Friday, August 13, 2010

Latex gloves

JD WALTERS SAID:

Except your 'trivially easy counterexamples' are nowhere near in the same league as what the mature creationist proposes that God has done with the whole world. All your other examples of the mismatch between appearance and reality are an artifact of our perceptual (objects far away appear smaller, etc.) or imaginative (the brain throws up confused images synthesized on the basis of previous sensory experience during sleep) faculties. We are well aware of these limitations. They give us no reason for global skepticism, as they are both taken account of in a broader context in which they make sense as models or reflections of reality, not reality itself. Again, nobody thinks that faraway objects really are that small. From the waking standpoint, it is obvious that dreams are a product of a particular psycho-physiological state.

i) They don’t need to be in the “same league” (whatever that means), since the question at issue is a matter of principle rather than degree. Critics of YEC raise a moralistic objection: mature creation makes God a “deceiver.”

All I have to do is come up with “deceptive” appearances for which God is direct or indirectly responsible, viz., dreams, nature miracles, &c.

ii) Yes, it’s obvious from the waking standpoint that dreams are illusory. But, of course, that’s not obvious from the standpoint of the dreamer.

The mature creation view cannot be absolved as a reasonable extrapolation of these instances. The claim is that the processes upon which we rely to reconstruct the real past in any other context (such as erosion, sedimentation, meteor craters) arbitrarily break down at a certain point in the past (however many thousand years old YECers claim the Earth and the universe is) when all the evidence suggests that the same processes were also at work for much longer than that.

This statement is dishonest. You keep appealing to the “evidence,” but as I’ve pointed out on more than one occasion now, that begs the question. Since you refuse to engage the argument, I’ll have to repeat myself. When Jesus multiplied the fish (to take one example), what’s the evidence distinguishing a miraculous fish from an ordinary fish? None. But if, in fact, the two cases are indistinguishable, then in what sense are the physical features of an ordinary fish evidence for ordinary processes? The physical features are not evidentiary in that respect, for they are equally consistent with a natural or supernatural point of origin. What’s the evidentiary value of X if the same physical effects are consistent with disparate causes (natural or supernatural)?

In that case, the physical effects aren’t evidence for anything regarding the past history of that present outcome. You might say that dominical miracle is totally unique, but even one miracle like that is sufficient to nullify the principle. For even if the miracle were unique, you’re not getting that from the “evidence.” Rather, you’d have to get that from metaphysical principle like the uniformity of nature. And, of course, that tends to be viciously circular since the ostensible evidence for the uniformity of nature takes the uniformity of nature for granted. What would count as evidence for a closed causal continuum? Evidence that things “normally” happen in a certain way? But this tacitly assumes that events are, in fact, unfolding in a chain of physical cause and effect. If, however, the cause were supernatural, then that might well be indetectible.

What makes one thing evidence for something else? What make X an indicator of Y, even if Y is presently unavailable?

That’s an issue you need to buckle down and deal with head-on, not simply reiterate the same tendentious claim ad nauseum. It’s not something you can avoid or evade. Thus far all I see you doing is to posit that the opposing position has unacceptable consequences, then you reason back from the consequences to what you regard as a superior alternative. But that’s just make-believe.

And the stopping point at which the ordinary processes of development break down really is arbitrary. The mature creationist has no argument against the idea that 'real' history started five minutes ago, complete with technological society, the decay of past civilizations, and even an implanted history of God's revelation through the Bible. Does the Bible say that God created the world six thousand years ago? It's all just a part of the background to the real story God wants to 'tell', which actually started five minutes ago.

i) To begin with, that commits a level-confusion. You’re conflating the metaphorical depiction of the world as a story with an actual story about the world. But how we interpret a story about the world, and how we interpret physical evidence, do not involve the same set of rules.

ii) And the hypothetical of implanted false memories cuts against your own position just as sharply as it cuts against YEC. It’s not as if your own position can disprove that hypothetical. It’s not as if any evidence you adduce could count against that hypothetical.

This is the real face of mature creation. Just as archeological and other remains from the past 100 years tell a certain story, which historians have largely been able to reconstruct, so the remains from the past 13.4 billion years of cosmic history tell a story, including a past state when the solar system was nothing but a disc of heavy elements whirling rapidly around the sun, before planets formed, and a past state when the Earth had no life on it whatsoever, a completely lifeless rock (and no water on it yet either), etc. But unlike the past 100 years of history, we are supposed to believe that past a certain arbitrary number of years, history breaks down and everything that we assumed happened before that point on the basis of the evidence actually took place very differently.

If it is mere assumption that the past resembled the present, then it is a darn good assumption and makes the most sense both of our own experience of history and of the record of the more distant past. Apart from local situations such as the Gospel miracles and perhaps paranormal events, the only place/time at which we have good reason to think that the natural processes we observe today were not operative in exactly the same form is at the Big Bang singularity.

I think Troeltsch was right that the principle of analogy is an indispensable precondition of historical investigation, although of course when I say that the past resembled the present, I include the possibility of miraculous events in that present, and therefore by extension to the past.


That brings us to the bigger, deeper issue.

i) To begin with, we’re dealing with an issue of principle, not degree. As Lewontin put it: “Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

I agree with Lewontin’s analysis. Where we differ is on the significance of the consequences. I’m open to miracles “rupturing” the regularities of nature in unpredictable ways. I don’t have any problem with that.

ii) I do think the chain of physical causation can and does break down in unpredictable and often undetectable ways. To take some examples:

a) I believe in creation ex nihilo. In the nature of the case, creation ex nihilo is abrupt, discontinuous, unprecedented, nonlinear. From nothing to something. Even if the result of creation ex nihilo were a closed causal continuum, there’s no telling (short of revelation) at what point in the continuum creation ex nihilo takes effect. Creation ex nihilo could initiate the cycle at an early phase in the cycle or a later phase in the cycle. And there’s no antecedent reason, that I can see, to think one is more likely than another.

b) I believe that angels and demons are agents who effect certain outcomes in time and space. I have no way of quantifying their contribution. It may be quite limited or it may be widespread. But even if the effect is physical, that’s not something you can trace back to a physical cause.

c) I believe that answered prayers frequently have physical outcomes. I have no idea what percentage of prayers are answered. But I don’t think it’s a trivial sum.

And even one answered prayer can have far-reaching effects. Take a Christian couple who prays to God to spare the mother from another miscarriage. If, in answer to prayer, the mother gives birth to a viable child, the life of that child will have multitudinous effects which would not occur had the child died in the womb. So God’s answer to that single prayer has a branching effect. And that effect is multiplied by countless answered prayers throughout the course of OT history, NT history, and church history.

From a Christian standpoint, I think it’s safe to say that history is honeycombed with the tangible effects of answered prayer. That’s a powerful dynamic in the course of world history.

Yet that’s not something you can’t trace back to a physical cause. If I offer a silent (mental) prayer to God, and God answers my prayer, that transaction falls outside the framework of physical causation. Even if I intone my prayer, God’s answer to my prayer is not just another link in the physical chain of cause and effect.

Thus, in a vast number of cases, our world has been shaped by the indiscernible factor of petitionary prayer. The present generation is the beneficiary of prayers offered by past generations, while the future generation is the beneficiary of prayers offered from the present generation. Yet, from an empirical standpoint, it usually looks like these things just “naturally” happen. They blend in seamlessly with the physical background. How could you tell, by looking at a teenager, that he is only here because his parents offered that prayer?

d) Likewise, some miracles are miracles of timing. Providentially opportune timing. Sometimes in answer to prayer, but not always. Miracles of timing employ natural mechanisms. So, in that sense, they’re perfectly “camouflaged.” They go unnoticed by the world at large. Only the beneficiary is in a position to perceive how timely, and unlikely, this was.

So, no, I don’t think we can simply start with a physical effect, then actually (or hypothetically) run back by through the physical links until we arrive at a physical cause. For in many instances, the trail of physical causes and effects runs out before it reaches the ultimate, supernatural cause. If something happens as a result of my prayer, then a scientist a 100 years later can’t trace the outcome all the back to God’s answer. The true explanation is physically untraceable. God left no fingerprints. Disposable latex gloves.

I follow Augustine in holding that miracles are not contrary to nature as such, but only nature as we know it and/or can influence.

You seem to be suggesting that miracles are the result of some hitherto undiscovered law of nature. However, miracles aren’t very law-like. Rather, they reflect the personal discretion of rational agent. It’s not like a machine that does whatever it was programmed to do, churching out a uniform product.

And I’m puzzled by your fanatical need to catalogue various events, then shelve them in the “right” place in your tidy little library. I expect many things which seem perfectly natural and normal this far down the pike go back centuries to something a long-forgotten mother mumbled on her knees in the corner of a hovel in some obscure, erstwhile hamlet.

19 comments:

  1. "That’s an issue you need to buckle down and deal with head-on, not simply reiterate the same tendentious claim ad nauseum."

    Yes J.D., please deal with the following conclusion from Steve head-on:

    "So, no, I don’t think we can simply start with a physical effect, then actually (or hypothetically) run back by through the physical links until we arrive at a physical cause. For in many instances, the trail of physical causes and effects runs out before it reaches the ultimate, supernatural cause. If something happens as a result of my prayer, then a scientist a 100 years later can’t trace the outcome all the back to God’s answer. The true explanation is physically untraceable. God left no fingerprints. Disposable latex gloves."

    Do you understand this, J.D.?

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  2. "All I have to do is come up with “deceptive” appearances for which God is direct or indirectly responsible, viz., dreams, nature miracles, &c."

    I've already argued for the disanalogy between things like dreams and perceptual illusions and the wholesale falsification of an entire history of the world. You haven't done anything to convince me those are anything alike.

    To use your terms, the principle between the two is very different.

    "What’s the evidentiary value of X if the same physical effects are consistent with disparate causes (natural or supernatural)?"

    OK, let me deal with that fish example a bit more fully. You're dealing with a very narrow class of physical effects, if all we're talking about are the physical features of the fish itself. We need to take a wider view of the overall evidence. We would have to include people's reactions to the miracle, for example, and the record it left in the form of the Gospel account. We might also include the fact that, at the point the miracle happened, there was no indication of heaps of fish lying around on that grassy hillside. For someone who had access to all this evidence (which is still physical evidence), it would be fairly easy to conclude that in this case, physical effects are due to a supernatural origin.

    Now if someone only had access to the material features of the fish itself, without all this other evidence, we might forgive him for thinking that the fish evolved naturally, just like all the others. And this evidence is not deceptive, because this narrow class of physical evidence (the material features of this particular fish) is indeed consistent with both origins, and nothing about the fish itself would incline one one way or another. But the broader physical evidence does conclusively point in one direction.

    Not to mention that the above situation presupposes a backdrop against which most fish we know have originated by natural processes. Indeed, one of the ways we recognize the miracle is that we know that usually we should not expect fish to come bubbling up on a grassy hillside. We recognize all miracles as miracles against the backdrop of the usual uniformity of nature.

    We do not have a similar situation with respect to the total evidence for the age and development of the earth and the universe. There all the evidence we can adduce does indeed point in one direction, even if individual bits of that evidence could be consistent with one or another origin. We have only one bit of evidence that sticks out like a sore thumb which points in the exact opposite direction: the YEC claim that the earth and universe only appear to have developed naturally over billions of years, a claim which I might add was first made only in the face of mounting evidence from geology and biology, made by Christian scientists I might add, for the antiquity and gradual development of the Earth.

    Now if that claim is ultimately founded in God's revelation (which I dispute, because I don't think the BIble intends to give us the exact age of the earth and the universe), then here indeed we would have deception, because not only a narrow class of evidence, but the total evidence points rather conclusively in one direction, towards a 13.4 billion year development of the observable universe from the big bang according to more or less the same natural processes we observe today on Earth. And we're supposed to believe, despite all appearances which cannot be attributed to limitations in our anthropocentric perspective, that this 13.4 billion year development is illusory. That's deceptive.

    Individual nature miracles are not analogous to this.

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  3. JD WALTERS SAID:

    "Not to mention that the above situation presupposes a backdrop against which most fish we know have originated by natural processes. Indeed, one of the ways we recognize the miracle is that we know that usually we should not expect fish to come bubbling up on a grassy hillside. We recognize all miracles as miracles against the backdrop of the usual uniformity of nature."

    But unlike you, I don't feel the need to classify events as miraculous and nonmiraculous. Directly or indirectly, every event is an act of God. Every event requires the primary causality of God, whether or not that also involves second causes.

    "Now if that claim is ultimately founded in God's revelation (which I dispute, because I don't think the BIble intends to give us the exact age of the earth and the universe), then here indeed we would have deception, because not only a narrow class of evidence, but the total evidence points rather conclusively in one direction, towards a 13.4 billion year development of the observable universe from the big bang according to more or less the same natural processes we observe today on Earth. And we're supposed to believe, despite all appearances which cannot be attributed to limitations in our anthropocentric perspective, that this 13.4 billion year development is illusory. That's deceptive."

    i) You're excluding the Bible from the relevant body of evidence.

    ii) A YEC would say you've substituted one divine "deception" for another: a deceptive word of God rather than a deceptive work of God.

    iii) It would only be deceptive if the primary purpose of certain natural processes we use to date things was, indeed, to date things. But that's just our human, secondary application.

    Nature is not a clock. We may use certain natural processes to clock various things, but that isn't what the process is for. To treat certain natural processes as if they were literal timepieces reflects your anthropomorphic projection.

    iv) Finally, you tipped your hand. This is not ultimately about science, creationism, or Darwinism. Rather, the real issue lies further upstream. This is about historiography. You side with Troeltsch (i.e. the principle of analogy).

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  4. "In that case, the physical effects aren’t evidence for anything regarding the past history of that present outcome."

    As I explained in my last comment, this takes a very narrow view of what the physical effects of this miracle would be. I would add, though, that, given the way we experience the uniformity of nature, the physical effects would and should be considered prima facie evidence for a natural origin. In our everyday experience, as well as in science, there is a presumption in favor of natural processes being at work, which presumption you demonstrate whenever you absent-mindedly walk over a bridge, confident it won't vanish in thin air, to take just one example. And how many times has that presumption misled you?

    I've already complained to Peter Pike about an understanding of reasoning in which there is a sharp separation between evidence and the assumptions which make that evidence evidence for something. You are playing far too fast and loose with some of the constitutive assumptions of our experience, I think. See my comment to him in the last post.

    "But how we interpret a story about the world, and how we interpret physical evidence, do not involve the same set of rules."

    I couldn't disagree more. If they don't obey the same rules, if physical evidence does not in some way constrain the plausibility of the stories we tell about the world, then each man, or at least each philosophical school, is indeed an island, shouting out to the inhabitants of other islands but with no way to convince the other that theirs is better. I've noted that some times you appear perilously close to a sort of postmodernism, Steve, when you've exonerated various kinds of idealism, for example, by assuring commentators that they have indeed taken all the physical evidence into account. Well if that's where epistemic duties stop with respect to worldviews, simply to tell a story that takes all the physical evidence into account, then absent internal contradictions there is no way to adjudicate between them. And presence or absence of internal contradictions does not decide the issue either. Mere absence of internal contradictions is not very impressive, and I suspect that there are many, many mutually incompatible worldviews that pass that test.

    Worldview and evidence are in constant dialectical consultation. Sometimes we might accommodate the physical evidence to the worldview, when we're more confident in the latter, and sometimes the strain between worldview and evidence might lead us to discard the former. But there is an important relationship between the two.

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  5. "Even if the result of creation ex nihilo were a closed causal continuum, there’s no telling (short of revelation) at what point in the continuum creation ex nihilo takes effect. Creation ex nihilo could initiate the cycle at an early phase in the cycle or a later phase in the cycle."

    I hope you're including general revelation in there, but in this case we DO know, from the Bible, the Christian theological tradition, and from science at what point in the cycle it started: at the absolute beginning, with the primordial raw material. God didn't start any cycle in the middle, with past histories, developed structures, and organisms who had already lived and died already in place. He started from scratch.

    "I believe that angels and demons are agents who effect certain outcomes in time and space. I have no way of quantifying their contribution. It may be quite limited or it may be widespread. But even if the effect is physical, that’s not something you can trace back to a physical cause."

    Again, keep in mind the totality of the physical evidence. You keep taking this narrow view. An angelic contribution is usually marked by a positive outcome (a martyr comforted in prison, for example), a demonic contribution by negative outcomes (disruption, depression, etc.).

    And again, all their contributions, however extensive, play out against a fundamentally stable backdrop. Angels and demons make contributions to this world. They do not go around rewriting history and seamlessly transforming vast sections of the natural world.

    "From a Christian standpoint, I think it’s safe to say that history is honeycombed with the tangible effects of answered prayer. That’s a powerful dynamic in the course of world history."

    I certainly agree, and I agree with C.S. Lewis that once a miracle takes place, the effects of that miracle are integrated into the later course of nature, with effects further down the line. Nature goes a different way than it would have if the miracle hadn't taken place.

    But Nature itself is still there. It was not transformed into something else, it simply changed direction.

    I have no problem with the idea that course of nature is affect by miracles, like a river that can be shaped and directed via damns and other constructs.

    What I do have a problem with is the idea that, when we try to trace the stream back to its source, we find a holographic projector. Or like Wiley Coyote, who thinks that a painted tunnel on the side of a cliff is a real tunnel and runs smack up against it.

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  6. None of the examples, miraculous or otherwise, have been remotely comparable to what mature creation would involve.

    The principle of these miracles is 'change to a course of nature already established'. The principle of mature creation is 'initiating a course of nature in medias res with most of its course already behind it'.

    "The present generation is the beneficiary of prayers offered by past generations, while the future generation is the beneficiary of prayers offered from the present generation. Yet, from an empirical standpoint, it usually looks like these things just “naturally” happen. They blend in seamlessly with the physical background. How could you tell, by looking at a teenager, that he is only here because his parents offered that prayer?"

    Again, you're not looking at the totality of empirical evidence. Looking at a teenager would not be gathering all the empirical evidence relevant to determining whether that birth was going to happen anyway or whether he is an answer to prayer. One would have to ask the parents, consult their medical histories, etc. And absent the rest of that evidence, it is a perfectly proper conclusion that the teenager is naturally born. I can't live my life attempting to constantly hold in my mind the awareness that anyone around me could have been born as an answer to prayer. There proper presumption is that natural processes are at work.

    "And I’m puzzled by your fanatical need to catalogue various events, then shelve them in the “right” place in your tidy little library."

    And I'm puzzled by your fanatical need to give an ad hoc, 'hey, anything goes when God's involved, right?' desperate defense of a view (mature creationism) that only developed in response to accumulating scientific evidence against YEC, and which is rejected by most Christian scientists and theologians.

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  7. "Directly or indirectly, every event is an act of God. Every event requires the primary causality of God, whether or not that also involves second causes."

    But that distinction IS important to science, and to everyday life. Like I said, we go about our daily lives with a very proper presumption that things will unfold according to natural processes. Similarly, I can't perform an experiment to verify a theory unless I assume that God won't intervene at just that moment to throw my results off.

    How many miracles do you know of that took place in the laboratory and resulted in a different statement of a general regularity of nature as a result?

    "i) You're excluding the Bible from the relevant body of evidence.

    ii) A YEC would say you've substituted one divine "deception" for another: a deceptive word of God rather than a deceptive work of God"

    No, I am not, because I don't think the Bible's purpose was to answer scientific questions. It's one of those pieces of evidence that is neutral either way. Augustine, Calvin and many others understood this. If you're going to complain that many people throughout Church history did read it scientifically, you might as well complain about all the other misinterpretations by Christians throughout history.

    "It would only be deceptive if the primary purpose of certain natural processes we use to date things was, indeed, to date things. But that's just our human, secondary application."

    "God said, 'let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs to indicate seasons and days and years.'" (Genesis 1:14)

    "Finally, you tipped your hand. This is not ultimately about science, creationism, or Darwinism. Rather, the real issue lies further upstream. This is about historiography. You side with Troeltsch (i.e. the principle of analogy)."

    No, it's not primarily about historiography either. The real issue is how revelation and reason intersect.

    And to say baldly that I 'side with Troeltsch' without including the very important qualification that I gave in the last post is disingenuous. My principle of analogy and Troeltsch's are quite different, because mine includes the possibility of miracles in the present, and by extension also the past.

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  8. Truth Unites...and Divides,

    It's well and good to ask me to deal with certain conclusion head-on. It's just condescending to ask me if I understand that conclusion, as if I were in 5th grade.

    So, as for the conclusion:

    "So, no, I don’t think we can simply start with a physical effect, then actually (or hypothetically) run back by through the physical links until we arrive at a physical cause."

    We're not talking about physics here. We're talking about history. About whether past events leave traces in the present, and about whether the past was basically similar to the present. Physicists find and formulate ceteris paribus 'laws' for what will happen if certain conditions hold. Historians, archeologists and paleontologists are looking at the record of whatever has happened, and try to reconstruct what happened. That would be impossible if there are traces of events that never actually happened.

    "If something happens as a result of my prayer, then a scientist a 100 years later can’t trace the outcome all the way back to God’s answer."

    Well by your own admission God works in different ways at different times. Some miracles are miracles of timing and coincidence, in which case a scientist could follow the chain of events from some previous configuration to the point where it constitutes the answer to your prayer. And even if that's not possible in all cases (and it's arguably not even the case for us if we have libertarian free will), the scientist will still be able to say that nature went one way for a while, and then due to an external influence went another way. See my analogy before with diverting a stream verses not being able to trace it to its source.

    "The true explanation is physically untraceable. God left no fingerprints. Disposable latex gloves."

    Nice. Tell that to the Egyptian priests, who when God performed a sign they were unable to perform, they told Pharaoh, "It is the finger of God!" Precisely because it was something they couldn't do on their own.

    Again, I think by 'physically untraceable' you have in mind a very small subset of the relevant evidence.

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  9. I fail to see how God could ever be accused of being deceptive if He never intended His creation to be used as a time-clock for the age of the universe.

    When He created the stars, did He actually intend scientists to use them as clocks, or were they simply made for the sole purpose as being light sources?

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  10. J.D., when your parents or teachers or professors or friends and family ask you: "Do you understand this?" do you automatically interpret them as being condescending to you?

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  11. Also, was God deceiving scientists in the early 1960's when the vast majority of geologists believed in geosynclinal theory when, in reality, plate tectonics was true?

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  12. Saint and Sinner,

    In Genesis God specifically states that the sun, moon and stars are meant, not just to rule over the day and night, but as "signs to indicate seasons, and days, and years" (1:14)

    And this goes against Steve's suggestion that our use of certain natural processes for dating purposes are just secondary, human applications. God meant certain processes from the beginning to measure the passage of time and the recurrence of seasons and festivals.

    Keep in mind that your skepticism about using natural processes for dating purposes cuts both ways, because most creation scientists use very similar methods (albeit without those 'godless', 'anti-biblical' philosophical assumptions) to arrive at a young age for the Earth. If our dating activities and our measurement of aging are only relative to our perspective, bye bye any objective (young) age for the Earth.

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  13. No, God is not deceiving scientists when they start with inadequate theories and progressively improve them. The inadequacy of past theories simply means that we can't read the truth of things straight off of our experiences, but we must carefully, painstakingly, accurately gather observations, compare them, and test all hypotheses vigorously. I think there was a lot that God meant us to learn on our own.

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  14. JD Walters said:
    "In Genesis God specifically states that the sun, moon and stars are meant, not just to rule over the day and night, but as "signs to indicate seasons, and days, and years" (1:14)"

    Me:
    Genesis 1:14 is referring to a calendrical cycle and was written to ancient people as something that was done by ancient people. To use it as a proof-text for modern scientific realism including distance calculations based on the speed of light is highly anachronistic.

    "Keep in mind that your skepticism about using natural processes for dating purposes cuts both ways, because most creation scientists use very similar methods (albeit without those 'godless', 'anti-biblical' philosophical assumptions) to arrive at a young age for the Earth. If our dating activities and our measurement of aging are only relative to our perspective, bye bye any objective (young) age for the Earth."

    AMEN!

    "No, God is not deceiving scientists when they start with inadequate theories and progressively improve them."

    Geosynclinal theorists didn't consider their theory any more 'inadequate' than modern scientists do of their modern theories. In fact, in the 1960 edition of Clark and Stearn's Geological Evolution of North America, we find these confident assertions:

    "The geosynclinal theory is one of the great unifying principles in geology. In many ways its role in geology is similar to that of the theory of evolution, which serves to integrate the many branches of the biological sciences....Just as the doctrine of evolution is universally accepted among biologists, so also the geosynclinal origin of the major mountain systems is an established principle in geology."

    Your demand to interpret Genesis according to the latest scientific fad is no better than critical interpreters of Genesis 100 years ago who, believing that the material universe was eternal because of the 'scientific evidence,' did away with creatio ex nihilo and interpreted Genesis 1:1 accordingly.

    Secondly, the switch from geosynclinal theory to plate tectonics was not a 'progressive impovement,' it was a radical paradigm shift that completely did away with past thinking and replaced it with a totally new conception.

    The history of science is filled with such examples as Kuhn showed 50 years ago when he debunked the 'accretion model' of scientific development.

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  15. Saint and Sinner,

    "Genesis 1:14 is referring to a calendrical cycle and was written to ancient people as something that was done by ancient people. To use it as a proof-text for modern scientific realism including distance calculations based on the speed of light is highly anachronistic."

    I was not using Genesis 1:14 as a prooftext for modern scientific realism. I was refuting your earlier contention that stars are just supposed to be light sources. But I do think this verse tells us that certain natural processes are particularly important for the measurement of time, and were established by God for that purpose.

    "AMEN!"

    OK, you might want to stay away from Ken Ham and the Creation Research Institute:)

    I'm curious, though, how you think the Israelites calculated the dates and life durations that are mentioned in the Bible. What did they use if not certain natural processes like the motion of the moon, sun and stars? The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar.

    "Geosynclinal theorists didn't consider their theory any more 'inadequate' than modern scientists do of their modern theories."

    I didn't say that scientists themselves think the current state of theoretical knowledge is inadequate. The history of science is full of confident pronouncements that we had reached the pinnacle of understanding in some field. But the smugness of some scientists does not make God deceptive in allowing them to cling to their inadequate theories. In a way it's a good thing when scientists come to take inadequate theories for granted, because persisting under a flawed paradigm is the only way for the full implications of that paradigm to be uncovered, and for the evidence of its inadequacy to be clearly perceived when it is found.

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  16. "Your demand to interpret Genesis according to the latest scientific fad is no better than critical interpreters of Genesis 100 years ago who, believing that the material universe was eternal because of the 'scientific evidence,' did away with creatio ex nihilo and interpreted Genesis 1:1 accordingly."

    But I do not interpret Genesis according to the latest scientific fad. I don't look to Genesis for science at all. I look to it for theological truths about God's relationship to creation and its significance. I certainly don't think it is a photographic snapshot of what we would have seen if we were there, or that created structures appeared in the order described by Genesis. For example, the Sun obviously existed long before the first life appeared on Earth, and long before the Earth itself, actually, because the Earth originated as a spinning disc of interstellar matter around the Sun.

    "Secondly, the switch from geosynclinal theory to plate tectonics was not a 'progressive impovement,' it was a radical paradigm shift that completely did away with past thinking and replaced it with a totally new conception."

    I agree that the change in mechanism to account for the evolution of the Earth's surface was pretty radical. But much also stayed intact: physical processes like erosion and sedimentation, and the age of the Earth, to name just a few things.

    It is tempting to think that the evolution of science is so arbitrary that just about anything could happen. Tempting because it seems to mean people of faith don't have to take science seriously (because what do scientists know anyway?), or that science might actually come around to an interpretation of nature closer to the literalist biblical one. These are false hopes. However science may change, some things are just not coming back, a young Earth that was formed exactly how Genesis 1 described it being one of them.

    "The history of science is filled with such examples as Kuhn showed 50 years ago when he debunked the 'accretion model' of scientific development."

    Have you actually read the Structure of Scientific Revolutions? In Kuhn's view, the 'accretion model' is very characteristic of 'normal' science, during the time between paradigm shifts. A paradigm shift occurs when empirical data accumulated under the old paradigm start to raise insurmountable problems for it. A paradigm shift will happen, but only when scientists have proposed a new paradigm that is able to explain the successfulness of the old one up to that point. More often than not most of the insights of the old paradigm will be included.

    There are many examples of cumulative advancement in the sciences, just one of which is the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian dynamics. Newton's laws are still valid for not-too-massive objects moving at not-too-high speeds, and are all that NASA engineers need to send spacecraft to other planets on trajectories of astonishing accuracy.

    Newton was not overturned, but simply recognized as incomplete.

    And Kuhn himself modified his extreme views as criticism came from people like Lakatos and Laudan, who themselves incorporated his insights and extended them. Philip Kitcher's "The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions" is a good place to start.

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  17. "I was refuting your earlier contention that stars are just supposed to be light sources."

    Oops. My bad.

    "I'm curious, though, how you think the Israelites calculated the dates and life durations that are mentioned in the Bible. What did they use if not certain natural processes like the motion of the moon, sun and stars? The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar."

    I don't deny that some things have uniformitarian explanations. However, I am a bit skeptical of some aspects of theoretical physics (e.g. dark matter/energy, etc.) and any historical science that does not have the benefit of eye-witness records to help put limits on interpretation.

    "I didn't say that scientists themselves think the current state of theoretical knowledge is inadequate."

    Then how do you know that the current theory that you believe necessitates that we take Genesis non-literally is not itself inadequate?

    What is it about modern geology that sets it apart from previous theories?

    "These are false hopes. However science may change, some things are just not coming back, a young Earth that was formed exactly how Genesis 1 described it being one of them."

    But how do you know that? You're playing the prophet just like the geosynclinalists I cited above.

    "More often than not most of the insights of the old paradigm will be included."

    But some go away, and sometimes, that radically changes interpretation.

    "There are many examples of cumulative advancement in the sciences, just one of which is the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian dynamics."

    Of course there are some, but what you need to prove is that all paradigm shifts are that way. If they are not all that way, then you can't play the prophet and say that many of the principles of modern geology will never be overturned.

    [BTW: I don't deny that uniformitarian processes can erode rock, deposit it, and cement it into new rock. The question is: How applicable are those processes to ALL of geology?]

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  18. "However, I am a bit skeptical of...any historical science that does not have the benefit of eye-witness records to help put limits on interpretation."

    That's a strange reason for skepticism. So the dating of successive patterns of settlement from pottery remains is suspect because none of the settlers left behind eyewitness records? And what guarantees that eye-witness testimony is accurate/reliable in any given case?

    "Then how do you know that the current theory that you believe necessitates that we take Genesis non-literally is not itself inadequate?"

    I take Genesis non-literally (non-historically would be more accurate, because in my view to read Genesis literally IS to read it parabolically) because of its genre, not because of scientific theories. The conflict between the Genesis account and scientific origin accounts may have tipped me off that I might have been reading Genesis incorrectly, but ultimately the reason is due to the text itself.


    But as for the issue of the (in-)adequacy of modern geology: I find that throughout all the dramatic changes that have taken place, some things have remained remarkably constant, one of them being the vast age of the Earth.

    Throughout the history of modern geology, I do not see geologists oscillating back and forth between an old and young earth. Instead, I see more and more geologists accepting an old earth, and calculating the age of the earth with ever greater precision.

    And the dating methods used depend on physical processes whose numerical characterization is highly unlikely to change whatever transformations take place in fundamental physics. For example, quantum theory may have overturned 19th century atomism but the gravitational constant still had the same value, and so did the rates of radioactive decay which are used to measure the age of certain rocks.

    In sum, the conclusions scientists have reached about the age of the earth are based on insights and calculations which seem to have been preserved through all the paradigm changes of modern science. It's as solid a piece of knowledge as any that we have.

    Certainly there is room for enormous change in fundamental physics, due to the incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics. But whatever changes take place there are not likely to radically revise our understanding of the world at the midpoint between the very large and the very small, at which level the standard model is fantastically successful. Perhaps we'll come around to the view that we live in a block universe and the subjective experience of the passage of time is an illusion, but that won't be of much use to YECers.

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