Perspectives on Discussion of Science and Religion

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Don_Mc

I am not claiming that you don’t know what you’re doing.

Some of the excerpts from your book you’ve chosen to post here clearly do claim that scientists and educators don’t know what they are doing:

@Don_Mc

“Arguably…, creationism and Evolution are strictly neither testable scientific theories nor documented historical events, but more like untestable theories of prehistorical events” (p. 59).

You’ve been politely corrected on this point multiple times. You’ve never responded, which speaks volumes.

@Don_Mc

Perhaps more importantly, I am claiming freedom – to think for myself, to write books if I feel inspired to do so, and to express my opinions here…

No one here has EVER suggested that your freedom should be curtailed.

Don’t I have the freedom to point out that science isn’t done by textual analysis?

@Don_Mc

Anyway, this will be my last reply to you.

IIRC, you have never made a substantive reply to me.

@Don_Mc

But I don’t think analysis of the dynamic causal interactions that occur within and among biological systems and subsystems, or of their characteristics – functional integration, nestedness and so forth – requires understanding how those systems came to exist in the first place.

I’ve spent a career doing exactly those sorts of analyses. I’m not an evolutionary biologist. I’ve done developmental biology, virology, genetics, carcinogenesis, cell biology, neuroscience, and biochemistry applied to cardiology. All but the first two were literally, empirically connected. Every single mechanism that I’ve studied all but screams that it arose by evolution.

It’s worth noting that you have stumbled onto a hypothesis (that systems biology and evolutionary biology can be separated as disciplines) that makes testable empirical predictions, which are false:

1. Zero systems biologists (and I know a few) have claimed to have separated systems biology from evolutionary biology.
2. Zero IDcreationists have taken up systems biology AFAIK. If you are right, they should be flocking to it.
3. No college or university that espouses creationism has started a systems biology department.

@Don_Mc

In my vision of a systems-centered approach, the origins of many of those systems would remain mostly unaddressed (hence unexplained).

Why? It’s all completely intertwined. People use systems-centered approaches to study evolution itself. Are they misguided?

"Evolutionary systems biology" - Search Results - PubMed

Why would any scientist want to consider your vision? How would you enforce this if no one did? Would you stop oncologists from studying the evolution of tumors?

@Don_Mc

Evolution and possibly other theories addressing origins would be set aside as a branch of biology dedicated to those questions, but would no longer be the central organizing principle.

Sorry, but the theme of biology for decades has been the opposite: the rapid breaking down of walls between disciplines and departments. For example, my first faculty position was in the Department of Physiology at UT Southwestern, yet I had never taken a physiology course nor published in a physiology journal.

You are proposing to erect a huge new wall on the basis of a vision for which you’ve provided no empirical basis. The only separation that makes any sense is that between the spiritual and the empirical, not by proposing new walls between scientific disciplines. Have you considered that viewing science as nothing but retrospective explanations might be a problem, and that looking at science more empirically might alleviate that conflict in your thinking?