me that all of them, regardless of their origins or details, fill the same basic niche: to provide people with a "framework of answers" (a term I just invented) about what they consider to be "important things" that are not objectively measurable--stuff like the nature of, or presence of, a "spiritual world," conceptions of what happens to people after they die, proposed answers to "why" questions and ultimate causation. Some people care deeply about these things, and find answers in their religions. Because religions tend to fill this niche, and because they tend to address a common set of questions, albeit with different answers, it seems fair to think of religion in general being a "way of knowing" about these kinds of issues. Certainly, we won't learn much about them with the mathematical or scientific "ways of knowing."

The difficulty is that followers of any particular religion tend to discount other religions--the disagreement of which you speak. "Christian theology is a form of knowledge." At least, it's a framework of answers to questions that cannot be addressed objectively, and must be taken on faith. For scientologists, their framework of answers is, for them, a form of knowledge that replaces their need for the Christian answers. Hindus have a different framework of answers from their religion, filling the same niche. Where we get into trouble, as a global society and as a set of warring factions, is in making the assumption that our particular form of knowledge is more true than that of others. Again, this raises the question of how to tell which one is right--or, if we can't do that, shouldn' we conclude that all religions are equal?