lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (03/06/84)
I disagree that creationism is unfalsifiable. It is true that many appeals are made to divine initiation of events, but these are supposed to have developed according to natural laws. I refer of course to the Flood. As a matter of fact, in the 1700's geological strata were widely held to be a record of Noah's Flood. Closer scrutiny of the geology showed this view to be untenable. By 1820 Lyell was able to remark concerning the diluvialists (creationists), "We have fairly driven them out of the Mosaic record." I quoted the whole letter of his which contains this remark in a net posting some time ago. I would comment that the diluvialists were scientific in their views since they modified their model to try to accommodate the accumulating evidence. This usually meant adding more floods and catastrophes to account for obviously distinct episodes of rock formation. Today's creationists simply gloss the entire issue of geological strata with wildly implausible assertions about their formation (cf. Morris, SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM, chapter V) Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew
tynor@uiucuxc.UUCP (03/09/84)
#R:ihuxr:-95700:uiucuxc:36200003:000:529
uiucuxc!tynor Mar 8 11:09:00 1984
I think you've fallen into the trap that the creationists have
laid... If their particular model can be proven false, then somehow
the entire creation concept can be proven false.. It's simply not
true. Once one allows the supernatural (God) into the picture, we
abandon all hope of disproving or proving a theory. Disproving a
theory that uses God, is as difficult (Impossible!) as disproving
God.
Steve Tynor
ihnp4!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!tynor
University of Illinois Champaign-Urbanarmooney@uicsl.UUCP (03/09/84)
#R:ihuxr:-95700:uicsl:7500053:000:508
uicsl!rmooney Mar 8 11:43:00 1984
The idea of creationism (i.e. that life the universe etc. were created
by a supernatural being) is *not* falsifiable. Maybe particular "models"
of creationism which demand the occurence of a particular testable and
falsifiable event can be falsified but the overall idea cannot be falsified
since the supernatural can be used to account for *anything*. See Re:
Creationism & Falsification.
Ray Mooney
ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!rmooney
University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign