Some Flaws in Creationist Epistimology

[jordan179]

Creationists reason as if there were a binary choice::  Currently Accepted Scientific Theory vs. Biblical Literalism.  This dichotomy is irrational, and it's at the heart of why nobody who understands science takes Young Earth Creationists very seriously in intellectual terms

Comments

[foxfire74]

Growing up in the Bible Belt,we had a strict tripartite division going between Young Earth Creationism, Them Godless Darwinists, and the Weaselly Fence-Sitting Theistic Evolutionists, who were clearly trying to have their cake and eat it too. I was largely surrounded by YECs while being a WFSTE, which gave me early training in when to keep my mouth shut. :) (Theistic evolution can be summed up as "yeah, evolution, as given a push by God".)

I personally have a sort of fuzzy creationism going; I believe that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the physical universe, but 1) I don't think He cares how I think the details took place and 2) the available evidence suggests billions of years/Charles Darwin/et cetera. God's responsible for the structure and functioning of my brain, and I don't think he intended me not to USE it... (God would probably care much more about my opinion on the details if I were a scientist, admittedly.)

And last but not least, one of the most brilliant people I ever knew was a YEC and an engineer to boot, who had NASA calling him up every fifteen months or so, going "um, so NOW can we hire you? Pretty please?" So I can't stereotype them as straw-chawin' redneck hicks, despite the best efforts of Facebook and Twitter to get me to do so.

[jordan179]

Theistic evolution is certainly possible. There's no real evidence for it, but it doesn't contradict any known things about the Universe either. I've used variants of the concept in fiction more than once (often cool Manichean Dualist ones with Light and Dark powers struggling for the Destiny of All Life).

I don't think that YEC's have to be stupid. It's easy to ignore evidence in fields that are not one's own specialty.

[benschachar_77]

That depends on how you see things more than what you see, I think.

It's easy to say that phenomena X is clearly non magical when you understand how it works. But perhaps because you understand it or have lived with it for so long you no longer even consider it spectacular.

[jordan179]

I think the Universe and the evolution of Life both awesome and spectacular. I just don't think it's supernatural.

Natural Selection on a Grand Scale

[jordan179]

Every effect must have an antecedent, independent cause that is equal or greater in complexity and power. (I know I'm stating the rule poorly but you get the idea.) The universe is very large and very complex, but it is nevertheless an effect, a phenomenon. So where did it come from? It couldn't "create itself"; not only is that nonsense (an effect can't be its own cause) but also there is no evidence that the universe is sapient and capable of creating anything.

Except that we now know almost every one of the founding assumptions here to be untrue.

In the case of all but the most microscale phenonomena, causes need not be independent of their own effects because feedback loops are not only possible but quite common in Nature. In the case of the most microscale phenomena (quantum effects) causes do not have to antecedent to effects -- strict temporal sequence breaks down at the quantum scale (in fact, causality itself is a bit fuzzy way down there).

There is and never has been any good reason to assume that a cause must be "equal or greater in complexity and power" to its effects -- that was Scholasticism's bias in favor of formal hierarchy speaking there. There are several ways for causes to be much smaller than their effects -- from very simple ones of resonance and accumulation (both different manifestations of the same process, since resonance is the accumulation of energy over time and accumulation as in crystalline growth an example of the resonance of a molecular structure). If you pass the result of a reiterative process through a natural selection filter (such as the one operating in planetary system formation) really minute causes (the accretion of dust and gas in a nebular cloud) can produce tremendous effects (vast orbital-resonance synchronized star systems).

[foxfire74]

Sorry, bit of an overreaction on my part. I deal with too many liberals who think "doesn't agree with me on X" = "stupid and reprehensible on X, Y, Z, probably A through W, and quite possibly pi as well. In Engineer Guy's case, he was heavily involved in the Bill Gothard cult, and questioning YEC would have shaken his entire family life to the core as well as stressed him out personally.