Re: [asa] Non-controversial science

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Bruce Bennett wrote:

> Michael,
>
> I am not a scientist nor do I have a scientific background, so I'm a bit
> trepid in my remarks. But isn't it the conclusions of historical science
> that sometimes causes the greatest stir among many Christians? For me, I
> don't outright reject historical science as being a legitimate science;
> however, I do think their conclusions (say for example, the age of the earth)
> might be more questionable than those drawn from non-historical science.
>
> Bruce

I think that the conclusions of historical sciences are in general more
tentative than those of non-historical sciences. However this must be
tempered by the observation that historical sciences make use of
non-historical sciences, some more than others. For example, historically
early attempts to scientifically date the age of the earth were crude
because of crude methods and were not very accurate. However now we have
great confidence that we have a pretty accurate figure because we can date
rocks by radioactive decay, which is basically physics. We know that a
supernova in one of the Magellanic clouds occurred about 170,000 years ago
by using trigonometry and the value of the speed of light.

It appears that if you want to dispute certain of the major conclusions of
historical sciences, you will have to dispute some of those of
non-historical sciences first.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

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Received on Tue Aug 26 15:47:31 2008