Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site h-sc1.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!h-sc1!shiue From: shiue@h-sc1.UUCP (steve shiue) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: Re: Philosophy of science and Creationism Message-ID: <634@h-sc1.UUCP> Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 00:13:55 EST Article-I.D.: h-sc1.634 Posted: Fri Oct 25 00:13:55 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 05:27:25 EST References: <11384@rochester.UUCP> <615@hou2g.UUCP> <143@ucdavis.UUCP> <12288@rochester.UUCP> <46@utastro.UUCP> <297@umich.UUCP <307@umich.U25 Oct 85 04:13:55 GMT Distribution: net Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center Lines: 58 > > Well, (by one definition) God is supposed to maximally benevolent and > omnipotent, which seems to have observational consequences that could be > falsified .... > This is not necessarily true. People like Alexander Pope (see the Essay on Man) have been saying for hundreds of years that because God is OMNISCIENT as well as omnipotent, and therefore is not subject to questioning. For instance, suppose that a scientist told a creationist that observation indicates that if there is a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God, then he must be out to lunch. The creationist, by the very definition of God that endows him with the above properties, could refute this by saying that God understands the broader picture that the scientist is incapable of seeing or understanding even if he could see it. The creationist argument is rather facile, and completely lacking in rigor. It amounts to ducking out of the intellectual fray before it even begins - the creationists ask to have it both ways, but I think it is a bit much to ask science to respect your theory when the nature of the theory places it above and outside of science. > >I agree that from the point of view of science, these assertions have > >been falsified. But I don't think that the issue. To me the issue is > >whether Creationists sidestep such falsifications when they arise by > >resorting to the unfalsifiable hypothesis of an omnipotent God. > ^Of course they sidestep such falsifications, for the reasons mentioned above. The essential point is this: the introduction of an all-powerful, all-knowing entity (regardless of its politics and whether you choose to call it God or Kate Bush) is, by intuition and logic, anathema to scientific inquiry. It allows any theory to survive poverty of evidence and outright contradiction, and by doing so, provides the ultimate "fudge factor" to justify any theory, even one as poorly supported as creationism. Certainly I cannot prove that the universe wasn't created a millisecond ago, exactly as it is (or ten or forty thousand years ago, for that matter). I can't even prove that anything exists outside of my own mind (see Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), or that my senses don't deceive me (as a matter of fact, I've recently come to suspect that people like Ken Arndt are merely perverse phantoms of my own imagination). But the advance of evolutionary theory and its study has proved enormously useful in the study of biological and anthropological phenomena, while the assertion of creationist theories has had if anything a negative influence on science and education. -Steve Shiue "I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill, I'd set him in chains at the top of the hill, And send for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille So he could die happily ever after." -Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues"