I know this was an old one, but I wanted to reply.
I totally agree. Personally, belief in YEC has given me an even greater appreciation of science. And I find science more fulfilling as a YEC.
Some people don’t seem to get that concept. For us, our worldview is grounded in two things: 1) scripture and 2) science. It makes for a better worldview. As a result, we study scripture, and we study science. We don’t arbitrarily offer up “God did it” for every problem. We do our best to find naturalistic explanations, and only invoke God’s hand when we have sufficient scriptural reason to. And for all of you who want to quote and debate this paragraph…go right ahead. The point is, we YECs have a great regard for science, and find it rather fulfilling.
BTW,
Non sequitur.
I’m sorry to be so blatant, but this is ridiculous. First, “science” is a VERY broad topic. Second, “a complete cessation… reduction … of doing actual science”?? On what planet? I know of NO creationists (on planet earth) this applies to.
Normally I ignore non-sense like this, but can’t help but marvel at comments like these.
If it’s a non sequitur, you must have a hypothesis for their absence. What is it?
Earth.
Do you know of any to which it does not apply?
No nonsense, all data, Jeff.
Name three of your favorite creationists, and we’ll look up their contributions to the primary scientific literature (where we publish actual science) over time.
We can start with John Sanford. How many papers has he published in in the primary scientific literature since (assuming his testimony under oath is accurate) he became a creationist?
Just to warm up, shall we look at my publication record so that we’re clear on the categorization?
There was a splendid paper in Bio-Complexity a while ago which addressed the question “who are the ‘parents’ of a synthetic organism?” I think that may be the high water mark for original scientific work by creationists in my lifetime. Admittedly it was devoid of scientific content, but that was in a way the genius of the thing: by making no intelligible scientific claim, it avoided stating anything that was actually false. The same can rarely be said for anything else published by creationists.
If that’s the case why do you ignore 99.9% of science which shows a very young (<10K years) Earth and a literal global Noah’s Flood / Noah’s Ark never happened?
Of all the possible questions that could be asked about the work of Venter’s team, whether ethical, biological, forward-looking, technological, or other, they chose to ask who the new organism’s parents were - and they didn’t even answer that.
That’s even more vacuous than their ‘paper’ on creating a genome-themed pet pyramid.
Bio-Complexity definitely would be a good target for a “Social Text” type hoax. I’d give it a try, but since I’m local to Seattle they’d probably want to meet me and I don’t think I could wash the slime off.
Impressive I’m sure. Certainly counts more than my “published” homework assignments in High School biology (which I probably got a B in).
So you being the expert, perhaps I need to hear more from you in this area. Plus you seem to be pretty firm in your belief that “creationism hinders science.” You also seem to indicate here…
…the possibility that all scientist who are creationists are known for
“a complete cessation (typically) or a dramatic reduction (rarely) in doing actual science”
This is a pretty serious thing since science effects every area of life, including technology, health and safety.
You mentioned “All evidence…” points to this.
Mind sharing some of that evidence?
Based on what you have been writing, it seems you view science as a collection of facts and inferences. (“Rock formations on Mars show it used to have bodies of water. Fossils show T. Rex had tiny arms…”) But in fact, science is a community enterprise where community membership involves learning not only the deep arcana of a discipline’s data, literature, and theory, but also how to make your own contributions back to the community.
The collective knowledge of a scientific discipline at any point in time is a (very deep and hard to understand for outsiders) snapshot based on the community’s process, standards, and hard work. Someone who is unaware of that background might find analogies offered by a popular author to be intuitive and convincing. But we would do well to take our cues about popular authors from the community that gave birth to and acts as stewards of that discipline, don’t you think? Is what’s intuitive for me really a good standard for science?*
You have gained an appreciation for some artifacts of knowledge produced by scientists, Jeff. But have you really come to understand how science works as a community enterprise where community membership involves learning not only the deep arcana of a discipline’s data, literature, and theory, but also how to make your own contributions back to the community?
Best,
Chris
*There is so much about stochastic branches of science like quantum physics and evolution that I find to be counterintuitive! Superposition? The applications of Heisenberg uncertainty? Quantum entanglement? Completely counterintuitive, all of them! And yet computer scientists are building a new generation of technology based on these counterintuitive notions from quantum physics. And in the same way that quantum physics is often counterintuitive, evolutionary biology is often counterintuitive. For example, constructive neutral evolution, homoplasies due to convergence and incomplete lineage sorting, neutral fixation…and the list goes on and on. This counterintuitiveness might explain why even a diligent amateur might find the field of evolutionary biology hard to grasp.
I suppose in some ways I’m like the average-joe who has an appreciation for science, even though we don’t know all the inner-workings. It’s like sausage. Most don’t know how it’s made, but still like it. Call us “consumers of science.” In fact, I can appreciate, and can relate to that wording:
But yes, I do get that there’s more to it than “a collection of facts and inferences.”
And being on this site has given me more exposure to that very large multi-faceted, contextually defined word “science” (I’ve seen many definitions of it). Particularly the inner workings of those who do this day-to-day. It’s not only given me insight into the ‘process of science’ but also a glimpse into ‘scientific career fields’. Insight I wouldn’t have if I didn’t come here (or better said stay here despite my ponderings as to why I should at times).
Having said all that…although I don’t know all the nuances, do appreciate both science…and sausage.
There’s a topic you didn’t mention, but it might be because your fingers can get exhausted from interacting with all the folks here (so I’m definitely not trying to make you feel badly). That topic is how stochastic scientific models like quantum mechanics and evolution are often counterintuitive to the non-professional. Even Einstein struggled with the counterintuitive aspects of quantum physics, and he most assuredly understood the math! But he did eventually come around…
I mention this so you can understand how difficult it can be for the scientific community to communicate to non-professionals about why concepts that seem intuitive (e.g., the “irreducible complexity” of a mousetrap and its components) are actually very poor models that are contradicted by carefully curated scientific evidence.
How so, exactly? If creationists are touting creationism as real science, isn’t my challenge perfectly reasonable?
Seconded, and I don’t see anything relevent to evolution/creationism from my initial scan.
I’ve never heard of any of the three. Wouldn’t going through the evidence involve knowing when each embraced creationism? But I have to say that it’s refreshing to see that @pnelson grasps the idea of testing someone else’s hypothesis, if not his own.
And why aren’t any of the ones you chose the creationists we hear about?
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