From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Wed Oct 01 2003 - 22:23:22 EDT
Walter Hicks wrote:
>
> Hi !
>
> This, I believe, is the opportunity for us at ASA
> to demonstrate how we can approach an evaluation
> of the claims without "bias"!!! (Does anyone want
> to bet that this will happen?)
>
> What I mean is that, instead of looking for
> reasons for why these strange (so called "YECs")
> are people who are flat outright _wrong_ aall of
> the time --- we can explore their claims and see
> if their is any reason why they might be RIGHT
> this time!
>
> Lets us see what happens on this scientific list.
>
> So far I have seen very, very, very little
> objectivity --- and an awful lot of prejudgment
> of classes of people -- over and over again. It
> does turn one's stomach on occasion.
1) If we never made _any_ prejudgements, we'd never get anywhere. This can be simply
another word for learning from experience. There is some point to the old story of the
little boy who cried wolf.
2) We should be wary of prejudging whole classes of people - especially races or ethnic
groups for which the actions of one member may have nothing to do with those of another.
It is something else to be suspicious of claims made by members of a group defined by a
particular set of beliefs which in the past has played fast and loose with the truth in
defending those beliefs. That is the case /a fortiori/ when some of these claims are
being made by the same people who have been wrong in the past with similar arguments for
their distinctive views.
3) It is not possible to "explore these claims" until full information (experimental
arrangements, data, &c) are made available. Making such information available is
supposed to be a major purpose of publication in refereed professional journals.
Until the YECs do that they will, quite justifiably, be subject to the same kind
of suspicion directed to the cold fusion claims announed at a press conference. Simply
saying "I can call spirits from the vasty deep" deserves no credibility.
4) Evaluation of such claims is not a matter of deciding for or against isolated pieces
of data. Even if these recent YEC claims turn out to be true, we would have to take
into account the facts that
a) there is still a great deal of observational data that points to an old
earth and old universe, and
b) we have no theoretical framework in which these putative data can be
encompassed. Simply saying "decay rates speeded up a lot during the creation week or
the flood" is no theory at all. It's just the "It's a miracle" claim again. & BTW it's
the same kind of thing that Humphreys did with his failed cosmological model.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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