Yes, you succeeded where others have failed. :-)
>
> Yes, Lakatos would be acceptable. I recall that he resurrected
> the 'Duhem-Quine thesis' which noted that adjustments can
> always be added to any hypothesis to keep it from being
> disconfirmed. This means that falsification and critical
> experimental results can always be deflected. And this is
> not always subterfuge; sometimes it is good science. For
> example, the perturbations in the orbit of Uranus were not
> interpreted as disconfirming Newton or Kepler. Later they
> led to the discovery of Neptune -- i.e. a real object.
At the risk of getting embroiled in a philosophical discussion with
someone, like you, who knows more than I, I would disagree that that is not
quite what Lakatos is saying. He says that one can't consider a theory
falsified until a better one is present to take over. (See I. Lakatos,
"Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," in
I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave , Critism and the Growth of Knowledge,
(Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970), p. 119)
This explains partly why I adamantly argue for a system which matches the
observational data. One can not change the dominant, naturalistic paradigm
until one has something that explains things at least equally well, and
Lakatos would demand that the new view explain something novel, (p. 120).
Christians can't possibly compete without a scenario which purports to
explain earth history within a christian perspective. Merely adding God on
as a useless and ad hoc layer won't do it.
Lakatos does not seem to rule out falsification entirely. There is a point
at which the main structural supports of a theory, when they are falsified,
causes, eventually, a paradigm shift, because people search for solutions
to the problems affecting the main supports of the theory. That is what
happened with Einstein.
>
> >And here I absolutely disagree that the battle is in philosophy. I
>call
>> what most christians do 'The Retreat into Philosophy'. They can retreat
>> from the observational world. They don't have to deal with any data or
>> even
>> learn anything in order to do modern Christian apologetics. All they have
>> to do is philosophize the problems away. They never have to explain the
>> data, just philosophize why the data doesn't say what it obviously says.
>>
> PA: The post-critical assessment that "all data are theory-laden"
> should at least give one pause. What counts as "data"? Today,
> most "data" are interpreted by a vast edifice of theory, as well
> as by complex instruments. There is no getting around this problem
>simply by insisting that all we do is look at the data.
This is one of the views of Lakatos, that I don't like. He wrote:
"Propositions can only be derived from propositions. They can not be
derived from facts." p. 99
The difficulty I have here is that this does open the door for a lack of
objective reality (a view that is rampant in physics due to the problems of
quantum). To me, this almost smacks of the concept that we don't have to
pay attention to the observational data--propositions will do. And that
then means that Lawyers doing science are as good as scientists doing
science. and this is a proposition (derived from other propositions) which
I adamantly reject ON OBSERVATIONAL GROUNDS. ;-)
>
> You don't have to shout. Let me illustrate my concern in a
> specific situation. I once attended one of Ken Ham's seminars,
> in which he presented to a lay church audience about 3 hours
> worth of geological and fossil evidence for a young earth.
> At the break, I asked him "What amount of evidence would
> it take to convince you that your view is incorrect?" He
> answered that no amount of evidence would suffice, because
> he presupposed that Genesis is God's word and teaches a
> young earth, and then he goes and finds evidence for this.
> All counterevidence is ruled out a priori. He even admitted that
> this is circular reasoning, but (as Gerstner put it) he only moves
>in the best of circles.
>
> I won't bother to comment on the fallacies here; you can see them
>easily. They have characterized the methodology of Morris and his followers
>since the 1960's. The point is that these are logical and philosophical
>issues. It bothers me that the public schools and maybe(?) most colleges
>no longer require a basic course in practical logic and philosophy, this
>being a capitalist democracy based on advertising and political campaigning
>and other kinds of advocates.
I agree, but by taking the view that ""all data are theory-laden"
> should at least give one pause. What counts as "data"? Today,
> most "data" are interpreted by a vast edifice of theory, as well
> as by complex instruments.",
one is almost accepting the view of MOrris and his followers. They don't
care about facts and that is why they can take the positions they do. They
would agree with the above (I can document this) and they think that the
bias of the evolutionist hides the real data that supports their cause.
Our children are constantly being harangued
>by these advocates and they are unequipped to deal with them, because
>philosophy is in such a state of disrepute. No wonder they eventually
>retreat to relativism.
And if the philosophy teaches that objective data can't impact the
formulation of propositions, then we are indeed lost! (I didn't shout
except once.)
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution