George writes:
> But again, whether or not young earth views have been falsified depends
> in part on what you consider plausible.
Definitely. One size does not fit all.
> One can always appeal to
> "apparent age, aka Russell's paradox. Bertrand Russell, certainly no
> friend of creationism, argued that there's no way you could prove
> scientifically or logical that the earth didn't come into being 15 minutes
> ago with all evidence, memories &c consistent with that. I think that
> there's a fundamental _theological_ problem with the apparent age notion,
> but it can't be refuted by strictly scientific arguments. (Of course
> most scientists who don't care about theology would just roll their eyes
> and ignore the suggestion.)
Yes. I think the problem with apparent age is both philosophical and
theological. I think that most scientists do roll their eyes and ignore the
suggestion of apparent age -- even those scientists with an interest in
theology. There are some underlying assumptions required to do science.
One of these is that "nature doesn't lie, it simply 'is'" -- or that inanimate
objects don't carry hidden agendas. That may not be true but the assumption
works pretty well in many cases. However, I don't think this limitation rules
out the possibility of studying or understanding the effects of "intelligent
agents" from a scientific perspective (Parts of sociology & psychology are
science, as are parts of archaeology). I suppose that whether this approach
is productive depends on the type of manifestation.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda
tikeda@sprintmail.hormel.com