hua@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Ernest Hua) (05/03/85)
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The following is from Duncan Buell at LSU:
I have been forwarded 600K bytes of net.origins, and have
read it through fairly carefully. (I am not on the
appropriate network, so I get things forwarded.) And I have
some comments for all of you, comments which I hope you will
all take seriously. Practically everyone on this list
spends most of his time in picking nits of one sort or
other. You would be amazed to see the list in the large
chunks that I see, with double and triple and quadruple quo-
tations and responses, going on for a number of lines, all
leading up to a one line comment which is the new material.
Only very rarely is there any real discussion or coherent
presentation of ideas.
With that introduction, what I will now present better be
coherent, I guess.
In the recent past, the creationists were asked to state
their position. As examples, the CRS doctrinal statement
was posted, and at least three people said that they would
sign it. More recently, someone suggested that the evolu-
tionists haven't presented their position, so why should the
creationists have to do so.
In the recent case in Louisiana, in which the appeal is
scheduled for about July, the creationist side presented
over a thousand pages of argument about the nature of "sci-
ence." I submit that that indeed is the ENTIRE question at
hand here. However, unlike the creationist side, I have to
agree with Judge Duplantier and his summary judgement. In
granting summary judgement, the judge in effect stated that
there were no questions of fact left to be determined and
hence no reason for a trial. All the relevant facts needed
for a decision (as to religious nature of creationism and
its mandated teaching) were at hand.
My argument is quite simple. There is a famous (and prob-
ably apocryphal) story of a Ph. D. student in mathematics
who got to the defense of his dissertation in group theory.
He presented the definitions of his groups, discussed the
lovely theorems about them that he had proven, and built up
an elegant theory. Finally, one of the examiners asked him
for an example of one of these groups. The punch line is
that there weren't any; the unfortunate student had built
his Ph. D. house on sand (couldn't resist the allusion) and
had used mutually exclusive conditions.
The moral of this story should be clear. Evolution and its
correctness or incorrectness, either or both in its general
explanation of the nature of history and its specific
description of what caused the turns of events to take
place, is independent of the assumption of the existence of
God/a god/supernatural power. It is, or should be, like all
science, a description of what happens/happened, answering
the questions of "what" and not "why." The best
demonstration of its independence from theology is the fact
that it can be accepted by members and nonmembers of all but
the very narrowest of religious organizations. Evolution,
like all good science, is supposed to make the following
basic assumptions about the rules of the game:
1. There is to be no appeal to supernatural power; all
forces acting are assumed to be natural forces, and all
deductions are assumed to be the best deductions possi-
ble given the observed facts and our current technology
for observation.
2. We assume a basic consistency of the rules of the game;
the rules remain constant over time, so that reproduci-
bility of experiments is required.
Creationism, on the other hand, cannot be so separated.
(Whether it is correct or incorrect is quite another
matter.) It has a quite different basic assumption. Paul
Dubois signs his postings, I suspect, to indicate his reli-
gious beliefs. Dave Brown (I think I got that right) admits
that he accepts creationism on faith. Lief Sorenson has
written a similar statement. That is to say, a NECESSARY
condition for the validity of creationism is the existence
of the aforementioned God/god/supernatural power. One can-
not accept the validity of creationism without believing in
the existence of that God/god/supernatural power as a "crea-
tor." Without a supernatural power, supernatural action can-
not take place.
This, then is the heart of the matter. All the evolution-
ists have to do to totally disprove creationism is to prove
the nonexistence of God/god/supernatural power. And the
FIRST thing that the creationists MUST do is prove the
existence. This, after all, is the way that a mathematician
(which I am, some of the time), would work. When confronted
with a particularly knotty problem, one of the first things
to do, before attempting a long and difficult proof, is to
convince oneself that there is some hope. If the necessary
conditions cannot be met, there's no point in going further.
If, on the other hand, the necessary conditions are met,
nothing is proved except the noninconsistency of the
evidence--but we all feel a little more assured that a proof
might be possible.
Now, why aren't the evolutionists going after the disproof?
On the one hand, I have talked myself into a corner, since
it would appear that there is a way to settle this matter
once and for all. On the other hand, this would be a tall
order. How, by the observation of natural forces, making
deductions based on the assumption of the nonexistence of
supernatural power, does one prove the nonexistence? One
cannot. This is an old argument, going back to Descartes.
Scientific methods can neither prove nor disprove the
existence of supernatural power. Any action of supernatural
power, whether past or present, must only be interpreted as
aberrations in the reproducibility of experiments (or falsi-
fiability of hypotheses, which is the other side of the same
coin) and indicate that one's formulated explanation is not
sufficiently complete, that some relevant variable has not
yet been accounted for.
And why don't the creationists go after the proof of the
existence of this power? The problem I see with the direc-
tion of this discussion is that the creationists are being
allowed to discuss small points and minor side effects,
instead of being forced to prove that they have any hope of
holding dear a valid explanation for the observed facts.
Henry Morris specifically cops out on the scientific proof
of the existence of the Creator in his *Scientific Creation-
ism.* As has been pointed out by numerous anti-creationists,
Morris has started his celebrated document by stating that
his fundamental assumption cannot be scientifically proved.
That is to say, all of science can be brought to bear on all
questions except the one on which all else depends. That's
a neat trick, but it shouldn't hold water. Again using
mathematical analogies, it is common practice when one is
faced with a knotty problem that one cannot solve to change
the problem slightly into one that can be solved. To some
extent this "works" professionally, allowing papers to be
published, tenure to be achieved, and so forth, but it
doesn't solve the original problem.
The fundamental intellectual and scientific problem with
creationism is that its basic assumption lies outside the
bounds of science, so that scientists don't bother with it,
and that creationists (and the dichotomy is entirely
intended) attempt to define the problem out of existence by
insisting that one must "take it on faith."
Faith, I must re-emphasize, is religious.
It doesn't matter at all how many nits you pick nor how many
Archaeopteryx can dance on the DNA of a Drosophila. If the
basic creationist postulate about the existence of a Creator
is false, then all that can be done is show that there are
flaws in the current theories. No creationist argument
about holes in evolutionary theory can prove anything about
the validity of creationism unless the Creator can be shown
to exist.
So, to go back to the issue of what is held to be "creation-
ism" and what is held to be "evolution," I'd be willing to
bet that all the evolution side would agree to some version
of my two rules above (suitably modified by committee to
take into account some points I may have overlooked). Will
the creation side admit that their basic necessary condition
is the existence of a Creator, and that, absent belief in
that Creator, it is impossible to be a creationist? And
then, is it not clear that we really DO have a religious
discussion going on? Brown and Sorenson admit as much; they
are at least quite honest about it. As Judge Duplantier
wrote, "As it is ordinarily understood, the term "creation"
means the bringing into existence of mankind and of the
universe and implies a divine creator. While all religions
may not teach the existence of a supreme being, a belief in
a supreme being (a creator) is generally considered to be a
religious tenet." Can the creationists on this list separate
their arguments from their religion? I suggest that they
cannot.
Now, a final pair of comments. Judge Duplantier, in his
ruling, said that he was interpreting the Louisiana "bal-
anced treatment" law as mandating the teaching of creation-
ism, since it mandated the teaching of creationism if a sub-
ject (evolution) were taught which could not be forbidden to
be taught (Epperson case). The ACLU in New Orleans tells me
that it is possible to interpret Judge Duplantier's judge-
ment as saying, not only that the mandating of the teaching
of creationism violates the First Amendment, but that the
voluntary teaching of creationism violates the First Amend-
ment, since the Judge quite clearly says that creationism is
a religious belief which is part of the religious doctrine
of specific sects. In the last batch of messages from the
net, there were again references to teaching things in
schools (as opposed to discussing things as if this were an
academic dispute).
Duncan A. Buell
csnet: buell.lsu@csnet-relay
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Live long and prosper.
Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }jp@lanl.ARPA (05/03/85)
Well put, Duncan. My high school senior son has been following this discussion for an English term paper. I think your comments will help him put things in perspective. It is interesting to note that some evolutionists are religious, but no creationist is scientific. jp
roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (05/05/85)
> Scientific methods can neither prove nor disprove the > existence of supernatural power. OK, that's it! Let's call it a draw, "rmgroup" the whole ball of wax, and get back to work, shall we? :-) -- allegra!phri!roy (Roy Smith) System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute