Subject: OT: Religion vs. science
Date: Aug 14 14:01:01 1999
From: Don Baccus - dhogaza at pacifier.com


At 01:42 PM 8/14/99 -0700, Mike P. Gagel wrote:

>Just wanted to point out that during the *debate* of religion vs. science,

I haven't noticed any debate between science and religion.

There's a debate over so-called "creation science", which claims
to be science, not religion.

>some posters seem to assume that science is fact or truth. Science is
>neither because while researchers can make a case that conclusions (or
>theories) are supported by observations, they can't *prove* their
>conclusions.

Surely true. However, the theories of science correlate much better
with the data than does the Bible as interpreted by the Institute of
Creation Research. It is impossible to correlate the data with the
notion that the earth is only 6,000+ years old, for instance.

Because of this, the so-called Christians of the Institute of
Creation Research are forced to lie about the data. That's the only
way they can trick people into believing them - they lie, then depend
on the fact that a certain subset of the population believes in the
literal truth of the Bible to such an extent that they will believe
those lies rather than learn about the data from independent sources.

Like ... scientists.

I call them "so-called Christians" because I honetly don't remember
being taught in my Christian youth that lying for God is something
that He or His Son would approve of.

I'm no longer a practicing Christian, so I suppose the notion of
lying for God shouldn't bother me, but it does. It apparently
bothers me a lot more than it does a bunch of self-proclaimed
Christians...

>Researchers use statistics when they argue a case. E.g., probability is
>often set to p=.05 (called Alpha value). If a researcher can show his or her
>conclusions meet or exceed Alpha (p<=.05), then conclusions are probably
>supported by observations. In other words, there is a 95% or better chance
>the researcher's conclusions are correct (or 5% or less chance of error).
>While researchers might strive for absolute certainty, they can never
>achieve it as there is no p=0. (And in my mind, p=0 is absolute proof.)

p=0 would only show that there's a zero percent chance that the correlations
being tested are due to chance.

It wouldn't show that your explanation for the correlation is correct,
not on its own...

Regardless ... science admits that our knowledge of the world is
incomplete. If our knowledge were truly complete, there would be
no need for science, which in its fundamental sense is the task of
extending our knowledge of the world (writ large, the universe and
everything, of course).

This is the anti-intellectual message that actually underlies the
"creation science" hoax - all knowledge of the physical world is
contained in the Bible. There's really no need to study the physical
world, because God has revealed all in the Bible. When data is
taken that seemingly contradicts the Bible, throw it out - because
the Bible can never be wrong about such things. Such as the earth
being flat, for instance.

>
>Mike
>
>-----
>Mike P. Gagel
>Vancouver, BC
>E-mail: mailto:hlthpro at home.com
>Bird Links: http://members.home.net/hlthpro1/birding/
>
>
>
>


- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.