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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Rules question
Message-ID: <317@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Sep-84 12:41:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.317
Posted: Wed Sep 19 12:41:08 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 01:11:41 EDT
Organization: UW Primate Center
Lines: 80

Warning!  This posting contains no sarcasm.  Try not to drop
over dead.
---
I will address here something which I have suspected from
my first contact with this newsgroup, and which bears heavily
on my initial posting: the offer to discuss scientific
creationism.  This is what I understand to be the concensus
of the evolutionary side of the argument:

	In order to present what the pro-evolution side would
	consider a legitimate position, these two requirements
	must be met:

(i)	A creationism model must be scientific and not religious.
	(to make this point belabors what Dick Dunn and others have
	been saying all along.  I include it here for completeness.)
(ii)	A creation model must, obviously, include a creator.  But a
	creator is a  religious (or at the least, supernatural)
	concept and therefore cannot be part of a scientific model.

These two requirements taken together rule out, by definition,
any possibility of a scientific creation model, right?  Ken Perlow
has stated as much:

> All creationist propositions need one or
> more gods to work the machinery.  But if the explanation is not
> naturalistic, it's not science.  By definition!

To which Larry Bickford replied:

> Sez who? Webster's has "systematized knowledge derived from observation,
> study, and experimentation..."

Another exchange went like this:

> [Michael Ward]
> "Science simply refuses to depend on divine intervention as an
> explanation of anything."

> [Larry Bickford]
> Such a science is bigoted instead of neutral. And until science gets
> *all* the answers, it has no place making such an absolute statement.

---
Well.  I shall not dispute point (i), above.  Clearly a religious
model will not convince the non-religious, or those who place a
higher value upon the truth to be derived from scientific inquiry
than that which might be derived on a religious basis.

However, I do feel that point (ii) is unreasonable, for the
reason given in the second quote from Larry.  How can science,
which must be willing to consider the best explanation of natural
phenomena rule out, a priori, the possibility that natural
phenomena has a supernatural origin?  Just as I must be willing
to consider models which are consistent with the assumption that
no creator was present, so must non-creationists be willing
to concede the possibility that models not based on that assumption
may be used to derive predictions regarding natural phenomena,
based on natural laws.

I have not yet tried to formulate any description of a model based
on creation in this newsgroup.  Several people have noticed that,
and have presented criticism based on that observation.  I don't
wish to complain about the criticism (it would be somewhat inconsistent,
since I have offered a certain amount of it to the evolutionary
position).  The reason I haven't given a model is that I do not
(yet) see that it is worth it.  If any such attempt will be
ruled invalid by definition, what's the point?  I'm still willing
to give one, and to demarcate what would be considered outside
of the realm of scientific inquiry (i.e., what the model could
not explain).  My question is, shall I try?

If I have misrepresented the evolutionary position, then of
course clarifications are solicited.
-- 
Paul DuBois		{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois

"Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein
do I delight."
				Psalm 119:35