From: lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins
Subject: Re: Young earth creationist logic NOT!
Date: 28 Aug 92 15:21:17 GMT
Reply-To: lawson@aldia.UUCP (Drew Lawson)
Organization: ACUSON, Mountain View, CA

In article <1992Aug27.043427.505@panix.com> carlf@panix.com (Carl Fink) writes:
>In <1992Aug20.171831.346@acuson.com> lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson) writes:
>
>[much deleted]
>
>>There is another point I've been meaning to bring up on this thread.
>>The anti-faith side of this debate questions why the evidence points to
>>long times, evolution, etc.  Perhaps the "evidence" is not pointing.
>>As an example, let me bring up the old "canals" on Mars topic.  They
>>were clear evidence that there was an advanced civilization on Mars.
>>More recent views is that they just happen to be there and aren't
>>evidence of anything.  They just appeared to be canals.
>
>  Drew, there are no Martian canals.  Never were.  They were a combination
>of bad telescopy and wishful thinking.  There are no features on Mars
>that resemble the "canali" of Mars.

That is not what I said.  Are you saying that no one ever thought there
were canals on Mars?


>>Perhaps I have an easier time with this because I am a programmer.  I
>>can think of variables and structures as real while I know that they
>>are just convenient concepts.  I look at evolution the same way.
>
>[sig deleted]
>
>  Drew, I'm a biology grad student *and* a programmer.  Let me point out
>that scientists are just as capable of abstract thought as you are.

I'm glad to hear it.  Until last week or so, that _had_ been my
assumption.


>If 
>you read back messages on this topic, you'll find that various 
>"pro-reason" posters (by analogy to your term "anti-faith") have
>said over and over that a scientific theory is just our best guess
>about how the physical universe behaves.  In other words, "just convenient
>concepts".

Alas, they are not the loudest (or most numerous) voices.  You are
restoring a bit of my confidence in my own sanity.  I began to wonder
whether I had misunderstood ten years of scientific (albeit
mathematical sciences, mostly) education.


>Furthermore, about half of the physicists I know think of
>such basic physics tools as the quantum as "just convenient concepts,
>without physical reality".  We're really quite capable of thinking, 
>you know.
>
>  As Stephen Gould has so trenchantly pointed out, "Evolution is a 
>theory.  It is also a fact."  That is, the "Theory of Evolution" 
>(more correctly, any given theory of evolution) is an attempt by 
>scholars to explain the fact of evolution.  Fact, sir, as certain
>as the existence of Siberia is a fact.  We have excellent records
>of evolution, we have seen it occur in modern times, and there's
>no *rational* way to dispute the matter.

Here we hit the same vocabulary tangle I have previously made problems
for myself with.  (Boy that's a terrible sentence.)  I do not dispute
contemporary evolution, though I haven't seen the evidence for it.  I
dispute evolutionary origin.  I dispute that all the life on the earth
originated by random survivable mutations from a single
proto-lifeform.

That is, of course, a viewpoint.  I present it for explanation, not for
evangelical purposes.  (I'm running low on asbestos suits. ;-)

-- 
Drew Lawson                      If you're not part of the solution,
lawson@acuson.com                you're part of the precipitate
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic