New Book on the Origin of Life

I think it’s pretty clear from context that @ho_idiotes is saying that Michael Marshall, the author of the book that is the subject of this thread, says those things in the early chapters of the book.

I agree with @thoughtful, I read the comment as fair warning to YEC folk of what they might encounter if they choose to read the book.

It’s an incidental thing that might be worth discussing more fully, but from a sociological perspective ‘myths’ means ‘meaning-making stories’, not ‘fiction’, and using the term makes no implicit judgement about the truth value of those stories. My point is that, while Michael Marshall in the book may well say that creationist stories are not useful or valuable, @ho_idiotes was not himself making those claims in this post.

I think the first of those is pretty easily challenged in terms of the best current cosmological evidence we have (which suggests that the expansion of the universe is indeed currently accelerating), but there’s a larger point.

It’s been said many times before, but never really satisfactorily answered, I don’t think.

I don’t a priori rule out the potential contribution of creation science to science. Part of the philosophy of science is an openness to new ideas, and I have a fondness for Paul Feyerabend’s ‘epistemological anarchy’.

But to contribute to science, creation science would need to be proposing and conducting new experiments, rather than simply trying to attack current science.

Science proceeds by coming up with better, more powerful theories, not by criticizing existing ones. There is a place for critique, but no-one gets a Nobel or gets famous from it.

The real standard in science - and it’s a phrase I write pretty often when I’m examining PhD dissertations - is “a significant original contribution to knowledge”.

If there are examples of creation science making such a contribution, I would be delighted to have them pointed out to me.

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Why can’t @ho_idiotes speak for himself? So I am again asking a direct question of @ho_idiotes

Please explain what you mean here. What do you consider “creation myths” and who is it claiming they “lack value”, and do you personally agree with those claims?

How do you reconcile the above statement with your statement here:

"The way to make a reputation in science is to overturn previous science. It is falsifying the status quo that leads to fame, not buttressing it. "

I reconcile it by the fact that both statements say exactly the same thing in different words.

But you don’t overturn old science by criticizing it, you overturn it by creating those new and better theories.

My view on this is internally consistent… and I’m a little flattered that you took the time to do the cross-reference search. :wink:

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No wait. This is a rule that your science paradigm has created. Besides, the “significant original contribution to knowledge” from Creation science would simply be labeled “truth”, which by the way, is another thing your science paradigm is not seeking after. Modern science does not seek truth.

True. That is not what it’s for. There is a science for seeking truth from holy writings, and it’s called theology, and its key tool is hermeneutics. I have the greatest respect for it, and have several good friends who are active, working theologians.

What about Genetic Entropy? That is a new idea from Creation science. Does it work? I am not yet convinced, but it is a new idea nontheless.

What about @PDPrice 's submission regarding natural arches? That is a novel idea from Creation science. Does it work for us? I personally am not yet convinced, but I am open.

If we are honest, we may have to abandon both of those ideas. So what? My point is that your claim is entirely unfounded, because Creation science very much advances new ideas .

I personally came up with a young universe cosmology model twelve years ago that may hold promise. It has received critique and a prompt from a secular physicist that there may be a way forward if it is properly developed.

Proposing the ideas is the first step. Conducting the experiments to test whether they explain the evidence, and do so more effectively than our current best theory, is the next.

In the case of all three of your examples, that work remains to be done. The proper scientific attitude, and the one I adopt, is to be agnostic as to the conclusion until the evidence is in. I do not presume that these theories are incorrect, but I do not assume they are correct in advance of the evidence either.

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The first step in my opinion is generating a model able to produce functional information to the extent you gain confidence that proteins can form sufficiently to start and maintain the cell division process.

No, what I am trying to tell you is that your view of science, in that it is hindered from seeking truth, may not be the purest form of science. I personally don’t think that truth should be something outside the realm of science. Theology and Creation science are different approaches to truth. But the two should not be conflated.

I don’t mind telling you that I strongly feel Creation science to be the better science than modern science. I don’t mind telling you that that is my strong bias but I think it is a bias well supported by the fact that Creation science, unlike yours, does seek truth.

No. It has been completely discredited by actual geneticists and biologists.

No. It’s a laughably bad misrepresentation of actual geology which has been thoroughly refuted right here at PS.

Creation “science” only finds new ways to misrepresent actual science while pushing their overtly religious agenda. Their self-published nonsense is a non-starter in the actual scientific community.

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Please share their reviews completely discrediting it. I’d be interested. I’d like to read the book eventually.

You and I both know that all of that is Christian sin and none of it is based on the Bible. Please keep attacking strawmans and making your comments look weak.

You’re also ignoring that most of science has been advanced by Christians or others who acknowledged God. Modern scientific thinking where one cannot invoke God as creator to explain natural laws and why the universe is ordered and consistent is a very modern phenomenon. Somehow instead this all was a random accident that happened to be ordered and consistent.

What’s your definition of what’s considered “creation science”?

What was it? What’s your scientific background @r_speir if you have one? I’ve been curious.

I let its adherents define their own terms.

I’d like you to define it, so that if “creation science” produced such a contribution, you wouldn’t be moving the goalposts.

Fair enough, but it seems presumptuous for an ‘outsider’ to try to define someone else’s field.

I would simply define it as an approach to science that includes the possibility of miraculous/supernatural causes for phenomena, rather than confining itself to natural explanations as natural science does.

Creation science covers both special creation and intelligent design approaches - essentially, any processes in which God is invoked as a cause. It often includes things like flood geology to explain geological features, and things like the RATE project that claim changes to physical constants such as those that govern radioactive decay.

As practiced, creation science is something of a grab-bag of different activities. I use that description descriptively, not pejoratively. Natural science is a grab-bag too, at least in terms of its foci, from cosmology to parasitology.

But I think the simplest and most elegant definition is the one I gave above: “…an approach to science that includes the possibility of miraculous/supernatural causes for phenomena, rather than confining itself to natural explanations as natural science does.”

Given I stated a preference for creation scientists to self-describe, though, I’m happy to be corrected.

I’m making my best efforts in good faith. I’m always seeking to expand understanding, never to ‘win’, so moving the goalposts is of no interest to me.

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You could not be further from the truth. And this is precisely what is so unfortunate because this misunderstanding of Creation science is perpetuated forward. We try hard, very hard to head this off by producing very real science and oftentimes getting very real results, but alas. The stigma in minds like yours is sometimes, many times, almost impossible to overcome.

Creation Week is miraculous. After all, it takes God to get the Universe and Life started. But after Creation Week ends, Creation science is there to begin its investigation much like you perform in a naturalistic sense.

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Sorry, late to the response. The downside of living in the UK when other posters are presumably in the US

Correct on all points, including the technical meaning of “myth” I was using here. I can’t recall whether or not Marshall uses that exact term, and because I only have it in audio I am not going to try to find it.

Marshall is claiming that they lack value.
I mean creation myths in the sense that ProfBravus explained it, rather than just focussing on Christian beliefs it allows him to discuss wider ancient literature. Marshall definitely gives more attention to Christian beliefs, as far as I can recall. Given this, in a technical sense of the word the creation accounts in the Bible are “myth”. This doesn’t mean that they are devoid of truth, but that that truth need not lie in a dogmatic belief that everything is to be taken at face value and given scientific meaning. They were written in a pre-scientific society to accommodate the pre-scientific knowledge of the people at the time.

Happy to go into this further, but I think it would be slightly off topic as it is now straying into the realm of my other thread “the bible as an act of communication” and away from what this book is saying

I will respond to this as I don’t want you to think I am just ignoring it
I have used the term lurk to describe my activity in a tongue in cheek manner, so fair play for using it back. To put it simply, I “lurk” because I have zero scientific training beyond school, where frankly I wasn’t interested, I therefore have nothing worthwhile contributing to matters that are scientific beyond questions.
I genuinely can’t remember disparaging anyone on this board, apologies if I have done so and forgotten, or if I have come across as doing so. If you let me know where I have done this, then I will consider whether I need to offer a specific apology and change the way I interact. I have complained often enough in fact about the level of interaction descending into insult and accusation that I certainly need to be told if I myself am doing it
I keep my thoughts about scientific matters vague because, again, I have no scientific expertise and am not interested in arguing about data that I know nothing about. I am interested in how people interact and think, and in language (primarily Greek, but also a school of linguistics called relevance theory). In discussions about human interaction dogmatic assertions won’t help so I will come across as vague. In matters of Greek and linguistics I am purely an avid reader so have more concrete thoughts, but claim no expertise

I have already done so elsewhere on this board. I am broadly in line with GAE with a few questions around how recent it may be. I am also broadly in line with Hilber’s work on divine accommodation. I have never tried to hide any of this. Anything on “why” is going to take a longer post and isn’t for this thread.

What I am up to? I am looking at conversations and finding things interesting

Hope this is a reasonable response. As I said, I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring your questions. Anything more on this is definitely not for this thread and should be picked up elsewhere if you feel the need

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Genetic entropy states that life should go extinct in a few tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. We have a fossil record of life going back billions of years. No, it doesn’t work.

Creation science has failed to incorporate the facts we already have, such as a fossil record spanning billions of years.

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