From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Tue Oct 28 2003 - 09:26:08 EST
John W Burgeson wrote:
>
> What puzzles me is the number of purportedly respectable academics who
> support young earth creation-- specifically ICR.
>
> Among this roster of shame are these gentlemen:............................
> Guys -- these are real people. They hold what are, to almost all of us,
> views which denigrate both the scientific traditions we revere, and many
> of the findings of our sciences.
>
> They need to be loved as fellow Christians; their IDEAS need to be
> exposed for the frauds they are.
>
> But while we fiddle around, and sometimes win a few, they are winning the
> war. And their students, in many cases, are turning from the faith when
> the fraud is exposed; it is hard for me to blame them.
>
> Maybe I'm wrong. maybe the YECers are NOT winning. But I've asserted such
> on this list (and elsewhere) many times; I don't recall a rebuttal. So
> what happens when (or if) they do win?
>
> I fear for our civilization.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a description of Imre Lakatos way of describing
how science operates & take the liberty of quoting here.
"You have a "hard core", a theoretical claim at the center which you're going
to try to maintain in the course of investigation. & then there are surrounding
theories forming a "protective belt" which can be modified to protect the hard core.
...............
So how do you ever decide if a theory is good or bad? It's not a matter of
evaluating a static theory but of an ongoing research program - new observations
& experiments & theoretical development. If your theory can continue to predict "novel
facts" (i.e., those not used in construction of the theory) with no - or slight -
modification of the protective belt then it's a progressive research program. If you
can't predict novel facts & continually have to be changing the protective belt to
shield your hard core from the implications of new data then your research program is
degenerating. & if it keeps on degenerating, eventually most scientists will abandon
it."
I don't want to suggest that this is a perfect way, or the only way, to
understand science, but I do think it's helpful. Among other things it helps to make
sense of the phenomenon Burgy notes here, people in respectable academic positions in
the sciences who hold YEC views that to most scientists seem blatantly false. If your
hard core is that the universe came into being ~10^4 years ago and that living things
have not evolved but were created instantaneously, you can always put together auxiliary
hypotheses to enable you to maintain that hard core. "Apparent age" is the most extreme
way but there are others.
The question then is whether such a YEC research program is progressive or
degenerating. There's no question that as a scientific research program it is
degenerating. It never predicts any "novel facts" but simply explains any new discovery
by saying, in essence, "God did that too."
So there's no difficulty in evaluating this program _as science_: By this point
in time it is a failure. The problem is that as a religious, cultural and political
program it is "progressive" in the sense that it convinces a lot of people and makes new
converts.
WE have to continue to highlight the inadequacies of YEC as science but it is
not enough just to point out a lot of data that seem (to non-YECs) to be discordant with
it. If we think that we can "falsify" YEC in that way we are ignoring its character as
a research program which can adjust its "protective belt" in order to maintain its
central YEC thesis. We ought to focus on its degenerating character as a research
program.
But science of course isn't the only issue. This is fundamentally a
_theological_ problem, and little progress is going to be made against YEC - either with
scientists or non-scientists - unless we can show the inadequacy of YEC theology. Now
theology also can be thought of in terms of research programs (cf. N. Murphy's _Theology
in the Age of Scientific Reasoning_.) One approach here would be to argue that if your
theological hard core is what it should be - i.e., "Jesus Christ and him crucified" then
it's superfluous to maintain "Genesis 1-11 and it as accurate history" as a _second_
hard core. The way in which we interpret scripture - and Genesis in particular - should
rather be understood as part of the protective belt, & therefore adjustable.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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