My thoughts on the Creation v Evolution debate

[wolfie]

* He performs the experiment. He records exactly what he did; including things like how high the tower was, what he dropped, what the observers at the bottom of the tower noticed, and so on. Everything - and I mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g - he can think of. This permits other scientists to repeat the exact same experiment.
(Side note: one early radio experiment proved non-replicable because the scientist forgot to mention the size and shape of the room, and what the walls were made of.)

Anyone else old enough to remember "The Six Million Dollar Man"? One episode involved trying to track down an incredibly powerful binary incendiary (take a paper clip off the letter from the bad guy, the dried remnants of a drop of part "A" and a drop of part "B" touch, less than a minute later it destroys Oscar's desk) that an amateur had created, but had been stolen. The amateur had been eating a cookie while mixing the stuff, and a couple crumbs got in. Chalk one up to irreproduciblity.

Be sure to wear your lucky rocketship underpants EVERY TIME you work on the experiment - don't want to change any unnecessary variables.

In fields where experiments are easy and cheap, we're pretty sure of our theories. We even call some of them 'laws' - eg the 'laws of physics'.

And there's some overlap between laws and theories. You've probably heard about the Pythagorean Theorem. There's also the Law of Cosines - which, in the special case of a right angle, reduces to the Pythagorean Theorem. Yep, the general case has a "stronger" name than the special case.

Don't forget Scott's Theorem, which the author himself has disproven on a number of occasions: "Ye canna change the laws of physics".

The term for you to research is 'paradigm shift'.

Is "floating a trial balloon" what happens when you do a paradigm shift without using the clutch?

Paradigm shift:
The 'miasmic' theory of sickness. Sickness was caused by bad air, or 'miasma'. This was the period when they'd send someone with tuberculosis (for instance) to the country to get some 'healthy air'.

That's literally where the name of one disease (malaria) came from. Ever watch "Connections" with James Burke? One episode touched on treatment/prevention of malaria (so long ago I forget which), in connection with the development of mechanical refrigeration. One line about the documentation for such a treatment was "Gauze curtains help because they keep out the night air". Noting that people who had gauze curtains over their open windows were less likely to get malaria was an observation. The mechanism (keeping out the night air) was a hypothesis that we now know is wrong. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine the actual mechanism that made gauze curtains helpful in the prevention of malaria.

Another medical example (sorry, can't cite a source - it's something I heard about decades ago) dealt with treatment of trauma on the battlefield in pre-gunpowder days. At one point, cauterizing the wound was the standard treatment. One military surgeon ran out of cautery oil (no, I don't know why they'd use hot oil instead of a heated tool), and bandaged the wounds with clean cloth in order to keep dirt out until he was able to replenish supplies and cauterize the wounds. When he got the supplies, and removed the bandages, he saw that the wounds had healed better than cauterized wounds would have in the same period. Cue stocking up on clean bandages and letting cautery supplies gather dust. For him, "this works better than the old way" was good enough, without needing to understand why this was the case.

[Rapscallion]

Because if peoples faith is so intrinsically based on a holy book you don't treat it as a damned pick 'n' mix on what is to be believed and what is a fable/ cautionary tale, myth you either treat the entire text as truth or as an analogy.

Been contemplating this for a few days, this and other similar aspects about which part is debated.

Why is it so important to some that the accuracy of this is maintained or destroyed? I've come to the conclusion that the whole creation thing is intrinsic to the claim of the entire faith.

See, arguments about whether jesus was in born in Nazareth or Bethlehem are one thing where a debate could be had about a mistake - more a fine detail than anything else. However, the creation tale is where the true authority of ownership is established. If the god of the Abrahamic faiths did create the universe, world, and the rest of us, then that establishes ownership and therefore authority over everything.

It's quite easy to debate over whether or not Pontius Pilate was governor of the correct area at the time, or Herod being around at the right historical time, as that is something that can be debated and put down to human error if there are issues found. Start to tackle the concept of creation and that's the very foundation starting to unravel. That, I think, is why there are very vocal fundamentalists trying to prove their side with museums etc, and why there are so many arguments over the accuracy of that part of the claim.

After all, if that part's not right, then is there really a god for jesus to save you for?

Rapscallion

[s_stabeler]

I think it depends. After all, consider that Adam and Eve's sons find wives they aren't related to. At a minimum, that means Adam and Eve weren't the only humans created. That suggests to me that (especially since it's in the old testament) the creation story was meant as "how we came to be here" in terms of the group that was writing this- it was a claim, more or less, that God created the world, then created that particular group- implied that that particular group has authority over others. The reason it becomes such a headache nowadays is that it's been adopted as the religious texts of a wider audience than it was ever intended to be read by- it's one culture's origin story- similar to how various other cultures have claimed divine creation- that ended up included in a religious text, where it has been applied to situations where it makes no sense.

So no, I don't think Creationism is literally true- it may be partially true- it's an accurate record of the order things evolved in, if nothing else- but I don't think it makes sense to say it is accurate as far as it being how everybody was created.

[BlaqueKatt]

Been contemplating this for a few days, this and other similar aspects about which part is debated.

Why is it so important to some that the accuracy of this is maintained or destroyed? I've come to the conclusion that the whole creation thing is intrinsic to the claim of the entire faith.

and considering the glaring error in chapter 1 and 2 if one person wrote it they were obviously not "divinely inspired" if the second chapter contradicts the first. nevermind that originally each separate church had it's own gospels(hence actual gospels according to judas, and jesus himself), until the catholic church gathered them all up(well over 8000most contradictory), chose the most consistent and packaged them together saying "this is canon". and don't even get me started on the "king James Version"

[HYHYBT]

And there's some overlap between laws and theories. You've probably heard about the Pythagorean Theorem. There's also the Law of Cosines - which, in the special case of a right angle, reduces to the Pythagorean Theorem. Yep, the general case has a "stronger" name than the special case.

On the other hand, you've switched fields. A scientific theory and a mathematical theorem are not the same thing.

Why is it so important to some that the accuracy of this is maintained or destroyed? I've come to the conclusion that the whole creation thing is intrinsic to the claim of the entire faith.

That works for why people who believe that way insist on holding that belief. It doesn't at all work for people outside Christianity entirely to come along insisting the rest of us inside it need to agree too.

[Bloodsoul]

I think it depends. After all, consider that Adam and Eve's sons find wives they aren't related to. At a minimum, that means Adam and Eve weren't the only humans created.

This particular source seems to offer an explanation…
http://holy-bibble.com/comics/74/

[Gilhelmi]

Ya, This is what I get for falling asleep for a week. I miss out on the conversation.

I gave up after the 3rd page, I was having a hard time reading the larger walls of text, in under 20 min.

But it did look like a good conversation, maybe next time.