jfw (10/06/82)
Having already mentioned something of the MIT C vs E debate, I will further
my submission by adding a comment from Dr. Jerry Lettvin (the Evolutionist ("The
Evolving One"?) of the debate).
Science is *never* certain. Science involves looking at a collection of facts,
trying to make some sense from them, and @b( making some predictions about soon-
to-be-discovered facts based upon one's theories ). Later facts may enhance one's
belief in a theory (gravitation is a 1/R^2 law force), or cause one to revise it
(Newtonian Mechanics). One can never assert that, based on the facts currently
known, that ALL POSSIBLE KNOWLEDGE AND THEORIZING about a topic can be declared
to have been done.
Relevance: If the universe we seem to be living in were actually created 5000+-
years ago, *EVEN IF IT HAD BEEN CREATED THIS MORNING AT 4:32EDT*, the evidence
we *see*, the evidence we infer, all points relentlessly to a universe far older
than that. Looking around us, with the current understanding of the currently
assembled body of facts, there is no other reasonable conclusion to draw other
than for a universe much older than a paltry few thousand years; the exact number
of billions may be a little fuzzy, but nothing points to *this* universe having
been created, fossils, tired carbon nuclei, and all, at 5000+- BC. Even if that
were the *truth*, you could not reach that conclusion as * SCIENCE *.
Another point Dr. Lettvin made: most folks out there in Netland are probably
aware of the phenomenon where a great researcher discovers a significant
phenomenon, and publishes a surprising lucid paper on it, which becomes the
reference work from which spring a number of review articles by lesser researchers.
Many of these review articles are interesting and important in their own right,
but for the fundamental truth, you still refer back to the reference work. The
Universe is God's reference work [under the Judeo-Christian set of beliefs of
which he is a part]. The Bible, regardless of its merits as a religious text,
is but a review article.