From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Calling facts "theory"
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:12:42 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.

In article <nyikos.716475669@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
>Subject: Re: Calling facts "theory"
>Date: 14 Sep 92 13:01:09 GMT

>In <18vr04INNo9p@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> jmm25@po.CWRU.Edu (Jessica M. Mcgeary) writes:


>>The Catholic church has, yes, accepted evolution. And has apologized
>>to Galileo, much good it'll do the poor man now. And even said that 
>>the Big Bang theory of the creation of the Universe is consistent with
>>what the Church believes, tho I don't think they're saying this is exactly
>>how they believe it was created.

>>But I'm still pissed at them for what they told Hawking and the other
>>cosmologists. No looking too closely into the moment of creation, because
>>that should be left a mystery and it's something that only God can under-
>>stand anyway.

>It is my understanding, based on conversations with a mathematician who
>has carefully read Hawking's book on "....Time", that Hawking himself
>does not look at the moment of creation, but instead has a vague theory
>of circular time which it is impossible to follow from his popularized
>account.

>To Hawking, apparently, the universe has always existed and his
>attempts to get around such things as the constant conversion of hydrogen
>into heavier elements are incomplete at best.

>By the way, I am a topologist, and a joke about my kind of mathematician
>is that we cannot tell the difference between a doughnut and a coffee
>cup.  From everything I have heard of Hawking, he seems to be the kind
>of physicist who cannot tell the difference between time and space.

>>Jessica McGeary
>>jmm25@po.cwru.edu
>>Case Western Reserve University
>>Remember! Arguments should be FUN!

>Yes, I have lots of fun over on talk.abortion.  I think I'll have
>some fun over here too.

>Peter Nyikos

Whoa! Wait a minute here. I'm a skeptical theist but I don't believe in the
"fact" of evolution.  There are plenty of dissenters in the scientific 
community from the neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, and in any event, a distinction
must be made between mutational evolutionary theory (which is established 
as fact like gravitational theory but doesn't entail naturalism) and 
naturalistic evolutionary theory, which is "a metaphysical research 
program" (Popper) and which is frankly nonsupernaturalist. My reasons 
for dissenting are certain logical and philosophical difficulties 
inherent in the way most NET (naturalist evolutionary theory) is 
formulated--problems with the tautological character of natural 
selection theory, problems of accounting for human cognitive-esthetic 
rapport with the world in terms of a natural selection model, problems 
about the "arrival" of the fittest, and problems about what is to be
taken as the fundamental unit of evolutionary process (i.e., *what* is it
that evolves?). These and similar quirks give me pause, and I am open to
the possibility that some of these may be overcome in the future, but it is
clearly not true that evolutionary theory stands on the same scientific 
ground as the fact that the moon is not made of green -- or was it Swiss -- 
cheese.

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