Many believe that evolution has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, and that any who reject it are, at best, somewhat disconnected from reality. What do you think?
That makes their views political and not data based. Awards committees can be corrupt. Some studies are not published not because they are bad science but because they don't agree with the majority. Peer review does not mean being reviewed only by those that agree with you. Some scientists argued against the majority who said earth was the center of the solar system, or against the flat earth majority. Lemmings make bad scientists. So do politicians.
I will say it again, when I was trained in scientific research we were taught to be brutal with regard to your own hypothesis. Don't favor or pad things to prove your hypothesis correct. Treat it harshly, statistically, to attempt to fail the hypothesis. If it stands the rigorous test it may be valid. You also had to defend your methods and conclusions. I doubt that my supervisors would have accepted "everybody else things so". Also, the agriculture companies that used the studies would get little results from "public opinion", rather they wanted data based information from which to develop useful products.
Going with the flow against proper analysis is dishonest.
Some may say that it is unreasonable to reject evolution because it is believed by the majority of scientists. Also, they may say that creationists are not good scientists (and cannot be good scientists), because they do not get mainstream scientific awards, and do not publish in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. However, this ignores the fact that certain Creationist organizations publish their own peer-reviewed journals, and Dr. Jay Wile (a young-earth scientist) definitely seems to be a big proponent of peer review...Off of the peer-review tangent, the main question that should be addressed is:
Are these majoritarian views on science a positive thing?
That is a tricky question, as although the majority can certainly be wrong, is it reasonable to think that the majority of the most learned people in the world could all be so wrong? I am interested in hearing people's thoughts on that idea...
Can logic arise out of chaos by chance? What would make on thing logical over another if there is no established order. Of course that is a problem in our society. Order has been thrown off, and everyone claims their own truth. That is illogical!
I would agree that it is reasonable to reject evolution. What we see in the natural world can be very feasibly interpreted as the product of a 6-day creation. In many cases, the creation explanation is more feasible than the evolutionary explanation of a natural phenomena, as is the case with the DNA that Kirk mentioned. Another example is the formation of proteins from amino acids. These proteins are essential to life, and evolution says they formed randomly. As found in The New Answers Book 3, the probability of one small protein being formed by chance from amino acids is around 1 in 10 ^ 130, and the probability of getting all the proteins necessary for life is around 1 in 10 ^ 40,000. Both far exceed the upper limit of probability for an event to be expected to occur by chance (1 in 10 ^ 50). This and other examples are reasons that it is reasonable to reject evolution.
Tough question you pose: Is it logical, is it reasonable? According to what parameters? Is it logical to believe that something as complex as a reproducing single-celled organism spontaneously generated itself from raw materials that do not contain DNA(information on how to organize such materials) I would say no. Not only does the genetic code have to be there, but the mechanism to read the data and assemble the structures must also develop. Can this be done by chance? I don't think that it can be logically.
We very count that in other considerations. We don't believe that organisms are going to grow in a can of processed food. If life could spring from dead material by chance, a can of corn could not be counted on to be botulism free. There may even have been live bacteria in the material put in the can. It is killed in the process, but we count on the fact that life cannot spring from dead matter.
If we think that genetic codes could spring from chance, but lock our doors with a simple key not expecting that anyone could make a key by chance, it would seem to me that we are being unreasonable.
We also count on genetic stability in organisms and ourselves. No genetic analysis would be valid in court if mutations were common. Why would we buy garden seeds that guarantee that the corn will produce 14 rows of kernels per ear. Purebred dogs or cattle or other special organisms would not be worth much. Animal and plant features are so uniform that we make scientific "keys" to determine what species to which they belong.
Visually, or maybe I should say casually, a female Sharp-shinned Hawk and a male Coopers Hawk can be confused, but the variance in the species is small enough that using a key to differentiate features can identify the proper species. Young science students used to have to do these exercises correctly.
But when our mind is set against creation of specific(pun) creatures suddenly, we try to ignore criteria that we count on in other ways.
Yes, and I think that doing so is contrary to good science. Research that does not prove your hypothesis can still be great science because it shows that your hypothesis is not statistically reasonable. This helps with learning just the same. I think good science actually takes a good deal of humility; a willingness to test your hypothesis and be wrong. If, however, you claim significance for your hypothesis that is not statistically valid, you draw others to incorrect assertions.
Assumptions exist and are sometimes valid, but they remain assumptions. In our recent discussion on another topic I reviewed some of the experiments and theories concerning various dating methods and was surprised at the lack of consensus among researchers looking at the same data. I am not saying the data was wrong, but some data is dismissed because it doesn't fit.
Scientists who believe it God's Word are under the same burden. On either side, creation or evolution, with regard to scientific discovery we must remember, we don't know everything.
In cases of legitimate controversy, scientists should claim ONLY that they have a working hypothesis that covers the data in a limited domain (micro-evolution) and allow the evidence for and against any larger claims to be freely debated. This is reasonable! Scientists should not assert facts where facts are indeed not in evidence, which is often done by evolutionists. Scientists also should not assert that it is science that establishes philosophical views when, in fact, these views were really adopted prior to any scientific investigation. .
That makes their views political and not data based. Awards committees can be corrupt. Some studies are not published not because they are bad science but because they don't agree with the majority. Peer review does not mean being reviewed only by those that agree with you. Some scientists argued against the majority who said earth was the center of the solar system, or against the flat earth majority. Lemmings make bad scientists. So do politicians.
I will say it again, when I was trained in scientific research we were taught to be brutal with regard to your own hypothesis. Don't favor or pad things to prove your hypothesis correct. Treat it harshly, statistically, to attempt to fail the hypothesis. If it stands the rigorous test it may be valid. You also had to defend your methods and conclusions. I doubt that my supervisors would have accepted "everybody else things so". Also, the agriculture companies that used the studies would get little results from "public opinion", rather they wanted data based information from which to develop useful products.
Going with the flow against proper analysis is dishonest.
Some may say that it is unreasonable to reject evolution because it is believed by the majority of scientists. Also, they may say that creationists are not good scientists (and cannot be good scientists), because they do not get mainstream scientific awards, and do not publish in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. However, this ignores the fact that certain Creationist organizations publish their own peer-reviewed journals, and Dr. Jay Wile (a young-earth scientist) definitely seems to be a big proponent of peer review...Off of the peer-review tangent, the main question that should be addressed is:
Are these majoritarian views on science a positive thing?
That is a tricky question, as although the majority can certainly be wrong, is it reasonable to think that the majority of the most learned people in the world could all be so wrong? I am interested in hearing people's thoughts on that idea...
Can logic arise out of chaos by chance? What would make on thing logical over another if there is no established order. Of course that is a problem in our society. Order has been thrown off, and everyone claims their own truth. That is illogical!
I would agree that it is reasonable to reject evolution. What we see in the natural world can be very feasibly interpreted as the product of a 6-day creation. In many cases, the creation explanation is more feasible than the evolutionary explanation of a natural phenomena, as is the case with the DNA that Kirk mentioned. Another example is the formation of proteins from amino acids. These proteins are essential to life, and evolution says they formed randomly. As found in The New Answers Book 3, the probability of one small protein being formed by chance from amino acids is around 1 in 10 ^ 130, and the probability of getting all the proteins necessary for life is around 1 in 10 ^ 40,000. Both far exceed the upper limit of probability for an event to be expected to occur by chance (1 in 10 ^ 50). This and other examples are reasons that it is reasonable to reject evolution.
Tough question you pose: Is it logical, is it reasonable? According to what parameters? Is it logical to believe that something as complex as a reproducing single-celled organism spontaneously generated itself from raw materials that do not contain DNA(information on how to organize such materials) I would say no. Not only does the genetic code have to be there, but the mechanism to read the data and assemble the structures must also develop. Can this be done by chance? I don't think that it can be logically.
We very count that in other considerations. We don't believe that organisms are going to grow in a can of processed food. If life could spring from dead material by chance, a can of corn could not be counted on to be botulism free. There may even have been live bacteria in the material put in the can. It is killed in the process, but we count on the fact that life cannot spring from dead matter.
If we think that genetic codes could spring from chance, but lock our doors with a simple key not expecting that anyone could make a key by chance, it would seem to me that we are being unreasonable.
We also count on genetic stability in organisms and ourselves. No genetic analysis would be valid in court if mutations were common. Why would we buy garden seeds that guarantee that the corn will produce 14 rows of kernels per ear. Purebred dogs or cattle or other special organisms would not be worth much. Animal and plant features are so uniform that we make scientific "keys" to determine what species to which they belong.
Visually, or maybe I should say casually, a female Sharp-shinned Hawk and a male Coopers Hawk can be confused, but the variance in the species is small enough that using a key to differentiate features can identify the proper species. Young science students used to have to do these exercises correctly.
But when our mind is set against creation of specific(pun) creatures suddenly, we try to ignore criteria that we count on in other ways.
Yes, and I think that doing so is contrary to good science. Research that does not prove your hypothesis can still be great science because it shows that your hypothesis is not statistically reasonable. This helps with learning just the same. I think good science actually takes a good deal of humility; a willingness to test your hypothesis and be wrong. If, however, you claim significance for your hypothesis that is not statistically valid, you draw others to incorrect assertions.
Assumptions exist and are sometimes valid, but they remain assumptions. In our recent discussion on another topic I reviewed some of the experiments and theories concerning various dating methods and was surprised at the lack of consensus among researchers looking at the same data. I am not saying the data was wrong, but some data is dismissed because it doesn't fit.
Scientists who believe it God's Word are under the same burden. On either side, creation or evolution, with regard to scientific discovery we must remember, we don't know everything.
In cases of legitimate controversy, scientists should claim ONLY that they have a working hypothesis that covers the data in a limited domain (micro-evolution) and allow the evidence for and against any larger claims to be freely debated. This is reasonable! Scientists should not assert facts where facts are indeed not in evidence, which is often done by evolutionists. Scientists also should not assert that it is science that establishes philosophical views when, in fact, these views were really adopted prior to any scientific investigation. .