Re: [asa] Non-controversial science

That's a good point Gordon, but I think we need to go even further. One
way to evaluate historical science is to surely look at the underlying
"hard science"; however, just because hard science supports the
historical science is not enough to support a conclusion, and may even
cause misleading determinations. Otherwise, why do we need trials if
laboratory evidence (e.g., blood evidence) points to whodunit? In
fact, in the U.S. alone over 100 people on death row have been
exonerated by hard science (DNA) who were convicted in part in many
cases by other hard science (blood evidence). Many times the methods
used to obtain hard evidence is questioned and successfully disputed in
court. If hard science was enough to support historical evidence, why
would need juries?

Michael made an interesting comment that I think makes my point: He
says: "[h]owever what do you conclude if your kids' pet rabbit has
disappeared overnight and there are prints of fox paws along with a
trail of blood leading from the hutch? Clearly a fox killed your bunny
and that is the principle of historical science." I think Michael's
conclusion is logical and reasonable, but what if I heard my neighbor
had borrowed the rabbit to play with, and it really wasn't missing?
What if there was another animal other than the fox that didn't leave
footprints that could have killed the rabbit? These are but of a few
possibilities that might lead one to a very different conclusion. I
think the more hard evidence or science to support historical sciences
the better, but I don't see it as even remotely dispositive in
determining the "truth". I once had a law professor tell me that law
schools train aspiring lawyers to dance on the head of a needle. While
that may be true, scientists are pretty darn good at it themselves or
maybe even better, and I sincerely mean that as a compliment. Hard
science provides basic objective building blocks for getting to truths,
but it's how we subjectively stack those blocks together that makes
things interesting.

Bruce

gordon brown wrote:

> 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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-- 
Bruce W. Bennett
Bennett Law Offices, LLC
P.O. Box 968
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