Re: unicycle for chirst


monkeyman wrote:

If it can be scientifically proven, why not? I bet before the first
dinosaur fossils were found, if you had told someone that they had
existed, they would of though you insane




What does this mean? The ideas of the earth being 6K years old, and
Noah's flood being a literal truth, cannot be scientifically proven, as
all the available evidence contradicts those "theories."

Scientific theories are:



- Parsimonious
- Logically consistent
- Logically falsifiable
- Reproducible
- Tentative




*"Parsimonious"* means that the theory should make *as few assumptions
as possible*. This is Occam's Razor: -Entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitatem- (Entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity). The Bible being literal truth is an underlying assumption
of Creationism, and it's a huge and unwarranted one. (It is worth
nothing that William of Ockham himself, as well as Thomas Aquinas whose
work was a precursor of Ockham's, were trying to find logical proof for
the existence of the Catholic God).

A specific result of ontological parsimoniety is that if the existence
of the universe can be explained *without* assuming the existence of a
god, then the assumption that there is a god should be discarded.

*"Logically consistent"* means that the theory should not contradict
*itself*; that is, it cannot suggest two separate, contradictory
explanations for a natural phenomenon. Genesis contradicts itself in
numerous ways, and the theological resolutions of those contradictions
are not themselves parsimonious; the resolutions of the contradictions
in the Bible all begin with the assumption that the Bible is correct,
therefore any contradictions must be something we don't understand.
That assumption is unwarranted and unscientific.

*"Logically falsifiable"* means that the theory should predict
something about natural phenomena, and those predictions should be
testable. Even if you start with the assumption that there is A
Creator, there is no test for whether the creator is actually the
Christian God (and in fact, the New Testament specifically prohibits
testing God). The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster notes that
the FSM alters the results of scientific tests with his noodly
appendage. The FSM is theologically and scientifically equivalent to
the Christian God; you can assert its existence but its existence is
untestable and unfalsifiable.

*"Reproducible"* means that the tests of the truth of the theory must
be able to be reproduced. This eliminates miracles described in the
Bible or other religious works as sources of scientific proof, as those
miracles are not reproducible.

*"Tentative"* means that the theory *should not assume that it is the
correct or complete explanation* for natural phenomena. A scientific
theory must examine all other possible explanations, point out areas
the theory fails to explain, and propose new areas of study.
Creationism asserts itself as truth; science does not.


I point all this out not because I care what you believe. People
believe all kinds of stuff; some people even believe that Paul
McCartney is more talented than John Lennon was. But in the U.S.,
*science* is under attack by fundamentalist Christians, and their
subversion of science and legislation is a significant danger to this
country. So, believe what you want, put what you want in your
signature, but don't call it science.


--
tholub
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