As rule:
As a possible and untested exception:
Regardless:
Which should clarify your question:
I’m not contradicting myself. The situation is nuanced and more complex than the simple answer you want from me.
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How would that be possible in a world where YECs are not allowed to get grants and have an academic career based on exploring these ideas?
I understand the sincerity of your conviction. But to those who take science pretty seriously, hearing someone trying to do science on, specifically, the special creation of Adam and Eve (and thousands of other life forms), - - it’s a lot like hearing that someone is doing science on what physiological changes can make a corpse experience a resurrection.
Resurrection is a miraculous process. It will never be subject to scientific analysis.
Because they are allowed to get grants and have an academic career exploring ideas that have nothing to do with origins. Once you have a solid foundation doing good scientific work, it is possible to add additional lines of research, such as work on radiohalos.
How about assuming that it happened and working out the consequences?
Yes, that is what a hypothesis test does, work out consequences from a precisely defined set of assumption. They would also have to sensibly consider alternate hypothesis with different assumption.
Is such a limitation placed on evolutionists?
If you were a YEC, and wanted to do research on physiological affects of crucifixion on the human body, you would no doubt be able to find grant money for that. As you can see for yourself, this specific area of study is not particularly specific to Young Earth Creationism.
But if you wanted to study how God miraculously created thousands of species on the Earth … well, your sources of money would be Evangelical, not Scientific, right?
Yes. We all have to build a strong foundation of work before we are allowed to take on risky lines of inquiry.
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YES. In all disciplines.
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@BenKissling have you heard of Change Tan?
She is an example of a YEC scientist, who is open about her beliefs, that has a tenured position at University of Missouri. Very nice lady too. You can see she followed this pattern:
Nah bro. Read the limitation I was referring to. He said we’d be allowed to start in an area that “had nothing to do with origins”.
What risk are you talking about?
Risk in this context might mean: “most your scientific peers don’t believe this is likely to pan out.”
So what?
What “risky” lines of inquiry has she taken on?
Her young earth creationist work is very risky by this definition.
Might I suggest that Ben might come to understand the positions of others just a bit better by an exercise we might call the flat earth test? Just suppose that the field in question was not YEC but FES (Flat Earth Science). Would he welcome a FES advocate into his geography, geology, or astronomy department? Does he think FES should be funded by NSF? Does he think FES beliefs should be relevant to hiring and tenure decisions in relevant fields? (Does that change for irrelevant fields?)
The next step is to realize that mainstream scientists think of YEC in the same way they think of FES. And if the answer to the various questions above is against FES, the argument now become about whether YEC is like FES in relevant ways, or not, rather than the proper approach to YEC considered as a unique case.
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I think it depends on how you frame your proposed research. If you come up with a proposal to investigate in what way polonium halo’s contain information on geochronology I wouldn’t think that that would be a problem. If your proposal is to demonstrate that polonium halos show that the Earth cannot be older than 6000 years you would, rightly, have a problem.
Do you see the difference between the two?
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To frame this accurately and honestly, we can say that YECism was deemed entirely inconsistent with all available evidence from a whole variety of disciplines and methodologies. And remember that it enjoyed thousands of years of dominance and a nearly complete hold on all authorities, religious and secular. It’s stranglehold on “consensus” was wrenched away after the body of evidence became so overwhelming large that it’s acceptance was no longer tenable for anyone who could see and understand the evidence. So please let’s remember that YECism had it’s shot and every possible advantage. It didn’t hold up to scrutiny and was thus abandoned, not “drummed out.”
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