[asa] Re: [asa] Believing Scripture but Playing by Science¢s Rules

Louise and others have suggested that Ross must hold two contradictory views of the age of the earth. And perhaps he does. However, there is (at least) one other possibility. He could hold the creation/destruction/recreation model Scofield popularized. I'm not saying this is a good or even a valid model, but it is one possibility. Bill Hamilton William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D. 248.652.4148 (home) 248.821.8156 (mobile) "...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31 ----- Original Message ---- From: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu> To: asa@calvin.edu Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 12:48:15 PM Subject: Re: [asa] Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules .htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border:1px dashed lightgrey important;} html, body {border:0px;} span.macro, span.macro ul, span.macro div, span.macro p { background:#CCCCCC;} p{margin-bottom:0.15em; margin-top:0.15em;}body{font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10pt;} Iain wrote: So why do we use a model that is based on assumptions that we KNOW are false? Because (a) it works in practice and (b) we can do the maths. If we had to model the states as Gaussians, the resultant model would take many orders of magnitude longer to process the data, and we wouldn't be able to do speech recognition. So actually I see nothing wrong or dishonest about doing science based on assumptions that we don't believe are true - we always state "given the following assumptions:", and we are not beholden in scientific papers to state whether we personally believe those assumptions to be true.<< I don't know much more than basic statistic for psychology majors, so I can't evaluate the example you give, but I can understand simplifying a mathamatical model to make calculations workable. I think the key to your example is that the model works in practice. Having to assume that the marine reptiles you are studying lived, breathed then went extinct 64,990,000 years before you believe the planet they lived on was created does not strike me as a practical, real-world solution. ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php

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Received on Mon Feb 12 16:40:44 2007