Re: A question to The Creationists, again

On Jun 7, 10:45 pm, James Norris <JimNorri...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 8, 1:10?am, Mark Nutter <manutte...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 7, 6:34 pm, James Norris <JimNorri...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 7, 10:57?pm, Mark Nutter <manutte...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

That's true. They're not wrong because of the faith, they're wrong
because of the lies and other specific but false statements they
make.

You're confusing the issue. Creationists might be morally wrong to
tell lies, but that does not imply that the main principle of
creationism (that the universe was created) is wrong.

Nor did I claim that it did.

No, but you are saying that creationists are wrong because they tell
lies and make false statements. Does your remark apply to the
pope?

When the pope tells lies or makes other false statements, he is most
definitely wrong. If we can't say that someone is wrong when they say
things that are not true, it would be difficult to say what "being
wrong" was supposed to mean.

But you must realise that scientific
accounts are created with the intention of achieving self-consistency
and consistency with the observable reality as the main criteria for
their scientific validity, so it is hardly surprising that they score
highly if measured for that type of statistical 'truth' compared to
the work of a god. But it is no way a disproof of the basic principle
of creationism, that the universe was created.

Well, if we're talking about a "creation" that was unrelated to the
real world and to objective truth, then I'd have to agree. The only
type of creation which would need to live up to scientific measures of
consistency would be a creation which (allegedly) occurred in
objective reality. Objective reality is truth, and truth is consistent
with itself, so any proposed divine creation which purportedly took
place in the real world would need to be both self-consistent and
consistent with objective reality in order to be true.

What is your explanation for the origin of the universe - why did it
have a beginning at all? If the universe had always existed, the
problem of 'why did the universe begin' doesn't arise, and there is
less need for a creator to start things off.

I do not assume that objective reality is under any constraints to
conform itself to the limits of what I may or may not know. When it
comes to something I don't know (like why the universe began to
exist), then I simply acknowledge that I do not know. I do not pretend
that my ignorance gives me a reasonable basis for claiming that I *do*
know how and why the universe came into existence.

Science claims that the universe could theoretically have
spontaneously come into existence at the beginning of time without any
supernatural intervention, and they apply Occam's razor (that the
simplest theory is the best one), to state that according to science,
the theoretical possibility is what did in fact happen, because the
existence of a Creator is an unnecessary complication. That proves
that scientists' belief in the principle of Occam's razor is stronger
than their belief in the existence of a Creator.

Occam's razor is accepted by scientists because it is consistent with
what we observe in the real world. The simplest explanation (i.e. one
that does not needlessly multiply entities) has statistically proven,
repeatedly, to be the explanation most likely to be true.

It all goes back to the self-consistency of the truth. Scientists do
not select their conclusions based on what is most consistent with
their *beliefs*, they select their conclusions based on what is most
consistent with real-world truth.

The creationists'
belief that there must have been a prime cause, and therefore a
Creator, is not easy for scientists to dismiss, because creationists
believe that they are using Occam's razor as well, to validate the
existence of a prime cause!

Add that to the list of things that creationists believe wrongly,
then. It is a direct contradiction of Occam's Razor to "explain" the
universe in terms of a "creator" for whom there is no other evidence.
The part about "needlessly multiplying entities" applies directly to
the act of inventing a god or gods just to have something to attribute
the "creation" to.

"Needlessly" goes back, again, to the principle that truth is
consistent with itself, and that we can therefore learn new truth by
discovering what is consistent with the truth we already observe. An
additional entity is "necessary" when its existence is required in
order to be consistent with the rest of the truth. Occam's razor is
just another way of saying that you can measure the chance that
something is true by measuring how consistent it is with itself and
with the real world. When something is not consistent with the truth,
there will be a greater number of inconsistencies which need to be
accounted for, which will likely multiply the number of entities you
need to invent in order to explain them all. Thus, if you prefer
explanations that fit the available data with the greatest parsimony,
you are most likely to be correct, since you will be finding the
explanation that has the greatest consistency with the truth.

To top it all, the 'big bang' (actually a
'big flash') was explained in the bible thousands of years before
scientist's discovered it to be true - didn't God say 'Let there be
light' and there was light? How much simpler can a theory be?

Quite a bit simpler. The "Big Bang == Let There Be Light" theory
actually has quite a few inconsistencies which you have not addressed.
For example, "Let there be light" occurs some time after the creation
of the heavens and earth and the waters over the earth, according to
Genesis 1. Secondly, why is there no real-world evidence that is
consistent with the existence of a divine being who is willing and
able to interact with the material universe? If there is no evidence
for the existence of such a being, then wouldn't it be simpler to
understand cosmogenesis in terms of the things whose existence *is*
supported by the evidence? Also, if there is no evidence for the
existence of such a being, how would the author(s) of Genesis have
acquired their information about the origin of heaven and earth? Does
not the existence of the Genesis account *require* that the posited
Creator also be the sort that was willing and able to interact with
material reality in detectable ways? What are the odds that the
Genesis account would be correct sheerly from being a lucky guess? And
so on.

The degree of consistency between the Genesis stories and what we see
in the real world are remarkably low. One can always raise the bar of
"proof" high enough that no fact can live up to it, but such contrived
standards aside, one can readily verify that the scientific
explanation is much more consistent with the truth than any
creationist alternative.

m

.

Relevant Pages

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    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: Frame bending in Pib
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