What is creation science?

[uppi]

So religions claiming there is a God would fall in what category?
The belief there is a God seems neither falsifiable nor verifiable. I would think claims fall in the category of doctrines adhered to by the followers of a religion, not per se the religion itself.

I would say that every religion has claims that are central to it and it would be hard to imagine that religion without that claims. If one of those claims is falsified, the religion in its current form is falsified. Of course you can then rescue the religion by dropping that claim - the same way you can rescue a falsified scientific theory by amending it. Do that often enough and you end up with a religion that is not falsifiable anymore, but might only be a mere shadow of what it once was.

YECs tend to define their interpretation of Genesis to be a central claim of Christianity. Thus they make their version of Christianity falsifiable. That does have no impact on all other versions of Christianity, unless they can convince everybody else of the centrality of Genesis. This is a major danger to Christianity, because then from the consensus that the claims of YECs have been falsified the consensus would emerge that Christianity itself has been falsified.

 

[timtofly]

I would say that every religion has claims that are central to it and it would be hard to imagine that religion without that claims. If one of those claims is falsified, the religion in its current form is falsified. Of course you can then rescue the religion by dropping that claim - the same way you can rescue a falsified scientific theory by amending it. Do that often enough and you end up with a religion that is not falsifiable anymore, but might only be a mere shadow of what it once was.

YECs tend to define their interpretation of Genesis to be a central claim of Christianity. Thus they make their version of Christianity falsifiable. That does have no impact on all other versions of Christianity, unless they can convince everybody else of the centrality of Genesis. This is a major danger to Christianity, because then from the consensus that the claims of YECs have been falsified the consensus would emerge that Christianity itself has been falsified.

So is the belief falsifiable, the interpretation falsifiable or what was written? If what was written is a lie, then we are back to God is a liar and what else does he lie about. Can one even be a Christian if there is no God? It is not just changing what was written or even dropping it altogether. It either happened or did not.

There is really no danger to Christianity. I am pretty sure that a person either knows or doubts. Christianity does not hinge on a person's beliefs. It will always be there when a person decides to believe it and or accept it.

 

[Hygro]

Try harder at what exactly? If you read something in my posts that isn't in there, that's hardly my responsibility, I think.

You made a claim that heterodox medicine is just another term quackery and then later said you don't know even what heterodox medicine is. How can you be qualified to judge what is or isn't in your own posts when you aren't sure what you're writing?

 

[djcollin]

Creation science might not be the right term, but just like there are evolution scientists who look at a cell and think 'wow, it's amazing this arose through evolution,' there are scientists who look at a cell and think 'wow, what amazing design and what an amazing Creator!'

Both are looking at the same evidence, but they come to 2 different conclusions about origins: one camp believes the universe came into being out of nothing and through time and chance all the natural laws and material structures we now see came to be and the other camp believes the universe came into being through the act of creation by a Creator.

 

[Arakhor]

Even the Big Bang theory doesn't postulate that nothing existed before it happened. Since everything in the universe can be traced back to the Big Bang, we simply don't know what was (or wasn't) there beforehand.

 

[djcollin]

Sure it does. It assumes the universe didn't exist and then it came into existence. Lawrence Krauss wrote a book entitled A Universe from Nothing.
So I feel legit in describing atheistic origins as the universe coming into being out of nothing, by nothing, and for (purpose) nothing.

 

[sophie]

Creation science might not be the right term, but just like there are evolution scientists who look at a cell and think 'wow, it's amazing this arose through evolution,' there are scientists who look at a cell and think 'wow, what amazing design and what an amazing Creator!'

Both are looking at the same evidence, but they come to 2 different conclusions about origins: one camp believes the universe came into being out of nothing and through time and chance all the natural laws and material structures we now see came to be and the other camp believes the universe came into being through the act of creation by a Creator.

Creation Science cannot properly be called science. The hypothesis is not testable. No experiments are performed to validate the assumption. It's more like really really bad 19th century history than it is modern science.

 

[djcollin]

I was thinking the same thing, but about "Big Bang" science.

 

[sophie]

I was thinking the same thing, but about "Big Bang" science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang_theory#Observational_evidence

 

[djcollin]

Ah, you're a big bang believer? I admire your faith.

 

[Agent327]

You made a claim that heterodox medicine is just another term quackery and then later said you don't know even what heterodox medicine is.

Not really. I believe I showed that - at least in the Netherlands - homeopathy is now officially quackery, following a lawsuit on the matter. The term 'heteromedicine' was used by you instead of homeopathy, I believe (and various other 'unorthodox' medicinal treatments). As far as I know there is medicine and non-medicine; 'heterodox medicine' seems to me only to be a confusing term.

 

[Arakhor]

Ah, you're a big bang believer? I admire your faith.

You are aware that simply equating accepting the Big Bang theory with faith doesn't automatically disprove any of the thousand other reasons that the Genesis story couldn't possibly have unfolded in the way it was written?

 

[djcollin]

Nope, but it would be helpful if you could provide evidence that Genesis couldn't have unfolded instead of an arbitrary assertion. I believe it did unfold just as Genesis describes.

 

[Arakhor]

Well ignoring geology, biology, astronomy and various other sciences, the days of creation have grasses, flowering plants and fruit trees existing before the Sun was created. That's the first thing I can think of, but there are countless others, of course.

 

[djcollin]

Arbitrarily asserting that creation scientists ignore geology, biology, astronomy, etc. That's just incorrect. Many of them have their PhD's in those fields.
But that is correct about the order of the Genesis account. Do you believe this has been proven false? I don't.

 

[Arakhor]

So how exactly did these flowering plants and trees exist without the warmth of the Sun? If your answer is "God did it", that's completely unfalsifiable and therefore utterly disingenuous to demand that scientists prove it to be false.

 

[djcollin]

Ah, but there was a light source before the Sun. And you'll notice that there was evening and morning each day, which is another confirmation of the light source, as the rotation of the planet with the light source shining would give evening and morning.

 

[Arakhor]

Genesis 1 says nothing about the first light being warm. It doesn't even say how bright it was, just that God said, 'let there be light', and there was light.

 

[djcollin]

Pejorative language isn't helpful Arakhor and neither are your continual arbitrary assertions. If you're a truth seeker then let's let the evidence show us where it leads. Now you can present evidence for the big bang hypothesis and I'd be glad to look at it. And I can present evidence for the creation hypothesis (and evidence that contradicts the big bang hypothesis).
Then we can have a beneficial discourse.

 

[djcollin]

Light gives off heat, but you're assuming there wasn't enough heat already created within earth's atmosphere when God made the plants. I suspect He was intelligent enough to account for that.