HQ

I recently got into a debate over young earth creationism. One objection to the view went as follows: "A scientific theory is a concise set of statements which has broad explanatory and predictive power within its purview. In order to be considered scientific, a hypothesis must predict what must or must not be observed if it is true. If such things are not observed/observed, then the hypothesis is considered falsified. [Scientific Creationism] does not espouse any idea which makes exclusive predictions about what must or must not be observed. Every biological observation falls under "God made it that way" or borrows from evolutionary theory and says "it adapted that way." Every piece of challenging evidence (i.e. all of it) is explained as "God could have..." In other words, no matter what is observed, it's considered acceptable under [a creation] "theory," while nothing could apparently falsify it. Thus, it does not meet the neces...

In clear-cut cases of crime, terror, and other instances of wicked human behavior, you'd think we'd all be on the same page. But we're not. We argue over it, especially if we talk politics. It seems we can all call something bad, but when we talk about what we or the government should do about it, we can't agree. Why not? The answer is fairly simple and comes down to our views of human nature. In other words, the argument is not primarily political but a question of worldview.  Consider any event in which a person has done some immoral action. Now, consider why the action was taken. What is the explanation for the action? You will probably pursue one of two lines of thought. Either you will find no further explanation necessary - a person commits a crime because the nature of human beings includes the property of being highly prone to evil actions or you will seek an explanation outside the agent in question, some feature of their social fabric or other enviro...

Marrten Boudry claims that there are far fewer fallacies out there than we think . His reason involves a 'fallacy fork.' The fallacy fork is a dilemma the conclusion of which is supposed to show us that fallacies are not usually fallacies. Here is the fork : Either the fallacy is hardly ever used, or it is hardly ever fallacious. For a fallacy to count, it must imply some deductive form. Since, we hardly ever make deductive arguments that are candidates for fallacies, we should prefer the second fork. So, are what we call fallacies not really fallacies after all? Consider, the ad hominem fallacy. A candidate for office claims that policy x will make everyone safer. Her claim is rejected on the grounds that she has known terrorists as personal friends. On the face of it, the claim could not be decided merely on the grounds of the friendships of the one who makes the claim. The assumption one has to make is something like, "anyone with terrorists as friends shoul...

There is a clock in DNA. Does it show how old the species is or not? We have less than 5% of DNA's function. This is small fruit and does not conclusively tell us that ancestry is common or not. So, what do the number of DNA differences show? DNA resides in the nucleus and mitochondrial DNA resides in a separate part of the cell. The mitochondria is passed on through the maternal line (the sperm unites only with the nucleus). DNA has its own language comprising of four letters, ATCG. We can compare two DNA strands. When there is similarity and difference we can see it. DNA strands might be 80% similar and 20% different. We have a huge database of DNA and we can make some conclusions. Evolution says that all differences are the result of mutation and the product of change over time. So, a chimpanzee and a human. Differences = mutations x time x 2. So, what would happen given 6 million years. If this is so, then there would be something like 25,000 mutations. But there a...

Dennis Venema I am sitting waiting for part 2. Some comments on what I've heard so far: So far the talks have not focused on Adam. Instead, we have heard arguments for the thesis that the similarities of traits across species do not show common ancestry and that they do. Neither argument is conclusive since both arguments conclude from that the data does not disconfirm the respective theories. Conclusions are thin. Design was a feature of Dr Jeanson's talk - all the data is compatible with design. But this is true even if evolution is true. The data would not be radically different given either evolution or young earth. This might be a fairly predictable conclusion given the data presented by Dr Jeanson, but interestingly, the data presented by Dr Venema is similar - none of if shows evolution over young earth. So, nothing of what we have heard so far is conclusive for either side of the debate. Okay, Dr Venema is on. Here are my notes: In the transition from geocent...

Dr Venema from BioLogos is professor of Biology at Trinity Western University in BC, Canada. Dr Venema is a theistic evolutionist (or evolutionary creationist, as he calls it). Here are my notes: Three assumptions: If every square inch of creation is under the Lordship of Christ, then science is an act of worship.  If God is the author of both books--the Bible and nature--then there cannot be a contradiction.  If there is apparent conflict between our study of the Bible and nature, it is only apparent.  A theory is an explanatory framework that has survived testing and makes accurate predictions.  Evolution is this kind of theory. It makes accurate predictions, holds up to testing and has not yet suffered from disconfirming evidence. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Dobzhansky). Speciation is much like the development of languages over time. Populations become separated and language changes a develops through incre...

[DISCLAIMER: I'm 'live-blogging' so there will be errors, maybe many] I'm at the Evolution, Genetics, and the Historical Adam Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The question for the conference is: Did Adam exist? The debate has achieved critical mass and now has its own Four Views book, an accomplishment reserved for only the most debated of topics. The speakers today represent two sides of the debate - Dr Nathaniel Jeanson argues that the Genesis account should be taken literally - six days, less than 10,000 years ago, and a guy, formed from the dust and the breath of God, called Adam, the first man. Dr Venema argues that Adam... well I don't yet know but will let you know when he speaks... presumably that Adam, at least as Genesis describes him, did not exist. Both represent leading Christian organizations devoted to their respective positions. Answers In Genesis, an organization known for a massive Noah's Ark in Indiana and fr...

Donald Davidson In an earlier post I looked at an argument by Donald Davidson that supported the idea that thought depends on language. Thought is possible through learning of the concepts of true and false through interpreting another person asserting something about an object in the world. Davidson calls this "triangulation." I suggested that the problem with Davidson's argument is that, from an non-theistic perspective, there appears no way for a "first thought" to emerge from non-thought. It only takes one person who has language, and therefore thought, to get the ball rolling. But if there is no language and therefore no thought then there can be no first thought. I considered this to be a pretty fatal objection to Davidson's argument. However, I found myself largely in agreement with him on thought's dependence on language.

Consider the following: Adam and Eve are created by God, are conscious and can understand God and each other when they speak. Although it is possible that both human beings were made with a fully working language system programed in from the start, it is more likely that both human beings had to learn to speak and understand after they were conscious. Just like children, Adam and Eve could have been trained by God to understand and speak.

... What do we mean by "nothing"? To define nothing one has to be able to conceive of nothing. Some say that it is impossible to conceive of nothing since nothing entails somehow the non-existence of time and space. We might be able to conceive of a particle-free space, but spacelessness and timelessness seem illusive. Of course, this does not touch on abstract objects, if one believes in such things. Others suggest that the findings of logic conclude that necessarily, something exists. Logic cannot, on that reading, conclude that nothing is possible. One suggestion is to say that time and space are matter dependent, that time and space are  relations  of material things (or concrete things). Once one conceives of a particle-free zone time and space  cannot  exist in that zone. Others might propose that while nothing is conceptually impossible since one cannot ascribe properties to such a "thing," it is, rather, a negation of everything. The incomprehensib...

Just how do we relate science and faith, specifically, the Christian faith? Christians who take their Bible seriously will also take reason seriously. God is eminently reasonable; one could even say God is reason. But all too often there is a feeling that Christians are caught between irrational, reason and science denying positions and compromise with their faith. Plantinga outlines three approaches to the problem. First, the two-truth  approach. According to this view one might affirm a proposition in science and deny it in theology. Second, the truth-from-a-standpoint approach suggests that we can hold to apparently contradictory propositions since we can be sure of both being true according to the discipline in which they are held. What we don't know is how the two propositions fit together. Not knowing how   the propositions fit together shouldn't diminish our belief in either. The  territorial  approach suggests "science... properly deals with matters ...

Does one's view of origins have anything to do with apologetic method? This was the subject of a recent debate held at Southern Evangelical Seminary. Three views were held at the debate. Jason Lisle argued that a presuppositional apologetic assumes a hermeneutic of literalism. Since presuppositionalists typically hold that scripture is the ultimate authority on what is true and since there is no indication found in the text that the six day creation account was anything but an account of actual events in 24 hr days there is no reason found in scripture to abandon a young-earth, six day creation position. The only reason for abandoning this view is found outside scripture and entails borrowing from methodological scientific naturalism or other non-biblical methods and worldviews.

God Created the World just as Genesis describes. But what does this mean for one's worldview? To believe that God created the world is to accept a set of principles by which one interprets experience, knowledge and by which one comes to conclusions about the fundamental nature of reality. To believe that God created the World is to believe something like the following:

Being a "nutter," for my non-British friends, means being crazy, doolally, mad and irrational. And young earthers, those who hold to the view that God created the universe six to ten thousand years ago in roughly six twenty four hour days, are, according to many people (mostly in academia or media), nutters.  The reason they might be deemed nuts is mostly a matter of supposedly ignoring what's in front of them - the evidence. Of course there might be more to it than mere stuff (see here for my comments about the logic of evolution), but let's leave that aside for a minute. I want to suggest that it is not nuts to think that the world and all that is involved in what Christians call "creation" was created more recently than modern naturalistic scientists suggest. The objections to the young earth view are multiple, but no objection lands a final punch. Furthermore, upon examination of the so called evidence, the young earth view finds itself i...