George writes:
> Whatever one may say about the falsifiability of evolutionary theory,
> "special creation" seems to me _less_ falsifiable from a scientific
standpoint.
[...]
Yeah, that's pretty much a given. What I do not accept is a claim that
evolution and special creation are equivalent from the standpoint of
explanation and potential verification.
This is not to say that _some_ versions of creationism are not subject
to falsification; the YEC position about the age of the earth being one
example. There were also several proposals for cyclical, catastrophic
histories of the earth that went down in flames in the 18th (and 19th?)
centuries. As more is learned about the history of life, newer
versions of special creation will be proposed to "fit" the current
facts. If the term, "theory space", can be coined to represent the
area in which a theory can reside -- within the restrictions of what
we know about the world -- then we can say that the new creation theories
must be formulated to fit a smaller, better defined "theory space".
Of course, despite such restrictions, creation theories will still occupy
a infinite theory space, but at least it will be a smaller infinite
space ;^)
Regards,
Tim Ikeda
tikeda@sprintmail.hormel.com (despam address before use)