From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. (dfsiemensjr@juno.com)
Date: Sat Jul 12 2003 - 23:19:45 EDT
On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 09:56:29 -0500 "Glenn Morton"
<glennmorton@entouch.net> writes:
>
> I am, of course, on dangerous ground disagreeing with a philosopher
> about
> logic, but I would suggest that there may not be an infinite number
> of
> equally good theories for any given set of facts. I absolutely
> agree that
> there are an infinite number of theories which can explain the data,
> most of
> which are trivial semi-clones of each other. YECs logically are
> correct
> that the world may very well have been created with an appearance of
> age
> 6006 years ago. That is theory 1. But then there are others who
> say it was
> miraculously created 6007 years ago, etc etc etc. All of those fit
> the
> facts. Are they equally as good as the modern scientific theory?
> No. If
> they were, why would we fight them? They are on a purely LOGICAL
> basis
> equally good. But on an empirical basis, they stink. You can't do
> predictions in a universe designed by the YECs.
>
> As an aside, the YECs clearly reject the equally LOGICALLY valid
> view that
> the world was created miraculously 13 billion years ago with an
> appearance
> of age. :-)
>
Glenn,
I'm not talking about nonsense. The YEC position is not scientific.
Einstein's two relativity theories are. I noted Whitehead's attempt to
replace Riemannian geometry (1925--if my memory serves). It fit what was
known, but not what was later discovered. A later attempt to "correct"
Einstein was produced by Dicke and someone whose name I don't recall.
Many predictions identical to Einstein's, one clearly different. That one
did it in after the experimentalists were able to mount a test. There was
an article on these multiple theories in /Scientific American/ a goodly
number of years back (can't locate the reference), listing a couple dozen
alternatives. Not all, if I remember correctly, were intended to
supplant: some were designed to clarify. Given the complexity of
relativity, I don't expect to see a large number of alternates. That
there are any indicates that scientific theories are not unique to a set
of data.
The matter of many scientific theories seems to parallel the mathematical
recognition that, for any set of numbers, there are an infinite number of
formulas to match the set. Science merely adds a little more complication
to the search.
> >. Bill Williams
> >remarks that the Hebreo-Christian scriptures are the only ones that
> allow
> >for a beginning, science's Big Bang.
>
> If he is not careful, someone will accuse him of being a concordist,
> horror
> of horrors! :-)
>
Not likely. He simply recognizes that the earliest creationists took
their cue from the Hebrew scriptures. Every other philosophical or
religious view insisted on an eternal universe. /Ex nihilo nihil fit/ was
universally accepted except by Jews and Christians. Even gnostics,
heretical modifiers of orthodox views, often had trouble with creation.
Plato had the Demiurge shaping recalcitrant stuff for the world we
experience. Aristotle posited prime matter as the eternal other to Pure
Form. The gnostics and Plotinus seem to have been the first to argue that
a degenerate deity produced out universe. Other religions and
philosophies did worse.
Dave
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